Pennsic XXXVIII
Aug. 10th, 2009 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7It's taken me days, but I've got all the photos uploaded. I've just noticed that the Uploadr helpfully did not upload any of the videos, however. So I have to go back and add the videos from second week. My paid Flickr account expires in, like, a minute, though, so I have to scrape up some money to fix that. (Huh, guess I bought it when I got home from last Pennsic?) *
I have been mostly sleeping since I got home. Sleeping and working, but whenever possible, sleeping. I am exhausted. I did not sleep at Pennsic, appreciably-- I hate the idea of sleeping through something awesome, so I was up until the bitter end at night, and the first hint of noise of people stirring had me out of bed in the morning, and I could not change either behavior no matter how I tried. I also tried napping but there was almost no success there.
Anyway. How was Pennsic?
I can't sum up, really. If you know what it's like, then you know what it was like. If not, I am helpless to explain it. I don't know if I did any kind of adequate job last year. At least this year I have photos.
The difficulty with explaining Pennsic is just that it is so large and so... lacking in narrative arc?... that you can't just sum it up. All you can do is meander through it, which is my aim with these photos; I tell you my point of view, but part of the beauty of the thing is that everyone's point of view is different, and everyone has a wildly different experience of Pennsic. I camped in the Swamp, where most of the focus is on having the best time possible; there are camps who are focused on authenticity, and camps focused on fighting, and camps focused on specific eras and personae, and camps focused on fantasy, and camps focused on, well, drugs or alcohol; I feel lucky that I have fallen into a camp so comfortable for me, and another part of my joy is that my camp is set up, what with the bar and corner location and all, to be an attractive place for all kinds of people to come and spend a little time. Which is what I like best-- new people and familiar people alike, all coming and sharing a little bit of their specific experience of Pennsic with us.
And we give them beer.
All but the last of the videos, and the roll of film I have to develop, are up finally. I think I've tagged and rotated them all, though some wound up upside-down. The set is here: Pennsic XXXVIII, on Flickr.
Selected highlights, which you might all enjoy, to drag some sort of coherent story out of me:
Me!
Just wanted to put that out there, since I rarely get a photo of myself I like. Thanks, Nez!
This is the place where I work at Pennsic-- the big Turkish coffee shop place, Your Inner Vagabond.
There's also a video taken here, of the kitchen staff dancing-- the band Ishtar was playing out front, and we could hear it very well; at that point, nobody was buying drinks, so we had a moment to appreciate the music.
Back home down in the Swamp: Drumming around the fire at night. It's in sepia because otherwise it was a monochrome red, all flecked and weird looking, so I figured I'd deal with the grain by making it properly monochrome. Black and white made the fire look eerily blue, so I just used sepia instead. Hokey, I know, but there it is.
Dancing around the fire-- it's out of order, but the video and photos of the firedancer were from the same time.
I like this photo, for some reason. Kilij, our neighbor from Wicked Monkey, fights heavy (i.e. the dudes in armor that get in a massed group and beat the stuffing out of one another with big pieces of rattan-- here's a photo of us with him in full gear). In his second day of fighting, he had an incident with his helmet-clad face meeting a boot-clad foot on both of their ways to the ground in not the same direction. This led to his nose making a snapping noise and starting to bleed. (He later scored a kill from this-- "My lord, is all that your blood?!?" "Yeah!" THUNK!) He came back down to the Swamp and was sitting on our porch, somewhat spaced out, waiting for our shower to be free so he could wash it off. A few minutes after I took these pictures, he went into the shower and we heard this stream of curses-- he'd set his own nose. ("I kinda wiggled it around until it stopped popping and sat right, y'know?")
He's not as dumb as he looks, or sounds, in this photo/account, but it's funny when he pretends.
Speaking of heavy fighters, here he is with our other neighbor, Tir, whose name is not spelled so simply. I'll find out how he really spells it. Both of them were very merry at the time this photo was taken.
Sigh. If I had a harem it would have heavy fighters in it. So dumb and so useful for alcohol disposal. It became a morning ritual for Kilij to stagger past, glare balefully at us, and say "You guys totally wrecked me last night!" We'd answer, "But we weren't even trying!"
Tir, on the other hand, is supernatural somehow, and later this night, after this picture was taken, got into a fight with a garbage truck. No shit, there I was. He's in the middle of the road, staggering. The garbage truck is trying to do a 40-point turn to get to the dumpster and he's in the way, but he's holding his ground. "Fuck that truck!" Tir is bellowing. "I can take it! I'm gonna fight the truck! That truck can't just go where it wants! This is my fucking road! Fuck you, truck!" Dude is wasted. It takes two or three friends to coax him out of the road. (The garbage men find it amusing and so do not seriously pose the question of garbage truck vs.... I'm not sure what he is, but we'll call him a Hun for convenience.)
