Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

Various Musical Chairs

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Alright, while I recharge my personal anecdote powers you can linger on some musical links.

Daily Composer is a blog written by my dear friend Anthony, who endeavors to post a snippet of original composing each day, complete with midi sample. For non-musicians it can be a fun 30-second diversion in your day, and for the musical among us it’s a good exercise in spotting and understanding themes and – if you’re as rhythmically remedial as I am – also a trial in sight-reading.

Cover Lay Down is an MP3 blog that focuses on folk-tinged covers of songs you might know. They have a way of not only digging up incredible obscurities, but distilling the stories of the artists who cover them … like a recent post on the Kathryn Williams cover of “All Apologies.”

Also, Rate Your Music is one of my top ten websites of all time – a home to a vast database of ratings and reviews predominately cultivated by real live music lovers. They are currently engaged in a fundraiser to make up for some technical snafus with their ad serving in the last few months. Honestly, snafus aside, supporting a great privately run site like RYM is worth the money anytime.

More along the lines of Daily Composer is the blog of Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary. BSG has featured an incredibly compelling soundtrack since its inception, and lately Bear has been sharing detailed insight into the compositions in each episode. However, if you aren’t caught up on your episodes tread lightly – Bear spares no plot points, as often they motivate his compositions.

I have a whole BSG mega-essay rattling around inside my head, but it has to wait until my Hedwig master thesis finally finds its way out before I can pay it my full attention.

A Personal Wedding (Or: The only feminist in the party is the one without breasts.)

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Last week I spent my sole lunch break shopping for dresses.

This is one of the many peculiarities of our impending ulta-modern, decidedly-feminist nuptials.

For those keeping score: Elise is the modern one; I’m the feminist.

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At our engagement party I found myself standing in our kitchen next to my father’s wife, chatting about our (then vague) plans about the wedding. She asked me who my best man would be, and I snagged Gina out of the roiling crowd.

I mean, hello, who else would be my best man but Gina? I’ve known her for half of my life. I’m in a band with her. We’ve only been in one fight, ever, which was neither of our faults. We are adept at psychic communication.

These are all traits one seeks in a best man. She really is the best man for the job.

(In this next bit I am maybe engaging in a slight blog-reality edit, but this is how I remember it. Or at least it’s how the story is best told.)

Dad’s wife laughed. Yes, yes, Gina is my best friend. But, does she have a “counterpart”? Another “good friend” of mine fitting the “best man” moniker?

Additional “scare quotes” trailed after her sentence, hanging expectantly in the air.

I replied that I had a great friend that I talk to every single day, who coddled me through my engagement cold feet, helped me design my ring, and even came early to help us set up for the party.

Her name is Lindsay.

The laugh this time was more pointed.

“Don’t you have any male friends?”

I do have male friends, and I love them dearly, but if anyone took an objective look at my life it would be clear to them that my best friends are all women, and since I’m marrying one of them it stands to reason that the next few on the list ought to be the ones at my side on the big day.

Thus, Gina and Lindsay are my “co-best ladies.” CBLs, for short. With the addition of Erika, the girls outnumber the boys in my party three to two.

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As we get farther into the wedding planning – and as we attend more weddings – I’m starting to appreciate how weddings can be both completely vicarious and intensely personal.

Except, a lot of people don’t leave room for the personal. And, I suppose kowtowing to tradition, or family, or current trends can be deeply personal for a lot of people, but for us none of the three really matches our personality.

Which means I have CBLs. And we’re not having flowers, because we don’t care and they aren’t budgetarily or environmentally responsible. And we’re making our own print collateral – not to save money, but because we both work in communications and we want to have control over the look and feel of our wedding.

Through the process of discovering these personal touches, I am gaining a new appreciation for weddings. In 2006 we attended a barbecue wedding with pies instead of cake. Last month we went to a wedding where the father/daughter dance was the Action News theme song.

Those are personal touches, perfect for their respective couples. Anyone who would turn their noses up at them would be insane.

