Blending history and science fiction is well-worn territory, and when it’s done well it can make for some of the most enjoyable and interesting stories around. Alternate history tales have even been spotlighted here in our weekly Kickstarter column before. But what happens when you turn the formula on its head a bit and drop a mysterious main character into a vast city, give him a weird quest, a completely anachronistic appearance, and a toy robot that can control minds? John Gelety explains, sorta:

Rockefeller is a short historical science fiction film about a strange, stoic man wandering through a city collecting different items that, on the surface, have no real connection to each other: A quart of motor oil, a sneaker, a train schedule, pieces of glass… Over time we come to learn what these items are for, who he is working for and why he seems compelled by an old picture he carries.

Rockefeller is a highly collaborative piece bringing together talented prop makers, costumers, cinematographers and actors [...] inspired by the broad world of alternate histories – a pedigree of divergent timeline stories like The Difference Engine by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling, the way Christopher Nolan used Nikola Tesla in the world of magic in The Prestige, and Seth Grahame-Smith’s the use of the eponymous traits of Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.

Even cooler, you can begin to unravel the mystery of the Man by exploring the official website and interacting with the team on Twitter and Facebook. Diligent fans will uncover hints about the items the Man is collecting and the motivations of his employer. The team is even creating additional viral videos to complement the main film to flesh out backstory and maybe raise a few new questions.

The Project: Rockefeller, a short film

Creator: John P. Gelety

The Sweet Spot: Every donation level has some pretty sweet swag from the movie itself. $15 gets you a copy of the script signed by the creators and members of the cast and crew, and at the top end $250 or more gets you a trip to the set, a copy of the movie and a whole bunch of other goodness. There are only two more rewards available in the $250 bracket, so if you’re a big fan you may want to think about locking in your support early.

Funding Deadline: December 9th, 2011

More Info: You can hit the Kickstarter page for more updates on the project, and check out the main site or any of the official social media channels to get involved and start learning the secrets of Rockefeller right away.

Rockefeller on Twitter
Rockefeller on Facebook

Every Monday Geekadelphia features a Kickstarter created by locals. Check ‘em out and support our local geek scene. If you have a project that you’d like featured on site, contact geekadelphia@gmail.com

In late September, Eastern State Penitentiary places its ominous gargoyles atop of their entranceway, and Philadelphia officially announces the start of the Halloween season. Yes, Eastern State Penitentiary’s Terror Behind the Walls is the official Halloween Mecca of Philadelphia. If you live in the city of Brotherly Love, and HAVEN’T been to Eastern State’s Terror Behind the Walls—you haven’t experienced Halloween in its entirety!

Unless you live under a rock, you already know that Eastern State Penitentiary was the home to questionable Quaker repentance practices in its early days, and famous convicts like Al Capone. Eastern State’s mission is to preserve this historic building, and question the correctional system in America today. Eastern State is an important part of our history, and Terror Behind the Walls is it’s main fundraiser.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Terror Behind the Walls has become the must see haunted attraction no only on Philadelphia, but in the entire United States. It has been ranked the #1 Haunted House in America by AOL, and has received countless recognition in mainstream media.

What’s especially exciting about the 2011 season are the two new attractions premiered this year. These attractions make Terror Behind the Walls the largest and longest show in the haunt’s history. The Gauntlet is a new, high energy opening attraction, featuring overhead catwalks and custom props above a massive outdoor maze. This attraction is filled with unexpected obstacles, objects, and very unfriendly creatures blocking your way to freedom. The second new attraction, Break Out!, is a new finale and consists of an outdoor scare zone in the final courtyard before visitors leave the event.

I’m also very excited about their 20th Anniversary Celebration. On November 12th, there will be a special encore performance where you’ll have the opportunity to mix and mingle with hundreds of haunted house owners and operators from around the country! Want more of a reason to go? Get this, paranormal celebrities will be talking about some of the firsthand experiences they’ve had with real ghosts inside Eastern State!

