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Blues music may have gotten its start in the muddy delta of the Mississippi, but few places in the United States have done more to advance this quintessentially American art form than Chicago. For proof of the Windy City’s proud blues tradition, look no further than the annual Chicago Blues Festival.

Since its inception in 1984, the Chicago Blues Festival has become one of Chicago’s flagship festivals and the largest free blues festival in the world, providing hours of entertainment to hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. Just a few of the famous names that have appeared at the Chicago Blues Festival in past years include B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Bo Diddley, among other musical legends.

In preparation for this year’s 26th annual Chicago Blues Festival (June 11th-13th), I’ve put together five fun facts about the festival that will help turn even the greenest blues fan into a true blues hound.

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1) You never know who will be there!

The Chicago Blues Festival is definitely the best place to see the world’s greatest blues musicians, but over the years it has also become a place for other famous performers to strut their stuff. One of the most notable Blues Festival collaborations came in 1986 when rock and roll icon Chuck Berry joined forces with the Rolling Stones’ legendary guitarist Keith Richards for a special headlining performance.

2) You can make a few hundred thousand new friends.

Since its first year, when 165,000 people showed up to pay tribute to the late Muddy Waters, the Chicago Blues Festival has ballooned in attendance, eventually amassing an unprecedented 800,000 visitors in 2007. Is there really anything better than singing and swaying with nearly a million blues fans on a beautiful summer day?

3) The Chicago Blues Festival has gone high tech.

When it comes to festivals, I never like to be too organized. Sure, I might take a look at the schedule to make sure I don’t miss anything important, but for the most part I enjoy just walking around and taking in the scene. Of course, I’m probably in the minority, which is why the Chicago Blues Festival has released its very own iPhone application.

The Blues Festival iPhone app features an array of tools to help visitors get the most blues action possible, including live schedule updates, artist descriptions, a color coded map of the festival, and a direct link to the Blues Festival Twitter feed. Plus, since we don’t want to go through another Great Chicago Fire, the app has a cool “Encore Flame” that the audience can use instead of a cigarette lighter.

4) The Chicago Blues Festival is also about education.

The “Blues in the Schools” program, originally developed by Chicago musician Billy Branch in 1978, is a unique opportunity for Chicago-area students to learn about the culture and history of blues music, as well as how to write and perform their own blues songs, under the direction of professional blues musicians.

Thanks to retired Chicago school teacher Kay Jones, Blues in the Schools has operated as an extension of the Chicago Blues Festival since 1988. In the 21 years since, a performance by students in the Blues in the Schools program has been the traditional opening act for the festival.

5) Did I mention it’s free?

There are a ton of great concerts in Grant Park during the summer, most notably the mega-sized music festival Lollapalooza, but few of them offer hours upon hours of entertainment for absolutely free. Granted, you will still have to pay 8 dollars for a strip of 12 “food and beverage” tickets (one of Chicago’s patented summer festival rip-offs), but I really don’t mind spending $20 on a few drinks if it means I get to sit in the sun all day and listen to music.

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Bottom line,  if you’re in Chicago from June 11th – 13th, there’s no excuse to miss out on the Chicago Blues Festival. So download your iPhone app and start strumming your electric guitar now, because I’m planning on seeing you there!

The very first concert I ever went to was Weird Al when I was around nine. Needless to say, he holds a special place in my heart. Enjoy.

According to a 2007 article in the New York Times, the average cost of a one-hour scripted network drama is approximately $3 million. If you have a flip cam, basic editing software, and a computer with Internet access, you can produce your own web series for less than $5.

Between YouTube and the ever-decreasing cost of digital video technology, it is possible for anyone with a creative vision and a bit of entrepreneurial pluck to share their very own movie or television show with the world. Over the last couple of years, a few of my friends have been working on their own web series, and I thought it might be interesting to take some time today, in anticipation of their pending second season premiere, to talk about the show.

