Pride in Furry Mecca – Viral views for Zootopia – Crushing on foxes – Newsdump (6/22/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Tips are always welcome. 

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Media and Fandom News

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From 2014, via chrisastro.com

On June 28, San Francisco Pride is going to be awesome for furries!

The Bay Area Furries are all ready to march in the parade.  Pride is the height of street fair season in “Furry Mecca”.  It’s one of the most loved activities for an active section of the community.  2014 was the first Furry appearance in the parade since 2005. They had attendance of 50+, and TV coverage with a million-strong audience.  RSVP’s are 25% stronger than last year, with days left to grow.  Two leaders got the event organized, despite unavailability of an important third from last year.

Califur visited by television naturalist Figgy Dobbs.

An Inside Look at the Furries in Their Natural Habitat!

Buzzfeed podcast covers furries (via earthfurst).

BuzzFeed’s Internet Explorer does “A Deep Dive Into Furries”.  It starts at 6:45.  I missed this in April.  It calls furries “the greatest mystery of the internet”.  As usual, Buzzfeed is a dubious source – it mentions FurryMate but overlooks their bots.  I won’t forgive them for spreading lies about the NJ FurBQ Hoax.

There’s furries in Peru too, sad mascot documentary, Furrycon article – Newsdump (5/28/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Tips are always welcome. 

Documentary: The Anti Mascot.

Lou Seal is the one Giants fans love.

The story of the San Francisco Giants’ Crazy Crab, the most outrageous mascot of them all. The 1984 San Francisco Giants were dreadful. But the team’s ill-conceived “Crazy Crab” mascot endured worse.

Shared by Excelsior30 on FurAffinity … a cautionary tale of how anthropomorphic costuming could make you a magnet for abuse. Professional performer Wayne Doba documents his experiences with water balloons full of pee, and back injuries from a “macho” attack by players from a rival team.  (Get happier with Hulu’s mascot documentary series, Behind the Mask, that had an Emmy nomination for Outstanding New Approaches in Sports Programming.)

MNFurs becomes a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit.

News announcement. On FurAffinity, Aerak shares what it means to him: now the organization can officially host charitable activities like hospital fursuiting to brighten people’s days. MNFurs have a lot to be proud of:

In a matter of six years, with only the word-of-mouth advertising, MNFurs has gone from a small group of close friends and associates with a weekly meeting number of less then a dozen people to 40 to 60 people in the same room every other Saturday night. At the same time, we went from 20 to over 200 people on our mailing list.

Their growing presence in the world of fluffy stuff is bringing Furry Migration, “Minnesota’s first furry convention having its second year on August 28-30, 2015.”

Furrycon in Rochester gets a great media spokeskitty, Zeigler Jaguar.

International mascot Trip E. Collie – love and theft at FWA – Newsdump (4/16/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Tips are always welcome. 

____________________________

Media and Fandom News

_____________________________

Huge French festival features San Francisco Bay Area furry and Good Boy, Trip E. Collie, as national poster dog!

FOURVIÈRE NIGHTS is a festival for theater, dance and music in Lyon, France – a center for French gastronomy and classic architecture. Look who’s on it now:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/588433638091395072

Trip Collie was very surprised when the festival picked him as their real-life mascot.  He’s on their website front page, and buildings all over France.  He says: “The festival has run for 70 years… runs June 2 – July 31. It has several hundred thousand attendees!”   For 2015, it’s featuring: “Björk to Ben Harper, to Iggy Pop, Joan Baez, Patti Smith, Robert Plant, the Chedid family, Christine & The Queens, Véronique Sanson, Bartabas and Florence Foresti.”

How did they decide to feature a furry from California?  I recognize Trip’s photo from Burning Man – they must be calling on the spirit of that festival.  And who can deny the adorable appeal of Hyena Girls’s suit making skills?  I can personally rate him as a 5-star cuddler.  You don’t get that by seeing pop stars from afar. Yay furries!  (And wow, that would be an amazing destination… Lyon had the best food I had in a visit to four parts of Europe.)

