Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Archives for 2013

A Philly Education

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Last night on Twitter the hashtag #PhillyEducation was trending. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a topic to be proud about.

I have been following Philly’s school funding drama enough to know that teachers and administrators have been laid off throughout the district even if I can’t explain exactly the source of the budget shortfall. Yesterday their absence was felt by students and parents on the first day of school. I saw tweets about schools with just one guidance counselor, rooms in new charter schools with no desks because no one had put them together, and this one:

It all makes me think back to a September 15 years ago. I was starting my senior year from a new commute, because my mother and I moved from the depths of Southwest Philly to rent a house just off 2nd street in South Philly – almost the entire width of Philadelphia – .

I remember looking at a lot of houses and apartments that summer, but they all failed one major test. No, not my present-day test of how loudly I could play my guitar before the neighbors complain. Back then, the test was if I could get to my public high school at 17th and Spring Garden on my own via SEPTA by only making a single transfer.

The litmus test was that I had to be able to stay in the Philly school district.

That high school, J.R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School, is a public “magnet” school that accepts the top students from throughout the city. It has spent the last two decades perched atop the state’s high school rankings – yes, even above private schools. That’s partially due to the caliber of the students it accepts, but everything to do with the talent and dedication of the staff that develops those students.

I started high school super-smart but uninterested with most subjects. I graduated with an A- average and a huge scholarship to college. Four AP classes and my advanced French skills allowed me to skip almost entire year of course credits at Drexel, which allowed me to start with classes in my own major and to complete minors in theatre and music (and very nearly history). My guidance counselor made sure of that. I learned public speaking skills by becoming a Peer Counselor to kids on the topics of health and sexuality, mentored by my Health teacher. I knew I was interested in theatre because my Biology teacher was also a theatre director, and spent three years nurturing my performance skills until I could hold the stage as a lead. I was interested in a music minor so I could record a third demo CD in Drexel’s studio, having recorded my first lo-fi attempt at home as a senior project with our choir teacher as an advisor. I applied for my job at RJMetrics because I’ve spent a decade teaching myself PHP and MySQL based on programming skills I learned in an elective class my freshman year – I had never had access to a computer before then. I write today because I wrote all the time then, and submitted to an extracurricular school literary magazine every quarter, and because teachers constantly forced me to submit my work to be published outside of school – and it was, repeatedly.

None of those opportunities will be available at Masterman today, or anywhere else in the Philadelphia School District.

This morning I walked into work carrying the same backpack that accompanied me to my first morning as a senior fifteen years ago, but also with a lifetime of skills and experiences built upon a foundation learned in Philadelphia’s School District. I was lucky enough to attend a magnet school, but the real point is that I wanted to learn and I was in an environment where there were many teachers who were happy to oblige.

I’m scared for the students of Philadelphia today, because if Teairah’s tweet is any indication, wanting to learn is no longer enough of pre-requisite to achieve success in the Philadelphia school district.

An Epilogue to The New 52

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BATWOMAN_25Here lies the epilogue to my grand experiment of reading DC Comics’ 52 new titles when they launched two years ago this month – and a tiny lesson on customer lifetime value.

Last week the big story in comics was that multiple Eisner Award winner J.H. Williams was walking off DC’s critical hit Batwoman, along with his co-writer W. Haden Blackman. Williams is also the illustrator to DC’s upcoming hotter-the-the-sun Sandman Overture with literary rockstar Neil Gaiman.

Not coincidentally, Batwoman is one of just two DC ongoings I am still reading (the other is Animal Man).

Mmany outlets tried to make the big story of the walkout that DC Comics ordained that we would never get to see the titular character – a lesbian – marry her new fiancee Detective Maggie Sawyer on panel. Given DC’s dalliance earlier this year with anti-gay champion Orson Scott Card writing a Superman story, many (not just comics) news outlets slanted their stories that the Williams walk-out adds more fuel to a fire of DC’s low opinion of GBLT characters and fans.

That may have yielded some extra hits and comments, but that’s not the real story behind the sudden resignation. If you read into Williams & Blackman’s statement, you’ll see the real issue is that DC won’t commit to a story for long enough that they can build up to it – which is exactly why I went from reading 52 title two years ago to 1 as of next month:

Unfortunately, in recent months, DC has asked us to alter or completely discard many long-standing storylines in ways that we feel compromise the character and the series. We were told to ditch plans for Killer Croc’s origins; forced to drastically alter the original ending of our current arc, which would have defined Batwoman’s heroic future in bold new ways; and, most crushingly, prohibited from ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married. All of these editorial decisions came at the last minute, and always after a year or more of planning and plotting on our end.

jh_williams_01While the final straw was the fizzled marriage plot, it was the ongoing interference that broke the camel’s back. Hints of this were visible over three months ago, when Williams tweeted his disappointment in his longstanding Killer Croc plans getting co-opted for another writer to write a one-shot of the character for Villains’ Month.

