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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Last year Wockerjabby won the Bloggie Award for “Best Kept Secret” blog, which made the Bloggies worthwhile for me. A lot of “popular” sites that i haven’t ever read won for things that they are only somewhat spectacular at doing, but all in all it was a fun time and i feel as though Rabi got recognition that she definitely deserved.

Cut to 2002.

In addition to their weblogs, some people write essays, make games, do photo-journals, or any other number of things. All of these people are eligible for the “best non-weblog content of a weblog site” award. Last year the winner was Zeldman, and of the other nominees was bloggie-creator Nikolai Nolan — who creates a “feature” each month for his log. You can scope out the other nominees from last year here

To this day there are only a very few webloggers i’ve ever heard of who write songs. Former blogger Jack Saturn does, as does Adam from Tweebiscuit. However, not only do i write songs, i demo them for everyone to hear, i play weekly concerts of them live and unedited, i posted audio from my studio cd as it was being mixed, and i put all of that together for my 54 song spectacular ’25/24′ over the summer.

It is my firm belief that there are very few other bloggers out there who have a more personal or interesting piece of “content” on their site, and as readers of mine i would like to ask you to please take a minute to click to here and nominate CrushingKrisis.com in “Best non-weblog content of a weblog site.” My music is something that i put my heart and soul into every week while receiving comparatively little thanx or attention, and so i’d like to try to make it a little more widely known. I don’t want to win, necessarily, i just want to see my songs in the company of undeniably amazing work from people like Nikolai and Zeldman. Voting closes on SUNDAY night, so please make sure to register your pick before then. In fact, tell all of your friends. Start a petition!

Honestly, it’d be an honor just to be nominated. And, meanwhile, if you have any suggestions for other nominations (or, if you want some suggestions for yourself) please comment!

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8558394/

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Two years.


Seven hundred and thirty one days, exactly.

Nearly right down to the minute.


It’s hard to say something important or unique about a song that comes up in nearly every conversational context possible. I’ve already described writing the lyrics, talked about the recording process, uploaded take after take of developmental recordings… and here i am two years later at a loss for what i’m supposed to be saying.


All i can say is that i’ve spent one tenth of my life living with “Under My Skin” … not only living with it as a song, but living with having written it and with why i wrote it. Living with the song is sometimes the hardest part; “Under My Skin” is easy to like, even for me, and i feel like it eclipses other songs that i’ve worked much harder on. Living with having written it isn’t so bad: at first it felt like a wall i had built to avoid having to express myself in any other way, but now it stands as an emotional landmark rather than a roadblock.


Living with the reason i wrote it is still strange. In the past I would agonize over it, asking myself “how do you kiss someone and then just let it go?” Now i know exactly how, because i’ve done it. It happens. I guess the real question i have is “After life crystallizes for one perfect moment, how do you go on living imperfectly?” I don’t really know the answer to that one, and i don’t expect to find it out any time soon. Sometimes that one moment i lived is almost like a fantasy in my head that never really happened, and sometimes it’s the only thing i can see. It is still both, and all the shades found in-between

“Under My Skin” became more than what i originally intended it to be when Laurel came into the studio to sing it with me last year. Ever since she willingly added her voice to mine i feel as though i don’t wholly own my words… they aren’t only mine anymore. Laurel’s voice singing them on Relief, and any other time i’ve caught her humming along, suddenly transforms “Under My Skin” from a song in the first person to a shared narrative — with its words and all that they are saying awkwardly shared between us both.


It doesn’t bring the moment back. Life doesn’t suddenly make sense the way television does. But, one moment that seemed so selfish and impossible when it first happened is now just a tiny seed that has sprouted into a flourishing garden of songs, friendships, and memories that will last me a lifetime.


And one very good song.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8531862/

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I don’t know that it’s an idea, so much as simply how my body tends to balance itself out. Left to my own devices during the summer of 2000 i actually split each day in half, sleeping from five to nine in both the morning and evening. This sounds ridiculous, but given a healthy and active list daily schedule it actually suited my needs perfectly and kept me highly energized through my grueling turn as an Orientation Leader.

Of course, there are problems with giving the body exactly what it seems to be asking for. With the exception of my magical two weeks of two-in-one days, my body tends to operate on a clock that is much nearer to 30hour days than 24hour ones, which means if i don’t have a set time to sleep i’ll stay up a handful of hours later every night until finally i’m sleeping the day away because i’m so locked in to my overly long internal clock. Furthermore, my attempts to correct my own sleeping habits tend to make the situation worse; for example, i should have never gone back to sleep this morning rather than do my best to stay awake all day — and here i am blogging about it past 2am.

The solution that has had a larger impact on my days than my quirky sleeping habits (which are endlessly remarked upon in derisive fashion by my roommates) is that i really just don’t waste time anymore. Sure, you could argue that i’m wasting time right now, but i mean something closer to not spending time idly. If i’m on the internet, i’m either writing or catching up on my daily reading … not aimlessly wandering from link to link. If i’m playing guitar i’m either writing or practicing … no idle ad-libbing for hours on end. I tend to break this rule just as much as i follow it, but keeping the idea of maximizing my resources stuck in the back of my head somehow netted me all A’s last semester — something i’ve never accomplished with such a rigorous course load Sure, it involved putting some thing off until the last minute (and stressing my way into the hospital), but somewhere along the way i finally learned to cut down on time-wasting (and unsatisfying) activities like reorganizing my cd collection and rereading my archives when i could be cooking dinner or writing a paper instead..