“What It’s Like to Attend a Furry Convention” – in Men’s Health magazine.

Researcher Debra Soh’s article was praised by furries who said – “It’s a broken record at this point, “Thought they were weird, turned out to be awesome.”  Debra recently appeared on this blog with a supportive statement: “A Lesson Everyone Can Learn From Furries.”

Hip hop artist Killer Mike at Furry Weekend Atlanta.

Killer Mike does music, acting, and “outspoken social activism” from a home base in Atlanta.  Apparently I’m lame because I didn’t know him before?  Now I do because he was tough enough to proudly hang with furries.  Nice.

Skypro Fursuits suffer vehicle and trailer theft at FWA.

Fans worried about loss of popular suits such as Telephone, but those were safe. Equipment was lost. April 12 update: “Car and trailer still missing and no word for the police. I dont think will ever be seeing our car again. :(“

Further Confusion 2015 covered by Science Fiction/San Francisco fanzine.

The writer reviews “one of my favorite conventions.” (PDF download, page 42.)

Furries: A Documentary – seeks funding on Kickstarter.

Production is complete and it’s just seeking post-production help.  It’s a great reason to check out what it will do with a modest goal of $2,500.

DJ contest: Furry is very close to winning, needs votes by April 17.

FURRY GOOD IDEAS: Fursuit of the Year award and fashion show, and more.

by Patch O'Furr

One of the few search results for “fursuit fashion show.”

Read to bottom for Fred Patten’s informative comment that inspired this.  

In 2014, fun hobby blogging exposed me to many new ideas that could use more development.  This blog is for underexposed, underrated topics.  That’s subculture, and it’s about fan love.  I love sharing it!

Looking back at some articles about new ideas and opportunities, I think they could use a feature.  FURRY GOOD IDEAS joins previous special features here.  

I was going to call this “What Furry needs”.  But nobody really NEEDS these. This isn’t preaching what’s best for you.   It’s just observation from one enthusiastic fan, inspired by other fans.  It comes from a thriving subculture that ‘s expanding with a convention every weekend, somewhere in the world.  That makes a lot of room for ambitious proposals.  This is an attempt to highlight ideas with popular demand, appeal, or opportunity to make real.  Share yours too!

“Alpha Chow:” Adult Swim’s furry parody infomercial, and comments from the fursuit actor.

by Patch O'Furr

Arrow is the furry star of this!  I got in touch with him for some casual questions:

“How did the video come about? Did you answer a casting call or did they contact you? Didn’t the suit already exist… do you think they specifically wrote it to fit you? Did you talk about the story to the writer? What was the production like, and where? How many takes did you do for the demonic voice?”

He answered with a blog post about the video:

Arrow Discusses: The Adult Swim Experience.

…a writer from a company that films shorts for Adult Swim contacted me because he wrote a script involving a buff mascot costume. He apparently found me from a fursuit parade video. After reading the script, I agreed, and flew down for a day-shoot. It was an amazing experience – I was treated as “talent” as much as any of the other actors in the short, and everyone was friendly and fun.

Then Arrow added answers to my questions that weren’t already on the blog:

• “The script he wrote called for a muscular dog costume. They figured instead of making their own they’d hire someone who already had one. He told me they emailed a few other furries too.
• The production space they rented, hilariously, is Lance Ikegawa’s studio in LA.
• When it was time to shoot the scene they didn’t know if I was going to voice it, so I jumped in and said I could do a pseudo-demonic voice and showed it to them. They did two takes. Obviously it was further edited in post. I did more takes of the head reveal, which was the most “acting” I did – I had to hold my own fursuit head in front of my face to cover my head entirely, then act like I was trying to pull the head off. That took about 5-10 takes.
• The eyes are digital because I refused to wear contacts cause I can’t get them in my eyes – if I could wear contacts, I wouldn’t have gotten LASIK!”

Find Arrow on Twitter: @arrowt.