Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Escape from your relatives with CultureSurfer.com


Painting by Eric Albers.

ART
Eric Albers-Eric's creations look like something out of Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas." This guy is seriously talented & seriously humble. I LOVE his work!

Glass Pull-This is totally cool. Watch glass artists compete in a contest to see who can pull liquid glass the longest distance without breaking it.

FASHION/BEAUTY

The Dillard's Show-Part 3-More cool fashion trends for Fall.

Navan-Learn about this vanilla liqueur at the PrettyCity.com event held at Mandarin Lounge.

MUSIC

Dare For Distance-By the adorable Never Shout Never at the 2nd annual PlaySTL Indie music festival. How can you resist this kid?

CYCLING
Richard England-The Team Bissell rider talks about his final race with Team Bissell.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Attempting to Return to Sanity


It's been an interesting past two weeks here at CultureSurfer.com HQ. Since Brightcove announced that they are no longer going to provide my video players for free, I've been searching and searching all over the internet for a good replacement. The players now cost a mininum of $6,000 per year. Yikes!

Life as a web mistress has been just a bit stressful. I've come up with two possible solutions, neither of which is ideal. Bliptv.com is the easiest solution, but that would mean visitors would no longer be able to link to the videos on my site. But the upside of Bliptv is that they will host all of my videos & I'll have stats on how many times each video has been watched.

The other possibility is to embed my very own players in the site. The best one I've found so far is from WebStunning.com. It's a pretty cool player, but I am not sure if I will get stats on it & there is no way to add descriptions or tags to the videos. This leads to the question of how searchable the videos would be by search engines, which I absolutely need.

I seem to be stuck in between a rock and a hard place.

And both of these players entail yet another (OMG!!!!!)site redesign. Yup. that's gonna be something like number 8 (I have to check) in 14 months. Here's why: I can't find a good player that I like which has channels on it. I will have to create a separate player for each channel on the site. We're talking something like 50 players.

Fun times ahead. But one very good piece of news. We should have about 10,000 visitors on the site this month. w00t!

Monday, November 17, 2008

New CultureSurfer videos for November 17, 2008


"Insight" by St. Louis artist Liz Steltzer

FASHION & BEAUTY
http://culturesurfer.com/Fashion.htm

The Guys-For all of you Dino fans out there(the model with the long hair), here's your chance to meet him.

The Dillard's Show-Part Two

R Bath & Body-Wendy & her husband have launched this business together & their products smell amazing. Seriously!

MUSIC

http://culturesurfer.com/Music.htm
Back Porch byCharlz Newman (combo of two of the band member's names)-This indie band is out of Minneapolis and is seriously good. We filmed them at the PlaySTL fest back in September.

ART
http://culturesurfer.com/Art.htm
Liz Steltzer-Liz is a very talented artist, super cool & smart lady, & she used to play pro softball. This is her interview from last month's Jack The Ripper art show.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

The 17th Annual St. Louis International Film Festival


This unbelievably huge, exciting, and exhausting film festival starts tonight, with Humboldt County opening the festival at the Tivoli Theater. The directors will be there & there will be a bunch of super excited film addicts who show up every year for this event. I think there are something like 275
:yikes: films being shown in 10 days, including the shorts. There are indie films, foreign films, and documentaries. Numerous sidebars (basically mini festivals) include:

AFI PROJECT: 20/20
African/African-American Sidebar
Animation Sidebar
A sampling of classic cinematic works.
Art and Music Sidebar
Asian Sidebar
Cinema for Students
Eastern European Sidebar
Environmental Sidebar
Family Sidebar
Film Noir Sidebar
FilmTracker New Filmmakers Forum
French Sidebar
Global Lens 2008
Indie-Fest
Interfaith Sidebar

I went through the schedule & narrowed it down to 24 movies, but of course I'll only be able to make a fraction of those movies. My goal is to film 12 directors (q&a sessions or interviews), so that I can upload one director interview per month until the next film festival. We're giving Dan, our photographer, our 2nd video camera so that we can split up & hopefully cover more directors.

For someone like me who has loved movies since they became such a huge part of my life back in high school, this is like putting me in a chocolate store & giving me free reign.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

New CultureSurfer videos for November 10, 2008


Yup, CultureSurfer is delving into that girlie (mostly) world of beauty. There are those who will argue that beauty, like fashion, is not culture. I beg to differ. Or I would beg to differ if it weren't my site. But since it is my site, I can do whatever I want.

BEAUTY
Pretty Sweet-the beauty bash put on by PrettyCity.com at Mandarin Lounge in St. Louis.

Mineral-based Makeup-Jackie from Jon Tomas salon talks about using mineral-based makeup at Pretty Sweet, the beauty bash put on by PrettyCity.com at Mandarin Lounge in St. Louis.


FASHION
The Dillard’s Show-Part One-At Saint Louis Fashion Week, Fall 2008

ART
Dallas Moses-curator of Jack’s Art Show at the Koken Art Factory

CYCLING

Cyclocross at Creve Coeur Lake-1-See Dan Elavsky’s beautiful photos put to music.

Monday, November 3, 2008

New videos for Nov. 3, 2008 on CultureSurfer.com


FASHION

Silver Dagger-at Saint Louis Fashion Week, Fall 2008


Traditional Filipino Fashion-At the fall Asian Couture & Cultural Event at Mandarin.


ART

Sara Parry-artist/adorable bloody bride at Jack’s Show at the Koken Art Factory


INDIE MUSIC

Here-by Elleven


CYCLING

4K To Go-The approach into St. Charles at the 2nd Annual Tour of Missouri, filmed from the Team Bissell car by Dan Elavsky.


Glen Mitchell-Director of Team Bissell


DANCE

Fire Dance, Part 2-Pandora’s Matchbox performs at Third Degree Glass Factory

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Give me my Loop back!

I had recently heard rumblings of increased crime in the U. City Loop. A teenager was shot during an argument back in August. A store that stocks very expensive jeans had recently been held up. It worried & angered me, but I didn't really think that much. I've been having plenty of anxiety over who we're about to elect as our new president, trying to get a web site off the ground in a bad economy, hearing about health problems of various friends, etc.

Friday night, my husband and I went to our beloved Tivoli Theater in the Loop to see "Rachel Getting Married." We left the theater at about 9:30, walked back to our car, & hit our favorite Mexican restaurant before going home.

Last night (Saturday night) we went to have dinner with some friends in front of a St. Louis institution, Blueberry Hill. Our friend mentioned there had been a police officer shot & killed Friday night in the Loop. We talked about it & then went back to discussing various things, particularly politics, as the husband of this couple & I are both political junkies. Then we went home.

I woke up this morning & turned on the Today Show. They broke for a local news update. I actually listened for once as I wanted to know more about the murder of the police officer.

It turns out he was a friend of mine. His name was Mike King. I hadn't seen him for years, I just hadn't run into him. I first met him around 10 years ago when I was the neighborhood liaison to the police department for updating the neighborhood on crime in our area. I think he also may have helped me out when we had major problems with some neighbors that finally moved away.

Mike was a great guy. He was really sweet & friendly. He didn't have that hard outer exterior that many cops (understandably) have.

Mike was murdered Friday night for no reason at all. He was sitting in his police car right in front of Starbucks, right where we had walked 30 minutes prior to get back to our car. We may have even walked past his patrol car & not even noticed him because there is always a police car parked in that spot.

The scum who killed him was a convicted drug dealer, apparently well-known by the police department. He just walked up to Mike's car & shot & killed him. They're still looking for the bastard as of this writing.

I can't even begin to express the sadness & anger I am feeling right now. For Mike's wife, for Mike's family & friends, for the U. City Police Department, for my community, for myself. Mike was only 50.

The Loop is where I go to relax and feel grounded. When I need to get myself away from work (since I work at home) I go to the library where I first learned how to read at the triangle table. I used to get my new shoes at the beginning of each school year at Lasky's, which was a mainstay of the area for years. The guys at the produce market know they can expect to see me almost every week. I've been going to the Tivoli theater since I can't even remember. Back when the floors were perpetually sticky, the a/c & heating were undependable, & I watched double features of almost every cult classic that was made in the early 80's.

This is where I most feel like me. Where I go when I feel lost & need to find my footing. This is where I go, above all, to feel safe.

And now thugs have taken over my neighborhood.