Next morning he's up at 9 am, headed to the port-a-johns, impeccably Tuchux-looking, a little spring in his step. I ask him how he does it, and he just shrugs and grins.
Speaking of local scenery, I also have a hilarious set of our leaky roof. Nez, our camp cook and dictator (<3), despite her considerable ire at the leaks dripping on her griddle, decided to make lemonade from lemons and use the drip to wash a coffee stain out of her shirt. Given that the leaks frequently had drastic changes in volume... well, here's the first photo in that little set, and I'll let you guess what happened before you click through. (Notes: 1. I shot from behind because that transparent white shirt was all she was wearing, so this is a family-rated set, and 2. Here's another example of why not to leave your camera's ISO setting on 1600; in color, these photos look horridly speckly, but in black and white the film grain just looks like art. I'm not being artsy-crapsy, I just want to do Nez, who in life has lovely even skin tones, some justice.)
Did I mention we had an ADORABLE BABY in our camp this year???!! We actually had two children, though the other hardly counted-- she was fifteen or sixteen and very self-motivated, interested in bugs, disinterested in boys or booze, beautiful yet intimidating (good, so we didn't have to fend anybody off!), well-behaved, and if she felt that a conversation or event was inappropriate, she would simply, quietly, leave. But the other child was thirteen months old and impossibly well-behaved-- his parents had made all sorts of contingency plans, should he not get along well with camping, but it wasn't necessary. He was a little hyper sometimes, and a bit hard on his mother, but loved flirting with all the women in camp, loved playing games, loved being cute, and loved attracting allllll the other children on the block with his most excellent toys. So during the day our little corner bar was a kid-magnet-- which was kind of nice, actually.
Here he is, forcing Captain Torsten to drop his intimidating Pirate Captain act and reveal that he actually is pretty good with kids (he has two of his own, nearly grown, can you believe it?):
To my sorrow, I didn't get a good picture of Parker's "flirt face"-- he has this expression he does, especially when a woman or girl is smiling at him, where he looks at you wide-eyed, averts his face, and then smiles and looks back sidelong at you. OMG it hurts my hormones. This picture is pretty close-- he's doing it to Nez, who he LOVED.
I should state for the record that I was working hard to strike a balance between shooting photographs, which I enjoy, and enjoying the moment, which is much easier for me to do without a camera between my eye and the goings-on. So I don't have a comprehensive photographic record. A lot of the fun went un-documented, because even the Stylus Tough isn't getting-lost-proof, and some of what went on, only the Rebel could have captured, and still other things, even the Rebel couldn't get. And I also made a conscious choice not to take incriminating photographs-- I know others don't feel so bound, but given the Swamp's almost hippie-like vibe of anything goes, there were various instances of people having a lot of fun without considering the risks of photos winding up on the Internet. (Nothing serious, but there was a bit of nudity.) So I put the camera away in instances like that, if I couldn't get a clear shot with nothing incriminating. I don't mean to make it sound like a den of debauchery, but taken out of context, it would appear to be. So I just didn't take any pictures sometimes. And sometimes, even when everyone's clothes were on, I still didn't feel like taking any pictures, so I didn't.
That said, i do have some Fizzball pictures. Ha ha ha. I have videos as well but they didn't get uploaded yet-- they're going up now. So a picture, more an establishing shot: yes, there were that many people there, and yes, it is that crude a setup, and yes, they all know exactly what's going on, and YES, Three Swans will be fielding a team next year, and YES I WILL BE ON IT.
For more about Fizzball, watch this space-- I'll post a video and explanation later.
And oh yes, the House of Daves.
Z has a more succinct explanation than I (along with an explanation of the Old Grand-Dad-i-Tini (link is to photo)) on his e:strip blog. Deciding that there were too many Daves in camp [two], we founded the House of Daves...
This indirectly led to the formation of Household Rule #4. Three Swans is a pretty laid-back household, with some unofficial rules (Do your share of chores; don't be a dick; don't smoke drugs in camp because that's obnoxious and you can do it with our neighbors instead), and heretofore only three actual written-down rules:
1) It's Nez's kitchen. [implied: Don't fuck with it.]
2) It's Klaus's bar. [implied: Don't fuck with it.]
