Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Archives for August 2011

Things to Do In Philly, 8/31 Edition

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The CK extended family is rocking so many high quality shows of their own in the next week that I probably can’t get out to much else. While I might selfishly hope that you’re going to come out just to the fam events, thanks to the Philly Fringe Fest you have plenty of other choices.

This is my version of the highlight reel, the sole criteria for inclusion being: do I dig it?

Filmstar playing the Blame-a-Thon, as shot by me.

First, here’s the family affairs:

Thursday, 9/8
Who: Filmstar, featuring your author and the lovely E
Details: 8p, $10, North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., Philly
Why? This will be my first time on stage at North Star Bar, though pre-me Filmstar rocked it at the now-legendary #blamedrewscancer marathon. We’ll whip out a few newer tunes, plus have copies of The Desperate Times EP to place in your hot little hands. We’ll share the stage with Mean, Secret Music, and Kyle Andrews.

Friday 9/2 & Saturday 9/3
What: The Gray Area, an original Fringe play produced by Gina!
Details: 8:30p, $10, The Walking Fish Theatre, 2509 Frankford Ave, Philly
Why? Gina & the rest of Ocelot On a Leash Theatre Company (of which I am a proud alum) have yet to produce a dud, and this is definitely not going to be the first. The company commissioned a series of Twilight Zone-esque short plays from local author Mark Wolverton and wrote some of their own pieces. To enforce the retro sci-fi Zone vibe, they’ll present the works in simulated black & white – including costumes, sets, props, and even the actors! If you miss it this week, the plays run again next Friday through Sunday at the Rotunda.

Wednesday, 9/7 through Sunday, 9/11
What: Checkers, an original one-man Fringe show
Details: various times, $15, The Fleisher Art Memorial Sanctuary, 719 Catharine Street, Philly
Why? Producer Mary Stewart is a longtime partner in crime of mine, and she acts as one of my major barometers of what’s good in the local arts scene. If she produces a show, I’m there. This year her choice is this one-man show developed by Mark Kennedy. In the spirit of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Mark explores the life of a minor character from Witold Gombrowicz’s already-absurd fairytale Ivona, Princess of Burgundiam. In the original play, the royal family has it in for Ivona because she’s too ugly to contribute to their gene pool. Here, Checkers the servant turns out to be hopelessly smitten with the decidedly un-fair Ivona. I’ve already bought into the show via their Kickstarter campaign, mostly on the strength of their oddball Tumblr featuring posts from Kennedy in-character as Checkers.

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What’s in store for the next week from the rest of my favorites? Behold:

Thursday 9/1
Who: Venice Sunlight & Stonethrown
Details: 8p, $8, North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., Philly
Why? Venice Sunlight is an awesome pop/rock band packed with slick riffs that puts on a high-energy show. Stonethrown is as close to Muse as you can get in the Philly scene – squalling rock with high-wire male vocals. They play first on a bill with Modern Suits and I Am Lightning.

Friday 9/2
Who: An Acoustic Evening with The Weepies
Details: 8p, $26, TLA, 4th & South, Philly
Why? The Weepies turned in one of the best albums of 2010, which I called “Cloying, cheerful pop-folk melodies so distinct that it’s often easy to forget that a band is playing beneath them.” The chance to see them reproduce those tunes in a stripped down show is hard to pass up.

Sunday 9/4
Who: Adrien Reju w/Pete Donnelly
Details: 7:30p, $10, Tin Angel, 20 S. 2nd St., Philly
Why? We’ve established I have a ton of local favorites, which maybe devalues my favorites currency – but not only do I adore songwriter Adrien Reju – E loves her. And E’s a hard one to crack when it comes to local music. With that double endorsement in mind, check out Adrien co-headlining a special birthday show with her producer from standout LP A Million Hearts. Last time we saw her she wielded a slew of unbelievably great new songs, which have now had nearly a year to simmer.

Thursday 9/8
Who: Brian Flanagan Band
 Details: Noon, FREE! @ Love Park, 15th & Arch
Why? Brian Flanagan graduated from covers at open mics to originals to fronting a band that plays sure, 70s-style singer-songwriter acoustic rock in the vein of Jackson Browne and Brian’s influencers Ray Davies and the Kinks. If you’re a Center City worker, spend your lunch break with the tasty gourmet food carts in Love Park and enjoy a free serenade.

Gina’s Bachelorette Adventure, Pt. 4

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The fourth post in this series finds your author all of three days before Gina’s Bachelorette Party AKA All-Day Adventure and I am, let’s say, FREAKING OUT.

