SiL

Sarah Donner has a great idea. Find the best in indie acoustic rock, book them in a rustic community space in Princeton, NJ, and charge nothing. Then, as if that isn’t sweet enough, do it again in a month.

I went last Saturday (August 29) for the first time .The out of the way location, a park in the Griggstown area of Princeton, gives no indication of what is in store. You would expect something like this in, say, Park Slope, Brooklyn. But driving down a side street in a bedroom community, I could not help but think I was lost. I saw some parked cars, walked to a little cabin one might expect to find at a sleep-away arts camp and was promptly blown away.

All the acts were fantastic, but the two standouts came early– Amy Campbell and Scott Krokoff.

I’ve been a fan of Krokoff for some time, but had not seen or heard his live act. His CD, A Better Life boasts rich, complex layers and a production quality seldom heard on an indie album. Krokoff live was a different animal. Gone were the backing musicians and the Hammond B-3. But what your were left with is the beautiful stripped-down optimism of an ex-tax attorney who left the rat race to follow his dreams.

Amy Campbell paralleled the event itself, an unexpected pleasant surprise. Her music, and her sexiness, is subtle but captivating. It was captivating enough for me to plunk down $20 for a couple of CDs and that’s saying a lot because I’m a cheap bastard. Heck, I figure if Amy can come all the way from Canadia I could throw down a couple of bucks.

Here’s a less than stellar quality video of the stellar Amy Campbell.

Amy, I’m sorry the video sucks. Hopefully the next time I see you I’ll have an iPhone.

Also rocking this particular evening were Kate Klim, Christopher Morse and Kiernan McMullan.

Sarah Donner, the evening’s hostess, showed off her stuff near the end of the night. Indie Music Night’s rotating line-up of talent is a selling point, but Sarah’s on and off stage charm and happy, energetic set makes a perfect anchor that makes me want to come back month after month.

I must give this one word of warning– the “bathroom” is worse than the one at the old CBGBs. Yes, it is possible, but only because it is an outhouse.

Indie Music Night is located at The Griggstown Pavilion, 373 Bunkerhill Rd (next door to it), Princeton, New Jersey. The next show is 9/26/2009 6:00 PM.

Marketing guru Marta Kagan must have been asked “What the F**K is Social Media?” more than a few times in her career. It prompted her to create her presentation “What the F**k is Social Media?.” It quickly became a viral hit. Mashable reports that Kagan has come out with a part deux, “What the F**k is Social Media: One Year Later.”

Here it is, for your social viewing pleasure:

What do your online friends mean to you? For Lisa Wolk, they mean everything. Lisa, one of my 250 or so Facebook “friends” has embarked on what she calls “My Social Network Road Trip.” As she explains on her blog:

Life experience and made-for-TV movies have taught us what “friendship” means. But what does it mean to be an online friend? I’m putting my social networks to the test by letting them plan my cross-country road trip. The places I stop, where I stay, what I eat – will all be decided by my online network of friends.

But apparently even web democracy has its limits. I employed my power as part of her social network and suggested she visit Edison, NJ on the way to her planned first stop in Philadelphia. Her response? “Wish I could – but I am without a car so I’ll be taking the bus to PHL to grab my rental car. ”

Ouch. Dissed and dismissed.

After a small, yet catastrophic incident, we are back. What happened? While working on a new project, I overwrote the entire database for SIL Radio. Thank goodness for automatic backups.

Everything has its own time, according to Ecclesiastes. And it might just be zombie time–at least according to Time magazine. After enduring years of Vampires better suited for Duran Duran than scaring people, Time magazine reports the monster de jour is the zombie. And with Lost Boys 3 reportedly in production, this news comes not a moment too soon. That’s right, the working man (and woman) of the horror world is hip. Zombie Chic, if you will. According to Time:

f there’s a social hierarchy among monsters, zombies are not at the top of the list. They may not even be on the list. They’re not cool like werewolves. There’s no Warren Zevon song about them. They’re not classy like Dracula and Frankenstein, who can trace their lineage back to respectable 19th century novels. All zombies have is a bunch of George Romero movies.

But the lowly zombie is making its move. For the past few years, vampires have been the It monster, what with Twilight and all, but that’s changing. Diablo Cody, of Juno fame, is producing a movie called Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament, based on a new novel about life (if that’s the word) as one of the walking dead. Later this year, Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin will star in the zom-com Zombieland. Max Brooks’ best-selling zombie novel World War Z is being filmed by Marc Forster, the guy who directed Quantum of Solace. In comic books, the Marvel Zombies series features rotting, brain-eating versions of Spider-Man, Iron Man and the Hulk. The zombie video game Resident Evil 5 shipped 4 million copies during its first two weeks on the market. Michael Jackson’s zombie video Thriller is coming to Broadway. (See the top 25 horror movies of all time.)

Apparently no one is safe from the shambling, newly marketable armies of the dead — not even Jane Austen. Seth Grahame-Smith is the author of a new novel called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, about a strangely familiar English family called the Bennets that is struggling to marry off five daughters while at the same time fighting off wave after wave of relentless, remorseless undead — since, as the novel’s classic first line tells us, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

Teachers Jason McDonald and Michael Miler’s Intermedia class of 10th, 11th, and 12th graders at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn wrote, shot and edited two stories on the media – one on Obama’s skillful use of the media with American Media CEO David Pecker and Star Jones, and another on media bias and public awareness with former CBS News President Andrew Hayward. This is a clip from PCN (Packer Collegiate News ), episode 1.1.

We’re working on movie pitches in class. Here is my selection of good, bad and instructive pitches. The Ask A Ninja my favorite. We’re using Paul Chitlik’s book, so although his video isn’t about pitching per se, I decided to post it here.

Paul Chitlik

Ask A Ninja Pitch:

What not to do:

This looks just like the CUNY 9th Floor Conference room on 41st street down to to same spaceship looking speaker phone.

Michael Weise (Hardware Wars)

This guy looks coked up. A little boring, but informative:

And remember, pitching is selling. Here’s Alec Baldwin with a little advice on selling:

OK, maybe you shouldn’t listen to Alec.

This is from our last shoot. We have a way to go to finish production on episode 7, but Patrick managed to make this promo.