3) Don't stick it in crazy. [not-so-implied: Don't fuck it.]
New Rule, #4) Don't put your balls in it, Andrew.
It's sort of sad that we needed that rule. He insists he didn't mean to do it. I don't know how you unintentionally do that sort of thing, but it bears legislating against regardless. Z charitably has decided that we need to get little yellow stickers to put on things that it is OK for Andrew to put his balls into or on. That might be hard to explain to single ladies visiting camp, but it's an efficient way to find out if they're into it.
But I am digressing. I think this entry has gone on long enough, so I will try to sum up:
The air made me sick so I sounded like Eartha Kitt on helium, making my war cry of "What, bitches?! What!!!" exceptionally humorous. Next year I am considering a dust mask of some kind.
I had a blast. I walked around and bought small things and did a lot of sewing/beading/handcrafting. I had to sew some of Z's garments onto his body, since they weren't quite finished. He looked alternately ragamuffinly and awesome, depending on how well I'd done.
I looked alternately hot and schlumpy, ditto. I did manage to finish two dresses while at camp, though. Go me! And go Nez's battery-operated sewing machine which she brought WITH HER to the SWAMP omg. Wow.
Z had fun as well. We are going to have Three Swans events during the year, most likely Craft Nites, which need a better name. The House of Daves will have meetings as well, possibly including the third member, John Henry David who defected from the John Contingent on the grounds of exceptional service to the House of Daves' Ladies Auxiliary. (He left a bruise on my lower back but man I did not mind, because those muscles needed tenderizing like whoa. He brought the awesome.)
And I am out of focus now so I am going to go.
_______________________________
*Um, if anyone wants to give me a week-early birthday present and gift me with another few months of Flickr Pro so that all my photos can remain visible, I'd reaaaaaallly reaaaaaalllly appreciate that. I seem to not have even that much cash and am going to go roll some loose change so I can buy groceries. Whoops-- Z is supposed to have been paid this week and wasn't, so we're sort of hosed. Well shit!
I have been mostly sleeping since I got home. Sleeping and working, but whenever possible, sleeping. I am exhausted. I did not sleep at Pennsic, appreciably-- I hate the idea of sleeping through something awesome, so I was up until the bitter end at night, and the first hint of noise of people stirring had me out of bed in the morning, and I could not change either behavior no matter how I tried. I also tried napping but there was almost no success there.
Anyway. How was Pennsic?
I can't sum up, really. If you know what it's like, then you know what it was like. If not, I am helpless to explain it. I don't know if I did any kind of adequate job last year. At least this year I have photos.
The difficulty with explaining Pennsic is just that it is so large and so... lacking in narrative arc?... that you can't just sum it up. All you can do is meander through it, which is my aim with these photos; I tell you my point of view, but part of the beauty of the thing is that everyone's point of view is different, and everyone has a wildly different experience of Pennsic. I camped in the Swamp, where most of the focus is on having the best time possible; there are camps who are focused on authenticity, and camps focused on fighting, and camps focused on specific eras and personae, and camps focused on fantasy, and camps focused on, well, drugs or alcohol; I feel lucky that I have fallen into a camp so comfortable for me, and another part of my joy is that my camp is set up, what with the bar and corner location and all, to be an attractive place for all kinds of people to come and spend a little time. Which is what I like best-- new people and familiar people alike, all coming and sharing a little bit of their specific experience of Pennsic with us.
And we give them beer.
All but the last of the videos, and the roll of film I have to develop, are up finally. I think I've tagged and rotated them all, though some wound up upside-down. The set is here: Pennsic XXXVIII, on Flickr.
Selected highlights, which you might all enjoy, to drag some sort of coherent story out of me:
Me!
Just wanted to put that out there, since I rarely get a photo of myself I like. Thanks, Nez!
This is the place where I work at Pennsic-- the big Turkish coffee shop place, Your Inner Vagabond.
There's also a video taken here, of the kitchen staff dancing-- the band Ishtar was playing out front, and we could hear it very well; at that point, nobody was buying drinks, so we had a moment to appreciate the music.
Back home down in the Swamp: Drumming around the fire at night. It's in sepia because otherwise it was a monochrome red, all flecked and weird looking, so I figured I'd deal with the grain by making it properly monochrome. Black and white made the fire look eerily blue, so I just used sepia instead. Hokey, I know, but there it is.
Dancing around the fire-- it's out of order, but the video and photos of the firedancer were from the same time.
