Comprised of historic and innovative breweries, Philly’s drink culture is rich and plentiful with innovative minds all with the same intention: to get us drunk! Recently I was delighted to speak with DrinkPhilly.com czar, Adam Schmidt about what it takes to be successful in Philly, the Drink brand expansion and everyone’s favorite time of the year for seasonal beer.

How did the Drink Philly project evolve into the Drink Nation expansion?

It has always been my intention to expand to other cities, ever since I started Drink Philly. Philadelphia was effectively a testing ground to see what was involved in running one location. Over summer 2011, we launched DrinkNJShore.com, which provided a great learning experience, and allowed us to see what resources were needed to run a second location and effectively manage it from our Philadelphia office. From these undertakings, we were able to estimate how much time, resources, and personnel were needed – and will be needed – for future expansion.

The Drink Philly community has continued to grow substantially throughout the City of Brotherly Love. How do you evaluate the success of Drink Philly and what are you hoping to accomplish by expanding the Drink Nation Brand?

A lot of people have told me, “If you can make it in Philadelphia, you can make it anywhere.” – I guess referring to Philly as being a difficult audience to sell to. I never really understood that reference myself, because this city has been so open and helpful to us. There’s a really close-knit community in tech, blog, design and journalism – in all these fields, everyone wants to help each other out, and wants to put you in touch with someone that can help you out. I honestly think if we had started anywhere but Philly, we would have had a harder time. Philly’s been good to us.

The first thing we did when we announced our expansion plans was tap into our already existing Philly users. Of course many Philly folks have friends or family in D.C. or Baltimore, so we just asked them to spread the word. And they did. It helped us get started, because one person tells another person, who tells two people, and they tell seven. Before you know it, you’ve got your user base.

Our Drink Nation brand serves as our parent site. Within that we plan to expand to more and more cities gradually. The Nation site holds content that anyone in the country could read, and will really help in determining where major interest is for expansion.

What information can you share about the brand expansions planned for Drink DC, Drink Baltimore and Drink NJ Shore. How do you think your success here in Philly will translate to other cities?

What I can say is this is only the beginning. We are working to build a brand that can expand to many more markets and build a community of our core audience: the intelligent drinker. It’s never easy to go in to another market, but we’ve already received a great reception from Baltimore and Washington DC. We’re filling a niche that needs to be filled, because there really is nothing like our site anywhere else.

Are there any iOS or Android apps in the works for the Drink Nation expansion? How can fans of Drink Philly stay in touch with Drink Nation events and follow the progress of Drink Nation’s expansion to DC, NJ and Baltimore?

We put a lot of time and design work into crafting our mobile site, which works exactly like an app on most smartphones. We wanted to be able to reach all mobile users before we spent a lot of time on building a native app for any one device. Now that we have a solid mobile site, we’re working on developing native apps for iPhone and Android. We’re not sure when they will be ready, but our hope is for it to be on the market by the end of the year.

We do have Twitter and Facebook feeds for The Drink Nation that anyone – including our Philadelphia brethren – are more than welcome to follow to keep updated on all of our happenings. We’ve also got @DrinkBmore, @DrinkDC, as well as Facebook pages for each. We’ll be sure to keep you posted, as well.

With Fall in full swing, now is the time for consuming pumpkin flavored everything. What seasonal beers can you recommend for our viewers?

My personal favorite is Dogfish Head Punkin’, but there are some other great pumpkin beers as well. I’d recommend Southern Tier’s Pumking, Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale, and Williamsburg AleWerk’s Pumpkin Ale. If you can find them still…

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To learn more about Drink Philly (and find your way to Drink Nation), visit their official website.

The last couple of months have been busy for our friends at Titan Books as they continue to produce some amazing works focusing on artists who should be household names for fans of film and art, as well as branching out with new novels featuring classic characters of literature.

This time around they have re-released an updated collection of the personal artwork of Drew Struzan, as well as a collection of works of popular science fiction artist Chris Foss. Finally, they have also released a new Sherlock Holmes novel, The Breath Of God.

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Ben Franklin is well known as a number of things: author, printer, politician, scientist, musician, inventor, civic activist, and statesman. Lesser known? Zombie Hunter.

No longer. Thanks to the guys over at Neo-Pangea, Big Ben’s zombie killing exploits are your to relive any time you’d like. In the new Flash11 and Stage 3d-powered game Deadcoats, Philadelphia’s favorite founding father is tasked with stemming the tide of an overwhelming army of risen Redcoats with only his trusty lightning gun, iron resolve, and witty one-liners to aid him.

