Friends of Armed & Dangerous party 2016!

This year’s meatspace party for blog regulars and friends will be held at Penguicon 2016 On Friday, April 29 beginning at 9PM 10PM.

UPDATE: Pushed back an hour because the original start time conflicted with the time slot assigned for my “Ask Me Anything” event.

The venue is the Southfield Westin hotel in Southfield, Michigan. It’s booked solid already; we were only able to get a room there Friday night, and will be decamping to the Holiday In Express across the parking lot on Saturday. They still have rooms, but I suggest making reservations now.

The usual assortment of hackers, anarchists, mutants, mad scientists, and for all I know covert extraterrestrials will be attending the A&D party. The surrounding event is worth attending in itself and will be running Friday to Sunday.

Southfield is near the northwestern edge of the Detroit metro area and is served by the Detroit Metropolitan Airport (code DTW).

Penguicon is a crossover event: half science-fiction convention, half open-source technical conference. Terry Pratchett and I were the co-guests-of-honor at Penguicon I back in 2003 and I’ve been back evey year since.

If you’ve never been to an SF con, you have no idea how much fun this can be. A couple thousand unusually intelligent people well equipped with geek toys and costumes and an inclination to party can generate a lot of happy chaos, and Penguicon reliably does. If you leave Monday without having made new friends, you weren’t trying.

Things I have done at Penguicon: Singing. Shooting pistols. Tasting showcased exotic foods. Getting surprise-smooched by attractive persons. Swordfighting. Playing strategy games. Junkyard Wars. Participating in a Viking raid (OK, it turned into a dance-off). Punning contests. And trust me, you have never been to parties with better conversation than the ones we throw.

Fly in Thursday night (the 28th) if you can because Geeks With Guns (the annual pistol-shooting class founded by yours truly and now organized by John D. Bell) is early Friday afternoon and too much fun to miss.

17 comments

  1. @esr –

    Thanks for the deets on the party. I’ll be there, of course.

    Also thanks for the shout-out for GwG. ATTENTION all shooter – if you would like to attend this year’s Geeks With Guns at Penguicon, please email me now!. (Yes, I’ve gotten behind on those emails, but you will hear back from me no later than Monday.)

  2. I’ll be there, of course.

    Though this might be my last Penguicon, if it continues to show signs of creeping SJWism…

  3. Have fun, y’all. :-) I’d attend your party if I could (provided you’re OK with the presence of relatively-new blog regulars).

    > The surrounding event is worth attending in itself and will be running Friday to Sunday.

    What event?

    > Singing.

    Any recordings? Being acquainted with (at least some of) your other talents, I’m intrigued by your musical facet. And out of curiosity: do your parties feature karaoke?

    > Tasting showcased exotic foods.

    Neat. Mangia, che ti fa bene.

  4. Speaking to VICE, Wilson said one cop was shouting at him, apparently believing him to be an armed suspect. ‘I just kept yelling at the guy over and over that it was a bachelor party,’ he said.

  5. > Penguicon.

    Never heard of it. And the name’s suspicious – must be a con.

    Now, seriously: I thought you were referring to some specific activity within Penguicon.

    > No.

    That’s a shame. Say, if I want to imagine your singing voice, what recording artist’s voice would be a good approximation?

    > And no karaoke, either.

    But perhaps you do allow your guests to sing and/or play instruments?

    1. >That’s a shame. Say, if I want to imagine your singing voice, what recording artist’s voice would be a good approximation?

      You’ve never heard of him. Probably.

      I used to joke that I have exactly the same 4-note range as Gordon Lightfoot. Canadian folk-rock singer, big in the 70s and 80s, now retired. Sample: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald; that’s him either singing a little high from his normal register, or I think I remember something about a tape speed error during the record mastering raising the pitch.

      So: start with that voice, drop the pitch a little, and make it less trained and confident (I’m not a bad singer, but I’m not a pro). That’s what I sound like when I sing. Even the accent is a good match, as Lightfoot sings in a very neutral dialect resembling my Middle American.

      You didn’t ask, but my speaking voice is very similar to Kevin Costner’s. His character in Open Range sounded enough like me that I found it amusing.

  6. > You’ve never heard of him. Probably.

    You’re correct, apart from The Monster’s link to the same video. I’d forgotten about it, though (except for the linking itself and the circumstances that had led to it).

    > You didn’t ask, but my speaking voice is very similar to Kevin Costner’s.

    I didn’t ask because I’ve actually heard your speaking voice (in the Great Beast video). But I had trouble extrapolating that to a singing voice. I considered Paul Stanley’s, though.

    In the case of your wife’s singing voice, I have three simultaneous, contradictory hunches for the following candidates: Joni Mitchell, Fiora Purim, and Candice Night. What say you?

    > I wouldn’t stop them.

    Sounds like it’s never happened so far.

    1. >In the case of your wife’s singing voice, I have three simultaneous, contradictory hunches for the following candidates: Joni Mitchell, Fiora Purim, and Candice Night.

      Of the three of them, Candice Night is closest, though Cathy’s sound is a little higher and sweeter. But her phrasing – the way she articulates – is much more like Joni Mitchell’s naturalistic style.

      Cathy is a much better singer than I am. I am merely on the good side of competent, in relatively undemanding styles. She is really good, and much more consistently good than me. On the occasions we performed together I sang backup.

      (By the way, don’t count on Americans to know who Purim is. I only do because she sang with Chick Corea and I’m a fan of his music. She was never a mainstream success up here.)

  7. > Of the three of them, Candice Night is closest, though Cathy’s sound is a little higher and sweeter. But her phrasing – the way she articulates – is much more like Joni Mitchell’s naturalistic style.

    Hmmm… perhaps Maggie Reilly would be closer, then?

    > I am merely on the good side of competent, in relatively undemanding styles.

    The most demanding ones are opera and metal, right?

    > By the way, don’t count on Americans to know who Purim is. I only do because she sang with Chick Corea and I’m a fan of his music.

    You notoriously love fusion, including Return to Forever’s Romantic Warrior; so chances were you’d listened to the band’s earliest lineup as well. And if you hadn’t, I could have searched YouTube for some sample of Purim’s voice and linked to it.

    > She was never a mainstream success up here.

    Or down here, AFAIK (even though we’re next to Brazil). In my case, “What Game Shall We Play Today?” is my only reference on her. I’ll probably look for more material, since I liked her voice.

    And I correct myself: her first name is Flora, not Fiora.

    1. >Hmmm… perhaps Maggie Reilly would be closer, then?

      No, not really.

      >The most demanding ones are opera and metal, right?

      Hadn’t really thought that through, but yes they’re up there.

  8. @esr –

    I just noticed that your panel “Ask Me Anything” is also scheduled for 9 PM on Friday (in the Windover room).

    (Scheduling spreadsheet here – look in cell L8)

    Ooopsies!

  9. I really wanted to come to this – it’d tick one more state off my “do something in all 50” list, and also possibly let me meet more of the A&D crowd in person. Plus, it’d give me an excuse to shoot targets, which I haven’t done in years. (I was even interested in Jessica’s “Geeks With Groove” idea a while back – I can dance, albeit a little.)

    And yet again, events conspire to make this impossible. Work is such that I think I’m going to have to spend extra time on a presentation for early May. Ho hum. Next year, I suppose. (How much interest is there in a FoAD (heh) gathering outside of Penguicon?)

Leave a Reply to John D. Bell Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *