…yeah, yeah, i know! hey, don’t blame me!

Seriously though, what gives???

After wrapping up Phoenix, Baltimore, Boston, and San Diego, we’ve just finished increasing our coverage of California: Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Francisco are now on CultureMob.com. Next up: East Coast.

Also, we’ve revamped our emails, particularly our “Tell A Friend” feature, to respond to customer requests. More information is now displayed and and you can customize the subject line to your liking. More features coming soon - stay tuned.

Seattle band Head Like A Kite will release their CD titled “There Is Loud Laughter Everywhere” June 17th (tomorrow).

I met with Dave Einmo from the band to talk about the release, his music cohort Trent and how they got the name Head Like A Kite.

Tune in later this week where I’ll follow up with the full length interview.
Here’s a teaser of our conversation:

Head Like a Kite is hosting a CD Release party at Neumos on Thursday June 26th. Dig this, the show is FREE!!!
Doors open at 8pm.

See event details at Culturemob.

The line up includes:
Head Like A Kite
Smoosh
Foscil
Glue
The Animals At Night
MC Troy Nelson (KEXP)

Customer response has been one of the biggest influences in the decisions we’ve made at CultureMob. From bugs to feature requests to UI suggestions, we’ve made several changes based on the feedback that we receive from our users.

And we’d love to do it even more: We’ve opened up Twitter, AIM, and MSN accounts to have more avenues for you to communicate with us.

• Twitter: CultureMob
• AIM: culturemobster
• MSN: feedback at culturemob.com

So give us a shout-out; and feel free to also use the feedback form or email us directly. We’ll talk to you soon…

Taking the lessons we’ve learned from adding the Portland and Denver area’s, we’ve decided to do it again: Welcome Boston, Phoenix, and San Diego! (Feeling jealous of Boston right now. The Breeders?!?) We’re currently working our asses off to make sure that we have the best coverage possible for those areas; so if you know of venues that could use a little love, we implore you to let us know.

But that’s not all!

In the last few weeks, we’ve added a couple of new features and refined the way our recommendations work:

News Feed

If you’ve checked out home page of the site, you’ll notice that the “Recent Comments” section has been replaced with the “News Feed.” Now you can not only see the comments and reviews people have about events, but also see what events people have created and saved (but only with user permission, of course). And if you want to catch up with what people have been doing in the area, we’ve got a page exclusively for that.

JavaScript Calendar

Bloggers! Add your events to your blog! I’ve been waiting for this feature for a while. With this feature, you can create a calendar for artists, venues, and personal events and control the display for images, descriptions, showtimes, and the location; just click on the “Get Widget” link on these pages. For the fancy web-devs out there, you can even customize your CSS to have full stylistic control over the content. This is great for artists and venues who are looking for an easy way to automatically post their events to their calendar. Check out an example of my personal events in the sidebar of my personal blog.

Stay tuned! More coming cities and features coming VERY soon.

GUEST BLOGGER: RIK WRIGHT

If you’ve never noticed it, there’s a seldom recognized non-profit here in Seattle dedicated to more avant-garde forms of free and creative music, art and dance performances. Located in a non-descript building on 18th and Union, Gallery 1412 has occupied the space formerly housing the Polestar Music Gallery for several years now. 

This Wednesday, May 14th, the gallery will host performances of two exciting groupings of Northwest sonic co-conspirators led by James DeJoie and Chris Stover.

James DeJoie has been gracing the Pacific Northwest with his baritone and alto saxophone performances for many years now. A Seattle native, DeJoie’s saxophonics, along with his clarinet and flute prowess, have been part of innumerable Seattle jazz outfits including the Jazz Police, the Jim Cutler Orchestra, the Jim Knapp Orchestra and Zen Tornado. DeJoie revels in the practice of bringing together diverse musical genres in distinctive combinations, enlisting veteran bassist Walter White, drummer Randy Doak, and exceptional vibraphonist Evan Buehler together to play their original compositions. Along with our more “traditional” jazz sound, Joie Tet often incorporates multiple wind and percussive instruments enhanced by electronic sampling, effect pedals and spoken word.

