Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Joining the Boys’ Club

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I have never been “one of the guys.”

Except for live-nearly-nude-dancing-girls, apparently.

I don’t do a lot of typical dude things, like ogle women or watch sports. Most of my friends are women. Even in my dim memories of kindergarten, I surrounded myself with girls.

That’s not to say I don’t have any close male friends. We just don’t do dude stuff together, like … uh, I’m out gender stereotypes already. This is how little I am connected to my dudeness.

That said, I have found myself in the groom’s party of one of my longtime male BFFs and – unlike my wedding party – this one is a single sex affair. A fest of sausage, if you will. Which means not only am I in for some guy-on-guy quality time, but I was in for a bachelor party.

Prepared as I might be to drink other men under the table while watching sports (seriously, just try me), inherent in the looming bachelor party was a looming visit to a strip club.

I dreaded the concept. The only time I was nearly convinced to attend a strip club with friends I wound up having dry heaves before I could even get in a cab. I’m too little of a stereotypical dude and too much of a feminist. Paying to objectify strange, naked women is really low on my list of things that sound fun.

(To wit: my own bachelor party was a co-ed 80s prom entitled “Like a Virgin.”)

I can't deny it - I honestly did resemble him a bit on Friday. You know, with the unbearable hotness of me.

Yet, at a strip club is where I found myself on Friday night. Well, they had tops and bottoms on, so I guess it wasn’t a strip club. A pole dancing joint? Is that more accurate?

Hilariously, I turned out to be a live-nearly-nude-dancer magnet. E thinks it’s because I looked like Bradley Cooper in the episide of Alias where he pretends to be an Australian rock star.

She was probably right.

And, folks, point numero uno everyone failed to tell me about strip clubs? You might have to be careful how you touch the women, but they do not have any hesitations about how they touch you.

Yeah.

You know, I can’t not be polite and chat for a minute if someone is nuzzling me with her breasts, and then I feel bad for taking up her time, and then I am obligated to fold dollar bills and slip them into improbably small straps holding together even more improbably small garments.

The whole thing is ooky and disgusting slippery slope (not unlike a stripper pole … HEY-OH!)

After the first hour I was tipsy and having fun with the guys and alternatingly glowering at my cell phone in an attempt to ward off further elbow-molesting bosoms, having driven off the last woman by going on at great length about how my beautiful wife helps me select all of my fashion after she complimented my scarf.

I can't even contemplate the coordination it would take for me to be able to do this. I'm still working on mastering tree pose.

I felt another pair of breasts at my elbow (seriously, my elbow = SO POPULAR), and turned for my casual brushoff. This woman’s opening gambit was to ask me what I did for a living. When I said, “communications – marketing, really,” she exclaimed, “That’s my major! Well, really I’m journalism.” Which, as we know, I was too.

That’s when I started to have a little fun at the strip club. At first it was a room full of strange women, none of whom where even vaguely as attractive as my wife. As aerobic as their gyrations were, it didn’t feel much different than watching a class at a gym.

Then I actually took the time to meet one of the women – a perfectly sweet Italian girl – and give her advice on how database classes are going to help her if she ever has to do any direct marketing. And then I met another woman who was a fitness instructor and collected comic books.

You know what, I didn’t mind watching them dance. They were real people with great legs. And we kept chatting after they danced.

(Of course, there was still the inherent weirdness of having to tip a girl to have the sort of conversation I’d have at a networking night at a bar…)

Does this story have a moral?

I am one of the guys, even if I’m not a stereotypical guy. I can drink and carouse and have fun without being a chauvinist, so I need to get over my fear of “The Boys Club.”

Also, I was reminded of something important: attraction is context. My wife is more attractive than any stripper not only because she is smokin’ hot, but because she’s my mega-talented best friend. Similarly, I think my friends’ wives and girlfriends are beautiful. Why? I know them. They are not random pretty faces on the street – they are dynamic people with a myriad of skills and interests.

So are the women in a strip club – but you don’t really get the chance to hear about that (unless you keep tipping them). I guess most men are fine with that, but my not being fine with it doesn’t mean I am not a man, guy, dude, or boy.

