Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

by

Okay, so, let’s get some things straight. I love Tori. I am spending $300+ to see her on her current solo tour because i panicked when the Philly date was in question. I own all of her in-print singles. I like to talk like her. However, i wasn’t expecting a new album. I am still waiting to hear things she’s only mentioned like “Snow Cherries in France,” “To the Fair Motormaids of Japan,” “Like a Virgin,” and “Zero Point.” I am still looking for something to wipe the purple haze of To Venus and Back out of my mind.

Two years ago this Friday i had just moved into the Drexel dorms and it was the first day of class but i was having breakfast with the girls from Kelly #2, and i had just come back from French III in possession of this strangely shaped purple double disc. And, we sat drinking milk and gabbing about awful morning classes and those strange purple sounds began to creep in. I only awarded the disc three and a half stars in my effort to get published in the school paper, but i always undervalue my favourite artists on first listen to their new material. Soon it was custom; if i did not shut my eyes to “Bliss” playing on my headset i would not be asleep in time for “1000 Oceans” to drift away. But, i was still slightly put off by the purple taste in my mouth… the wrong songs from Under the Pink on the live album, faux strings where Tori would usually have a composer, melodies recycled and reconstituted, lyrics more obscure than observant. It was not quite what it was meant to be.

Two years later, Strange Little Girls is still not quite what i was looking for. At first the name seemed like it could be an all new album or even a beesides collection; Tori always refers to her songs as girls, so it seemed apropos. Even when a collection of covers was announced i almost assumed it would include such staples of her sets such as “Love Song” & “Landslide,” or maybe songs only teased at like Joni Mitchell’s winter ballad “River” or the Beatles classic “Hey Jude.” And, of course, Tori went and made an arty self-consuming project out of it.

Each song, she says, is a song by a man about a woman, and she is trying to get us to see the woman’s point of view without changing any of the lyrics. She’s subtle, or perhaps tricking us into accepting this album in lieu of the sure-to-come masterpiece that will follow the renegotiation of her contract. But, in the meantime, she has left us these 12 new windows into her world, and we cannot help but peer in with our hands cupped close around our eyes to make it seem like we are a part of her little blue world as it turns endlessly upside down.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5770910/

by

Those poor Freshmen don’t even have a clue.


For the last two years i’ve been involved in move in, first as a student in the middle of hurricane floyd carting my stuff trip by trip up to the fifth floor of Kelly and then in that same building the next year trying to keep things orderly through pouring rain and hard beating sun. Here in my third year, i am finally disconnected from the class slowly seeping into the precious cracks of my campus that have been so dry and empty all summer. I would rather not caulk them in with this endless stream of fresh faces. I do not want lines in the book store. I do not want people milling around in the lobby of the theatre. I do not want to bob and weave through a crowd on their way to the cafeteria because they only know how to travel in herds.

Ironic that i work in admissions, isn’t it? Today i was in the bookstore pricing my textbooks and all around me parents were gasping at prices and tellings their students what’s what as they silently looked over their shoulders and stewed. It all seemed crude to me, pudgy pushy parents edging past me in the aisles trying to take control of a situation that they could hardly hope to dent, while their student idly followed with shopping baskets dangling behind them. Do you know that parents often fill out applications for their students here in the office? I might be a momma’s boy by some standards, but she never touched the interiour of an app, and you had better believe that i picked up all of my books myself with my own money.

I suppose i just don’t really understand it… the crash of over two thousand new students swamping my campus with questions and with too-wide eyes and with their domineering parents, secretly scoping for attractive people or where they might go to hang out tonight. Why i am i working for this perpetually in-motion machine that greedily sucks in student after student and pumps out cookie cut graduates every year? Because, i suppose, somewhere in the middle the push of getting in and the pull of getting out (or perhaps the opposite) – everything balances out perfectly and all you do is float until the gravity of the situation takes over for you again.


I am not there yet; i’m just about to be $435 closer to getting my feet off the ground.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5767392/

by

MetaFilter mostly slammed Madonna for weighing in on the state of the nation during her Friday Los Angeles show, but after giving her speech a read i think it’s probably the most intelligent thing anyone has said in the past six days. To discount an opinion because it comes from someone of celebrity status is ridiculous, especially when it’s from someone who is so much more educated about the cultures of the world than some of the American’s who are so quick to give their opinion. Madonna is self-made, controls her own business, currently lives abroad, and has two young children. I think that alone would make me interested in what she had to say, but i think you’ll see that it wasn’t just interesting … it was true.

