Catching Up After A Crazy Week!

There's lots going on here at the Kitsch-en! We're shooting some of the sequences for our upcoming music video tomorrow, so I've been wearing my costume designer (and seamstress) hat. Thankfully that's done!

A little ironing and they'll be ready to wear!

I've also been inventing cocktails in honor of our fabulous AIDS Walk New York sponsors! Here's one created for the very generous Doug, who requested gin. The recipe will be featured in one of our upcoming happy hour episodes!

Black Rose Ginny, coming soon to a happy hour episode!

Finally, I just completed an article for an event publication with several tropical recipes we had fun sampling. They're a nice counterpoint to the crappy weather we're currently experiencing. I think there should be a ban on snow in April!

Repeat after me, summer is coming, summer is coming...

Have a fabulous weekend!

Recording Session

We recorded the song for our next musical episode today! The weather was crappy, the trains were late and slow ..it could have felt as though everything was working against us, but I'm pleased to say it went well! I'm really proud of this song. It's the second one on which I've co-written lyrics and I may be biased, but I think it's a lot of fun. You can judge for yourself in a few weeks! 

Now we have to actually shoot the video!

Recording session!

 

Happy New Year!

I hope 2016 is treating you well so far!

I love the feeling of a clean slate that a new year brings. Resolutions aren't particularly my thing, although I do love to set goals! We have some pretty ambitious ones for the show this year, including producing three new music videos and getting our YouTube channel to 10,000 subscribers.  It's not just vanity on our parts. YouTube has an arcane algorithm which ranks channels on watch time and subscriber numbers. If they deem either of those numbers low, you fall in their rankings and it becomes that much harder for viewers to discover your channel. And when that happens it becomes a vicious cycle. Our watch time is excellent (a high percentage of viewers stick around to the end of our episodes), but our subscriber count could be higher. More subscribers means more opportunities for us to spread the love of kitsch and cocktails throughout the universe! So please subscribe to our channel if you haven't already. Click here to go to our channel - the "subscribe" button is red and on the right. And please share with anyone you know who loves cocktails, cooking, kitsch, retro culture or just laughing at the antics of a couple of goofballs. We're so grateful for your support!

Happy New Year to YOU!

Please click the link above to subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/VelveteenLounge

Stream Con NYC

We just attended Stream Con NYC this past weekend, which was a convention for digital content creators and those involved in that industry, as well as for fans of such content. My head is swimming now with information and possibilities.

One thing we learned at VidCon (a similar, but much more established, convention) in July is that our audience, by YouTube standards, is old. Old in this case means over 30. If you've ever watched an ad before one of our videos you know what I mean. If it's not for incontinence products, it's for osteoporosis meds. That's what YouTube thinks of folks over 30. Next stop: the nursing home!

In the meantime, I look at our audience and see a bunch of vital folks, ready to have a good time. Many have disposable income and time on their hands. They travel, party a lot, buy good liquor, eat out at nice restaurants, entertain and spend money on things like turning junior's room into a man cave or mom cave after he goes off to college. It just doesn't align with the decrepitude the digital world sees in the numbers and stats.

However, we are faced with a unique issue in promoting our show to folks who don't "live online" like the younger set. It can be a real challenge getting folks to subscribe to our show, even though they love it and watch every week, because they're just not in the subscribing habit. It doesn't cross their minds. Kids get all of their entertainment on their phones. The over 30 crowd still pays for cable in many cases. Kids watch live streaming on Periscope and YouNow, both of which are turning kids who just talk to their phones into millionaires. Over 30: What's Periscope?

It can be really frustrating, since I love our show and know others do as well. We've been recognized on the street. We get good reviews. We were on TVGuide.com, which is as traditional as it gets, but at least it shows we're legit. Public TV stations (again, traditional media) download our show and send us messages if we miss a week. All of that means a lot to us and keeps us going, along with our love for what we do. But I'm not going to lie: I want to make money at this and that will happen when we reach a MUCH wider audience. We need to reach the folks who love cocktails and food and fun. I think that's a lot of people. But how to reach them when Facebook won't put YouTube videos in peoples' news feeds and YouTube won't promote you if you don't already have big numbers?

Time to put on the deerstalker and begin to crack this mystery.

Here are a couple of shots from the weekend. I'm looking forward to attending more of these conventions in the future, since we clearly need the advice!

Stream Con NYC

Halloween party at Dailymotion

Behind The Scenes

We shot four videos today! Here's a gander at what shooting an episode looks like from my point of view!

You can only see the evidence of one of the lights in this shot, off to the right, but there are actually two others on the left. Someone said that our camera doesn't look impressive, but, ironically, it does a much better job than our old, much more "impressive" looking camera. That's called progress!

And here are the results of shooting four videos. Care to join us for a cocktail? We have spares!