Here are some tips to help you enjoy your experience at Eastern State Penitentiary’s Terror Behind the Walls:

1) Buy your tickets ahead of time! Unlike other local haunts, Terror Behind the Walls actually sells out! If you know you want to go through the haunt on a certain night you should definitely buy your tickets online. You wouldn’t want to show up and find out you can’t get in!

2) Monster be good! Terror Behind the Walls is not only a great haunt, it strives to be a family event! You can bring your brave little ones, but if they’re getting a little too scared just tell them to yell, “Monster be good!” and the ghoul will slink off into its respective corner.

Documentary film maker Gary Hustwit first impressed all of us with HELVETICA, the story of typeface and how it affects all of us in myriad ways. He then went on to further make an impact on filmgoers with OBJECTIFIED, a look at how designers go about creating the everyday things we use and buy. Now the trilogy is complete as Hustwit prepares to release his third film, URBANIZED.

URBANIZED is the story of how a city becomes a city. It looks at who exactly gets to plan the shape of the metropolises we live in and how those decisions affect us. By looking at a wide range of urban projects both large and small, Hustwit tries to show us what the future may hold for the cities and urban areas many of us call home.

Featuring interviews with a veritable who’s who of architects and planners, including Amanda Burden, Enrique Peñalosa, Alejandro Aravena, Eduardo Paes and Rahul Mehrotra, URBANIZED is a film that might just change how you look at Philadelphia and its surrounding environs.

As a special treat, director Gary Hustwit, in association with AIGA Philadelphia and AIA Philadelphia, will be having a special screening of the film at Drexel University on November 3rd in the Mitchell Auditorium, Bossone Research Center. And Geekadelphia has a pair of tickets to give away to one lucky reader!

How to enter? Just leave a comment. We’ll select one of you at random at the end of the day, and you’ll score a pair of tickets to the 9pm screening. Good luck!

What better place to put a Haunted House than an abandoned Mental Asylum? Before it was was shut down in 1986, Pennhurst catered to individuals with mental disabilities; some of which were the most violent patients in the Tri-State area. This facility hid these individuals away from a society that didn’t understand them. Underfunding and lack of staff eventually led to the neglect and abuse of its patients, and Pennhurst was then shut down.

Left to decay in its remote location, Pennhurst became the stomping grounds for trespassers and was strewed with graffiti. It slowly morphed into the ominous property that you will experience at Pennhurst Asylum. Just walking around the property gives you a sense of eeriness, and the architecture begs you to step inside.

Before you enter the haunt, you’ll pass through a small museum explaining the history of Pennhurst. Owner Richard Chakejian received some backlash for transforming the grounds into a haunt, so this museum educates his customers before leading them into the haunt. This serves two purposes. The first being, you learn a bit of the history of Pennhurst. The second reminds you of the people who inhabited these grounds, and the real life horrors that happened in these rooms.

Do you want to go ghost hunting? At Pennhurst you can! You enter the Mayflower building with just a flashlight and your sixth sense. Some say a little girl roams the first floor, while an angry nurse stabs patrons with a hypodermic needle on the second. And no, I’m not talking about actors. These are the real spirits of Pennhurst!

The haunt itself is a mind-bending experience. Because the actors are working with the atmosphere they are given, they don’t have the luxury of confined spaces. They depend on the characters to scare you. This is what Pennhurst achieves very well. Each doctor and patient has a story, and every room you go into takes you to a place that shoots you out of your comfort zone. Not only do the actors tell you a story, they scare you aggressively. These actors aren’t just popping out of corners. They’re staring you in the face and begging you to interact with them.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Here are some helpful tips to give you a great Pennhurst experience:

1. Save time! Go on Thursday or Sunday! The busiest nights are Friday and Saturday. If you don’t want to stand in longs lines Thursday and Sunday are the nights that are the least busy.

2. Wear comfortable shoes! The Pennhurst grounds have only been open to the general public for two seasons, so there are some areas that aren’t paved. Don’t come to this haunt in your heels!

