thatcrazycajun | There are times I'm Goddamned proud to be in fandom...and this was one

Now that I'm home from work and can post stuff like this... I just got back from traveling half the length of the Northeastern seaboard with my sweet Songbird, visiting her family in central New Jersey over the Thanksgiving holiday and a friend of hers in Philadelphia on Friday, and then spending the remainder of the weekend at the Darkover Grand Council annual convention in Timonium, MD and driving thereto and -from. (My very first experience driving a 4x4, a humongous 4-door Hyundai Something-or-Other that was all the Hertz office at PHL had left when our hideously-delayed flight got us in at long last. Getting that tank over so many hundreds of miles and back to the rental lot safely is one of many things that make me an agnostic rather than an atheist.)

Others on my ever-growing friends list have far better reviews of the con than I could possibly post (especially since they got to be there for the whole thing, instead of only about the middle third or so...grumble, grumble), so I refer you to them if you want a "straight-up" con report (if such an adjective can even be applied to this notoriously pansexual, pantheistic, just-this-side-of-anarchic family reunion cleverly disguised as an SF/fantasy con). I especially recommend the ones posted by

redaxe and my Trained Pet Guitarist™,

gorgeousgary.

How-ever... I must needs make note of the truly awe-inspiring, sniffle-inducing generosity of the venerable folk/filk music band Clam Chowder ("the group, not the soup!") and the fans thereof present at DGC (two of whom were Your Humble Correspondent and SP). The longstanding tradition of raising money for Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC at the Clams' Saturday night concert combined with a disturbingly intense lust to see Clam guitarist John Huff make a lewd spectacle of himself to generate a truly astounding group donation of over $10,000 to the DC charity hospital, utterly shattering all previous records for the event. We were rewarded with the unforgettable (no matter how hard we try!) sight of John fulfilling his vow from last year's concert that if this sum was raised, he would perform "Sweet Transvestite" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show...in full costume as Dr. Frank N. Furter, high heels, makeup, fishnets and all. Which he did, plus "Time Warp" and the main theme and the whole rest of the second set. He gets this week's Gold Star™ for being one hell of a good sport for a great cause.

If you don't know, Children's, with which I am long familiar from my seven years of living in the DC area and reading the Washington Post (thanks, Bob Levey), treats sick and injured kids from the whole world over, no matter their affliction(s) or financial resources. Clam soprano Kathy Sobansky and her husband Ed are among the faithful who support the Post's annual Children's fundraising campaign (and Ed's employer matches the Darkover contributions dollar for dollar!), which is how all of this got started. (If you want the rest of that story, longtime Darkover Head Wench and costuming maven Susan de Guardiola encapsulates the long and sordid history of the Clam Chowder BOGS Auction here.) Oh, yeah, and they did the bawdy song that started it all 10 years ago to boot, "Bend Over, Greek Sailor." (I can only find one version of the lyrics online here; you have to scroll waaay down to find them, and they aren't the ones the Clams sing.)

And last year, the big-hearted denizens of Darkover finally got long-overdue props from the Post, in a piece by Mr. Levey's successor as living-section columnist and chief drum-beater for Children's, John Kelly. That one is archived here. (About frelling time; we've only been throwing huge sums at this cause for, like, a decade...!) One can only wonder what Mr. Kelly will write about this year's effort, after the Sobanskys present Children's with a check for twenty large...and one prays, for the sake of readers of all ages, that he will not include any pictures!