Crushing Krisis

Category Archives: thoughts

10 years, by the numbers

Thursday, August 26, 2010

As of today, the 10th anniversary of Crushing Krisis, I’ve blogged…

3,652 days
3,724 posts and 28 pages
988,154 total words
263 average words per post
271 average words per day

641 posts with the world “guitar”
261 posts with the word “awesome”
181 posts mentioning Madonna
121 posts linking to rabi

3 months with posts every single day

107 unique original songs posted (holy shit, that’s a lot … 10 albums worth!)

And, in those ten years of my life…

262 original songs written
105 of 120 months in relationships
17 states visited or traveled-through
11 guitars owned
11 different job titles

One pair of favorite boots, purchased circa 1997. Resoled twice.

10 non-profit fundraiser concerts
9 roommates
7 primary residences
7 plays produced
4 twenty-four hour fundraisers
4 appearances at the Tin Angel
3 iPods
2 skydives
1 favorite pair of boots

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10 days, 3 bands, 1 brain

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

It is 10 days until Crushing Krisis’s 10th birthday and I am having an editorial calendar failure. And a brain failure.

Really it’s kind of an overarching not being able to do anything except nap and read comic books failure, which as failures go is not such a bad one. It’s way better than the “so overstressed I can feel the ulcers growing” brand of failure I was experiencing two weeks ago.

Actually, I think the napping and the comic books had a lot to do with escaping that particular pit of despair. Napping, comic books, little purple pills, and not drinking a gallon of lemonade every single day.

Meanwhile, in news related to the brain failure, I have discovered that being in three separate musical acts each with their own set of unique arrangements is the functional limit of my brain capacity. The wherewithal to recall all of those songs seems to have jettisoned my ability to return phone calls or schedule home repairs.

I am now off book on seventeen bass arrangements for Filmstar. As long as someone yells out what key we’re in at the start of the song I am fine, except for the one song that only makes sense if I pretend we are playing a David Bowie song. Like, if we begin and I’m like, “Oh, it’s a Filmstar song,” then I am a hot mess and play about two correct notes. But, if I instead say, “This is the secret, unreleased B-Side to ‘Suffragette City,’” then I’m fine.

Meanwhile, as Arcati Crisis Gina and I are working on two new songs, which – per our modus operandi – are completely different in every possible way from anything we’ve done before. One is an acoustic dance song from me equally influenced by Gaga and Heart, which I just previewed on our Facebook page.

(The other is a Gina tune which could be referred to as “Message In a Bottle from an American Girl in Russia,” but is actually called the much more succinct “American Mikaela.” It’s chorus hook is so destructively catchy that I have successfully lobbied to sing it three times as much as Gina originally planned.)

There’s also the musical artist that is me, who I can sometimes forget about in all of the commotion between the other two and commuting to my actual, fully-paid, highly-beloved full time occupation. He’s rehearsing to support Mieka Pauley this weekend at our house concert shindig, where he is rumored to debut a brand new Madonna cover (and, when you rumor something to yourself, it’s pretty sad if it doesn’t come true, so I need to get on that).

Meanwhile, ten years minus ten days ago I was sitting in a dorm room with a broken collar bone, registered for a year of music courses totally outside of my major and wondering if I would have anywhere to live in a month.

Ten years. Wow. What were you doing ten years ago today?

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Your guitar plays great songs!

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

There’s a meme I keep seeing on Twitter to the effect of, “Telling a photographer their camera ‘takes good pictures’ is like telling a cook their oven bakes good cake.”

I will tell you, I got my back up a little about this. Sometimes your ability to do good work is truly limited by the quality of the tool of production.

I don’t know if a good cook could produce great work in my Sophomore year oven. Honestly, to this day I’m not conclusively sure the thing heated up past 200 degrees.

In my contrary angst I clicked through the meme to a delightful blog post from photographer Erin Farrell, who maybe was the patient zero of this wave of strident photogs? Erin put “takes good pictures” to the test – handing her pro camera to her amateur brother to shoot a friend’s daughter, and then shooting that same girl in the same location herself.

The results? You have to read her post to see, but the essence is that even her brother’s best shot with a heavy-hand of pro touch-up doesn’t compete with her middling shots directly out of camera.

Touché, Erin.

Then I thought about guitars. What if someone stopped me after a show and said, “your guitar plays great songs!”

I think that phrase is more illustrative of the photographer’s dilemma than the camera example, because the divisions are clearer. A guitar isn’t as smart as a camera – it has no automatic mode; it can’t focus on faces. As the songwriter, I’m the one who dreamed up the melody, wrote down the words, and decided on the arrangement and dynamics.

The guitar can’t do any of that for me. Like the photographer, it results from my skill and years of experience.

What the guitar did was give it tone. Depth. Credibility. If your favorite guitar player played your favorite song on a crappy guitar it would still be your favorite song, but it wouldn’t ring as true as their original. I am not a huge guitar snob, nor am I the best guitar player, but I categorically won’t play on other people’s guitars – my guitar is as much a part of my sound as my voice.

