Audrey and my show Illadates just got honored by the Public Relations Society of America. They awarded us (and the forward-thinking folks at GPTMC & uwishunu.com who financed it, promoted it and hosted it) with a Bronze Anvil for “superior performance in the design and execution of individual tactics within broader public relations campaigns.” Pretty rad, eh?
“The Bronze Anvil Award annually celebrates the growing scope, creativity and strategic importance of public relations tactics, and represents the highest level of tactical achievement in the public relations industry,” said Arthur Yann, 2008 Bronze Anvil Award committee chair. “The outstanding work done by this year’s recipients is truly deserving of such noteworthy recognition from their industry peers.”
And please pardon me, but I can’t help use this opportunity to share one of my banner ads I made last year (when we were still called “Cheap Dates”). It makes me laugh:
My good buddy Marc Brodzik just launched a new online video channel called Scrapple.tv. It’s a site bringing fresh, interesting and off-the-wall videos from the Philly underground art & music & political scenes.
Marc’s been churning out some amazing shows all year, and his new project is sure to entertain. He is quite a character. I think the Philly Weekly put it best when they said, “Interviewing Marc Brodzik of Scrapple.TV is like wrestling a Tasmanian devil covered in baby oil.”
Here’s the first episode of one their new series called Back2Basics:
I’m lucky(?) because I get to watch a lot of video on the internet. It’s what I get paid to do, which tends to make me a bit jaded at times. But every so often I come across a video that blows my mind. This video is one of those.
The time it took. The energy. The planning. The foresight. The danger. The vision. This is shear and utter genius (plus some good old fashioned hard work).
Blu, whoever you are, I salute you. Applause all around. You will go far.
The independently-published student paper The Temple (University) News just did a nice interview piece about our Illadates Show. Pretty cool they found us. Jimmy Viola did a great job reporting. Reminds me of my ol’ Penn State Daily Collegian days as an Arts Beat writer.
We haven’t yet started thinking about doing a Season 3, but apparently at least a few people are interested. That is flattering to see. In fact, there are some days I miss making the show. It sure was fun to get paid to go on dates! Have you watched all the episodes? Dang, kid, there are 24 of ‘em! What are you waiting for?
An aside: I’m interested in seeing how the Illadates media lives on after we’ve done making it. Will people continue to watch? Will people discover the shows a year from now and email me saying hi? What happens to a web series after it retires but before it gets pulled down offline?
A good buddy from my Telluride days and awesome adventure filmmaker, Ben Knight, has his first of what I hope are many videos up on the New York Times. Nice job, Ben! You gotta dig skiercross. It’s a pretty killer sport, I’m glad to see it’s going olympic.
This is a completely random collection of short vignettes from our trip. We didn’t want to stick to any over-arching theme or anything too complicated (we wanted our brains to be mushy), so this is kind of a mishmash of moments in time. Enjoy!
Thanks again to all you lovely folks who contributed to our honeymoon wedding present. We love you!
Of course we needed to hit up ol’ Fishtown before the end of the season! Watch for those cameos! Alex, Brandy, Kyle, Sammy, Jeff and Will all make a brief cut!
Last night was First Friday here in Philly, and we went out to see my friends David Kessler and Candace Karch’s show at the Babmi Gallery in Fishtown. His show is “Shadow World” doing a multi-media instillation of his excellent art-video blog of the same name. If you haven’t watched any episodes, do yourself a favor and check ‘em out. Her show is “Lost and Found” and is showing absolutely amazing prints of surreal-looking x-rays with pen and ink drawing. Show is up until January 20, 2008. Go buy some art! Have a look at the short vid I shot there:
The snow yesterday falling around us in Philadelphia was magical. It gave me shivers (the good kind) just thinking about all my past winter beginnings, especially the ones when I lived in Telluride, Colorado and the first dusting of snow was cause for much excitement. In honor of those wonderful winter feelings, I share with you this:
Audrey and I just completed the 10th episode of Season 2 (the 22nd of 24 total) in our video series, Illadates. Now’s your chance to catch up on some of the episodes you missed! Did you see us getting crazy in a costume shop in Mount Airy? Did you see us watching the sunset from the Ben Franklin Bridge? Did you see us galavanting around Port Richmond? How about watching us suck it up at bowling? You can watch every episode in the viewer below! Just click the ‘book’ button, then the ‘episodes’ tab, and pick yr favorite.
