Influenster Review: Palmolive Soft Touch

When I go shopping, I generally select items based on three things:

1. Effectiveness
2. Price
3. Design

For these three reasons, I tend to stick with certain brands.  Sometimes, one of these items are not part of the decision.  For example, I am willing to pay more for an item if it really works well.  Like a hair product, or makeup.

I recently joined Influenster, and was sent two bottles of Ultra Palmolive Soft Touch dishwashing liquid (for free, to test out and review – full disclosure!).  I was told to give one to a friend, so naturally, I sent the other bottle to my blogging partner-in-crime, Stephanie.  I kept the pink Vitamin E one, and gave her the Soft Touch Coconut Butter.

I don’t normally use Palmolive.  But free is good for my pocketbook, so I decided to give it a whirl.  Coincidentally, I was just about to run out of dishwashing liquid anyways, so bonus! 

I have a dishwasher, but there’s always a few hand-wash only items sitting on the counter.  Therefore, I’ve washed dishes at least a couple of times prior to writing this up.  Here’s what I noticed:

1. It’s very bubbly.  You don’t need to use a lot.
2. It smells pretty, but almost like a body wash, which I found a little disconcerting for washing dishes.  Maybe that’s just me.
3. It’s supposed to be good for your hands.  I didn’t notice results to either end of this… my hands were not noticeably softer, but they certainly didn’t get any worse.  So, a draw on this end?
4. The dishes were clean, so effectiveness = yes.

So, since the effectiveness was a “yes,” I now reach the price component.  I researched on Amazon, and found that Palmolive Ultra Soft Touch came up with a price of about $3.50 a bottle.  I was also sent a few $1 off coupons, which would knock it down to $2.50, and maybe you can find a sale too - so if you’re interested, I’ve got a few left and I can send ‘em your way.  Let me know.

My current favorite dish soap, Method, comes in at about $2.99 a bottle (via Target), so it’s a little bit cheaper.  It is effective at getting the dishes clean, and I like how it smells.  But where Method really wins out is the design category.  I would much rather have the Method bottle sitting on my sink ledge than a bottle of Palmolive.  Maybe it’s the art teacher in me, but the Palmolive bottle is kind of ugly.  I want to go out and buy a container to put the Palmolive into, so it’s not sitting there.  Yes, I could also not keep my dishwashing liquid up on the counter.  But it’s a convenience thing.  If I have to hand-wash dishes, I want my set up to be as easy as possible.

So, in conclusion, I’m not really won over on this product.  But there’s nothing “bad” about it either.  I’m just kinda meh.  I’ll definitely finish up the bottle that I have (no sense in wasting it), but I won’t be running to the store for more.

So, there you have it, my honest 100% review of free stuff I got in the mail.  I just recently found out that I qualified for the Influenster “Spring Vox Box,” so be on the lookout for another IMHO review coming soon!

Rock on,

Jen @ Hell Razor

P.S. Happy happy birthday today to my blogging bestie, Steph @ Calamity Layne!  Stop by her Facebook page and leave her some birthday wishes!

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OOTD: Skulls

dress - ASOS curve / leggings - Torrid / shoes - Shoe Carnival? / earrings - Nordstrom

I just bought this dress from ASOS Curve and I knew I wanted to photograph it the first time I wore it because it is so awesome.  Sugar skulls are my favorite.  And I used an online coupon code and it only cost me about $40, which is worth bragging about, I think!  If you decide to buy it, know that it runs large (I bought this one size smaller than usual, and I probably could have bought it even one more size smaller).  But I love it, and the sleeve length is enough that I don't have to wear a shirt underneath (yayy summer options), but I totally could do long sleeves underneath and take this into fall/winter, no problem.

Close up of the print:



Hey, check this out: I wore different shoes today!  Well, they're not super different from a style standpoint, but they're not the Sketchers I've been wearing for the past few weeks.  I bought these at Shoe Carnival, I think?  It's like a Famous Footwear... not sure if they're located everywhere...

