This has been a very busy and exciting summer for us, and probably the best example of that for me happened last month when we launched ColbertNation.com. As you might know, the site is the official fan site for The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. The show is insanely popular and I knew it already had a huge audience. That means there’s a lot of eyes watching as we launch and that there’s not much room for error. So of course since I was confident that everything I could control was all set, there would be problems with things out of my control.

Knowing this, I had double-checked all the code and server settings, and scheduled the launch for a time when we’d have the least traffic. It coincidently coincided with the week that Stephen Colbert’s face was staring out at me from my desktop page-a-day calendar. I’ll back up for a second: This year I’ve been enjoying America the Calendar, which is the calendar version of America the Book written by John Stewart and the Daily Show writers. I’m a huge fan of the Daily Show and of course Colbert, and the calendar is filled with jokes about politics and media. But for the week of July 18th there was a week long gag demonstrating the different TV Journalist expressions. It’s funny on it’s own, but his expressions from that calendar were a day by day reflection of our launch status.

The punchline for me is in the timing. It all had to happen simulatneously, my launch, the heatwave and power issues at the host, and then these calendar pages staring out at me as I’m dealing with each issue as it comes up. That’s what makes it surreal.

I just dropped off a hulking banner at the printer today. (forgive the pun. it’s late and I need a joke.) It’s for the Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe and it’s going to be 9ft x 30ft. HUGE! I think it’s going to hang from a smoke stack and be visible as you drive in from Jersey. Hell, it should be visible from Jersey. I’ll update here if it ends up going somewhere else.

In related news I broke Adobe Illustrator while making this. Apparently Illy won’t allow for dimensions larger than 227.5416 inches. I have to admit I was stumped for a minute on how to work around this. I ended up building it at 1/2 size and let the printer blow it up. 

I organized a TV segment for the Live Arts Festival with ABC-6 this morning. Karen Getz brought her dancers - who are actually comedic actors - in for a shoot at the Painted Bride. They ran some great segments from her upcoming show “Suburban Love Songs”. They had to keep running the same excerpt for different camera angles, and it was quite entertaining to see Jen Childs hoisted up in the air and spun around over and over again. The show is set in 1968 at a suburban party, so the music is great - stuff like Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. Look out for the segment to air on Aug. 30th around 7am… if you’re up that early. Tickets: www.livearts-fringe.org

View photos from our 5-Year Anniversary Bash here.  Thanks to James Wendell for the great shots.

What a night! Mason and I are still recovering from our big event, but we couldn’t be happier about how it all went. The catering by 12th Street at the VIP party was delish (I’ll be eating leftover spanikopita all week), and we were thrilled to see so many friends and well-wishers. Of course I was also delighted to see so many members of the press, and the Inquirer even sent a photographer to document the night.

The incredible performances from Reactionaries, James Sugg, Kate Watson-Wallace, Brat Productions, Hero Pattern, and Milton and the Devils Party ran amazingly smoothly. But our preparation wasn’t without a few tense moments. It took us about six hours to set up the lights, sound, power and do sound checks for all the performers. Thank god for Bill Moriarty, our tireless soundman for the night! We blew the power during a run-thru for Kate Watson-Wallace’s excerpt while dancer Megan Mazarick was balancing on top of a couch standing on it’s end. The place went pitch black and I was petrified we were going to be responsible for a major injury. Fortunately, Mason fixed the problem quickly and we ran yet another 100-ft. cable from the cinema’s projection booth.

The night ended with a raucous screening of The Broken Hipsters dvd and was capped off with a live appearance by the giant babies. The variety of performances certainly drew a diverse crowd, and that’s what we loved about it! Huge thanks go to Gina Renzi, UPenn, Jay Sand, Mark Wolfe, Bill Moriarty, our lovely volunteers and all the performers!

We’ve got a downright media blitz going on this week, with coverage in the City Paper, Philadelphia Weekly, Inquirer, Metro, UC Review/Weekly Press and PhillyCreativeGuide.com. I like this from the Metro’s write-up today: “An anniversary celebration for a PR firm sounds, admittedly, like a great big snore. However, Canary has boldly promoted some of the edgiest artists on the Philly scene.” Also check out:

OK. This party will be huge and a lot of fun if we live to see it. It’s our 5-year anniversary so we wanted to mark it in a big way, so we’ve invited some of our favorite clients to perform, and everyone we know to attend. So there’s no backing down now. We just have to stay calm and get everything prepared. The biggest challenge we have left to worry about is lighting and electricity. We know our way around sound, and we’re pretty confident about other aspects, but lighting is a new challenge and we don’t know if we’ll have enough electricity. This whole event will be run from 400 feet of extension cords. There’s only one (very overtaxed) outlet in the theater! All the power for the sound, pa, amps, lights, etc. needs to come from different areas of the building. Please don’t trip over any when you get there. You might just shut off all the lights, and then: chaos! The place will be rampant with pick-pocketing and feel-copping. Oh the humanity!

Be careful what you wish for, I guess. As the press about this weekend’s anniversary bash has started coming out, we’ve begun to get a few interesting phone calls. Today a gentleman, who was quite difficult to understand, called to inquire about the write-up and Broken Hipsters photo he saw in the paper. After a couple of minutes of very awkward conversation, I figured out that he seemed to be asking if our party was a nude event, because of the men in diapers in the photo. You see, The Broken Hipsters rock opera, which will be screened on Saturday night, features a plot that includes giant babies played by men in diapers. I seem to remember that our performances in NYC attracted a few diaper fetishists. Will we have nudists at our party? I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

This is the truthiest way I can think of to start off our blog. As you may know, we just launched the new ColbertNation.com. The site was so much fun to build, and because I’m a huge fan it was an exercise to contain my excitement and remain professional during the process. Well yesterday I went in for our wrap-up and training meeting, and then to see a taping of the show. It was a great way to mark the completion of a project and I rarely get a chance to do that in such a dramatic way. How often does a client perform for you after a project? Megan and I had the best seats, and it was a great episode. Stephen did a bit on Wikipedia involving elephants, and today the entry for elephants is blocked due to vandalising. That’s some real power he has over his audience.

Now I’m back at the office and it’s back to work and the final push toward our 5-year Anniversary Bash on 8/5!