Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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New Boots and “Fall from the Sky”

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Hi. This is my first NaBloPoMo default – I’m not missing a post, but I am way off the grid of my editorial calendar.

I spent all of my writing time today plugging away on my NaNoWriMo novel, which means no elucidating new post. But, hey, my book is now over 20,000 words long!

However, never let it be said that my filler posts are not awesome. So, here’s your default post.

First, these are my new Kenneth Cole boots. They are a little urban cowboy for me, but I’m excited. Part of my non-blogging time was spent leather conditioning them.

When did I turn into a guy who spends my non-blogging time leather conditioning boots?

In other news, here’s the further development of one of my favorite Filmstar tunes, “Fall from the Sky.” We have a few bobbles on it, but this is pretty damn close to what it’s supposed to sound like.

We’re playing The M Room this Friday night. I may post a few more of my recent favorites.

But I Regress, pt. 7

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60s X-Men

Last time I decided to catch up on X-Men comic books only to discover that nowhere on the entire internet existed a definitive guide to collecting X-Men as trade paperbacks.

I decided to write it myself.

I am not exaggerating when I say the undertaking was harder than my Senior Project in college. No reference books, just sparse ISBN numbers and internet hearsay.

Finding a starting point was like grabbing a toe-hold in quicksand – there have been dozens of X-Men titles accounting for thousands of issues, and my intimate knowledge of them ended almost fifteen years ago.

80s X-Men

I started chipping away every night. First I plotted out Uncanny X-Men from issue #1 to present, puzzling together the different means of buying it in book form. Black and white Essentials, premium color Masterworks, dozens of crossover collections, and more regular volumes of the post-2000 books (but, mostly out of print!)

Then I moved to adjectiveless X-Men. Excalibur. X-Factor. X-Force. Oh god, was I really going to try to summarize Wolverine?

As I made progress on my guide I started to get excited about stories I had missed out on. How did Wolverine get his adamantium back? How did Emma Frost wind up as Cyclop’s lover? Where had Rogue been all this time, and how come she can touch people now? Who were X-23 and Daken?

90s X-Men

I had resolved to E that I would get something delivered to the new house every day for the first few weeks we lived there – even if it was something small. I just wanted to relish living somewhere where I could get packages delivered for the first time in my life.

So I hatched a plan. A schedule. Through assembling my guide I had my own library of links to all of the TPBs ever printed with the word X-Men on them. Not only that, but now I knew where on the internet they were the cheapest. I could get through entire runs in book form for under $1.65 an issue … sometimes way under.

Two hundred dollar would buy me into years of missed comics continuity. A few months hiatus from going out to lunch and buying new CDs could catch me up on over a decade of X-Men.

00s X-Men

Well, as we learned from my dalliance with City of Heroes, restraint has never been my strong suit. Three months after my first trio of books were delivered to my new doorstep I have every X-TPB – both in and out of print, from 1996 forward, with barely an exception.

Four months into our new house and I’ve gone from responsible adult all the way back to my teenage levels of geeky obsession. MikeyIl even convinced me to buy Starcraft II, but it was boring – I hate spending time in someone else’s sandbox.

The comics are different than both City of Heroes and Starcraft. I’m not writing fan-fic or putting time into someone else’s universe. I got something I love – the world of comic book continuity – and I found an outlet for it I can own – my best-on-the-net guide to collecting X-Men comic books as trade paperbacks.

How do I know it’s the best on the net? Because I used it to buy every damn book there is, will be, or was before, and no one else’s guide helped me do that.

That’s the difference between high school geek me and present day regression to geekdom: with my own house and CK, now I have my own set of sandboxes to play in.

I like it this way.

manning the homestead

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I am home for the day, partially to work remotely, partially to host some contractors, a teensy-bit to work on CK, and entirely to go an entire day without having to put on shoes or ride SEPTA.

Not to beat this whole “ten years ago on this historic, victorian-era weblog” thing to death, but ten years ago today I blogged 33 times.

What was wrong with me?! We’re not talking about a special blogathon or anything. This was just a normal day in my life. Most days I don’t even tweet 33 times. Hell, days where I write three blog posts are pretty few and far between. And, now at least I’m a professional and a musician and a husband and a homeowner and all sorts of other interesting things that I can drone on about at length.

