Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

consume

Return of Girlfriend and Prickly Pear Mojitos

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After a week of her absence, every aspect of life involving Elise seems like an adventure. Let’s cook rice! Let’s light candles! Let’s go for a walk!

Okay!

The dizzying newness of every trip up the stairs to see the light on in her office only serves to emphasize the advice I received from my-former / Elise’s-new co-worker Dan: a couple needs to vacation together and apart.

Since I had Bonnaroo in June and we had St. Louis together in July, Elise was suffering from a one-vacation handicap. She needed time away from me to have an adventure, and I needed time to shuffle around the house and pretend to be a bachelor. With her returned from San Francisco it feels as though our balance has been reset.

Our walk this afternoon took us through the Italian Market*, and afterwards past Pat’s and Geno’s** to wander down Passyunk to find a fabled Mexican restaurant with excellent margaritas.

It had been fabled by an old professor of mine who, apparently, has only a relative sense of location. We didn’t have directions, or the name of the restaurant, but he told us that we would have arrived when we were able to see a mural, a parking lot, and the Mexican restaurant all at the same time.

We came to such a point, and were faced with a drab Mexican restaurant with multi-colored blankets in the windows. It did not look like the home of excellent margaritas.

“Do you think that’s the place he was raving about?”

“Well, consider the source.”

The source being my motorcycle-riding, monochromatic- dressing, ponytailed senior project advisor.***

“Well, i suppose…”

Elise tapped on my shoulder. I turned to regard her and noticed that we were standing in front of a giant orange slab of a building with no sign and a huge wooden door.**** It looked like it needed a moat.

“Yeah, that’s probably it.”

Indeed, it was. And, not only were the margaritas excellent, so were the mojitos. Several drinks later I learned how to use Elise’s new camera, and bit my poor drunken tongue so badly that we thought I would need stitches.

It’s nice to be having adventures together, again.


* Note to self: The Italian Market is a ghost town by two on a Sunday. Start getting out of bed before one.

** Note to the internet: No Philadelphian who enjoys cheesestakes would ever eat at Pat’s or Geno’s. They are for tourists and people in South Philly who don’t know any better. If you want a good cheesesteak go to Jim’s or Tony Luke’s. Trust me.

***Yes, essentially my father as a communications professor (except i don’t think prof owns several dozen rifles).

**** Name, undetermined. It’s just above Morris on Passyunk, and both we and Prof. Steggy highly recommend it.

Stops Just Short of Calling Tolkien “A Little Bitch”

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The fascinating Hero Workshop posts the following excerpt from a recent article:

A greedy, smaller-than-human creature finds a treasure in the depths of a river. The treasure is a ring of great power which exerts strange influences on its owners including giving them the ability to disappear but always to bring danger or death to its owners. A hero enters the fray armed with a reforged sword that had been broken. Various races of humanoid beings attempt to gain control of the ring by magic and by heroism until it is finally brought at great cost and sacrifice back to its origin where it is purified by fire. The last pursuer perishes along with the ring.

Sound familiar? Is that because you’re familiar with Wagner’s opera tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung, AKA The Ring Cycle?

Don’t worry, i’m not either. At least, I wasn’t until I read Caroline Leech’s fascinating article about Tolkien and Wagner. Did Tolkien borrow from Wagner, or are their stories both so commonly archetypal in theme that they could hardly help to intersect?

Regardless of the answer, Welsh National Opera’s dramaturge Simon Rees offers the follow summary opinion:

The more I look at the two pieces, the clearer it is to me that Wagner produced a piece of extraordinarily united and unified work that you can tap from every angle and it remains as sound as a bell. And that Lord of the Rings is the conception of a very much lesser imagination, though still a very interesting and powerful piece of writing.

“Basically Wagner is for grown-ups.”

Ouch.

For some additional background on The Ring Cycle the the First Timer’s Guide, or the Wagner Experience @ uTexas, or ever-trusty Wikipedia’s articles on each of the four parts: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. Or, if you are musically inclined, examine the collected vocal scores, all available via the Indiana University Digital Library Program.

Many Splintered Realities (or, The Conclusion of NaBloPoMo)

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I began this month by comparing my entry into National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) to a DC comics-style Crisis – a reboot of me and my entire multi-verse of blogging, all for the benefit of any new readers that might stop by. Everything familiar would be eliminated, or re-imagined from scratch.

 

 

I was never a DC comics fan, so fittingly this month wound up more of a Marvel Comics event, even if i didn’t intend it. Marvel doesn’t have a hand catchword like “crisis” for their crossovers, and they usually don’t destroy the entire universe to make their point.