I like this photo, for some reason. Kilij, our neighbor from Wicked Monkey, fights heavy (i.e. the dudes in armor that get in a massed group and beat the stuffing out of one another with big pieces of rattan-- here's a photo of us with him in full gear). In his second day of fighting, he had an incident with his helmet-clad face meeting a boot-clad foot on both of their ways to the ground in not the same direction. This led to his nose making a snapping noise and starting to bleed. (He later scored a kill from this-- "My lord, is all that your blood?!?" "Yeah!" THUNK!) He came back down to the Swamp and was sitting on our porch, somewhat spaced out, waiting for our shower to be free so he could wash it off. A few minutes after I took these pictures, he went into the shower and we heard this stream of curses-- he'd set his own nose. ("I kinda wiggled it around until it stopped popping and sat right, y'know?")
He's not as dumb as he looks, or sounds, in this photo/account, but it's funny when he pretends.
Speaking of heavy fighters, here he is with our other neighbor, Tir, whose name is not spelled so simply. I'll find out how he really spells it. Both of them were very merry at the time this photo was taken.
Sigh. If I had a harem it would have heavy fighters in it. So dumb and so useful for alcohol disposal. It became a morning ritual for Kilij to stagger past, glare balefully at us, and say "You guys totally wrecked me last night!" We'd answer, "But we weren't even trying!"
Tir, on the other hand, is supernatural somehow, and later this night, after this picture was taken, got into a fight with a garbage truck. No shit, there I was. He's in the middle of the road, staggering. The garbage truck is trying to do a 40-point turn to get to the dumpster and he's in the way, but he's holding his ground. "Fuck that truck!" Tir is bellowing. "I can take it! I'm gonna fight the truck! That truck can't just go where it wants! This is my fucking road! Fuck you, truck!" Dude is wasted. It takes two or three friends to coax him out of the road. (The garbage men find it amusing and so do not seriously pose the question of garbage truck vs.... I'm not sure what he is, but we'll call him a Hun for convenience.)
Next morning he's up at 9 am, headed to the port-a-johns, impeccably Tuchux-looking, a little spring in his step. I ask him how he does it, and he just shrugs and grins.
Speaking of local scenery, I also have a hilarious set of our leaky roof. Nez, our camp cook and dictator (<3), despite her considerable ire at the leaks dripping on her griddle, decided to make lemonade from lemons and use the drip to wash a coffee stain out of her shirt. Given that the leaks frequently had drastic changes in volume... well, here's the first photo in that little set, and I'll let you guess what happened before you click through. (Notes: 1. I shot from behind because that transparent white shirt was all she was wearing, so this is a family-rated set, and 2. Here's another example of why not to leave your camera's ISO setting on 1600; in color, these photos look horridly speckly, but in black and white the film grain just looks like art. I'm not being artsy-crapsy, I just want to do Nez, who in life has lovely even skin tones, some justice.)
Did I mention we had an ADORABLE BABY in our camp this year???!! We actually had two children, though the other hardly counted-- she was fifteen or sixteen and very self-motivated, interested in bugs, disinterested in boys or booze, beautiful yet intimidating (good, so we didn't have to fend anybody off!), well-behaved, and if she felt that a conversation or event was inappropriate, she would simply, quietly, leave. But the other child was thirteen months old and impossibly well-behaved-- his parents had made all sorts of contingency plans, should he not get along well with camping, but it wasn't necessary. He was a little hyper sometimes, and a bit hard on his mother, but loved flirting with all the women in camp, loved playing games, loved being cute, and loved attracting allllll the other children on the block with his most excellent toys. So during the day our little corner bar was a kid-magnet-- which was kind of nice, actually.
Here he is, forcing Captain Torsten to drop his intimidating Pirate Captain act and reveal that he actually is pretty good with kids (he has two of his own, nearly grown, can you believe it?):
To my sorrow, I didn't get a good picture of Parker's "flirt face"-- he has this expression he does, especially when a woman or girl is smiling at him, where he looks at you wide-eyed, averts his face, and then smiles and looks back sidelong at you. OMG it hurts my hormones. This picture is pretty close-- he's doing it to Nez, who he LOVED.
