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Category Archives: consume

Crushing On: Cheap Graphic Novels

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Reading comics via graphic novels can be an expensive habit to maintain. They’re are rarely any cheaper than a $15 cover price, and sometimes run more like $20 or $40 – and hardcovers can be as much as $100! When you’re trying to gather a run of dozens or hundreds of individual issues, that adds up really fast.

When I first started buying, I thought I simply had to pay cover price at book stores or comic shops. That was really expensive, but it was immediately gratifying and I could make sure the quality of a book was high – both in its contents and its physical condition.

50% off of new graphic novel releases every week? Yes, please!

Then, I realized I could order them on Amazon for at least 25% off, and as much as 33% off. That was a lot less expensive, and fast with Amazon Prime – but, the physical condition of a book after it had been packed and shipped could vary widely. At one point I was sending back a fifth of everything I received!

Then, I discovered Cheap Graphic Novels dot com (CGN). They have (or, can get) every graphic novel in print, and if it’s from Marvel or DC it’s 45% off. And, if you order it the week of release, it’s an even 50% off! Not only that, but they are comic book lovers who are friendly to chat with and take a good look at books before they pack them in indestructible double-boxes with paper on all sides.

This totally exploded my comic book buying – I was getting double the books for the money I’d spend in a bookstore, and always in perfect quality compared to Amazon. I have spent an obscene amount of money with CGN in the past two years, and they have never made a mistake, and the worst quality issue I’ve encountered is a tiny bend on the cover of a single book.

I see you doing the project management math. Low cost. High quality. Surely there’s a downside? Well, there is, but it’s a minor one: CGN ships via Media Mail from California, which means I might not see the books for two weeks. And, they require signature on delivery, which means if you aren’t home to receive your order you’ll be headed to the post office.

You know what? That’s okay. When it comes to my comic habit, I’d rather spend a little extra time and keep my money and high quality bookshelf intact. If you agree, you should make your next order from CGN. There are a handful of other sites with similar discounts, but none that I’ve found so reliable and friendly.

Note: I haven’t been compensated for this in any way, although I’d love for CGN to start a referral program so I could add them to my Definitive X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four guides. If you order from them, tell them Krisis sent you!

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not what i meant to say

Sunday, November 4, 2012

That post was supposed to be about the Marvel Avengers Alliance PvP tournament and how you have to be in the top 1,000 people in the world to win Deadpool for free and how I am currently ranked 1,700 out of TWO MILLION but I am never going to close that 700-person gap between now and tomorrow when it’s over even though I am taking every POSSIBLE shot at this point.

In my head I still know it was about that, but I’d have to draw a effing diagram to explain to you how it wound up being about Wayne Gretzky.

Instead, please accept this rather hilarious comic book cover of Deadpool facing off against an undead Teddy Roosevelt and a hoard of animals – presumably either ones that he hunted or intended to kill but never got around to prior to his death.

Why they are playing for Team Teddy, I don’t understand.

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Crushing On: Productivity Tools ToDoist & TimeSheet

Saturday, November 3, 2012

I’m at my best when I’m on the clock.

That’s not just a euphemism for procrastinating until a deadline. I am consistently, measurably better at getting things done when I consistently measure what I’m getting done.

That’s always been true for me at work, especially starting in 2006 when I flourished like a unruly weed when paired with a project management system that allowed me to track my billable hours. Knowing what my to-do list consists of and how long I spend doing it is a huge motivator for me. I guess it was my own version of  ”gamification” before that became a hip thing to do to everything in your life.

It hasn’t always been as easy to find the same productivity alchemy at home. I always have long-term goals and near-term projects I’m working on, but I don’t exactly have billable hours. Who is there to charge, aside from myself? Left to my own devices I’ll always pick the thing that is the most fun or the most methodical – which works out frequently to rehearsing, occasionally as laundry, and hardly ever as cleaning the bathroom.

I’ve found a website and an app that both nip that occasional path-of-least-resistance listlessness in the bud, but from slightly different directions.

ToDoist: a tasklist website and app

First, there’s ToDoist. I found it over the summer after demoing over a dozen task management systems online to help my wrangle dozens of things I was hoping to get done. Some of the services were no-frills checklists, while others were practically their own personal Outlook installation.

ToDoist falls closer to the former side of the scale – it’s a simply, obvious checklist that allows you to group tasks into projects and set deadlines and priorities.

When I checked out other systems, I discovered the lack of projects and priorities to be a real dealbreaker. If you can’t organize your tasks or give them some sense of order then you might as well be working with a pen and paper – which is cool and all, but I wanted something dynamic that worked from any internet connection as well as on my phone.

ToDoist does the trick, and for a mere $2 a month you can add improved filtering, tagging, searches, and reminders – totally worth it!

ToDoist meant I was actually crossing things off my list of at-home to-dos – awesome! However, it lacked one feature I really treasure about entering billable hours at work – the ability to perform an audit on what I was spending (wasting?) the most time on. I find that’s a useful exercise to undergo both at work and at home to normalize your expectations … like, your commute is always 45 minutes, so stop being so sure you can leave work late and still get home by six!

Timesheet: a time tracker app for Android

I needed a super-straightforward phone app – effectively, just a stopwatch for tasks. I found my match in a free app called TimeSheet.

It’s the perfect tool for a freelancer or home project enthusiast. You can set up multiple projects, each with a client and a billable rate. When you start working you simply start the clock on your project! When you’re done you stop the clock and wind up with a handy task summary that breaks out your billability and allows you to add expenses and notes. You can also add tasks after the fact without the clock, and export your data to Excel.

Is this overkill for a week or two of auditing how I spend my time? A little. But, you don’t have to use all of those features. Heck, you could use it just for one thing you are trying to bring more of in your life, like working on your NaBloPoMo book or mixing your band’s new album.