3. Ask questions! There are four can’t miss attractions at Pennhurst, and while the grounds are amazing—it can be hard to find everything. The staff is very friendly and helpful; don’t be afraid to ask where to go next!

Pennhurst Asylum puts on a great show for only being open for two seasons.

Make sure you check it out! Go to their official website for more details! Keep your eyes peeled in the Spring. Owner Richard Chakejian might open Pennhurst’s grounds for a paranormal event you can attend. How awesome is that?

Have you been to Pennhurst? Comment with your favorite attraction or paranormal experience, and you could get a T-shirt!

Special thanks to LaSalle University for helping me put this production. Photography provided by Beth Salazar.

When Evan and his team over at NextFab Studio emailed Alex Hillman and I regarding sponsoring a prize at the Halloween bash tonight, we of course said yes. That crew produces some really great stuff, and we knew they’d come up with something awesome.

We didn’t expect it to be THIS awesome though.

Tonight’s winningest mustache will receive a giant mustache hunting trophy, carved and mounted on a plaque by the folks at NextFab. The photo above is a snapshot of NextFab Studio’s Lewis Colburn, who also sports a pretty serious bit of facial hair.

Best of luck tonight, friends. See you there. And please check out NextFab Studios’ website, and follow them on Twitter. They are awesome.

It probably won’t look like this. But let’s pretend.

The area around 30th St Station is a bit devoid of character – but all of that is about to change. On November 2nd, Mayor Nutter, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, the University City District and other stakeholders will hold ribbon cutting ceremony and celebration for the newest public space to open in Philadelphia.

This public plaza is adjacent to the 2nd busiest train station in the country and will boast ample seating, sun and shade, flora of the tree and plant variety as well as ongoing public events such as farmer’s markets, yoga classes and special events and festivities. The space occupies the outer parking lane of Market Street and will give the area a more welcoming vibe to incoming visitors.

The opening ceremony will not only include a 3-D model cake of the space (courtesy of Charm City Cakes of Food Network’s Ace of Cakes fame) but there will also be an announcement of the park’s name – which was decided via a contest that received over 500 submissions. Food and beverages will be provided in addition to music by the West Philadelphia Orchestra, Drexel University’s Recreational Athletic Fitness demos and performances by the Give & Take Little Circus.

The opening celebration will take place at the plaza outside of 30th St station next Wednesday, Nov 2nd from 12-1pm. Be there and celebrate this exciting addition to Philly’s landscape!

Come on. You know you’ve Googled “Murder” before. And the authors of A Miscellany of Murder definitely have Googled “murder” a few times, and they put together an interesting collection in this book. If you’re the least bit curious about the worst crime a person can commit, this book is for you.

A Miscellany of Murder is a collection of history, literature, true crime, television, and trivia related to the topic of murder. The Monday Murder Club complied this disturbing anthology by meeting every Monday night in Boston.

Originally designed as a writing club for mystery writers, The Monday Murder Club took their research and made this book possible. (more…)

Geekadelphia obviously hearts WordPress: it’s the very foundation of our beloved blog. And, as it turns out, we’re not the only ones in Philly who prefer to manage our content with Automattic’s open source system. There’s a great community of WordPress fans in our fine city, meeting monthly to discuss the popular blogging platform.

On November 5th and 6th at Temple University, that community will gather for the much bigger annual WordCamp Philly conference. With Saturday sessions for users, power users, designers and developers, WordCamp Philly covers all the bases, no matter what your specific interest.

Super-duper WordPress geeks can return to Temple on Sunday for more code-oriented fare like contributing to the underlying codebase that powers the platform and developing plugins that augment the great built-in functionality of WordPress.

The conference will include talks from a wide range of speakers, including one of those guys from that other blog. Of course, you may fancy yourself a WordPress guru, in which case you can cast aside all that humility we know you have for a moment and nominate yourself to speak at the event. And if a solid day or two of WordPress geekery just sounds like the best kind of weekend ever, hit the registration page to secure a spot.

