krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

Live-Blogging The 1st Presidential Debate

September 26, 2016 by krisis

campaign-2016_758_426_81_s_c1 I’m live-blogging the debate tonight in the same format I have in the past – assigning values as we go.

On main questions, candidates will split 7 points.

On specific rebuttals, candidates compete for their own total of 3 points in individual rebuttals.

On crosstalk, I will award up to 5 points to either candidate I see fit.

“Achieve Prosperity”

“Two economic realities” – record job growth and income growth, but income inequality is significant.

Clinton: Pivots into an opening speech, invokes her granddaughter’s birthday. “Invest in you – invest in your future. Jobs in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing,” technology. Also wants to raise minimum wage, guarantee equal pay for women, introduce profit sharing, supporting people struggling to balance family and work. “Difficult choices you face and stresses you’re under,” hits family leave, sick days, asks the wealthy to pay their share. Says, “Donald, it’s good to be with you.” “Who can shoulder the immense, awesome responsibilities of the presidency?”

Points: 4 of 7. The typical big plan you hear from a president, but it’s credible.

Trump: “Our jobs are fleeing the country. They are going to Mexico and to many other countries. Look at what China is doing to our country – [?] our product and devaluing their currency … they’re using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China and many other countries.” Mexico building some of the best plants, some of the “the most sophisticated plants.” “As far as childcare and so many other things, I think Hillary and I agree on that … but we have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us, our companies leaving the United States and” firing everyone. I’ll be “reducing taxes tremendously … for small and big businesses.”

Points: 3 of 7. Trump gave a terrific recap, but he seems focused on an old style of economy that’s focused on industry that we might not even have anymore.

Clinton rebuttal: “I think trade is an important issue, we’re 5% of the world’s population and we have to trade with the other 95%.” Immediately chases his tax plan, “trickle down economics all over again.” Calls it “Trumped up trickle down,” almost gets a reaction from Trump. Hits hard, “the more you help wealthy people … the better off people will be.”

Points: 3 of 3. Could not have been better or more effective to rebut Trump.

Trump, on creating 25 million jobs and “brining back the industries that have left this country.”

Trump rebuttal: “My father gave me a very small loan in 1975 and I built it into a company that is worth billions and billions of dollars” and some of the biggest? best? assets all over the world. “We have to renegotiate our trade deals.”

Points: 1 of 3. He already seems a little rattled and imbalanced. He tries to say that Clinton should have been “doing this for years” in terms of fixing bad trade deals, but it’s not connected to any kind of answer. Also, he’s got to blow his nose (or bump some cocaine, not sure.) Holt needs to interrupt him to try to get him on track. He’s rambling crazily now. [Read more…] about Live-Blogging The 1st Presidential Debate

New Collecting Guide: She-Hulk, and her new status quo at Marvel

September 20, 2016 by krisis

Yesterday Marvel made a shocking and totally cool announcement that Jennifer Walters – traditionally known as She-Hulk – would drop the “She” prefix and become Marvel’s main Hulk in a new eponymous title from writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Nico Leon.

hulk-2016-promo That will mark her sixth time anchoring a solo series since her debut in 1980, not to mention several runs with The Avengers and Fantastic Four and a ton of mini-series in the past decade. That’s all covered (along with every single guest appearance) in my newly-launched Definitive She-Hulk Collecting Guide and Reading Order. (The guide also covers other She-Hulks, like Betsy Ross.)

This will mark a big shift from past She-Hulk series, which have usually featured a green, grinning woman with her monstrous tendencies almost entirely under control. Here, Walters will get lost in her rage as she tries to maintain her double-life as lawyer and superhero. Says Marvel EIX Axel Alonso in an exclusive with A/V Club:

Jen went through major trauma in Civil War II, and Mariko and Nico’s story will deal with the fallout of that trauma—the anxiety and anger, sometimes self-destructive, that comes along with it. If there is light at the end of the tunnel, Jen is going to have to search hard for it, and she’s going to have to battle with some pretty big monsters—including the one within—to find herself again.