(Not that I need extra motivation to do either of those.)

(Okay, maybe just a little.)

In just three days I found out that I’m getting way more sleep than I used to, and that my commute takes up a lot more time in aggregate than I realized – so I should find something productive to do while I’m in transit. I also decided I could be spending a minimum of time each day doing other things (a-hem: blogging), so I added projects for those too.

There you have it – two free productivity tools that can help you get a better handle on your time. I’m totally into them both, so hopefully you can find some use for them too.

Now it’s your turn: What productivity tool are you crushing on lately? Is it super-techy, or as simple as a pen and paper?

Also filed in Crushing On, ocd | | Comments (0)

#MusicMonday: Heart – “These Dreams”

Monday, October 15, 2012

E and I saw Heart at the Tower Theatre on Friday, a classic-rock date night sequel to our spur-of-the-moment decision to see the Pretenders a few years ago.

I don’t adore the entire Heart catalog like I adore that of The Pretenders, but I do love a great number Heart songs – especially from their first three albums. That acoustic-driven galloping rock is definitely in the lineage of Arcati Crisis; I’ve always been fascinated that Gina isn’t a particular fan, given her similarities in writing and performance to the Wilson sisters.

Of course, those Heart albums were all before my time. My actual introduction to the band was most like the video to “These Dreams” in 1986, which to me at the time might have plausibly seemed as though it came from the Labyrinth soundtrack.

Don’t worry, I won’t subject you to the entire video.

I was always confused by Heart on Casey Casem’s count down, because in their videos they were made up just like the big-haired rocker guys I was so bored by … except, these were… women? I felt like I should have liked them, but this was in their “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You” period, a song Ann Wilson won’t even sing today, so could you blame me for not liking them?

Yet, these were also the acoustic-rockers who spawned hits like “Barracuda” and “Crazy on You.” What gives?

I read Heart’s new memoir Kicking and Dcreaming overnight on Friday, and it explained the peculiar duality of the band. Heart nearly dissolved when they left CBS Records imprint Portrait in 1982, and when they reformed for Capitol records they began performing songs by other writers in an attempt to fit in on rock radio. It brought them their greatest success – including their first number one single, “These Dreams,” one of their few songs with Nancy Wilson singing lead.

My obsession with not purchasing an $18 copy of Nancy’s live acoustic solo record lead me to snag the early Heart discs from the bargain bin.

I’ve always been obsessed with the song, but the synthesizer- and reverb-drenched original never really sounded right to me. Back in college while I was trolling through the CD racks at Tower Records I noticed a peculiar lone title in the W section – Live at McCabe’s Guitar Shop by Nancy Wilson?

That Nancy Wilson? I picked up the case an examined the track list and, LO AND BEHOLD, it included an acoustic version of “These Dreams”! But, it was $18 – far too rich for my blood when it came to CDs.

(Oh, the quaint stories of being a music fan in early 2000s.)

I eventually did buy the album, after picking up those early Mushroom and Portrait LPs with the encouragement of my old colleague Alex. I’ve never been one for those Capitol albums, though. Their stadium rock sound also mean that Nancy’s acoustic leanings were muffled and later altogether drowned out.

Happily, that wasn’t the end of Heart – in the past decade they’ve refocused on their old-school sound with a bluesy tinge on three solid studio albums.

That also means that on tour they’ve reclaimed some of their excessive 80s hits. On Friday they brought me to tears with an acoustic version of “These Dreams” with Nancy on mandolin that flowed directly into an acoustic and piano duet on “Alone.”

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#MusicMonday: I Blame Coco – “Self Machine”

Monday, September 10, 2012

This post is about a song I have never heard that you cannot buy.

Sort of.

So much good new music arrived in my mailbox last week – Amanda Palmer, Adrien Reju, and Juliana Hatfield – and the coolest part is that I sponsored it all! Juliana Hatfield’s new LP was truly a surprise – an all-covers project with no hint of the setlist or direction when I pledged my support. Given that Hatfield’s past decade of albums have ranged from minimal acoustic to grungy indie rock, there was really no telling what would arrive.

When it showed up in our mailbox last week I did what you would expect and likely do yourself – I listened to the covers of songs that I knew. The version of “Learn to Fly” was delightful! I’m still digesting the rest of it.

Anyway, this is not a post about Juliana Hatfield (partially because Ms. Hatfield doesn’t have her album up for streaming/sharing anywhere – oh noes!). It’s about one of the songs she covered, a pretty and ingenious bit of sfi-fi tinged heartbreak called “Self Machine,” originally by I Blame Coca AKA Sting’s daughter, Eliot Paulina Sumner.

Lonely robot in a wasteland
Rusting in a lonely harbor
Lonely robot in a wasteland
Rusting in the harbor’s water

I’m not a human if you say I’m not
I’m not a human if my engines lock
And this motor that you call my heart
Is another machine that will stop

The Hatfield version of the song first came on as E and were running errands on Saturday, and you could almost draw a dotted line from our ears to the car speakers as they perked up. Not only is this a great song, but it brought out the best in Juliana Hatfield. Her singing is tuneful yet bruised, suspending by pulsing, buzzing synthesizers like a man laying on a bed of nails.

It’s one of her best songs in years – maybe ever.

Which brought me to the original I Blame Coco version. It’s good. I’d probably give it four stars if it came up on my iPod. But, in my first and only listen to the original version above, Sting Junior does not bring that same powerful fragility to the song. It’s too strident – too much declaration, not enough regret.

Of course, I wouldn’t know that without listening to Juliana Hatfield’s version. She took a good song and exploited it’s flaws in the best way possible. Her version is the more definitive of the two, in my mind.

