You know, there’s only ever a few good ideas in the universe at any given time. Did you guys use the existential crisis presented by this to alter the show?
LOL, nah. We’re still Cheap Dates at heart. But we did take a few liberties in how we’re approaching it. We’re classy geeks, so we figured losing the ‘cheap’ was okay. Plus, our dates weren’t bottom-basement cheap (like drinkin’ Pabst in paper bags in the park).
Here’s to hoping that the oppressed people can stand strong together and shake off their ugly military dictatorship! I’ve spent a good deal of time in South East Asia, but only got a mile from the border of Burma/Myanmar because of the terrible situation in that country and the border skirmishes with Thailand at the time.
We used to call ourselves Cheap Dates, but due to a lil’ trademark trouble, we’re now calling our show of dating awesomeness in Philly Illadates. Made with love, to you and yours.
In Episode 13 of Illadates, we decided to try something new. Let us know what you think! A double date with a couple of guest stars! Writer, blogger, dandy extraordinaire, soon-to-be-portrayed-by-Johnny-Depp-on-film (truth!) Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy and his lovely wife Lady Pinkwater brought us to some of their favorite spots in town.
We started by a fanciful walk through the lovely historical Bartram’s Garden, birthplace of American horticulture. Then, true to dandy form, we had a late afternoon aperitif at Caribou Cafe on 12 & Walnut. Beau Monde’s amazing crepes finished off our evening but not before we stopped into Anastacia’s Antiques, a curiosity shop on Bainbridge Street not to be missed!
I just spent the last 80 minutes (that’s an eternity!) watching this great IFP panel discussion in it’s entirety on YouTube while waiting for video to compress. If you’re into the ways media creation and distribution are changing and developing like I am, you should watch it. I’m a big fan of all the people on this panel and think they are all on the cutting edge of media. Andrew Baron from Rocketboom. Arin Crumley and Susan Buice from Four Eyed Monsters. Brett Gaylor from Open Source Cinema. All moderated by my buddy Lance Weiler from Workbook Project.
Two of my favorite film bloggers Karina Longworth and Agnes Varnum have sent out the APB on the big New York City opening of AJ Schnack’s film About a Son. I was lucky to meet AJ and catch his film at the 2007 True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri. As I raved then, it’s an amazing picture, a very sensitive portrait of an artist. Go see this film! (For you Philadelphians, it opens at the Ritz on October 19th.) Here’s a clip:
To drum up some interest for the film, we’re calling for a little social media guerilla marketing by way of a Soundtrack of Our Lives meme.
Here’s mine. Apologies for not pulling out exact songs, but I’m an album man. Always will be. I don’t think I’ll ever succumb to the single. That being said, here are the albums that were stuck on rotation during various periods of my life ’til now:
Pre-High School: The Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” and “25th Anniversary Box Set”. What can I say, I wanted to be a surfer kid growing up in California. Lucky for me, great music went hand-in-hand with that desire.
High School: Nirvana “Nevermind” (obviously) and The Pixies “Doolittle”. I can’t hear either of those albums and not be immediately transported back to skateboarding around good ol’ Nazareth, PA.
College: Grateful Dead bootlegs. I was a hippy in college! I’d put Phish bootlegs in here, too, but that would be too embarrassing. I’m ashamed.
The Travelin’ 20’s: Air “Moon Safari”. An album I first heard in a cafe in Laos and have yet to grow tired of.
Late 20’s - now: I don’t think I can pull out just one. Would it be all my friends here in Philly who I hear practice and play shows all the time? Lately I’ve been really into Grizzly Bear “Yellow House” and The Arcade Fire “Neon Bible”, but that would be selling short hundreds of other bands I’m into. I’m a music fanatic. I guess only time will tell what has made the most lasting impression on me.
