This is post 1 of 6 related posts which together make up our September 12, 2020, DIY, Virtual MonSFFA Meeting.

1) OPENING CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG

To start us off this afternoon, that was “Stayin’ Inside” by Brent McCollugh (www.facebook.com/brentmccmusic). If you seem to recall having heard it before, you likely have! We first featured the number as part of our April, and very first, online MonSFFA meeting. At the time, the COVID-19 quarantine was just beginning!

This month, we’ll be replaying some of our favourite coronavirus parody songs from among the collection we’ve harvested off of the Internet these past months. Think of this as a “Greatest Hits” compilation!

Many talented and witty songwriters/performers have been providing, throughout this COVID-19 crisis, gentle comic relief to us all, filking well-known rock and pop hits. Whenever given, we’ve credited by name these creators.

2) INTRODUCTION

With Labour Day behind us, the summer holiday period has drawn to a close, not that many of us vacationed this summer as we have in years past. Many of us remain on “pause” at work, or are working reduced hours, and a variety of travel restrictions are still in place, anyway. Few opted to venture far from home, a lot of folk “staycationing” this summer, maybe cautiously visiting the local beach or having a couple of friends over for a backyard barbecue or something along those lines. Pretty much all of the festivals, concerts, sporting events, blockbuster film premieres, genre conventions and other such summertime entertainment choices were either held online, postponed, or cancelled outright. Travel and tourism tentatively lurched ahead this summer, but on Impulse power! The albatross of COVID-19 hung over everything as we deconfined and began a measured return to something approaching normal, yet categorically not so.

Our society will be changed in profound and enduring ways before the anticipated vaccine is deployed. Tens of thousands worldwide have already died—over 9100 in Canada, 5700-plus of those in Quebec, and approaching some 900,000 globally. Many more will have succumbed before the virus is finally vanquished. These are fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, and friends now absent from our lives well before their time.

Customs like shaking hands will almost certainly wane until the practise is but a vestige of a bygone era, and we’ll probably wash our hands rather more often than we did before the virus hit. Online learning could supplant, at least in part, traditional classroom schooling at colleges and universities, and the remote office will undoubtedly grow in popularity as employers and employees alike adapt to a more decentralized workplace. This should see savings for businesses as they scale back on their rented office space in downtown towers, and for employees who no longer need commute to and from work morning and evening. In turn, downtowns will take on a new character no longer centered primarily on the transient daily population of office staffers. Their key clientele of workers and students having largely vacated the city core, then, many downtown restaurants and bars will fold, to be replaced by something that better serves the new paradigm. Everything from the corner coffee shop to public transit will be impacted by these shifting sands. Urban populations could register a falloff in future as post-COVID thinking sees people flee the perceived congestion of city streets in favour of quieter, less crowded suburban neighbourhoods in which to live and work. And as during the April-May lockdown, the environment should benefit as we will surely record a reduction in air pollution because driving back and forth, whether by car, or on a bus or commuter train, will moderate.

The brick-and-mortar retail sector, already facing challenges prior to the coronavirus crisis, may experience an acceleration in decline as consumers shy away from a return to crowded stores in favour of online purchasing. Movie theatres could eventually disappear, too, as folk eschew the multiplex crowds and adopt streaming services as their means of viewing filmed entertainment. Ironically, the nearly extinct drive-ins, relics of the 1950s-’60s that enjoyed a revival this summer, may well experience a more permanent comeback as retro entertainment venues, expanding beyond movies to include screenings of live music concerts, sports tournaments, and other pop culture events. How many of us, even years after the virus has abated, will think twice before putting ourselves in the middle of a jam-packed room at a Comic Con, for example, or some such event?

And yet, we are unequivocally social creatures. On some primal level, we absolutely need that face-to-face contact with our fellow human beings. How we will manage this while at the same time guarding against future contagions similar to the coronavirus remains to be seen. Regardless of how it all plays out, the world we return to when things finally get back to “normal” will be a fundamentally changed one.

As always, it remains vitally important that we continue to follow best recommended safety practises in order to help minimize the spread of the virus. That means frequent and thorough hand-washing, use of a hand-sanitizer, social distancing, mask-wearing in public, the minimizing of contact with others outside of our “bubble” of quarantine fellows, etc. Yes, it has been indisputably difficult to confine ourselves to our homes and neighbourhoods, but we all know that it is absolutely necessary if we are to triumph over the COVID-19 virus.

As always, to those of you deemed “essential workers,” and indeed, to everyone, please take all possible precautions in order to keep yourselves as protected from infection as can be. Now that students are returning to school and fresh outbreaks are inevitable, it is especially important not to let up on those safety protocols. We must not surrender to “COVID fatigue!”

This is our sixth virtual MonSFFA meeting. Today’s get-together will unfold right here on the club’s Web site over the course of the afternoon, beginning with this first post, and followed by subsequent posts at 1:30PM, 2:30PM, 3:00PM, and 4:00PM, with a concluding post at 4:30PM. All content will also be available concurrently on MonSFFA’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MonSFFA), however, the interface best suited for taking in this meeting is this very Web site.

