Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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We’ve hit claydirt!

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Her car slowed to a crawl by the curb as she rolled down the window.

“Hi there!” She exclaimed.

I had no idea who she was.

“Are you having problems with your pipes?” she asked, her voice filled with sympathy.

I looked up from my shoveling, one leg hiked up on the pile of dirt while I wiped the sweat from my brow with the opposite hand, reflecting that I was striking one of the more manly poses from which I’ve ever been interrupted, and replied.

“Sure looks like it, huh!”

As it turns out, we were not having a problem with our pipes, or really any kind of problem at all. Everything was proceeding according to plan. E’s plan.

Mostly.

You see, all home repairs are remanded to the exclusive custody of E due to a combination of my OCD and my having never lived in a house where I was allowed to do anything to anything.

As a result, I can’t even put a screw into a wall without wanting to call in an architect. I’m like, “You want me to do WHAT to the WALL of OUR HOUSE that WE OWN? Are you sure?”

And then E takes the drill from me, sinks a screw into the wall, and hangs a picture. Or installs a laundry system or hooks up a digital thermostat or whatever other crazy MacGyver insanity she does while I’m worriedly reading and re-reading instruction booklets and internet how-tos.

So, when E proposed a plan for regrading our front lawn that began with, “find some free fill dirt from Craigslist,” I just nodded. I mean, first, she’s always right, but also, it’s not like we are going to break the front lawn, right?

Like, what’s the worst that could happen?

Right. That question got a little less rhetorical on Thursday night when a 30-year-old dump truck cracked a panel of our sidewalk and dug its wheels into our lawn in a possibly irretrievable fashion.

For a few minutes I really thought we had acquired a permanent 30-year-old dump truck lawn ornament, which I guess I was okay with. That was before it stood on its rickety pneumatic hind legs to expel what was surely close to a ton of dirt onto our front lawn. Then there was also the chance that the entire thing would tip over backwards and somersault through our front window.

Well, we got rid of the truck, but were left with a pile of dirt that was only slightly smaller than a VW Bug, bristling with hunks of broken concrete. Honestly, it looked to be about 30% dirt, 70% shattered ruins. Between the broken sidewalk, the massive tire rut, and the subsequent pile of rubble it really did look like we were digging up a ruptured sewer pipe.

Which maybe is why three separate people asked about that, even when I was halfway through shoveling said dirt to its final resting place. Because, as it turns out, the rubble was not bristling with concrete – it was clay dirt, and all of the various rock-like bits were clay that easily gave way beneath my shovel.

(Gina was able to discern this immediately when she arrived for rehearsal yesterday, despite my trying to convince her the yard was filled with rubble from a giant robot fight that had occured in our lawn over the weekend. Maybe I should have skipped the giant robot part.)

Three hours of manly labor later and the pile was half-depleted – more of a buttress than a Bug – while our lawn is now graded up almost a foot at the foundation of the house.

What might my solution have been, you ask? I probably would have paid one of the three landscape engineers we are personally acquainted with a large sum of money to find a solution that involved neither a dump truck or me spending a day shoveling dirt.

Of course, E’s solution was free less the cost of the new sidewalk panel, plus I got to look manly for an afternoon, so that’s why she’s in charge of these things.

it’s a glam rock life

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At about midnight on Saturday Gina and I were having some issues.

At that time we were on the third song of our full-length, fully-electric Arcati Crisis set at Fergie’s pub.

Actually, we were about four minutes into trying to start our third song, my one-minute and six-second tune, “Glam.”

In case you are bad at rock math, 4:1 is not a very good prep-time to play-time ratio.

On the left side of the stage, one of Gina’s two lowest strings was a hair out of tune. On the right side of the stage, I was playing the opening riff to my own song in the wrong key (which sorta made Gina’s ever-so-minor tuning issue a moot point).

Even in the moment I was struck by the Alanis-Irony that after six months of preparing for our big electric debut we were having the kind of rock-stoppage that regularly felled us a decade ago when we were acoustic teenagers, all while our brand new drummer looked on, bemused.

That’s rock for you. You can practice all your high flying solos and set up an awesome effects chain, but rock has some basic requirements to fulfill and one of them is playing in the same key as each other (unless you want to play more experimentally and/or with a lot more distortion than we do).