Okay, now I’m tagging a couple of you. I’d like to hear about the Soundtrack of Your Life:
Since I recently blogged about my sister Rebecca and mentioned her eco-friendly, fairly traded maternity clothing line, Schone Maternity, I called her to see how she was doing. Things were not looking good. She was overloaded with work being a one-woman operation, fearing the debt her business was racking up, and stressed out about screwed up orders from her factories. It ain’t easy running your own business, that’s for sure.
But then this morning, she sent out a wonderful email that I just had to share and write about! First of all, her line is being featured in next month’s O (for Oprah) Magazine! WoWza! Check page 170 in the upcoming October issue! And see photos above - the new photos from her Spring ‘08 line. Hot!
And then she got some uplifting encouragement from one of her clients. She says, “I met a customer (buyer for a store in Hawaii) yesterday who actually hunted me down- she only visited the showroom because she wanted to find my line! She asked me when I’m going to start a regular fit line because as she said, ‘obviously you’ve got natural style, I’m sure any line you do would be amazing.’ Nice to hear, I need a little ego boost every once in a while ”
Sometimes, when things look so hard and futile, those little nuggets of encouragement make all the difference. My sappy note for the day: go out encourage someone you know. They’ll appreciate it.
A film that ranks in my Top 10 of All Time, Richard Linklater’s ‘Before Sunrise‘, is rife with amazing one-liners. For those of you who aren’t lucky enough to have seen it already, it’s the story of two young strangers (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) who decide to take a chance on love and fate and spend a night exploring Vienna together on a whim. It’s romantic, passionate and as I mentioned, chalk-full of inspired dialogue. Well, actually, the whole movie is just dialogue. Not much happens. That’s what I love about Linklater’s films, actually. All his films follow suit. Lots of philosophizing on life, not much action. Waking Life, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunset (the brilliant sequal, 10 years later). Many of his films have had a profound impact on the way I think about life and the world.
Here’s an example from Before Sunrise I came across today on Vagabonding:
“That’s what I like about traveling — you can sit down, maybe talk to someone interesting, see something beautiful, read a book, and that’s enough to qualify as a good day. You do that at home and everyone thinks you’re a bum.”
I am a huge fan of thrift shopping. The beauty of the search. The elation of a mighty find. The mystery of the evolution of one’s wardrobe. You can’t go wrong. Since high school I have made my regular pilgramages to the wild and exciting lands of mothball smells and 99-cent supermagik t-shirts. My sister Rebecca and I have gone thrift shopping together for as long as we can remember, and now, she’s an amazing fashion designer with her own line (check it out y’all, I’m very proud of her!).
Today, I found one of the best shows I have ever seen on my beloved sport of thrifting. I’m now a huge fan of the awesome, amazing and fabulous ThreadBangers Show! See for yourself how these kids are doing it oh-so-right:
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about bike safety in the city lately. Recently, a bicyclist in my neighborhood, George Gonzalez, got crushed by a bus just two blocks from my house at a spot that I bike past dozens of times a month. And this morning, I’m reading about a popular blogger named Adam Finley of TV Squad who was killed last week by a bus in Minneapolis. What a bummer. Hearing about this just makes me so mad. Didn’t the bus see him? Wasn’t he riding safely? Even rock stars aren’t immune. Remember Mary Hanson of Stereolab?
If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that I like to post about bikes and biking. I love my bike, it’s a sturdy ride. An old steel-framed Schwinn with a single speed on a freewheel hub. It’s got a weird LiveWrong sticker on the downtube that a previous owner slapped on the frame. He told me it was to raise awareness about bicyclists being hit by cars, but when I google it, all I get were stupid tounge-in-cheek references to another campaign.
I was thinking about covering the sticker over, but instead I am going to declare a new meaning. I want it to be about fighting the senseless carnage of road rage, careless driving and unsafe habits when bikes and cars collide. Literally. Those of us who ride around big cities on a daily basis make our best efforts to be safe (usually). I sure do. Let’s all remember to keep an extra eye out for those two wheelers while driving cars, okay? And I guess I’ll be making sure not to casually cruise through red lights anymore.