If an aspiring songwriter told me “your guitar plays great songs” (and they have, more or less, because I love to let other people play my guitar), I would thank them and tell them about Breedloves and why I like playing them. Because, even if my songs might be better than their song at the moment, the better tool is going to help level the playing field – and help them improve.

In short, the nicer guitar will play great songs.

That, in turn, made me think about cameras again. E is a degreed photographer, and I love her prosumer Pentax digital camera. In Paris she frequently let me shoot with it even though I also had a low-end “point and click” camera to shoot with.

Below are two photos of one of my favorite works of art, Cupid and Psyche, which lives in the Louvre. Both were taken by me with no coaching from E, though with different cameras on different days and with different light. Both are the best shot I took out of many with each of their respective camera, based on the limits thereof.

Which camera took the “great” picture? Click through for full size.

Bottom line? Some cameras take great pictures, and some guitars play great songs – but they need a certain alchemy from the taker and the player to do their magic.

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Filmstar and The Substitute People

Friday, August 6, 2010

I want to tell you about one of my fantasies.

(Don’t worry, it’s work safe.)

I fantasize about being a substitute person.

If you don’t know what that means, you clearly don’t watch Elizabethtown as much as E and I do. At one point, Kirsten Dunst’s Claire – a perennial second-place finisher in a life and love, muses:

60B!

You and I have a special talent, and I saw it immediately. We’re the substitute people. I’ve been the substitute person my whole life. … I like it that way. It’s a lot less pressure.

I’ve always had the fantasy of being the substitute person, but it took Claire to put words to it. Usually my fantasy goes like this:

A musician I really love – let’s say, Amanda Palmer – is in town, but they are touring without a certain band member – usually a guitarist or harmony singer. I’m at the concert, and when they start to play one of their big hits they stop and ask, “Does anyone know the [guitar/vocal/cowbell/whatever] part to this song? [I raise my hand.] You do? Come up here and try it.”

And then I get up and, of course, play the solo or sing the harmony to perfection, because I am obsessed with it. And then they ask me to sit in for another song. And another one. And then I hang out with them after the show and they fall in love with me.

Sort of like Courtney Cox in the “Dancing in the Dark” video.

I’m sure you have a similar fantasy, even if you aren’t a musician. Maybe it’s about stepping in with a sports team, or filling a hole on a big project in your office. It’s the opposite of the Actor’s Nightmare, where you’re stuck on stage with no idea what to do.

The allure of the fantasy is that we’re the substitute people. Just like a substitute teacher, no one is expecting us to do much more than fill a hole. Then, when we are amazing (or, at least, more amazing than adequate), they fall in love with us.

Having the substitute fantasy doesn’t mean you don’t like your life. I love being half of Arcati Crisis. But, every time I listen to E’s Filmstar demo record I catch myself thinking “I could walk right up and play all of those bass parts, if they needed me to.”

Well, two weeks ago life put my fantasy to the test when I wound up behind a microphone at a Filmstar rehearsal with a brand new bass hanging off my shoulder.

To make a long story short, Filmstar found themselves without a bassist, and I was called on my flippantly mentioned substitute-person fantasy of playing with the band.

I did know their songs pretty well – well enough to noodle along to their EP. Well enough to play bass on all fifteen of their songs? I didn’t necessary know every key, chord, and rhythm.

Oh, and there was the little detail of my not having played bass for seven years.

I decided that didn’t matter – I wanted to be their substitute person. E asked me to fill in on a Thursday. My new bass arrived on Friday. I arranged all the songs for myself on Sunday. I knew all fifteen of them for rehearsal on Wednesday.

We played every one.

This photo of me playing bass is nine years old, and this is as big as you're ever going to see it.

Was I awesome? No. Am I a bassist? Not by trade. But as a substitute person I was solid – I showed up able to fill the entirety of the hole in their lives, probably better than they anticipated I could.

I don’t know how long I’ll keep substituting with Filmstar, or if I’ll keep loving it. At some point a long-term substitute becomes your permanent solution, and surprising adequacy turns into lingering disappointment.

I’ve decided i don’t want to think it through that far. For the moment, I’m living my fantasy, and playing in an awesome rock band with my wife.

Sometimes we get we want in the most unexpected ways. What’s your substitute people fantasy? Have you ever got what you wanted?

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get elevated

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

I wrote that last post on the El.

For those of you not acquainted with Philadelphia, we have exactly two and a half brands of subway. One travels north to south. One travels east to west. One spends half its distance traveling from the center of the city to the west, and then emerges from the ground.

(I always laugh when people find the Philly subway system confusing. They’re named unambiguously and barely make a turn. Paris – now that’s confusing.)

The “El” is short for the Market Frankford Elevated Line, the east to west subway named thus because it runs along Market Street & Frankford Avenues and because after it exits the central part of its route in either direction it runs along elevated tracks. Creaky, red iron, elevated tracks that tower overhead, dripping rain that smacks as it hits your scalp.