Even if it was the I Blame Coco’s version I was obsessed with, her LP Constant isn’t available in the US, nor is the MP3 of this song (though you can buy the LP as an import).

The Juliana Hatfield version, which I am obsessed with an firmly believe you should buy, is not available for download anywhere, and Amazon only has a single copy of her CD – or, you can buy it directly from her.

Two versions of an excellent song, both trapped in the internet machine, unable to shake free.

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Crushing On: Hip City Veg

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Myth: Vegan food is always a stuck-up meat imitation or utter rabbit food, and of no interest to people who don’t mind a bit of animal in their meals.

Fact: HipCityVeg is vegan fast food your entire office will merrily devour without question.

I am so utterly addicted to this vegan lunch joint at 18th and Sansom that our relationship has become deadly serious. After heading there experimentally with my wall-sharing colleague MK I have vowed to try every delectable item on their chalkboard menu.

I’m not sure what the next step is for us – usually once things get this serious I write a song about the person and/or food establishment I am crushing on.

I started with a Buffalo Bella – a huge portabella mushroom breaded and spiced up in the buffalo fashion. As a pescetarian, one of the few world-of-meat things I ever crave are buffalo ANYTHINGS – because, really, there aren’t many fish-y or veggie things that work well with the classic breading and sauce treatment. Well, this sandwich fits the bill perfectly – it isn’t trying to be chicken at all, it’s huge and luscious and spicy and will gradually explode all over your desk as you eat it as any good buffalo meal ought to.

Also, the best sweet potato fries in creation, paired with ridiculously incredible cilantro-black bean dip.

Fast forward to my next visit. I ordered the same thing (how can you turn that down) when a random woman in line started enthusing to me about the Udon Noodle Salad.

(This is the sort of thing that happens at HipCityVeg. While you are there everyone likes everyone else, but not in a creepy tie-dyed hippy way. People are just friendly in a way that isn’t brought out by a trip to Wendy’s. Did I mention vegan milkshakes? They are so good.)

Based on the recommendation, I picked up the Udon Noodle Salad on my next visit – and it was AMAZING. As utterly addictive as the Bella. I almost shamelessly drank the dressing out of the bottom of the container once I was through.

Almost!

That is when I made my vow to eat my way through the entire menu.

So far everything has been excellent. I would amend the Arugula Taco Salad onto the greatest hits list with my first two selections, as well as their irresistible Groothie. A few items have included fake “Chik’n,” but I don’t feel like it’s trying too hard to be chicken so much as it’s a convenient protein delivery system, happily accepted.

If you work within a few block radius of 18th and Sansom I highly recommend a pilgrammage.

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Crushing On: Chronicle

Saturday, September 1, 2012

I love this minimalist poster. Beware – a more spoiler-filled version is displayed below.

This week I watched an amazing movie – and I almost turned it off after five minutes.

The movie was Chronicle, a $12 million small-scale superhero flick that just hit DVD after running in theatres earlier this year.

Why did I nearly turn it off? Two words: found footage.

On the list of cinematic tropes I categorically dislike, found footage movies rank consistently high. You know what I’m talking about. Cloverfield. Paranormal Activity. Ever since Gina and I saw the disjointed Blair Witch Project in the theatre I’ve held a special contempt for the contrivances of these flicks. You have to suspend your disbelief like whoa to trust that various characters would keep wielding a camera and talking to it through the challenges of the plot. As a result, a good story is frequently sacrificed to the lame cinematic device.

Also, there’s the shaky camera making you want to barf.

Lower on my list of trope no-nos – but still ranked – are superhero origin stories. Few superheros have origins so epic they should take an entire movie to tell. Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, The Fantastic Four – these are heroes whose origins have been shown in a few frames of cartoon theme songs. Do they really merit entire movies to explain? Rather than reimagine an origin for the umpteenth iteration across all media, why not show us a unique portrayal of heroism that only your movie can achieve?

Chronicle is a found footage superhero origin story, and I loved it despite myself and my list of loathed tropes. Like, raving on Twitter about it before it was even over loved it. E loved it, too. It hit a random rental grand slam in our house.

Let’s just say that the movie does not waste Dane DeHaan’s resemblance to Mark Hamill. Honestly, it gives the movie a bit of extra resonance.

Now, how to explain the joy of this flick without giving away all of its prickly twists?

Chronicle‘s excuse for being found footage starts out having nothing to do with its overarching plot. Andrew is a peculiar loner (and dead ringer for Luke Skywalker) with few interests, a dying mother, and an abusive father. He picks up a camera one morning and begins documenting his life – ostensibly to catch his dad’s abuse on camera, but secretly to analyze his day to find some meaning in life.

He doesn’t manage to do either. What he does is capture an inexplicable event and its aftermath on camera. Suddenly, he is recording a historic breakthrough in human potential – partly just to document it, but still to find some meaning in life.

The breakthrough provides meaning, but only to a point. Like a shiny new toy that eventually becomes a part of your daily routine, having a special power changes your entire world except for things like friendships, financial and physical well-being, and the general circumstance of your life … which is to say, it doesn’t really change your life at all until you start wielding it as a tool.

This realization is crucial to any good origin story – yes, you have great power, but what sort of responsibility will you take on along with it? The kids in this movie are no Clark Kent, Peter Parker or Bruce Wayne – they are typical, modern, bored suburbanites. Their first instinct is not to make the world a better place. Or, more accurately, it is only to make their own worlds a better place, and only in the most superficial and temporary ways.

This is a bit spoilerific, but they made it a poster, so here it is

A chain of dumb teenage decisions leads to ever increasing conflicts until the movie reaches straight up Matrix-level heights of insane Superman-inspired tussles, except it wields them more smartly than either franchise ever has. A protracted fight scene at the end is effectively the best superhero blowout I’ve ever seen short of The Avengers. Low budget effects work lends the film a visceral, tangible heft.