This semester has an even more ridiculous free-time to work-time ratio than last, and so i’m interested to see how i fare. Also, it would be nice if i could factor actually working into the equation somewhere between sleep and cd reviews, because money is never as evil as they say it is ;)

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8505261/

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Lately i’ve been spending a lot of time with my cd collection: reorganizing it for my new shelf, inventorying it to determine my average cost per song, and compiling my year end list. Oh, and listening.


In this flurry of action i noticed that despite outstripping all previous purchasing years by a ratio of 3:1 in 2001 i wrote less than half of the reviews that i usually complete in a calendar year. This seemed greatly out of proportion, and just plain wrong considering i claim to be all about music reviews, so i’ve resolved to turn in two reviews per week via the dusty-but-still-functional Just Like Assholes. This not only assures that i’m actually honing my reviewing skills, but that i’m actually listening to some of the records that i’ve bought only to let languish in the wake of newer & better ones. Plus, it’s more stuff for you to read! And, it has built in comments!

So, without any more chatter, the reviews for this week are:

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8504849/

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(This is my first article for “Finding Your Voice in Journalism.” It’s supposed to be about something i hate. Note that i took liberties with the timeline to compress the article into the assigned length. Commentary is greatly appreciated.)

I suspect that as a rule most boys must hate shopping with their mothers. For me, shopping with mom always carried the weary, claustrophobic sensation of being trapped in a space much smaller than the boy’s department. I have always been subject to a special kind of terror: I am an only child, and with my mother as a single parent I really had no choice but to browse the racks with her in tow, thrusting patently ugly garments under my nose for examination and publicly questioning whether or not I needed to buy a larger size of underwear.

This year I found my nightmare playing itself out in two locations over my Christmas Vacation, both with their own special set of embarrassments. The first seemed simple enough; she had to make an exchange, and I wanted a pair of boot-cut jeans.

Of course, even my best laid plans go awry when shopping with mom; when I met her at the counter with my pants she proceeded to loudly lament that I was looking a wee bit chubby around the middle on Christmas morning, and that I might be wise to upgrade my accustomed waist size by an inch or two to accommodate my ever-expanding girth.

Though I neglected to refute her point about my weight-gain, as we edged closer to the cashier I reminded my mother that I had taken the same waist size in jeans since I started high school. Every single pair of jeans in my bureau were of the same dimensions as the contentious pair I was holding. They fit fine.

“That might be true,” she acknowledged, “but I won’t be the one whining when I get home to find that my jeans don’t fit well.” Never mind that I had tried them on. And, anyhow, “that’s what belts are for,” apparently, buying jeans that are too big for me to start with.

Since I was the one paying for this purchase, my opinion won out — although I found myself unconsciously sucking in my “gut” as I said hello to the girl behind the counter. As I stepped out of the store with my shopping bag in hand I breathed a mental sigh of relief: one down, one to go.

Our second spectacular shopping extravaganza took place in the discount warehouse of Syms, where I intended to find a suit jacket to wear on Co-op interviews. “I just need a jacket,” I told myself, “we’ll be in and out in a flash.”

Alas, it was not meant to be. Before I could even get my bearings amongst the overwhelming aisles of short, athletic, and double-breasted styles my mother had picked out two corduroy suit jackets that looked as though they were only making a brief stop in the store before an engagement at the Salvation Army. My solution to this problem was to brush past her to find my size, but she pursued, claiming that buying a jacket was positively wasteful when I could buy an entire suit instead.

I begrudgingly agreed with her, if only because she was paying for the shopping excursion. However, in my head I knew that she was prolonging our shopping trip by adding our pre-rehearsed waist-size argument to the already complicated decision between a short and a long cut.

Sure enough, my “in and out” turned into an excruciating three hour dilemma as I was bounced from size to size, offered peculiar suits with plaid-like pinstripes, and accosted by salespersons who did nothing to detract from my mother’s own general hovering and thoughtful fashion consulting.

All in all the experience was draining. Yes, there was shouting across the store. Yes, there were heads stuck in-between dressing room curtains. Yes, there was a rendition of the aforementioned waist-size drama. By the time we made it to picking out new shoes (“Might as well!”) and having alterations made (“They’ll do it while we have lunch!”) I found my psyche located somewhere between a thundering explosion and a teary resignation.

Never mind that I came out of both situations with clothing that looks good on me. All that sticks out in my mind is my absolute terror at entering a clothing store, and the childhood urge to either throw my level-best temper tantrum or to find a circular rack of clothing to hide inside. I know that my mother cares about me, and that she’ll always love me, but that doesn’t mean she had to ask me in a stage-whisper if I had worn out my underwear yet while we were in line at Kohls.

Or maybe it does. I suppose all of that is what mom’s are for.

(Any thoughts? Remember, this is being turned in sans the context of my blog, and it’s supposed to express hatred of something and a use of a distinctive journalistic voice. Responses of any kind are welcomed.)

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8504516/