Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

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I don’t ever make resolutions for the new year, or, at least, not in the way other people do. It’s just too daunting to pick attainable, sustainable goals in the middle of paying off Christmas and going back to work, and implementing them with just one day of notice. It’s impractical. It’s ineffective.

The reason it’s ineffective, i think, is that there is no snooze button; if you decide to put off your diet for three days so that you can finish your holiday leftovers, suddenly your resolution has been shot to hell.

It’s much better to not just have a handful gargantuan tasks with a single effective date, but to have a laundry list of wishes and a whole season to accomplish them. My theory is that with a range of time and more reasonable goals to choose from, i’d stick to them a lot better. As such, with a scant 27 days left to the season, here is a belated lsit of my Summer Resolutions — of which i need to complete at least 75% by the beginning of Fall (at which point the remainder will roll over into my Fall resolutions).

  • Relearn and retain essentials of French language and grammar
  • Maintain a consistent weekly budget
  • Subscribe to intellectually stimulating magazines
  • Get abs
  • Visit Rabi
  • Walk New York
  • Study for the GREs
  • Make a fake book binder
  • Write new songs
  • Buy a computer
  • Record a new demo
  • Play the Tin Angel or The Point
  • Exercise every other day
  • Buy more brown and orange clothing
  • Drink less
  • Blog more
  • Blog better
  • Read more (new) blogs
  • See more of more of my friends
  • Arrange three or more songs for The Treblemakers
  • Reread Dante’s Inferno
  • Reread A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • Read Atlas Shrugged
  • Rejoin choir
  • Leave the city for a few days
  • Gain just a hint of upper body musculature
  • Start a band
    • Still a bit daunting, but only because i’ve spent all summer planning Blogathon and playing Sims. I’m thinking relearning French will have to wait for another time, and i don’t know if i have the willpower to create abs where there is nothing in four weeks or less, but everything else is up for grabs. What should i do? What would you? And, more importantly (because it’s always more fun to look forward than to plan for the here and how), what should i add to the list for this Fall?

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140304056877702/

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    I like to think of myself as the ultimate indicator of whether any particular cultural trend has reached zeitgeist levels of proliferation, but in what we collectively refer to as reality i can think of at least two more trust-worthy sources to defer to. One are daily newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer and the second is the Oxford English Dictionary.

    Not coincidentally, within the last few weeks both have indicated that BLOG is a word that has been inexorably wedged into our collective language, through the above linked article and the (somewhat shocking) inclusion of the term in the next version of the OED.

    My response is, of course, “I told you so.” After all, i have been doing it for three years now, to the day.

    While the OE inclusion is surprising, the Inquirer article left a bigger impact on me — if only because it neglected to mention this site.

    I have a sneaking suspicion that Crushing Krisis could be the longest running Philadelphia blog (now that Rabi is conveniently out of the way in new york); I have to slog through all of the links here and here to make absolutely sure.

    The concept is staggering; it doesn’t mean that i set a trend, but at least that i tapped into it first and have (so far) held onto it the longest. Through this passive act of ignorance i suddenly realized both how important this has become to me, what it really is, and how often i do not come through for it.

    Long gone are those days, though, when i represented all that is common and exciting about blogging. I am not an active linker, and i do not engage in many of the trends and memes that are so often definitive of the blogging community. I am more interesting in reporting, either on my daily life, or on the people and communications i observe, and in singing and playing both my own songs and others’ through Trio and Blogathon.

    Whether or not i’m putting in my best effort on a daily basis, new people continue to happen onto this page for the first time, some of them familiar and some entirely strange. All of my roommates (current and former) read it regularly, as do most of my close friends. Some of my professors have been known to stop by. This weekend, Rabi and I had just sat down to a refreshing Bubble Tea when my cell phone was rung by my god-brother, who i haven’t seen or spoken to in almost four years, but who had found this through Google. He told me that “Hide Your Love Away” was his favorite song so far, and said we should hang out sometime soon.

    That’s what i love — how this has been woven together with my “real life;” not so much that you cannot see the seams, but well enough that it never quite unravels. I love that people i haven’t talked to, people i have forgotten, people i have never met can see a sketch or snapshot of my life at any given moment. Sometimes writing for it can seem boring, or tedious, or invasive, but if i were to stop, to actually give up for a single minute in the days or weeks that separate my posts, then suddenly this mirror of my identity would just turn into a photograph, taken from far away.