Lastly, I hate news like this because it discourages some people from getting in the saddle. We need more bikers, not less. Here are some resources and tips to help your make urban bike riding safer:
My dear friend Catie posted this awesome photo of me shooting video at the Catalpa Music Festival that she and her awesome husband Nat put on a couple weeks ago. Thought I’d share it with y’all.
We’ve been taking advantage of these late summer evenings by sitting out on our roof. See, the thing is, we’re lucky when it comes to roofs. Ours roof is better than most. It sits on top of four very tall stories. And nothing nearby is higher than us. Our building pokes right out the top of Northern Liberties. We have a 360′ panorama of the whole city. It’s pretty awesome.
One day, I’m going to bring my kids to this building and tell them stories about our rooftop parties we used have here, “back in the day.” It’ll go something like this:
“One time, we bought plastic water canons on an impulse at the supermarket for $2 and shot all these goofball drunkards at the huge, annoying dance club across the street.”
(”Doesn’t she look badass with that canon in her hand?”)
“And then got the rest of our friends to get crazy with the water guns because we all acted like 12 year-olds for an evening.”
“And we had all these fun parties!”
“And we used to sit and watch the sunsets together while we fell in love, your mother and I…”
This weekend, a bunch of my friends and I drove up to the mountains outside of State College, PA (home to my alma mater, Penn State) and had a music festival freak out hosted by dear folk Nathaniel, Catie and Kevin. Good times! I’m uploading some video to my Live Music Journal as I get time to do so, but do watch these to get the summation.
One of my favorite performances (see video above) of the day was Enumclaw who played as the hot summer sun started dipping down onto the horizon. It was truly magical. Also, the projector art (see video below) these fellas were throwing was inspired. This clip during the Evening Fires set. Also, one might say, magical.
During these hot, hot summer days, Audrey and I hole up in our one air conditioned room many evenings and settle in to watching the kickasstic flat panel TV I picked up earlier in the season for $300 on Craigslist. We don’t have cable, and I haven’t bought an Apple iTV yet (did anyone buy that thing?), but we’ve been tearing through some shows we’ve heard people talking about.
Deadwood, as many have told us, is our current obsession. Holy crap, that show is awesome! We’re halfway through Season Two and can’t get enough. Here’s hoping they continue the series! A couple nights ago, while our warehouse loft boiled away at a consistent 90-odd degrees, we cranked that lil’ window unit in our bedroom and watched four hour-long episodes in a row!
There is something so delectable, naughty even, about watching 4 straight hours of television. I have never owned my own TV and still won’t bother paying for cable, but I do now realize how nice it is to turn off one’s brain and get sucked into a South Dakota gold rush town in 1877. Yee ha!
I had the fabulous experience a couple weeks ago of shooting video at very close up at a demolition derby in the Poconos. I was right above the action, on the infield, in the middle of the mud. The producers parked a big truck for me to set up a tripod just ten feet from the edge of the dirt pit where the hulking skeleton cars were smashing each other up. Pure awesomeness! No, I won’t be videoblogging it, unfortunately. It was a gig for an ESPN show.
One of the most interesting thing about a demo derby is the people involved, of course. First of all, what would possess a person to spend untold hours modding an old car just to trash it in the matter of minutes? The prize money for this event was like $1000 for first place. I can’t imagine after buying the car, fixing it up, flatbedding it to the event, the gas, the food, etc. they’d even break even.
I guess that’s what makes it a uniquely American affair. Cars. Crashing. Loudness. Mud. Lots of mud. All because, well, it’s fun.
Yes, this is the second Lord Whimsypost in a week, but it just happens that we spent the day on Saturday cruising around the pastoral landscapes of central New Jersey with him, checking out roadside attractions, antiques joints and other rural ephemera. Here’s the video of when we got back to his house and unloaded the loot.
And by the way, if you still don’t know what Whimsy’s all about, you really ought to check out his amazing book. I’m not just plugging it because we’re friends, either. It is truly a work of genius. Please, do yourself a favor and buy a copy.
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