Nothing in the world skeeves me out like the El. In fact, for several years at the old house I boycotted it entirely. However, it’s a reality of traveling to and from the new house.

The grime of it is paralyzing. The navy blue floor is encrusted with untold months of flotsam at every crack and corner. The blue seats are not plastic but a sponge-like blue fuzz that seems engineered to attract and retain dirt.

Then there are the people – the degenerate, tactless people. I have heard of and witnessed people doing things on the El that you would never witness elsewhere in public – let alone on public transit. Vandalism. Performance art. Investigations of personal hygiene. Sex acts.

The charming combination of environmental grossness and personal grossness is enhanced by the claustrophobic layout of each car. To a New Yorker – accustomed to their wide, hard-plastic benches and center-of-aisle poles – it probably seems like an amusement park ride.

A tiny, disgusting amusement park ride.

Whenever I ride a carefully tuck my limbs into my body like an Olympic diver, trying to avoid contact with something or something that will give me syphilis or leprosy.

Carefully tucked into myself, I pull out my laptop, and log in remotely to work for 29 blocks of elevation, before shutting down and doing my best to hold my breath and stay absolutely still for 10 blocks of subway.

The first thing I do every day in the office is wash my hands.

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man (just me, actually) vs. nature (mostly this one bird)

Monday, July 12, 2010

I have been waking up early almost every day at the new blue house.

Some of that awakening has been of my own volition. Other of it is due to an east-facing window.

However, largely the inspiration is avian in nature.

When we talked about owning a house in a speculative fashion, people would say the same sorts of things. “You’ll always have projects,” was a common response, and I’d never dispute it. Another common one was, “Oh, you’ll have a yard! There will be birds singing.”

No, really, people say that.

I would consistently respond, “Yes, I need to figure out how to poison them all.”

It’s not anything I have against birds, per se. I have a friend who disputes the very nature of birds. Like, “feathers, hollow bones – that shit is just unnatural.” She regards each sample of the class with guarded skepticism, as if it could be a carrier of bubonic plague or infectiously bad credit scores.

That’s not the nature of my problem. Birds are fine as a concept. I just don’t like things that make uninvited noise (other than, obviously, me). Birds fall into the same offensive category as small dogs, train tracks, and babies.

Which is an entirely other topic.

Birds know no reason. At least trains pass and babies are usually hungry or tired or want to chew on your remote control.

Why is the bird chirping? Like, this morning at 4am when the species of bird I refer to as “Digitalis Clockus” – which earned its name because its brief, repetitive, perfectly-pitched warble is louder than my digital clock, even when it is positioned across the street in a neighbor’s yard where it would be technically trespassing for me to poison it or beat it to death with a wok – began chirping, why was it chirping?

Why, gentle readers, must it not only begin to chirp, but chip that piercing, non-snoozeable-but-very-alarming chirp every morning between 4:07 am and 5:15 am? Why must its circuit carry it from our neighbors broad yard across the street to the towering dogwood beside my window?

I have encountered it once in close quarters, in the lower boughs of said tree. I assumed my avian foe would be approximately the size and shape of one of those totally over-the-top Hammacher Schlemmer alarm clocks that light up and vibrate and make bagels, but with wings.

Nay. It is a tiny, mottled, gray thing that I could probably fit whole in my mouth.

If I thought that it wanted to fly into my mouth I would put the poison right on my tongue, like a tiny, toxic hit of LSD, and wait patiently for my avian friend to swoop into my maw.

That would be better than waking up every day at an average time of five forty-one in the morning.

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Disaster is Natural

Monday, June 28, 2010

I have this theory about how Philadelphia is immune to disaster.

Stick with me for a minute.

No seismic activity. Relatively far away from potential tidal waves and protected from hurricanes. We’re not known for forest fires or mudslides, and despite our utter flatness occasional floods are minor. It doesn’t get too oppressively hot and the biggest challenge in our snow storms is waiting for the city to send plows. We’re relatively drought- and famine-proof, as modernized cities go, and NYC and DC are preferable targets for terrorists and rogue nuclear missiles.

Really, the closest we come to city-wide disaster is one of our sports teams winning a championship. Otherwise, short of OCD Godzilla bursting free from my chest to tramp around Center City, it’s a pretty safe place to live.

So, of course we move out of the center of the city to the fringes and within the first week there’s a tornado on our block.

Yes, day six as homeowners, tornado.

That is only vaguely an exaggeration. It wasn’t officially a tornado, and it was actually on pretty much every block adjacent to our new one while leaving us untouched.

I witnessed a portion of the storm from my office window, and it looked sufficiently deadly – I saw it blowing things clear off the gated roof of an adjacent building before my view was reduced to a foggy blackout. However, when I left, Center City looked no worse for the wear.

A huge tree on the next block, completely uprooted.

My new neighborhood was a different story. My bus stopped a mile short of our house in traffic snarled by dark traffic lights.

I disembarked and began a muggy hike back to my home. About a mile out from our house I started to see down tree branches. Then it was downed tree limbs, taking some power lines with them.

