So Long, Farewell

This is my last week, and, likely, my final WordPress entry at Inside Out Creative. As the final fall semester of my college career nears its end, I am overwhelmed with a multitude of conflicting feelings. There’s excitement – the excitement that just around the corner waits this so-called “life” for which my educators always claimed to be preparing me.

There are opportunities to seize and career paths to forge, which peppers the “life” stew with a modicum of anxiety. But I will not fret. I’ve gained so much knowledge from my education, and indeed, my internship, that the only missing ingredient will be experience. This will come in time, and as it does, I will welcome its gradual arrival.

To my sparse but valued audience, I offer my heartfelt thanks for your time and interest in reading my internship blog.

Light Up Night

Coming up this Friday December 4 is Light Up Night in downtown York. For my internship, I had the privilege of making a brochure for this event, so I wanted to share the details with you. Beginning at 5:00 pm, York County Food Bank and Shipley Energy Green Team will begin accepting food donations at South George Street and West Market Street.

Following this, the Strand-Capitol Performing Arts Center will host dance performance previews by the Greater York Center for Dance Education and the William Penn Pep Band with Carol Sing Along. After a welcome message from the Shipley Green Team and Mayor Brenner, guests will proceed to the lighting of the tree and the arrival of Santa Claus! Mayor Brenner will then read a Christmas story in the Strand lobby, after which kids can talk to Santa Claus and enjoy cookies and beverages.

Join us at 7:00 in the Capitol Theatre for the Mighty Wurlitzer sing-along and the showing of two Christmas classics on the Capitol’s Big Screen, “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” and “The Year Without a Santa Claus.”

New Year’s Revolution

Welcome back, readers! I wanted to talk about New Year’s Eve with you. The New Year’s Revolution event is on my mind because I was preparing some materials for it today. Back when it was known as First Night York, back when yours truly wore a Marvin the Martian beanie between November and March, New Year’s Eve was a magical evening. My family had never been the type to host grandiose social events – but New Year’s stood out as an annual beacon of pomp and circumstance.

The electric lights of downtown York lit up every snowflake with a wintry “welcome” and my family’s style of celebration felt right in tune with the people who organized the event. Sometimes we would stay until midnight, saving our loudest horn-blows and woo-hoo’s for 11:59:59. Sometimes we would enjoy the entertainment and depart early to ring in the new year through our electric window overlooking Times Square. Now I’m twenty-one years old, and more than a few years have passed since I’ve had any interest in spending New Year’s Eve out on the town.

This year, however, I’m on the inside looking out. That is to say, I’m involved in the planning – thinking about that night months ahead of schedule – and I couldn’t be more excited. In the very near future, I will be posting the scheduled entertainment to this page, York City Events’ Myspace & Facebook pages. Then you can make your own itinerary and share in my giddy excitement. Thanks for stopping by!

Fast Forward Life

The harder we try to slow down, it seems, the faster life passes us by. My internship has been going well, with most of my time spent on the social networking pages of our beloved City of York. Today, I posted a blog about some of my favorite dinner destinations in the downtown area on our new social network, Downtown Tastes.
I also posted a performance schedule for the 2010 Box Lunch at Cherry Lane on the city’s Myspace page, which I will recreate here as soon as time permits. Yours truly will be performing on May 27. If you like the way I write, come here me sing. Thanks for stopping by, and have a happy (and spooky) Halloween!

Make the Parking Meters Sweeter

Good morning, valued reader! Today I thought we’d stroll down Market Street and around the corner to East Philadelphia where the parking meters have been adorned with painted personalities. In case you haven’t noticed a trend developing already in my posts, I have a deep appreciation for the unconventional works of art “sprucing up” our otherwise lackluster cityscape. What a perfect place to splash some paint, too, for when and where else have parking meters EVER made us feel good?
This metropolitan beautification stands for more than, say, hanging a poster.

It worked in my neighborhood in North Philadelphia, and it works here too. These artistic expressions in unlikely places instill pride in neighbors and passersby alike. “This is a place worth living”, I thought walking past the North Philly murals every day. “This is a block worth taking care of”, people will hopefully think to themselves in York. It’s money and time well spent, too. I think people are definitely less likely to commit crimes or litter on a block where they feel at home.

In Turn, I Gain Experience

Friends of Inside Out Creative, to begin, I apologize for the several month hiatus in updates. Please allow me to introduce myself. You can call me Humble Narrator 2.0, or Andrew if it’s more to your liking. I comprise a modest quarter of our team of fall interns, and I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be the social networking presence of this company for the remainder of the semester.

On my first day at the office, I was given the account information for Myspace, Facebook and Twitter, which I was told I’d be responsible for while interning here. Today, while rummaging for an elusive forgotten password, I stumbled upon a sheet for our WordPress… which I didn’t know existed! So, in the wake of several blogless months, I bring good news! You needn’t peer into our fishbowl office any longer for a glimpse of exciting IOC endeavors. Using this very blog and the awesome power of Facebook [Serve with sarcasm], I will be keeping you attuned to all things IOC, as well as my experiences interning here, so check back often!