Update: It looks like they’re sold out, but you can get on the waiting list here.

WordCamp Philly 2011
Temple University’s Alter Hall
1801 Liacouras Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19122-6083
Register here

Update: He’ll be at the Free Library on Saturday, not Friday. – Edt

Like him or not, Chuck Palahniuk, has written some of the most intriguing stories ever put to paper. Most of you would remember his most famous novel turned movie Fight Club, but Palahniuk has published 14 books that range from his non-fiction accounts of oddities that he’s has found across the country to a legendary time-traveler who’s most famous contribution to society is the rampant spread of rabies.

His newest book, Damned, is about a thirteen-year-old daughter of a billionaire couple who dies of a marijuana overdose at a Swiss boarding school. After being dropped in hell, she meets up with a rag-tag group of kids as they wander off to have some words with the Dark Lord himself. Damned looks to be like The Breakfast Club as written by Dante Alighieri.

Chuck Palahniuk is on his way to The Free Library of Philadelphia on Oct 29TH to give you a little taste of his version of Hell and sign a few books. VIP signing starts at 12:30pm. You’ll want to get there early because the first 100 people in line will get a VIP ticket to meet Chuck at the signing. Later on at 2:00pm Chuck will read from his novel and answer some questions.

He’s famous for going way past the line when it comes to researching his novels. He’s made his way through underground fight clubs and has been to numerous sex addict meetings. For this book however, it might be interesting to ask him just how he researched Hell. Maybe he took some notes from John Constantine and had a staring contest with a cat. They’re half in, half out you know.

You know how on Cheers whenever Norm would enter the bar everyone would shout his name? I plan on spending as much time at Barcade to earn myself such a welcoming.

The just-opened Fishtown bar combines two of this Geekadelphian’s favorite things — old school video games and craft beer. The result is the sort of place that hardcore gaming geeks and the general populace can all call their home. Having already opened successful Barcades in Brooklyn and Jersey City, owners Kevin Beard, Paul Kermizian and Pete Langway complete a hat trick of awesomeness with the opening of the Philly location.

The beautiful space features such yesteryear classics as Burgertime, Tron, Tapper, Joust, Super Mario Brothers, Tetris, Popeye, Double Dragon, Rampage, the ageless Ms. Pac-Man and many others. The best part? They will still only cost you a quarter, which will leave you with plenty of cash to sample the bar’s impressive beer selections. I recommend the Southampton Pumpkin Ale. If all the vigorous games WWF Wrestlefest have you working up an appetite, there’s food ranging from Siriracha-infused deviled eggs to a 3-cheese grilled cheese sandwiches available. Seriously, once you go there you are totally going to want to move in.

In conjunction with Barcade’s opening, I had the chance to talk with co-owner Paul Kermizian (who also directed the 2004 documentary American Beer) about the business, video gaming and what visitors can expect. Here’s what he had to say. (more…)

Philly’s very own film festival season is already in full swing and next week with the Philadelphia Film Festival winding down, the 2011 Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival is gearing up to take its place. With a full week of great programming, the festival runs November 2nd to the 8th.

Boasting 10 feature films and 2 short programs (both of which are free to the public), there is a lot there for film fans looking to check out some great flicks and documentaries. I will be posting my picks/reviews next week.

Some highlights are The Girl From the Naked Eye, a gritty crime noir film, Dirty Hands: The Art & Crimes of David Choe, a documentary on the eccentric street artist and Doctor Kong a short doc on Hank Chien, the Harvard educated plastic surgeon who is also the 3 time Donkey Kong champion. Get more info on the website www.phillyasianfilmfest.org

If you’re a fan of Adult Swim favorite Robot Chicken, no doubt you’ve heard the voice acting of Bi-Coastal actress Leah Cevoli. Leah has also been featured on the HBO Western series Deadwood in addition to working on several other interview, travel and web projects.