By the time I was a block away it was entire trees – trunk, roots, and all, upended ass over end to be splayed rudely across well-groomed lawns. Entire blocks of entire trees, the entire landscape denuded by mother nature.

To say I was nervous when I approached our house would be an understatement. I was obsessing over the huge tri-trunked tree that shades our patio, and how any of its trio of arms could go crashing through the roof to destroy my collection of guitars and recording equipment, now located in one conveniently destructible place.

My heart sank when I turned onto my street a block below our house, only to find it completely blocked off by the arboreal carnage.

A barricade of branches and power lines.

Having lived in the absence of disaster for nearly three decades, to me the sight was fantastical – as if my block had experienced some sort of wizarding dual, the debris glinting with hints of magic in the afternoon sun.

I navigated around it with great care, emerging on the other side to regard a pristine, untouched block stretching beyond the mess.

I raced the remaining distance to my house but, like the rest of our block, it was unmolested – no downed trees, no holes in our windows from golf-ball-sized hail. The only evidence of a storm my neighbor described as sounding “like a freight train passing by” was a dusting of shredded leaves on our lawn and our power, out.

We dodged a bullet – a house on the next block had its gutters shredded by downed trees, while a few streets over a massive branch decimated the windows of an SUV. A co-worker lost all of the power lines to his house to trees.

Us, we just lost our innocence – no longer protected from disaster by Philly’s impregnable grid of row homes, and now inclined to worry about the state of our house after every storm.

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do start believin’

Friday, June 25, 2010

A week ago I had just finished commuting home for the first time to my new house. Presently I am the merch guy for Filmstar as they split a bill with The Shondes at Tritone.

That’s the life, at the moment.

That, a seemingly unlimited amount of cardboard boxes in various states of unpack, and a steely, unflinching resolve to spend money on things like towel hooks and toilet seats. Whatever it takes.

We moved with no issue whatsoever, aside from only sleeping two hours in a 36 hour span. After all of the wacky settlement hijinks it was a bit of a letdown, where “letdown” means “totally awesome gift from serendipity.”

Things have generally been serendipitous lately, in a broad Alanis-Ironic reading of the term. I like to think it’s universe-funded payback for all the not-being-nasty I’ve done in the last year.

It’s hard. I’m nasty by nature. Or, at least, by nurture.

My high school graduation was 1/10 this big.

On Tuesday we walked into Trenton Arena, late for E’s brother’s graduation, to discover his face displayed on a jumbotron singing “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Apparently he was the only tenor confident enough to bring an appropriate amount of NJ rock to that Journey classic (by way of Glee), and so wound up singing Steve Perry lead at his own high school graduation to a half-full arena’s worth of crowd.

And now I am in an increasingly packed rock club, selling merchandise and recording video for my wife’s band while she rocks out in a rather short skirt which I heartily endorse. Later we will go back to our house, and sleep on a mattress on the floor. Tomorrow I will finish setting up my new recording studio and start playing music again.

This is the life.

Also filed in Filmstar, day in the life, elise, family, house, philly music, shopping | | Comments (1)

HOMEOWNERS

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

I felt that it was important to document our faces as homeowners prior to having to spend any money on the house, a process that will begin in less than 24hrs ;)

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Based on a true OCD story

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Scene: E and I approach the Oregon Diner, both dressed for the heat and wearing flip flops.

P: Oh, we’ll have to wash our hands after touching all of those boxes in the U-Haul.

E: Okay.

P: Oh my god! I can’t go into a public restroom wearing flip flops! What am I going to do?

E: Honey, I have sanitizer in my purse.

P: You mean for my feet, for after I wash my hands in the restroom? I don’t know…

E: No, honey, for YOUR HANDS.

P: Oh.

And, scene.

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just a one-hitter / don’t stop believing

Saturday, June 12, 2010

I’m still upset about not blogging on Thursday.

It wasn’t like I forgot about it. I had words in the white box at least three times, but nothing seemed blog-worthy.

With all of this news about perfect games in baseball I was really looking forward to notching a month of blogging every day which – incredibly – I have only done three times in the past 118 months.

It’s the same sort of rarefied event as nine innings of no one on base – a perfect storm of a strong performance by me, plus my team of interesting friends and co-workers supplying me with fodder to write about.

(Also for the record books: that’s only the second time in 118 months this blog has ever discussed baseball (so don’t get your hopes up for another mention (unless you plan to read for another five years)).)

Anyhow.

We went out last night to see two of our favorite local bands in our last “we live ten minutes from South Street” hurrah.

As of noon we are about halfway through our packing process – all of the media, books, decor, and closets have been packed, but the everyday clothes, computers, dishwares have not – which is encouraging, since we have a full 120 hours left before any movers arrive.

In excavating my hall closet I unearthed about 200 issues of Rolling Stone, which I am finally willing to part with, along with my high school year book – now 11 years old, almost to the day.

I took a brief intermission from packing to page through, showing E various pictures of my rail-thin, long-haired self, alternating between my two stock high school poses – one, smiling obviously for the camera, and the other, mouth open and finger pointed in mid-discussion.

