Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

selfy-stuff

Bridezilla vs. The Groomlin

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As we hit the two-month mark on our wedding plans it’s becoming increasingly clear that Elise is the calm, measured one, and I am the rational, demanding one.

In layman’s terms, that would make me “Bridezilla.” Or, as we deemed me almost a year ago, “The Groomlin.”

Except, I don’t think my behavior has been all that monstrous. This is the most expensive endeavor I’ve undertaken in my personal life, but it pales in comparison to the cost of my projects at work. I’m being just as detail-oriented about the wedding as I would about a 300m-piece mailing, and there are plenty of details to orient to in both.

Part of being rational and demanding means holding the line when presented with unacceptal options. I carefully vetted caterers for ones who would take requests for vegetarian and vegan meals seriously. I had firm words with my jeweler when they nicked up Elise’s engagement ring without noticing. I refused to sign a contract with our first shuttle company because they were evasive and rude to Elise when she asked them to clarify their deposit policy.

Which brings me to the story of this weekend, my erstwhile wedding band, and the double-standard of “Bridezilla.”

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Elise knows I like unusual, modern design, and early in the band-shopping process she turned me on to tension-set rings. They’re typically titanium or stainless steel bands, and the strength of the band holds a jewel without any prongs or inset.

Since I don’t wear much jewelry I liked the utilitarian idea of a stainless steel band, and I loved that I could finally have an excuse to wear a sapphire, my birth stone. I picked a sample setting, and we set out to find a store that carried something like it.

We found said store in New Hope – awesome, since that’s one of my favorite places in the area to spend the day. We visited once to nail down the exact ring and jewel – a thin stainless steel band with tension set princess cut sapphire almost the exact height of the band.

The store didn’t have it in stock, but it wasn’t a custom design – just a more obscure band/jewel combination. They told us they’d order it from the company headquarters in Europe, and that it would be in shortly. Sure enough, they rang us barely a week later to let us know that the ring was in, which is what brought us back to New Hope on Saturday.

Once we were at the counter I was so aflutter with excitement to get the band on my finger that I didn’t really look at it before I slipped it on. As I turned it round my knuckle, admiring its fit, Elise immediately exclaimed, “That’s not it!”

I looked down, and saw that though the band was right the stone was wrong – round cut, not princess.

Of course, at the point you’re paying hundreds of dollars for a ring you’ll spend the rest of your life wearing you want the stone that you asked for. The jeweler’s wife understood completely, and she told us she’d ship the ring with the correct stone directly to us.

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That’s essentially how we recounted the story in Elise’s father’s kitchen later in the day, but as I told it I saw something in my mind that I hadn’t noticed earlier. As I turned the wrong ring round on my finger the company’s logo was etched on the rear of the band. But, why would it be marked visibly on the outside of my ring?

Elise, she of the eagle eyes, had no recollection of said branding. Maybe I had seen it on the inside of the band?

No. I could not shake the image of turning the ring around on my finger and noticing the mark as it turned. It was on the outside of ring.

Knowing me as well as she does, Elise thrust her phone at me. “Just call them,” she insisted. “Better than spending the next week wondering about it.”

So, sitting in Elise’s father’s kitchen with the entire assembly of her siblings around me, I dialed the jewelry store.

P – Hi, it’s Peter, with the tension set ring. I have sort of a strange question. When I was there earlier and I tried on the ring I thought I saw the company’s logo etched on the outside of the band. But, I’m sure it would have really been on the inside. Can you just look for me?

Jeweler’s Wife – Oh, sure, just let me get it out. (rummaging sounds) Here we are. Let’s see. Yes, yes, there’s the mark. It’s on the outside.

P – Well, that must be some sort of mistake.

JW – No, no, now that I think of it, all of the rings in the case have it on the outside as well, so it’s just like the one you tried on.

P – Yes, but they’re for display. They’re display models. Of course they would be branded. I didn’t think my actual ring would be branded.

JW – Well, that’s how their rings come to us.

P – Can’t we get one without a brand? Or, have it on the inside?

JW – I don’t think they do that.

P – Right.

…

P – Can you just hold on to our order for another day or so? I need to decide if I’m still interested in the ring.

JW – I don’t understand. You might not want to order the ring?

P – Yes.

JW – Because of the brand mark?

P – (firmer) Yes.

JW – But, why?