DC relaunched their entire publishing line to try to establish new (or: bigger) buying habits with a wider group of readers, of whom I was one. I read all 52 books in September 2011, and at least 26 of them that October. I was really excited to see so many distinct stories and new characters, and I would have gladly kept up with many of them.

However, one-by-one, my favorites got picked off – Resurrection Man and Frankenstein to low sales, Stormwatch to a complete reboot, Birds of Prey and Demon Knights to creator changes, and Batwing to a new direction. It seemed like the only books I enjoyed were the offbeat ones no one loved, or the books DC was certain needed a big change.

Note the distinct lack of their core superhero IP on that list; I largely disliked the first story of this books, with a few exceptions (Flash, Batgirl, Green Lantern Corps). And, even if I adored them, it wouldn’t matter – hardly a single book has survived past twenty issues with a consistent writer/plotter aside from Scott Snyder directing Batman, Gail Simone on Batgirl, and Brian Azzarello on Wonder Woman. (Superteam Buccellato and Manpul just announced they are leaving Flash.)

The end result is that I went from reading 52 DC comics 24 months ago to just 1 as of next month. DC’s reboot won them my money and attention in the short term, but my lifetime value as a customer grew less and less as I dropped books, and now will continue to accumulate only a measly $2.99 per month. They lost me in the long-game of increasing revenue.

Meanwhile, in that same time period Marvel has grown my readership from just X-books to all but two books in their entire publishing line of main continuity stories. They have me reading characters I am an avowed non-fan of – like Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Daredevil, and Captain America – just on the strength of the creators and the bold stories being told. I’m happy to commit to that because even when creators change during a run the story direction tends to be largely preserved. My the slope of my cumulative lifetime value line keeps getting steeper and steeper. I’m about as valuable of a customer as they can have – traditionally known as a Marvel Zombie.

I’m just one customer, but I have to believe there’s a greater trend to be found in that example.

Is there a common moral to be found for DC comics between Williams walk-out and my trailing off? I’d say the stories are one and the same – DC doesn’t have faith in their creators to tell stories. That isn’t about characters getting married – Marvel only boasts one major marriage in their line. It’s about telling interesting stories that evolve but never distinctly end.

#MusicMonday: “We Can’t Stop” – The Postmodern Jukebox

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cyrus-we-cant-stopContinuing the theme of “traumatic experiences” from last night, earlier this summer I had the distinct experience of viewing the gloriously random trainwreck that is the video for Miley Cyrus’s comeback single, “Can’t Stop” (which this weekend I had verified to me by an actual beach-going teenager as “the song of the summer, because ‘Blurred Lines’ is so overplayed”).

It was early or late or I was half-watching teevee or something, so I remember having the sound turned very low. My watch was purely for the aesthetics of the piece (or, I suppose, the lack thereof). Yet even a whisper of the song left an imprint on my brain. It only took one more listen to get the “la da dee da dee” refrain irretrievably stuck in my brain, and after watching the second glorious visual trainwreck that was Miley’s MTV Music Video Awards performance I also was stuck with the throaty “we can’t stop” chorus.

We’re talking 24/7 under-the-breath singing here. Constant subconscious replay. Ultimate earworm.

At that point I broke down and bought the damn song, and here’s what I realized: it’s actually a pretty interesting song. If you just treat the lyrics like the gibberish they are and listen to the arrangement, it has many interesting little hooks in it – the real performance of the chiming high piano notes, the thrumming fuzz bass, the “la da di” vocal hook, and the way it all evaporates into a brief vacuum at the top of a chorus before it enters on the repeat.

It’s just that the flat, Rihanna-aping vocal production sucks all of the air out of Miley’s performance and makes it joyless and robotic on the whole. (And, note that writing team Rock City actual pitched this to R before Miley sunk her grill into it.)

Enter Scott Bradlee and The Postmodern Jukebox. Yes, I know they are all over the internet already. No, I don’t care. Have some more.

The magic of the Bradlee version of the song is that it strips away all of the obvious differentiators I mentioned above and somehow emerges with an even catchier song.

First off, I am a total sucker for anything Motown, and the raw doo wop blend of unison and harmonies from The Tee Tones is a welcome throwback.

Second, the time signature – Postmodern Jukebox is in 6/8. For the non-musicians among you, just tap along to it. You’ll find you’re tapping in two sets of three – 1-2-3, 1-2-3. You can’t really make the argument that the original song contains this feel, yet after hearing it in the cover I can track that steady pulse in the original as notes in swing time.

Third, the vocal. I’m not just talking about the syrupy swoop of Robyn Adele Anderson’s vocals, which runs a lovely counter towards the trend of all retro-style singers having that taffy catch in their voice like Adele or Duffy. It’s her melody that’s distinct. She hews pretty close to the original on the verse, just adjusting for the time signature and – you know – actual singing. Then she breaks out in the “la da di,” transforming the earwormy sing-song of the original into an actual song-worthy melody that allows her to blossom into a brief crescendo on “doin’ whatever want.”

