Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

consume

very serious donuts

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It is almost ten in the morning, and I am eating a bacon donut.

Kat and Jeremy currently farm enough to support three or four families, but they have enough eggs to stock said three families, a small market, and a donut shop.

Conveniently, Kat works at a donut shop. It’s actually the nearest landmark to their house, which was convenient on Thursday when we had been driving for eight hours and discovered that state roads in Vermont don’t have a lot of clearly labeled cross streets.

If my biggest weak spot of culinary frivolity is ice cream, donuts are not too far behind. As a kid I would clench my entire body in genuflecting hope every time our car passed the Dunkin’ Donuts. I was under the impression that was the only source of donuts. Like, in the world.

Now, I know better – I know that homemade donuts are a different beast entirely. On certain Fridays my boss brings in a particular kind that – if I should be bold enough to eat a filled variety – causes me to lose my voice for over an hour.

They are serious donuts.

So, when Kat mentioned that she worked part time at (and supplied eggs to) the donut shop down the road, my Fouth of July plans solidified: I would spend the morning eating donuts, perhaps bookended by a tacit jog to and from the shop to give the illusion of offsetting the 1000+ calories of breakfast I’d be consuming.

Such is the story, and here I am at Trademark-Infringement Donuts. I don’t want to advertise the name, as they’ve been flying under the legal radar thus far. Let’s call them “Funkin’ Donuts.”

Here is today’s Funkin’ Donuts menu:

  • Cinnamon Sugar
  • Honey Glaze
  • Maple Caramel
  • Plum Homer *
  • Beet Homer *
  • Chocolate
  • Maple-Bacon
  • Lemon-Poppyseed
  • Orange Sourcream
  • Cake

    * Homer donuts are crafted to look as similar to the legendary Simpson’s donut as possible. The Beet Homer has beet icing. I am eating it presently. It’s great.

    However, it is the Maple-Bacon donut that approaches the donut hall-of-fame. It is a plain, circular donut with a middle hole, iced liberally with light-brown maple icing, and sprinkled with bacon sprinkles from local pigs.

    My meat-avoidance is pretty specifically predicated on a distaste for pork, but when we’re talking about less than an ounce of bacon from a local pig probably well-cared-for enough that he had a name I can make a brief exception.

    And that exception was really, really good.

    I’m going to spend the rest of the morning celebrating America by seeing how many donuts I can eat in one day (previously: 10), talking to Kat about her neighbor’s diabetic cat, and plotting a concert I’m going to play in the donut shop when I come back in the fall.

    • 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.

    Play at playing with The Beatles. Or, just play with The Beatles.

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    The pair of surviving Beatles recently appeared at E3 to hype the impending The Beatles: Rock Band, out on September 9. It represents a remarkable milestone – mass licensing of Beatles songs to a third party, cooperation of all four Beatles estates on new intellectual property, release of new studio chatter from the band, and creating multi-tracked masters of songs originally recorded live in mono or stereo. (see the full fact sheet)

    In the game, you and your friends can take the Beatles from the Cavern Club days all the way to the rooftop in your own living room, not mention traipsing through their imagined acid trips. You’ll start out with 45 Beatles songs in-game, but many more will available as downloadable content – starting with the complete Abbey Road.

    Assuming you already have a plethora of plastic video game instruments lying around the house, the a la carte game will cost you $100. If you need all of the plastic instruments to go with it, you’ll be dropping $250 for the full kit.

    Seems like a bargain to play along with 45 of your favorite Beatles tunes, right?

    Not really. Because, if you have an actual instrument lying around the house, you can buy The Beatles: Complete Scores hardcover tome for half the price of the a la carte game and learn how to play the actual music to every single Beatles song.

    If you need an actual instrument to go with it, you can pick up a starter guitar or bass package plus the book for about $250 – yes, even including a replica Hoffner bass! (The scores plus drums will run you a bit more – $300-$500).

    Herein lies your dilemma. Do you want to have a primary experience with the music you love, or a secondary experience?

    If you’re a non-musician, you might argue, “I don’t really have a choice,” but I think you do.

    You might argue, “I don’t read music,” yet you’re willing to learn an arcane method of notation in Rock Band that’s not too different from reading guitar tab, which is included in the score book.

    You might argue, “I don’t have nimble fingers, a sense of pitch or rhythm, or a decent voice,” yet if you expect to surpass even easy mode on Rock Band you’ll need to hone some or all of those skills just as you would playing actual music. In fact, Rock Band is much less forgiving of mistakes with drumming and vocals than a jam with friends would be.

    You might argue, “I don’t have time to practice music enough for it to be worthwhile,” yet you have time to play Rock Band two or three hours a week. That same time would serve you equally well training on an actual instrument. You could probably learn how to play “I Want To Hold You Hand” on guitar in the same time it takes you to reach your first save point.

