Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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News by appointment, or news right now?

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Do you get your news by appointment, or do you get your news whenever you want it?

It’s one of the big questions behind the rise of social media as a news source as well as in the transformation of journalism from pull to push.

Yesterday I encountered a useful real-world example.

In a meeting at work I mentioned I would follow-up on a task Wednesday, and I was met with a collective giggle. Didn’t I know there was another big snow storm coming Tuesday night? It made for a perfect opportunity to lament my not owning a tv and abstaining from local newscasts. Silly me, for eschewing appointment news!

Except, is that why I didn’t know about the storm?

Not really. I went to bed early the night before, and hadn’t checked my Twitter or RSS feeds when I awoke. My phone’s weather widget wasn’t on. Sure enough, when I returned to my desk and checked, all were abuzz.

The news was delivered to me as soon as I engaged my social networks – off-axis from the typical news appointment of 11pm or 6am. Why would I make an appointment to watch television or read a newspaper when I could get the news when it was convenient for me?

In this instance I looked behind. But, did my co-workers know that Representative Murtha had just passed away? That appeared on my feed midday – but they would wait to make a news appointment to hear about it.

Similarly, I’ve heard about hyper-local news midday – like construction accidents on the next block – when co-workers would have had to search the bowels of a network site for the story. Or, wait for their nightly news appointment.

Maybe it’s funny to hear this from a journalism major, but I reject appointment news – local newscasts with watered-down reporting and over-hyped weather are dead to me. I even reject having to visit a news website to look for relevant stories. I’ve stopped making time in my life for that.

If news is relevant to me it will get filtered to me when it’s relevant.

What about you? Do you consume local news differently than you used to? If there was major breaking news affecting your zip code, where would you hear it first?

Comfort Films

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I’ve been watching Star Wars for days.

Lest you wonder, “You mean, instead of going to work?,” allow me to explain: I’m home sick for the second day in the row – a relative rarity for me.

I’ll spare you the details and state simply that I’ve been relatively couchbound for over forty-eight hours, aside from when the constant heavy knocking on doors up and down my block (which I have begun to attribute to daytime drug deals), drove me to sloth up to the bed (there only having to contend with barking dogs).

My non-sleeping couch time has been spent watching Star Wars: A New Hope. Not the ooky remastered version. No. The original, unretouched theatrical cut that comes as a bonus in the box set.

I haven’t made it through it awake a single time, yet.

When I was home sick as a child – as sick as I have been this week – the Beta machine was my only comfort. On it my mother had amassed copies of every possible children’s show or movie shown on VHF, UHF, or HBO from 1981 forward. Muppet Movies, The Last Unicorn, Flight of Dragons, Here Comes the Grump, Neverending Story, Dark Crystal, and many more that I can’t remember at the moment.

And Star Wars

Being sick in college wasn’t the same. When you’re sick you just want something you like. You want comfortable clothes, comfort ford, and comfort films. I’ve seen hundreds of movies since then, but none really qualify (save for maybe Lord of the Rings – we did have a tape of The Hobbit, after all).

Having heard my stories of being home sick, E started buying me those movies on my first birthday when we were dating. We’ve continued to fill in the gaps over the years. Having just recently acquired the Star Wars Original Trilogy, all that remains outside of my grasp are the Muppet Movies.

I know this is ridiculous, but I don’t think I would have gotten better so quickly without Star Wars. It kept me couched and calm, intermittently napping – just like it did twenty years ago. Only now in my more mobile state am I interested in modern fare.

Do you have any comfort films?

Trolls Under the Bridge

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As I spend more time working on Social Media projects at work and at home, one of the most recurring topics is “Trolls.”

It’s a broad topic. Trolls can be anything from vociferous-but-reasonable dissenters to people with an agenda of annoyance and an axe to grind. Each species merits a different reaction.

The Air Force created a terrific Web Posting Response Assessment – effectively, a Troll Taxonomy Tool & Decision Tree – to aid in selecting a response. (Here is a PDF of a recent version, for your reference.)

It’s a great tool – it distinguishes between several layers of negative responses. There are true “Trolls” (negative purely for the sake of it), but also responders are who “Misguided” (negative based on incorrect info) and “Unhappy” (negative based on a corresponding negative experience).

This simple, one-page chart has been a sanity-saver on a few projects in 2009. It forced my teams to stop a cycle of second-guessing – evaluate, respond if-needed, and move on.

That’s why my thoughts went to the assessment last night, when I received a comment notification on one of my videos. The comment was to the effect of “this dude can’t hit a note.”