P – Because it’s my wedding band. It shouldn’t have any extraneous marks on it.

JW – But, it’s just the company logo…

P – It’s my wedding band, not a fucking Toyota.

…

P – So please hold our order until we call back. Thanks.

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Clearly I went a little Groomlin there, but the various bystanders in the kitchen forgave me. Of course I don’t want the company’s logo to be visible on exterior of my ring. Of course I was flustered by the jeweler’s wife treating it as a non-issue. No, it wasn’t unreasonable to tell her to hold my order. Aside from dropping an F-bomb the call had been entirely rational.

So, here’s my question for you: if I was a bride, would you say that I was a Bridezilla? And, if so, what does that say about the double-standard of weddings – that a man who’s concerned about having things his way is in-control, but a woman who wants things her way is a monster?

a world outside the sphere

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With my valiant effort to get online last night and blog despite missing some sibling-to-be hanging out time I’ve now made it past the halfway hump of NaBloPoMo, where I was left stranded last year.

It’s interesting how this month of writing is shaping up, compared to the first year in 2006. Then I had a whole month of stories plotted out to tell. This year the posts have been more of slowly unspooling chain of thoughts, with each day linking to the previous one (either obviously, or just in its inspiration).

Much like last year, running the event through the Ning network has made it more of a personal challenge than a team effort – even with a social network at its center NaBloPoMo feels impersonal, and lacks the amazing community of 2006. No one seems to be making a point of reading everyone else (as I legendarily accomplished the first year).

In light of that, it’s taken a concerted effort to connect with other participants. Every morning I read a few fresh blogs on the network, and leave comments if I can muster anything to say between tooth-brushing and shirt-choosing. It’s lead me to befriend a few new bloggers, though nowhere near the volume I did in 2006 (who still makes up a healthy chunk of my feed subscriptions).

One blog I’ve become immediately devoted to is Paradise Preoccupied, home to an American expat mother of grown children who has remade her life (and her family) in the island nation of Seychelles. I first tuned in to blogger Sandra when she made a post about the semi-autobiographical novel she was writing based on her time as a band-aid in the 70s. Since then we’ve been keeping up daily – the first new daily read I’ve had in a long while.

Wreke Havoc is devoting each day to a Blatantly Bad 70s song. We’re not talking about mildly terrible 70s songs that you’re slightly nostalgic for and occasionally enjoy listening to in the car. No. These are insidiously terrible, and you will cringe as you listen to every one (all while enjoying the accompanying essays).

Another two I’ve been keeping tabs on: there is no vodka in this kool-aid is a perfect blend of nice and nasty, and Jinx (who shares a moniker with my favorite G.I Joe) is one of the rare few bloggers posting original music online. From her I cribbed Interes.tingness, which syndicates all of Flickr’s most amazing new photos in real time (just like LJ Aqua, but with pictures instead of real-time streams of Russian emoness).

I’ve also picked up two non-BloPoMo linkers: my theatre friend Sharon’s delicious natural cooking blog, and Dragonballyee, the personal blog of half of Messy and Picky, a Philly food blog.

It bears mentioning that some of my 2006 buddies are still around and actively linking to me, including You’re Doing It Wrong (my cross-country OCD blog-soul mate), Debbie Millman (inscrutably cool brand executive who I’m still hoping to grow up to be), Snippy (who I think still plans to make out with me if we ever meet in person?), my dear Mit Moi (who seems to have an anecdotal response to ANYTHING I say or post), and One Blonde’s Ambition (who used to have Augustana’s “Boston” autoplaying on her page for so long that I was eventually forced to buy it when she took it off her layout).

That’s all I’ve got in me this exhausted evening; with the two-plus hour commute by train each way trips to New Jersey completely wind me. I’ll be skipping my typical T-Give journey in an attempt to right my month and get a few more Trios done.

(PS: If you are currently reading/linking me and you assume I know and am just ignoring you, you are quite possibly wrong. I keep an eye on my inbound links and trackbacks, but I’m not as vigilant as I was in the olden days, so please stop by and leave a comment just in case. (Of the above, I had no idea Sharon had a blog, and I had completely lost track of Blonde’s Ambition when she changed urls.))

Make You Feel Real Blue

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A few weeks ago Lindsay, Dante Bucci, and Bill McConney were playing a tiny living-room style show in a just-off-South coffee shop called Cafe Grindstone that had an entire vegan menu and a shelf of random used textbooks to peruse.