Some fans are already hotly debating if rage and a center-stage turn are the right direction for this typically light-hearted hero who is historically as inane as Deadpool. She-Hulk going all rage-y in lieu of an appearance by her cousin Bruce Banner is a time-honored tradition when she’s on the wider Marvel stage – Brian Bendis used the same trope over a decade ago as one of the inciting events in Avengers Disassembled before setting it up again currently in Civil War II.

Personally, I don’t have an opinion other than, “Yay – more She-Hulk!” I own nearly all of her appearances, and her original series was my first custom binding project last year.

How easy is it to own that all for yourself in collected editions? The She-Hulk Guide can help you catch them all, but let’s take a look at Marvel’s track record of reprinting Jennifer Walters’ starring series through the end of Secret Wars in 2015.
[Read more…] about New Collecting Guide: She-Hulk, and her new status quo at Marvel

Music Monday: “Undress You” – Mutlu

September 19, 2016 by krisis

It’s rare to spend a night out of the house unless it’s to rehearse or play a show, so I took great delight in kicking off a few weeks of birthday-adjacent celebrations on Saturday with an outing with Lindsay and her beau J. We converged on my old South Philly stomping grounds to see two songwriters and friends of ours play The Boot & Saddle – Katie Barbato and Multu.

I know Katie from being out and about on the open mic scene in what seems like a very long ago and far away life, plus splitting a memorable Arcati Crisis show with her band The Sleepwells. She’s also famous for helping me break out of one year of my February Funk (and pushing me to finish “Dumbest Thing I Could Do” – a good call on her part). Earlier this year she released an outstanding EP with her band Dirty Holiday that is amongst EV’s major favorites, and she has a new solo record out this fall.

I could write you an entire essay on Katie and her music and how Lindsay leaned into my ear at one point and remarked, “Her voicings are so much like yours, but she plays like Gina. So, obviously, you love her.” But, that will have to hold – perhaps until I hang out with her in a few weeks.

mutlu-onaral I’m actually here to talk about Mutlu.

Saturday night was the first time I’ve ever seen Multu perform without our dear friend Dante Bucci playing by his side (and, as it happens, only the second time seeing him without being behind the mixing desk, thanks to the music festivals that Lindsay, Dante, and I produced over the years).

I had second thoughts about going. Or, more accurately, about staying. It seemed impossibly hard to start celebrating my birthday there in the absence of Dante, who was synonymous with Mutlu for me, whose birthday traditionally marked the end of our various Virgo/Libra birthday shenanigans in college.

I thought it might be too hard. I thought I might slip out after Katie was done her set, or maybe stay for just a song or two, telling Lindsay and J I was exhausted after a long day.

Dante would never do that. Dante never missed a single show of mine if he could physically get to it, and he’d never leave before my set was over. How could I use the absence of him as an excuse to miss live music when it was his favorite thing in the world?

Maybe I was supposed to simply get lost in my emotions and in the crowd and dance, like all my friends have been doing for fifteen years of seeing Mutlu perform.

So that’s what I did, undulating to the music without a care. At one point, Mutlu announced, “This is a new one from my EP Caffeine and Whiskey, you might not know it.” He began to play and I knew it within a second. It was “Undress You,” a song he had first written and performed live nearly a decade ago just now enjoying its time in the spotlight.

I know what that feels like. I’ve been sitting in my living room rehearsing decade-old songs for weeks, checking to see if it’s their time.

How was it not this song’s time in the spotlight a decade ago when it is so instantly memorable? I’m not sure. I don’t remember it being this relaxed, the jazzy guitar quite so articulated. Maybe it was a little too eager to undress a decade ago? Maybe it needed the years to give heft to “Why we wasting time when we could be together?” Maybe the old falsetto hook of “Can I undress you?” was played for laughs instead of being a soulful call-and-response with the following “probably the last thing I should do”?

Maybe there was a through line from this song of Mutlu’s I had forgotten to my own “Dumbest Thing I Could Do,” who Katie helped to coax into the spotlight with its own response of “is be along with you.”