So, Chronicle sticks the landing on the origin story. What about the found footage?

First, it’s not all that shaky. Second, there comes a point in the story where the main characters stop being interested or capable of shooting video of themselves, but by that point the filmmakers have built up several devices to allow us to believably track their story. The transition from intentional to unintentional recording barely registers. The way they record a particularly tense mid-air confrontation is ingenious both in concept and execution.

In the end, Chronicle is a solid indie super flick that explores what it would mean to have powers in the real world, where not every superhero is infallibly noble.

Would Clark Kent really decide to be a clumsy, mild-mannered reporter by day? Would Peter Parker so quickly shrug off the death of his uncle and be a superhero every night, even while trying to pass his classes and keep Aunt May’s house out of foreclosure?

Chronicle says: maybe. You’ll have to watch to understand why

(Thanks to Alex for recommending this one!)

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#MusicMonday: “Live and Die” – The Avett Brothers

Monday, August 20, 2012

I don’t like listening to music on the radio.

That is a generalization. The more specific version is that I have all of the good song that the radio plays on my iPod already sans the lemons and commercials, so why bother? It’s not as if DJs are any more useful than the random function these days.

I make an occasional exception for Philadelphia’s Radio 104.5, because they are an unusual station. They’re alt-rock, but they’re the first station in Philly I heard playing “Fuck You,” and they actually debuted “Rolling in the Deep” to me last year – and, you’ve got to be pretty up on your new releases to get the drop on me hearing an awesome song like that.

Essentially, 104.5 is more alternative than it is rock. Yes, they play their share of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Foo Fighters, but they’re also playing bands fronted by women, and acoustic stuff, and obscure artists not getting play across the country – because Philly likes all of that.

Case and point: a few weeks ago this song came on and immediately became my #1 “I Wish I Wrote That” of 2012. Behold, “Live and Die,” by the Avett Brothers.

I have been vaguely aware of the Avett Brothers, but not especially a fan. Whoa, boy, has that changed.

A few thoughts:

1. Wow, how did this get on the radio? This is like… Folk/Americana music. But not. It’s a pop song played in the Folk/Americana style.

2. He has this awesome squareness to his voice. Like, I highly doubt it is auto-tuned (but, who knows), yet listen to the wonderful control of the descending melody on “I want to love you and mo-oh-oh-ore.” Such perfection.

3. Wow, this kind of sounds like how I want the new Arcati Crisis record to sound.

4. There is nothing wrong with writing a treacly sweet love song. They’re catchy. People like them.

That last one is mostly directed at me.

“Live and Die” is from The Avett Brothers’ forthcoming LP The Carpenter, out on September 11th.

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Does the past matter after a reboot?

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

To be fair, I don’t know if any of us really wanted to see a fourth film of Maguire’s puffy prematurely-balding version of Peter Parker.

We are living in the age of the reboot.

Last week Amazing Spider-Man relaunched the webhead’s cinematic universe while the body of the old Tobey Maguire series was still warm. There’s a new Dallas series on TV. Sherlock Holmes revisionist history movies are being released alongside a present-day version of the detective on BBC TV.

So do those older, original versions matter?

Alternate Future History

Think about your favorite TV show or series of books. It’s a serialized, ongoing story that builds with every installment and references its past. You love it. You watch every episode and buy every volume. You are a super-fan.

What if there was some prior series with the same characters and concepts, but it was not a part of the current story you love? Would you buy it? This is increasingly common in our age of reboots. If you loved the new JJ Abrams Star Trek movie – which departs from the traditional Trek timeline post-Enterprise- are the other TV series and films automatically a must-watch? What about past Spider-Man movies, original Dallas, Sherlock Holmes books, Charlie’s Angels, G.I. Joe, Inspector Gadget, or Battlestar Galactica?

To me, Garfield is the perfect embodiment of Peter Parker – thin, gangly, awkward, and genuine.

Probably not. All those past series are just an alternate reality to the present ones. You don’t need to watch both.

Case Study: DC’s Crisis of Collected Editions

DC Comics  is one year into their successful line-wide New 52 reboot. Now they’re faced with a major crisis: they have a huge back catalog of trade paperbacks and hardcovers that might not matter.

DC’s rich history of iconic characters stretches back to 1938. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman – these heroes emerged as pure archetypes and over many decades evolved into the rounder, more dynamic characters they are today. There are many hundreds of older issues of their exploits available to reprint and press into the hands of eager young fans of today.

Action Comics #1, 1938

Except, today’s characters are not the same people – and I don’t just mean their personalities. DC’s Crisis On Infinite Earths rebooted everyone back in 1984, making post-84 books the equivalent of new-Trek. Some of the characters beneath the masks of Flash and Green Lantern weren’t even the same as before! Then, after many years of tweaking, DC rebooted again last fall – creating a new-new-Trek.

What wasn’t immediately evident from those #1 issues was that some characters survived more intact than others. Batman’s corner of the DC Universe? Seemingly mostly the same, even if Bruce is younger than before. Superman? Origin retold from scratch, parents now dead, never in a relationship with Lois. Wonder Woman? Major changes in the Amazonian status quo, right down to her parentage.

Which brings me to my titular question: do DC Comics Collections matter? Yes, there are the Watchmens and the Killing Jokes, the indisputable classics of the comics medium that will move units regardless of if their stories still count for anything.

But what about DC Archives, their premium hardcover reprints of Golden and Silver Age comics? What about Wonder Woman #205? Action Comics #527? The 70s Green Arrow / Green Lantern series?