As I put back the book that taught me that pigeons are superstitious a flyer on a lower shelf caught my eye with a familiar logo – Alexandra Day.

I picked up the flyer and scanned it. A Monday night show at Tritone on South Street – not a twenty minute walk from my house – with one of the best songwriters in Philadelphia. Doesn’t take much convincing.

Then I continued to read. She would be splitting a bill with a band whose name I didn’t recognize, who would play the entirety of Joni Mitchell’s Blue.

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Improbably, I currently name as Blue my second favorite album of all time. That puts it above albums that I played on repeat for entire days of my youth. Albums that taught me what music was.

How, then, can that one LP – that I didn’t hear a single song from until college – come to eclipse all else in my collection?

It’s the color of it. Blue is rooted in a palette of different blues, explicit and implied: midnight sky outside of a plane window on “This Flight Tonight;” the melancholy emotional blues on “All I Want” and “My Old Man;” the twinkling blue tinge of frost on “River;” and the blue tv screen light in “A Case of You.” It is music that makes me see color, every single time I hear it.

It’s also the sureness of it – the way threads of blueness and yearning to get back to California are woven through the album. The sureness of Joni’s indelible performance, and the perfection of the tracking. In my opinion it is nearly the ultimate in a singer-songwriter album, and if you are assembling an album you ought to spend some serious time listening to Blue to understand how to make its formula your own.

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I mentioned the upcoming show to as many people as would listen, but I have other promotional duties as well, and I couldn’t seem to hook anyone with the play-through of the Joni album. I wound up tired and alone Monday night, installed in the back corner of the Tritone wrapped in a jacket and scarf, sipping cranberry juice.

Alexandra came by my table, her usual whirlwind of energy and vinyl pants, but she immediately caught on that I was at an unavoidable ebb.

“This is a good bar to just sit in,” she advised. “I’ve come here many times just to sit in the corner. And, you’re really going to like the band.”

The band, I learned, was Ellipsis – a local jazz trio. They assemble the second Monday of each month with as many additional players as necessary to make it through the entirety of an album. In the past two months I had missed a swing through Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” and Neil Young’s “Harvest.” And, Alexandra said the word in the room was that next month’s artist would be Bjork.

My excitement was paired with skepticism that any band could replicate the magic of Blue, especially a jazz band who I discovered in short order did not have a guitarist: piano, upright bass, drum kit, and hand percussion, plus a young jazz vocalist. Joni Mitchell’s best album without a guitar?, I mused. Is there any point?

The band set up a projector beside the stage that shone a series of images – the cover of the album, long dusty fields, empty starless nights – across their bodies and onto the wall to their right. Without much preface, they began “All I Really Want,” possibly my favorite Joni song.

My skepticism continued for a verse – the arrangement on this one was measured mimicry, and the vocalist was treading delicately around Joni’s words. Then we reached my favorite point of the song, exuberant in new love even as it plumbs its unsure depths:

All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you
I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you
I want to renew you again and again
Applause, applause – life is our cause
When I think of your kisses
My mind see-saws
Do you see – do you see – do you see
How you hurt me baby
So I hurt you too
Then we both get so blue

I hadn’t noticed, but as the verse continued I leaned farther and farther from my seat, as if I thought the song could just reach out and envelop me. By the time Samantha Rise reached that melancholy pinnacle, “we both get so blue,” my ass was barely in the chair. I was in love and wrapped in the color of her voice.

The show that followed is one of the best I’ve ever witnessed. A silkier, surer version of “My Old Man” that sent a chill through my body. The quiet menace of the quickly descending fifth in the b-section of the otherwise pretty “Little Green.” A raucous, celebratory turn through “Carey,” stripped down to it’s upright bass and percussion and then built again (here I exchanged a glance of incredulous amazement with Alex and she just laughed and turned back to watch the show). A perfect, absolutely verbatim rendition of “Blue.” A saucy, jazzy version of “California” that transformed directly into a racing, free-form take on “This Flight Tonight” complete with scatting. “River,” bare of it’s jingle bells and with a frostier pulse. A subtle, measured read on the oft-covered “Case of You,” possibly the best lost-love song ever written. And, the sometimes superfluous “Last Time I Saw Richard” transformed into a incandescent elegy for the entire album, although in its narrative it perhaps comes first – her old man gone and married to some chick who skated around on the iced over river.

