Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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.

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Clay under my fingernails now, even after a thorough hand washing. Serves me right for taking a class that involves visual art.

Bill couched it carefully to me… Production Design… it would help my emerging directorial conception. Very useful for identifying and bringing forward the thematic elements of a play. Close textual analysis of a Greek tragedy of my choosing, as well as The Tempest. Assurances that my less-than-meager skills as an artist would not limit my academic success (and threaten my near 3.7 GPA).


All of the couching in the world, though, could not have stemmed my alarm at spending forty whole dollars in an art supply store this morning. As for the clay, well… i do have that GPA to protect.

The first project sounded fairly simple. Pick a geometric solid and create it in any medium of your choosing. Pick a play. Create all of your set-pieces out of that geometric solid so that they can be puzzled back together into it. Simple enough; i bought bricks of super-light clay. It still makes sense… it will never solidify, so i can tweak it up until the last minute, and it will be easy to squish back together if i make too awful of a shape. I choose an irregular polyhedron that resembled two pyramids crashing into each other — figuring that something essentially square would be much easier to deal with than something that resembled a multi-sided die.

There i was, thirty minutes ago, in my sculpting glory: making a sturdy rectangle of clay, marking off the lines i need to cut, slowly peeling away the outer layers until i was almost there — one more slanted side to uncover with a quick slip of my newly purchased modeling knife. And, slip it did, directly across the knuckle of my left thumb, leveling off the entire side of it.


To my credit, i did not panic, even when the innocuous-looking flattened side of my knuckle turned quickly into seeping red. I calmly held my hand away from the clay and finished the cut to complete my polyhedron, and then walked to the bathroom and scrubbed the clay off of my hands. I intermittently passed my thumb under the water, transfixed by the way the steady running stream carried away the blood, leaving my thumb looking perfectly fine except for a vague squareness.

Satisfied that i would not lose my appendage to some strange clay-based infection, i left the bathroom only to be faced by my unsteady geometric solid, all-but tottering in place amidst a pile of scraps. I could see my mistakes immediately… too rash in tracing the sides, my crashed pyramids looked more like rectangles caught in the act. So, before heading off in search of a bandage, i decided to piece my clay back together into a rectangle so that it would be ready for another try sometime tomorrow. There i sat, bleeding thumb held back away from my hand in an attempt to forget that it was conveniently opposable, pressing together the clay i had just so painstakingly cut apart.

And this is only 5% of my grade…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/01/90211213/

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Fuck editing.

Drexel University has disappointed me more than a couple of times during my three and a half years here. Bad scheduling, botched financial aid, boring classes. But, for once, just once, they have come through for me. In this round of co-op interviews i was offered not one, but two jobs. Two. Both of them at major companies around the country and specifically in Philadelphia, both in Communications, and both very well paid. For once i am faced with the opposite of my typical Drexel decision; instead of trying to make the best of something i don’t like, i am faced with trying to discern what the best is between two excellent choices.


I haven’t got a clue, and i need to find one by Tuesday morning.

And, meanwhile, i’m sure you’re thinking “Yo, Peter, what happened to all that ‘i’ll be less busy next term’ crap? Where the hell have you been?’ Well, it’s a damned good question. I’ve been stage managing The Vagina Monologues. But, no, not just stage managing. Scheduling. Promoting. Publishing. Just about everything i could possibly do up through this point short of acting or directing. And, it doesn’t go up for another three weeks.

Anyhow, i’ll have more to say about that soon. There is something to this Winter, the verging on adulthood that is almost tangible. I’m not alone in this feeling, but i still feel alone in the sheer lust i have. I want everything. I want rock star, and i want business man… i want travel, i want home, i want love, i want happiness, i want maturity. I need more of everything; i need more time. The one thing i can say for Drexel is that it’s five-year program creates an illusion at once grand and awful… allowing you to put off the real world for that much longer but just making you want it that. much. more. badly.


