A thread to help bring events to the attention of nearby people that they might be interested in.
Home Free (full name: Home Free Vocal Band) will be in the Seattle area on November 1 & 2. This is an a cappella/barbershop quartet group that has a beatboxer as their fifth member. They started out doing more pop songs but have settled on country as their main music of choice.
You can see the skill with duplicating instruments in the video for “Try Everything” from Zootopia, with one of the other singers (short beard, longer hair, black shirt) helping out with some additional sound effects. The only thing I don’t know is if they’re using a multi-track recording for the instruments or if they can get them all in one shot.
That was worth it. They are a fun group to see on tour. They had a short Q&A session and joked with the audience, such as when there was a request to sing “Happy Birthday”, they said they were going to treat everyone the same and ignore everyone equally. And for the request of “Can we get a solo from ‘Special Effects’?”, they were non-commital, but that was already in the play set for the second half.
That was their “here’s proof that we really don’t use any musical instruments” segment. When “Special Effects” (Adam Rupp) did his routines, it proved they don’t have to do a multi-track recording of any of their songs. He is so quick, it sounds like he’s doing two or three instruments simultaneously. He’s probably using circular breathing in order to be able to get those notes out that fast. Adam Chance and Tim Foust also do some percussion effects during quite a few songs, so maybe all four singers pitch in at various times.
More fun from the group. Multiple subtle and not-so-subtle pitches about buying their CDs out in the lobby, and when they were prepping the audience to get ready for a photo opportunity, it was a reference to The Three Amigos!
Do yourself a favor, though. Bring earplugs or get seats way in the back. Tim demonstrates the power he can put behind a very deep bass voice. It will make you feel like you’re being battered by those miltary sound cannons from The Incredible Hulk. He is his own amplifier.
Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle has been slowly moving their event a little earlier each time for the past couple of years. It’s moved from the end of March to March 1-4 this year. As usual, the guest lineup will change in the next few weeks as their availability changes, but here’s some of the ones I recognize:
Actors
Christopher Lloyd
Felicia Day
Jeremy Shada (Adventure Time)
Mark Sheppard
Phil LaMarr
Sean Maher and Summer Glau (the Tams from Firefly)
Writers
Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files)
Patricia Briggs
R.A. Salvatore
Artists
Andy Price (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comics)
Chris Claremont (many comic books, including 16 years on Uncanny X-Men)
Christophe Lautrette (has worked on almost a dozen movies with DreamWorks Animation)
Ryan North (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl)
Steven Silver (Kim Possible)
I’m not sure if Stan Lee is going to be there or if they’re just using a picture of him for that page.
Updated guest lists for ECCC. These are just the ones that I think are widely-recognized. Check the website for the full list and you might see others you’re interested.
Actors:
Billie Piper and David Tennant
Karl Urban
Mark Sheppard
Wil Wheaton
Tom Wilson (Biff from Back to the Future)
Writers:
Terry Brooks (Shannara)
Artists
Quite a few Marvel and DC artists like Aaron Lopresti, Adam Hughes, Adi Granov, Brian Michael Bendis, Laura Allred
In the not too distant future, next Friday and/or Saturday, A.D., a familiar person puts on the red jump suit again.
This is actually a national event instead of a local one, but the MST3K Live 30th Anniversary Tour starts over on the east coast in October, makes its way over to the west coast in November, before wrapping things up in Colorado, Wisconsin and Illinois.
When they’ve got two shows scheduled for the same town, the first movie is The Brain (the 1988 Canadian sci-fi movie) and the second is Deathstalker.
We went to last year’s tour when they played Baltimore, which was Jonah as the ‘host’ and Joel did the intro and Q&A. Pretty good show, I thought. I’d do this one, but the DC run looks less convenient for me logistics-wise.
Many IMAX theaters that might be nearby where you live will be showing all 20 of the Marvel movies starting at the end of the month. Go to the Movie Reviews thread for more details.