Age of Apocalypse is a particular favorite of mine, because it involved the X-Men, which was my concentration in Geekdom. In it, Professor Xavier is assassinated in the past, causing decades of history to shift radically.

For four months all of the many X-Men books were canceled and replaced with their alternate reality counterparts, similar at the core but alien on the outside. Wolverine and Jean were mercenary lovers. Magneto formed the X-Men, and Scarlet Witch was the first to fall in battle. Beast was an evil scientist, and Shadowcat a heartless bitch.

Unlike DC Comics, Marvel never really eliminates the past. At the end of four months the history we knew and loved returned. Not unscathed, though … it came along with new insight onto characters, and relationships, and some new characters mysteriously brought over from the alternate time line.

 

 

My little Krisis of the Infinite Crises (AKA NaBloPoMo) wound up a lot like that.

Clearly I am still me, and everything I’ve written over the past six years of Crushing Krisis remains part of my personal canon. Yet, during NaBloPoMo I recast some of my major characters, topics, stories, and songs. Certain themes, previously prominent, didn’t merit a mention. Others were played up anew for dramatic and comic effect.

Some changes were temporary for the sake of simplicity, like the comedification of my mother, and the suspension of archives and backlinking to old posts.

One universe-shattering change is here to stay: the port of my blog to WordPress.

Other, smaller changes may or may not stick: The return of Trio, the web’s longest running single-artist web session (AKA podcast). Reinstatement of comments. Retirement of certain prominent persons and topics. New favorite reads. OCD Godzilla.

 

 

As I re-imagined my personal narrative for NaBloPoMo I was reminded about the best aspects of myself and my life, and how they could be reflected in the best aspects of my blogging. I realized how blessed I am to have a six-year-old website that I still enjoy updating, and how unique I am to be able to express some of my sentiments in song.

I realized how truly, truly lucky I am to have such fascinating people interested in reading about it and hearing it.

I thank each of you for your attention, patience, and support. I sincerely hope that you decide to stick around to see what the future holds in store.

 

 

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Rabbit-Totems and Purple Dragons

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Even before I had the internet I was always interested in connecting to people who I could understand on some intrinsic level.

In my pre-internet age, one of my favorite comics was Sam Kieth’s The Maxx. Many issues of The Maxx had a pen pals page tucked into the back. The idea of it thrilled me – some equal yet opposite alterna-comic fan flung far across the country could trade significant thoughts with a distant speck of me.

I whined and begged my mother for permission to write to some pen pals or, even better, to send in my information to be listed (because, surely each pen pal was reaping hundreds if not thousands of letters from eager writers such as myself).

I was flatly rejected. Repeatedly. Because, as far as my mother was concerned, it was the goal of the entire population of America to seduce me into acquiescing to a quiet, tidy kidnapping. Who knew what kind of lunatic was lying in wait for impressionable young comic fans such as myself to engage them in witty adolescent banter, only to suss out the likeliest kidnappees and stealthily infiltrate their homes in the night.

I shortly and unsuccessfully agitated for a P.O. Box, and that was that.

(Why didn’t I just send in the damn letter with telling her? Who knows. That is how good of a kid i was.)


When I first started Crushing Krisis one of my favorite things was to not only find and link to a new blog, but to get into a longterm habit of reciprocal linking – carrying on a sort of turn-based dialog in a series of blog posts meant not just for each other, but for our entire audience(s). In a way it was like a comic-book crossover.

Sadly, in most cases only my side of the chat still exists – six years of blogging yields quite an attrition rate. Of my virtual pen pals even the most venerable and permanent-seeming blogs I exchanged links with are gone. All but one.

Wockerjabby was a strange creature – six years ago just a clean layout emblazoned with a purple dragon, talking about college and exercise and veganism and astrophysics. Rabi, pronounced just like “Robby” (cotton on?) was… a girl? A girl named Rabi living just a few miles from my apartment? An awesome, intelligent, health-conscious, blogging girl name Rabi going to college around the corner from my favorite malll?

I was hooked from minute-one. And, just a few hours later, Rabi noticed my link and wrote me a nice email. And (nearly causing me to have a heart-attack in excitement) linked back.

Afterwards i started a (somewhat embarrassing, in retrospect) linking campaign professing my blog-love, and Rabi continued to reciprocate, carrying on merry conversations via email all the while.

If the story plateaued there – two bloggers trading links for six years – it wouldn’t be too remarkable.

It didn’t.

We decided to meet – Rabi was the first internet person i ever met. In the middle of a field, actually. Well, at a train station, and briefly in a grocery store, but predominantly in the middle of a field, where I sang songs and she read poetry.