You don’t think about this stuff when you watch a pop band play their new single on Saturday Night Live. They have guitar techs. The drummer has a click track in ear so they can cue samples. One of the guitarists is actually playing into a midi sequencer so it doesn’t matter too much if he’s a hair out of tune. And on every chorus the singer is doubled by a ten-track, four-part harmony pulled right off of her record.

That shit is way above our heads.

Of course, if one of them forgets what key the song is in they’re still in trouble, so I suppose what I’m saying is Gina would do fine on Saturday Night Live, but I would be immortalized in my own Ashlee Simpson moment.

But not really. Because I am a freakish perfectionist, and we had played all of these songs hundreds of times already, and we already played an awesome sneak preview date and teaser set and two awesome songs, and I was not about to let me forgetting for three measures the song was not actually in F ruin my night.

The upshot of this story is that the gig was awesome. The whole “Glam” snafu was barely a blip. On our third try we just started the damn thing, and after the eight seconds of dischordant intro all of our issues were over. We proceeded directly from that into a raucous debut of our cover of “Moonage Daydream.” Then we played Gina’s brand-new “Song for Mrs. Schroeder” for the first time, and turned in pitch-perfect versions of “Apocalyptic Love Song” and “Love Me Love Me Not” to end our first set.

I even hit the little hammer in the last verse of “Love Me Not” I had missed in our last few rehearsals.

Over an hour later we closed the night by launching into one of the most awesome, hard-rocking versions of Gina’s seven-minute epic “Brother John” that we’ve ever unleashed.

When it was over we said thank you, doled out sweaty hugs to our friends that had hung around until last call to catch every song, and got paid.

And then I drove a car inside of the Philadelphia city limits for the first time ever – at 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning – and I didn’t even kill any drunk douche bags on Walnut.

In sum, the “Glam” incident barely even ranks. I’m only devoting precious digital column-inches to it as a reminder that the stupid crap that happens to me in the middle of a show only has to matter if I let it.

Otherwise, it’s eight painfully out-of-tune seconds out of a three-and-a-half hour gig, and that is a really effing good out-of-tune to awesome ratio.

In Review: Rolling Stone 1122 – Jimmy Fallon, Robert Plant

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I have a lifetime subscription to Rolling Stone, and I still eagerly devour each issue the day it arrives, just as I did as a teenager. Half a life later, with a communications degree and a side gig as a musician, my opinions on the mag are a little less reverential than they once were.

Since E has expressed … let’s say, not the strongest interest in my ongoing journalism critique, I’ve decided to spare her a ninth year of such twice-monthly boredom and move my review online, where she can skip it more readily and without feigning deep spousal interest.

RS1122 - Jimmy Fallon

Cover/Feature:  “Jimmy Fallon’s Big Adventure” by Brian Hiatt, cover by Robert Trachtenberg
The ice-skating cover is not exactly an iconic image, but it’s very Fallon, complete with svelte peacoat over a non-descript hoodie. The article goes through the typical Late Night Host feature motions, as if cribbing directly from the superior Conan article from just a few issues ago. It does a lot to explain Fallons’ constant mirth as the result of something other than a coke addiction, but otherwise is mostly a softball fawner about how much of a darn great guy he is.

Bruno Mars: “Mr. Showbiz” by Jonah Weiner
A solid profile that explains who the heck this Bruno kid is anyway and why/how he writes such explosive hits (see my review of his LP). Unfortunately, he comes off as a bit of an entitled prick in just about every statement he makes, even if it’s all carefully disclaimed as sarcasm. No good photos.

“Robert Plant’s Mystical Mountain Hop” – by Stephen Rodrick
A vivid article that helps to contextualize Plant’s new Band of Joy endeavor, an outgrowth (but not continuance) of his record with Alison Krauss. He takes a few veiled shots at other aging rockers trying to hang on their their glory and never comes off as surly or preening as Roger Waters in his recent cover story. I love the splash photo of him lunching on cassette tapes. Great shot, and Plant is at his kooky best as he contemplates his tangled lunch. I love it, as well as the absolutely gorgeous snap of him in white silk where he looks like the king of Rohan.

Matt Taibbi: “The Crying Shame of John Boehner”
Taibbi’s unfocused article harkens back to his salivating earlier pieces that were more in love with turns of phrase than making a point. After a mid-article recap of Boehner’s career there is no prevailing thesis or structure other than his unorganized laundry list of Boehner misdeeds, too often using the Tea Party as a straw man to represent the will of the country at large (seriously?)