Dividing her time between California and Philadelphia, Leah is the focus of this edition of Geek of the Week. We caught up with Leah and discussed her Philly favorites as well as her active work life.

How did you get involved with Robot Chicken?

Leah Cevoli: It all started thru a chance connection on the social networking site FRIENDSTER! True Story. Matt Senreich (Robot Chicken’s Exec Producer/Creator), reached out to me on Friendster. Having just moved from New York City he was looking to connect with other East Coast folks in LA, and invited me to have coffee.

This was right when Robot Chicken had been given the green-light to shoot, so no one even knew about the project yet, I certainly didn’t. We chatted about my first 5 years in LA, the ups and downs of it all and at the end of the coffee meeting, he mentioned that he and his partner (Seth Green), had just sold a show to Cartoon Network and they would keep me in mind. A few months later, I received an email that there had been a last minute cancellation, and I was invited to come in and record my first character the very next day! Sabrina The Teenage Bitch.

I was a nervous wreck, not having much animation voice-over experience, I arrived early and got to watch Mila Kunis do her thing in the booth, and sort of just learned how to do it by observing her, and thru the awesome direction of Seth Green. (One of the best directors I’ve ever worked with). I guess I did okay, because they have invited me back for a total of 9 other episodes to date, about 40 characters. The show is amazing to work on, everyone involved are totally fun and total geeks! Our wrap parties usually consist of karaoke, video games, darts, pool, you name it!

Tell me more about the upcoming series Game Over and your involvement in it.

Leah Cevoli: I met up with the Production team (Bullis, Chris Pierdomenico, Joey DiCamillo) as they were holding rehearsals in Aston, PA earlier this year, and a few days later they invited me to come on-board as a producer. It was a really fun experience, getting to work with local filmmakers, most of who are just out of college. One of the coolest parts about it, besides the team and the cast, is that we were the very first TV pilot to shoot at the brand new Sun Center Studios in Aston, PA. The pilot is currently in post-production and you can keep up with us at at the official website.

What are some of your favorite places in Philadelphia?

Leah Cevoli: I really enjoy the Piazza in Northern Liberties; I went there a few times with a girlfriend and had a blast. Great food, great vibe! I also really enjoy the Olde City area (my sister Rachel portrays young Betsy at The Betsy Ross house). One of my fondest memories of this past year in Philly, was watching Rocky on the steps of the art museum! Oh, and Love Park.. I love that little area of Philly.

What do you geek out to?

Leah Cevoli: KARAOKE!! I am a karaoke junkie. The best part is that I’m not a great singer, but I AM a great entertainer, so I’ll just get up there and give it my all. You cannot be a person easily embarrassed and go to karaoke with me! I’ve been known to roll around on the floor in a dress like Madonna circa Like A Virgin.

I love writing, I have a poetry book I published a few years ago (Amicably Ever After), and I just started a new tumblr.  I’m a social media junkie, so I spend a lot of time on twitter and Facebook.

What are some of your working on currently?

Leah Cevoli: Currently I am in production on two of my own shows, a weekly docu-reality style Vlog, called On The Road with Leah. Basically I walk around with my flip-camera and cover all sorts of events, like the recent Geekadelphia Awards. In our first season I shot episodes in 8 states and 15 cities!

This show can be found on my YouTube channel, but are both being transitioned over to Mingle Media (online).

I am also in pre-production for a new web-series, called Jedi Camp! I am co-starring along with Camden Toy (Buffy). Basically, Jedi Camp is the first ever day camp in Southern California for children to learn the ways of the Force. The children come to be taught by real Jedi Masters. I’ll be playing the role of the head Camp Counselor, and Camden Toy, is the School’s Head Master. This is being produced by First Glance Films, whose president Bill Ostroff, is also a Philly boy!

Robot Chicken is gearing up to record Season 6 so, fingers crossed I’ll be recording some more character voices soon!