It’s amazing how many of the notes – some from people I haven’t spoken to in 11 years! – say something to the effect of, “You believed in me and it made my high school years bearable. You are so talented, and I know you will find success.”

I know I read those messages at the time, but I’m not sure if I really appreciated what they meant. If I could write something in that book today that would appear to the me of 11 years ago, it would be this:

Dear Peter 1999,

One of your greatest talents is your ability to be enthusiastic about everyone you meet, which is why you’re going to school for journalism. I know it feels like while you believe in everyone else no one believes in you. Maybe that’s because people assume (rightly) that the enthusiasm and ambition you have for them is the same as you have for yourself, so you don’t really need their belief.

Don’t be afraid to let people know you believe in yourself, too.

Don’t worry, you’re doing everything right.

Don’t change, ever.

xoxo,
- Peter 2010

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I laugh until my head comes off (Amanda Palmer’s “Idioteque” debuts)

Friday, June 11, 2010

See that Radiohead lyric in the title? That’s my past two days. Work + House has reached absolute critical intellectual mass. Whatever that means.

I love Amanda Palmer, even if I don’t always love everything she does. When she said her next release would be an album of Radiohead covers on ukulele I was beyond skeptical.

The skepticism has ended – behold, her cover of “Idioteque,” released literally minutes ago.

I love it. I just love it. I’ve always loved the song, but the icy, withdrawn version on Kid A has never totally connected with me. Amanda’s sounds instantly familiar, as if it was the version I was hearing in my head all along.

For more on her upcoming album hit her “Idioteque” blog post; of note:

[buy "Idioteque for] a minimum donation of 40¢ (9¢ going to radiohead and the rest to paypal)

the album will be available … for a minimum donation of 84¢…some stuff i’d like you to know about that 84¢:
- 54¢ of it is going directly back into radiohead’s pockets (the cost of selling my covers of their songs)
- the remaining 30¢ will be going to paypal to cover the transaction fee

There is no physical release beyond a limited edition LP, and anything beyond the minimum donation for digital is 100% gross profit for Amanda, which will help her recoup her production costs.

Is this the new model of indie music? I hope so, as it’s exactly what I would do. I guess we’ll see soon enough.

Also filed in dresden dolls, music biz, radiohead | | Comments (0)

Oldies Aren’t So Old Anymore

Monday, June 7, 2010

I have been a huge Madonna fan for essentially my entire life – I have distinct memories of spinning the 45 of “Dress You Up” and its b-side “Shoo Be Do,” which came out when I was three-and-a-half.

My father is a different story – and not just on Madonna. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him actively listen to a single song released after I was born (except, occasionally, Billy Joel). His taste in music is firmly rooted in the 50s and 60s – doo-wop, Motown, and early rock – and the radio in his car was permanently and without question tuned to Oldies 98.1, WOGL.

No exceptions, no Madonna tapes. Oldies 98.1 or else. And we spent a lot of time in that car.

When I first was old enough to care about radio stations I thought it was an annoying and restrictive rule. Seriously, no new music? How uncool was that?

Then I got to know the songs. At age five I would perform flawless choreography to “Stop! In the Name of Love” and sing along in parking lots to girl-group classics like “I Will Follow Him” and “Leader of the Pack.”

Those were the obvious oldies – Supremes and Stones, Beatles and Temptations. I’ve owned them for years. But WOGL was more than that – a never-ending stream of doo-wop, 60s pop, deeper cuts, and one-hit wonders. After years of riding around Philly with my dad, to this day I have instant and total recall whenever I hear a classic like “Lightnin’ Strikes.”

Relatively early in my life I remember asking him, “Dad, how old will I be when they play Madonna on WOGL?”

We did some math. Despite playing a lot of Doo-Wop, at the time the majority of WOGL’s songs were grouped around the late 60s and early 70s (disco was relegated to its own hour at night), so my father took The 5th Dimension’s “Age of Aquarius / Let the Sunshine” in as an average example.

“Well, ‘Aquarius’ went to number one in 1969, and now it’s a song we hear a lot on WOGL, in the 1980′s. So, it took it almost twenty years to become an ‘oldie’.”

“So, I’ll hear ‘Holiday’ on WOGL in… um… 2004?”

He laughed. “When you’re 23? Maybe. I don’t know if they’ll ever play Madonna.”

I giggled my agreement – how could Madonna ever be an “oldie”?

Now a full five years past his predicted 23, I’ve heard Madonna on WOGL. It makes a certain amount of sense – she’s an oldie to someone!

What my dad and I didn’t anticipate on our idyllic long rides was that when the oldies’ qualifying line reached forward into the 80s that the oldest tunes would reach their expiry. First it was the more obscure, one-hit doo-wop that went extinct – yes to “The Still of the Night,” but no more spins for The Del Viking’s “Come Go With Me” (very nearly my favorite song all time).