The Rest: [Read more…] about In Review: Rolling Stone 1122 – Jimmy Fallon, Robert Plant

lime popcorn and how I nearly died

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I nearly died yesterday, due to a combination of popcorn, caffeine, and my remarkable skill and poise in professional presentations.

Allow me to back up for a moment. Last year E and I sent our spit to 23andMe so we could receive genetic profiles. Mine revealed many interesting things, including that the fact that my body metabolizes caffeine differently than most people.

Anyone who knows me could have told you that without the benefit of a state-of-the-art genetic test. Where a 12-ounce coffee makes most people perky, it turns me into a jittery, speed-talking demon that cannot operate touch screens or complex machinery.

It was with full knowledge of that potential outcome that I grabbed a 20-ounce soy chai latté on the way into an informal client presentation, figuring that I needed at least a slight edge of insanity to get through my fifth meeting and subsequent all-nighter of writing.

You would think I would be too traumatized by the events in this post to want to eat the popcorn ever again, but it was actually really good. I mean, there are worse ways to die than to asphyxiate on a delicious snack.

Fast forward to the meeting.

Slightly high on my caffeine buzz, I am at the head of a conference table filled with my clients, one of whom made individual bags of lime-tinted popcorn for each of us.

Things are going well. I have a rhythm down: gesture to slide, explain, solicit feedback, eat two kernels of popcorn, respond, repeat.

On the umpteenth repetition of this ritual, I finish explaining, solicit questions, and place the first of two pieces of popcorn into my mouth. The question is brief, and I inhale sharply to fuel my answer.

My first piece of popcorn skitters back across my tongue and lodges itself firmly in my windpipe.

“Excuse me,” I wheeze, patting my chest gently to expel the rogue kernel.

It does not expel.

I try to gently cough it up without causing a hugely gross scene in the middle of my presentation. and discover that I don’t seem to have any air to do the coughing with.

My entire client group is now staring me down as I slowly asphyxiate in front of them. I hold up one figure in a gesture to them to wait a moment and try again – with slightly less tact – to cough up the kernel, still lodged in my windpipe.

Nothing seems to be happening. I am acutely aware of the inexorable passage of time, both from a biological “I need to breathe” perspective and a business “this is kindof a long pause in a presentation, even an informal one with popcorn” perspective.

The entire client team continues to look on, now in mute horror, as my thumps to my own chest become less and less delicate. Finally, now nearly half a minute having passed, I turn to my left to one of my clients and in the barest of whispers state the following:

“I think I might require your help.”

Said client solemnly rose to his feet, walked around my overstuffed chair, and thumped me solidly three times in the back.

The kernel popped out of my windpipe, and I promptly swallowed it before it could wreak any further havoc. I re-took the inhaled breath that got me into trouble to begin with, and plunged forward.

“Now, as I was saying…”

Crushing On: Fashion Scarves

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In Urban Outfitters this fall with Sarah Cooley I had the urge to buy scarves.

I have to be careful not to cross over from "fashionable" to "douchebag" with my scarf-wearing, as I am not handsome enough to pull off douchebag. Touché, Mr. Pitt.

I don’t know what came over me. I own plenty of scarves. At least six. And these scarves were light – hardly appropriate for winter outdoor travels.

Nonetheless, I bought two and began alternating them every few days at work. We’re on the casual side of business, so have forsaken ties – but, my neck can feel a little nude with just an open collar.Since my scarves were light-weight and contained pleasing colors, I’d leave them on when I hung up my jacket to ward off the chill of our conference room.

Given my penchant for Kenneth Cole accessories I would have been remiss not to buy at least one scarf there.

Then the compliments began amassing, and I knew I had struck personal fashion gold.

As a kid I hated scarves, but I think that’s because no one taught me a good way to tie them that would keep my neck warm.

Could this be the spring look of my fashion-forward future?

Now I know a few knots, and they’re a practical addition to my wardrobe rather than a useless tie that costs about the same. They help to offset all of the solid colors I wear, and also make me less self-conscious about doing weird things with my neck.

I am now actively aquiring additional scarves to round out my repertoire. I may even stage an exploratory mission to the land of ascots.

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do once the weather warms up.