Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

the early bird gets the eggs

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Today I woke up at 6:55am, laced up my running shoes, and walked to the supermarket because it was 6:55am and I was definitely not jogging at that hour.

Why? Because New Zealand has run out of eggs. We are officially in a national egg shortage. It’s an ovo-crisis!

I mean, New Zealand has some eggs. Personally, we’ve got about 23. But there are not enough eggs. Few enough eggs that it has become common over the past month to visit the grocery store to see an entire bank of egg shelves picked entirely clean, which didn’t even occur during the height of our lockdowns.

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

Yes, people are even buying that one last carton in the corner with the cracked egg in it.

Apparently one measures these things not in terms of eggs but in terms of laying hens. Literally, the chicken came first, in this scenario. I have learned from the prestigiously-titled Stuff that we currently have 3.5 million egg laying hens (a 68% hen-to-people ratio), but we ought to have 3.8m egg laying hens (a 74% hen-to-people ratio). Those hens (and their predecessors, I suppose) laid about 92 million eggs in the year ending in June 2022, down an apparently staggering amount from 101.2m in the prior egg-laying calendar year.

Long story short, today I learned you need three hens for every four people.

The thing is: it’s not like New Zealand just found a whole lot more people. Even if we count tourism, we don’t have as many people in our borders as we did back in 2019, and there hasn’t been any chicken-specific diseases (that I’ve heard about, anyhow – and, we do have a line into the chicken community).

How did New Zealand run out of eggs?

To the best of my understanding, we actually ran out of eggs 10 years ago and just didn’t realize it until last week. [Read more…] about the early bird gets the eggs

family, but make it camp

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Today is the day of the annual family camping trip, where “family” means all relatives currently within the borders of New Zealand except for me.

I abstain from camping not only because it means sleeping near bugs, but because skipping it presents an incredibly rare occasion for to be alone in our house.

Both E and I have worked from home for the past two years and will continue for the foreseeable future, but I serve the role of our errand-runner-in-chief. That means that if anyone is occasionally left at home alone, it’s E rather than me. That means the family camping trip might ne the only time alone in the house for more than 15 minutes for all of 2023 – just as it was in 2022!

I claim to love being alone. In reality I like it for about twelve hours.

After that, I get lonely and want to make some food for someone.

It turns out that what I crave isn’t necessarily “alone time,” it’s uninterrupted time. It’s hard to choose that for myself when the alternative is a rare hour where E and I are both free to hang out, and even harder when I’m in the same house with an awesome and highly-entertaining kid during her waking hours.

I walked away from the perfect work/life balance of my dream job just to spend more time with that kid – so, of course I’m going to give up some potential quiet time to hang out with her!

Sometimes the only way to enjoy uninterrupted time to myself without feeling guilty is for the kid to be nowhere within a 100-kilometer radius of me. Maybe camping is that far away? I’m not sure. All I know is that it involves sleeping in a tent in a well-managed slice of wilderness with questionable access to plumbing and electricity. That’s a combination of factors I would only endure for a reality show with a significant cash prize. [Read more…] about family, but make it camp

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 1 & Episode 2 – “One Night Only” Talent Show Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my supersized Power Rankings of the massive double-episode premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “One Night Only”! This pair of premiere episodes introduced a never-ending cast of 16 queens competing in a mini-challenge photoshoot, a Talent Show, and a runway theme of “Who is She?”

The last season of Drag Race was one of the most-entertaining in the history of the show. It also verged on jumping the shark. There were several stretches of episodes with no eliminations, the season shoved an excessive (but entertaining) lip sync tournament in the middle, and the entire thing was saddled with the “it’s chocolate” save mechanism that was obviously fully under the control of the producers.

It left Season 14 feeling belabored. For the first time, many fans complained that Drag Race was… well, dragging. Drag Race is at its best when it is a non-stop variety show competition with real stakes for the contestants when they misstep. The more it is stuffed full of non-eliminations, immunity, or special saves, the more it drifts into feeling scripted – which minimized the agency of a talent cast of artists.

What saved Season 14 from sailing straight over the proverbial shark was its cast. In retrospect, the cast seems packed full of unforgettable personalities – but, part of why they were so unforgettable is that we got so much time between them Sashaying away!

As it turns out, a belabored season can still be one of the best, as long as it spends that extra time showing off its cast.

The show seems to be headed in the opposite direction this year, with a massive cast competing all at once in this first pair of episodes with a supposedly irreversible elimination at the end. That means far less early screen time per queen. Plus, after this initial pair of episodes, episodes will only air for an hour on MTV (which means the actual content is more like 40 minutes).

Will Drag Race be able to steer away from its impending shark jump by producing a brisk, tight, shenanigan-free season that shows off the talents of its massive cast? Or, will this extra-long season of extra-short episodes collapse under the sheer weight of trying to make each of its 16 queens stand out.

