Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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I didn’t think my question had been rude; after all, I would be missing half a day of work to attend their silly “Honors Day.” I just wanted to know what I would be honored for. My outstanding GPA? My flawless academic writings? My strenuous extracurricular schedule?

The associate dean was mum on the matter, somewhat indignant that I had even asked. Apparently the invitation itself should have been honor enough. After our exchange I might have skipped out on the ceremony altogether if not for the fact that Elise had also been invited. And ,she knew why: she was receiving an award for a particularly spectacular paper she wrote on the topic of style and pacing in James Joyce’s Ulysses. So, at worst I would be a pretty applauding face in the crowd when Elise took the stage, and at best I would be crowned as the most dominating intellect in the Liberal Arts program.

The event program was huge, listing all ninety honors that would be conferred during the ceremony to seventy-some individuals. It even listed the title of Elise’s paper next to her name (“Oh god, I’ll die if someone reads a passage from it”), though I could not locate the indication of my achievements as easily.

I finally found my own name, in the midst of a small group at the top of the last page, listed under The General Electric College Bowl Award. The image it summoned was that of the Alex Trebek hosting the National Geography Bee, which I absent-mindedly audited on PBS last week. I remember thinking that those kids were either geniuses or freaks of nature, and that either way I would gladly get them liquored up to avert their almost inevitable descent from middle-school smarty-pants to high school social reject.

Yes, I know that they’re mostly twelve. I’d still show them a good time. But I digress.

Being on the last page, my award was near the end of the ceremony. My trip up to the stage was unremarkable: two quick handshakes and I was down again, tiny envelope in hand, back to my seat. Like the Oscars, only without any movie stars or acceptance speeches. I opened my envelope and scanned the letter inside. Congratulations, blah blah blah, esteemed, yadda yadda yadda, deposited in your account, blah blah huh, call with questions.

It was not just a dorky award given in the memory of a former Junior-team-Jeopardy style television show that all of our parents apparently watched on weekend afternoons. Not just recognition for my two year string of As, only broken once. All of that, plus an anonymous faculty nomination in light of some distinguished facet of those efforts. And the end result was money. Cash, dollars, paid on my behalf directly to Drexel University. Not an alarming amount of money, but enough that I made my advisor assure me that he could deliver a thank you card to my anonymous benefactor. It’s only the third scholarship I have ever earned, and the first I had not applied for on my own.

In retrospect, missing out on a few dozen dollars from work was definitely worth it.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200363453/

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I feel as though there’s something i have to tell you — i really owe it to you. It won’t be easy, but i have to. But, first you should know that when i got back home last night from Lyndzapalooza i felt as if i had bruised everything that i had: fingers, muscles, voice, brain, and heart. I was, as i put it so eloquently to Elise, “a piece of hurt.” Not that it’s any excuse for what i’m about to tell you, but i just feel as though you should have an idea of the state i’m in.

I cried at the end of Armageddon. There, i’ve said it. I cried, not only for the characters on screen, but for myself — for having so knowingly bought in to a written-by-committee tearjerker that barely aspires to B-movie status because of one thing: Bruce. Bruce Willis. The man doesn’t always make the best movies out there to be made, and he isn’t always the best actor that could be found, but you just don’t kill him. Do you understand? Don’t kill Bruce. Because, in killing him, you force him to let loose, to lose control, to unlease all of the pathos and weariness that he has built up during the shooting of countless Die Hard movies as well as the physical emotiveness he reserved while dubbing his voice into the Look Who’s Talking series. And when you let me know that for the entire population of the Earth, including those of us spending our waning hours watching this bland by-the-numbers Bay/Bruckheimer creation, the only thing that stands in the way of our imminent deaths is the noble self-sacrifice of Bruce Willis then by god maybe the end is nearer than we think, because i will be blown into a thousand pieces by errant space debris before i’ll watch Bruce sacrifice himself again to save a pansy talentless hack like Ben Affleck who draw the straw of death fair and fucking square! Do you hear me?!?! Straw of death.

Like i said, i’m not especially emotionally stable right now. Apologies. Hopefully you don’t think any less of me for it.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200308389/

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My spectacular view from the 35th floor has proven itself to be no solution to today’s pervasive dreariness. A panoramic image of my city opens up just past the faux-mahogany lip of my cubicle, displaying clearly every still, gray eave and chimney from here to the nearly-obsolete Stadium (a distance that was almost infinite to me as a child, now seemingly so simply to fly across).

Honestly, the view left me longing for my lunch break; i’d much rather be inside the fog than above it.

In other news, Elise has confirmed the existence of my rooster after the debut of its new 7-7:30am time slot. Not only did Elise hear it in person today, she kindly offered to strangle it with her bare hands. At least now the crowing actually overlaps with a time that i have to wake up. Meanwhile, corroborating reports have emerged from Meg and Amanda, the former of whom lives over two blocks away.

Lindsay and I conducted a sparkling discussion on the height of cubicles as a status symbol over a health-conscious lunch of salads & Snapple. (Oh, the difference a year makes). In my first nearly coherent attempt to describe our director, i claimed she was “Like Karen from Will & Grace (except not shrill or drunk) if she was surreptitiously being made to listen to Strange Little Girls in her sleep.” Not the most succinct description, but i’ve only been working on it for five days now.

Life isn’t so bad, is it?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/04/200098268/

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I’m having trouble deciding what i feel about anything except for sitting holed up in my room protected by womb of thick walls and loud music. Yesterday on my way home from class i walked a block out my way – out of boredom, i guess. I had never been on it on foot before, just in a car passing by. The feeling was indescribable, as if i had stepped off of my front porch and onto the set of a television show (because i had never seen that block before except for through the glass of a window/screen).

I think that sometimes Elise feels bad that i don’t write so many songs anymore, as if it’s her fault. It guess it is a little bit, because i am happy and not creating stupid scenarios in my head to connect me to every person that i pass by on the street out of utter desperation to be a part of someone else’s day. It’s confusing to look at the entries in my little grey book from a year ago, while Elise was still new and confusing enough to evoke my typical lyrical ramblings. At a point not too far after that there is a disconnect, and suddenly i am not writing out of my gut anymore, from where my songs used to spring covered in bile and blood. Every time Elise gets used to me not having anything new to sing at all i surprise her, the other night with four new songs that she had never even heard a hint of before. They make me uneasy — i have trouble feeling them and so they are hard to sing.

I have thirty four weeks of college left after i complete my last co-operative learning experience this summer. I said a funny thing last night to Erika about that. I said that i wasn’t returning my mother’s phone calls because she would have to get used to not hearing from me and being worried once i left Philadelphia. I talk a lot about what i may or may not do after i graduate, everything from going abroad to going to grad school, and usually it has an air of fantasy and speculation about it. Last night, though, i said it without thinking. It felt like singing one of my old songs, half diaphragmatic support and half a punch in the gut. I don’t know where i’m going to go, or what i’m going to do, but apparently it’s not going to be here.


Or so i say. But, for as many streets there are in this city that can make me feel alien there are other cities on this planet that i’ll never see. I really ought to start working on that.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/03/90595788/

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I can’t imagine when it was, as i hardly ever watch television, but i definitely have a recollection of channel-surfing past a Richard Simmons Sweating to the Oldies advertisement and remarking to Elise that i ought to buy it. Why? Because i would be a lot more likely to dance around in my living room like an idiot then do, say, ten pushups a day.


She doubted me at the time, but had she seen the solid gold dancing i’ve got going to the Chicago soundtrack right now i think she might… erm… well, she’d say i was gay.


Right. But, what’s important is she loves me.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/02/90328381/