*Actual* Konvention thoughts...

[chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)]

Chris here, answering a bunch of various posts...


Scott Telford wrote:
                    
> Thanks to IED for the nametags and Chris for the rubberbands!

  You are welcome. I tried to find a woman to distribute them but failed.
Everyone had to settle for a "Rubberband Boy." (Actually I'm a little
long in the tooth for "boy." I'm a year younger than Kate.)


Dr G.T. Parks replies to Scott Telford:

>>   The fans' performances ranged from an acoustic guitar adaptation of
>>   RutH (believe me!) to an almost a capella Big Sky with a two-chord
>>   electric guitar accompanyment by "Loney Planet", to an excellent
>>   Wuthering Heights by "Rare Flowers".  The aircraft-carrier-style
>>   elevator built into the stage was used extensively.

> I thought Lonely Planet were excellent - they were technically very good
> and their interpretations of the KaTe songs they played were interesting.
> However, Rare Flowers were awful IMHO - almost all that accompaniment was 
> programmed (and virtually identical to KaTe's original) and the singer went 
> horribly out of tune. They might as well have mimed to KaTe's version.

    I was hiding on the floor trying to shield myself with the people in
front of me. My reaction was "I thought *I* was a nervy bastard!" _Wuthering
Heights_ is one of the most difficult to sing songs ever written, right up
there with _Shadowlands_ and _The Star Spangled Banner_. The dance troupe
doing _Ken_ was great.


Mike Mendelson asks:

> Maybe next time the lovehounds shouldn't be so cocky and should
> conduct some practice quiz sessions before the Con... people could
> post questions similar to the quiz questions asked and everyone
> could take a shot at answering them.  I bet we could cover some
> of the actual questions posed, and only LoveHounds would have access
> to the practice session.   (Actually, this could be fun anyways...)

   We did suffer for our hubris.
   How about an IRC quiz?


Peter Byrne Manchester:

> Geoff strongly urged that we form a Committee of the Whole, so to speak, but 
> I was troubled by the fact that the instructions from the stage stipulated 
>[deleted]
>        In retrospect, I still think I was right--though I was certainly 
> undercut by the fact that the winning Norfolk Alchemists were six.  That is 
> still not 12 or 15, however, and anyway, I think the bitter truth is that 
> even if the whole batch of us had been one group, we wouldn't have done any 
> better.  Yes, the B team got 5 song titles with `love' in them, over the A 
> team's 3:  but the correct answer is 7!  NONE of us got the name of the 
> second director of "The Red Shoes" after Michael Powell, though Andy 
> immediately realized that there was a second credit and that his name was the
> key to the question.

    The second director was the screenwriter and was credited as co-director.
Andy did have his last name right, but had Irwin rather than his correct
name (not mentioned for those playing along at home.) 

>       I don't know what the Norfolk Alchemist's secret is--they are six 
> young people, mostly female, and they got 17 out of the 20 questions right-- 
> but they have beat us love-hounds twice in a row now.  Next time, I say take 
> no prisoners!  Field a team of 4, 5, 6, but let's set up to draw from *our* 
> strengths.  Delegate someone to write down the questions (the fact that we 
> were not organized to do that was a major planning flaw).  And have two or 
> three of us bring *fast* laptops with things like The Garden indexed for 
> instant access.  Maybe (if another 4 years go by before a new Konvention) the 
> machine could support a satellite connection from the floor to a network gate 
> and the whole newsgroup could get online in support!

    Actually I want upstairs and *found* the leader of the Norfolk Alchemists,
a slight, pretty, red-haired English girl named Amanda Greenaway. On behalf
of Love-hounds I offered our congratulations. In truth, she was the entire
team. The rest of her team wrote the questions down, scribbled the quick
answers and produced a clean copy. I brought her downstairs to meet the
Love-Hounds, particularly an awed Andy Marvick. She offered to not enter
next time, but we urged her to please compete, that we would try to do better
and needed the competition. We asked *how* she did it, and she said that she
really didn't know, but she did own to a really good memory that could be
considered "photographic." If we *really* want to win ... all we have to do
is give her a computer and an account and make her a love-hound!

>       Anyway, to come back to the sad truth:  we fielded our best this time, 
> and they were in fine form too.  Several of the questions were devious, but 
> not in any way unfair.  In fact, I have to say Peter F-M's quiz was very, 
> very skillful.

