Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Under the Chalk

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I am so very behind the times when I need Rolling Stone to tell me that a tune from PJ Harvey’s forthcoming piano-based record Under The Chalk has leaked onto the internet a month ago.

What the hell?

Luckily, the internet forgives and provides. Check out a rather transfixing YouTube performance of “When Under Ether” and/or stream the leaked track below, and then head to Philly-based mp3 blog Some Velvet Blog to check out the cover and tracklist of Chalk.

I really like it. I’m looking forward to the huge, inevitable number of Tori comparisons PJ’s record draws, as if she is suddenly professing to be a pianist; the entire point of her is that every album is completely different.

(Also discovered in my mad PJ hunt – The Yellow Stereo. Very good music writing, and taste.)

Happy Birthday To This

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I spent the majority of my day yesterday moving my best friend & bandmate Gina and her boyfriend Wes into their first house.

We were a small team of movers – just five, plus one in the truck – yet the move went as smoothly as it could possibly go… with the exception of one instance of Gina and I collapsing into giggles while trying to carry her futon around a bend in the stairs, and the fact that the laws of physics bar them from sleeping on a queen-sized box spring anywhere other than their living room.

Gina and I have now known each other for over half of our lives – through middle school, high school, college, post-college, and now whatever this is. It was amazing thing to be a part of her big move yesterday, just it continues to be amazing to be able to see so far into the past of someone, someone with whom silliness comes so easily, and with whom I am the epitome of comfortable, willing to speak my mind even when I know we disagree.

Crushing Krisis has now been alive seven years – since August 26th, 2000. That’s more than half as long as I’ve known Gina, and nearly as long as I’ve known the rest of my best friends.

To the best that I can discern, Crushing Krisis is the longest continuously running blog in Philadelphia, and has been since 2003. It’s an amazing thing to contemplate, especially considering that Philly was recently measured to be the second most bloggingest city in the United States. It also means that CK is increasingly one of the most established blogs on the face of the internet.

Just as significantly, since it’s inception Crushing Krisis has been a home to my original music, featuring the original (and, correspondingly, longest-running) singer-songwriter podcast, Trio.

Maybe more significantly than either of those distinguished roles, Crushing Krisis is a part of me – a persistent virtual reflection that helps me to see myself as I am, as I once was, and how I wish I would be.

This page is a lot of things, and a lot of me, and for each year that passes it gets a little more important, because I am getting older and starting to forget feelings from certain moments or stories from specific parties.

I long ago accepted that birthdays and new years days are not inherently transformative experiences – you don’t come out on the other side a new person more than you would emerge reborn from any other day of the year. Yet, they can mark your graduation into being a changed person.

As I wrote last year’s birthday post I felt as if I had finally reached a stable place in life, and if Year 6 of Crushing Krisis was about finding stability, then this past year has been converting stability into happiness.

Some of that conversion was literal. I went from writing and editing letters to managing publications and ad campaigns. I went from being a house-bound recluse of a songwriter to a semi-regular at area bars. and open mics. I transferred Crushing Krisis from Blogger to WordPress on November 12, in the midst of participating in the amazing National Blog Posting Month. I vowed to have a consumerless Christmas (and succeeded). And, Gina and I finally became the band we’ve always teased at being.

And now I am actually, unequivocally, at an equilibrium of happiness – which, if you read through as many hundreds of old posts as I have in the past few weeks, you will realize is a state I wasn’t sure I would reach. Not so soon, at least, and maybe never.

Year 7 of Crushing Krisis includes a slew of favorite posts. I cursed at the television. I had a headache so profound that I gave it a name. I reinvented myself for NaBloPoMo. I recounted my first heartbreak. During a single Trio I redefined one of my favorite songs, and debuted one that had been incubating for half a decade.

I almost burned down the house baking cookies in the microwave. I finally told the story of my life-altering nap at Bonnaroo. I recorded a perfect version of one of my favorite songs. I took my first trip to a casino. Septa carried out an act of terrorism against my favorite garment. And, I finally celebrated the 4th of July the way I’ve always meant to.

But, for every favorite post there’s another that’s just as essential. I offered the most succinct description of myself ever made. I retold the story of the Queen of Darkness, complete with soundtrack. I mercilessly deceived a toddler to get him to eat his vegetables. I contemplated six years of knowing (and reading) Rabi. I listened to the Beatles entire catalog while racing through my last letter of NaBloPoMo reading.

I examined my role as a narrator in my own songs, comparing it to that of an inanimate object. Elise and I found a new favorite restaurant, where we’ve since become regulars. I documented my seemingly endless struggle with organizing my home office. I started documenting my visual life. I reflected on how far my 2004 resolutions have got me.

I recorded my favorite Garbage song, as well as one of Madonna’s most obscure. I reflected on how feminism sometimes makes me cry. I drank a lot of limoncello. I helped present the fifth annual Lyndzapalooza with hardly a hitch. I recorded my catchiest song, ever. I nearly lost my mind in the middle of Broad Street.

After recapping my year in words or links I usually spend the penultimate paragraphs of these August 26th posts talking about what Crushing Krisis is to me and what I hope to make it in the future, but I don’t know if this iteration warrants the introspection.