Reading, PA based Neo-Pangea can normally be found crafting beautiful interactive experiences for companies like National Geographic and the Travel Channel, but this particular project was a personal labor of love created from start to finish in just three weeks using brand new tech.

I’ve spent more paid work hours than I care to count headshotting the living dead with my thunderbuss, but I recently had the chance to chat with some of the team over at Neo-Pangea about the process of making the game.

Where’d the idea come from? Why Ben Franklin? Why zombies?

Aaron Beaucher, Ambassador of Inspiration: We have been wanting to do something zombie related for some time now – so when we were looking to showcase these new Flash 11 features and our own capabilities it seemed like a great opportunity. Brett really headed up the concept of Ben Franklin vs undead redcoats, seemed to be a good fit due to our ties to Philly. The lightning gun in the game is actually modeled from a real prop gun we have in our studio… now we just need to get our jetpack into something.

Brett Bagenstose, Baron of Pixels: We are so excited about the possibility of GPU rendered video that we had to have an experiment right out of the gate. But, we wanted to make something more than just a typical proof of concept. A typical, modern day zombie shooter seemed pretty cliché… it needed a purpose and a grounding to Pennsylvania. Ben Franklin kind of wrote his own role.

Jason Morris, Royal Alchemist: Why not? Ben is a local legend, and his love of zombie fighting isn’t as well documented through history as his fondness for French “pastry”. We just figured it was time to show the side of the story that people don’t usually get to see.

(more…)

Matt is the one soaring through the air. Photo by Alexander Iziliaev

Parker: How does Indy Hall Night Owls sound, this Wednesday?
Me: Can’t, going to the ballet.
Parker: THE BALLET?!
Me: Dude, I’m classy. I like the ballet.
Parker: I know, but BALLET?! Do you play iPhone games the whole time?

I’m not sure why it surprises so many of my friends, but I really do love a good ballet. I always find myself awe struck by the way the dancers move, especially considering the most elegant moves I make involve walking to the fridge from my couch. The grace, the lightning, the beauty… it is impossible not to get sucked in. And I’m talking about the ballet, here. Not my fridge.

So yeah, I’ll definitely be scoping out Ballet X this week.

For today’s Geek of the Week, I chatted with Matthew Neenan, the co-artistic director of Ballet X’s Fall Series. The world premiere of his piece Jackson Sounds hits the stage tonight through November 20th, and draws inspiration from the students of Andrew Jackson Public School in South Philadelphia.

Anyhow, enjoy the short and sweet Q&A, and try to check out the show if you can. Especially you, Parker. (more…)

If you live in Philly, then you already know all about Preston Elliot and Steve Morrison.

The two, along with their regular cast of characters, have been making the morning commute to work that much easier for Philadelphians since The Preston & Steve Show debuted on 93.3 WMMR in 2005.

But what you may not know is that Steve Morrison is one of us; yes, he is a geek. He is an avid lover of video games, a huge movie buff and often talks about it on the air. As he and Preston prepare for the annual Campout for Hunger, Steve was kind enough to answer a few questions for me via email.

You have been a part of Philadelphia’s radio landscape for a long time. For you, what is the best part of being a radio personality in Philly?

The people! Funny, colorful, loyal, generous, quirky, salt-of-the-Earth and a hundred other adjectives; Philadelphians are the real deal and I owe them everything.

Your love of video games is no secret. Are you a Playstation 3, Xbox 360 or Wii kind of guy and what games are you currently playing?

I have two of all three systems because I’m a lunatic. The system I end up using the most is the Xbox 360 especially when it comes to first person shooters; the controller is just more suited for them. However, the PS3 is a mofo especially when it comes to the exclusive titles such as the “Uncharted” series and “God of War.”

What was your favorite superhero movie from this past summer and how excited are you for The Avengers movie?

I loved “X-Men First Class.” I was not expecting much and they did a very solid reboot on a series that really didn’t need a reboot. The first hour is some of the finest Marvel related movie stuff that I’ve ever seen. As for the “The Avengers” movie, I am insanely stoked especially because I have extreme faith in Joss Whedon.

If you could replace your co-host Preston Elliot with anyone, living or dead, for one show, who would it be and why.

