Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Archives for February 2003

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I never know what’s going on in my apartment.

There are four of us, spending all of our time alternatingly at work, in class, with our significant others, or on stage. The odds that more than two of us will ever be here at the same time are dwarfed by the odds that the apartment will be empty when one of us arrives.


The way i figure it, you and your college roommates would have to be absolute dweebs for this not to be the case. “Dweebs,” for sure, because the four of us are definitely geeks, so i had to find a word that had more of a “shut-in” connotation.


It’s not hard to spend nearly three quarters of your typical waking hours outside of your collegiate abode; it’s not like we do it intentionally. In fact, occasionally going days at a time without re-entering it really isn’t a challenge — especially when you’re dating someone with their own apartment.

What starts to occur is that, with so many lengthy departures, your home can hold something unusual for you upon your return. Different. It can be full of surprises. And, though these surprises might prove alarming at first, as the length of your residence increases the unusual circumstances that you find yourself entering into become less and less alarming.

Rearranged or missing furniture should not phase you, nor should strangers reclining on said furniture (even if they are the only people presently in your house). The appearance or disappearance of drastically large amounts of any kitchen items, including actual food or liquor, should be duly noted but not unduly fretted over. Finding a sign on your front door that proclaims “Ring hard and often; cover $5” should only bother you if you do not have a doorbell. You should expect to find large new appliances, game / home-theatre systems, or piles of laundry more often than not. You should strive to exhibit no surprise upon the emergence unexpected or unwelcome people from your roommates’ bedrooms. If any of your personal effects seem to be lost or missing, even from your own room or bathroom area, you should allow ample time for them to be returned or replaced before entering a period of mourning.

Then there are the notes. Even in this technologically advanced age, notes are the most effective form of roommate to roommate conversation. Why? You can blow off an email, but there is only so long that you can profess to ignore something that is affixed to your doorknob, disco ball, toilet-lid, television screen, Brita pitcher, or bedroom door. Additionally, you should learn to anticipate what will at first seem like non-sequitir content in said notes, which will eventually bloom to make a terrifying amount of sense once you put the correct context in place, as in the only vaguely exaggerated examples that follow:

  • Please extinguish your own toaster fires.
  • Do not poke at the holes in the bathroom ceiling.
  • For your own safety do not open the closet door until Animal Control arrives.
  • You have 24 hours to return all dinnerware to the kitchen before a fine goes into effect.

    and, a personal favorite excerpted from Elise’s house:

  • Dear tenants … I am leaving the country to serve in the Isreali army, hopefully to return in March … These are the best years of your life; make sure to have fun every day … Signed: Your Landlord.

    • College… it’s an adventure.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/02/390367882/

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    Coolness

    Meet Ariel Meadow Stallings. She is a blogger of some note and repute, but i really only know her as a commenter on Little Yellow Different. Apparently, she’s also an occasional contributor to the (now defunct?) Shift magazine, which i had never even heard of before today. Her latest contribution was an article about small-time blogger Helen-Jane, who was hired (yes, hired) to blog on the behalf of a movie starring real famous people!

    How, you ask, did a little-known blogger get flown across the country to do such high-profile weblogging? Simple: star on Ernie Hsuing‘s reality-based Blind Date Blog this past year, which i ostensibly served as a color commenter on, along with Cyan Pictures president Josh Newman. That makes Helen and i both alum of the same fantastic blog empire! So, theoretically i connect to Helen-Jane here. However, let’s keep moving…

    The movie, I Love Your Work, stars Christina Ricci, Vince Vaughn, Jason Lee, and Elvis Costello. The index page of its website, to my vague disbelief, is literally Helen-Jane’s daily log from the set (which is also covered in this Salon article). The move site provides a link to Helen’s personal webpage and there, in her top-left-sidebar box she highlights what she is currently “listening to.” And, what, you ask, is she listening to?

    None other than Peter Mulvey, my personal favorite folk-rock hero and my mainstay musical influence — not to mention being one of the few people on earth who owns both of my demo cds as well as occasionally talking to me from on-stage about his bottom-end. So to speak.