At the end I was breathless and teary. I witnessed something unique and transformative, unusual and terrific. I saw all of the colors that Joni painted into the album, and so many more.

It was a show that should have played to a packed club, or even on the main stage of the Kimmel Center, and I was watching it from the back corner of what is effectively a living room with a bar and a stage along with twenty, maybe thirty fans.

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I’m inexplicably nervous to talk to other musicians, a condition that’s becoming increasingly paradoxical as I play more frequently. I am one, so shouldn’t I understand how to approach one?

Samantha – delicate and composed on the stage – was twinkling and approachable off it it. I think I heard her boasting to another fan that she could defeat him at any Mario-based game. Eventually I noticed her by herself at the bar and plunged in.

“That was so good. Blue is one of my favorite records, ever. You really did it justice.”

“Wow, thank you. It’s one of mine too!”

And so we just talked, just for a minute or two – the easy chatter of two people who love music. She shook my hand and jotted down her information on the pad I had been sketching out my next Trios on, and parted with a nod and a smile, settling in to enjoy Alexandra’s equally amazing set.

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Three days later and I still can’t get her and Ellipsis out of my head. In that last post I wondered if I still saw colors in the world, but Samantha answered that question neatly. Sometimes you just need someone to show you where to look.

Preoccupational Hazards

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Tonight was my one night off for the week, except I wanted to spend it on – do some blogging, maybe start my next Trio.

That wasn’t meant to be. I had some more pressing concerns to attend to, such as washing dishes and laundry. And, I’m not just talking about from a normal “chore” perspective. No. This was a no drinking glasses left and completely out of pants situation.

You might laugh at my situation. Ha!, you might think, he seems to be so together with his podcasts and his Groom Team, but it’s an illusion! You might continue to gloat, Aside from his yuppy job he’s living the slovenly, disorganized life of a lazy bachelor.

Yet, that’s just not the case – and not just because I’m living merrily in sin with Elise. I’m certainly spending time being clean, orderly, and tenacious outside of my yuppy occupation – it’s just that the time is invested in all of my yuppy pre-occupations.

At this point I have so many non-occupational jobs that it’s not unusual for a week to go by without me even finding the time to do a single load of laundry. Take this week, for example.

I spent half the weekend recording and mixing the four songs in the last two posts, and the other half working on an arrangement for Drexel’s all-female acappella group. Monday I spent a few hours cleaning up the back-end CK, and then I went to a concert of someone who is playing at my wedding. Tomorrow night I’ll be co-hosting an open mic with the other half of Arcati Crisis, and on Thursday I’m the artist liaison at our Lyndzapalooza Fall Mixer.

Did you catch all of that? Recording engineer, transcriptionist, network administrator, event planner, rock star, and A&R rep. That’s six hobbies that I’ve turned into part-time jobs. Hobs? Jobbies?

At least with the latter half of wedding, AC, and LP I knew from the start that I was getting into something that was both time-consuming and rewarding. However, the former three – CK, arranging, and DIY recording – all started out as innocent distractions from the rest of my life. I never meant for them to become staying up until 3am, working until I nod off in my chair sorts of engagements. It just turned out that way.

Is this insane or just slightly abnormal? Do you have jobs aside from what you do for a living and taking care of your home and family? If you do, did you choose to make them a priority, or did they sneakily transform into one over time?

Not In The Face

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Elise and I recently discussed that her choice to marry me was evolutionarily wise, as I am clearly bred for survival.

I am quick-witted and have a fast metabolism. I have perfect vision and a keen sense for danger, as exemplified by the fact that I have yet to experience a mugging on the streets of Philadelphia. I am relatively agile and have good manual dexterity, traits that serve equally well in the wild as onstage as an indie rock star. And, I have no major physical ailments other than allergies, which I probably wouldn’t have if I had spent my youth hunting and gathering.

Essentially, I am the perfect man. Yes, if not for nearly a half-decade wearing braces I would not be as strikingly handsome as I am currently. But, evolutionarily, buck teeth aren’t a deal-breaker. Otherwise, really, I’m a catch.

Or, at least, that’s my “I know I don’t do dishes all-that-frequently, but really we should still get married” platform.

