Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

selfy-stuff

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.

Backfilled

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I’ve been crap about blogging live for the past few weeks. Too much life, not enough to say.

Or so I thought.

I kept jotting down thoughts as I lived, because stuff kept happening. It seemed pointless at the time – journaling that would never see the light of day. However, starting from the Philebrity party on Thursday I felt like a theme was beginning to emerge. I went back to straighten things out and edit a bit, and it turns out I had something to say that I want represented on CK after all.

The result is that I’m backfilling all the non-blog blogging I’ve done since the first of this month. It’s blogging via hindsight, having seen the threads of my story woven neatly together over the weekend.

In the future I have to post as life happens and trust that a story is being written.

Adventures in Adulthood

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The past ten days have been an adventure – from the unreality of the Imogen Heap and Lady Gaga concerts to the front seat of our car parked in Chinatown a few hours ago.

It felt right to end it sitting on a bedroom floor with E, her sister with her delightful boyfriend, and appearances of an adrenaline-filled little brother and an exhausted dad, both visiting from the cast party downstairs.

I can find a myriad of reasons to be unhappy. I’ll grant that I used to be better at it, but growing up and getting things that you’ve always wanted for yourself takes the edge off. Still, even all married and with a fulfilling job and being a part time rock star I can make myself miserable. Just ask the me of two Monday’s ago.

I say that by way of contrast: when I’m happy, I know it. I clap my hands. I laugh. I love my hair. I say delirious things that get tweeted if Britt or Amanda are anywhere near me. I break out into Rent in the middle of E’s dad’s foyer, high school girls tittering as they walk past.

Those kids sealed the deal for me. I turned around to talk to E and between us was one of the leadz from the play – imperial and larger than life last night, but tiny, young, and fragile between us. I finally got to tell her how awesome she was. She grinned, thanked me, and then yelled, “Steeeeeeeve, where do I get water in your house?”

She was oblivious, moving through space effortlessly just like she did on stage last night. I never knew how to do that as a teenager. If I was happy, it was fleeting, and if I moved through space effortlessly it was because I forgot myself.

I could not have possibly pictured this life as a teenager, sitting on the floor with a partner and siblings I love, laughing louder than the combined forty teenagers downstairs.

Next time I’m feeling grumpy, awful, unhappy, hateful … just remind me about these ten days.