    The internet: a small damn world afterall.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/02/90368335/

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    Man, blogger eats one witty post and i’m dead in the water for over a week. If it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t too witty… just something about Friends, urination, and Ghandi. I mean, honestly, whatever you just imagined the post to be was probably just as funny as the erstwhile real thing.


    This weekend i worked an event called Scholars Days, which are the point in the admissions process when the middling-to-exceptionally smart applicants get dressed up in order to impress the faculty members who will contribute to deciding how big each scholarship will be. Exciting stuff. I remember when i came to campus for my interview i was completely miserable, soaking wet, and skeptical that i would even pass by Drexel’s campus on the street again let alone attend. So, i find working this event to be implicitly ironic.

    In case you were wondering, student employees are all but invisible on Scholar’s Days. Students are either too miserable or too nervous to want to talk to us, and parents are either too overwhelmed or too well-trained as stage-mothers to listen to our incredibly valid opinions about the campus. As a result, i basically spent ten hours of my (well-paid) life alternately reading and crowd-watching.

    My favorite iteration of the latter is definitely making up stories about all of the students i catch a glimpse of. This activity keeps me blithely entertained and also allows me the illusion of attentiveness. The Gimme Round tends to involve identifying the chronic pot smokers and the never-been-kissed crowd; not especially challenging. Next i move on to identifying those who have competed in science fairs, guessing at what their project was for bonus point. Afterwards, if it’s not a liberal arts day, i play “Trekkie or Comic Book Fan?” Even more tricky is trying to decide who is questioning their sexuality, closely followed by who is definitely not questioning their sexuality (though maybe they should be). And, finally, in what i like to think of as the lightening round, i contemplate who will join the theatre (we tend to be rather intelligent, on the whole) and, subsequently, who will spend their first cast party sucking face with one of the cast members of our current play How To Save The World (or The Play Big Business Doesn’t Want You To See).

    If only i could get together a panel of my peers and a tiny buzzer i think Scholars Days would go by much faster. As it was i had to convince Aim to have a Corona and some wings with me afterwards to salvage the weekend at all.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/02/390367579/

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    I can’t imagine when it was, as i hardly ever watch television, but i definitely have a recollection of channel-surfing past a Richard Simmons Sweating to the Oldies advertisement and remarking to Elise that i ought to buy it. Why? Because i would be a lot more likely to dance around in my living room like an idiot then do, say, ten pushups a day.


    She doubted me at the time, but had she seen the solid gold dancing i’ve got going to the Chicago soundtrack right now i think she might… erm… well, she’d say i was gay.


    Right. But, what’s important is she loves me.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/02/90328381/

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    Winter turns me into something of a lardass; it feels as though i have been steadily gaining several pounds a week. I personally like to think of it as a protective layer of flubber combined with an appreciation of fine dining, but flub is flub. However, after many weeks of intense practice i believe i could competetively run the two block Walnut street dash to board a moving SEPTA bus.

    I would surely win.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/02/90282047/

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    The week that i moved into my first apartment was also the only week i’ve ever owned a cell phone. Actually, it was on loan from Drexel as part of my employment as a peer leader. Only two and a half years later and all that i can remember is working long days in our tiny cloistered room in The Armory, after which i would take a short but exhilarating walk back to my new home. Short to the tune of seven blocks, but exhilarating because it carried me off of the Drexel campus map and onto poorly lit residential streets that were known to host such threats as maliciously drunk frat-boys and the very occasional mugger.

    In the beginning i would get so tense walking home from work that i would nervously finger the nine key on my company phone, as i had it set to speed dial the police. At the time i was new to the feeling of my own keys in my hand, and could not help but finger them constantly while my other hand readied for action, especially when i turned up the always-dark thirty-sixth street from Powelton. And, though I always tell prospective students that i’ve never been harassed or mugged for a reason i have the distinct feeling that neither my shiny new keys and tightly-clutched phone were that reason.

