Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

self-aware

I #blamedrewscancer for being a Philebrity

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I have a story to tell you.

I met half of the #blamedrewscancer crew at Fuzion at around seven for the Philadelphia Area New Media Association (PANMA) holiday party.

That is not the story.

We were at PANMA for some brief networking and catching up with friends, but our end destination was The Trocadero, where Philly blog fixture Philebrity was holding their non-denominational X-Mas party slash year end awards.

Blame Drew’s Cancer was up for the “Outstanding Do-Gooders of the Year” award. Polling had been open and transparent, so it was easy to see that we were getting creamed by Phillies’ Shane Victorino from day one. As such, we didn’t marshal much of a vote – eventually coming in fourth, behind even Mayor Nutter for his ballsy budget bluff.

The four of us – Britt, Mikey, Libby, and I (plus Libby’s awesome husband, another Peter) rolled in to the Troc fashionably late, and occupied the “Reserved” table closest to the stage. Our innate rowdiness took over shortly, and we were hooting at the house band (shout out to BC Camplight) and yelling “Hut!”at any reference to Lady Gaga.

Okay, maybe that was just me.

Suddenly, it was time for our award category. Philebrity Captain and one of my personal Journalist heroes Joe Sweeney read down the list of nominees. When he hit #bdc we cheered, the crowd cheered for us, and he continued down the list.

End of story? Not quite.

Joey Sweeney: So, Shane isn’t here tonight, so we’re going to give this award to Blame Drew’s Cancer.

Team Blame Drew’s Cancer: ???

No, he was not joking. Suddenly we’re being gestured at and motioned towards to the stage and then we’re on the stage and then I’m hugging Joey Sweeney and then, inevitably, I am standing in front of a microphone gaping at a rather large crowd seated at round tables all Golden Globes style and I am like, omg I think now they want me to talk.

Luckily, there is video to document my surprising coherent trip through award show aphasia:

(Take note of my neck-bobbing walk down the stairs, as it figures in to the next bit pretty heavily.) [Read more…] about I #blamedrewscancer for being a Philebrity

Daily Demo: Crashing

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Song #77: Crashing (live demo) [“Save As” to download from that link]
Last recorded for Blogathon 2002.

10 years ago this weekend I went to my first college party, still very much a purposefully-naive, dewy-eyed teen.

I came home having had my first vodka cranberry and my first inklings of adult romance, drifting to sleep wrapped in the blissful denouement of each.

The following Monday morning was a decidedly dreary day, and I found myself locked out my dorm room in my pajamas. Instead of heading to French 103 I sat down in our common room – five stories from the ground with a two-story windowed wall staring out into Center City Philadelphia.

I pulled out a pad and wrote “Crashing.”

Later that day, having been let back into my room, I recorded its first rough demo and transferred the lyrics to the first page of the crisp new book I bought for my collegiate songs. Up until then I wasn’t sure how I would know it was time to start using it, but I suddenly did.

“Crashing” made frequent appearances at parties and late night hangouts throughout my Freshmen year, resulting in the first complements on my voice I had ever heard. They came as a great shock to me, as they still do. Later that autumn I recorded it for my first full length demo, Other Plans – shakily, in the middle of the night, trying not to wake up my mother in the process.

As a dreary fall turned to winter I moved on to add other songs to my slim gray book – many of which I still play to this day. Yet, it was “Crashing” I would play between classes as I sat at the dinged, old upright piano in the theatre green room. I would hypnotize myself with the rolling two chord verse, learning how to play piano in increments (and maybe a little bit about what the song really meant, as well).

It took the entire intervening decade to learn how to play piano well enough to demo it that way, and it seems apropos that it wound up recorded just as shakily and late as its original demos were, respectively.

And you are…?

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There is a chance you are arriving here for the first time, launched from Twitter or NaBloPoMo.

If that’s the case, hi. I have an extensive series of bios linked off in that other direction. Oh, and for my first NaBloPoMo I spent the entire month re-telling my personal origin story, so be sure to read that too.

That said, I know we are all couch potatoes on the great lazyweb, so you aren’t likely to hustle around clicking those things. As such, allow me to summarize the current state of me:

I live in Philadelphia and am relatively newly wed to my partner of nearly eight years.

We both work in marketing – me in communications development, she in design. We are also both musicians – she the lead singer of Filmstar, me as a solo singer-songwriter as well as and a member of Arcati Crisis.

We’re also relatively voracious consumers of music, especially within Philadelphia, which boasts an astounding and thoroughly-talented local scene.

