April 5, 2020 – It dawned on me while watching that commercial on TV with the hashtag — #AloneTogether —  which I think is annoying to see, kind of empowering for the first ten views, but by the thousandth time, I honestly have to leave the room when it comes on. Then again, I’m trying to keep the TV off now. Not that I’m being good or super productive. No, now I’m onto even more frivolous past-times, when I want a past-time that is. I don’t suppose guitar practice is frivolous, perhaps some people in my regular world would think so, but I do get something out of that, and I am doing a fair amount of guitar practice. No, frivolous is the tons and tons of eye shadow tutorials I’ve watched in the past few days. The reasons for it do require a bit of explanation, which will take you deep into the crazy that is how I think.

Once upon a time, I used to have the best eye makeup. I spent a long time on it. Before anyone did such things, I layered, meaning put a bunch of colors together with a brush. After years and years of having to look rather boring for my work, seriously you can’t do much of anything if you’re the job I am, I’ve lost my talent for eye makeup application. Even so, I’m drawn to it. Every time I watch Fox News (don’t hate me, I love the Fox News women), I stare at their eye make-up. They have the best eye makeup artist at Fox. My brother sent me a link of a girl on YouTube who he thinks has a funny channel. She did; it’s religious criticism, very well edited, but seriously, again, with the eye make-up. That girl had as good, if not better, eye make-up than the Fox News women. And then there’s that show Witcher on Netflix. I was madly in love with the eye makeup they had on the character Yennefer. That’s my cover picture – a close up of the dark sparkly make-up Yennefer wore. Of course, sparkly; I do love me some sparkly. Mind you, there’s no court now. No necessary meetings. No need to please anyone, to scare anyone, or to impress anyone. So I can look like whatever I want to look like right now. So I thought hey, what a good time to try to make good, really good, perhaps even inventive, eye makeup. Only where to start … because I’m now terrible at it.

Bring on everyone’s favorite teacher, YouTube. There are literally thousands of girls, guys too, on YouTube showing how to do eye makeup. And I watched everything. Tutorials on a smokey eye. Tutorials on a basic every day look. Even that, is more than anything I ever do. Tutorials on a French look, an American look, a halo look, on the benefits of cream shadow. There are even tutorials on how to recreate Yennefer’s look — the sparkly blue-green-black cover photo. Mind you, I don’t think anyone got it. Given my new knowledge of these things, they just combined a smokey eye with a halo eye, but Yennefer’s look is much more paired down. I came to the conclusion that the amount of layering these younger YouTuber’s do now, which is way more than even what I used to do in my youth, doesn’t suit my … what do they call it, mature eye. Oh and “eye” is singular, just as “lip” is singular. Not sure why, seeing as we have two of each, assuming normal and assuming no tragic accidents or something. But I do find for my mature eye, and the other one too, when I try to put on eye shadow in the way these younger girls do now, I look ..well, not as good as they do. And yes, I did watch the tutorials for the mature eye, but I can’t take those women. I’ve tried a few looks, all geared so I could get good enough to recreate the Yennefer look. And honestly, today, I’m really feeling the Yennefer vibe. So armed with my new YouTube knowledge, as I sit here in the company of my loyal work companion Jasper, I will say, with my comfy work-out outfit on, I’m also sporting the best I can do with the inventory in my make-up drawer to recreate out of my own black and light blue eye shadows from two different palettes, two formerly untouched colors, my mature-eye version of the Yennefer look, and feeling quite rock and roll because of it. So I thought I’d check out some new music.

Before that though, I was wondering, other than the various artists releasing home videos of themselves messing around, is anyone releasing anything now? Or has everything been delayed? The movies releases are delayed. But music? It seems like people could put those releases out, if they were ready.

I got a suggestions this week — a video made by someone who makes really good fan-made videos of The Pretty Reckless. This isn’t The Pretty Reckless, but the YouTuber made this video because Taylor Momsen, The Pretty Reckless singer, is guest singing on this track on the album release by the metal band In This Moment. It’s a cover of Queen’s We Will Rock You. It also guest features Lizzy Hale (which she actually spells Lzzy Hale) from Halestorm.

I liked the song, so I checked out the rest of the album. I’m not a huge fan of In This Moment, I suppose that’s because it’s heavier than what I normally like, but I really did like this album, especially the covers. They covered Fly Like an Eagle (Steve Miller Band), in a really slow metal way. Really, it does kind of go with the eye makeup of today, all that metal. And they covered a song you all might not know, but it’s something I’ve been listening to since I started this current guitar journey of mine, a song called Into Dust, originally by Mazzy Star. A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I thought Mazzy Star, which predates Lana Del Rey, had a sort of Lana vibe about it. Honestly, I think In This Moment’s singer Maria Brink is channeling her inner Lana with this whole record. In many places, the record is slow, like Lana, but different too because of the addition of that band’s metal sounds. It makes for an interesting blend, just like black, green and blue eye shadows do. There are some interesting songs. I do like the title track, Mother. There are more metal guitar-based tracks, which makes sense because this is actually a metal band, but I like the branching out into these melodic things.

And I like it that the band released their record now. I’m sure it would make them more money if they released it later, and I think most album releases, like movies, are being delayed, but I think it’s more ‘for the fans’ to put it out now. And it’s free on In This Moment’s YouTube channel, so that’s good too. I did notice that they are touring, starting in May, or so it says in the links on YouTube. I’m not sure how that’s going to work. I don’t know if people are going to go to the shows. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea in this current world, but I do give them credit for pressing on. Or maybe, just maybe, they know something we don’t know, that everything will be okay by May. My goodness that would be good. Except for one thing….

When everything is normal again, I have to take off the Yennefer eye shadow. But until then, when the world goes back to normal, I suppose I’m releasing things of my own. For Jasper’s viewing pleasure, today’s eye makeup look is … Yennefer! I’m going to take advantage of this time away from the real world to get to try looks I never can do. Yennefer’s eye shadow; I love it! But it’s far from what I can do in reality. Well, then again, I’ll always be able to wear it when practicing guitar. Humm… perhaps all of this makeup tutorial watching is not so frivolous after all. I mean every guitar player needs her look. Right?