Action Comics #1, 2011

None of it counts in continuity, so does it matter anymore? These classic stories have little to nothing to do with the current state of my favorite heroine. They aren’t all prohibitive classics. So, is there any point in reprinting them?

(Marvel doesn’t have this problem. Aside from some isolated soft reboots of certain characters, everything still counts, all the way back to the 40s. Every issue of X-Men is acknowledged and in continuity.)

Does the alternate past matter? You decide.

I want to know what you think. Do older stories still have a place post-reboot? If you loved JJ Abrams’s Star Trek did you immediately jump back to rewatch the original series?

And, on our case study: Should DC even bother to reprint non-seminal stories of characters other than Batman if they don’t matter in current continuity?

What do you think?

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#MusicMonday: “Anything We Want” – Fiona Apple

Monday, July 9, 2012

Fiona at SXSW this spring.

It was 1999, my freshman year of college, when Fiona Apple’s When The Pawn…dropped.

I don’t know if I would have called myself a fan of Apple’s at that time. I had picked up her first album in Junior year of high school thanks to the recommendation of my computer programming teacher, and saw her twice on the tour behind it.

Though I grew to love Tidal over time, it was always a little sleepy for me at the time. I loved “Sleep to Dream” from the start, plus “Criminal” and the thrumming “Carrion,” but on the whole it was subtle for my teenage years. So I can’t tell you exactly why I picked up When the Pawn… If only I had started a blog a year earlier!

What I can tell you is that I thought – and still think – that the LP is a work of utter genius. Every song is an incredible feat of songwriting. Fiona’s voice is throaty and lush. All of the arrangements are imaginative without being over-bearing. It is a five-star effort that I still listen to front to back almost once a month.

I followed all the Extraordinary Machine drama and, as you may recall, I didn’t love the finished product. I did still love the songwriting. It was another all-genius every-time effort. That’s not easy to do twice in a row, especially on your second and third releases!

I was notably cooler in my zeal when Apple’s The Idler Wheel… was announced earlier this year. Sure, new Fiona Apple record – great! But who knows if she could keep up the genius streak or find the right sound for her songs.


(Yes, I know, advertisement, but this performance is so amazing, it’s worth it. If you’re seriously opposed, here’s another great performance on YouTube.)

I don’t know that she achieved either, but she made an arresting, challenging work of art in the process, and she is delivering similarly arresting and somewhat terrifying live shows in support of it. At the Tower Theatre Apple looked like she might shake herself right off the stage, or simply disintegrate where she stands from the sheer intensity of it all. (She also sounded haggard, which is concerning, since we’re still early into her tour, but she sounds better on the video, just a week prior.)

While many are fixated on single “Every Single Night,” I thing early leak “Anything We Want” is the pièce de résistance on this record. It’s the one song where the minimalist pounding-on-things style of found-sound production definitely doesn’t detract from a song that clearly has some intricacies built in.

Also, the lyrics are quite genius – a story of seduction spanning time and space. Witness this clever device.

first verse
My cheeks were reflecting the longest wavelength
My fan was folded up and grazing my forehead
And I kept touching my neck to guide your eye to where
I wanted you to kiss me when we find some time alone

last verse
Let’s pretend we’re eight years old playin’ hooky
I draw on the wall and you can play UFC rookie
Then we’ll grow up, take our clothes off and you remind me that
I wanted you to kiss me when we find some time alone

That’s just stunning. The very oblique seduction in the first verse is resolved by very adult tryst in the final one. Yet, in the final verse she contrasts that lust with pretending that she’s eight years old. Kids kiss, and grown-ups take their clothes off. Is the “let’s pretend” a remembrance of her own youth with a now adult lover – a flashback to more innocent flirtations? Or, should we read the “Let’s pretend… then we’ll grow up” differently – that they are so effortless and comfortable with each other that they regress to their childhood selves and grow forward in the room together, until they are adult enough that he reminds her where she wanted to be kissed hours or days before, since forgotten?

Stunning. The turn of the lyrics keeps me rapt every single time I listen to it.

I want to believe Fiona Apple is healthy and happy at the moment - a recent giggling and quite normal appearance on Jimmy Fallon supports the theory. If she keeps laughing and living and releasing strong work, I’d say it was one of the best concerts I’ve seen in my life, and The Idler Wheel… is a brave experiment by a singer with a still-unbroken streak of excellence – even if it’s never the excellent we expect from her.

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Crushing On: Smart Girls at the Party

Saturday, July 7, 2012

E and I joke that in our relationship she contributes most of the food discovery, while I chip in most of the media. She finds fresh foods, new snacks, and recipes, while I unearth new bands, programs, and news.

Lately we have slightly flipped the script, with me signing up for a CSA and E getting more connected with the women in tech movement. Which is how I walked downstairs the other day to find her watching this:


(If you can’t see the embed, you can watch the episode elsewhere.)

I sat down. I laughed and cried. I was delighted.

That’s an episode of Smart Girls at the Party, an unusual and awesome internet talk-show hosted by Amy Poehler of SNL and Parks and Rec. The show’s mission statement is “Extraordinary individuals changing the world by being themselves.”

What that boils down to is Amy Poehler interviewing young women who are trying and succeeding at anything and everything they want to do.

“We wanted to represent real female friends and celebrate that stage of life where you write down what you want to be when you get older, before too many people tell you no,” Poehler said. “And we poke fun at the talk-show format a little bit, taking very silly things very seriously. This is like ‘Charlie Rose’ for a younger audience.”

…”We wanted something to feel bite-sized and positive and I do think that there’s some lack of celebration of the unique, original girl,” Poehler told the Daily News. “So in some ways, it was a response to that. But, honestly, we really wanted to do a talk show that had a dance party at the end.”