While I was wondering those things in my songwriter’s brain I was dancing, singing along, and remembering. The song brought back flashes of friends lost to time and circumstance, and of Dante’s lawn and a song that was suddenly and improbably my new favorite thing, pulling me out from the mixing desk to dance and sing along.

It was an indelible moment that I had completely forgotten, but it all came rushing back as I sang along to words I didn’t even realize I knew with Lindsay smiling at my side in her own instant recognition.

It is my new favorite thing all over again.

accumulate

September 18, 2016 by krisis

Last week on one of our trips to the library EV had to hold on to my belt loops rather than my hands to cross the parking lot because I was juggling a massive box of books to donate.

In it were books that E and I have been carrying around since college – over a decade now! Textbooks, college literature, and pleasure reading that has been forgotten or fallen out of favor. They travelled from our separate apartments to our combined one, then to our house on Greenwich Street, and now here to the suburbs, never once cracked open in all that time.

It never felt like we had a lot of stuff before we moved to this house. I’m not sure if it was because we didn’t have the space for it or because we were better at hiding it all.Or, perhaps it’s that we’ve given up a third of our physical space and much more of our time to the tiny third human now rooming with us. Likely some combination of the three..

I used to scoff at the idea of someone who needed to clean out their attic or garage or basement – how could you have so much stuff in there that you needed to dedicate time to throwing it all away? Yet, earlier tonight I waded into our box-strewn attic to try to reclaim my recording space for upcoming projects.

There was barely room to take a step. When we first moved here six years ago the attic felt cavernous – so large you could hold a concert or install a bowling alley. Now it is cramped, a scene from hoarders, packed to the eaves on each side with boxes of comic books, CDs, instruments, sheet music, board games, and random knick knacks I have accumulated and not yet purged.

I managed to eliminate six entire boxes from the hoard, consolidating three boxes of print samples from my old Creative Services job down to one (do I need five copies of a 2010 individual health care plans booklet?), mercilessly eliminating items from boxes marked “computer errata” (a spare copy of my original 1999 demo encoded at the wrong speed – was I hoping it would become a collectors item?), and combining several boxes of books (perhaps communications history books and grammar guides can share a space?).

Now there is room to breath in the attic – though still not enough to record. Eventually I’ll run out of obvious trash to dispose of and get down to the harder choices… books that I’ve read and still love, board games we play but not often, and stacks of handwritten revisions to lyrics.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about accumulation in this digital age. I have some friends who are notoriously sparse in what they allow into their homes, constantly pruning possessions back to a few favorites. I have further friends who eschew any physical item if they can have the digital version.

I don’t know how to get there. I’ve wanted so many things for so long that just now my urge to possess is starting to feel sated. Now the constraint is not budget but space and, terrifyingly, time.

I’ve been working on a song about this feeling before EV was born. It’s never quite finished – just one more possession I’m hauling around, although this time it’s my mind that’s being weighed down. Now that I’m nearing a half year of spending time at home as a parent, I think it’s high time to start putting these things to use or discarding them.

Are we all that we accumulate
Because I don’t want to be defined
By melted liquor bottle chocolates
That fell behind my dresser
The night we thought we ought to eat them all at once
To see if we would get drunk

Am I a thousand paper backs with creases on the spine
And every Beatles record I have bought since I was nine

I don’t want to live alone
I don’t want to be a hermit crab
Carrying my possessions inside a shell
Winched onto my back
Moving to a larger home when I’ve outgrown the last

Children’s Book Review: Mr. Tiger Goes Wild & The Curious Garden by Peter King

September 17, 2016 by krisis

We’ve been reading to EV since the first days of her life, but reading to a tiny squirming baby is a lot different than reading to a curious and opinionated three year old.

Peter Brown in a YouTube video for his book The Creepy Carrots.

Back then I read whatever I liked, and baby EV issued nary a complaint unless the language wasn’t smooth and consistent enough to hypnotize her into a lull. As long as I was enjoying the reading, she was enjoying the reading, too.