Then it was Doo-Wop entirely. Then the line crept into the sixties pop, slicing through all but the most enduring Motown and Brit Rock – stuff you can still hear on television commercials. Smaller pop singles like Lou Christie’s “Lightnin’ Strikes” went MIA. Now the midday playlist is mostly 70s classic rock and disco in the day time – where it should never show its spangled face.

Songs I once assumed would be forever woven into the fabric of my life have all but disappeared. Now I rely on random trips to the supermarket to jog my memory – that’s what it took to unearth Friend & Lover’s “Reach Out Of the Darkness” – and it’s from as late as 1968!

The same me that grew up with Madonna grew up with those songs, and this morning when Philebrity‘s Joey Sweeney posted his unfinished thoughts on WOGL 98.1 FM’s recent inclusion of hits from the 1980s into the canon of “Oldies” – complete with name-checking “Come Go With Me” – it resonated with me (and, from the looks of the comments, it resonated with a lot of other 20- and 30-somethings as well).

Yes, “Borderline” is an oldie now. But it’s on other formats, and on Greatest Hits CDs still moving thousands of units a year.

What about “Come Go With Me”? Will any eight year old Gaga-loving kid ever have the chance for that to be his favorite song? Has doo-wop seriously gone the way of ragtime and big band – a dusty antique with no relevance to today.

Probably. I guess that means when I have kids I have to alternate between Madonna and doo-wop on every car ride to make sure they know all of their musical fundamentals.

Also filed in essays, family, linkylove, madonna, motown, music | | Comments (1)

next, on a very special CK…

Saturday, June 5, 2010

I don’t know how this suddenly turned into Peter’s Precious Story Time at Crushing Krisis.

Seriously, aside from my re-launch during NaBloPoMo I can’t tell you the last time I posted three heavy-duty stories with dialog and stuff within a single week, let alone the last time that from a word-count angle I had this high of a words:posts:week ratio (1013:1).

I guess part of that is being a little more diligent about blogging lately. That partially comes from reading the blog archive more, and realizing how many gaps it leaves in my life and the things I have opinions about. As a result, I blog more. And while I’m blogging more and thinking about blogging more then there isn’t the need to so carefully prune by topic or length.

Essentially, reading more means writing more means writing more.

Also, life is actually pretty exciting lately. Like, not as obscenely over-stimulating as it was last summer with all the #blamedrewscancer stuff. Really just stimulating enough that I have some time left over to write some of it down.

As for this week, basically I have spent the five days since skydiving trying to completely unpop my right ear.

See, not all of the stories are interesting.

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personal anti-wireless forcefield update

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Now heading into day seven of no internet in our house I decided to do a cursory inspection of the grounds to search for some external culprit, and it seems that a panel of our back fence has collapsed on top of the phone/internet switchbox.

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t have a personal anti-wireless forcefield generated by the intense electro-magnetic powers of my hair. I’m just saying that maybe the my hair is not to blame for this particular portion of my life-wide wireless signal outage.

Unless, of course, my hair caused the fence to collapse.

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my personal anti-wireless forcefield

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

When you are an internet addict trying to buy a house and maybe launch a new feature on your website, it can be a little frustrating when your connection is spotty.

It can be downright maddening when every device in your life stops communicating with the outside world at once.

Evidence of potentially villainous hair. Note its awesomeness.

To whit: The wireless in our house died, followed by the entirety of the internet connection. The GPS on my phone has stopped working. My broadband card keeps sputtering and dying.

I’m not sure if the static electricity contained in my awesome curls has mutated me into some sort of electromagnetic pulse deploying super villian that surrounds myself with an electronic deadzone, but pretty much every wireless device in the vicinity of my body has stopped working. It’s only a matter of time before the effects extend to radios and digital watches.

This is a steep price to pay for having one of the best heads of hair in Philadelphia, but we all have our burdens to bear.

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houses, wombats, sinuses, clouds, etc

Monday, May 24, 2010

The house process continues to rage across my life like a wombat on methamphetamine. While I had that under control, I also came down with a bit of a complete sinus disaster on Thursday, which left me feeling like I had a blanket wrapped around my head for the past four days.

Have you tried fighting an allegorical rabid marsupial on uppers with a blanket wrapped around your head? Slightly more challenging than your typical allegorical wombat-fighting.

An angry wombat.

(PS: On wombats, Wikipedia says the following:

Wombats are Australian marsupials; they are short-legged, muscular quadrupeds, approximately 1 metre (39 in) in length with a very short tail. … [T]heir lack of fear means that they may display acts of aggression if provoked, or if they are simply in a bad mood. Its sheer weight makes a charging wild wombat capable of knocking an average-sized adult over, and their sharp teeth and powerful jaws can inflict severe wounds.

See that sidetrack I just took? That is my life for the past four days.)

Usually if I’m sick – even a little under the weather – I go on complete life lockdown. I’ll go to work or appointments, but I am low key and constantly snacking and hydrating.

Friday didn’t really allow for that. I went to a United Way business breakfast and awards, which meant I had to be up early and completely on-point w/r/t personal style. Somewhere in there i may have forgotten that I already took decongestant, so I took it again. At that point I think *i* began to resemble a wombat.