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Maybe most men don’t want to spend their lunch breaks looking at dresses – for them it would be less of a personal touch, and more of a personal hell. I can appreciate that. But to me everything from our CBLs to our DIY invites are the defining facets of our modern, feminist wedding. As the feminist half of that equation, for me it’s not just about axing antiquated “Adam’s rib” readings and sexist, sexual bachelor parties.

Feminism isn’t just about the female – it’s about equality in words and actions.

That means that I can and should have an opinion on dresses, and décor, and everything else about my wedding. A wedding marks the joining of our anima and animus, neither of us giving away or sacrificing anything of ourselves in the process. How can that joining be equal if the groom does nothing but say yes and write checks?

And, besides, my CBLs are going to look stunning.

Choosing Your Family, and Cheers

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(This is the toast I gave yesterday at my mother’s wedding, prefaced by my extemporaneous introduction of “I’m Peter, and I’ll be your toaster.”)

Every family begins as a unit. The family you find yourself born into; the family you are given.

From there, how you define your family is up to life, to circumstance, to chance, and to you.

Whoever else we may have begun with, there was no questions that E—– and I were a unit – a matched pair, mother and son, adventurer and sidekick, driver and navigator, friend and peer.

We existed as that unit for years, occasionally inviting others (who are here today) into our fold. L—, the first person to ever lay eyes on my face. A—–, hers the first babies I ever held. M— and me, holed up in a blizzard, lip-synching to MTV.

Through all of that E—– raised me to be an overachiever, and in my immediate family there were precious few. So, it was at first with trepidation and then with increasingly welcome relief that I re-met J— in our merry carpool to community college, me getting a jumpstart on the next step in my education and J— rekindling a seemingly insatiable desire for knowledge.

Nothing against E—–, who to this day has committed to memory the names of all of my favorite Thundercats, G. I. Joes, and rock bands, but that summer J— was something almost entirely new in my life: an adult peer who would follow my wandering conversations on any topic and through any debate, and who – if I may be disarmingly frank for just a moment – did not (and does not) hesitate to call me on my teenaged bullshit.

As I broke away from our unit to go to Drexel I began to find my own family, and I wondered what E—–would do with herself in my absence. But, I had no need to worry: she took a class in world religions, became a fitness instructor and a realtor, and finally purchased her own home.

I know many of these actions were inspired, supported, and appreciated by J—, because how can you help but be inspired by him? He has one of the most inquisitive minds I know, and he was one of the few people I knew with a GPA higher than my own.

L— said a very true thing to us on the way to us on the way to the ceremony this afternoon, only slightly undercut by the fact that she was wearing a glue-on-moustache at the time in her capacity as our chauffeur.

She said: She and E—– and A—- were sisters who found each other. Sisters by choice.

That concept is meaningful to me – family by choice – especially now, as Elise and I are creating a family unit of our own. Because, aside from common eyes and noses, what reason do we have to be connected to the family we are given? We have to find them, to choose each other, because the true members of your family are your sisters and brothers… your friends and lovers… by choice.

So, here’s to E—– and J—, B— and E—, M—-, D—-, L— and J–, Elise and I, and all of the other families we have chosen to be a part of, today celebrating with one voice the creation of a beautiful new unit: J— and E—–.

Cheers.

in my tribe

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Because you are savvier than I am I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now, but the BBC had pictures from Brazil of a tribe that has never had any contact with modern society.

The concept fascinates me. Here we are on the internet, sending each other mp3s and photos and links to porn while we burn through our fossil fuels keeping us alternatingly warm and cold, and somewhere out there people are still living the lives they’ve lead for centuries.

Unsurprisingly, they all seem to be staring at the airplane taking their photos. Way to obey the prime directive, photographers.

Personalist

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(In case you wanted to take a spin on the personality typing lazy susan in the comfort of your own office, the three internet tests I’ve found to be most similar and consistent to the actual Myers-Briggs are two Jungian type tests at Human Metrics and Similar Minds, and a shinier modern version at 41 Questions.)