While Preston is clearly irreplaceable, I would love to bring in Steve Jobs. He was always my number one interview choice when he was alive and, since you made this living or dead, I’m going to maintain that.

Really, how hot is Kathy Romano?

We originally noticed Kathy because she was the hot traffic girl on NBC 10 and now she’s just like a sister so the hotness thing has diminished for me. Besides, we’ve all seen her go to the bathroom and that really kills it. Okay, that’s not entirely true.

To me, nothing says the holidays like the annual Preston and Steve Campout for Hunger. How are you preparing for living in an RV for a week?

Believe it or not, I’m sort of training for it this year by dropping weight (we always end up eating like shit during that week) and by regulating my sleep a little better. Will it help? Absolutely not, but I’m enough of an a-hole to pretend that it will.

Any final thought for some of your geekier fans?

Fellow geeks, we are living in blessed times; the sheer volume of stuff to geek out over is staggering and the amount of women now getting on board means there just might be longterm hope for our species.

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You can hear the Preston & Steve show weekday mornings on 93.3 WMMR or download the podcast at wmmr.com.

Listen up geeks and nerds. Stop your fighting. Let’s unite and celebrate Nerd Nite, together. Because seriously, these guys are doing some really cool stuff.

Next week’s Nerd Nite Philadelphia takes over Frankford Hall in Fishtown on Wednesday, November 9th at 7:30pm. Guests can look forward to food and drink specials ($6 beer & pretzel, $8 beer & sausage), a live performance by the Philadelphia String Quartet, and of course, some awesome lectures. Oh, and its all free.

Speakers and their lectures include Jay Parrish (Imaging Technology & Deception in Fine Art), Caroline Ashurst (Physics & Metaphysics in Acupuncture) and Rocky Parker (How Snakes Make with the Sex). That last lecture title was from Nerd Nite’s press release. I wish I could make that stuff up.

Starts at 7:30pm. For more information, visit Nerd Nite Philadelphia’s official website.

Nerd Nite Philadelphia
Wednesday, November 9th, 7:30pm
philadelphia.nerdnite.com/updates

Hollywood Babble-On (HBO) is a podcast featuring the Sultan of SMod, Kevin Smith and Lord of Laughter and Vicar of Voices, Ralph Garman. Recently, the guys stopped by to do their show from World Cafe Live right here in Philadelphia. Ralph is local “Philly boy who went to Hollywood to sell his soul… and is still looking for a buyer.”

It seems that a few people may have purchased his soul, because Ralph lends his voice to Family Guy, is the entertainment reporter/impressionist for the Kevin and Bean radio show in LA, was also in the epic Sy-Fy monster flick, Sharktopus, and is a rather convincing psychopath featured in Kevin Smith’s new movie Red State.

I’m a huge fan of Hollywood Babble-On and listen religiously every week. Garman and Smith skewer anyone and everyone with their name in lights with their signature blend of obscenities and impersonations. Garman has the ability to mimic the likes of Al Pacino, Sean Connery, Harrison Ford, Ed Wynn, David Bowie, and many more. So instead of simply listening to Ralph on HBO, I actually got a chance to talk to the man that has kept my afternoons between class full of laughter.

How did you find yourself sitting down with Kevin Smith every week to record Hollywood Babble-On?

Ralph Garman: It’s sort of a long story. I’m on a morning radio show in LA and Kevin has been a frequent guest, so we got to be friends. I usually do a Hollywood news segment on the show where Kevin and I were just busting balls and cracking jokes. I pitched it as a whole show to the station and they said people were more interested in music so we just shelved the project. When Kevin started the SModcastle and the podcast network started to take off, we thought we would give the show a shot. It’s blown up from there and we are now doing the show at the Jon Lovitz Podcast Theater.

You have a big bag of incredible impressions, how do you go about learning a new impersonation?

Ralph Garman: It’s funny, I equate it to a party trick. I kind of have a knack for it. I would occasionally do skits on the radio show and do the voices along with it. I ‘d hear something and try to work on it. It would sound like someone and I would bring it out. I have picked a character before and tried to do a voice that way, but it is much more difficult coming in on it from the outside. (more…)

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!