    Convinced yet?

    Other Rock Band titles offer the allure of collecting disparate, virtuosically-difficult music into a video game – much of which is impossible to track down as printed music. None of that is true this time around – the music comes from a single source, the virtuouosity is in the ease of playing, and it’s all collected in a single, relatively cheap book. It’s a completely level playing field for anyone – novice to expert.

    You can’t say that about any other Rock Band game or for any other artist in the history of music.

    Essentially, you have no argument to buy The Beatles: Rock Band other than perhaps, “I already know how to play all 213 originally released Beatles songs, and now I’m bored.”

    The game does have some redeeming features in the areas of drumming and singing – the two bits of Beatles that are the hardest to master on your own. Designers worked closely with Ringo to make the game a tutorial for his unique drumming style. Also, the game features a harmony training mode, which will allow you to voice any part in the band’s remarkable multi-part harmonies.

    Based on that, if you’re a Beatles-loving singer or drummer starting from scratch I can appreciate wanting to purchase the game for some guidance. If only the game also allowed you to plug in an actual midi-guitar in to test your chops against the recordings … then I’d buy it in an insant!

    Otherwise, if you’re a Beatles-lover who wants to experience playing their music yourself, my advice would be to actually play it yourself.

    whiling away the hours

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    (1) A few years ago I saw Malcolm Gladwell deliver a speech at the New Yorker Festival that is largely recapitulated in the second chapter of Outliers, called “The 10,000 Hour Rule.”

    In it, Gladwell draws our attention to a data point converged upon by countless studies of experts in a variety of fields. He says, “In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” He goes on to quote neurologist Daniel Levitin:

    In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. … It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

    Gladwell supports the rule using Mozart, Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and the Beatles as his examples. Not to say that their genius and success is purely a result of 10,000 hours of practice – the book as a whole explains other facets – just that it was an essential component of their expertise.

    .

    (2a) 10,000 hours is a long time.

    If as a child starting at age five you had piano lessons two times a week (an hour each) and also practiced an hour a day, you would clock nine hours a week. 468 hours a year. 4,680 hours a decade.

    If you kept that up until age 26 you’d finally have served your time.

    (2b) 10,000 hours can go by before you know it.

    Maybe you got into video games at age 11. You played them every night after homework and dinner, let’s say from 7:30 to 11:00 p.m. on most nights, plus extra on the weekend. That’s more than 25 hours a week. 1,300 plus a year.

    You’d be a master by the time you started college. Most kids are.

    (2c) Time is relative.

    .

    (3) In the car today Gina and I were singing in harmony to the amazing Hezekiah Jones album Hezekiah Says You’re A-OK, on the way to see his band split a bill with the equally fantastic Up the Chain.

    “You know, Gina,” I said, breaking from my lead vocal, “I’ve been thinking about this 10,000 hour thing. Not everyone’s an expert at something. I mean, what do most people spend 10,000 hours doing by the time they’re 25? Watching teevee, I suppose.”

    “More than likely,” she replied.

    “But, think about me. I watched a lot of television, sure. Mostly, though, I read until I was old enough to write, and then I wrote and read. That’s what I spent my 10k on.”

    (Perhaps she interjected, “Oh, I remember.”)

    “And, you know, is it any surprise that I’m good at communications? I’m not an expert, but no wonder it’s my calling. I spent my whole life practicing for it.”

    We sat and sang for a moment, contemplating that.

    “What about you?”

    Gina paused in her harmony. “Hmm, me?”

    “Yeah. What did you spend 10,000 hours doing?”

    “This. Listening to music. Singing harmony.”

    “Really your whole life, right? Your mother singing, your father playing guitar…”

    “Yeah, since I can remember.”

    “Right. So, no matter how much I rehearse, you’ll always have the edge. It’ll always come easier to you, until I reach that threshold.”

    “I suppose.”

    We paused as the song wound down.

    “What do you think Hezekiah spent 10,000 hours doing?”

    We thought on that for a few moments, and then sang together to “Albert Hash.”

    .

    (4) We’re not all Mozart. I might not ever be Hezekiah Jones. But, we’ve all spent 10,000 hours doing something other than sleeping, and hopefully other than watching television. Maybe something incidental that we do out of necessity or habit. Driving? Social-networking? Cleaning? Taking care of children?

    I’ve put in more than my share on communications – reading cereal boxes and trashy fantasy novels, writing stories at eight on my manual typewriter and almost nine years of blogs.

    I got an early start on 10,000 hours of being Gina’s best friend, which I keep padding. I’m really good at that. More recently I’ve attained well-in-excess of 10,000 hours of being in love with Elise.

    I hope eventually I’ll reach my 10,000th hour of serious focus on music. It’s a large piggy-bank of time to fill.

    What about you? What have you spent your life mastering, intentionally or unintentionally?

    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?