It’s the last day to donate to help out the new locally organized GameCamp! Athens. Here’s the lowdown:
This is a children’s camp set to be launched this month at the University of Georgia (exclamation point is intentional, btw!). GameCamp! is part of a proven program in Texas and Louisiana that teaches participants about video game design, helping them gain 21st century skills in the process. The kids will be designing games based on social issues to help give their work further relevance to the world around them.
Teaching kids mad skills by way of video game design? And with social issues to boot? BRILLIANT!
We’ll be running a story on this written by April Moore Skelton shortly.
RT: PasteMagazine — Let the Right One In American Remake Planned For 2010
http://tr.im/qsG3

This just in:
R.E.M. will release a live digital EP, entitled Reckoning Songs From The Olympia, through iTunes and all digital service providers on July 7th, 2009.
The EP features live versions of four songs from the band’s beloved second album Reckoning that were recorded during R.E.M.’s “working rehearsals” at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre in July 2007. The track-listing is “Harborcoat,” “Letter Never Sent,” “Second Guessing,” and “Pretty Persuasion.” In its five-star live review, Q magazine said: ” Eleven new songs are played each night, while the remainder are a changing complement of oldies that pointedly contextualize the virgin material.” (http://remhq.com/news_story.php?id=585).
The EP will give fans a preview of what’s to come when the band release R.E.M. Live At The Olympia as a two-CD set this fall. R.E.M., which is singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, and bassist Mike Mills, performed a special five-night residency — dubbed “working rehearsals” — at the fabled Irish venue to test out new songs for their 2008 studio album Accelerate, which was produced by Grammy-Award winning producer Jacknife Lee and topped multiple charts its first week of release.
Reckoning Songs From The Olympia comes on the heels of the 25th anniversary of Reckoning, which was released on April 9th, 1984. On June 23rd, the band released a deluxe edition of the album, featuring a bonus disc with eight of its 10 songs recorded live in Chicago in 1984, to celebrate the occasion.
In Athens, even the sweet ladies at the Fibercraft Guild come up with great art ideas — they made yarn double-cannon balls, the size that would’ve been made for the double-barreled cannon. Plan was to “fire” them off (throw them), but they couldn’t get permission to do that, so instead they just displayed them. They’re really great — They did this as an Arts Unleashed project (sponsored by ACC Leisure Services and meant to bring art into non-traditional settings). Unfortunately, this event took place within a day of the fire at the Ga. Theatre, so they didn’t have quite the turnout they’d hoped for.