This week’s date was to Washington Avenue and the amazing Mummer’s Museum! Fun!
We’ve had a ton of fun making Illadates over the course of this year. It’s been a fantastic project. We are, however, happy to take a break from making the show week-in and week-out. We’ve already shot episode 23 in Fishtown (stay tuned for that next week), and be sure to see the season finale, the ‘Win a Date‘ episode in two weeks.
What’s next for us, you may ask? Well…. Audrey and I are already scheming up our next project, of course! But it’s a secret for now. You’ll see. Watch for that in February of 2008.
I haven’t been able to get out to shows much this fall because I’m so dang busy, but I did get to go see Dragons of Zynth and Celebration at Johnny Brenda’s on Saturday night. It was a great show! And of course, I made a couple vids. Here’s one from Celebration’s set:
Audrey and I took the opportunity on a sunny late-November Sunday to hop in our new cute lil’ car “Trigger” (more on him later) and drive aimlessly around the southern coast of New Jersey. We happened upon a totally weird, almost Twighlight Zone scene in this little town called Bridgeton where all these people were wandering the streets zombie-like. We high-tailed it outa there once the police started closing off the streets for a random parade. We thought they might be cordoning off the zombies.
After that, we pointed to a speck on the map called Sea Breeze and drove out there only to find nothing but a swamp. Seriously. Here’s the video:
As the afternoon crept up on us, we kept zig-zagging our way down the Coastal Heritage Trail (map) towards Cape May so we could watch the sunset. We saw another fun dot on the map called something like “NJ Tall Ship” near a very small dot called Bivalve. Who’s ever heard of a town called Bivalve? Sounds like a place to go for heart surgery. Bivalve, however, ended up to be a rotten-smelling boat launch for professional fishing boats. We got some amazing photos there, though. Like the one at this:
As the late fall sun quivered over the horizon, we pulled up to Cape May Lighthouse and the beach where we could pick up shells and cool-looking rocks and run around doing cartwheels and stuff. That was fun! And romantic!
And at last, we headed into the town of Cape May in search of a good meal. Alas, this was the only downside of the trip. Having no guide in a nearly dead off-season town with 90% of restaurants and businesses closed, we chose what appeared to be a quaint local joint. Instead, it had big screen tv with football playing, ditzy waitresses and crab cakes boiled down to crispy hard balls that looked and tasted like crap. Luckily, it was ‘buy on get one free entree night‘ so it was only half as bad as it might have been.
Spontaneous road trips on a sunny Sunday. Can’t beat it, baby.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted about a good ol’ long-distance adventure blog, so I thought it high time. While certainly not quite as hard core as walking or biking around the world, the Half Throttle guys did a pretty bang-up job on documenting their adventures motorcycling from Utah to Panama. They’ve got some great videos and photos to prove it. Have a look at Episode 29: Pan-American Highway:
Instead of having a party to celebrate the end of our second season of the Illadates show, we thought it might be fun to have a contest for our season finale show happening in a couple weeks. Isn’t that exciting!? Here’s the announcement we made yesterday:
Head over to uwishunu for details. You can email your date idea to iknow [at] uwishunu.com or leave a comment to enter the contest! We’ll be keeping track of the best pitches, and probably posting them in a blog post. You can vote for your faves, soon, too!
We can’t wait to hear what your favorite date in Philly is. Make ‘em good, people. We want to have some fun with you! Even if you don’t live in Philly, wouldn’t this be a great excuse for a visit?
And do us a favor… spread the word for us! Kthxbai.
Portland and I have a long, mythological relationship. I’ve only spent a grand total of sixteen or seventeen days there spread over four or five visits and passing-throughs. But it’s always lurked around my mind as one of the greatest cities in America, embodying so many ideals I want in a lifestyle. Biking, sustainability, art, music, proximity to wilderness. Oddly, even though I’ve gone on and on about “someday soon I’ll be moving to Portland” during the travel years of my twenties, I never have. And I wonder if I ever will. Once, in the fall of 2002, I even packed my car, ready to move, but somehow through a strange twist of fate, ended up in Philly for a year before moving back to Colorado.
Who knows. Maybe I’ll get my stint in Portland yet.
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