I tried to objectively place my responder in the tree. Clearly he had a negative experience listening to me. He’s also misguided, because I’m definitely hitting many notes quite well in the video, and his comment wasn’t subjective.

Ultimately, though, he’s just a garden-variety Troll – spreading negativity for some intangible reason it’s impossible to dispute. So, per the Air Force, I’ll monitor it, but won’t respond.

That’s the success of more than my crack Air Force training. Three or more years ago that sort of comment would cripple my confidence. I would probably apologize for his negative experience without ever assuming he was misguided. And I would stop playing the song, probably for months!

Yesterday, he just made me smile. These days I’m a lot bigger than one or ten trollish comments. I sound how I want to sound; if I didn’t, I would have never posted the video.

That’s the same confidence you must have in your brand to make good use of the Air Force tool. If you’re unsure of the product or service you’re offering, every dissent turns into a potentially reasonable complaint.

From there, it’s all apologies, and you’ll be overrun with Trolls.

Daily Demo: Icy Cold

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Here’s a brand new HD video of “Icy Cold” with beautiful hi-fi multi-track soundboard audio. It comes with a story.

Okay, story-time.

Ten years ago (less 24 days) I was a freshman in college, and I wrote a song called “Icy Cold.”

It was an odd one – very oblique lyrics in one of my more unusual alternate tunings (at the time) made it a challenge to sing and play. I left it off my 2000 demo CD Other Plans and, curiously, also did not consider it for my 2001 studio disc Relief. It remained bound to my apartment, where it factored in to a few of my favorite Trio recordings.

Around the same time I wrote “Icy Cold” – 86th in a rapidly-expanding list of songs – I decided that it was time for me to start playing shows.

Being rather ignorant as to what that entailed, I assumed that I would just phone up a local, mostly-acoustic venue where people I liked frequently played and explain that I wrote tons of awesome songs, and then they would invite me to play. (Later, after my initial flush of success, I could upgrade to playing the TLA or the Electric Factory).

The Tin Angel being the only local mostly-acoustic venue that I knew of at the time, I sussed out their booking information and rang them up.

That was the extent of my year-2000 booking experience at the Tin Angel. No follow-up. No booking. No flush of success.

To be fair, I would have been an utter disaster. I know some people so wonderful that their first ever show was at the Tin, but I was not that kind of wonderful in 2000. Sure, I had the awesome songs, but I could just barely sing, and I was playing a guitar that didn’t even especially stay in tune!

Over the course of the past ten years I’ve done a lot to rectify my singing and guitar-playing issues, and I’ve played in a lot of amazing Philly venues – including the Tin Angel, as part of a showcase with Arcati Crisis. Yet, I’ve never fulfilled that original goal of ten years ago – being featured solo on the bill at the Tin.

Well, that’s going to happen on Friday at 10:30 p.m., so when it came to choosing the first song to post in 2010 in this glorious new HD audio/video combo format it seemed natural to choose “Icy Cold” – especially given the slights it experienced in 2000 and 2001.

Plus, it’s really freaking cold out.

That’s my story.

PS: I owe the hugest possible shout-out to Tim Jahn for explaining Adobe Premiere Pro compression codecs to me via Twitter at the eleventh hour (literally) to make this beautiful video possible. Tim writes a blog of occasional, thought-provoking bulletins that I have been enjoying for months. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Apocalyptic Love Song – Arcati Crisis, Live @ Rehearsal

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It’s a new year!

Ten years ago at this moment I was a freshman in college with a totally new group of friends at my first adult dress-up party, about to experience my first kiss. And maybe die in the throes of Y2K.

Tonight I am home alone with my wife, and I shaved off my mustache., so I could give her a unscruffy New Year’s kiss.

There have only been two constants in my life that ten years. Music. And Gina.

“Apocalyptic Love Song” is about loving someone to the end of the world and beyond. I think it’s the best song anyone currently living in Philadelphia has written. Possibly the Eastern Seaboard. And I will not rest until Gina wins a Grammy for it. Sometimes I am brought to tears while we’re playing it, moved by the power of Gina’s lyrics and performance.

Encompassing the two constants in my life, and addressing the unknown the always lies ahead, it seemed fitting to end our concert with it tonight.

The future makes me laugh, the future makes me cry
I can see it all in the reflective square of light shining in my eye
I see ripples. I see waves. I hear cries of despair.
And all I can think to do is go on breathing all this air
But I know that for a while the sun will continue to shine
Just as long as at some point you were standing here by my side

You can download a revelatory version of “Apocalyptic Love Song” from our most recent Live @ Rehearsal CD.

You can watch our entire web concert in sequence via our YouTube playlist.