since i’ve been in portland this weekend, i thought it was high time for another themed brea list. this one is the portland edition. maybe i went a little overboard here and linked to too many things. whatever - come back later this week if you are overloaded. it’ll still be here.

horse feathers - if you are having a crappy day and you just want to relax, the first thing i would suggest you do is put on horse feathers’ “a house with no home.” it’s the equivalent of a warm cookie at the end of a hard day. and they live in portland. i think. the video below is just at someone’s house but i’m linking not for the video quality but the tone overall. i think it’s an accurate depiction.

olio united - a shop i like to hit up while i’m here. if i haven’t been to the actual store in a while, i pretty much know what they have via their great website. if you look at any red carpet photos of me, i’m probably wearing a dress from here at one time or another. mostly local and all indie designers.

reading frenzy - a very good comic/zine/independent press store in portland. the kind of place you could walk into and spend hours looking from book to book.

powell’s - if you read ever, you’ve probably been to the powell’s website at some point another. that could never prepare for the massive building that sits close to the center of portland. it literally takes up a block and you could get lost if not for the helpful maps.

voodoo doughnuts - any place open 21 hours a day wins my vote. also they do weddings. in addition to the obvious (selling donuts).

ground kontrol - vintage arcade games. i played tron tonight. need i say more? (except that maybe it’s also a bar.)

miranda july - i think technically miranda july lives in los angeles now but i associate her with portland. by far in the top 10 creative people ever. wait, yes, ever. also, if you have never seen the site learning to love you more, i urge you to go there right now. and complete an assigment. and then post it in the replies on this blog and on the site. at the very least, it will make you feel creative and you can tell people about it later.

a quick london recap: it was fun! also, apparently, people in london love heroes. greg couldn’t go anywhere without being stopped.

here are a few photos from the expo.

the crowd posing for me.

this guy was nice enough to pose for me.

these guys were cracking me up and took so many pictures, i made them pose for me.

ken (who you might know as the german) and me.

the crowd. not too interesting of a video but this is what it looks like from my side. it looks like chaos. and it also looks like greg signing a dude’s shirt.

thanks to laura for posting a guest brea list last week. a laura list, if you will. hope everyone enjoyed it because there are definitely weeks that i am too busy to blog. i promise london pics to come, by the way.

so many bands, so little time.

cold war kids - loyalty to loyalty. this album has been out for a little while. i should’ve written about it a while back. a year or two ago, a friend of mine took me to a cold war kids show (they are a southern california band) and he told me he thought they were going to be huge. from what i could tell, they were already huge because the show was packed. either way, they put on an amazing live show and their new album is pretty bomb too.

LOCAL by brian wood and ryan kelly - on my trip to london, i had quite a bit of time to kill on the plane and this giant hardback book came in handy. not that it’s just for a long trip. it’s 12 short stories so you can read it a bit at a time. the stories are all related in some way or another to Megan, who at times reminded me of people i know and other times eerily reminded me of myself. loved the stories set in austin, portland, and richmond (i’ve spent a lot of time in all those places).

and brian wood’s twitter and blog are pretty great too. yeah - i realize i just blogged about channel zero a few weeks ago. can’t a girl be a fan?

austinhandmade.com - you know i love austin and creative people. this site combines both. all austin designers - a great place to get a holiday gift for friends. i’ve spend a lot of time looking at the necklaces and stationery.

amelie gillette - the hater: pop culture love letters - part of the onion’s a.v. club, this blog cracks me up. she never fails to point out the ridiculousness of pop culture.

filmed this a while back. you can tell it was the same day i did the g4 interview (because i’m wearing the same clothes). kristin is amazingly funny - always great to do an interview with someone who makes me laugh.

i’m only in this movie for a second but i read the script and i think it’ll be awesome.

it premieres on the sci fi channel november 2nd and called battle planet. please tune in!!

trailer can be found here!

here’s a video of me during a press interview in london.

and here is an interview on celebrity scraps talking about my dog and making greg join twitter.

this one is a little different than the heroes ones - it’s all about the use of social media by actors (and other stuff). hope you like it.

also chris brogan is an amazing online media person. he gives great advice if you have an online business or other such adventures.

also - an interview with me in german.

very soon - i will post photos from the uk (particularly of the fans - thanks for posing for me!).

I know what you’re thinking: who is this Laura person we don’t care about and what is she doing on Brea’s blog?  WE WANT BREA!

Who am I? My company helps people like Brea keep their online empires happily humming along. I do things like explain the weird intricacies and etiquette of twitter and make sure that her facebook and blog are linked up. When something breaks I fix it, and when something is confusing I explain it. You can catch me on twitter as @lkr.

As for why I’m on her blog, Brea ask me to do a guest Brea List while she’s away in London. I thought I would theme my list around my favorite web resources, and give you a little sneak peak behind the scenes of the Brea Grant Web Empire.™

Twitterrific (for brea) & TwitterBerry (for me): When you spend all day running around (bad unintentional pun) like Brea, a phone app for tweeting is a must-have. Who am I kidding, I spend EVERY day in front of a computer but TwitterBerry allows me to get my fix from the beach as well!

FeedSmith, CommentLuv and Twitter Widget: These are some of my favorite plugins, I use them on pretty much every project. Despite its frustrating, wildly fluctuating numbers, feedburner is essential for tracking the metrics of your blog. I think commentluv is a great way to encourage comments, and I love being able to give a little “reward” to commenters for taking the time to say hi. Twitter widget makes it dead-simple to embed your twitter feed into your blog which is great for driving traffic to your twitter account.

Yotify: Social media types know that what we call listening (basically looking out for mentions and media pertaining to the client) is probably the most important element of online strategy. For monitoring Brea, I’ve been playing around with a new site called Yotify. It can be annoying with all of the multiple set-ups, but it allows more targeted, in-depth searches than your standard google alert.

Gary Vaynerchuk: When Brea and I started discussing her jumping into the whole social media thing, I sent her a link to this Gary V speech. As you can guess, she was not only immediately sold on the power of all this stuff but totally fired up about the possibilities.

got such a great response, i filmed another one.

these guys do a funny (if sometimes a little crude) heroes podcast.

and they interview me live. you can find it here.