I love flat shoes, but they HAVE to have some kind of sole to them.  Many flats out now are too flat and my feet just hurt too badly to wear them.  But these have good bottoms.



Although I'm not a fan of being too matchy-matchy, I went for it today when I decided on these sweet skull earrings I bought at Nordstrom when I was out with Lisa and Gunnar a while back.



When I go through a whole work day and no one mentions my awesome earrings, I start to wonder if they're just too used to me wearing stuff like this so that it no longer has any impact.  Hmmm.  Well, I appreciated them, and I guess that's all that really matters.



Today's eye was back to shades of pink.  I used light pink on the lids, and a brighter magenta pink on the outer corners, up into the crease.

Rock on,
Jen @ Hell Razor

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The Doctor is In! Rock n' Roll with Crazy Joe!

Hello everyone!
One thing you might now know about me is as much as I love vintage clothing, I LOVE vintage music ten times more. I enjoy the sound of vinyl over CDs and I appreciate the skill and technique used in vintage recordings (I'm a giant sound and recording nerd, so will not bore you with details).

Anyway, I caught up with my great friend and phenomenal musician Crazy Joe!  for an interview. He's the King of Nerdabilly, has a PHD in Electrical Engineering, a SWEET studio in his basement, OH! and plays guitar like it's nothin'! His new album "The Doctor is In" came out recently and I thought you guys might be interested in hearing about some real life rock n roll goodness!

What was the first song you learned on guitar?
Wild Thing! My dad taught me A, D, and E. I'm pretty sure it was second grade sometime. This, of course, led to "Louie Louie," "Gloria," and so forth. I just realized that he must have taught me G as well, haha.

Did you alway know that you wanted to be a musician? Who are your top 3 influences musically?
In my Dr. Seuss "My Book About Me," I wrote that I wanted to be an electrical engineer; this is when I had just turned six. Very likely I just asked my dad what he did. I was obsessed with tape recording and music and banging on my little toy guitars pre-kindergarten, so I guess I didn't really have a choice. I suppose my biggest early influences are still the records my parents had around growing up; specific ones I remember were the Beach Boys, Four Seasons, CCR, Johnny Horton, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Jim Croce, Three Dog Night. There was always music playing. Later, of course, I got into Hendrix, Zeppelin, James Brown, and got very heavily into jazz, which is probably what I listen to more than anything.

What made you choose to release your new album, "the Doctor is In" on vinyl?
Because I apparently like investing thousands of dollars into ventures with guaranteed loss. Part of it is that I had never done an LP before; and part of it was that I had finally finished my all-analog studio and wanted to put out a record that was 100% analog from the microphone capsules to the disc cutter head. That's very rare today. My old man advised against it; therefore I had to do it, haha.

Tell us about your studio! Do you have any plans for it yet? Why did you want to build one?
Man, it's funny to hear the question, "why did you want to build one," because it has never occurred to me that I even had a choice! I started fooling around with home recording in the very beginning, like first or second grade, before I even played guitar. By the end of elementary school I was already making recordings where I layered myself playing multiple instruments, and by high school I was selling four-track recordings to my friends. But things really got serious when I got my Ampex AG440B one-inch eight-track when I was a junior in high school. A lawyer in Cleveland (who's now a judge from what I understand) just gave it to me; I had been asking around at the OMEA convention if anybody knew of an eight-track machine and some guy told me about him. I started building a console right then and there, even though I didn't really know that much about electronics. Well, believe it or not, I finished the damn thing - at age 30!....I totally didn't answer the question....

I wanted to build a studio that cut everything down to the absolute essentials; in fact, I specifically wanted the least amount of gear possible. My ultimate goal was to design and hand-build every single piece of equipment from scratch, and except for the eight-track, I did! I have five tube microphones, a few dynamics, my homemade console, my eight-track tape machine, my two-track tape machine, a stereo compressor, and that's it. That and my garage echo chamber.