I am not a fanatic about Poehler, but here her typical deadpan delivery makes for hilariously honest interactions with the wide age-group of her guests. She never condescends or jokes at their expense. Actually, she builds them up as characters and experts by interviewing them from a place of delighted naivete.

Despite being a major feminist, I’m always unsure when it comes to girl-centric programming – whether that’s curricular or in media. On one hand, I know girls need to get away from the shadow and influence of boys in educational and social settings so they can grow up with equal footing. On the other, girls-only can be a ghetto, and it can serve not only to over-shelter girls but also exclude the inquisitive, equality-minded boys that form the other half of a equal-opportunity world.

It’s a tough line to tread, and I feel like Smart Girls at the Party really gets it right. It’s a show I would share with girls or boys, and I’m sure they would both find it equally delightful – it just happens to feature the empowered young women who will change the world tomorrow by being themselves today.

Best of all, it’s a reminder that smart girls at the party are often the coolest ones in the room.

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Marvel says “NO” to reboot, launches new Marvel NOW! titles this fall – UPDATED

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

News of Marvel’s post-Avengers vs. X-Men plans has leaked, and it’s everything a fan could hope for – major creator changes, new titles, and an intact sense of Marvel’s over seven decades of superhero continuity!

A sneak peak at the future of Marvel from the pen of Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada.

How are they doing it? With Marvel NOW! – a relaunch of one new title a week for five months – 22 new books to stand along some long-running favorites. The official news breaks later today on EW.com, but it hit the web last night.

  • Avengers, written twice monthly by Jonathan Hickman
  • Uncanny Avengers, written by by Rick Remender with art by John Cassady!
  • X-Men, written by Brian M. Bendis

There are other rumored changeovers not covered by EW – namely, Bendis on Guardians of the Galaxy, Frank Cho on Wolverine, Ed McGuinness on Nova, Matt Fraction on Fantastic Four, plus Uncanny X-Men writer Kieron Gillen talking the helm of Iron Man. Plus, already-announced changes like James Asmus on Gambit, and Kelly Sue DeConnick on Captain Marvel starring Carol Danvers.

That’s just 10 of a rumored 22 titles!

What does that mean for readers? Let’s take a look.

Avengers by Jonathan Hickman

Marvel currently runs five Avengers titles separated by blurry lines, and it sounds like some of them will end this fall to make way for this twice-monthly monster.

Hickman is the Marvel architect that reinvented Fantastic Four as a smash hit with a story that spanned 50+ issues and more than quintupled the core cast, but still resolved into several brief, funny arcs. He’s also the author and designer of some mind-bending creator-owned work like Nightly News and Pax Romana. 

Now he’s unleashed on one of Marvel’s two big teams, with reportedly 18 characters in a mix of standalone adventures and cosmic smashes. Plus, his one potential weakness – a slowly unfolding meta-story – will be aided by an accelerated ship schedule – already a success on The Amazing Spider-Man.

This is the Avengers everybody wants to be reading after the movie, and it marks an even bigger cast and more prominent role for Hickman, who has yet to misfire. It’s going to be awesome.

Uncanny Avengers by Rick Remender

Remender’s Uncanny X-Force has been a hit since day one, especially because it focuses equally on its cast instead of only featuring Wolverine.

Holy total status quo change, Batman! While The Avengers have had their share of mutant members, Wolverine is the only full-time X-Man to stay with the team for any length.

Now Remender is getting all sorts of X into the Avengers, bringing them X-Men’s traditional adjective along with a team that reportedly boasts Wolverine, fan-favorite Rogue, and First Class star Havok alongside Captain America and Thor.

No one is better for this job than Remender. After bubbling under on a solid run on Punisher he exploded on Uncanny X-Force, a stunningly grim and hilarious take on Wolverine’s secret execution squad. It sent readers into endless fangasms when its first year concluded with the epic Dark Angel Saga. Now Remender in the saddle of what will unarguably be Marvel’s flagship title, with all of the star power of the Marvel Universe at its disposal.

In late-breaking news, art star John Cassaday of Planetary and Astonishing X-Men will be joining Remender, at least for the first arc.

Says Remender:  “In 1943, Arnim Zola, who was this bio-fanatic engineer, recorded the Red Skull’s consciousness, and set it to wake up 70 years later. So the Red Skull [in Uncanny] is right out of 1943-44. Prime Nazi scumbag. In his mind, he’s taking that vitriol and hate and Nazi horror and methodology, and pointing it at the mutant species.”

For everyone who argued if the Avengers or the X-Men was Marvel’s Justice League, here’s the answer: it’s both. This is about as huge as a single Marvel comic can be, both in characters and creators.

All New X-Men by Brian Bendis

Fans both love and loathe Avengers impresario Bendis, who has steered the line for nearly a decade. He’s introduced a consistency and gravitas to the once meandering Avengers, bringing them to prominence and expanding a single book to a line of five. He also has steered Marvel’s snappy Ultimate Spider-Man title since day one. But he’s a slow, decompressed storyteller who relies on a lot of talking heads and domestic scenes, and he uproots long-running plot threads for his own plans.

The community buzzed with heartbreaking rumors that he would be wresting control of the entire X-line from beloved authors like Remender, Gillen, and Aaron, but this move is a total left-turn from there! Bendis gets a single X-book, with a time-displaced team of the original five X-Men made popular in every form of media – Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Angel, and Jean Grey!

This is the best possible weapon for Bendis – fan favorite characters in a new context that’s not a side-universe. It lets him tell stories fans love without the interference they loathe.

Marvel is shaking up its existing architects, with four of them shuffling titles and Rick Remender seemingly replacing Ed Brubaker.