We continued through Blogathonning and late night IM conversations discussing “Peter’s-Head Romantic Gravitational Units,” and a lengthy walk through night-time Philly, and somehow wound up flying together and then road-tripping together to Boston for concerts, followed by multiple iterations of walking the breadth of NYC and Philadelphia, eventually coming-of-age and enjoying martinis in both locations.

All of that from one link, six years ago yesterday. Not only a best internet friend, but a best friend.

Ever since Rabi’s link has always appeared on my link list. And, six years later, CK is still on hers.

It’s hard – still hard, even with blogs and MySpace – to thwart the natural tendency of our social circles towards homogeneity. Your friends will always have something in common with you, because if you have nothing in common the spark of friendship never catches, and a year later you’re left wondering why someone is still on your friends list. Because of the limits of the physical world, usually many of our friends wind up having the same things in common with us.

The allure of The Maxx pen pals and, later, the internet, is the offer of hundreds of different tangential contacts – small intersections of interest. The long tail of meeting people, the joy of which is following that connection to find even more connections.

In Rabi I have found the unique overlap of blogging, of loving music, of eating strange vegetarian foods, of remaining dedicated – even obsessed – with staying vibrant and real.

Probably way cooler than anyone i could have met from The Maxx.


(ps: Rabi, your Trio got usurped because i don’t know how to play two of the songs yet. Consider this your Trio IOU to be redeemed when i have more than a day to learn three songs.)

Oh Well (A Trio of Links)

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I’ve been so busy playing other people’s songs for the past week that i’m having temporary amnesia when it comes to playing my own songs for the first of what is hopefully a final Trio of Trios for you.

In the meantime, here’s the second in what I hope to be a tradition of presenting a Trio of Links every time I’m not quite ready with a Trio of songs when I planned to be. This Link Trio is drawn from NaBloPoMo blogs I’ve already highlighted in my series of site reviews.

The first link is In The No, the inaugural PodCast from A 1,000 Times No.

In it, blogger Jen interviews Tom Zoellner, author of The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire.

The podcast is a fascinating hour on the history of the diamond ring, partially about the history of diamond PR and how it has become “the semiotic of royalty.” Tom was also the co-author of An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography, the novel that became the film Hotel Rwanda, and he also discusses that book.

(Extra-bonus: Jen is connected with a cappella u, and her theme music is a cappella!)

The second link is Grand Rounds Volume 3, Edition 9, as hosted by Doctor Anonymous.

Grand Rounds is an ongoing event hosted in round robin fashion by a number of different medically oriented blogs. It highlights the best medical writing from recently updated blogs. Though the writing is medical, it isn’t necessarily technical – some of it is on topics like coping with the emotional ramifications of disease.

My final link is a post that all hobbyists should read at In A Minute Ago, titled Five Ways to Nurture Creativity.

I’m of the firm belief that it’s important for everyone to have at least one hobby that isn’t passive (like tanning or watching television), and I spend most of my free time trying to engage actively in something.

People become the most enamored with your creative output when you are engaged and confident in your work, and blogger Sharon provides five universal suggestions for getting to that point. One of the suggestions that is made is making a space for your hobby. This seems so simple, but it has been hugely impactful on my hobbies.

In prior apartments my computer was in my bedroom or living room, respectively, which made it hard to sit down to focus on blogging and recording music rather than focusing on sleeping or socializing. Especially when my computer was in the living room both hobbies declined to all-time lows. Now that I have my own office/studio it’s much easier to delineate serious, uninterrupted personal time devoted to either or both.

(Sharon also suggests keeping a visual journal, but this could just as easily be a small text pad, or memos to yourself – the point is not the medium, but quick instant-feedback on an idea that you can tap into at a later time).

Taking hobbies seriously dovetails with possibly the most important thing I took from my creative studies in college: Don’t apologize for your art! If you release creative output into space you shouldn’t defuse it by offering a retraction regarding its quality or content. Whether you make a mistake, or just felt the performance was a little too risqué, you have to allow it to stand on its own for the audience.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to the creative process itself – that’s what preparation and practice are for. A photographer will take some crap shots that never get printed, and an actor will discard many approaches to a line. However, an imperfection in a final product or performance is part of its art.

That doesn’t mean you can’t afford to be human – your humanity might be the most attractive aspect of your work. Just don’t allow your human flaws or self-deprecation to obscure what is so fascinating about you to begin with.

ps: I had hoped to record a Fiona Apple song for my last influences Trio, but i didn’t have a guitar arrangement locked down. Though it isn’t necessarily what i would have played, here’s a highly superior “Oh Well” from the unreleased Jon Brion version of Extraordinary Machine.