back to the fred

it's more Fred Lane for your listenin' pleasure there at the Mister Kitty. I know we've put "French Toast Man" up at Found Sound before but, you know, we only keep those things up there for a week. Now you can enjoy it again!



I love all these little fake album covers. "Live From First Baptist Federal Prison". "I think I Stepped In Something". "Twist, Leathernecks, Twist".

a public service announcement

relevant link: http://www.laspegasusunicon.com/
(tl;dr - Las Vegas Brony convention crashes and burns)

Edited to add: wow, after reading that info dump Google doc (linked to in the comments) I'm leaning towards 'scam'. EIGHT (8) levels of membership? Package deals including hotel rooms (which is why people were getting kicked out of their hotel rooms - the convention took the money for the rooms but never paid the hotel)? Looks more and more like a drive-by cash grab by someone who got in way over their head. This wasn't a 'fan convention'. This was an (attempted) business. Conspiracy to commit financial transactions with malice aforethought.

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You shouldn’t start a fan convention if:

If you’ve never staffed a convention or run a video room or worked a dealers room table or managed a cosplay contest or set up an art show or worked registration or laid out a flyer or built a website or reserved meeting space at a hotel or rented a car or an apartment. If you’ve never done any of those things you have no business starting a convention.

Can’t balance your checkbook? Don’t start a convention.

Never thrown a big 4th of July or New Years Eve party? Never stayed behind to help someone else clean up THEIR big party?

Ever telephoned fifty strangers to ask them for their time and/or money? No? Try it sometime. It’s fun.

Not willing to put up your own money? Every cent of it? Not willing to go into debt?

Desperate to create an environment where everyone MUST obey your every whim? Burning, assholish desire to be a Big-Name-Fish in the Small Pond?

Can’t get two people who absolutely hate each other to work together? Can’t stand the idea of working with people YOU hate? Perhaps a project that depends on people working together is not for you.

Not totally willing to take over any and every aspect of the convention at a moment’s notice? (I didn’t say ‘ready’, I said ‘willing’. Nobody is ever ‘ready’)

Cannot say “no” to your best friend’s bad idea? Not ready to say “yes” to a good idea from your worst enemy?

Unable to put your own life and everything in it on hold for the sake of the convention?

Think your fan convention is gonna make you lots of money?

If this sounds like you, don’t start a convention. There are enough conventions already. We’re good. Get some KFC, call your friends, have a picnic in the park instead. We’re all better off that way.

THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Yeah, I know: bronies. But new fan conventions have been crashing and burning for-ever. For-freaking ever. Get a wild idea, start a convention, spend way too much money, hallucinate wildly about attendance figures, have a weekend of stress and fail, and watch the pieces fall slowly around you, all because you had no idea what you were doing and when that little voice inside you told you that you had no idea what you were doing, you ignored it.