Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Although she has been known to veer sharply in either direction, my mother has always been just the perfect shade between crazy and inspired. I look back upon my childhood now and try to figure out what was going on on her end of things… what adult motivations were playing out behind the benevolent ‘mom’ i adored.


My mother took endless pictures of me up until i started grade school — almost enough to make up for my nearly undocumented puberty (thank the lord). Up until my parents got separated i don’t think she worked at all, and i’m sure she found herself with all sorts of odd times during the day while i napped, played, or sat through endless repetitions of The Making of Thriller. So, she sat down with rolls of film and colored paper and yarn and elmers glue and came out with these odd books… like easy-reading version of my toddling life. Peter at the Zoo. Peter at the Beach.


Construction paper shades that make up the primary colors of childhood and sentences with one subject and verb each, plus the occasional adjective. They used to live in the bottom drawer of the desk in our dining room, and every so often she would get them out and read them back to me. I suppose she would be feeling lonely, or reminiscent of when i existed without any kind of premeditation. Grade school and GI Joes make a kid grow up fast. Eventually she altogether stopped mentioning them at all, and i haven’t seen them since we moved in 1998.

I don’t know what i’m talking about. If i was four today, those books would be something like Henry’s Diary, which alternating makes me want to cry about the fact that i’m two decades old and inspires me to one day be a dad as awesome as Henry’s dad.


And a mom as awesome as my mom.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8703510/

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

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The trend in weblogs for ringing in the New Year seems to be a dead split between resolutions that might not be upheld and a litany of excellent things about 2001 that never came to light through the actual process of blogging. So, in the spirit of my general disagreeance and spitefulness this past weekend, here are the reasons why my year sucked (in roughly chronological order):

  • My grandmother dies; i proceed to get so sick that i miss the funeral (never to be forgiven by family). (!)

  • I have to drop a class for the first time. (!)

  • The weekend of my dress rehearsals for Good Woman of Setzuan i am diagnosed with Pneumonia and Bronchitis. I have to argue not to be admitted to the hospital so i can start going to rehearsals again. Upon my return I forget an entire verse of my big song on opening night (at this point being generally attributed to my medication, which i will neither confirm nor deny). (!)

  • My first girlfriend wound up being somewhat of a psycho/bitch; horrible breakup ensues. (!)

  • I managed not to fail anything despite all of the above circumstances, but garner my first C (in Recording Class) (!)

  • I have no spring vacation; i immediately started work at Admissions after classes ended. (!)

  • I am totally miserable in my apartment; i don’t speak much to my roommate. (!)

  • I miserably quit blogging for an entire week when my archives disappear. (!)

  • I do not leave the city once during the entire summer. (!)

  • I spend the majority of the summer wondering where i’ll be living in September. (!)

  • I sign up to attend the Philadelphia Folk Fest and then have to back out because of work and moving into my new apartment. (!)

  • I step in to give the counselor-of-the-day presentation one Tuesday in September, because the counselor in question was to horror-stricken to speak. (!)

  • I enter a rather depressive haze and let details about it slip to my mother, who becomes physically ill at the thought of my mental instability. (!)

  • I am admitted to the hospital for four days only to be told absolutely nothing is wrong with me. (!)

  • I endlessly deliberate over a first date with someone who lives across the country from me and who i like very much — only to be romantically rebuffed. (!)

  • I spend the entire last weekend of the year in the most dire of blah moods. (!)


    • So, that’s my year. At a glance, 2001 looks as though it might have been my worst year ever pound for pound. However, lest we all despair for my miserable year, click the end of each phrase for the happy ending that i might not have hinted at while blogging. And, in case i haven’t mentioned it, Happy New Year.

    https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8335446/

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    Airports and planes are abuzz with holiday spirit of rushing and nastiness and “the air is safe now; i’m staying away from buses.” At Ft. Lauderdale’s Terminal 4 there was a two-hour-long line to the Air-Tran ticket counter that almost nearly turned into a riot thanks to yours truly, a young married couple from Delaware, a model toting a small terrier in a carry-on, and my 80-year-old grandmother. I still have yet to figure out which of the five of us managed to convince the other four not to pummel the people cutting in line to death with our luggage. Furthermore, i had a gun slightly inclined at me during the whole metal-detector ordeal, and i think one of the kids sitting behind me on the plane was trying to peel the other one’s face off while being beaten back by a bag of complimentary pretzels.

    Yes, Christmas. Can you feel it? I have exactly 20% of my Christmas shopping done and our DSL hardware is in UPS limbo and my brain would have exploded in Florida if it wasn’t for Jill with her sensible car and our Mexican Cuban restaurant — you have to love a fine dining establishment that features entrees like “Chicken Chunks” and “Fried Beef” without qualifying them with any sort of description. None. Whatsoever. But, they had bitchin’ sombreros…

    https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/8136899/

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    So, i’m in Florida. Hi.


    Florida is entirely queer is basically what i’ve decided. I feel like an endless cliche saying things like “well, in Philly…” every other sentence, but it’s honestly a entirely different culture than what i’m used to. Case and point: cars. Most of the peope i know at Drexel have their licenses, because where they live they basically need a car to get from anywear to anywhere. However, these people mostly don’t bring their cars to Philly … there’s just no point in it.


    Here if you don’t have a car you’re stranded. Going to the movies last night was utterly unaccomplishable via bus. Getting to the airport would involve a pricey cab ride or a ride to an out of the way rail-station and then a pricey cab ride. Today was like the Greatest-Hits of lacking public transportation: getting to see Martha involved a lengthy car ride to the out of the way train-station, followed up by a doubly pricey cab ride down the highway. And then i got lost in Jupiter.

    Well, really, this tiny development inside of Jupiter that gives one the impression that there was a Disney race in Starcraft who came to Earth to colonize our territory. It’s not exactly the town of Celebration, but’s it’s got that pastel-and-stucco, pre-fab, homogeonized-milk sortof feeling to it. Which, was even creepier when i thought the entire thing was Martha’s college, but then she informed me that it was really just one big creepy pre-fabricated expensive housing development — where you can pretend that you live in an amalgamated every-state of the USA minus anything with a population density higher than… oh, shit, what the hell do i know about population density.


    But, anyway, now playtime is over and i have to do the pricey two-hours journey back to the geriatric imprisonment that is my grandmother’s condominium.

    On the bright side, Martha is as obsessed with Buffy as i am, and tomorrow i’m having lunch with JillMatrix!!! Rock on!

    https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/8085417/