Gina modeling a vast collection of our stenciled icons in action on Gina's back late in the day in her bachelorette adventure (while Mikki and I spray more stencils int he background). As you can imagine, we had to spray these quickly and in highly public spaces.

Allow me to set the scene for you. It is eight or nine at night. I am on my side patio, which I like to pretend is private but really is quite in full view of anyone passing directly in front of our house.

I am wearing only my underwear. My blindingly white naked torso vibrates against the dusk like a bike reflector. I am dual-wielding two cans of spray paint against a defenseless bag of planting soil, which is wearing a plain white t-shirt. The shirt bears several iterations of the Starfleet symbol, some in black spray paint, others apparently colored in with a marker.

I swear, if photographs of this scene existed, I would totally share one.

Why this utter madness? Let’s travel back in time two days. As the guy on the ground in Philly, I was on the receiving end of the various bachelorette party supplies selected by Kelly (in Belgium) and Mikki (in Seattle). Both women are so ridiculously kitschy and crafty that it defies explanation. I received many things. A box of 30 pink t-shirts. A set of Erlenmeyer flasks and graduated cylinders. A package of vaguely phallic sidewalk chalk.

What I did not receive was spray paint for branding our t-shirts.

The t-shirt iconography had become central to our gamification concept for the party, with Gina choosing a team for every challenge. If the team defeated the challenge, they would be branded with a special stenciled badge. Think of it as “Foursquare: LIVE!”

Despite working all day in the midst of a team full of craft maniacs, I am not in the least bit crafty. I’m not even good at speculating about methods of craft. I am good at desktop publishing and subsequently printing things on high end paper. That’s about the extent of my crafting abilities. I am not great at creating things with my hands. I still have problems changing guitar strings.

Thus, the spray paint issue was very … concerning. Three days to the party seemed like the time we should be testing the spray paint, to make sure it would work. Kelly and Mikki had mentioned a few potential brands in their emails, but I couldn’t find any online that I could get shipped in three days, because spray paint can only be shipped via ground.  I started researching other spray paint, discovering that most of it needed to be sealed with heat before it set. Every time I found something that sounded like it might work (including, hilariously, “Hunters [sic] Specialties Permanent Camo”) I ordered it for the fastest shipping possible, all the while getting increasingly frustrated that I was researching spray paint at all instead of writing Gina’s instruction book.

The very highly recommended spray paint choice of Kelly and Mikki was "Montana Gold Acrylic Spray Paint," which comes in every possible color, including metallics.

Remember how I recently shared a leadership assessment that said that I have a strong future vision while focusing on data and clearing obstacles? Well, it also told me that under stress I become myopic and focus only on information overload and slaying things.

It’s not a big leap to the scene that opened this post. I had five cans of assorted spray paint and two markers lined up and had dressed a 40lb sack of dirt in one of my old t-shirts. At a loss for an icon I could quickly stencil out of a sheet of cardboard, I went back to basics: the starfleet insignia. Not wanting to get spray paint on my clothes (even clothes I’ve set aside specifically in a bin entitled, “for painting”), I elected to strip down to a pair of blue bikini briefs to conduct this exercise.

Welcome to my brain. It is a scary place.

The next morning Kelly and Mikki talked me down from my panic after I sent them not the sanest or nicest email I have ever written. They helped me figure out which local stores carried the paint they both recommended, and Kelly assured me we could visit one together when she arrived stateside. Mel coaxed me away from my desk at lunch and convinced me I would not have a panic attack from entering a craft store. I bought the recommended spray paint.

Problem: solved!

Now we had all of the necessary elements for Gina’s party, save for three: Kelly, Mikki, and the instruction book that would lay out the rules of the game and all of the various challenges.

Oh. Just that.

Tune in next time for Kelly and my madcap adventures the day before the party, how an off-hand mention of a “side-quest” turned into the most hilarious part of the event, and samples from the now legendary instruction book.

X-Men Hardcover & Trade Paperback Review, 8/30 Edition

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Marvel Comics is the purveyor of a mighty list of comic book heroes, including my favorites – The X-Men.

If you aren’t the comic-collecting type you might think your consumption of said heroes are limited to every kind of media but print. Not so! Marvel releases collected editions of almost every one of their newly released issues. These handy tomes make it easy to keep up with comics without being a issue-by-issue collector.

It’s a big week for X-collections, with my favorite X-book so far this year out in paperback! Plus, an overview of Marvel’s other new books for the week.