However, perhaps connected to the above lack of youthful days spent out in the sun hunting and gathering, in my post-quarter-life dotage I am increasingly less a person and more just a walking collection of leper-ish skin conditions. Due to a handsome pre-existing combination of dandruff, eczema, and psoriasis, a few years ago I was moved to see a dermatologist. She combated the terrible trio handily with a series of prescriptions, but she was more interested with helping me with a problem I wasn’t even there to complain about: I had an irritated red patch next to my nose that didn’t seem to want to be moisturized away.

I had suspected it was the result of mainlining Biore pore strips every other night. My dermatologist, in her professional opinion, did not concur. Instead, she diagnosed me with the charmingly titled seborrhoeic dermatitis – “sebderm” for short – which in my opinion sounds like a sexual dysfunction that involves seepage more than a skin condition.

She put me on a fantastic little creme called Elidel, the red patch went away, and that was that. I discovered that I had been self-conscious about the patch, and was happy to see it gone.

After over a year of relative remission, in recent months I developed a new, even more charming issue on my face – scaly red blotches floating above the edges of my mouth, like some misbegotten fruit-punch smile.

They started out subtle, and I convinced myself it was the combination of my rakishly deep laugh lines and my current proclivity for facial scruff. (I also secretly feared it was herpes, mostly because now that I only make out with Elise I have precious few reasons to invoke my irrational fear of herpes.) Yet, I put off visiting the dermatologist, thinking I could make the patches disappear with Elidel, more frequent shaving, and the power of positive thought.

That plan did not work. In fact, in my procrastination the patches got angrier and… well, woundier, if we’re being frank. They edged a little bit too close to herpes territory for my liking. I also developed worse dandruff than ever before, possibly because I was constantly stressing out about my face, and I tend to massage my temples incessantly when I am stressed out. The flakes were as big as granola. It was deadly stuff.

This is my face, people. I might not launch ships with it, but I’m about to launch a fucking multi-thousand-dollar photography package with it on my wedding day, and I am really hoping I am not going to have to buy some sort of Michael Jackson-approved pancake makeup kit to cover up my various flaws.

(Also, do you trust someone to tell you about how awesome your new marketing campaign is going to be when his winning perfect smile is adorned with two possibly herpes-based open sores, and who creates a tiny blizzard of flakes every time he turns his head or rearranges his hair? And, that’s to say nothing about how incredibly compelling it is to watch a songwriter who looks like he wandered offstage in his biblical leper costume from a revival of Jesus Christ Superstar.)

Back to the dermatologist I went, secretly crossing fingers and toes that I had not caught airborne herpes from the skeevy lady who used to make my morning smoothies.

Happily, that was not the diagnosis. No, it was a newer, deadlier version of my sebderm, and it meant business. My face and scalp were put on hard-core, expensive, non-formulary drugs – steroids that warned that I might experience visual hallucinations, a shampoo that could strip chrome off a bumper, and a foam that explicitly reminded me not to use it on my genitals, lest I be tempted.

Well, folks, I am here two weeks later to report that my dermatologist was right again, and her newer, more aggressive treatment knocked the reddened and/or precipitous fight out of my head. My laugh-lines are back to their rakish selves, even with scruff, and today I pawed at my hair at-length like I was in a 90s-era Herbal Essence commercial and produced nary a flake.

Yet, with progress I have paid a price: due to my temporary run of steroids I am now proudly bearing the complexion of a high school wrestler.

Seriously. And, not just little pimples that you can contain with face-washing and salicylic acid. No. Serious acne, which I have never in my life previously experienced.

While I am happy to be rid of my red patches, my prior issue was hell of a lot less conspicuous than the current alternative – which lead one of my coworkers to ask me if someone had punched me, because the area around my right eye is so puffy and red.

Yes, that is totally progress towards the photography package.

Elise, bless her heart, has been incredibly supportive, and through this process has endured all manner of facial applications, including ones I must wear only in the dark, and others that bleached an entire set of our sheets. She also believes that doctors should be trusted implicitly, which I know to be false. Though she has gamely pretended that my outbreak is no big deal, ultimately she agreed with my diagnosis that I ought to stop the steroids a day or two before I started regaining other high-school traits like having crushes on red-heads or writing songs about how I am not actually gay.

Why? Because she loves me? Perhaps, perhaps. However, I choose to believe that it’s because – despite recent appearances to the contrary – she has a biological imperative to stick with her evolutionarily fit man.