Only time will tell if the season was successful, but based on these first two episodes there seems to be a clear divide in the cast between the competitors and the potential fodder. Several queens burst out of the gates ready to slay, while many others seemed to struggle to make their drag ready for prime time.

Which queens came out on top and which ones are in danger of an early elimination? My Power Rankings considers each queen’s performance on the show as well as how they are treated by the edit and the “meta game” of what a queen needs to win Drag Race in the wake of a season with an unusual winner like Willow Pill.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 1 & Episode 2 – “One Night Only” Talent Show Review & Power Ranking

The Year Comics Broke Up With Me

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I didn’t read any new comics in 2022.

It wasn’t about me. It was about the comics. And, I can prove that with data.

More on that in a moment.

Image by ???? Cdd20 from Pixabay

I started reading new comics again in 2010 after 15 years away. Since then, I’ve read nearly every Marvel comic from the end of Avengers vs. X-Men in 2012 through the end of 2021. The same is true for DC from the beginning of Rebirth in 2016.

Plus, since 2017 I’ve read nearly everything from Aftershock, Valiant, Vault & Zenescope, plus a wide selection of new titles from Black Mask, Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW, Image, Mad Cave, Scout, and many, many more!

That adds up to reading a lot of comics every year. Marvel alone reliably releases an average of 14 in-continuity issues every week, with DC chipping in up to 10 more. Then, we add in my other “every comic” publishers, ongoing indie titles I keep up with, and new releases I’m checking out.

That results in an average pull list of 48 comics per week – or about 2500 issues a year. It means I read well over 50% of the new single issue releases in the American comics market.

I kept up that pace for five years. That doesn’t mean I was buying 48 comics a week. My reading habits were a balance of snatching up new digital issues of the things I loved the most, waiting a bit longer for digital discounts on others, and catching up on other comics for a minor subscription fee via Marvel Unlimited (MU), DC Universe (DCU), and Comixology Unlimited (CXU).

2022 began with a big change: the death of Comixology as we knew it.

What used to be a standalone site with a decent web-based reader was absorbed entirely by its owner, Amazon. My ability to easily read and reference issues before they hit MU and DCU was scuttled. Using CXU was over. That knocked out my entire indie comics habit, since the vast majority of them only distribute digitally through that single channel.

I told myself I would enjoy a three month break and then start catching up via MU and DCU.

That never happened because of a more gradual change: I stopped liking comics. Or, at least, I thought I did.

This is where the data comes in. [Read more…] about The Year Comics Broke Up With Me

Crushing On: The Night House (2020)

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I loved horror movies when I was a kid.

The Night House, starring Rebecca Hall

It’s one of those facts about myself that I often forget. Sure, I always recall the story of how a children’s version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was the first chapter book I ever read. What I don’t typically remember is how I loved terrifying flicks as early as the age of seven, including Alien, Nightmare on Elm Street, and the somewhat campy House.

How I had access to all of those definitely-not-age-appropriate flicks, I cannot explain.

As an adult I’ve lost my taste for outright gore that accompanied some of the horrific films of my youth. You’d never catch me watching a Saw flick. Maybe part of that is never knowing if gore will be accompanied by the spectre of sexual violence to make it seem extra frightening. I’m generally looking for equal opportunity murder that doesn’t threaten anyone’s agency.

That reticence doesn’t have to rule out every horror flick. Something I’m trying to remind myself in 2023 that I don’t have to finish everything I start. There’s no prize for finishing a terrible comic or sitting through a bad movie. There’s no harm in checking out the huge swatch of modern horror out in the past decade – if it turns me off, I can turn it off.

That is how I found myself sitting down with The Night House this week. Why was it my first choice? I have no idea. I had never heard of it before. I couldn’t tell you how I found it.

All I know is that once I saw that it starred Rebecca Hall I was down to watch it. I am absolutely devoted to Hall ever since seeing her in The Prestige. I think she is one of the major relatively-unsung talents of the past decade of film. She can make any character instantly sympathetic or completely reviled.

The Night House was an absolutely riveting suspense thriller. I’m not always a movie viewer with a lot of patience for slowly-simmering plots, but I could not tear myself away from this movie! It slowly unravels an elegant, surprising, and ultimately satisfying central mystery. I was constantly guessing and revising my guesses as the tension simmered.

Much of this David Bruckner film is Rebecca Hall alone with the camera, often in complete silence. I can think of few other actresses of her generation that could make that work. It’s not just her ability to hold attention on screen, but to project so much complexity and inner life with so few words and actions.

I’m not sure I would place this in the realm of modern horror with a capital “H.” While there are some scary moments and shocking imagery, I was often reminded of Hitchcock’s version of horror – as much about the tension as the release.

(Extremely vague spoilers follow, which will give away the opening premise of the film and send you in with a few expectations – but spoil none of the plot. You’ve been warned!) [Read more…] about Crushing On: The Night House (2020)