VinTank to Help Art Predator Get A Really Goode Job!
Extra, extra read all about it! VinTank to help Art Predator win Murphy-Goode wine job!
Okay, I admit, I am exaggerating a little bit, but it’s really exciting news! After I groused over at VinTank and here on Art Predator about how VinTank was providing an unfair advantage to the 8 candidates they’ve chosen before the contest is even over, VinTank’s Paul Mabray commented on their blog and on mine that they are happy to help ALL the applicants Read more…
So I know you’re wondering, “what’s up with this Murphy-Goode wine blogging job you’re going for?”
Glad you asked! In this June 5 LA Times article, Murphy-Goode winemaker Dave Ready Jr admits they jumped on the “best job in the world” idea and made it their own by offering $10,000 a month for six months and a house in Healdsburg in the heart of Sonoma County wine country to the winning applicant via a 60 second video:
Ready said he got the idea of hiring a “lifestyle correspondent” via video application from the Australian state of Queensland. Early this year, tourism officials there caused an online sensation by inviting people to submit videos for “The Best Job in the World.” The gig: spending six months as caretaker of a palm-fringed island surrounded by azure sea, and using blogs, video updates, photo diaries and other online media to promote tourism. More than 34,000 people applied for the roughly $120,000 job, which went to Ben Southall, a self-described adventurer from Britain.
“We thought, ‘Wow, can we apply this to the wine industry?’ I guess we can,” Ready said as applicants joined him in sipping samples of Murphy-Goode wine. Many said they had learned of the job — which calls for an imaginative, inquisitive “people person” who is also a communications whiz — through e-mail lists or from friends.
With the deadline looming on Friday, Murphy-Goode has over 1300 videos posted on their website; they’ve warned they won’t accept more than 5,000. But according to Ready:
the main weakness among the applicants so far was their inability to show a passion for wine or for life in the bucolic Alexander Valley, not their mastery of the Web as a marketing tool.
Hmmn passion, passion, passion…I just think that’s an Art Predator attribute if there ever was one. Read more…
Art Predator: I Want “A Really Goode Job”
Just over a month ago, Queensland Tourism announced Ben Southall Gets Best Job in the World!
Which meant that Art Predator did not. And for those of you who follow this blog (and there are a lot of you, lurkers and commentors alike), you know my huge disappointment. You likely recall that I wrote a lot about Australia (not just my typical AUS wine posts!) and the Great Barrier Reef in the weeks leading up to that announcement–posts that, I must admit, have very long tails and continue to be quite active.
In the same post, I mentioned that Murphy-Goode was a week or so into a contest looking for a “Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent,” and I wondered whether Read more…
Get in FREE to all 391 National Parks these 2009 dates: June 20-21, July 18-19, Aug 15-16
To encourage you to visit one or more of the 391 National Parks in the United States, the National Park Service will allow you in free during three weekends this summer: June 20-21, July 18-19, and August 15-16. Now that’s a nice Father’s Day Gift and great way to celebrate the longest day of the year!
This is a great deal–unless you’re like us and already have a pass to use the National Forests and Parks!
I took this iconic image of Half Dome with my iPhone the first week of April when we spent a week skiing and camping there.
SocialVibe & WordPress Team Up to Help Surfrider & More
I’m working on adding a new widget to my blog, one that adds an ad.
And I’m actually excited about it.
No, not because I’m going to make money. Most of those affiliate ads and Google adsense ads you see on some blogs pay so poorly they aren’t worth the trouble or the pollution to the blog. And if you ever see ads on my blog, they’re making money for WordPress.
My new SocialVibe widget/ad will support Surfrider Foundation which is a very wonderful organization which does great work locally and globally. I am actually involved with several local Surfrider projects and the local environmental director, Paul Jenkin, is a friend as well as someone I admire greatly for all of his problem solving skills and ideas so I look forward to supporting thme this way.
According to this post by WordPress’s Raanan Bar-Cohen:
You spend a lot of time creating great content and attracting an audience for your blog. What if you could use that influence to make a positive social impact? Now you can. Read more…
1 raven’s cave:
limestone arch?
