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.

August 27, 2003 by krisis

I don’t ever make resolutions for the new year, or, at least, not in the way other people do. It’s just too daunting to pick attainable, sustainable goals in the middle of paying off Christmas and going back to work, and implementing them with just one day of notice. It’s impractical. It’s ineffective.

The reason it’s ineffective, i think, is that there is no snooze button; if you decide to put off your diet for three days so that you can finish your holiday leftovers, suddenly your resolution has been shot to hell.

It’s much better to not just have a handful gargantuan tasks with a single effective date, but to have a laundry list of wishes and a whole season to accomplish them. My theory is that with a range of time and more reasonable goals to choose from, i’d stick to them a lot better. As such, with a scant 27 days left to the season, here is a belated lsit of my Summer Resolutions — of which i need to complete at least 75% by the beginning of Fall (at which point the remainder will roll over into my Fall resolutions).

Relearn and retain essentials of French language and grammar

Maintain a consistent weekly budget

~~Subscribe to intellectually stimulating magazines~~

Get abs

~~Visit Rabi~~

~~Walk New York~~

Study for the GREs

Make a fake book binder

Write new songs

~~Buy a computer~~

Record a new demo

Play the Tin Angel or The Point

Exercise every other day

~~Buy more brown and orange clothing~~

~~Drink less~~

~~Blog more~~

Blog better

Read more (new) blogs

~~See more of more of my friends~~

Arrange three or more songs for The Treblemakers

Reread Dante’s Inferno

Reread A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Read Atlas Shrugged

~~Rejoin choir~~

~~Leave the city for a few days~~

Gain just a hint of upper body musculature

Start a band

Still a bit daunting, but only because i’ve spent all summer planning Blogathon and playing Sims. I’m thinking relearning French will have to wait for another time, and i don’t know if i have the willpower to create abs where there is nothing in four weeks or less, but everything else is up for grabs. What should i do? What would you? And, more importantly (because it’s always more fun to look forward than to plan for the here and how), what should i add to the list for this Fall?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140304056877702/

August 26, 2003 by krisis

I like to think of myself as the ultimate indicator of whether any particular cultural trend has reached zeitgeist levels of proliferation, but in what we collectively refer to as reality i can think of at least two more trust-worthy sources to defer to. One are daily newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer and the second is the Oxford English Dictionary.

Not coincidentally, within the last few weeks both have indicated that BLOG is a word that has been inexorably wedged into our collective language, through the above linked article and the (somewhat shocking) inclusion of the term in the next version of the OED.

My response is, of course, “I told you so.” After all, i have been doing it for three years now, to the day.

While the OE inclusion is surprising, the Inquirer article left a bigger impact on me — if only because it neglected to mention this site.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Crushing Krisis could be the longest running Philadelphia blog (now that Rabi is conveniently out of the way in new york); I have to slog through all of the links here and here to make absolutely sure.

The concept is staggering; it doesn’t mean that i set a trend, but at least that i tapped into it first and have (so far) held onto it the longest. Through this passive act of ignorance i suddenly realized both how important this has become to me, what it really is, and how often i do not come through for it.

Long gone are those days, though, when i represented all that is common and exciting about blogging. I am not an active linker, and i do not engage in many of the trends and memes that are so often definitive of the blogging community. I am more interesting in reporting, either on my daily life, or on the people and communications i observe, and in singing and playing both my own songs and others’ through Trio and Blogathon.

Whether or not i’m putting in my best effort on a daily basis, new people continue to happen onto this page for the first time, some of them familiar and some entirely strange. All of my roommates (current and former) read it regularly, as do most of my close friends. Some of my professors have been known to stop by. This weekend, Rabi and I had just sat down to a refreshing Bubble Tea when my cell phone was rung by my god-brother, who i haven’t seen or spoken to in almost four years, but who had found this through Google. He told me that “Hide Your Love Away” was his favorite song so far, and said we should hang out sometime soon.

That’s what i love — how this has been woven together with my “real life;” not so much that you cannot see the seams, but well enough that it never quite unravels. I love that people i haven’t talked to, people i have forgotten, people i have never met can see a sketch or snapshot of my life at any given moment. Sometimes writing for it can seem boring, or tedious, or invasive, but if i were to stop, to actually give up for a single minute in the days or weeks that separate my posts, then suddenly this mirror of my identity would just turn into a photograph, taken from far away.

