Nerdy Curls: CONvergence Recap!

Hey, it’s Court!

This past weekend was CONvergence weekend here in the Twin Cities! Well, technically, in Bloomington, a first ring suburb, but how the heck else are we going to find spaces to park our hovercrafts?  If you don’t know, CONvergence is a four-day celebration of science fiction & fantasy at the DoubleTree Hotel wherein one can, for the price of a ticket to Disneyland, spend a weekend ensconced in chain mail while attending panels on Doctor Who slash fiction (that’s fan fiction where pre-existing characters that may not have pre-existing sexual relations in their official universe have sexual relations. Sexy). Basically, if you are a nerd/geek in Minnesota, this is your Burning Man. You’ve already booked your hotel room the November before.

What are you wearing? What are you wearing? What are you wearing? What are you wearing?

Hours later Kevin sends us his outfit. We LOVE OUR DUDE PUBE!

Nerds are the best. They’re the kind of people that get obsessed with things: sports, gadgetry, stories, characters. They’re the kind of fans you want because they will love, dissect, analyze, and criticize, but still buy, everything you create. Nerds are also usually very smart, hence they’re the people doing work in this world that few people can do and requires generous compensation, hence they have disposable income to spend on the stuff with which they’re obsessed, i.e., comic books, toys, costumes, swords, Dirty Curls stuff. That makes me sound like a right asshat capitalist, but I wouldn’t feel bad about it if nerds weren’t so darn nice. That’s a rash generalization as every group has their own asshats, but CONvergence must be a good sample of nerds to theorize that, overall, they’re really nice people. I don’t know, I dropped out of statistics class in college.

Potty Mouth McClean.  photo courtesy of Baron Dave Room.

ANYWAY. My point is, these are the kinds of people you want on your side, not just because they’re great fans, but because they’re just good people. The cooperation and organization that is apparent at CONvergence is the result of a well-knit inclusive community and there were smiles to spare all over the place. I was only there on my temp passes on Thursday and Saturday, but next year? I’m doing the weekend thing. A different costume every day (okay, at least two different ones). And a freaking hotel room in which to bed sexy nerds. Hey, the parties are half the reason one goes to CONvergence and contrary to popular belief, there are some hot nerds. But I digress.

The Dirty Curls were asked to play Harmonic CONvergence, which is the performance programming: bands, comedians, spoken word (Rockstar Storytellers, my writer/performer collective, did a show on Thursday), and other performance I’m sure I can’t categorize, on a stage in hour-long slots in a large conference room of the hotel. We performed late on Saturday night at 11:30pm, but we still had a very full house and one of our most receptive audiences since a week before at the Rocky Horror Picture Show. That’s the nerds for ya – they do love their sexy stuff.

Lacey rocks “Donut Baby Rap!” photo courtesy of Baron Dave Room.

For the HarmCon show, we had our fullest band ever! Not only were all the Curls in attendance, with Lacey due with a Baby Curl, but we were also joined on stage by the fabulous Laura Bidgood, a fellow Rockstar Storyteller, and long-time master of the viola! She did a lil’ fiddlin’ in a few songs for us and some gorgeous legato for the ballads and from where I was standing, it sounded amazing.  And I always get comments on how incredible, how pitch-perfect, our harmonies are; it’s so nice to have everyone on stage with me. It just sounds, in the truest sense of the word in my book, awesome. 

The Curls with Laura on viola!  photo courtesy of Baron Dave Room.

In my own version of nerding out, I ran into Jeremy & Vanessa Messersmith on Thursday and they said they were coming to the HarmCon show and they did (with other fellow Rockstar Storyteller Rob Callahan)!  It was very flattering to see Jeremy in the audience, laughing his ass off. If you not familiar with Jeremy or his music, click here to get there.  He’s great and you’ll wanna catch him next time he’s in your area, m’kay?  But whether or not they ended up attending, the whole audience was just so great. We can put on a great show, but it deflates quickly if our audience isn’t on board (which luckily doesn’t happen often). And the CON audience was among the best.

And that goes also for our intrepid 1:30am audience in the Stand Up! Records party room! Kevin, Lacey, and Laura ended up departing before this show, but Anna, Veldie, and I rocked it in the little hotel room as a trio. Some fans followed us over from HarmCon, which was the best feeling!!

Hot shorts and cleavage! Veldie, Anna, and Court in the Stand Up! Records Party Room. Photo courtesy of Bill Young.

Aside from our own shows, we got to see our buddies The Kamikaze Snowmen perform AND I got to be in their brand new music video for “Indifferent Man!” I will link to it as soon as it’s up! They only just filmed it on Thursday night at their own HarmCon show, so settle down.

And of course, all our buddies at Stand Up! Records (I even performed a stoned 5 minutes of stand up comedy on Thursday night… oh boy), including Dan, Gus, Zach, Chris, Bill, P-Bau, Jason, Adam (who recorded his comedy album at HarmCon on Saturday evening!), and everyone else.

Bloomers because I started my period that night.

Oh, and lest I forget, The Curls also got to host the Fearless Comedy Party Room for a couple of hours Saturday night (it was a BUSY night); Lacey worked the door checking IDs, Anna and Kevin poured out shots, Veldie helped with schmoozing and photos, and I talked to a few people about pledging to support Fearless (which you can do HERE! See what I did there?) and actually got a couple of fans to pledge $500 so they can have the the Curls play their house party!  Isn’t that just the tits???

And my final nerding out note, the button to an amazing weekend, was getting to meet and hang out with Cedric “Vain Mainstream”, the lead singer of The Drug Budget, one of my latest favorite local bands.  If you’ve ever experienced one of their live shows (no? GO! They’re playing this Friday), you know that Cedric is insane. And he really is, in like, the best ways. He came to both of our shows that night and then we had one of those nightcaps that ends in the psycho-analyzation of the egos of band front people. Yes, that’s what the kids are calling it these days.

What an amazing weekend. Thank you, Midwestern nerds that come from all over to be with your people for a few days at CONvergence, and for welcoming us sex nerds into the fold. You know what fold I mean!!

Also, this happened.