billystripes

For every hit single, you'll happen across a few album tracks. This post is sort of one of those, if you pretend for a minute that the rest are hits. As we'll be streaming some of our 2018 Stan Bush concert footage this week , it would feel silly to distract from that with anything else. So here's another short story from concert day, 2018. (Before I go on, I must give a big shout out to Raymond T who has kindly agreed to us using his footage. Hero) Knowing how many people you can fit into a concert hall is one thing, but knowing how quickly you can safely move them in and out is quite another - that would become pretty much the largest issue of the year.  We finalised TFN 2018's guest plans at a meeting held in September 2017. By December 2017, the plans had changed entirely and we were starting again. A scheduling conflict for (somebody you'll hopefully see sometime soon) left a huge hole in our plans. Completely by fluke, Stan also replied to a speculative email

  Tuesdays. They've never sat well with me. Weekends tend to be nice. Mondays are fine, but Tuesdays sneak up on you. Look out for yourself because even with seven days' notice, you'll never quite see the next Tuesday coming. Terrible, awful things with nefarious minds of their own, putting an abrupt stop to your plans for a great week. If something can go wrong it will, but it'll wait till Monday's done. Naturally then, it's the day I've chosen for blogging. Consistency is key so I'm going to make an effort to share stories on Tuesdays from now on. Maybe not every Tuesday, but definitely some and hopefully most. It'll give me a chance to do something which is neither work nor TFN, by way of working on something related to TFN... sounds very me. (That said, should this, in fact, prove to be my first and last Tuesday blog, so long! But hopefully not). So, let's talk about a thing, shall we? Given our most recent Big Broadcast of 2020 announcement

People often ask me to tell them stories about my experiences at TFNation. To shed a little light on what goes into putting a convention together, and how much of that planning actually makes it to the weekend in one piece. Life on the other side of the stripes, I suppose. Granted, I've no reason to assume you're one of those people. Yet here we are, together, on the cusp of something tantalisingly tasteless, as we prepare to delve into the deep unknowns of a world you never imagined could truly exist this side of decency and legality; and in truth, one which seldom ever does. Okay so, fair enough. It always does. I'll admit, it's mostly spreadsheets and lifting boxes. And insurance forms. Loads and loads of forms. But, stay with me as I'm sure there are a few interesting tales I can find for public consumption, most of which will likely be true, at least in part. Some of these revelations might just shatter your very world, changing everything you think you kno

Brexit.  It almost sounds like a Transformer, doesn’t it? And just like a Transformer, its most notable characteristic is going to be change.  I often receive questions about Brexit. Will it impact future guest lineups? Will flights (and everything else) become more expensive? Will I need some kind of funky new super-Visa to enter the UK? And perhaps most importantly, who will win custody of Jim Sorenson? The truth is, I don’t know. Nobody does. Not even Jim.  What I do know, however, is the set of values TFN holds which I’m confident will see us through any coming changes. We believe in fandom. We believe in friendship. We believe in people. And that means we believe in you - the TFNation. If there’s one thing this community can definitely handle, it’s a transformation (kibble and all). Whatever Brexit throws our way over the next twelve months, TFN will still be here and you will still be welcome, wherever you reside.  Of course change can only ever begin in the

Hello. In case you've stumbled in and found this little corner of the internet by accident, here's a brief explanation. My name is Billy. I am one of the organisers of TFNation, which is a convention for fans of The Transformers and other shape-shifting robots. I'm here to talk to you today. I've toyed with the idea of writing something for a very long time. Almost a week in fact. Writing and me is an unusual pairing. I have a non-robot job which requires me to write to different audiences, in different tones through the day. Come home time, I'm into TFN mode, writing very different types of things to completely different audiences. The end result is that on a Saturday morning such as today, it's difficult to remember my actual voice.  Then there's the issues of time and well, being busy, and before long, the blog format just feels like something other people do. Then there's the elephant in the room. The large, lingering question of "what wo