    Walking down Walnut street tonight with Elise’s cell phone in my hand recalled the experience for just a moment, blogged-about but forgotten in the interim. Of course, now i am thrust into what actually qualifies as West Philadelphia rather than blocks of expensive double homes, and i am now typically as oblivious to any potential dangers the streets hold in store for me as i was trigger-happy on the nine button back in the day.

    Oddly, i felt strangely alone out on the street — somehow totally out of place, as if i was being blue-screened onto a city block from the safety of a comfortably heated studio. As if a digital jaws or T-rex could snap me up as i rounded a corner, represented by your common Philly street thug. Or, you know, an actual screen-monster approximately as threatening.

    Tonight was literally the first time i had a cell phone in my personal possession for more than a minute or two since those tense walks home in 2000; Elise had given me hers so i could call her to consult on Ben & Jerry’s flavors, but as the neon sign of the convenience store disappeared behind the slope of Walnut street i found the phone at my ear. Elise just a speed dial button away; I wouldn’t call her just because i was afraid, though. No, of course not.

    What i would do, though, is have an embarrassingly loud one-sided conversation about themes of materialism and submissiveness in Moulin Rouge as they relate to modern feminism. Not exactly guaranteed to scare away muggers, but i suppose i was hoping to portray that any startled girly screams in the middle of such a heated debate would be construed as distress calls rather than me conceding that Nicole’s tuberculosis had nothing to do with damning her character as soon as she became more than a high class hussy.

    But, really, i hated that movie.

    When i finally reached my own corner the phone was still pressed to my ear with Elise only a hot key away, and i felt confident enough to finally relax my death grip on her tiny Motorola. However, it was then that i saw it.

    A cat — my first assumption; fair, i think. It wasn’t as big as Elise’s dreadnought-sized house felines, but not unreasonable for a feisty-but-underfed outdoor tom. Upon a second glance i saw that the tail wasn’t right… not high and wagging like a cat’s. Not even right for being a bit damp and put out. In fact, more like outrightly straight, and tapered near the end. Not especially fluffy.

    As i got closer the silhouette of its face began to resolve so that i could make out out not an adorable button of a kitty nose, but a snout. Yes, definitely a snout. At this point i upgraded my estimate from stray to opossum, although i had no guesses as to what an opossum would be doing wandering around on Walnut street at this time of year. Or any time of year.

    At this juncture i idly pressed the call button on the cell so as to share my speculation with Elise. I had only gotten halfway into what i’m sure was a very clever introductory sentence about the migratory patterns of opossum when my quarry turned to face me and i discovered that it was not a cat, opossum, or even a deformed pan-handler. No, none of the above, not by any stretch of my overstimulated and sleep-deprived imagination.

    Indeed, it was a rat. A rat that had grown so large that even seeing it full on i was tempted to believe it was a mutated house cat. Let me put that into perspective for you: big enough that it cannot be obscured by a single car tire; too menacing to beat to death with a flip-flop; large enough that it immediately evoked a fire-swamp joke after i was done screaming like a little girl at the top of my lungs at one thirty in the morning in the middle of a deserted West Philadelphia street.

    I’m not sure if that scared away the muggers or attracted them.

    The ROUS continued to stare me down while Elise casually dismissed my peril — i took her hanging up on me as an implicit refusal to rush down the stairs to arm me with a burning torch, large steak knife, or can of disinfectant lysol.

    There we stood: girly boy desperately clutching a cell phone and two pints of Ben & Jerry’s and rodent … rodent and girly boy desperately clutching a cell phone and two pints of Ben & Jerry’s and rodent. After a bone-chilling minute where i thought i would be forced to lob a pint of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch at the thing’s head, it nobly retreated to the barely sufficient cover of an Accord tire so that i could breathless dart past it. My keys now added to the list of precious cargo clutched tightly to my chest, i was more urgently tense during those fleeting moments of escape than i ever was three years ago on the front stoop of my apartment building.

    Moral: Cell phones cannot protect you from everything. At least, not unless you have the speed dial for Animal Control directly between the one for your unsympathetic girlfriend and 911.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/02/90266022/