With Avengers vs. X-Men involving the reality-bending Phoenix Force fans have feared the worst for the post-event landscape; fans would riot if Marvel conducted a DC New 52 style full-line reboot. However, if this is the tone the soft relaunch of Marvel will be taking, it looks like readers will have plenty to celebrate.

Marvel’s development over the past few years has been steered by five major authors – Marvel Architects. Brian Michael Bendis on the entire Avengers line; Matt Fraction on Iron Man, Uncanny X-Men, Thor, and The Defenders; Jonathan Hickman’s ground-breaking run on Fantastic Four and cult Secret Warriors; Jason Aaron on Wolverine and his integration into X-Men, and Ed Brubaker on all things Captain America.

It looks like Brubaker is stepping down from his Architecture role, and Remender is stepping up! Meanwhile, a new class of fan favorites like Kieron Gillen, Ed McGuinness, Christoph Gage, and James Asmus has been racking up excellent runs and major sales. If Remender’s move to Uncanny Avengers is any indication it looks like this under-bill of writers is about to step into the spotlight.

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#MusicMonday: “The Wicker Man” – Iron Maiden

Monday, July 2, 2012

Yesterday I learned to play an Iron Maiden song.

Certain artists and bands are proceeded by so much accumulated conversation and so many cultural references that I assume I’ve heard their music at some prior point without actually knowing anything about what they sound like.

That’s always been the case for me with bands that are generationally a little before my time. I’m sure the same holds true for you with a certain handful of artists. If you’re my age, you might not be able to hum a Rush song, but you certainly know them by reputation. Same for Kate Bush. If you’re older or younger the list will be different, but the sensation will be the same. Niche artists with one or two major hits, there’s no convenient way into their catalogs on the radio, so you hear the version you’ve assumed in your head, maybe reinforced by that one greatest hit.

This covers a lot of early metal for me. Like, I know my requisite share of Black Sabbath and AC/DC songs, but that’s about it. They’re all a long parade of fantastical album covers and t-shirts worn by Wayne and Garth or Beavis and Butthead,

Yesterday, at our first duo rehearsal in over a year, Gina casually announced, “There’s this great Iron Maiden song we should cover.”

I grinned and nodded. If you know Gina or have ever listened to Arcati Crisis, you’d understand that sort of thing is a little out of our wheelhouse. Yet, I bring as many crazy ideas to the band as Gina, and the few of them that work turn into us covering “Love Game” or other similarly entertaining insanity.

Still, my interest was piqued, and I rarely turn down a musical challene, so we marched over to my mixing computer and loaded up “The Wicker Man” by Iron Maiden.

That’s not metal. At least, not the obnoxiously loud, Metallica-adjacent metal I was expecting from Iron Maiden (and, Metallic is a band I actually know). Despite being from 2000 – a time when there are a hundred different genres of metal ranging from Cookie Monster growling to soaring counter-tenors – the song was more like punk in its supreme simplicity, aside from the solo. The guitars weren’t even that loud. And the singing was incredible – ringing and dressed in multiple layers of harmony.

More or less a perfect Arcati Crisis cover tune. I played it again.

“It’s just that riff,” Gina said, indicating my reference monitors as the yoyoing chorus riff began.

“That’s not so hard,” I vowed. I picked up my twelve-string and began to work it out as Gina sang the melody above me. The song transitioned into the second verse, and I kept playing along. “It mostly sits on the root.”

I played the rhythmic Em, sliding down to pick up the C underneath it. Gina nodded and mirrored my changes on her guitar. “Right, but it doesn’t really resolve D, it has a G in bass.”

I tried it, and she was right. “Makes sense, there’s a D at the top of the next progression anyway. Hey, I think this is low enough for me to sing.” I sang through it tentatively and Gina jumped up to harmony, our voices ringing out through the room until we arrived at another chorus. “Okay, well, I can’t sing that.”

“No, wait, there’s an underneath part, give me a second.” These things really do take just a second with Gina, who is a living harmony jukebox. “Here it is, YOUR TIME WILL COME! YOUR TIME WILL COME!” I sang it back. “No, sit on the low note the first time, it only goes up on the second lines.”

The second chorus ended and we were into the extended intstrumental, with its epic guitar solo. I looked up at Gina standing over my desk. “You’re going to play the solo.”

She smirked back at me.

And that is how I got to know Iron Maiden, and how Arcati Crisis learns a cover song.

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Happy Joss Whedon Day

Thursday, May 3, 2012

From GQ, illustrated by Cliff Chiang

Marvel’s The Avengers opens tonight in the US, and by all critic and audience accounts (having opened abroad last week) it is one of the most enjoyable comic book movies ever made.

That comes as no surprise to me – it was written and directed by Joss Whedon.

For all of you about to say, “Oh, I love Joss Whedon!” please allow me to share my Whedon Credibility, which will trump all of y’alls’:

I made my father take me to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the movie theatre when I was ten years old, because I loved vampires. Then, in 1997 when I saw that Buffy would be a mid-season replacement in TV Guide I saved the issue and checked the WB’s schedule religiously each week until the show appeared. I never missed an episode until I left for college.

As one of the 1% of Joss’s oldest fans, I am incredibly happy he is about to become the director of one of the top five highest-grossing debut weekend films of all time. He deserves it. He is a freaking genius, and it would benefit the entire world if he was given enough respect, money, and autonomy to make whatever art he wants to make whenever he wants to make it for the next several decades.

There is no amount of over-exposed he can get that will annoy me. I will always love him, even though I stormed out of the theatre when we saw Serenity screaming that I would never watch anything of his ever again.

He also gives outstanding interview, and the first-ever big screen comic book crossover movie is yielding what is sure to be the biggest haul of Whedon sit-downs in the entire past and future of this timeline.

Behold:

GQ: I ask him if there’s some validation to getting The Avengers, at long last—if he felt like his early work had opened up a door that, until now, he himself never got to walk through.