As we cannot yet safely assemble face-to-face in a meeting hall, this September virtual meeting has been prepared especially for you, MonSFFA’s membership. Sit back, check out each of the afternoon’s posts, scroll down leisurely through the proffered content, and enjoy! And do comment on what we’ve put up. Let us know what you think about specific topics presented or the meeting overall. Your input helps us to tailor these virtual meetings for maximum interest and enjoyment.

3) MEETING AGENDA

In This Afternoon’s Virtual Meeting:

1:00PM, Post 1 of 6

1) Opening Coronavirus Parody Song

2) Introduction

3) Meeting Agenda

4) A Second Parody Song

5) Stand by For Announcement of Trivia Challenge Winners

6) A Third Parody Song

7) Who Was That Masked Man? (A Quick Superhero Trivia Game)

1:30PM, Post 2 of 6

8) Education inSF&F

2:30PM, Post 3 of 6

9) Mid-Meeting Break (Display Table, Raffle, Zoom Get-Together, Including Announce of April’s Trivia Challenge Winners)

3:00PM, Post 4 of 6

10) Shakespeareans in SF&F

4:00PM, Post 5 of 6

11) It Came From The Garden! (Photo Gallery)

4:30PM, Post 6 of 6

12) Another Coronavirus Parody Song

13) Official Listing of April’s Trivia Challenge Contest Winners

14) Answers to April’s Trivia Challenge

15) A Pair of Bonus Parody Songs!

Be that as it may, a portion viagra rx of the sickness are able of are living entirely functional life-style with quantity of troubles. cipla tadalafil 10mg Others count their money and will choose generics over branded drugs since they are a lot cheaper. This medicine cialis samples by and large is safe and highly effective formula manages weight and increases energy. Kamagra Tablets are manufactured by Ajanta Pharma in clinical and hygienic viagra uk sales conditions. 16) Answers to “Who Was That Masked Man?”

17) Thank-You!

18) Final Parody Song

19) Nineteen Random Briefs to Close Out Today’s Meeting

 

4) A Second Parody Song

With this one, originally included with our May meeting’s content, we’re reminded of the importance of washing our hands, courtesy the “Founders Sing” YouTube channel (YouTube.com/FoundersSing). Like Lady Penelope’s car, it’s FAB!:

5) APRIL’S TRIVIA CHALLENGE: WINNERS TO BE NAMED TODAY!

Note that we’ll be announcing the first, second, and third place winners of our April virtual meeting’s trivia challenge during today’s mid-meeting break via our Zoom session! Join us at 2:30PM for that announcement.

Designed as a combination online/in-person contest, we had originally expected to conclude our challenge by mid-summer, at the latest. We had, upon launching this challenge in April, anticipated returning to in-person meetings post-lockdown within two or three months—surely the coronavirus emergency would by then have ended! But of course, we know now that this despicable virus persists, and that the crisis continues with no return to any kind of meeting-hall gathering likely anytime soon.

That being the unfortunate reality of the situation, we’ve decided to drop the in-person component of the contest and wrap things up with today’s online announcement of the winners, based upon the online entries we’ve received.

We’ll also list those winners, for the official record, in our closing post this afternoon at 4:30PM, along with the correct answers to the 19 sci-fi trivia questions posed.

6) A THIRD PARODY SONG

One of local-girl-makes-good Celine Dion’s biggest hits provided the basis for this amusing coronavirus filksong by Five Times August, another which we first showcased in May (fivetimesaugust@fivetimesaugust.com):

7) WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? (QUICK SUPERHERO TRIVIA GAME)

When donning cape and cowl, a superhero assumes the mantle of crime-fighter, valiant defender of the innocent, and crusader for all that is good and moral and proper. But whether it’s a pivotal, character-defining moment that starts them off on a virtuous mission to right wrong, or a bizarre lab accident, exposure to radiation, or strange chemical reaction which bestows upon them extraordinary meta-human powers, a superhero lives a double life! It is a cliché of the genre that the superhero, when not exercising the duties of an awesome champion of justice, hides his or her true identity behind the guise of “ordinary citizen,” often the person they were before occurred the incident that set them on their path to superheroism.

In a nutshell, most every superhero has a secret identity! Everyone knows that Superman’s alias is mild-mannered newspaper reporter Clark Kent, Batman’s, wealthy industrialist Bruce Wayne, and Spider-Man’s, young high-schooler Peter Parker.

But do you know to which comic book superheroes these 19 lesser known alter-egos or secret identities belong? We’ll run the answers this afternoon in our closing Post 6 of 6 at 4:30PM.

1) KENDRA SAUNDERS

2) JEFFERSON PIERCE

3) REMY LEBEAU

4) DINAH DRAKE-LANCE

5) ROBERT REYNOLDS

6) RALPH DIBNEY

7) BRIAN BRADDOCK

8) LINNYA WAZZO

9) IRMA ARDEEN

10) WENDELL ELVIS VAUGHN

11) BRYCE LAINE

12) PIOTR RASPUTIN

13) MARI JIWE McCABE

14) ALEC HOLLAND

15) ANGELICA JONES

16) ALISON BLAIRE

17) RICHARD RIDER

18) CAROL FERRIS

19) DUKE THOMAS