The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Weekly Notes: April 28–May 4, 2025

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  • ♿️ Another busy week at work, including a trip out to Emerald Downs planning for graduation, hosting an IPSE Day event supporting our students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and ending with a full-day all-employee training focusing on equity. This year included a session on disability justice, which was led by a colleague from another school who I know through my work with WAPED, DSSC, and through watching the AHEAD listserv. Happily, this session was quite well attended by people across the college, and not just by people who are part of our Access Services department!
  • 🚀 Unfortunately, Seattle Worldcon is in the midst of our first (and hopefully only) big controversy. While it’s not my area, I’m close enough to have some of the not-yet-public information, and it’s been quite the experience watching the wider commentary based on incomplete information while not saying anything. Hopefully as more information comes out, this will calm down and fade into just being an unfortunate bump on the road.
  • 🥳 And, of course, yesterday was my 52nd birthday. We kept it a fairly low-key day, wrapping up with dinner out and seeing the play version of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” at the Renton Civic Theater. It was a fun show, and we do enjoy supporting local theater.

📸 Photos

One end of a dirt racetrack circle, with green grass and a pond in the center, with the snow-covered peak of Mt. Rainier rising in the distance in a clear blue sky on a sunny spring day.
Mt. Rainier in the distance over the Emerald Downs racetrack.

Four students sit at a table at the front of a lecture hall with a presentation screen behind them, in front of an audience of staff, faculty, and fellow students.
Four of our students were part of a panel discussion for IPSE Day, talking about their experiences at Highline College.

Me, a white man with a short trimmed greying red beard, wearing a black cap, black half-rim glasses, and black shirt and hoodie, standing outside in front of green trees, with a slight smile.
Me at 52. Feeling pretty good about aging well.

📚 Reading

Finished Lois McMaster Bujold’s Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance.

🔗 Linking

Norwescon 47 Thursday Night Star Trek vs Star Wars Dance

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From Norwescon 47: Are you Team Enterprise or Team Skywalker? Do you dream of the final frontier, or a galaxy far, far away? Lightsaber or phaser? The Force or the Prime Directive? Let your attire display your affiliation as we dance the night away with DJ Wüdi!

One note: Due to technical issues that plagued the start of the dance, the first 20-some minutes of this has been reconstructed at home. Everything from 27 minutes on was recorded live at Norwescon. This also means there’s one duplicated track…have fun finding it!

Costumed people, inculding Ursula from the Little Mermaid, a Starfleet science officer, and a Vulcan, dance in a circle to The Firm's "Star Trekkin'" as I stand on stage with my DJ gear in front of a video backdrop showing a Super Star Destroyer maneuvering through an asteroid field.

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Norwescon 46 Thursday Dance: Fandom Mash with DJ Wüdi

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It’s the Thursday night dance! On our first evening venturing Into the Wylde, who knows what manner of fantastical beings we will encounter… or we will be? Mix-and-match from whatever outfits you brought for the weekend to create mashup costumes, or wear something to represent your fandom(s), and come down and dance to a mix of dance tracks across eras, convention favorites, and all manner of mashups and oddities, all brought to you by DJ Wüdi!

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Norwescon 45 Multiverse of Music

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Recorded live on Thursday night at Norwescon 45: After opening ceremonies, get moving at the Multiverse of Music with DJ Wüdi, spinning dance tunes crossing decades, styles, and genres with something for everyone. From con standards to pop hits, dance floor classics to modern mashups, new wave to dark wave, enjoy an evening of eclectic tunes chosen to keep the dance floor moving.

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Norwescon 39 Thursday Night Dance

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Now that I’m prepping to DJ the Thursday night dance at Norwescon 45 in a couple months, I realized that I’d never posted my Norwescon 39 Thursday night dance recording here. Whoops! So here it is, a few years late — four and a half hours of music from the opening night of a science-fiction and fantasy convention. As is standard for me, it’s a mix of all sorts of stuff. Enjoy!

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Meatloaf Again?

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Content warning: Morbid, dark humor.

Seems the Weber grill company sends out regular “recipe of the week” emails, which I’m sure are pre-written and pre-scheduled and just go out automatically.

Today’s was for BBQ meatloaf.

Screenshot of a Weber “recipe of the week” email with a recipe for BBQ meat loaf.
Screenshot of a Weber “recipe of the week” email with a recipe for BBQ meat loaf.

They had to apologize.

Screenshot of a Weber email apologizing for sending the BBQ meatloaf recipe on the same day that recording artist Meat Loaf died.
Screenshot of a Weber email apologizing for sending the BBQ meatloaf recipe on the same day that recording artist Meat Loaf died.

“Meatloaf again?”

Riff-Raff, Frank N. Furter, and Magenta around the dinner table in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Riff-Raff, Frank N. Furter, and Magenta around the dinner table in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Also: I honestly did not know until today that Meat Loaf was a vaccine-denying Trumpublican and (at least according to a lot of online scuttlebut) very likely, and unsurprisingly, died of Covid-related complications.

I can simultaneously be disappointed at the death of a long-time favorite musician, be disappointed that he got sucked into MAGAland, and think that it’s his own damn fault for dying that way — which makes it even more disappointing, because it’s quite likely that it was preventable.

Sounds From the Lost Abbey 05

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Back in February, I took up a challenge from one of my friends (prompted by the Gigs mix I posted) to create a mix based around songs that I’d have played at the Lost Abbey, during the mid- to late-1990s. To get a little help putting together the playlist, I put out a call for requests on Facebook, and ended up with something around 14 hours of possible songs, almost entirely pulled from requests by people who used to see me spin at the Lost Abbey.

Since 14 hours is far too long to do as a single mix, I’ve broken the requests up into multiple 80-ish-minute playlists. Here’s the fifth of quite a few to come!

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Thor’s Day Night Dance

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This past weekend, I was the DJ for the Thursday Night Dance (which we named the Thor’s Day Night Dance) at a local convention.

We call it Thursday night, but we used to know it as Thor’s Day…and you can kick off your weekend of saving the world with a celebration worthy of Asgard itself! Join DJ Wüdi for an evening of tunes new and old for gods and mortals alike. Come dressed as your godlike representation or as your mortal alter-ego. Requests are not just welcome, but encouraged!

Here’s my full DJ set from the night, recorded live as the night went on! The full track is huge (4 hours, 23 minutes, 296.6 MB), so I’ve also split the night into four sections of roughly an hour each for easier downloading. In all the tracklists, tracks marked with “•” were requests.

Enjoy!

The full mix:

(See below for track listing.)

Download Thor’s Day Night (full) (4h 23m 21s, 296.6MB .mp3)

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