Before the adrenaline wears off and Tiny Wittgenstein decides to get a word in, I wish to report that the Yiddish Sing-Along went swimmingly and the Dramatic Readings from the Ig Nobel Prizes were a blast.
For the former, Marnen Laibow-Koser brought his violin and sheet music for "Dire-gelt," "Di arbuzn," and "Zog nit keyn mol," and Danny Miller brought a childhood love of Theodore Bikel in the form of "Tumbalalayka" and "Der rebe Elimelech" and "Tayere Malke," and I brought handouts for songs like "A finf-un-tzvantsiker" and "Dzhankoye" that I had stapled together in Ops at the last minute and we must have had more than twenty people, because we ran out of copies for the songs we actually performed. One woman recognized some of the titles and said she hadn't heard Yiddish in decades. Two kids stuck their heads in curiously but then hung back, so I called, "Come in! You'll learn how to say eat the rich in Yiddish!" and they did and we all sang "Daloy Politsey." Everyone was extremely down with lomir Nikolaykelen tsebrekhn di vent. Danny had managed to find Yiddish lyrics for "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"; Marnen knew an extra riddle-verse of "Tumbalalayka." I got to hear![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
choco_frosh translating for his offspring by analogy with Mittelhochdeutsch. We finished with "Ale brider" led by Rebecca Maxfield who had been one of the graces of last year's attempt at a similar circle and the line about Un mir zaynen ale freylekh vi Yoynosn un Dovid hameylekh also went over big. I would love it if this sing-along became an Arisia staple. We didn't get as much spillover from Shabbes services as I had been hoping, but everyone who showed up really cared. Mir zaynen do.
For the latter, I performed selections from Bernadette Timmermans et al.'s "Vocal hygiene in radio students and radio professionals" (Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, 2003) and Tomio Naitoh's "Amphibian Amplexus in Microgravity" (Zoological Science, 1995). I could probably have gone bigger with my characterization of a professional speaker becoming increasingly hypochondriac about their vocal health, but I believe I located the appropriate level of inappropriate enthusiasm about the prospect of tree frogs doing it in zero-G. Pooja Usgaonkar interpreted the rediscovery of international experiments in intentionally untied shoelaces as if it were an episode of The Magnus Archives. Robin Abrahams delivered a lecture on the defensive behavior of army ants in seamless drill sergeant. I had never actually heard of Erik Satie's Vexations (1893) and its marathon performance history, but according to a person whose name I am totally glitching on even though I heard it three times, you get some fascinating EEG results off a pianist who plays it for twenty-eight hours straight. Jeremy Bell had scientific proof that it is all fun and games until someone hits themselves in the eye with a wine cork.a_reasonable_man maintained an epic straight face while reading from a paper with the showstopping title of "Accidental Introduction of Giant Foreign Body into the Rectum: Case Report." I continue to find this sort of head-on collision of science and improv extremely fun. A bunch of land mines went off in my hindbrain and I said hello to them and I kept doing what I was doing, which was talking fast in front of an audience.
Now I am home and have a headache which I suspect may be not unrelated to the fact that I managed to eat a peanut butter sandwich this afternoon at three o'clock and then nothing until a mug of goat's milk when I got home, but it was a very good first day of the convention. Tomorrow I have the four back-to-back panels and then on Sunday and Monday I have three panels each and I might just be kind of scarce on the ground for a while here. Schreiber' has given me a kelp bar with a wonderful packaging of green-haired mermaid. I hope I make it to the dealer's room. I hope someday my brain remembers how to reproduce this level of blithering confidence when I haven't just gotten off a stage.
For the former, Marnen Laibow-Koser brought his violin and sheet music for "Dire-gelt," "Di arbuzn," and "Zog nit keyn mol," and Danny Miller brought a childhood love of Theodore Bikel in the form of "Tumbalalayka" and "Der rebe Elimelech" and "Tayere Malke," and I brought handouts for songs like "A finf-un-tzvantsiker" and "Dzhankoye" that I had stapled together in Ops at the last minute and we must have had more than twenty people, because we ran out of copies for the songs we actually performed. One woman recognized some of the titles and said she hadn't heard Yiddish in decades. Two kids stuck their heads in curiously but then hung back, so I called, "Come in! You'll learn how to say eat the rich in Yiddish!" and they did and we all sang "Daloy Politsey." Everyone was extremely down with lomir Nikolaykelen tsebrekhn di vent. Danny had managed to find Yiddish lyrics for "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"; Marnen knew an extra riddle-verse of "Tumbalalayka." I got to hear
choco_frosh translating for his offspring by analogy with Mittelhochdeutsch. We finished with "Ale brider" led by Rebecca Maxfield who had been one of the graces of last year's attempt at a similar circle and the line about Un mir zaynen ale freylekh vi Yoynosn un Dovid hameylekh also went over big. I would love it if this sing-along became an Arisia staple. We didn't get as much spillover from Shabbes services as I had been hoping, but everyone who showed up really cared. Mir zaynen do.For the latter, I performed selections from Bernadette Timmermans et al.'s "Vocal hygiene in radio students and radio professionals" (Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, 2003) and Tomio Naitoh's "Amphibian Amplexus in Microgravity" (Zoological Science, 1995). I could probably have gone bigger with my characterization of a professional speaker becoming increasingly hypochondriac about their vocal health, but I believe I located the appropriate level of inappropriate enthusiasm about the prospect of tree frogs doing it in zero-G. Pooja Usgaonkar interpreted the rediscovery of international experiments in intentionally untied shoelaces as if it were an episode of The Magnus Archives. Robin Abrahams delivered a lecture on the defensive behavior of army ants in seamless drill sergeant. I had never actually heard of Erik Satie's Vexations (1893) and its marathon performance history, but according to a person whose name I am totally glitching on even though I heard it three times, you get some fascinating EEG results off a pianist who plays it for twenty-eight hours straight. Jeremy Bell had scientific proof that it is all fun and games until someone hits themselves in the eye with a wine cork.
a_reasonable_man maintained an epic straight face while reading from a paper with the showstopping title of "Accidental Introduction of Giant Foreign Body into the Rectum: Case Report." I continue to find this sort of head-on collision of science and improv extremely fun. A bunch of land mines went off in my hindbrain and I said hello to them and I kept doing what I was doing, which was talking fast in front of an audience.Now I am home and have a headache which I suspect may be not unrelated to the fact that I managed to eat a peanut butter sandwich this afternoon at three o'clock and then nothing until a mug of goat's milk when I got home, but it was a very good first day of the convention. Tomorrow I have the four back-to-back panels and then on Sunday and Monday I have three panels each and I might just be kind of scarce on the ground for a while here. Schreiber' has given me a kelp bar with a wonderful packaging of green-haired mermaid. I hope I make it to the dealer's room. I hope someday my brain remembers how to reproduce this level of blithering confidence when I haven't just gotten off a stage.
