Zak hits the mainstream media

Yes, that's me on CNN.com. Click to make it bigger.

In case you hadn't heard elsewhere, I'm doing a show tomorrow (Thu 5/27/10 at 1:00PM SLT) at a nice fashion store in SL called Le Charme. There's nothing really unusual about that. Anyone who reads this blog knows I play pretty much all the time, and enjoy performing at new venues, perchance to gain some new fans.

But the interesting thing this time around is that upon waking up this morning, I saw that I had some new messages on my Facebook wall, and went to go check them out. One was from Sandy Demina, my informal manager who has helped get me in front of a bunch of European audiences in SL recently. Lo and behold, Sandy had managed to get CNN to run an iReport on the fashion show event... and included information on me and the other musician playing tomorrow, Max Kleene!

Here's a link to the report online.

Before you decide that I'm blowing this out of proportion... yeah, it's an iReport, which isn't exactly the same as being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room. iReports are CNN's user-created content section. But still, this is one of the first mentions of Zak Claxton that's even remotely tied to mainstream media. It's not insignificant at all. I'm very happy to have received past coverage in places like the Metaverse Journal, on the Beat Chicks podcast, Second Life Newspaper, SL Enquirer, and many more. But none of those publications are necessarily those that you feel compelled to forward to your mom.

Part of me feels somewhat akin to Navin R. Johnson, Steve Martin's character in The Jerk after being listed in the phonebook... "I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday!". Even so, it's pretty cool to be referenced on CNN. All I can think of are the millions upon millions of musicians who weren't on any mainstream media today -- and likely never will be. I'm not nearly so jaded as to not appreciate these kind of things.

Oh, and lest we forget: please come to the show tomorrow! Talking about something is never as cool as actually doing it. There will be a fashion extravaganza, with me (followed by Max) strumming and singing along. Should be fun. See you there.