Looking back ten years ago today, I did have a lot to talk about. I wrote a song. I was sick. I linked to some other bloggers. My despised roommate moved out. My new (also somewhat despised) roommate was nowhere to be found, so I couldn’t sign a new lease. And I had to move out of my summer dorm room. And I told you alllll about it.

So, what would 2000 Peter be telling you right now about 2010 Peter’s life?

Last night I went to dinner with my friend Mary. I got home really late, but it was still faster than the commute from my office to our old house. I’m presently in my pajamas. I have answered a few dozen work emails. If these dudes ever show up I’m going to have new storm doors that are less sexy than they are expensive (but, still somewhat sexy). After that I will probably scream obscenities at Jillian Michaels while doing 30-day Shred. Oh, and I’ll probably practice bass, because I rehearse with Filmstar tonight.

Altogether, it’s a pretty interesting day considering I’m not going to wear any shoes until at least 6:30pm. But could I possibly serialize it as a 33 post series?

10 years, by the numbers

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As of today, the 10th anniversary of Crushing Krisis, I’ve blogged…

3,652 days
3,724 posts and 28 pages
988,154 total words
263 average words per post
271 average words per day

641 posts with the world “guitar”
261 posts with the word “awesome”
181 posts mentioning Madonna
121 posts linking to rabi

3 months with posts every single day

107 unique original songs posted (holy shit, that’s a lot … 10 albums worth!)

And, in those ten years of my life…

262 original songs written
105 of 120 months in relationships
17 states visited or traveled-through
11 guitars owned
11 different job titles

One pair of favorite boots, purchased circa 1997. Resoled twice.

10 non-profit fundraiser concerts
9 roommates
7 primary residences
7 plays produced
4 twenty-four hour fundraisers
4 appearances at the Tin Angel
3 iPods
2 skydives
1 favorite pair of boots

10 days, 3 bands, 1 brain

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It is 10 days until Crushing Krisis’s 10th birthday and I am having an editorial calendar failure. And a brain failure.

Really it’s kind of an overarching not being able to do anything except nap and read comic books failure, which as failures go is not such a bad one. It’s way better than the “so overstressed I can feel the ulcers growing” brand of failure I was experiencing two weeks ago.

Actually, I think the napping and the comic books had a lot to do with escaping that particular pit of despair. Napping, comic books, little purple pills, and not drinking a gallon of lemonade every single day.

Meanwhile, in news related to the brain failure, I have discovered that being in three separate musical acts each with their own set of unique arrangements is the functional limit of my brain capacity. The wherewithal to recall all of those songs seems to have jettisoned my ability to return phone calls or schedule home repairs.

I am now off book on seventeen bass arrangements for Filmstar. As long as someone yells out what key we’re in at the start of the song I am fine, except for the one song that only makes sense if I pretend we are playing a David Bowie song. Like, if we begin and I’m like, “Oh, it’s a Filmstar song,” then I am a hot mess and play about two correct notes. But, if I instead say, “This is the secret, unreleased B-Side to ‘Suffragette City,’” then I’m fine.

Meanwhile, as Arcati Crisis Gina and I are working on two new songs, which – per our modus operandi – are completely different in every possible way from anything we’ve done before. One is an acoustic dance song from me equally influenced by Gaga and Heart, which I just previewed on our Facebook page.

(The other is a Gina tune which could be referred to as “Message In a Bottle from an American Girl in Russia,” but is actually called the much more succinct “American Mikaela.” It’s chorus hook is so destructively catchy that I have successfully lobbied to sing it three times as much as Gina originally planned.)

There’s also the musical artist that is me, who I can sometimes forget about in all of the commotion between the other two and commuting to my actual, fully-paid, highly-beloved full time occupation. He’s rehearsing to support Mieka Pauley this weekend at our house concert shindig, where he is rumored to debut a brand new Madonna cover (and, when you rumor something to yourself, it’s pretty sad if it doesn’t come true, so I need to get on that).

Meanwhile, ten years minus ten days ago I was sitting in a dorm room with a broken collar bone, registered for a year of music courses totally outside of my major and wondering if I would have anywhere to live in a month.

Ten years. Wow. What were you doing ten years ago today?