Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

kismet, or something

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There are some days that are just kismet, or something similarly serendipitous.

Last night was Filmstar rehearsal. I’m learning now that band rehearsals ebb and flow. For months you are learning new songs and battling new riffs, and then suddenly you realize you’ve arrived and want to work on something new.

I got there halfway through rehearsal last night, after powering through a particularly strong version of “Promise Me, Promise Me.” I think it is giving me arthritis, actually. The gradual decay of my aging husk aside, it was a good rehearsal. Good enough that I asked when we’d be learning another new song.

The space between rehearsal and bed is slim, if I want to possess even a modicum of sanity the next day. A few minutes prior to exhaustion overtaking me, I checked my blinking phone to discover we had the chance to play the Tin Angel the week of my birthday. I fired away some emails and nodded off, bedside light still on.

Today I woke up too early and thought, Oh, to hell with going back to sleep. I got to the office before anyone else and started my day in peace.

A few hours and several dozen emails into the now-broken peace, I noticed my phone blinking. It was David, who books local shows at the Tin; we were in for September 24th.

I didn’t have time to celebrate. Instead, I put out some fires, did crazy Batman-esque calisthenics with my personal trainer, and delivered a 90-minute long presentation complete with a little 5.5″ x 8.5″ instruction booklet I composed for the occasion.

(Actually, if you know me, that probably did constitute a celebration. Few things make me happier than crises, superheroes, print collateral, and public speaking.)

Eventually I wound up at home, after nearly missing my trolley stop as I nodded off to The Format crooning in my ear. E and I sat on the couch.

“Are you writing your anniversary post yet?”

“No.”

“Shouldn’t you?”

“I feel like playing guitar.”

Having long since given up on serving as a traffic cop to my creative whims, E noodled on her iPad while I strummed. I could tell that she could tell that I was working out something new. She stayed silent but set a curious eye on my over the edge of her iPad.

I hummed a little. I found where two different chord progressions connected. I picked a starting pitch.

I played the new song, rather coherently, with a few stops and starts to fit the uneven lyrics into the chords.

E has seen me birth many a song since we moved in together in 2004. The process doesn’t typical elicit a comment until I fish for one.

I played it again and she fixed me with a look over top of her iPad.

“New?”

“Yeah. Just now, actually.”

She waited, just long enough that I almost had to ask.

“It’s a good one.”

“Does it work?”

She laughed her little non-laugh that she laughs.

“Yeah. Really. Really.”

She gave a satisfied smirk. Later, she asked me, “Do you want to go out for water ice?”

I nodded back at her.

“Just let me play it once more.”

I played it twice.

I am exhausted in bed, again, with bleary eyes and sore muscles, but a new song and a belly full of water ice for my trouble.

I’ll take it.

Don’t you people watch disaster movies?

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I work on the thirty-eighth of forty five floors, and sometimes the floor shakes.

This is the reality of working in a high rise office building. There is not always a reason for it. There seems to be a certain square of carpet positioned half the office away from me that, when walked over with vigor, causes my chair to shake.

I’ve never quite discerned which square of carpet it is, but yesterday a little bit before 2pm I was ready to find it because clearly someone with a little bit of heft to them was jumping up and down right on top of it.

I stood up from my chair.

I kept shaking.

Plan B. Maybe I was having a white-out? I used to have them in high school when my diet consisted entirely of allergy pills and Altoids. The world begins to go white around the edges and you have the sensation you are shaking and try to correct it, but really you weren’t shaking in the first place, except the shaking correction turns into you anti-shaking.

It’s all very confusing. Except, yesterday I didn’t feel confused. Well, I was confused about the shaking, but it didn’t seem to be originating from my person. And I wasn’t seeing white.

Also, I had just eaten a really big lunch.

It was at this juncture that I picked up my phone and tweeted:

Um, did Philly just have an earthquake? Our building is shaking.

Here my cultivation theory kicked in. If life is like the movies, we’ve all seen the disaster movies – we all know what not to do.

I checked to make sure my enceinte cube neighbor was okay, picked up all of my things (people are always going back for their cell phone or laptop), and walked to the doorway to the fire tower stairway, where I continued tweeting. After all, one wall of my cube is solid reinforced glass windows. Not where you want to be in the event of an earthquake or alien attack.

I just watched Skyline. I know what’s up.

Camped out by the stairs it took one swipe through my Twitter stream to see the shaking was not localized to Philly. I noticed mentions from Syracuse and Arlington.

We all know the story from there.

There is a beauty in shared experiences on the internet. And, while a pretty big percentage of people might see a certain television show or comment on a political revolution a world away, nothing tops direct, personal experience with natural phenomenon. Twitter was abuzz for Snopocalypse and it’s been abuzz during our summer deluge of rain.

For an earthquake felt by the entire disaster-deprived northeastern seaboard, it was electrified.

I felt only slightly reassured once tweets identified the source and magnitude of the earthquake was in Virginia. What about aftershocks? Or, what if it was just a pre-tremor tremble presaging the big one?

Also, there was still the alien angle to consider.

Plus, I still had that pregnant co-worker. If this really go down like a real disaster movie my chances of survival as a gawky meta-aware white guy were ever lower with her in the cast.