Chris Stover’s More Zero plays an exciting mix of modern jazz, drum-n-bass, and funk all within the framework of Chris’s unique compositional style. Favorably compared to the Dave Holland Quintet and John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quartet, More Zero features an eclectic mix of some truly world class improvising musicians: Stuart MacDonald on saxophone, Ben Thomas on vibes, Jeff Norwood on bass, and Matt Jorgensen on drums. 

For a mid-week taste of musical experimentation and noteworthy instrumental prowess, visit Gallery 1412 for More Zero and the James DeJoie Joie Tet and treat yourself to this fabulous combination of local inspirations.

Rik Wright
http://www.rikwright.com

IRON MAN is here people, brace yourself for the wave of comic book characters. Robert Downey Jr. Gets it.

Have you been by the AMC Cinerama the past few days? You may have noticed the IRON MAN sign on the marquee. No? Well maybe you noticed the line of people waiting to see the blockbuster over an hour prior to the movie start time. My guess is this took place in many theaters this weekend.

Tonight, I too went to the movies to see IRON MAN. I went in with very little expectations and what I got was a pretty good movie. IRON MAN was one of my favorite Marvel characters growing up. I had him right behind DAREDEVIL which in my opinion got totally screwed in the box office. Yeah, DD as a movie sucked. I’m happy to say the IRON MAN did fairly well in action and plot. My only problem was the bad guys were too one dimensional. Yeah, I know it’s a comic book character but people need to realize that character development is…aw…I was about to break the movie down and all I really wanted to do is give you my list of my top ten comic book movies.

From Best to Worst:
1. Batman Begins

2. Spider-Man

3. Hell Boy

4. Iron Man

5. Blade

6. V for Vendetta

7. Superman the Movie

8. X-Men

9. Batman

10. Spider-Man 2

Dual grinder

Originally uploaded by spacematters

Are you guys ready for the Olympia Power Tool Races ? I hope so. I’ve received word the a carpenters union will be racing a dual grinder hard hat. And besides my humble rail rider I know of at least 2 others… this summer might just turn out to be the fastest most amazing year or power tool races yet!

Oly Power Tool Races

While I spend my days writing cute comments about Seattle venues, going out to art shows, and blogging about local music, all the techies here at CultureMob.com have been working diligently to improve our website and add useful new features for our users- YOU! Check them out:

• ADD AN EVENT- Now promoters and performers can upload new events into CultureMob.com so all of our readers can discover them. Once your event is on CultureMob.com, we redistribute the information to other local publications like The Stranger and The Seattle Weekly- how easy is that?. Is your event listed on CultureMob.com?
• TELL A FRIEND- Once you’ve found that awesome event like this week’s Meat Beat Manifesto or the opening of Miss Saigon, you can share the information with your friends (and look cool because you knew about it first!)
• FACEBOOK and MYSPACE APPLICATIONS - You’ve got a great lineup of events to attend that you’ve found at CultureMob.com; add the CultureMob.com application to your Facebook and Myspace page and share your events listing with your friends!

WOW! Have fun with these new features and use CultureMob.com to promote, discover, and share information about exciting events in Seattle!

I was lucky enough to be invited to watch last night’s Sonics game from courtside seats. Looking up at an NBA basketball player while the game is underway is pretty cool. Plus they pulled out a win to top it off!

But the seats and the win were gravy. A live event, the players giving a strong performance, the venue (mostly) full of people cheering — there’s something enduring and important about that. It’s about community. A shared interest and experience. And that’s true for just about all local events, whether it’s the Sonics, classical music, hip hop, art exhibits, theater, lectures, or a pillow fight.

That’s what makes cities vibrant. And that’s why Seattle should save the Sonics. It’s not the numbers. A raft of studies show that most claims about the direct financial benefits of pro sports teams to a city are inaccurate and wildly overstated. That’s true, but misses the point.

We humans are social creatures. Sports, like other events, are a part of the fabric of the community. Great communities attract great people. Great people build great businesses. And the cycle repeats, until you’ve got a group of guys willing to kick over $150 million to save the Sonics, which is the tipping point to make it work at a logical level.

So it doesn’t matter if you actually attend the games, just like it doesn’t matter if you go to events at Benaroya Hall, McCaw Hall or Town Hall. The fact is, their presence makes our community stronger. And maybe, one of these days, someone will invite you to an event you weren’t planning to attend. The options exist, as long as the players do.