    There have been times i have loved this more than i do now, and times that i have disliked it less, but i don’t think i have ever felt so comfortable about it. Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening. Thank you for caring. And, starting today, thank you for talking back in the comments section

    Happy Birthday to this.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/happy-birthday-to-this-3/

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    And, by the way, i wore cargo pants to Kaki King. And, and, rather than doing it myself i made Ross order my cosmopolitan. I have to say, there’s nothing quite like making your muscle-y blond football-player sized male friend walk up to a female bartender to order a cosmo (especially when they come in dainty little glasses). I don’t know what was better… the look on her face when she heard his order, or the look on his when he saw the look on hers.

    But, i digress…

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140302352548944/

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    I think most people enjoy attending concerts where they know all the songs. I know i do. As much as going to a concert is for experiencing art in motion, it is also a selfish pursuit: you want to hear your favorite songs, and you don’t want them fucked with. There is a certain thrill that comes with the anticipation of a crashing bridge, or the appreciation of an understated vocal ad lib.

    This approach is sometimes prohibitive to hearing new music, whether it be a new band or a performer debuting new material. But, no matter how well prepared you are, there can always be an opened band or a strange tune that punches past your lack of karaoke intimacy with to make you fall hard into aural love.

    I found myself at the NorthStar Bar with a motley assembly of some of the most talented people i know to see just such a stranger: Kaki King. Anthony had described her to me by email earlier in the day – “Imagine Ani DiFranco on crack … She uses her right hand on the fingerboard to tap out bass lines, and her left hand on the fingerboard to play melodies simultaneously. It’s pretty impressive.”

    I’ve come to accept my mediocrity as a guitar player — i’ve been playing only two years less than both Anthony and Kaki, but i am still easily impressed by simplistic guitar pyrotechnics. I was prepared to see a few interesting tap solos and some intricate picking, and to generally have my playing be humbled.

    Really, though, i was not prepared.

    I’ve seen a lot of random opening bands, many of whom i’ve derisively blogged about the next day, but Kaki King is the first artist since Peter Mulvey (and, to a slightly lesser extent, Erin McKeown) to ever leave me with my eyes unblinking, my jaw hanging loose, and my fingers twitching just in contemplation of my inevitable attempt to replicate the performance before me.

    Kaki is, in short, the most astounding acoustic guitar player i have ever witnessed. It wasn’t just the casually arrived at alternate tunings, the tap & hammer solos, or even her simultaneous strumming & drumming on the guitar. It was her personality — quiet and simply smiling, but with a quick wit hidden beneath her swath of out-grown bangs. It was her ease — the way that after the audience’s obvious favorite song of the night she remarked to the effect of “That isn’t really finished yet; sometimes i just play the songs live and let them go in the directions they want to.” The way that, as opposed to how people joke about it with me, i really could not tell when her casual tuning and fretting ending and her songs began because at any point her hands were on her guitar the performance was underway.

    Kaki has some MP3s on her site for your perusal, and while they will not replicate the awe that i was in on Tuesday night, i think they still speak adequately for themselves. And, please keep in mind that i typically range from indifferent-to-resistant when it comes to instrumental music, so Kaki must be pretty damned good.

    Must be? Hell… she is.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140300363101718/

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    On Monday Aim invited me to join her at a Radiohead concert. The concept of it nearly rolled my eyes back into my head; an arena of young urban hipsters as or more obsessed with their band as I am with Tori Amos, all with overt political or stylistic agendas, all of whom would undoubtably frown at me for having bought the new Michelle Branch album.

    It sounded like a challenge, not to mention a good time.

    Poured into my tightest blue jeans and snuggest brown t-shirt, as we walked to our seats i scanned the crowd of trendy young men and realized that i have resorted to co-opting a slightly queer style of dress and carriage because it just works for me … i am small-framed and relatively slim and no longer trying desperately to attract strange women wherever i go. If pressed i could not explain it; it’s just my need to feel wanted, i suppose. I’m not sure what stops me from showing up in cargo pants and a stained flannel shirt. Maybe it’s that i spent the 90’s wearing that, or maybe it’s that i like to approximate an accurate interior self-image so that i feel as though i actually stand out in a crowd as me.

    Ultimately, all eyes were on the stage and none on my inanely logoed tee or my inordinately tight ass-hugging pants. I have rarely seen such a polite audience held in rapt attention at such a huge rock show. I am not good with Radiohead’s titles – ever since hearing Kid A their albums pass by me like symphonies – but some songs still stuck out just by virtue of how they were achieved. A hypnotic electronic piano version of “Like Spinning Plates,” a spastic and brittle “Idioteque,” chiming xylophone and the faint singing of the lawn section on “No Surprises,” and “Everything In It’s Right Place” prefaced as “this is a song about the good old days.”

    As it echoed back at me from Thom, and then the effects pedals on the stage, i just thought … Yes.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140294589227633/