Tony Cosentini over at Philly Concert Hub recently released a neat iPhone application that lets you find upcoming concerts in Philadelphia.
You can use the application to find upcoming shows by date and venue, as well as locate venues and listen to audio samples from the bands performing. You can even buy your tickets directly from your phone.
The application is free and currently available for download on Apple’s iTunes store.
The opening to this hilarious City Paper article almost reads like a bad, B-Horror movie. Just picture a deep, movie trailer voice reading this.
A pack of wild chickens has colonized the 600 block of Pierce Street in South Philadelphia.
They’re everywhere — lurking in the tall grasses of the block’s vacant lots, clambering over the concrete walls that separate neighbors’ yards, seeking out friendly humans with a bite to eat, escorting the chicks, like ducklings, across the road. [ dramatic pause ]
No one knows how many there are.
Head over to the City Paper’s official website to read the full article, and be sure to read every single quote completely out of context. Especially this one at the end of the article. Thanks for pointing this out, Jen.
“I sprayed a hose at her and she wouldn’t move. Maybe I’m a mean person, but I got a stick and said, ‘I’ll kill your babies!”
Just read it.
Chickens in South Philly
www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/06/18/coop-dtat
If you have been out and about in the city no doubt you may have seen these stickers on the sides of news paper vending machines, or as posters in stores and various other places in the city where humans tend to go. This is the start of the viral marketing for the movie I think might be the salvation of a summer filled with remakes sequels and rehashes and other re-treds that have become a staple of the summer movie season.
The movie is District 9 and it’s produced by Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame, and directed by first timer Neill Blomkamp. Neill is best known for his work on HALO Land fall a short film that was meant to be viral marketing and a warm up with Weta for the Halo live action movie, that he was supposed to direct until that project was sadly derailed. But what we saw in that 7 minutes was some of the best sci-fi warfare I have seen since Starship Troopers, and the general opinion was if he could do this with a shoe string budget imagine what he could do with a real budget and a real film.
See Landfall and more after the Jump!
Cheap Dinosaurs, performing live
Not up to anything Thursday night? Of course you aren’t. Head on over to Tritone for a sweet lookin’ concert, featuring chiptune and visual artists like Cheap Dinosaurs, Void Vision, and vBlank. Our pal Don Miler, aka No Carrier, will be on the scene as well, creating his always stunning 8-bit visual Nintendo cart art.
You can scope out the flyer from Cheap Dinosaurs’ Myspace page, here.
It’s $7 at the door, and 21+. Tritone is located over on 1508 South St. See ya there.
Cheap Dinosaurs & No Carrier @ Tritone
June 18th, 2009 @ 8PM
I’m pretty sure that, on a semi weekly basis, John Freeborn and I discuss the idea of opening a video game museum in Philadelphia. I mean, come on. We have every other kind of museum you could think of. There’s even a museum about The Three Stooges. Why NOT a video game museum?
During the past few months, my pal John has moved quite a bit, before settling down into his new (gorgeous) house. And in the midst of all the shuffling about, he came across his epic Next Generation magazine collection and decided that, instead of throwing it out or putting it up on eBay, he’d give a bunch to me.
Freaking. Awesome.
He posted a bunch of the covers on his blog, many of which have headlines that are fairly hilarious considering how dated they are. On his blog, he writes a bit about the magazine.
The magazine went from 1995 to 2002 and was unlike any video game magazine of the time. It was more grown-up, when video games were still just for kids. The paper was higher end and the design was smart and clean. Imagine if WIRED made a video game mag, that’s what it would be like, smart. They would often show detailed schematics of systems, talk about technology and its effects on people and they treated video games like an art. The rest of the world came around to this view, but it took years. Next Generation was ahead of its time. Read more at Wikipedia.
Thanks John. These mags will have a special place in the eventual museum.
Next week is a rocking week for DIY geeks in Philadelphia. There’s not one, but TWO different 3D printing workshops happening right here in Philly. These machines are the little brothers of professional 3d printers, and using one you can print out, as 3d objects, pretty much anything you dream of. If you want a little 3D copy of your own WOW character on your desk, or a Stormtrooper helmet to keep pencils in (or anything) stop on by one of these workshops, and make something!
Fab@Home creator, Evan Malone will give a workshop on 3D Printing and 3D Modeling for the Fab@Home Fabber. Attendees will be able to work hands-on with the Fab@Home machine. The workshop is Wednesday, June 17 from 6 to 8PM at Klein Art Gallery (3600 Marrket St. Philadelphia, PA). Please RSVP to the Klein Art Gallery (via facebook) as space is limited.
The MakerBot workshop is happening at Hive 76 and is starring MakerBot founder Zack Hoeken. The class is Saturday June 20th, from 1PM to 5PM at Hive 76 ( 915 Spring Garden, Suite 500, Philadelphia PA). You just need to show up on time, and with a laptop, and we do the rest. We’ll teach you everything you need to do a first design, and a first printing using the MakerBot. Tickets for the 4 hours class are $25 (or $5 for students).