I have seen 2012.

With our expectant friend safely making her way home our office belatedly made an announcement about our relative safety and encouraged us to do the same.

Everyone in the building ran for the elevators. It was practically an aftershock. Because you totally want to be packed into elevators with 3,000 of your closest friends right after an earthquake. That sounds awesome.

I proceded back to the fire stairs and walked down them. All thirty-eight flights. I emerged from the lobby just ahead of my co-workers who took the elevators.

Then I walked twenty-five blocks. Sure, I could have jumped right on the El near my building. But I thought of people. People on the El are incredible stupid and rude on any day of the week. In the aftermath of an earthquake with the entire city dismissed from work all at once?

I have seen War of the Worlds. I know how that turns out.

I had no interest in being underground with other human beings. I walked to 46th street and waited in beautiful sunlight for the El to carry me home.

Drum Engineering w/Filmstar

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As if the Philly Geek Awards weren’t enough excitement for one weekend, I woke up on Saturday morning to face the daunting task of setting up our dining room as a drumming room for recording Filmstar.

After shopping around to some fantastic local studios last fall we realized we weren’t quite ready to drop major cash on pro recording for our first EP. To make studio time worthwhile you need to be playing solid takes of songs, know what you want them to sound like, and understand what you want to add.

Our first pass at that preparation was the Live @ Rehearsal style recording sessions for The Desperate Times EP last winter. For that session we recorded the band live with scratch vocals, going back to recut lead and backing vocals (plus acoustic guitar) on top of our full band takes.

I outdid my prior bests in mixing the EP, but I was flummoxed by the limitations of our recording process. Particularly, it was impossible to stitch together the best parts of multiple takes because we hadn’t recorded to a click track.

Thus, the mission for our new double A-side single: record perfectly in-tempo, click-tracked drums, as many times as we could withstand. [Read more…] about Drum Engineering w/Filmstar

Crushing On: My Face, by Neutrogena

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It is a well-known fact that I am no stranger to wearing makeup.

In high school this took the form of lip gloss and body glitter. What can I say – I thought I was David Bowie and was obsessed with anything that could make me sparkle like a Spider From Mars.

My #1 Beauty Secret

This is not a post about body glitter. It’s a post about being a local rock star and a vain motherfucker who applies makeup in the men’s room of my office and does not care about any looks or comments I get because I am going to walk out of that bathroom way more gorgeous than I came in.

In fact, if you’ve seen me give a presentation or play a show in the past two years, you’ve seen me wear plenty of makeup and probably didn’t even know it.

I know I am not the only vain, presentation-delivering local rocker with an interest in this stuff, so I’m sharing my secrets with the masses.

A few years ago in a particular pique of angst about the inescapable genetic heritage of dark circles under my eyes, E handed me her Neutrogena 3-in-1 Concealer for Eyes.

Having not worn much makeup in the decade since I also gave up vinyl pants, I was a little reticent to try it. I became a quick convert. This is not heavy, greasy makeup. It’s light, it blends in with my skin tone, and it doesn’t bother my medicatably grumpy T-zone in the slightest.

It became my standard, daily defense against especially baggy eyes. I would wear it to work for weeks at a time with no comment from my colleagues.

When it was time for our wedding, E went through a ritual of several official Hair & Make-Up Tests to make sure she had a solid plan for our big day. I was a little freaked out that the only thing I could control would be how closely I shaved – it seemed like woeful under-preparation for thousands of dollars of photography!

This time it wasn’t E to the rescue, but my co-worker Kate. She wasn’t a major makeup wearer, but she confessed a special secret: she relied on Neutrogena Healthy Skin Enhancer Tinted Moisturizer to even out her skin tone.

I'm gonna be a supermodel, and everyone is gonna dress like me - wait and see.

Here I was even more skeptical. Something to rub all over my face and “tint” it? It sounded like something that would make my sensitive skin freak out, and much too girly to wear at my wedding.

[That may be the only context in which I have ever rejected any plan of action for being “too girly.”]

That wasn’t the case at all. The Skin Enhancer simply smooths things out in paces where I’m naturally a little blotchy, like my chin. I put a dot there, another two dots at the top of my laugh lines, and a final pair at the edges of my jaw, and then blended. To that I added the final piece of my arsenal, a Neutrogena spot concealer (not the best, but it’s consistent in tone to the other two).

Verdict? I looked like a supermodel at my wedding, and most people thought I was joking when I said I had on as much makeup as my wife.

To this day I rely on that simple trio of Neutrogena products to take the unsightly edges off of my face for rock shows and special events. Aside from occasionally going overboard with the eye concealer (which, if applied heavy-handedly, shows up in flash photography), E professes that she can hardly tell when I’m made up.

Think you would know? If you saw me at the Philly Geek Awards, you saw me with facial treatment set to “stunning.” Could you tell?

Vanity aside, whether I’m pitching a campaign or rocking a mic, I want to present an enhanced version of the normal, every-day me. Smoothing out the edges of my face is just one way that I try to make myself a little larger than life.

The rest of my preparation is a trade secret.