Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Streaming live at 12 midnight for 12for12k

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If you’re awake at midnight EST on the Monday-to-Tuesday divide you can catch the first ever live, streaming concert of my music – in support of an awesome, international charity drive called 12 for 12k.

I think I’ll call it at12for12for12k. Cool?

Founded by social media marketer Danny Brown, 12 for 12k throws down a bold challenge to social media users – can you use your social networks for good in concert with people all around the world to raise $12k for a new charity every month for a year?

This month’s charity is Unicef’s “Believe in Zero” – the belief that we can stop children from dying from preventable causes. And so far there is less than $1,200 pledged for the month.

It shouldn’t be that daunting. 1,200 people could do it for a reasonable $10 a month – three less trips to Starbucks. 12,000 people can do it with no issue – $1 a month, each! Easy pickings. If more than 10,000 Twitter users turned their icons green for Iran, surely just as many can muster $1 a month in donations to a good cause?

If you know me you know that projects like this are very close to my heart. I used Blogathon as a platform for my music to raise money and awareness for my favorite charities. I have cancelled Christmas in favor of giving charitable gifts. I volunteer with Lyndzapalooza – a musical non-profit dedicated to giving a voice to more of Philly’s independent artists. And starting tomorrow I am helping to plan a major non-profit project for this September.

12 for 12k is at once easier and harder than those projects. Easy, because it’s simple to support with a small donation. Hard, because it’s about making your giving a year-round trend – not just a once a year event.

I’ll be playing at midnight, and at the very least I will donate $1 for every song I play … and my songs are short, so that could get pretty expensive! In fact, I think I could play 12 songs in an hour… 12at12for12for12k!

If you’re awake at midnight – or even if you aren’t – will you do the same? Just ten of us donating $12 each is 1% of this month’s goal. We might not make it to $12k this month, but we can make giving a regular part of our lives, and save lives while doing it.

The power of social media compels you!

(PS: I promise at least Madonna & David Bowie covers, and almost can promise MJ as well. Dunno if the Lady Gaga is ready yet… you’d all have to donate a lot of money to hear that.)

Have an Infinite Summer

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Once I was in a very bad place, and also in the hospital, and I asked my mom to walk to B&N to buy me David Foster Wallace’s massive masterpiece Infinite Jest.

It kept me sane through three days in the hospital, and kept me awake at night for another month – which, at my faster-than-light speed of reading, is quite the feat. Try as I might, I could not devour it in a few sittings like I can with any other book. It was a novel that required digestion.

This summer has been declared Infinite Summer, which gives you an entire solstice-to-equinox season to read the book at a snailish increment of 75-pages a week.

As I understand it, your reading will be accompanied by encouraging blog pep-talks like this one from Kottke:

So sure, it’s a lengthy book that’s heavy to carry and impossible to read in bed, but Christ, how many hours of American Idol have you sat through on your uncomfortable POS couch? The entire run of The West Wing was 111 hours and 56 minutes; ER was twice as long, and in the later seasons, twice as painful. I guarantee you that getting through Infinite Jest with a good understanding of what happened will take you a lot less time and energy than you expended getting your Mage to level 60 in World of Warcraft.

Is that more or less haranguing than my Beatles screamo diatribe from last week? I think the Big K was meaner than me.

In any event, it’s a wonderful, maddening read, there are nifty bookmarks bearing the schedule, it makes a wonderful pillow and/or doorstop, and I might re-read it too if I can find a spare moment or two to read the second half of Outliers.

Grudge Match

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My friend Rob Baniewicz (of killer improv comedy duo Meg & Rob) shared an article from the Onion A/V Club Q&A titled “Lifetime Grudges.”

The article caught my interest because it’s about lifelong, subjective, sometimes irrational grudges that people develop against artists. Many of the Onion’s regular contributors shared their personal grudge matches, from Sofia Coppola to U2.

Surely you’ve done it. A movie star whose weird mouth-shape you just can’t get past? A musician whose utterly terrible new album forces you to lose faith? The reason doesn’t matter so much. just that they’ve jumped your personal shark permanently, never to return to your good graces.

A few spring to my mind immediately. Alanis Morissette – by her fourth US record she had entirely quit writing catchy, interesting music, so I gave up. Chuck Palahniuk – wrote too many overly-convenient, repetitive books for me to care that he might eventually get better. Jason Mraz – I found his songwriting schtick underhwhelming from the first second I heard him.

The grudge article is an interesting counterpoint to something else that has been on my mind lately: permanent “must-buy” policies. Lifetime subscriptions, let’s call them.

Surely you have these too – an unflinching desire to consume everything by a specific artist. I’ll buy any song by Garbage, watch any movie by David Fincher, and love any print by Mucha, no questions asked. It’s a form of brand-loyalty – these artists appeal to some aspect of your personal aesthetic, and you’ll support them forever for it.

Who is your #1 Grudge, and why? What about your most major undying, devoted subscription? Could the grudge ever (re)earn your trust? Could the subscription ever fall from the pedestal?

Lambert Crosses the Gay Rubicon?

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A strongly-worded NYT Style Article about my American Idol obsession Adam Lambert, whose “is he or isn’t he” gay controversy is DOA.

Interesting, though, that the article is ostensibly about the recent Neil Patrick Harris effect – wherein “He crossed the Rubicon. He did the ‘sudden death’ play. Supposedly you come out and your career is over. He came out and his career is in better shape than it ever was” – and yet carries a sidebar pairing Lambert with Bowie, Liberace, and Prince – two flamboyant straight men who managed to plausibly deny any actual homosexual tendencies and a gay man in deep denial who was finally outed by his own lifestyle.

Essentially, NPH is the only example to date of the mythological Rubicon-crossing that Lambert is currently forging through.

And, not every hot, talented, triple-threat gay guy was Doogie Howser.

(from my stalkee J. Clifton on Twitter, who may have just hinted at having a farcical virtual Tori Amos listening party with me next month, the mere thought of which slays me. Oh, the list of bloggers in this country I could get into trouble with (Jett, I am looking at you).)

Lefsetz publishes Amanda Palmer, lashes the Billboard Top 100

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I am suddenly a fan of savvy music blog Lefsetz Letter, who provided me with the link that inspired my previous post.

I found him via Amanda (fucking) Palmer, who sent him an email about the power of twitter and why she wants to get dropped from her label – the intersection of which is that she had to explain Twitter to the VP of Media at her OZ label, who dished it, and she proceeded to put together a TwitMob event in under 24 hours.

Between this and not liking her video because she looked “fat” RoadRunner records are looking like total asses. No wonder she wrote this charming song about them, to the tune of “Moon River.” Stick with it ’til the end, it’s hilarious.

Meanwhile, back @ Lefsetz, he apparently does a weekly analysis of debuts and big climbs and drops on the Billboard 100 album chart. This week he was pretty harsh, laying out the reasons why a dozen albums aren’t going to make back their production costs, let alone go platinum.

The one he singles out for praise? Lady Gaga. Not because she is fucking ubiquitous in dance clubs (I know this because I just went to one, so there), but because she has gangbusters viral marketing and can sit alone on a stage and do this. Which, honestly, so can I. This one is a bit better.

So, basically, if Amanda would produce a matching album of bangin’ club versions of all of her songs she would rule the charts.

And, scene.

(ps: check out a bonus Amanda interview I was kindly asked to blog a few months ago and got lost in the honeymoon morass.)