Three year old EV is a little different. She has a long attention span and a voracious appetite for books, but she’s got some preferences to work around. It’s not so much that she dislikes any one book, but that she likes others a bit too much.

We don’t do any “put it on repeat!” behavior in this house (another post for another time), but if EV is crushing on a particular book it quickly turns into a twice-daily read for a few weeks. As the designated reader for at least another two years, when a new book hits the “Crushing EV” list that means my preferences come into play beyond my typical “is this a good message?” filter.

I don’t want anything with language too simple or silly, or prose too basic. I enjoy books with different character voices where I get to do a little acting or situations that leave some room for imagination so I can editorialize. And, strong graphic design and typesetting can’t hurt – after all, these are books I’ll be spending hours with each week!

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild is one book that I was delighted that EV added to her favorites, so much so that finding more by author Peter Brown was my first priority at the library. When we picked up The Curious Garden I expected it to be good, but I did not expect the two books to have such complimentary, synergistic themes.

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild & The Curious Garden by Peter King

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild: CK Says: – Buy it!

Read Time: <5 minutes
Gender Diversity: Male protagonist; society of mixed genders; children exclusively minded by females
Ethnic Diversity: not applicable
Challenging Vocab (to read or to define): loosen, peculiar, unacceptable, magnificent
Themes To Discuss: civilization, wearing clothing, differences between animals and people

The Curious Garden: CK Says: – Consider it!

Read Time: 4-8 minutes
Gender Diversity: Male protagonist; no other named characters though some female background characters
Ethnic Diversity: A set of briefly-seen wordless background characters are of different races
Challenging Vocab (to read or to define): greenery, pruning, delicate, mysteriously
Themes To Discuss: trespassing / urban exploration, pollution, how plants grow, greening

This pair of beautiful children’s books by Peter King have a lot to say about civilization versus nature, and how the ideal state of the world is a balance of the two. Both books have a positive message and enjoyable prose, and each it rife with interesting topics for discussion.

Peter King’s illustrations are a delight. His characters are all vividly colored and have a slight blockiness to their outlines. They seem to be near siblings to Jon Klassen and even give a very slight hint of Adventure Time.

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild is the whimsical tale of a town filled with very proper animals who all dress like pilgrims and walk around on their hind legs. Mr. Tiger feels like something about his routine just isn’t right. After bounding around town on all fours and enjoying some very loud, improper roaring, he decides to take things to the next level and abandon his clothing. His neighbors, already perturbed by his running and climbing, decide this is a a bridge too far and ask that he leave town.

Mr. Tiger enjoys a return to the forest, but eventually misses his friends in town. He returns to offer a compromise on the puritanical dress code only to find that many of the town’s animals have adopted some of his more animalistic habits and are happier for it.

EV loves this book – from the moment of its introduction it has been one she is happy to read multiple times a day if given the chance. Me too, thanks to hilarious pages like the when where Mr. Tiger first has his wild idea. At first, she was more enamored with the variety of the animals in the town, the comic style word balloons that made it obvious who was speaking, and the cuteness of Mr. Tiger. As she has aged, she is more engaged with the plot, why Mr. Tiger wanted to be wild, and Mr. Tiger’s return to nature (and then again to society).

EV has repeatedly initiated discussions about why the tiger is even wearing clothes and if it would be okay for her to take off her clothes outside. If you don’t like your books with a side of thought-provocation, then this might be off-putting – but, we love those kinds of books in this house. I think the topic of what it means to be civilized (and what’s just puritanically-derived custom) is perfect for a little wild thing who is learning to tame their toddler urges and interact with the world around them.

Since we love Mr. Tiger so much, The Curious Garden was the first book I plucked from the shelf the day EV got her library card. Like Tiger, it has inspired intense love from both EV and we parental units, but it’s a very different sort of book with its own message about how the best elements of nature still need some cultivation to blossom. [Read more…] about Children’s Book Review: Mr. Tiger Goes Wild & The Curious Garden by Peter King