In addition to my major three loves (wife, comm, music), it turns out I’m also pretty passionate about non-profit development. I probably wouldn’t have told you that before this year, because it is the first time it has been so patently obvious. I helped to throw a music festival and a 24-hour streaming benefit concert, both of which raised funds for respective non-profits, and both of which nearly intellectually slayed me in the process.

Inclusive of prior iterations of the festival and my wedding I spent every free moment planning an event from March of 2007 to this past month.

Right now I’m trying to be pretty passionate about me. It’s hard – for someone who spends a lot of time working in the public eye and promoting others I have an awfully hard time shining the spotlight on myself. It something I have to improve on to avoid doing a disservice to my songs.

Oh, hey, and to my blog, which has run the longest out of any native Philly weblog – I’m currently blogging into my tenth year of inane, self-centered rambling.

We’ll see how that goes.

breakfast of champions

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I’m awake at 8am, just like any other day of the week.

I briefly debated if I should eat some sort of special pre-jump meal, but given my general lack of stomach for breakfast it seemed like an unnecessary temptation of fate to eat anything unusual before skydiving. I settled on my favorite meal and number one comfort food, Special K Red Berries with Silk Soy Milk.

(ps: Why is it called “Red Berries” when it only has strawberries in it? Wouldn’t you say that strawberries are the red berry with the strongest draw? Like, “OMG, I’m going to get some red berries today, I hope there’s some strawberries in there!” Did some other cereal copyright “strawberries”? Anyhow…)

I’m also a bit torn about how to style my hair and what underwear to wear – two factors that are clearly not going to have a net effect on my jumping experience

A few months ago I was yelling at my mom for not having a living will. The most dangerous thing she does is perpetuate a three-decade long smoking habit. So, jumping out of a plane made me feel like a bit of a hypocrite for not putting any affairs in order.

(PS: No one, under any circumstances, should tell my mom I am skydiving. This is one of those occasions that justifies my blocking her on Twitter. If she finds out she will hit me with the Italian fear/guilt combo so fast and hard that I won’t even let the man strap himself to my back, let alone jump off of anything with him. Anyhow…)

On the off-chance I die today, here’s all that I could think of while I was brushing my teeth:

I don’t like coffins. I want to be disposed of in a green way where the earth can just reclaim me. If that’s not readily available in Pennsylvania I’d want to be donated to science – with the caveat that they can’t dissect or otherwise alter any of my boy parts, because that is just weird.

I don’t like funerals. We went to a beautiful wake for Wes’s father last year that was full of music and might not have mentioned the “G” man even once. I really liked that.

If I get killed doing this I blame Drew’s cancer.

I didn’t get to far past that, because (a) I don’t think I’m going to die (and would like to keep it that way so, please mom, no calls), and (b) I was really hungry for that bowl of Special K.

I’m going to go take a shower now, and mull more over the hair and underwear dilemma.

Escaping Mediocrity

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I am not a major reader of mommy-blogs.

Sure, I have my certain mommy favorites, as well as several long-time reads who happened to be or become moms, but I don’t typically seek out new moms to read. They’re just in a different part of their lives than I am, at the moment.

All that said, Maverick Mom is a blog worth reading. It’s not just about motherhood. Or, maybe as of a month or two ago it was. Right now it’s about motherhood (and the rest of life) as an adventure that is helping blogger and entrepreneur Sarah Robinson “escape mediocrity.”

Escaping mediocrity. Does it mean anything to you? If not, you should read her gripping post about nearly losing her son to a riptide. At the end she has the wherewithal (and good humor) to compare the riptide to the tug of mediocrity.

Sarah’s post poses a challenging question: are we accepting the average because it’s easy, eventually to discover that we’re lost with no sign of what’s good, right, or successful?

I know the first impulse is to say, “Nope!” Our lives are awesome, right? We totally love them.

Okay, sure. But, loving life doesn’t exclude the chance that you’re settling for something. Can you honestly say you don’t have anything in your life that is disappointingly average – not as challenging or fulfilling as it could be? We all know I aim to kick ass at all times, but even I can cop to pieces of my life that aren’t living up to their potential. I wage a constant war on some of them, but in all honesty I let others slip by. Easy can be nice. Status quo is even keel.

If your answer about anything is “maybe” or “yes” or “omg, definitely,” then you should start reading Sarah’s blog, perhaps beginning with the escape plan she’s hatched to push past the mediocre elements of our lives.

Sarah, you are anything but mediocre.