If this list isn’t enough to satisfy you, catch up on every X-Men book collection ever in my Definitive Guide to Collection X-Men in Graphic Novels, which address the collection(s) of every X-issue ever printed. Also, if you’re new to this whole comics racket, see my recent Intro to X-Men (on a budget) post.

xXx

Collection of the Week:
Uncanny X-Force: The Apocalypse Solution TPB
Collects Uncanny X-Force #1-4 and material from Wolverine: The Road to Hell.

CK Says: Buy it! If you like X-Men and know who any one of Wolverine, Psylocke, Deadpool, or Fantomax are from other media, check out this book! It’s the best X-Men has been in the last two years. I read it three times consecutively when it first arrived in hardcover earlier this year.

New-to-X writer Rick Remender not only nails Wolverine and Fantomax and has a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of X-history, but writes the best Psylocke of all time. Seriously: ever. Meanwhile, artist Jerome Opena contributes some of the most lush interiors any X-book has seen in some time, with vivid, painterly colors.

The plot? Wolverine puts together a top-secret kill-squad to deal with the return of major villain Apocalypse. The team has to go through his deadly horseman to confront him, and they’re in for a surprise when they do – one that will cause them to rethink joining the team. (Available for just a few dollars more in hardcover)

xXx

There are three more X-books out this week, but you should avoid one of them like the Legacy Virus? Which one? [Read more…] about X-Men Hardcover & Trade Paperback Review, 8/30 Edition

#MusicMonday: “Chemmie” – Joan as Police Woman

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At this point shuffling the unheard songs on my iPod can turn up anything. My collection is approaching 25,000 tracks, with three thousand I’ve never listened to before, with entries running from 70s AM Gold to 80s hair rock to new LPs out this year. Knowing I added something to iTunes has no bearing on when I’ll eventually hear it. It could be months.

Given the vast unknown that is my unheard playlist, sometimes it turns up random gems that wind up on repeat for hours at a time. That was the case when Joan as Police Woman‘s “Chemmie” came on last week.

First, I have a undeniable soft spot for songs with any of the key words “chemical,” “communications,” and “crisis,” so I was bound to pay attention from the first chorus. Second, this song is sexy as I don’t know what. It’s like a slouching, indie-rock take on “Let’s Stay Together.” It would definitely go on my candlelit-baby-making mix tape, if such a thing existed.

Instant five-stars!

I’m definitely growing a soft spot for Joan as Police Woman, whose music trends to resembling a sulty, low-key take on the Pretenders’ best moments of simmering funk groove. I’ve stayed willfully ignorant of what the band moniker actually represents, but for the purposes of this post peeked at Wikipedia just long enough to learn that it’s the one-woman band of Joan Wasser, who – much like Chrissie Hynde before her – is an American with a decidedly UK sonic bent.

“Chemmie” is from Joan as Police Woman’s 2011 LP The Deep Field.

sounding off

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This is the first time all month I truly don’t feel like blogging. Between the acts of god and the blogiversary I am tapped out, dudes.

Chez Krisis escaped Irene with only the aforementioned broken screen door as evidence of the storm. Goes to show that all that wackiness E put us through with the several tons of dirt and subsequent weeks of hard physical labor paid off, as there was hardly even a trickle in our previously-damp basement.

I cannot believe that there are people whinging about Irene over-hype in the media. I hate local news just as much (okay: five times more) as the next person, but this was warranted. Overhyping a snow storm is one thing – it’s snow. We’re all gonna live through it and probably have a lot of fun getting bombed and using trash can lids as sleds.

Hurricanes are something else entirely. There is no fun aspect, and as a city used to “fun” apocalyptic weather patterns we needed a bracing dose of reality to make sure we’d be prepared for any eventuality. I know I personally ignore all local weather news, but at the point that the National Weather Service thinks it might be dire I pay attention and prepare.

(Did you know they are the ones largely credited for spurring passive communities into action during Katrina prep? Did you know you can input your zip code into NWS’s site Weather.gov at any time to see all the weather warnings for your area? If you hear any politician say something negative about this service, it is a sign they are a total moron.)

Did it hurt to get extra groceries and gas, clean up the stray stuff around our house, and check various batteries. Totally not, so no complaints here. Well, maybe I could have done without eating an entire loaf of Parmesan Pesto bread in the last 24-hours, but as my friend Sarah pointed out, I was simply carb-loading in preparation for feats of athletic exertion during the storm.

And, well, now I’m ready to hibernate and live off my own body fat, which I guess could have come in handy, too.