The Poverty Jet Set

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.

Not that Audrey and I want to leave Philly any day soon (we love it here!), but this article in the New York Times (with accompanying video) makes me salivate.

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.

Last night’s show at Johnny Brenda’s was breath taking! Though I was full of nerves before they went on, Audrey and Gretchen played wonderfully. The other bands, Picastro and Scout Niblett blew me away. Watch some vids on my Live Music Journal. (UPDATE: just added another vid, the top one!)

Audrey and I had a little fun with some wineglasses and a guitar the other evening. Thought we’d share. Enjoy!

Wineglass Experiment from Mark Schoneveld on Vimeo.

Funny vid of the week for youze:

Click To Play

Port Richmond isn’t the first place to pop into most young urbanite’s mind when pondering a date, but it should! It’s a great neighborhood, the heart of the Polish American community in Philadelphia. Audrey and Mark head up there in Episode 16 to have dinner at Syrenka, one of the most famous Polish restaurants in town. They ride the historic trolley Route 15 up there and have a beer at Byrne’s Tavern. Join us!

Last week was, understandably, a bit crazy. I didn’t get much of a chance to promote our last episode of Illadates. In fact, I completely forgot to cross-post it here. It’s one of my favorite episodes to date. Do have a watch!

Click To Play

I’m a huge fan of The Arcade Fire. And while they do have some awesomely creative videos out there in the Interwebs, this has to be one of the coolest music videos I have ever seen. It’s interactive! Click the image to watch (and play!).

Cheers, Gorilla vs. Bear!

Behold, Illadates: Queen Village! Enjoy!

BTW, we’re showing you the version we uploaded to Viddler. I just wanted to give those nice fellas a quick shout out ‘cuz their player is dope (how cool is it that you can comment within the videos!) and they’re doing good work up in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, my old high school stomping grounds. Oh yeah, plus, they did us a sweet favor and featured us on their blog! Do yourself a favor and go upload some vids there!

Audrey and I brought our video camera along with us on some errands around town and decided to shoot a quick couple of vids for Lonely Planet TV, the new video site made by the fantastic travel book publishing company. They’ve got a contest up on the site asking for videos about places you feel at home. Obviously, that’s what Audrey and I love to do, so we had to enter. Here are our goofy creations. Goofy being an understatement. We’re nerds. Please forgive us in advance. But if you get a chance, click over to the site and rate them high for us! FTW!

Oh my!

Oh baby! Can you believe it? History, folks. That’s history. And now, I give you this… a video my friends and I made on opening day back in April… when everyone knew this was possible. When everyone thought it could happen. The vibe was right. It was in the air.

Congrats, Phils! You rule! Onward!

We’ve made our re-debut on uwishunu.com just now, and just got interviewed by Joey at Philebrity.com for the relaunch of the video blog!

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).

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!

Behold, glacier wave surfing. Oh yeah, it’s exactly as you imagine. DeepwaterFilms gets heavy into it as world champion big wave surfers, Garrett McNamara and Kealii Mamala ride into a monster tsunami created by Child’s Glacier in South-Central Alaska.

I’ve seen these glaciers up close while I was adventure guiding in Alaska and I can tell you, surfing like this is completely insane. But totally awesome. Speaking of Alaskan surfing adventures, have you ever seen someone surf the tidal bore on the Turnagain Arm? I have. It’s also awesome. Nothing cooler than a ten-mile tidal wave.

Ride ‘em while you can, folks. We’ll be out of glaciers in a few years.

Hat tip to Vagabondish.

[Note: I attempt to refrain from delving into overtly political discourse on my blog because, well, I find it rather banal. But...]

Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than an undeserved police beating. I hate gawking at them. I spend a good deal of energy trying to NOT be pissed off at the state of the world, at brutality, injustice, oppression and the like. It ain’t easy, as many of you know. But now that witness to unwarrented police violence in America is more readily accessed than in Rodney King dayz, I have a hard time staying calm. This latest video making the rounds got me thinking. And because tasering incidents are a dime a figgin’ dozen on YouTube, because America tends down a path of self-destruction, because we lose control of our freedom more and more every day (and Lord knows I love my sense of freedom), I feel like this is a good time to bring up some of my all-time heroes, the White Rose movement:

White Rose was a non-violent group of German philosophy students in the early 1940’s, who, against all odds, printed out and distributed dissenting literature against the Nazi regime. With their friends and neighbors being carted off by the truckload to concentration camps, these kids had the cohones to try to do something. Anything. No, they weren’t going to stop the Nazis. But at least they didn’t just accept things and turn a blind eye. Here’s a film about them.

This gets me thinking about the importance of speaking up. About the power of self-publishing - blogging and video blogging - in an age of a censored corporate mass media. About how we should protect this neutral Internet with our lives. About how everyone should be learning how to use these mediums for when the time comes. Because if you ask me, it’s coming.

You might be interested in giving Naomi Wolf’s new book a read. Here’s her thesis - the ten steps all dictatorships have taken in a quest for power:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

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.

When I was younger, I spent a couple summers in Alaska as an adventure tour guide. The first summer there, on the first day I arrived, a guy at the youth hostel in Anchorage handed me a beat-up copy of ‘Into the Wild‘. He just said, “Welcome to Alaska. Read this. It’ll change your life.” I love when books do that! I devoured Jon Krakauer’s book in a couple days, probably shirking some of my duties as guide to get an extra few pages in before packing gear or setting up tents or making dinner.

I won’t get into the details of the book now. Believe me, you should read it. Period. But a bit of exciting news just belatedly crossed the editorial desk here at The Poverty Jet Set! ‘Into the Wild‘ has been made into a big-budget feature film directed by Sean Penn! Sa-weet! The trailer looks friggin’ amazing!

Here’s something I didn’t expect. As I was trolling YouTube for a copy of the trailer, I found these excellent videos made by a couple of cool, yet nutty Alaskans (aren’t they all?) having their version of fun with a 4-wheel drive truck in the dead of winter, retracing the steps Christopher McCandless took on his fateful journey to the heart of darkness/the wilderness. Make sure to watch both parts of this really well done homemade exploration video! Here’s part one:

NewTeeVee just linked to a new web video project about a dude, Alex Boylan, traveling around the world with nothing but the shirt on his back. No money. No plan. Just a video crew and (presumably) a laptop to blog with. I can dig that. You as his audience can interract and tell dude where to go, what to do, who to hang with. Around the World for Free could be pretty awesome. We’ll see once he starts off on his journey next Tuesday from New York.

Something smells a little fishy about this effort, though. Maybe it’s the uber-Flash FanRocket site with no permalinks, auto browser resizing and crazy strobing ads. Maybe it’s the oddly corporate Press Release. Or the non-embedable videos. I dunno. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. They might have a great production team on board, following guy around to make some super entertaining vids.

I just wish companies like this would have a better understanding of social media. I wish it was more grassrootsy. More authentic. Like the kids over at In a Van By the River. Or all the other adventure travel series I’ve posted about before. Or, for that matter, as humble and wonderful as the New York Times’ Frugal Traveler. Who can compete with Matt Gross? The man’s a master. Lucky for him he’s got a great video editor and a media giant in his corner. That helps.

I just made this fun lil’ video at Dylan’s new compilation album promo site (via Adverblog). Yeah, I’m just shillin’ for the man, but it sure was fun and who doesn’t like ol’ Bobby D?

It must be noted that the original bit was part of a masterwork by one of my all-time heros, D.A. Pennebaker. The film, Don’t Look Back, recently got remastered for DVD, you might want to pick up a copy!

(They didn’t allow me to embed the flash video, so I captured it and uploaded it to YouTube. Their loss.)