    Great questions, better than last time. One of the nasty ones was the same
as last time (the complete name of Kate's Roy Harper duet _You_.) The main one
that no one got last time was a bit UK-centric, about some public event that
Kate as supposed to appear at, but didn't.

    Actually we don't need a laptop. A complete copy of all of Kate's lyrics,
credits (Who did the _Shoedance_ mix? No, "some cretin" is *not* a complete
answer) and a special list of "IAQs" (Infrequently Asked Questions.) If
someone had brought all the CDs we would have gotten another two questions
right.

    One thing to remember though - the quizmaster is reading this...


cwilliam@mendel.Berkeley.edu (Chad) asked:

> Someone listed seven songs with the english word "love" in the
> title but this did not include "The Craft of Love."  Would this have
> been a valid answer?  I would have come up with this title before 
> "Why Should I Love You?"  Well, if it counts, then the correct
> answer should be eight.

    Nope, only officially released songs, especially considering that
nobody knows what *Kate's* name for that song is.


From: abm4@columbia.EDU (Andrew B Marvick)

> IED had a wonderful time in England and wants to thank again the
> Homeground crew for their stunning show of generosity and Kately
> spirits both during and after the convention.  IED had an absolutely
> marvellous time at Homeground Towers in the company of Peter
> FitzGerald-Morris, Krystyna, Pami, Mark Semich, Chris'n' Williams and
> Vickie Mapes, |>oug /\lan and Cheryl Aittima.  IED was permitted to
> hold forth to his heart's content, with minimal ribbing from his polite
> hosts and friends, and what more could IED ask for? Anyway, he is quite
> confident that |>oug will never show anyone that video record he made
> of the occasion, so IED's reputation is safe...

   We had a wonderful time as well...but it is going to make it hard to stomp
those "secret Love-Hounds ruling cabel" rumors.
                                          
> Love-Hounds was not particularly disorganized at the convention, as
> Andy Semple asserts  -- there was a loud shout from our spot when our
> name was mentioned by Dave Cross on stage. Anyway, it's always embarrassingly
> easy to find the American contingent(s) at Kate Bush conventions.

   I went over to find the single person forming the Japanese contengent.
She wasn't there at the moment but I did meet the editorial staff of _Cariad
Kate_ now know as _Never Forever_. Apt name, as they will cease publication
at issue 25. They gave me a copy of the current issue, #22.
                                                           
> It's IED's suspicion that a lot of the philocanines who had earlier
> announced their intention to attend, apparently didn't make it. Too bad,
> they didn't get their nametags! Many thanks to Peter Manchester for keeping
> a detailed written record of the event as it unfolded -- no easy feat
> when sitting in near darkness among a close press of Love-Hounds,
> all the while braving powerful onslaughts of draft, chill, and decibels.  

    When I grabbed the spot I didn't realize that the lower stairs doubled
as air-conditioning vents! Apologies to those who froze.

> In defense of Love-Hounds Team A, who did not meet their full
> potential during the convention quiz (er, a precise score is not
> available at this time, sorry), Peter F-M told IED that the
> quizmasters' express aim was to frame each question so that it would
> strongly suggest one answer while in fact requiring another, much more
> obscure one.  IED agrees that it would have been better had all
> Love-Hounds in attendance pooled their intellectual resources for a
> common goal.  One unfortunate result of combining IED with three
> equally well (or indeed, far better) versed afficionados of KTrivia  
> was that the team wasted many precious minutes considering the wealth of
> subtle tricks which the questions concealed, leaving insufficient
> time to write out complete answers.  

    Oh well. We did need a scribe. One other thing, we handed our sheet
in *far* too soon. If we had known that we could have spent almost another
twenty minutes pondering I'm sure that we could have won, especially as
we came up with at least two more "love" songs, one other correct answer
and realized that we had written one question down wrong. Hell, I had the
correct answer to the name of the co-director of _The Red Shoes_ in my
possession. This month's issue of _Empire_ magazine had reviews of books
about the co-director of _The Red Shoes_ in a bag!

                          Chris Williams of
                             Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                               chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (his)
                                 vickie@njin.rutgers.edu      (hers)