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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So, i’m an idiot. Did i mention that? All this time i thought the little “battery” light on my guitar’s preamp meant the battery was functioning, when in fact it meant that it wasn’t functioning very much at all. Somehow, reversing the polarity of the preamp solved this problem temporarily, and after fooling around with that for a little while i wised up and bought some 9-volt batteries and now my amp sounds sweet and beautiful like it’s supposed to sound instead of all fussy like it was sounding with the low-battery pre-amp. Right. So, now i’m sitting here having my own spring jam, because it’s beautiful outside and the light shines just right on the middle of my floor so that it seems like a spotlight. This is so much better than that dumb concert i did on Thursday….

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3511365/

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I’m a forgetful boy; sometimes even the most daily and normal things i do get forgotten once or twice a week. Last week i inadvertently left my wash in the laundry room for five days, and the week before i forgot to balance my checkbook, and this week i forgot twice to take my allergy medication. I wasn’t totally crippled because i have a certain amount of medication floating around in my system already, but missing a day tends to impact the next day negatively so having forgotten to take a pill yesterday today i wasn’t in good shape. I felt unfocused, and my face felt numb, and i was physically on the verge of tears the whole morning so much that people kept asking me if anything “was wrong”. And i swear tear ducts must be connected to your brain somehow to make you sad, cause i was in this awful mood to go along with my teary face. For an hour or two i was sure that i was on the verge of some total emotional breakdown, though honestly now i can’t imagine what those problems i conjured up might have been. But, it finally went away at some point when i stopped paying attention to it, and now i’m back to my normal miserable self. What joy.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3496748/

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May: i did just shower but it was just to cool off, not to get clean. I didn’t even wash my hair! But, anyhow, i’m not gonna stop showering until i see a full pack of cigarettes lying on Re’s desk in every cam shot she takes. You can’t fool me just cause you want me to be dirty!

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3488511/

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An hour past showtime. I will never, ever, ever play into microphones outdoors ever again in my career as a bitchy little folk singer. The student tech crew could inexplicably not get either of our guitars to come in via our pickups, so we had to mic them both with microphones. Now, i dunno if you’ve ever seen me play before, but i shimmy around like a belly dancer with a cricket put down the back of my shirt, so giving me a stationary microphone to play my guitar at is the worst idea you could ever have. Furthermore, they couldn’t even get our vocal mics to come out of the monitors in front of us, so i couldn’t hear Gina singing anything directly, just from off to the side. After sitting there strumming a G chord for ten minutes while the sound guys did everything but get us any sort of monitor mix we could hear, we finally decided to start and see what happened.


“Punk” was a thankfully quick crash and burn, though at that point we were assuming the monitor problem would get fixed. In our naivety we managed to get some good harmony going. However, the set took a downturn during “Deadweight” when two obnoxious guys were standing directly in front of us having a conversation and we still couldn’t hear ourselves playing. I, of course, started directing all of the lyrics right at the conversationalists – which wound up getting their attention rather quickly (they especially looked up when i screamed “i can’t get rid of you even if i want to, cause your deadweight the way you serve no purpose”). “With or Without You” was quick and rather painless for me because Gina was singing, but i couldn’t hear her guitar so i didn’t know what the hell was going on. “Lost” sucked because i couldn’t hear my guitar over the reverb of our voices (which finally found their way into the monitor), so i basically just played it quick and angry (which generally works well). I stalked off to retune after that and Gina bravely attempted “Landslide” solo while the wind dueted into her microphone, after which i came jogging back onto the stage for a very brave attempt at “Under My Skin” (in which the solo was rendered totally moot because Gina had no pickup for her acoustic guitar so we couldn’t hear what she was playing). After that we were supposed to play another 20 minutes of songs, but i was basically just muttering “fuck” under my breath inbetween every lyric and Gina was totally frustrated, so we hammered out “Can’t Do” and walked right off the front of the staging area without even saying thank you. Yep… i’m a rock star in training; i’ve got the attitude and everything.


The next band’s instruments all plugged in fine and the band sounded wonderful, even though they had too much reverb. There was a chick guitarist in the last band, but i was too pissed to hang around much longer. Somehow i managed to sell fifteen demos in the midst of all of this, but that leaves me with mucho extra copies, so get your orders in now. Ugh.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3486388/

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Five hours. I just ran into Gina, so … she’s here. I also dropped off my rapidly fuzzing liner notes to be copied on stock paper – had i planned this out properly i would have had the liner done digitally for today, however when it comes down to digital liner notes or underwear to wear for your show the right choice is (usually) doing laundry. Also, Gina and I were just totally improbably asked to record songs for a play opening in D.C. in July that will be playing at the Philly Fringe Festival, which means we might get to perform live there. This is ultra-tentative, but if i pursue it i think it’ll work out. See how easy it is to network when you’re not just some random kid recording dumb little concerts for your website ;-)

Meanwhile, somehow i leaked the liner notes before the demo release (i know how: i am a dumbass), so people are starting to catch wind of the thanx they received. I’m probably going to change the inside liner notes for each “pressing” of the disc so i can keep straight which ones got made when, so hopefully there’ll be some continuing surprises. But, now i have to sit at my desk and stew for another hour while my copies are being done. What fun.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3480901/