I should state for the record that I was working hard to strike a balance between shooting photographs, which I enjoy, and enjoying the moment, which is much easier for me to do without a camera between my eye and the goings-on. So I don't have a comprehensive photographic record. A lot of the fun went un-documented, because even the Stylus Tough isn't getting-lost-proof, and some of what went on, only the Rebel could have captured, and still other things, even the Rebel couldn't get. And I also made a conscious choice not to take incriminating photographs-- I know others don't feel so bound, but given the Swamp's almost hippie-like vibe of anything goes, there were various instances of people having a lot of fun without considering the risks of photos winding up on the Internet. (Nothing serious, but there was a bit of nudity.) So I put the camera away in instances like that, if I couldn't get a clear shot with nothing incriminating. I don't mean to make it sound like a den of debauchery, but taken out of context, it would appear to be. So I just didn't take any pictures sometimes. And sometimes, even when everyone's clothes were on, I still didn't feel like taking any pictures, so I didn't.
That said, i do have some Fizzball pictures. Ha ha ha. I have videos as well but they didn't get uploaded yet-- they're going up now. So a picture, more an establishing shot: yes, there were that many people there, and yes, it is that crude a setup, and yes, they all know exactly what's going on, and YES, Three Swans will be fielding a team next year, and YES I WILL BE ON IT.
For more about Fizzball, watch this space-- I'll post a video and explanation later.
And oh yes, the House of Daves.
Z has a more succinct explanation than I (along with an explanation of the Old Grand-Dad-i-Tini (link is to photo)) on his e:strip blog. Deciding that there were too many Daves in camp [two], we founded the House of Daves...
This indirectly led to the formation of Household Rule #4. Three Swans is a pretty laid-back household, with some unofficial rules (Do your share of chores; don't be a dick; don't smoke drugs in camp because that's obnoxious and you can do it with our neighbors instead), and heretofore only three actual written-down rules:
1) It's Nez's kitchen. [implied: Don't fuck with it.]
2) It's Klaus's bar. [implied: Don't fuck with it.]
3) Don't stick it in crazy. [not-so-implied: Don't fuck it.]
New Rule, #4) Don't put your balls in it, Andrew.
It's sort of sad that we needed that rule. He insists he didn't mean to do it. I don't know how you unintentionally do that sort of thing, but it bears legislating against regardless. Z charitably has decided that we need to get little yellow stickers to put on things that it is OK for Andrew to put his balls into or on. That might be hard to explain to single ladies visiting camp, but it's an efficient way to find out if they're into it.
But I am digressing. I think this entry has gone on long enough, so I will try to sum up:
The air made me sick so I sounded like Eartha Kitt on helium, making my war cry of "What, bitches?! What!!!" exceptionally humorous. Next year I am considering a dust mask of some kind.
I had a blast. I walked around and bought small things and did a lot of sewing/beading/handcrafting. I had to sew some of Z's garments onto his body, since they weren't quite finished. He looked alternately ragamuffinly and awesome, depending on how well I'd done.
I looked alternately hot and schlumpy, ditto. I did manage to finish two dresses while at camp, though. Go me! And go Nez's battery-operated sewing machine which she brought WITH HER to the SWAMP omg. Wow.
Z had fun as well. We are going to have Three Swans events during the year, most likely Craft Nites, which need a better name. The House of Daves will have meetings as well, possibly including the third member, John Henry David who defected from the John Contingent on the grounds of exceptional service to the House of Daves' Ladies Auxiliary. (He left a bruise on my lower back but man I did not mind, because those muscles needed tenderizing like whoa. He brought the awesome.)
And I am out of focus now so I am going to go.
_______________________________
*Um, if anyone wants to give me a week-early birthday present and gift me with another few months of Flickr Pro so that all my photos can remain visible, I'd reaaaaaallly reaaaaaalllly appreciate that. I seem to not have even that much cash and am going to go roll some loose change so I can buy groceries. Whoops-- Z is supposed to have been paid this week and wasn't, so we're sort of hosed. Well shit!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-08-10 04:36 pm (UTC)(I'm with you on the broke business--I rolled all my coins last week! Just checked on bank account and neither one of two deposits I had hoped to see there have arrived yet. I somehow never thought life was supposed to work like this?)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-10 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-10 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-10 04:52 pm (UTC)Oy. Yeah, I figured it eventually got past this point, too.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-10 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-10 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-10 05:41 pm (UTC)That one was my second attempt at fitting the pattern to myself-- she drafted one from measurements for me, which was close but not quite perfect. It's best if you can have someone help fit it to your body. The instructions are flawless, though, and it's not hard to make if you just follow the directions.
I got another pattern for myself with the tailor in my camp's help-- she made me a duct tape pattern by wrapping me, in an old t-shirt, in tape and then cutting it apart into a pattern. So I'm going to try that method as well.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-10 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 03:45 pm (UTC)