After seven years of blogging Crushing Krisis is me or, more accurately, an integral, inextricable part of me that I hope will exist as long as I do and beyond. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how many posts I make in a year (105), or how many unique songs I feature (37), or how many times I tell you how I really feel (?). This is just what it is, and I wouldn’t want it to be anything else.

While the penultimate paragraph changes, the final sentiment never really does: thank you. Thank you, no matter how many posts you have read, or how many songs you have listened to.

Thank you, because each of our identities are half about our self-perception and half about others’ perception of us, and if this is a form of me it would only be half-alive without a you to complete it.

Thank you. And, happy birthday to this.

Gilt & Hail

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While out in the world I am constantly seeking out details to ferry back to this little white box.

Some days are just as plain as the box itself, monochromatic and empty, and so the smallest sensation of actual life sticks out. Last Friday, a fever, riding home in a cab from work. He had attached a small plastic hose to the passenger a/c vent, and it pumped air under the divider, directly onto my naked ankle. In my hyper-sensitive state the sustained blast of air was alternatingly soothing and intensely painful.

I sank into a kind of paralyzed trance, in rhythm with the throbbing veins beneath my skin.

Other days the world is so vibrant with narrative color that I can hardly take it all in. Not if I had a tape recorder for my thoughts, or a camera for the view. And so I marvel at the human mind, and how in a life full of gadgets it is still the best recording device I’ve got so long as I make sure each aspect of the world is remarkable in its own way.

I prise away at every little detail.

A beautiful voice is emerging from the post office boxes. At first I think it might be the radio, but it slips remarkably from disco to R&B to lullaby without changing key. I don’t think digital satellite can do that.

I peer through the keyholes and tiny windows in the doors of each box to try to catch a glimpse of her. Gilt, but fading, each door is set with a key hole surrounded by a multi-pointed star, each of ten successive letters marking its points.

I don’t understand why. I still can’t see her.

A pleasant-looking woman in a Ft. Lauderdale shirt strolls in with her toddling son, adorable with untied shoes. In line behind me he too is drawn to the singing, or maybe just the gilt, and strays beneath the nylon divider to investigate.

“Get yourself back in here,” she croaks. She speaks like a bull frog, lower and more destroyed than a woman who had smoked for twice her age. She yanks him under the rope and lays a firm smack across his midsection. It reverberates across the tiled floor as he looks up at her. No tears, still quizzical.

She catches me staring, and I hold her gaze for long seconds.

The posters, I notice, are coded. A star means to leave them up indefinitely. A plus means they will expire; their shelf-life is printed below, white on black. And it isn’t just the posters – laminated mats and signs as well.

The tiny woman in front of me is trying to pick up mail in her maiden name; she drops pennies into her purse and they make a peculiar clinking sound, like the inside is made of tin. At the next window the clerk informs a man that he was lucky to receive his package, as it had no address on it.

I can’t figure it out, either.

I am at my bullet-proofed window. I think I could slip a pvc tube around the edge and spray aerosol poison into the face of my clerk. But that wouldn’t be an effective way to pick up my package. She is fussing with her watch, which is clearly two or three links too small for her wrist. Had it swollen suddenly?

There are scratches everyone on the inside of the bullet-proofed window; who is trying to escape?

The woman behind me bobs, up and down, back and forth. The stamp machine does not take dollars. There is a mural on the wall of some Midwestern settlement, and I can’t understand what it has to do with post offices or Philadelphia.

I fiddle with each tiny ball bearing that chains the pen to the bullet proof window as if they are rosary beads.

I pray: remember each detail.

Now With More Undergarments…

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One of the reasons I love having a blog – especially a longstanding blog that is never revised or edited in retrospect – is the hindsight it offers.

For instance, longtime readers may recall that I used to have a webcam, and on said webcam I would routinely – even frequently – appeared in the nude. Never full frontal, mind you, but everything but. Because, apparently, that’s how I spent most of my time – nude, either pretending i was in a Playgirl spread or playing guitar.

If you are one of said longtime readers, you may also recall that I archived the highlights of said webcam in a conveniently accessible gallery, where they could be viewed by all future employers or pornographic film recruiters.

Well, you may recall it, but it certainly came as a shock to me when I clicked through an old link tonight to be met with very nearly my full monty circa 2001.

Even more shocking, in retrospect my 2001 almost-full-monty was some pretty hot stuff. Like, just now I sorta gawked at myself for a minute or two.

In case you aren’t one of said longtime readers (of which there approximately four that I can think of) I’d love for you to see the hotness that was me for yourself (as long as you are not an employer! or co-worker! or one of my hypothetical eventual children!).

Except… um… actually, I’d rather you not see it.

Let me rephrase: I’d love for you to be cognizant of the hotness that was me, but I don’t necessarily want to direct you towards a venue where you can see the hotness, especially not in a form that can be forwarded via email or posted on your favorite social networking site.

In any event, thank god for my blog, or I would have tottered into my middle age having completely forgotten that I used to lounge around the apartment in the buff, strategically placing bass guitars so that they would show only the tiniest wisp of pubic hair, and that I really ought to consider taking some of those pictures down if I ever decide to run for a political office.

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.