And, they do all this with the ridiculous lyrics about big butts and lines in the back room intact – the only difference is now we’re dancing with “Miley,” rather than “Molly.”

I’ve always said that a good song can be stripped down bare. This cover of “We Can’t Stop” isn’t exactly bare, but it had to be stripped down to the basics of the chord changes and melody to build it back up to this point. The fact that it’s even more catchy without the trappings of modern studio production just proves what lovely bones the song has.

Not every song on the radio right now would survive the transition – certainly not the tuneless “Blurred Lines.” Buy the Postmodern Jukebox version now!

fresh smelly trauma

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I come to you this evening traumatized. I am not the author who wrote to you about an innocent, chiming bee last night. I live in a harsh new reality.

In a word, the difference is: poop.

Yesterday I experienced my first live baby waste incursion. EV6 and I were just hanging out in the middle of the floor, bouncing around, when suddenly I discovered an incursion from the diapered zone. Before I could take any action, it reached out to touch my leg where it was uncovered by my shorts. The inside of my thigh, to be exact.

My leg! An important part of my body I would prefer not to live without, but I would I need to burn it? Perhaps just soak it in a chemical bath until an entire layer of skin melts away to reveal a new level of epidermis that had never experienced the horrors that the one before it had so bravely defended against.

I won’t – nay, can’t – say much more about the reconciliation process that allowed me to cleanse and reclaim my fully-functioning thigh. All I will note is that EV6 seems to take no notice of my distress, nor is she distressed herself by the proximity of excrement to her own chubby thighs. No, in fact, she seemed to be quite entertained by the process.

Not me. For me, there is only terror. Every time I see a hint of that smiling poop face, hear a whisper of that disturbing gurgling noise in the diaper area, the trauma is upon me again. There is no safe time or space. As long as there is a baby near – any baby – then it can happen again.

I know I cannot be alone in this fear, yet at the same time I honestly don’t know how we’ve come this far as a human race while each generation is faced with this challenge not only to the sanctity of our bodies, but also of our minds.

Crushing On: Bailey the Bee by miYim

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On day 41 of EV6’s life there is only one thing, living or animate, that I am positively sure she can identify other than E or I.

It is Mr. Bee.

miyim_bailey_the_beeWe received a small assortment of stuffed and noisemaking creatures from our friends and family. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with them. Even a seemingly tiny bunny or caterpillar is about as big as a newborn baby, give or take. I assumed she would thing all of these grinning creatures were just wildlife showing her a threat display and she would constantly cry and try to army-crawl away from them.

Mr. Bee by miYim was different. He looks so darn friendly. He has a firm body and  exceedingly silly feet attached to his thorax with yarn legs. He has a small velcro cuff for affixing him to a car seat, stroller, or baby. And he makes an extremely pleasant dull jangle when he is shaken. It’s a very quiet, neutral sort of sound that I was willing to commit to hearing over and over again, if necessary.

I forget exactly where he started out, but I quickly migrated Mr. Bee to the changing table, because newborn babies have a complete meltdown every time you change them and I was desperate for anything to distract mine while I desperately wiped away her black tar poop.

I would jingle Mr. Bee once or twice, and then lay him on EV6’s chest or even cuff him to her wrist so she could keep on hearing the jingle while I changed her. Soon, I began announcing him. “It’s Mr. Bee,” I would exclaim, signaling that we were beginning a visit with her insect friend that just happened to coincide with a diaper change.

Eventually, the routine (which, keep in mind, happens 10-12 times a day) extended to include a little jingle to Mr. Bee’s jangle. I sing “Mr. Bee” three times in an ascending triad cued from his dull chiming, and then announce “It’s Mr. Bee!”

A little over a week ago we were having a gibbering freak out about EV6 smiling at us randomly while sitting on the couch. The next time I changed her and sang the Mr. Bee jingle, I noticed she smiled then, too! I was usually just so busy grabbing changing implements and psychologically preparing myself for runny mustard poop that I hadn’t noticed when she started doing it!

I asked E if she had noticed this, and she said she had never witnessed the phenomenon.

“Well, are you doing the routine?”

“Um, I show her the Bee, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, you sort of have to announce him.”

“I suppose I do say, ‘It’s Mr. Bee.'”

“No, no, no,” I responded, and escorted her upstairs to the changing table to show her my specific Mr. Bee salutation.

As it turns out, my strategy worked entirely. EV6 has not cried during a diaper change for weeks as long as they are preceded by Mr. Bee. We have even extended his good will to a goodbye ceremony where he gives her a little bop on the nose and then flies back to the shelf.

As far as she is concerned, diaper changes are Mr. Bee Variety Showtime, a feature of which is one of the big humans doing a lot of wiping and patting of her behind.

(Epilogue: E tracked down the friend who bought Mr. Bee for us, and she said she purchased him at a Whole Foods because he made the least offensive noise of all the various baby toys. Also, his name is Bailey, he is $10, and we’ve already purchased a backup.)