I want all that and i’m sitting at my computer in my fucking jeans and a tee-shirt, listening to myself play guitar. I want it all and, as i’ve just found out, if i were to get it all i wouldn’t know what to do with it at all.

I think this calls for a drink.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/01/90206744/

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Standing at the deli counter in the middle of Ft. Lauderdale on Christmas Eve wearing board shorts and a bright orange t-shirt that i had inadvertently shrunk to a prepubescent size in the wash, it occurred to me immediately that the striking blond man with the “Got Lube?” shirt was going to hit on me. I just knew. It was like a sign from god.

Christmas in Florida was absolutely bizarre, to say the least. At three in the afternoon on C-day i found myself firmly planted on my grandmother’s couch eating bonbons while attentively viewing the Trading Spaces Marathon while my mother lounged out by the pool. I eventually walked down the hall to the condominium of my retired lesbian 2nd-cousins to borrow a deck of cards, and proceeded to play solitaire.

Those two incidents pretty much sum up my trip to Florida, aside from how my mother was flagged down at the airport and — after an extensive search of her person and property — was forced to discard her “bang’s scissors.” Which, honestly, she was more likely to kill someone with in Florida than she was on the way back from it, but safety regulations are safety regulations for a reason.

Happy New Year.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/01/390155447/

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If you were to ask me to talk about my biggest hobby, i would simply say, “Music.”

If you were to ask me to elaborate on my favorite elements of music, i would reply, “Hearing it. Making it.” Or, more explicitly, i enjoy being a fan of music and being a writer of music. One can involve being very critical of other people’s work, while the other requires an unending faith in my own.

Sometimes i have trouble reconciling the two. For example, in a book of my agonizingly chosen flying-to-Florida collection of music, the new Bright Eyes disc faces a burned cd of my recent trios. I have no qualms in admitting that i am skeptical about Conor Oberst’s new effort as Bright Eyes; i was skeptical before ever hearing a song by Conor and continue to feel that way now that i have bought a third album of his. He’s not so different from a previous version of me; a recent Rolling Stone article featured a picture of his slight vegan frame with a guitar almost dwarfing it, singing about heartbreak in a style whose lineage includes Brian Wilson and Bob Dylan.

I happen to really enjoy my new Trios;though the imperfections of my performances are more noticeable when crisply preserved in digital format, i delight in hearing the sound of my own voice captured in such a faithful fashion. I have worked hard for that voice… failing auditions, slaving at voice lessons, struggling through choir. Singing and singing until the sound of my own voice became transparent to me; hearing myself on a recording of “Tangling” or “Excuse” feels the same as performing the songs live. I cannot distinguish anything about my vocal performance other than whether i am hitting the notes i intended to. I cannot be critical of it

Conor is just about a year older than me, and i don’t think he is much of a singer. His bio calls his vocal stylings “quak[ing] with the tumultuous energy that only youth can produce.” Tumultuous energy sounds very much to me like unsteady notes and failing vibrato. There are parts of his album Fevers and Mirrors that i physically cannot consume — he screams, yowls, stretches his voice past the breaking point. I do it too, of course, all rock singers do at some point. But, to me it never sounds as rough… as pained. And, i am doing it for my website… him, for an international audience of consumers..

I ostensibly bought his new disc Lifted to review it, but i know that i am really casing up the competition. In the past i have wondered at the success of others who are only slightly older than me, and whose work i adore. Now, i am wondering about the success of someone who i could very plausibly be; who shares the exact years of pop culture inundation with me, if not some of the same influences. I happen to think that i sing better than him; i also think i write more accessible songs. But, i am in college, and he is on the road. I am on the dean’s list, and he is in Rolling Stone.

My two favorite hobbies will be staring each other in the face deep inside my bookbag as i walk through the metal detector this morning, bound for Fort Lauderdale. They will both air themselves, probably more than any other music i will have with me. And, when my family asks me what i did this year, all i will say is “i am on the dean’s list.”


Merry Christmas.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/12/90080825/