Then I had to condense a full workday into a less-than-full workday to deliver a huge project. Afterward, what was supposed to be a 10-minute appearance at a goodbye party turned into a four-hour odyssey, interrupted intermittently by calls to our Realtor until my phone died.

And, PS, for the first time in five years the internet in our house was completely down.

Yeah, so, not a lot of snacking and hydrating in there, which meant i woke up at 7am on Saturday in less than tip top shape – making it a perfect day to jump out of a plane with Gina and Wes.

Just ignore that Peter is carrying an entire roll of toilet paper with him as he straps into his ‘chute. “Why a roll of toilet paper,” you inquire? Because he is using boxes of tissues at the rate of 2boxes:3hrs.

Fast forward seven hours and half a roll of toilet paper and no skydive has occurred, due to cloud cover. Which, honestly, I know it’s a very complex process with a seemingly endless array of safety concerns, but when you’ve paid and you’re sitting there on the bench staring up at clouds with hunks of toilet tissue wedged up your nostrils you are thinking, what is the big fucking deal with the weather that it’s going to interfere with you THROWING ME OUT OF A PLANE!?

It’s probably all for the best because – as E pointed out – if your sinuses are completed jammed even after two boxes of tissues and half a roll of toilet paper you probably do not want to introduce massive, repeated pressure changes to ram that farther up into your brain.

I finally got my rest and hydration after that, but I had to make up for all the abuse of being out and about before I felt totally blanketless. And, while resting and hydrating and lacking internet, I didn’t get all that much done in the way of signing away my life in exchange for a charming 87-year-old Tudor.

And that was the last four days of my life.

I’ll come back and tell you the next actual chapter of the house project tomorrow. Ish. I have to make sure that wombat is corralled before I make a big show of talking about it.

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The Human Calculator v. The Harmony Jukebox

Monday, May 24, 2010

That would be a pretty dull superhero fight, huh?

Actually, the title refers to Friday’s post, which drew a quick comment from someone who built a straw-man of “The Human Spellchecker” to stand next to my snarky Human Calculator.

I’m so high-and-mighty about math, but do I use a spell-checker when I blog? Would I deny people a spellchecker too in my dedicated Ludditism?

The answers are, respectively, “occasionally” and “of course!” The existence of tools to assist us doesn’t replace the need to master skills or knowledge on our own.

Consider the source. I take for granted that I’m comfortable doing both of these things. I have to proofread words and numbers as part of both my jobs and my hobbies. It’s in my best interest to be a knowledgeable snob about both.

Maybe they aren’t the best examples for me.

I always say, “music is like calculus to me.” Yet, I’m a musician. I don’t have wonderful pitch, and I am not a natural singer. I can’t pluck perfectly in-tune harmony notes out of thin air like E or Gina, each of whom I refer to as “The Harmony Jukebox.”

When our band learns a new song I usually have to play along on piano at first, and when I sing harmony in the car E has to sing with me the first few times. And I have to pay careful attention to breath support, shaping, and phrasing to stay in tune.

At some point I have to sing the notes myself in an effortless way. If I never eliminated the piano, or E, or the careful attention to every note, I wouldn’t be much of a musician. I mean, yeah, they have auto-tune for that now, but what about performing live.

Bottom line: being a musician is hard work for me! Sometimes it isn’t any fun at all.

What if math was that hard for me? Would I sometimes just whip out the calculator? Probably. But just like music, I’d still want to know how to do it myself. I still want to possess that knowledge.

What about you? Forget grade-school antics like math and spelling. What is a difficult skill that you have to reproduce daily? Do you use a tool to assist you? And, can you still perform the same task without the tool?

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The Human Calculator

Friday, May 21, 2010

When I go out to eat I am imbued with a special power – restaurant food renders me as THE HUMAN CALCULATOR!

Okay, not really. It’s just that I do quick math in my head all of the time, and compared to the amortization schedules I’ve been juggling lately calculating tips is hardly a challenge.

Why do people need calculators to do this! Here’s an example, from a recent five-person lunch outing that was totally not unique in that I acted as the human calculator.

I know and you know I simply have to multiply the check amount by one plus whatever the tip amount is, but I am the sort of person who does math in chunks. Thus:

The bill was $123.
10% is $12.30, so…
20% is $24.60.
We didn’t want to tip 20%, just 18%…
So, subtract 10% ($1.23) twice from $24.60.
After rounding, the tip is $22, meaning…
the total bill is $145, and we would each pay…
$29 total.

I did that in my head once in about 17 seconds, and then mentally checked my math before people were done with the tip calculator programs on their cell phones. And then they didn’t trust me because I used 18% instead of 20% and rounded by .14 cents, so they calculated it AGAIN!

And then they were like, “Whoa, you totally did that in your head.”

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?! I’m all for computers and smart phones and iPads, but have we seriously become a nation that is so terrifyingly awful at math that we’re intimidated by leaving a tip?! Move the decimal over one place, double that (or, add half if the service was bad), and adjust if necessary. The end.