My admittedly verbose inner writer has always been glad to withhold 1,000 words (or more!) at the opportunity to share a picture, so I will upload photos whenever time permits. The series today was merely to share my walk to IOC with you, my valued reader. Lovely mural, isn’t it? Whether on foot or zooming by in your car, it’s impossible to ignore the beauty these urban canvases bring to our area.

My mornings in this chic intern office (yes, we have our own office) have so far passed very quickly, so I wanted to try to bring you up to speed. The office was positively buzzing in the final days leading up to the recent Bike Night event, which went off without a hitch. I was excited to help with this event for several personal reasons. Chiefly, my grandmother was an assembly line spot welder for Harley Davidson for many years, and my late granddad, an avid rider.

If there is a cheesy “lesson from Grandma” emblazoned deep in my subconscious, it’s that you cannot judge a book by its cover. She would remind me of this before introducing one of her Harley friends. A short, bubbly woman, she stuck out at the plant like a self-described sore thumb. She alleged that beneath their leather and stud-laden getups, under their helmets and bandannas, “Harley guys are sweethearts… total teddy bears.” When they would bake her cakes or send her Christmas cards, the lesson resounded. My grandpa had a passion for motorcycles that I like to think was aflame in more hearts on Bike Night than any other night of the year, and I hope every Harley Head got his fix. I’m certain that my grandpa was there in spirit, drooling over “Fat Boys” and chromed out Softtails like the rest of you. Cheers!

- Andrew & the IOC team

The End

This particular intern is in the midst of his final day.

From networking in the most social possible manner to web logging like a blog machine design specifically to post awesome things to the internet, I have conquered all challenges set before me. And now, as I prepare to take my newly enlarged brain into the real world, I can look back over my internship and evaluate the scenery with the eyes of a master artist.

And to these eyes, the valley below seems well tended.

Yes, I leave with the perspective of a brilliant painter and the skills of a great gardener. I also rule at metaphorical flapdoodle.

And if you have been following along, you are likely a connoisseur of fine flapdoodle too.

Other Things That Interns Do

Upon sealing the deceased widget in its sepulcher, I embark on a new set of internly projects. I would be lying if I said that I do so with a heavy heart.

I don’t.

I am glad that the widget is cold and dead (no longer my concern), but I do feel like playing with widgets has increased the overall mass of my brain, and that is a good thing. The heavier the brain, the more cool stuff it produces. I like to think that–after four weeks of interning–my brain makes up the majority of my body weight.

Anyway, on to these new internly things that I oh-so-cleverly alluded to earlier.

Just the other day I was calling some dudes about being an entertainment venue for the New Year’s Revolution events, and the ones that I got a hold of were all cool and stuff, but I talked to an awful lot of robots (answering machines). When I was young, I romanticized the idea of talking to a robot. My fantasies tended to go something like this . . .

Me: Yo, mister robot.
Robot: What, human child?
Me: Do you shoot missiles?
Robot: ONLY AT HUMAN CHILDREN!!!
And then the robot would shoot missiles at me, but since (in my fantasy) I was a ninja knight who could fly and stuff, I would out maneuver the missile and slice the robot’s head off.

Moral of the story: do NOT trust robots.

I have also been given the task of editing the Yorkfest program. Being a master of the editorial arts, this project seems like it was poured from the heavens above into my chalice of internly projects. And from this chalice I shall drink deep.

If you managed to sift through all of the noise emanating from this blog, good for you.

If not, your weakness does a discredit to the human race and you should be ashamed.

Working With Widgets

As my oh-so-relevant title suggests, I have been working with widgets. While widgets are fairly simple to use and even create, they can also be quite a headache.

There are numerous web sites that allow you to create your own widget (some of them allow you to do this for free), but creating an application with which to proliferate your widget can be quite confusing. Sure, many of the sites allow you to post your widget on their gallery, and sure, you can send the HTML code for your widget to anyone you want, but if you want people to be able to find your widget effortlessly, your going to need to develop an application for it.

Facebook is where I started. This wasn’t terribly difficult, but it was confusing. Luckily I found a walk through to help me along. But even after you create an app, you need to have five users or ten fans in order to have facebook host it. Unless facebook is hosting your app, it won’t show up in a search.

I have also been looking into other ways to spread the word about widgets, but none of them have come close to reaching fruition yet.

Anyway, this has been my week so far. Widget this, widget that, widget, widget, widget!

Cement Truck

Narrowly we avoided catastrophe. We were mere millimeters from having a Box Lunch without a band, but light broke through the clouded skies and an email we got! Kenton Shelley will play the box lunch on Thursday the 25th of June! And I hear (yes, I had my ear up against the grapevine again) that he will rule over Cherry Lane Park like a benevolent king spreading his musical decrees for all the world to hear!

In school I learned NOT to overuse exclamation points and CAPITOL LETTERS! They said that it was like screaming at your reader.

Oh yeah?

Good.

That’s what I’m going for.

Anyway, the internship is sailing smoothly as a boat over calm seas. I am beginning to consider myself a social networking Valkyrie (YES, I know that the Valkyrie’s were women, and NO, I am not making a personal statement), gathering souls and transporting them to the Valhalla of the York City facebook page. In two short weeks, I have brought 200 new friends to the site.

Yes, my awesomeness is astounding.