Next up? I hear it’s traditional for us to kidnap the bride at the wedding and barter in liquor with the groom for her return.

That, I think I can handle.

2010 Recommended Albums Roundup

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There’ll be no more hemming and hawing – here are my recommended albums of 2010. I just have to get it out 50 days sooner next year :)

Thanks to my friend Melissa W. for inspiring/encouraging this endeavor, and for all of my office-mates for enduring my many rounds of listening ;)

Top 10 Recommended Albums of 2010

1. Sara Bareilles – Kaleidoscope Heart. A gleeful, big-voiced, piano-pop record not unlike what I expected from Kelly Clarkson fresh off of Idol. (full review)

2. The Black Keys – Brothers. Turns basic two-man blues stomp into a sonic wet cement that will fill up your ears and harden to stone, never to exit. (full review)

3. Robyn – Body Talk. Prickly-tongued dance pop that picks up directly where Cyndi Lauper left off with She’s So Unusual, both in voice and coquettish feminism.

4. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs. Evokes the washed out echo of America’s abandoned suburbs – dingy lawns, faded vinyl siding, and a hopeless tranquility.

5. The Bird & The Bee – Interpreting the Masters Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates. Transcends “carefully crafted tribute” to become a valuable reimagining of these classic songs. (full review)

6. Sia – We Are Born. Send a Britney Spears CD back in time along with an emotionally-unhinged, unintelligible cyborg lady from the future, both to the attention of the disco band at your local club; enjoy the results.

7. Corinne Bailey Rae – The Sea. A riveting, jazz-tinged journey to the bottom of the ocean, where an intent to drown transforms into a raison d’etre. (full review)

8. The Roots – How I Got Over. A pinnacle of hand-crafted hip hop, merging sure-handed classic soul with introspective and uplifting rhymes.

9. Vampire Weekend – Contra. Dizzingly smart, giddily smart-mouthed Paul Simon pop pretends it’s facile and heartless, but it’s anything but. (full review)

10a. Menomena – Mines. Found sound rockers take over for the waylaid Kings of Leon as the best back-to-basics rockers in America, sans basics.

10b. Blitzen Trapper – Destroyer of the Void. A fantasy land where Neil Young continued adding his “Y” to the acronyms of ever more classic rock acts after ditching Crosby and company.

10c. Hindi Zahra – Handmade. I spit “world music” like a curse because it never means this but it really ought to – international influences brought to bear on finely crafted pop songs.

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Keep reading for 32 More Recommended Albums of 2010 (in alphabetical order by artist). [Read more…] about 2010 Recommended Albums Roundup

You Sound Like a Vulture (an Arcati Crisis adventure)

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For the past few months Gina and I have been rehearsing with Zina, who is also the drummer in E’s band Filmstar.

It started as a speculative exercise – what would Arcati Crisis sound like with drums? We got our answer pretty quickly, as Zina is a ridiculously fast study. We’re already eight songs into drumming up our repertoire, and last night Zina polished off “Bucket Seat” after only a second rehearsal of it.

“Bucket Seat” has been one of my favorite songs from the moment I finished writing it in 2003. When Gina and I made Arcati Crisis formal in 2007 it was the second new song I brought to her to add to the repertoire, and in minutes she found the off-kilter chords that tangle with my staccato diminished stabs. Now the song sounds nude if I play it solo.

Zina was proving to be equally as intuitive on it. After our first run with Zina we fine-tuned a few spots and ran it twice more. It was solid, and we were playing it at the right tempo, but I felt like it was over too quickly.

I turned to Gina. “I think you need to play a guitar solo out of the fast part after the key change.”

One of my favorite aspects of the drumming process is that rather than constrict arrangements around our guitar playing, drums have opened up more space. Zina’s rhythm takes the burden of the two of us. These are songs we’ve played literal hundreds of times, but we keep finding new spaces inside them.

That said, nothing’s structure has really changed yet. The songs are all the same shapes they’ve always been. We haven’t added any funky breakdowns. Or guitar solos.

“A solo?” Gina asked, a little tentatively.

“Sure. You know, like what you play in the intro. Try it.”

We tried it. Gina stopped after four notes, two of which were pretty cool. “It doesn’t quite fit.”