There have been times i have loved this more than i do now, and times that i have disliked it less, but i don’t think i have ever felt so comfortable about it. Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening. Thank you for caring. And, starting today, thank you for talking back in the comments section

Happy Birthday to this.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/happy-birthday-to-this-3/

August 23, 2003 by krisis

I must admit that my legs hurt a touch, but Rabi can just neglect to find that out until she reads this post. It is worth it, to blithely walk around New york, hopping sidewalks and diagonally jaywalking as if i actually know where to go. We’re now at the Prince Street Apple store, which looks more like some sort of overly lit nightclub whose status as a computer seller is only given away by all the computers sitting around. I am on the kind that looks like the Pixar lamp, but rabi cannot figure out how to make the digital camera that’s strapped to it work, so you’ll just have to take my word for it

Funny how i can find people to be so vastly different only five hours from where i grew up. Just goes to show, you don’t have to be from a tiny place to be a small town boy.

More, later.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106168283586810413/

August 22, 2003 by krisis

And, by the way, i wore cargo pants to Kaki King. And, and, rather than doing it myself i made Ross order my cosmopolitan. I have to say, there’s nothing quite like making your muscle-y blond football-player sized male friend walk up to a female bartender to order a cosmo (especially when they come in dainty little glasses). I don’t know what was better… the look on her face when she heard his order, or the look on his when he saw the look on hers.

But, i digress…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140302352548944/

August 22, 2003 by krisis

I think most people enjoy attending concerts where they know all the songs. I know i do. As much as going to a concert is for experiencing art in motion, it is also a selfish pursuit: you want to hear your favorite songs, and you don’t want them fucked with. There is a certain thrill that comes with the anticipation of a crashing bridge, or the appreciation of an understated vocal ad lib.

This approach is sometimes prohibitive to hearing new music, whether it be a new band or a performer debuting new material. But, no matter how well prepared you are, there can always be an opened band or a strange tune that punches past your lack of karaoke intimacy with to make you fall hard into aural love.

I found myself at the NorthStar Bar with a motley assembly of some of the most talented people i know to see just such a stranger: Kaki King. Anthony had described her to me by email earlier in the day – “Imagine Ani DiFranco on crack … She uses her right hand on the fingerboard to tap out bass lines, and her left hand on the fingerboard to play melodies simultaneously. It’s pretty impressive.”

I’ve come to accept my mediocrity as a guitar player — i’ve been playing only two years less than both Anthony and Kaki, but i am still easily impressed by simplistic guitar pyrotechnics. I was prepared to see a few interesting tap solos and some intricate picking, and to generally have my playing be humbled.

Really, though, i was not prepared.

I’ve seen a lot of random opening bands, many of whom i’ve derisively blogged about the next day, but Kaki King is the first artist since Peter Mulvey (and, to a slightly lesser extent, Erin McKeown) to ever leave me with my eyes unblinking, my jaw hanging loose, and my fingers twitching just in contemplation of my inevitable attempt to replicate the performance before me.

Kaki is, in short, the most astounding acoustic guitar player i have ever witnessed. It wasn’t just the casually arrived at alternate tunings, the tap & hammer solos, or even her simultaneous strumming & drumming on the guitar. It was her personality — quiet and simply smiling, but with a quick wit hidden beneath her swath of out-grown bangs. It was her ease — the way that after the audience’s obvious favorite song of the night she remarked to the effect of “That isn’t really finished yet; sometimes i just play the songs live and let them go in the directions they want to.” The way that, as opposed to how people joke about it with me, i really could not tell when her casual tuning and fretting ending and her songs began because at any point her hands were on her guitar the performance was underway.

Kaki has some MP3s on her site for your perusal, and while they will not replicate the awe that i was in on Tuesday night, i think they still speak adequately for themselves. And, please keep in mind that i typically range from indifferent-to-resistant when it comes to instrumental music, so Kaki must be pretty damned good.

Must be? Hell… she is.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140300363101718/