Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Crushing On

#MusicMonday: “Chemmie” – Joan as Police Woman

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At this point shuffling the unheard songs on my iPod can turn up anything. My collection is approaching 25,000 tracks, with three thousand I’ve never listened to before, with entries running from 70s AM Gold to 80s hair rock to new LPs out this year. Knowing I added something to iTunes has no bearing on when I’ll eventually hear it. It could be months.

Given the vast unknown that is my unheard playlist, sometimes it turns up random gems that wind up on repeat for hours at a time. That was the case when Joan as Police Woman‘s “Chemmie” came on last week.

First, I have a undeniable soft spot for songs with any of the key words “chemical,” “communications,” and “crisis,” so I was bound to pay attention from the first chorus. Second, this song is sexy as I don’t know what. It’s like a slouching, indie-rock take on “Let’s Stay Together.” It would definitely go on my candlelit-baby-making mix tape, if such a thing existed.

Instant five-stars!

I’m definitely growing a soft spot for Joan as Police Woman, whose music trends to resembling a sulty, low-key take on the Pretenders’ best moments of simmering funk groove. I’ve stayed willfully ignorant of what the band moniker actually represents, but for the purposes of this post peeked at Wikipedia just long enough to learn that it’s the one-woman band of Joan Wasser, who – much like Chrissie Hynde before her – is an American with a decidedly UK sonic bent.

“Chemmie” is from Joan as Police Woman’s 2011 LP The Deep Field.

Crushing On: Twitter in a Crisis

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I know, “duh,” right?

Let me explain.

With the vast majority of everyone I know battening down their hatches in preparation for Irene to blow through their area, I felt as though I had to choose a hurricane-related thing to crush upon.

Could it be the local farmer’s market, still appearing on schedule this morning so we could stock up on healthy food to carry us through the potential apocalyptic conditions? Perhaps it should be my handy pair of camping lanterns, holdovers from my 2006 trip to Bonnaroo? Or, Roman & Sons, who replaced all of the rickety 90-year-old windows on the first floor of our house earlier this year?

I’m crushing on all of the above, but the thing I’m really in love with at the moment is Twitter.

Something I excised from yesterday’s mammoth anniversary post was a paragraph about 9/11. Were you online that morning? All of the news sites went down. For a brief period there was no information, anywhere. Then, an amazing thing happened – blogs(including CK) started acting as a distributed network of information, reporting details more accurately and succinctly than the television coverage. People on the ground in NYC posted photos and eye-witness accounts, while everyone else helped to connect and cultivate that information.

In the intervening ten years, the world has realized that centralized news in a crisis is only effective when the crisis is affecting only a very small group of people. A hostage situation, a plane crash – traditional news excels in communicating information about this kind of news.

When it comes to revolutions and acts of nature, centralized news becomes less effective. Everyone is experiencing the same earthquake, hurricane, or plague of locusts. We are all nodes of information, we all want to know what’s happening as close to us as possible, and we all want to know what’s happening to our friends.

Twitter does all three. Tonight I’ve been broadcasting our status (so far the only casualty is a screen door), searching for mentions of our area and the local roads (the main road north of us is flooded), and keeping up-to-date with our friends (all safe!). I know Nan is fine in NC, where to find our nearest emergency shelter, and that I might need to drive our Shop Vac down the block to help with the baling at Cecily’s house.

Oh, and then there is the intermittent tornado warning/watch. I’m debating if I should remove some of my guitars from the attic.

I might be on pins and needles at the moment, but so is everyone else. We’re on pins and needs together, sharing stories and anxieties and laughter, and knowing that makes it less frightening and confusing.

Plus, no Fail Whales in sight!

Stay safe and dry, friends.

#MusicMonday: “King of Anything” – @SamuelTsui

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I always say the best sign of a good song is that it translates well to other mediums. A radio hit can use all the autotune and layered riffs in the world, but if someone was strumming it on an acoustic guitar or humming it on a street-corner, would it still be compelling?

To me that’s the difference between good pop music and disposable songs, as I alluded to in my recent Gaga post. Gaga tunes sound great from a hard rock band or on an acoustic piano. You could make an 8-bit video game version and they’d still be indelible. By contrast, with most newer Britney tunes you have to do some heavy lifting to make them work.

Most of Sara Bareilles’ repertoire passes the translation test. Certainly “Love Song” does, with it’s staff-spanning melodic leaps, but perhaps not as well as the hyper-pop single “King of Anything.” I was hooked on within twenty seconds of bro playing the video for me last fall.

My #MusicMonday today is “King of Anything,” but not by Bareilles – the version I’m crushing on is by YouTube phenom Sam Tsui, with an assist from Kurt Schneider

Sam Tsui isn’t a new phenomenon, and neither is his cover. Tsui, from just outside Philly(!), is one of the biggest stars of YouTube. He has an unbelievably golden counter-tenor to rival Glee’s Chris Colfer, and he’s been all over the web and on television – even on Oprah! Meanwhile, this video is nearly a year old, and has five million views.

I’ve seen it dozens of times already, but I keep coming back to it for a few reasons. [Read more…] about #MusicMonday: “King of Anything” – @SamuelTsui

Crushing On: My Face, by Neutrogena

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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.

My #1 Beauty Secret

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.

I'm gonna be a supermodel, and everyone is gonna dress like me - wait and see.

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.

#MusicMonday: “Blame It On the Boogie” – Jackson 5

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I was raised largely on a platform of indoctrination to the music of Michael Jackson, David Bowie, and Billy Joel.

While Bowie and Joel were my mother’s favorites, MJ was my own pick – entirely on the basis of Thriller.  If the 80s had YouTube I would have been on it doing my toddler version of the “Thriller” dance.

I wound up with all of the Jackson 5’s hits encoded in my DNA. I don’t know how that happened; I don’t remember owning any of their LPs. Nonetheless, when any one of them starts playing it evokes a physical and emotional rush that at makes me want to jump up and down and cry at the same time.

“Blame It On the Boogie” was part of the Jacksons’ Destiny album sessions before Michael recorded his first major solo hit, Off the Wall (a gem overshadowed by Thriller). Along with “Shake Your Body” (another all-time fav), it’s disco infused with the sheer joy of Michael’s aerobic, still-adolescent vocals, and backed by the assembled Jackons, who were a robotically perfect backing choir long before auto-tune was even invented.

To this day, very few songs not by Madonna can get me on the dancefloor faster than something by the Jackson 5, and “Blame It On the Boogie” is high on that list.