Just in time for Halloween! Hometown hero Scott Derby pays homage to Shaun of the Dead once again with his October 24th (TODAY!) TeeFury.com design. Entitled The Undead Gentleman’s Game, the fictional cricket team The North London Brain Eaters is depicted. Anglophiles and zombie lovers alike will dig this shirt! I spoke to Derby to get the scoop on the inspiration for his latest design:

First; thanks so much for all of the coverage that you and the Geekadelphia crew have given me. I truly appreciate it!

The story? A friend of mine handed me her sketchbook at Baltimore Comic-con, and asked me to participate in the theme of her book, which was fictional sports team logos. Being a fan of SotD, it seemed like a “no-brainer” (see what I did there?) and after a few minutes of thought, the basic idea popped into my head, and I sketched out a logo. I kept the idea in my mind to revisit and revise later with the use of a computer, and out came the shirt design that you will soon see on Teefury.

That’s pretty much it!

Remember that TeeFury designs are only available for 24 hours so be sure to place your order now!

Part of what makes webcomics so interesting is that there are literally no boundaries to what you can create. There is no “demographic” or “model” you have to fit into, you just have to be able to tell a story that is important to you.

Eat the Babies by Brady Russell is a perfect example of this. Brady is a Philadelphia guy who has created a comic that is very unique and has to read to believed. It is the story of a walking, talking television as it explores the world around it and occasionally gives us a lesson in economics. Like I said, unique.

Brady was nice enough to do an email interview for Geekadelphia to talk about his comic, how he works and how great it is being an artist in Philly.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m an organizer and activist who has fought the good fight in six different states, but I arrived in Philadelphia in 2005. First of all and foremost, though, I have always wanted to be a maker-of-things (writer, artist, comics, etc). I had this idea in college, though, that I needed to go out and have some life experiences that weren’t writing and art before I really pursued those things (not really sure that was a great idea now, but it’s the road I took). That’s why I went into the organizing life. Along the way, I have written several novels that sit on my hard drive. (more…)

I had the chance to stop by and chat with the folks over at Storably the other day. Founded in the summer and launched a few weeks ago, this Philly-based startup aims to resolve the challenges associated with finding a decently priced parking spot or a convenient storage location.

Early this year, co-founders Apu Gupta and Josh Kowitt both came to the realization that there was an opportunity to match the free spaces people have to the spaces people need. Kowitt was already taking in requests from friends to store stuff in his basement, while Gupta was growing frustrated with parking availability. “In many respects, Storably is like the AirBnB of parking and storage.” says CEO, Apu Gupta.

Gupta and Kowitt launched their community marketplace to utilize unused or underused spaces. There’s a benefit for two types of customers here: people who’ve got spare space and people who need it. That’s simple enough right? If you’ve got space to spare, they’re providing an easy way to generate some income.

If you’re looking for space, they’re providing some options that normally don’t arise. For example, say I owned a mansion in Queen Village and wanted to rent out one of my driveways, I could let Johnny Commuter park his Ford Tempo next to one of my spare Audis.

If only I had space to spare though, it’d be great to make some passive income. The Storably folks are pretty confident that sites such as AirBnB and RelayRides demonstrate that people are becoming comfortable with these types of concepts. They felt that parking and self-storage was the inevitable next step.

Community Manager Brendan Lowry reading his second or third favorite blog.

For those who follow the startup scene, Storably is actually based in the former office of Venmo. Timing worked out well when Venmo [secretly] moved to NYC a few months back, as speculated by Technically Philly. Hopefully, our new friends at Storably can meet comparable success coming out of that sweet Rittenhouse-area office.

Go ahead, browse some listings for parking or storage. Or perhaps, clear out that Hoarders-attic of yours and profit off of somebody else’s hoarding: www.storably.com

Science on Tap is back at National Mechanics this Monday, October 10th, featuring a special talk on the Science of Demonology with Jonathan Seitz, Ph.D. Here’s some deets from the Science on Tap folks:

In our modern age, we have largely banished the study of things that go bump in the night to the margins of respectable society: to parapsychologists, reality TV shows, or costumed guides giving “ghost tours.”

But in medieval and early modern Europe, the study of demons — demonology — was very much a serious, scientific business. The true nature of demons, their abilities and limitations, and the extent of their activity in the world was much debated by physicians, philosophers, theologians, exorcists and others.

Seitz, a historian “of science, magic and religion” and author of Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice will spend the evening discussing European demonology, while National Mechanics dishes out appropriate beer specials.

See you there!

Science on Tap @ National Mechanics
Monday, October 10th at 6 pm
www.nationalmechanics.com