My tweets of the last week:
Archives for 2011
Crushing On: My Face, by Neutrogena
It is a well-known fact that I am no stranger to wearing makeup.
In high school this took the form of lip gloss and body glitter. What can I say – I thought I was David Bowie and was obsessed with anything that could make me sparkle like a Spider From Mars.
This is not a post about body glitter. It’s a post about being a local rock star and a vain motherfucker who applies makeup in the men’s room of my office and does not care about any looks or comments I get because I am going to walk out of that bathroom way more gorgeous than I came in.
In fact, if you’ve seen me give a presentation or play a show in the past two years, you’ve seen me wear plenty of makeup and probably didn’t even know it.
I know I am not the only vain, presentation-delivering local rocker with an interest in this stuff, so I’m sharing my secrets with the masses.
A few years ago in a particular pique of angst about the inescapable genetic heritage of dark circles under my eyes, E handed me her Neutrogena 3-in-1 Concealer for Eyes.
Having not worn much makeup in the decade since I also gave up vinyl pants, I was a little reticent to try it. I became a quick convert. This is not heavy, greasy makeup. It’s light, it blends in with my skin tone, and it doesn’t bother my medicatably grumpy T-zone in the slightest.
It became my standard, daily defense against especially baggy eyes. I would wear it to work for weeks at a time with no comment from my colleagues.
When it was time for our wedding, E went through a ritual of several official Hair & Make-Up Tests to make sure she had a solid plan for our big day. I was a little freaked out that the only thing I could control would be how closely I shaved – it seemed like woeful under-preparation for thousands of dollars of photography!
This time it wasn’t E to the rescue, but my co-worker Kate. She wasn’t a major makeup wearer, but she confessed a special secret: she relied on Neutrogena Healthy Skin Enhancer Tinted Moisturizer to even out her skin tone.
Here I was even more skeptical. Something to rub all over my face and “tint” it? It sounded like something that would make my sensitive skin freak out, and much too girly to wear at my wedding.
[That may be the only context in which I have ever rejected any plan of action for being “too girly.”]
That wasn’t the case at all. The Skin Enhancer simply smooths things out in paces where I’m naturally a little blotchy, like my chin. I put a dot there, another two dots at the top of my laugh lines, and a final pair at the edges of my jaw, and then blended. To that I added the final piece of my arsenal, a Neutrogena spot concealer (not the best, but it’s consistent in tone to the other two).
Verdict? I looked like a supermodel at my wedding, and most people thought I was joking when I said I had on as much makeup as my wife.
To this day I rely on that simple trio of Neutrogena products to take the unsightly edges off of my face for rock shows and special events. Aside from occasionally going overboard with the eye concealer (which, if applied heavy-handedly, shows up in flash photography), E professes that she can hardly tell when I’m made up.
Think you would know? If you saw me at the Philly Geek Awards, you saw me with facial treatment set to “stunning.” Could you tell?
Vanity aside, whether I’m pitching a campaign or rocking a mic, I want to present an enhanced version of the normal, every-day me. Smoothing out the edges of my face is just one way that I try to make myself a little larger than life.
The rest of my preparation is a trade secret.
Philly feeling very Il after Geek Awards
Still aglow from our outing at last night’s Philly Geek Awards, presented by Geekadelphia – as modeled for the cover story of today’s Philadelphia Daily News by my #blamedrewscancer compatriot and Philly digerati MikeyIl!
E and I mingled with some of our Twitter BFFs, and spent the ceremony adjacent to the charming crew from KeyPulp and the gorgeous award-winning duo from Talkadelphia.
Also: geeks are fucking hot. Seriously. I don’t think I have ever been to a wedding or other black tie affair boasting as many stunningly attractive and well-dressed people as last night’s event. We need more dress-up geek events in this town, pronto. (We’re already conspiring with KeyPulp on a geek dress-up dinner-party blog crossover.)
Possibly more thoughts later. Also, an interview with The Il himself in the coming weeks.
all points of the compass
Yesterday I took one of those personality type assessments that you frequently take at work, and for once I thought it told me something useful.
The assessment suggested our personalities are divided between four predominant focuses – clearing obstacles in the present, having a vision of the future state, caring about people and their skills, and collecting and analyzing data.
Some people were clearly one thing. I was sitting next to a warrior, who only cared about crossing things off his list, and across from a nurturer, who only cared about the people around her.
Unsurprisingly, I do not have a singular focus.
However, I was the only person in a room of two dozen who was primarily focused on the next steps. I’m a planner. I want to know how present actions will be reflected in the future.
I wasn’t only that. Right behind it was my path-clearing tendency – I consider what we can do now to get to those next steps, as well as my analysis-OCD – gathering information and data to get to those next steps.
You’ll notice a missing element: people. It turns out, in this particular rubric I’m supposedly not too concerned with others.
If there was any doubt in my mind about the validity of that assessment, you don’t have to look much farther than Arcati Crisis rehearsal. I’m always pushing to learn more songs so we can play longer sets, record video to add to our web content, add more harmony to make our songs more complex, or any number of other things that will transform us. I am fixated on the future state.
I want to get those things done, and I have my data to support why we’re doing them (in the form of song binders, spreadsheets, rehearsal videos, etc).
What I don’t do is ask, “Are you having fun?” It just doesn’t come into the equation for me. I’m having fun if the song sounded good. When the songs don’t sound good I’m not having fun. If that happened all the time I wouldn’t show up. I assume that about everyone else. And – whether they share my dogmatic future-focus or not – it’s true.
This week, the songs sounded great. I think we were all pretty happy.
It’s not that I don’t care about others. It’s that I assume that being on a team indicates interest, and the best thing I can do to keep you interested is to always be moving towards the next step in our evolution – which means doing great work in the present.
For being a band-leader, I think my personality fits me to a tee.
the tyranny of the click
I have never been good at playing to a click track.
[For non-musicians, a click track is a simple rhythm track that plays in your ear while you record to help you keep time. It can be as simple as a beats-per-minute setting that plays a little “beep” for every passing beat.]
For a long time that was a function of other, more major issues in my guitar playing. I was dropping beats left and right and my strums were like the thrashes of a dying man. Not lining up with clicks was the least of my problems.
I still cannot quite play to a click track, even with half a lifetime to refine my playing. Now my problem is syncopation – I so very rarely strum on all the downbeats the click usually slides away from me as I play.
Why is the click so important?
First, it satisfies the musical leanings of my internal OCD Godzilla, who needs things to be both perfect and perfectly aligned. He does not truck with deviations in speed or rhythm, and has put the nix on many fine solo recordings of mine because they ever-so-slightly sped up.
Second, for flexibility. Overdubbing, stealing riffs for other verses, patching biffed guitar solos, and dance remixes. They’re all easier when a song is recorded to a consistent click track.
Though I still can’t play to basic clicks, after a year of drumming with Zina I have no problems playing to a basic rhythm that sketches in a bit more than just the main beats in a measure. A simple rhythm on my Casio keyboard can now keep my songs in time.
That’s fine for me solo, but what about the entire band?
We’ll find out on Saturday: we have a drum engineering session scheduled with Zina. She’ll record her parts to two Filmstar songs with a metronome playing in-ear, and then we’ll all dub our parts on top of her.
In effect, we’re recording like a real band would record, which makes our house a real recording studio, and me a real recording engineer. Plus, the tracks will be a consistent speed.
OCD Godzilla is incredibly pleased.