For those in Washington State, this Saturday is the first of three days where state park admission is free. A few details located here and you can do a search for events going on in other states at the New for 102 page for the National Park Service.
This will be local to a lot of you. Just like the Free Comic Book Day in May, there is a Halloween ComicFest every year. The list of comics that will be available can be viewed here.
For next year’s Emerald City Comic Con, first off, it’s earlier in March again, on the 14th to the 17th. Makes it possible for me to try and attend because where I work, the last week of March is usually verboten for taking time off (big push to meet end of fiscal year goals).
Second, they’re giving people a chance to win tickets now through January 31, 2019. They’ve made arrangements with 21 comic book stores in the Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia and Portland areas where you can pick up a passport from them, or you can download a version you can print out. Visit at least nine of the stores and get the passport stamped at each one. Then post a picture of it on Instagram with their tag #ECCCPassport19.
The official rules have an alternate way of entering with a postcard, but it’s one entry per person, so I couldn’t send in the postcard and use the passport to enter.
Head to the ECCC Passport page for the details. It has a Google map embedded that shows where the stores are, but if you download the PDF version, it has a list with their street addresses on the last page.
There’s also a note in the passport that says you can get something exclusive at the convention and there will be additional perks showing up on the website later.
I just found out there’s another convention in the Seattle area next weekend that is similar to the Emerald City Comic Con. It’s called GeekGirlCon, which focuses on empowering women and girls “to pursue their passions—whether they love science and technology, comics, literature, gaming, or anything else!”
While looking through the schedule and exhibitors, I saw two things I’m really interested in: “25 Years of MYST & MYST Fandom” with Rand Miller, and “Enter LAIKA: Behind the Scenes”. If you don’t know who Laika is, they’re the private movie studio that made Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings and are based just outside of Portland, Oregon.
Regarding MYST, Cyan Inc. is based outside of Spokane, Washington. If I remember right, they turned down funding from Brøderbund so they could work on the sequels without the pressure of “we gave you money so you have to publish it by” deadlines. At one point, I found a copy of the first game they ever published, called The Manhole. I gave it to a friend who had a young child because I thought they’d enjoy it. If I had held onto that, that would have been the perfect thing to take with me to this convention to have Rand Miller sign.
GirlGeekCon was good to go to. Held right next door to the Convention Center that ECCC holds theirs at, but since it’s a smaller event, it’s not as crowded. Even the vendor area, though a bit crowded, was navigatable. Learned a few new things and got to park close for not a lot of money.
Mysterium is the annual Myst convention. It is held in different cities, but next year, it’s going to be back in Spokane, WA, so a trip over to the Cyan Worlds office is likely and Rand Miller is open to having attendees stop by. See the Mysterium page for more details and they’re working on a “Global Mysterium”, to be scheduled at some point.
Myst turned 25 this year. The Kickstarter for the special re-release of all 7 games ended earlier this year.
dak, yes, that’s the place. I think next year’s con is already scheduled for about mid-November. I only attended three panels, but learned some really good information that I want to share after I go through my notes. Audio or video recording wasn’t allowed, but I took a lot of notes.
One of the very useful things I found out is called Archive of Our Own (AO3). It’s a site that does their own fundraising, a bit like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive, that was created as a better way of ensuring that transformative fanworks (fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic) remain available because too many of the free-to-use commercial sites shut down or are changed so much like Delicious that people leave. I will be adding AO3 to my “why we need fan fiction” blog shortly.
The only thing I don’t like about AO3 is that, being very used to one very particular fanfiction site, there doesn’t seem to be a way to keep a private list of “saved stories” that you can go back to. Either you make a public list (and hope that your list name is universally unique), or you use the “mark for later” thing which can inadvertently be wiped out if you want to clear out your history for any reason.
At least that was the case a few months ago. I haven’t looked for any new features recently.
On another note, can you no longer see when you reply to someone or if that post is immediately above yours? The last couple posts I’ve made here were in reply to a post, and I used that post’s reply button, but they don’t get the little “reply to” image next to the date area…
