Adventurtimes!

So I went to Seattle for the Pop Conference!  It was pretty successful, I’d say:  I met lots of cool folks, and managed to not make out with Chuck Klosterman or similar (this was facilitated by the fact that Chuck Klosterman was not there; and I was accompanied by my gentleman caller, who may have frowned upon such behaviour).  And I gave a paper about Lady Gaga, so that was pretty neat.  I have come so far as a scholar!  It was but a year ago that my students in the LGBT Pop class were all turning in terrible papers about Poker Face and I was like “who is the Lady Gaga that the young folk are so excited about?”  Ah, yes.  Don’t say we’re not busy doing important things over here in Musicologyland.

And also I think you’ll be able to download and listen to my talk on iTunes University!  I’ll let you know if this actually happens.  This is pretty cool, but also slightly mortifying, because it means that my technological snafus are forever immortalized, as is the moment in my presentation when I meant to say Jay-Z but accidentally said Kanye instead.  But oh well.  Nobody’s perfect.

I accidentally managed to book us into the Shepard Fairey room at the hipster hotel.  I mean, I intentionally booked us into the hipster hotel (it was cheap and has free waffles at breakfastime!) but I did not bargain for the Shepard Fairey room, which meant having to cope with this wallpaper for four days:

Also, this icon, which clearly indicates “milk bottle, present, Hershey Kiss,” was on the little cabinet in the room, and the cabinet did not contain any of these things, so I must assume it is hipster code for “towels, condoms, coffee,” which is what the cabinet did contain.  MYSTERIOUS!  I am still disappointed that I didn’t get any Hershey’s Kisses, but I probably shouldn’t complain because there were, indeed, those waffles.

As is my wont, I dragged my gentleman caller stumbling through Seattle on a steady diet of neon and donuts:

And we went to the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company, where I bought a map of the known universe.

I am ten years behind in emails right now – Canadian friends, I will write you tomorrow, I swear it on the ghost of Annette Funicello’s girlish figure.