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Moxie Spendlove was conceived in 2007 by Jason Biggers, Jeremy Scheffee, and my sister Shelly Frappier, who also plays the title role in the show. The series revolves around the character of Moxie Spendlove, a “wide-eyed socialite who inherited the family fortune, became president of her grandfather’s gag gift franchise, and set out on a mission to find something that would make her truly happy.”

Season One of Moxie Spendlove introduced a diverse cast of characters to help (and hinder) Moxie in her efforts to find her purpose in life, including Moxie’s chief confidante (who spends most of Season One deep in the closet); her buck-toothed assistant (with a secret identity); and her two sweet but scatter-brained socialite friends (whose leaching habits would lead to their assassination). Actually, I was the person recruited for a two-scene role as the British assassin hired to kill them.

Now, I should note that I am not an actor, or at least I’m not anymore. In high school, you might have said I was, but even that would probably be a stretch. Nevertheless, I had a great time filming my scenes and I was happy to be involved in the production. Interestingly, the very fact that they asked me to lend my talents is what I think makes Moxie Spendlove successful.

Nobody involved in Moxie Spendlove is a professional actor or director, they are just regular people like you or me who had a fun idea for a story and the passion to bring it to life. They rely on friends to fill roles, they use apartments and local store fronts as sets, they design their own costumes, and they shoot and edit the show by themselves. Is it perfect? No, not exactly, but that’s not the point. Is it fun? Is it funny? Is it a great example of the kind of show you could put together if you were dedicated? Yes, yes, and yes.

I love when people pursue their creative passions, and I know from personal experience that that’s what happened on the set of Moxie Spendlove. With that in mind, I encourage you to watch this trailer for Season Two and check out the show when it premieres on May 31st.

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Almost one full year ago, I started a blog called They Are Coming For Us!, a humorous website dedicated to exploring the inevitable robot uprising. The purpose of the blog was two-fold: I wanted to use it as a testing ground for SEO experiments, and I wanted to have an outlet beyond my professional writing obligations to talk about some things that I really enjoyed, namely robots, science-fiction, and other nerdy delights. I even started a Twitter account for the blog, which, for a time, was even more popular than my actual Twitter account.

After a few months of steady updating, however, I found myself visiting the site less and less frequently. There were viable excuses to stop writing on the site, including some work changes and a couple of new marketing-related blogging opportunities that I didn’t want to pass up, but, honestly, it came down to the fact that I just didn’t know what to with it anymore. The project had become a burden to update, rather than something that I actually enjoyed doing, so I let it fall to the wayside.

For months, the disappointment of walking away from something in which I had invested so much mental effort weighed heavily on my mind. Eventually, I realized that I had made a mistake. What use was there in blaming the site for my lack of inspiration? After all, the reason I was uninspired is because I was creating uninspiring content, and there’s nothing worse in the world of blogging than that.

So, taking inspiration from a couple of other go-getters whom I follow on Twitter (including Matt Cheuvront, Tim Jahn, and Brandon Zeman), I decided to redesign They Are Coming For Us! from the ground-up by changing the site from a general blog to a robot-themed web comic with a blog on the side.

Over the weekend, I put in a few hours here and there tinkering with different layouts until I hit on a brilliant Wordpress theme called ComicPress. After installing ComicPress, everything else started falling into place, and I began publishing comics at the end of last week.

Is the website perfect? Far from it. I still have a lot of work to do in fully connecting the site to the vast world of social media.

Is it a good start? I think so.

The truth is, even if what I’m writing isn’t funny, at least I’m enjoying what I’m doing with the site, which is something that hasn’t been the case for a long time. Besides, like everything else, it’s going to take some time for me to figure out what does and doesn’t work. To this point, if you have any feedback on the redesigned site, feel free to leave a comment here or there (or in a message to either Twitter account).

I look forward to hearing your comments, and I hope that They Are Coming For Us! will soon become a must-visit destination during your day.