“That’s a really beautiful thing to say,” he says, and pauses for a second, stares at his lap, processing. “I’m kind of a little bit—I, a little bit, feel that way. I didn’t, really, until you said it, but now I totally do.”
…
So he goes in and pitches [his pre-Nolan vision for Batman]. He’s on fire, practically shaking. “And the executive was looking at me like I was Agent Smith made of numbers. He wasn’t seeing me at all. And I was driving back to work, and I was like, ‘Why did I do that? Why did I get so invested in that Batman story? How much more evidence do I need that the machine doesn’t care about my vision? And I got back to work and got a phone call that Firefly was cancelled. And I was like, ‘It was a rhetorical question! It was not actually a request! Come on!’”

Next up…

Forbes: “The Dark Knight,” for me, has the same problem that every other “Batman” movie has. It’s not about Batman. I think Heath Ledger is just phenomenal and the character of the Joker is beautifully written. He has a particular philosophy that he carries throughout the movie. He has one of the best bad guy schemes. Bad guy schemes are actually very hard to come up with. I love his movie, but I always feel like Batman gets short shrift. In “Batman Begins,” the pathological, unbalanced, needy, scary person in the movie is Batman. That’s what every “Batman” movie should be.
…
I have one particular theme, and it ties in with what I was talking about with the corporations, and that’s helplessness. The empowerment of someone who’s helpless. And that has everything to do with how I feel about myself. Buffy was a pretty blond girl of whom nothing was expected, who didn’t try very hard at anything, and then suddenly became the most powerful person around — that theme, whether it’s empowerment or the discovery that one is powerless, that drives everything I do.

But, this one was most epic in length and scope…

Wired: I mean [Dollhouse is] potentially the most offensive show in the history of television. And to me it’s also the most pure feminist and empowering statement I ever made. It’s somebody building themselves from nothing. As has been told in legend and is actually true, I thought of it because I was having lunch with [Dollhouse star] Eliza [Dushku], and she was talking about what everybody expected from her. “Well, these people say I should be this, and these people say I should be that.” And I was like, oh, click, that’s the show. And I know what the name is. And when I know the name, that’s usually a bad sign. I literally went home and said to my wife, “Honey, I accidentally created a Fox show.”

And one of the things that we talked about at that lunch, one of the things that was the mainstay of the show, was sex. It was about how people relate to each other sexually, what they want from each other sexually, what they want from each other romantically, how these two things are interlinked and how they’re separate. The show was on some level supposed to be a celebration of human perversion, because perversion, like obsession, is the thing that makes people passionate and interesting and worthy. And people who are nothing, like Echo and the other dolls, are learning to be someone. And part of learning to be someone is learning to be someone that nobody else wants to be. Eliza said, “I want to explore sexuality. Not just wear sexy outfits,” although she’s like, “I would like to do that too.”
…
It may be that I’m not as invested. But I guess the thing that I want to say about fandom is that it’s the closest thing to religion there is that isn’t actually religion. The love of something and what it’s trying to accomplish or mean are usually very separate. The people who are like, “Well you can’t do it. That staircase was seven steps, not five.” They totally missed the point of this. When I first met the comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis, we were talking about comics and he told me his favorite letter was, “Daredevil would never say that. Die. Die. Why can’t you just die?”

(Wired: Well, it makes a good point.)

And Bendis can’t, by the way. Sunlight, stake through the heart, beheading, he won’t die. He’s actually very powerful.

Happy Joss Whedon Day!

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#MusicMonday: “Gravel” – Ani DiFranco

Monday, April 9, 2012

Ani DiFranco’s “Gravel” burst from my iPod headphones as I left the house this morning and transported me back to another place and time in my life.

It was 1997, and I was a new Ani DiFranco fan. After borrowing her tapes from my friends Andrea and Nava (yes: TAPES) I snapped up two of her remarkable trio of perfect LPs, Out of Range and Dilate, and waited with bated breath for April 22nd. That was when her new, live, double-CD Living in Clip would be released.

Living in Clip contained a bevy of older songs that were new to me, but one that no one had ever heard before outside of concerts: “Gravel.” It was the third track.


(This live performance is from slightly after the LiC version, but still pretty close in feel.)

While I loved the entire double-CD, it was “Gravel” that I played again and again in wonder. This was long before YouTube and prior to Ani’s major media breakthrough with Little Plastic Castle, so I had never seen a video of her playing guitar. I was already fascinated by the sound of her songs like “Out of Range” and “Shameless.”

How did she make those sounds? I had plenty of friends who played guitar, but none of them made the sounds that came out of “Gravel.” The guitar hopped and skipped, and sometimes barked. How did she do it?

(I would learn her rapid guitar attack emerged from five Nailene brand nails duct-taped to her fingers.)

I played that record into the ground in 1997 – played it so much that both my mother and I had it memorized from front to back. We saw Ani together for the first time that summer, sitting in the rafters of The Mann Music Center, watching her open for Bob Dylan.

“Gravel” also had a more immediate effect. Less than six weeks after I first heard it I begged my mother to buy me an acoustic guitar. I think she was surprised by my sudden vehemence – while I certainly asked for things, they were usually music or books. I didn’t frequently beg for anything, aside from the ability to get online – and I quickly became a whiz at that.

She relented and bought me a guitar. Who knows what she thought I would do with it, but the night we brought it home I learned to play “Dilate” from a guitar tab (a what?), and started to slowly decipher the tab for “Gravel.” By the end of the summer I could play the song all the way through.

That’s where “Gravel” took my brain this morning – fifteen years ago, almost to the week. Half my life – a half completely changed because of my fascination with this single, amazing song.

Thank you, Mr. DiFranco.

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