No wonder mortgage lenders expected me to roll over and play dead whenever they’d change their offer to something seemingly lower. Maybe mere mortals would be tricked, but not THE HUMAN CALCULATOR.

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Actual thing that just happened in my office

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

(scene: Peter and co-worker giggling maniacally in the hallway in front of our manager’s office)

Manager: What are you doing out there?

Me: If we tell you, you have to promise to not fire us for doing it.

Manager: Sure.

Me: We’re making a human pyramid in the middle of the hallway.

Manager: Why?

Co-worker: So we can take a picture of us in a human pyramid. I’ll be on top! [strikes a legitimate cheerleading pose.]

Manager: Cool! Can I watch?

(scene.)

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Yet another thing I have screamed in the middle of a Target.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

“Oh, because I’m always looking for neon colored things to put in my vagina.”

Seriously, if I was a woman I don’t think I’d be cruising the feminine products aisle looking for a box of tampons that resembles a pack of highlighters. I get the packaging of a tampon being a fun color so it’s unobtrusive in your purse, but the actual applicator? Are we seriously selling this to young women?

Can anyone with a vagina offer some insight?

(Because all tampons are “Tampax” to me, I had to use the interwebs to figure out the brand I encountered, and I must say that the Kotex “How to Insert a Tampon” video is refreshingly frank and personal for something coming from a major brand.)

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#140conf: Day 1, intermission

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Great googly moogly, #140conf flies by quickly. Here’s the overview of the first half of day 1.

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Emotional Spring Cleaning

Monday, March 29, 2010

I should be subjected to some sort of electric shock of increasing frequency and severity whenever I let posting lapse for more than seven days. I wonder if there is a WordPress plugin for that.

Failing that, I at least have a persistent nagging in the depths of my soul. PETER, growls my inner OCD Godzilla (a voracious blog reader), YOUR BLOG IS STALE. A week and a half, maybe he can bear. Two weeks and he starts exhaling tiny wafts of smoke from his nose, and I’m like, Godzilla doesn’t breathe fire, right?

I read a lot of blogs about betterment, simplification, and frugality. They all dole out advice about organizing and eliminating – make a clear surface or a paid off credit card, and then it’s easier to avoid the things you would clutter it with.

I’ll never quite attain that clear-surface perfection in my physical existence, but this past year I’ve been struggling to get there in my intellectual life.

A little over a year ago I had a lot of stuff on every surface of my mind. Event-planning. Marriage. Marketing. Songwriting. Blogging. Some piles were deeper. Identity management. Seemingly unfixable relationships.

For the past year every time I read one of those decluttering blog posts, instead of decluttering my desk or my bureau I decluttered some recess of my psyche.

It was scary for a while. I jettisoned some stuff I thought was pretty central to my existence. But you know what? None of it was. I am a husband, a songwriter, a blogger, a music-lover, a communicator, and an occasional activist.

All of the other stuff is just ornamentation, and there’s a thin line between emotional tchotchkes and emotional clutter.

And, anyway, OCD Godzilla needs a lot of space to roam. He is a free-range imaginary beast of the psyche.

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Writer’s Envy

Friday, March 5, 2010

(I forgot to post this yesterday because I am A PRO.)

WTF, am I doing a meme? Yes, because one of my favorite bloggers and virtual pals Kari from Inflammatory Writ addressed this very interesting set of questions to the internet at large, and I found them compelling.

I guess that’s how memes start. It’s like mono getting passed around in your Junior year of high school – everybody thought it was a good idea to kiss that one boy, and things just spiraled out of control from there.

Anyhow, here we go.
Continue reading ›

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Rats retire from a sinking ship

Thursday, February 25, 2010

I have been enjoying a budget blog called Early Retirement Extreme, written by Jacob – a man who semi-retired into financial independence at age 30.

How? Here’s a glimpse:

I don’t have a driver’s license, I don’t have any debt, I don’t live in a house, I cook everything from scratch, I cut my own hair, I practically never buy new or anything at all for that matter, I am not on any prescription medicines, and I am in great physical shape.

Essentially, he has eliminated the American addiction for conspicuous consumption from his financial diet, and it hasn’t left much else to spend on. I can definitely appreciate his no-frills approach to spending – even within my yuppy, metro life I’ve managed to live marginally.

For a more detailed analysis of how Jacob works his magic, see his recent post Your budget is like a sinking ship. He literally compares the average American budget to a ship, showing how you can plug the leaks. He also aggregates the spend on some common items – like clothing and furniture – across a lifetime, like so:

$2688 a year or a lifetime cost of more than $200,000 simply to have other people prepare your food. If the average income is, let’s say 40000 after tax, would you really want to work 5 years of your life just so you can eat a meal you didn’t make yourself a couple of times a week for the rest of your life?

While his simplistic living might seem beyond your ability to withstand, his bottom line can make sense for anyone – identify the quality of life that you want, and then plug the leaks.

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