The studio looks SWEET! Do you think about visual design when you're building all of your equipment or do they just turn out the way they turn out? 
Oh, I am obsessed with two-tone grey motifs, black Bakelite knobs on dial plates, jeweled pilot lights, mechanical VU meters; and have a basement full of that crap. Luckily I bought a lot of it in the 90's when it was still cheap. So yes, I still look at an Ampex tape machine and drool. Ain't gonna lie.
One thing that still kills me about my console is that I drilled the front panels during exam week my senior year of high school; and if you look down a row of knobs, a few are off by 10 or 20 thousandths of an inch. That drives me crazy!

Are you planning on recording other people at your studio or is it distinctly for you?
I don't know yet! I've been so busy with school since I finished the record I haven't touched the place. I've had a lot of inquiries about that. Folks might not like the price of tape these days; one-inch is up to 185 bucks a reel.

What's so special about your guitar? 
It's got my name on it! 

I only have three electric guitars; I sold everything else a few years ago. They were all made by one of my best buddies, Casey Simmons. He is a top-notch restoration guy at the Air Force Museum; does machining, painting, upholstery, everything on those old planes. I've been playing the "Crazy Joe" guitar for about eight years now. He made it when he still lived at his parents' house. He built a very similar guitar for himself at the same time, and I finally bought that from him about a year ago; it's equally lovely. In fact, it's a couple pounds lighter and has a 24-3/4" scale length instead of 25-1/2", so it doesn't cripple me to play it.

Did you do all of the electronics? 
Oh yeah, the guitar has all the same silver/Teflon audiophile wire, silver-contact swtiches, and sealed pots as my studio and hi-fi gear.

What inspires you to keep playing and creating music?
"Inspiration" and "why do you"; it's just not something I can control! I'm gonna make music - and for that matter build electronics - until I keel over, I suspect; I just do it. You asked about the inspiration behind the album; well, that question can go off on three or four different tangents, but if you want to know what inspired the songs, and I freely admit that several of them are incredibly cynical and negative, I can tell you that every single song conveys a sentiment that was genuine at the time of writing. And yeah, I had a few bad years.

Out of every song you’ve written, which one is your favorite?
Oh, I think they're all terrible. I liked "My Guitar" from the King of Nerdabilly. I think "Mary Ann" was a good rock & roll song. Actually, I'm proud of my songs, especially on the new album. Sometimes I cringe at how far I'm willing to be autobiographical, but it's also good to get them out of my system.

What is most important to you in song writing and creating an album?
I don't know. I write songs when I'm compelled by some event or feeling. The last album, I felt like it had been a few years since I'd put one out and I needed product for the festivals and tours I had coming up. I was pretty much playing professionally at that point; touring with Deke, doing a lot of my own shows, although I was still teaching a little in-between. So I put some, what I thought were cool covers, made it a pretty well-put-together rockabilly/early rock & roll album, I felt. This album, I had crossed the give-a-damn threshold and was going to put it out when I felt like it. I definitely wanted to do it in my own studio, with my own console especially; that took time. At some point I realized I had a pretty good-sized pile of original songs so I decided to make it all original tunes. There's no other reason why there are 11 songs than that's how many I had. It worked out when it came time to compile the album, because the five-minute slow-blues-booty-jam rounded out the album sides to about 15 minutes each, which is perfect for vinyl cutting. I haven't heard one complaint that the album is too short; on the contrary, I've heard that 30 minutes is perfect.

So to actually answer your question - doing what I want when I feel like it. I didn't care if I sold five copies of this thing. I just wanted to make it the way I wanted to. I didn't even master it; just transferred the 1/4" mixes as-is because I liked the way they sounded. I went to a lot of trouble to have strictly Ohio musicians, artists, photographers, and so forth on the album; in fact, the LP was cut and pressed in Cleveland! It feels good to be able to say that.

For tour dates, and more info on Crazy Joe, visit http://www.crazyjoe.org/

Catch ya later!
~Steph @ Calamity Layne

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