“Yeah, but if you keep the two that worked, and descend…” I started imitating her guitar with my voice, wailing a solo. “raw wah, whear wheh wah, rah weh wah,” I paused for a breath between phrases, “and then a lower ascending line.” I climbed back up the scale, “until it resolves!” I shouted, wheezing and wailing until I reached a bent note at the top.

I finished my performance and looked at Gina expectantly.

“You sounded like a vulture,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“You want me to play it like that?”

“Well, you know. That’s the general shape of it.”

She regarded me skeptically while Zina looked on from behind the kit, bemused.

“I could draw it for you,” I offered, “like David Bowie did for Mick Ronson on ‘Moonage Daydream.’ I could go get crayons.”

“Oh, sure,” Gina mimed with her hands what I assumed to be an elaborate David Bowie crayon drawing, “that might work. Or we could just try to play it a few times.”

And that was how “Bucket Seat” acquired a guitar solo.

You can stream or download our full-length Live @ Rehearsal, Vol. 4 LP for free. Hear “Bucket Seat” and other rocked up Arcati Crisis songs at Dorian’s Parlor Neo-Victorian ball on Saturday March 12. There will be steampunk costumes. We’re also working on a ninja weeknight gig for February. Stay tuned.

Crushing On: The Hunger

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The first book I ever read was a children's version of Dracula, so I'm sure you can understand if I find all this Twilight business to be a bit annoying.

I think vampires could possibly be on their way to wane. It’s hard for me to be sure, as I am generally oblivious to their ebbing in and out of favor, having loved them since age six.

Age six was when I read my first book as I sit on my front porch in the summer sun. That book was Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Seriously. It was an abridged version for kids, and the few extremely terrifying dreams that I still remember were a small price to pay for a lifelong love of reading.

By the time of my reading of Dracula I was already an established David Bowie fan, so please understand that (a) I was not your typical six-year-old, and (b) I might have loved 1983’s The Hunger even more at age six than I did this weekend.

As opposed to his stunt-casting in many films, David Bowie is actually the perfect person to play this character.

Have you heard of this movie? It’s insane. From a novel of the same name, it’s like a retroactive Lynchian remake of Black Swan with literal vampires instead of metaphorical birds, where David Bowie and Susan Sarandon split Portman’s part (complete with homoerotic touches), but replace her ballet dancing with cello playing and smoking cigarettes, respectively.

The Hunger is exactly as disorienting, awesome, and disturbing as that description suggests.

In one of his strongest cinematic turns, David Bowie plays an androgynous vampire musician who is a little touchy about getting older – so, essentially, he is playing himself. Catherine Deneuve is his sire and very long-term domestic partner, as well as a sex enthusiast and classical pianist who is a dead ringer for Lady Gaga.

As the pair begin to fret over Bowie’s gray hairs, they independently obsess over Susan Sarandon, a young doctor trying to unlock the secret of aging by experimenting on some very temperamental monkeys. When the two of them aren’t busy fucking and killing (usually in that order, but not exclusively) the swingers they pick up from the local goth club they teach music to an adorable neighbor girl.

This movie … words just fail me. From the first minute it’s both disgusting and gorgeous. It’s beautifully sparse, with lingering shots that made me gasp and short, clipped dialog that’s hardly necessary. Honestly, it would work almost as well as a silent film. Unlike a lot of movies from the early eighties, it does not feel dated to me – the only hints of its age are electronic music cues and perhaps an overuse of slow motion.

Most importantly, every time The Hunger reached a point where E and I exclaimed “wouldn’t it be awesome if x” or “surely they’re not going to x” that exact thing happened. We’re talking about three of the most transgressive plot twists I have seen on film outside of shock/horror movie.

I mean – yes, this was shocking and horrifying – but on the whole it was more of a sexually-charged arthouse flick than it was Saw.

Did I mention David Bowie AS A CELLO-PLAYING VAMPIRE? Oh, and, if I may be a total dude for a brief moment (maybe the first ever on CK): the breasts of a young Susan Sarandon.

The current vampire craze has resulted in talk of a remake, but there is no way it could be as erotic and thought-provoking in the present day. Even with Lady Gaga.

I might need to buy a copy.