Wizard World Philadelphia is next weekend, and we here at Geekadelphia are starting to gear up for what is promising to be a really great con. One event that I am really looking forward to is an advance screening of Chris Nohan‘s live-action film adaptation of Production I.G‘s Blood: The Last Vampire, a month before the July 10th release date! Regular readers of Geekadelphia will recall me writing about this back in May and news of this screening is starting to circulate on the various anime and manga blogs. This sneak preview is a Philadelphia exclusive and will be on Friday June 19th at 7 pm in room 201A.
More after the Jump!
Last week, our BFFs over at Crunchgear (what up Doug!) hit up The Franklin Institute for a tour of the awesome Star Trek exhibit. Regardless of what some of you commenters might say, we here at Geekadelphia adored the exhibit, and highly recommend it.
Here’s what Doug over at Crunchgear had to say.
“Jeff Victor of STARFLEET, the International Star Trek Fan Association, recently showed me around the 12,500-foot Star Trek exhibit at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute. We laughed, we cried, we played a little Dabo. Good times indeed.”
I’ve got to show Crunchgear some serious love for the fact that they have a “More Geeky Philly Stuff” link at the bottom of their recent Philly posts, which sends you to a bunch of Philadelphia related geek posts from this year. Check it out.
Our boy Johnny Zito, the legendary Philly figure behind DC Comics’ The Black Cherry Bombshells (Dustin interviewed him and co-creator Tony Trov back in March) is up to his ol’ tricks again. This time, instead of illustrating comics, he’s working on t-shirts.
Recently, Zito designed this sweet looking Star Trek t-shirt, which has been named a finalist in a competition sponsored by CBS. The winner gets to see their t-shirt printed as an official Star Trek Tee and of course, gets the spoils associated with such an honor. Fame, women, money… you name it. Johnny already has all three, and will be sharing those things with Geekadelphia when he wins.
In a recent interview, or rather, in the email he sent to me, Zito states that “everything I know about love and friendship, I learned from Star Trek.” Same here, Zito. Same here.
Give the guy a vote, and wish him some luck.
Johnny Zito’s Star Trek Tee
www.is.gd/NJ4J
I wonder if he looks anything like Professor Layton?
Ah, Philly Pecha Kucha. It’s kind of like Ignite Philly meets your 2nd grade Show N’ Tell class, only with a little more room, a lot less crying, and no one brings a hamster. But what is it, exactly?
It’s the Japanese word for “chit-chat.” It’s also a kind of rapidfire creative show-and-tell governed by a simple rule: show 20 slides, talk about each one for 20 seconds. Wired magazine called it: “Say what you need to say in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words and images and then sit the hell down.” We call it an evening of fun, sociability, and a little larnin’ thrown in.
Invented by Tokyo architects, Pecha Kucha (say peh-CHAK-cha) events have been held in more than 170 cities.
Their last event back in March was a huge success (check out some photos, here), and they’re back with their sophomore effort this Saturday, June 13th.
One of the featured speakers is Kevin Werbach, an assistant professor over at the University of Pennsylvania. He’ll be giving a talk entitled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in World of Warcraft. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited about that one. Here’s hoping for some video we can embed after the discussion, because that sounds awesome. Yeah, he isn’t exactly a professor of WoW, but that title sounded great.
Other presenters include Morgan Andrews of Puppet Uprising, Jonny Goldstein (who will illustrated his fear of snakes), and more. Visit Studio 34′s page for more.
Philly Pecha Kucha @ Studio 34
Saturday, June 13th, 7:30pm – ? (that’s how you know it’s a party)
www.studio34yoga.com
www.phillypechakucha.com
If there’s one thing we here at Geekadelphia believe in, it’s the inevitable robot uprising and enslavement of humanity. We’re ready for it, whenever it occurs. That cute little robot in the flyer there? Yeah, we’re ready for you, Boombox-bot. Your mechanical arms and adorable “i think i’m Button Gwinnett” wig aren’t going to save you. Bring it.
Speaking of that flyer, if there’s another thing we believe… it’s supporting our boys.
Our pals over at Used Wigs (what up Jeff!) are hosting their first live show this week, on Friday, June 12th, from 8PM to 10PM. The whole crew from their award winning deserving podcast, Used Wigs Radio, will be on stage dishing out the LOLs nonstop at Ardmore’s Milkboy Coffee.
In addition to their hilarious podcast, they’ve got lots of guests planned. Best selling author Josh Piven, comedian Don Weir, and a musical guest, Philadelphia’s Audible.
For more information, hit up the official site over at Used Wigs. See you there!
Kaiju Big Battel is one of those things that definitely has to be seen to be believed. It’s described as “performance entertainment” and basically entails 2 grown men dressed up as really bad “Godzilla” style monsters beating the crap out of each other. How can you possible go wrong with that?
Meant to be a mixture of professional wrestling and the tokusatsu kaiju(special effect monster) movies it began as a video project by students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While said video project was never realized, another student suggested that more characters be created to fight at live competitions or Big Battels. The first Battel occurred on Halloween night in 1996 and they have been battling ever since. They have appeared at several anime conventions and regularly tour the US and they will be at the Trocadero June, 20 8:00pm tickets are $18.50 and the show is all ages so feel free to bring the kids. Get your tickets here!
Check out a video of the greatness that is Kaiju after the jump!