2 raven’s nests:
1 dilapidating
1 active
5 ravens in flight
1 jack rabbit skull
with a few teeth
misc raven down
misc jay feathers, blue
1 dead raven skeleton:
flesh, feathers almost gone
sternum, vertebrae, femur intact
8 primaries still attached, broken tips
1 rabbit’s foot, furred, attached:
femur, tibula picked clean
misc bird bones, hollow
misc mystery bones
misc snails, dead and alive
misc pack rack middens:
oozing orange guano
misc footprints: Read more…
Yes Sunday in the United States is Flag Day and you have to choose where to fly your flag. Locally some of these choices are will it be food or wine, music or art on June 14.
Will you get your hands dirty with Devin Slavin at the Grow Food Party Crew’s permaculture workshop June 14?
Or will you stain your teeth red with fabulous wines at the Ojai Wine Fest from 12-5pm:
The Ojai Wine Festival is a Charity Event
The Ojai Wine Festival is the major fund-raiser for the
Of course there are other options: the Ojai Music Festival (OMF 6/12 review & Flag Day dilemna: hear music, taste wine, grow food, or make art? Part 1 no alcohol allowed although people sneak it in).
OR make art by silk screening t-shirts with the Ventura Bicyclists Union Read more…
OMF 6/12 review & Flag Day dilemna: hear music, taste wine, grow food, or make art? Part 1
Such is the dilemna of the Art Predator this Sunday June 14. Do I fly my Art Predator flag high as I am stimulated by the exciting music at Libbey Bowl at the Ojai Music Festival? or taste area wines at Lake Casitas? or get dirt under my fingernails and learn more about permaculture with Devin Salvin and the Grow Food Party Crew? or silk screen shirts for the Ventura Bicycle Union?
Let me just say, first and foremost, that last night’s show by Tin Hat and eighth blackbird at Libbey Bowl was spectacular. All gussied up in a fancy black dress and high heeled sandals, I rode my bike over there from our friend’s house, by-passing all the traffic and parking confusion.
I was there as a member of the blogging press and was looking forward to live blogging the event using the promised wifi. However, no luck getting on from my seat, and the last thing I really wanted to do was wander the venue looking for an open seat that also had wifi.
So I scribbled some notes during the opener by Tin Hat and just let myself get swept away from the operatic excursion into sound and sight offered by eighth blackbird, supplemented by the smells of the oaks, the creek, the sycamores and the sounds of the crickets. The audience was almost spooky–they were so still and quiet and concentrated.
Truly Tin Hat was well worth the evening. Read more…
Burning Man “coffee table book” iPhone ap is here & LA Regional Ice Cream Social is THERE June 13!
Well it’s not exactly here on my blog, but it’s here on the planet ready for you to pick up at your local iTunes store and put in your shopping cart in plenty of time to prepare for and share the Playa!! And while no, it’s not THAT ap, it is an ap that lets you show people what in the heck Burning Man is from the comfort of your own iPhone! (I promise to let you know about THAT app: Brilliant Burning Man iPhone Ap & 2008 photos) as soon as the app resurfaces.
So back to the story at hand. Burning Man 2008: A Photo Essay by Matt Freedman is on iTunes: http://bit.ly/dFIWy According to developer Pmatt from Seattle’s Space Virgins Camp,
Think of the app as a coffee table book for the iPhone, together with a selection of essays. It contains over 300 extraordinary Burning Man photos, packaged in an easy-to-use full screen photo viewer. You can go through the whole collection, or browse by categories (People, Art, Art Cars, The Man, Dust, etc.). When people ask you what Burning Man is about, now you can just pull out your iPhone (or iPod Touch) and show them!
You can also visit my site to see sample images, excerpts from the essays, and the complete text of my annotated packing list…
http://www.silentcolor.com/projects/burningman2008
And yes, for LA Area Burner types: Read more…
Ojai Music Festival Opens Tonight in Libbey Bowl
My whole life I have been hearing and reading about the Ojai Music Festival which takes place every June practically in my backyard (OK, Ojai is about a 20 minute drive away) in one of my favorite places, under the oaks and sycamores of Libbey Bowl, an outdoor amphitheater. The Festival opens tonight and features the musicians in this YouTube:
The Ojai has been around for over 60 years, and over that time has gained a reputation for fostering “a healthy spirit of eclecticism in its adventurous programming, Read more…
art predator 