Howdy, Los Angeles! Having a good time? It’s kind of confusing trying to have a good time this week as you all know, and I want you all to know how privileged I feel to be in the position that I am in today.

We don’t…we’re not doing the show because we want people to forget, we’re doing the show because we want to remind people of how precious life is. And how full of joy it should be.

The tragedy that occurred this week is unthinkable but i want to think of it as a big fucking wakeup call. OK? But now that we’re all awake, we should stay awake. Acts of terrorism are going on in this country on a regular basis, ok? In England, in Ireland, in…Israel, in Palestine, in India, in Tibet, and Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in Africa and Bosnia and Afghanistan. I could go on and on. OK?

Last night, last night we said a prayer for in a moment of silence, ok, 18,000 people shut up. Hard to believe but it’s true. We had a moment of silence where we said a prayer for everyone who died Tuesday morning, for all the family and friends of those who died. Tonight, I’d like everyone to say a prayer for peace. I’d like everyone to say a prayer that President Bush practices restraint in his decision making, and he does not retaliate this act of violence with another act of violence, ok. Because violence only begets violence.

So please everyone, no kidding, can we just keep quiet, bow our heads, grab the person next to you, I don’t care, but please, say a prayer. Repeat, because I don’t know about you but I want to live a long and happy life, I want my kids to live a long and happy life, ok.

[Long pause followed by chants of “USA! USA! USA!” from the audience.]

All right, all right, I knew it wouldn’t go on for a minute. OK, USA, yeah, but the whole world OK. Start thinking in a global way. Please! Thank you very much. Thank you. I said it last night and I’m going to say it again, if you want the world to change, change yourself.

[via MadonnaRama, who should implement permalinks]

All of the proceeds from Madonna’s Los Angeles shows were donated to relief funds related to last Tuesday’s events, including one for children who lost parents in the tragedy.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5740206/

by

MapQuest claims that i walked less than ten miles in yesterday’s travels from my house to the corner of 5th and South and back, but i’m not prone to believe it; even if the distance is really that relatively tiny when being roved over by four wheels, it certainly feels like twice that if you walk every step of it and take in the sights and sounds along the way.

Yesterday saw me starting off at home and slowly slipping farther and farther into the city until i was past it and had to work my way back through… first to admissions and then retreating back to the theatre, next quickly into 30th street station and then down to and around and around the same block of Chinatown looking for a good vegetarian restaurant, unintentionally down to South Street, and finally back up to Rittenhouse Square – where everything stalled out for almost two hours as my world reduced down to two people and one tiny park bench that was put there for a woman who refused to sit still.

At some point in eighth grade we were filling out some redundant “getting to know you” survey, and one of the questions prompted us to fill in our favourite physical place to be. My partner in the exercise listed locations in Paris and in London, and others in the class named other cities and states. The only place i could think to write down was Rittenhouse, which is just a city-block sized square of green dotted with an indefinitely multiplying quantity of benches. The me of six years ago couldn’t even begin to fathom something better than a tiny piece of quiet in the middle of the knotted urban mess of my city, and i’m almost a little sad to say that today it still ranks implausibly high of my favourites places in the world. The fact of the matter is that i’ve hardly ever been to another place that would compete not only for character but for context, and in my limited experience the square still has impressive rank.


I was a little surprised that Rabi had never been there before, so i aimed our trip back towards the train station so that we would pass Rittenhouse Square. As the amount of Walnut street between us and the square quickly shrank i had this mental zero-g moment where i caught myself wondering why i was even bothering: i’ve spent less than three hours of my entire life there, i manage to not think about it for months or years at a time, and typically i just walk through it on my way to a bookstore. I suppose i just wanted to show her something that was inherently plugged into my concept of Philadelphia… moreso than any certain skyscraper or piece of history.

When Rabi failed to gasp at the tiny block of neat grass and wooden benches i was hardly surprised, but somewhere along the way i think she got the point. Of course, mileage obviously varies.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5724030/

by

Everything i write nowadays is toolong and verywordy. I can’t seem to help myself; i’m just not as omnipresently connected as i used to be and the things i have been wanting to say just build and build until they are no longer simple phrases or paragraphs. Do you remember when this used to be snap reactions to hardwood floors, or fuzzy butterflies swirling in my stomach and the awkwardness that always ensues as a result? Hardwood floors have turned into brick walls and sloped ceilings, but that special breed of butterfly does emerge from a cocoon every so often to do a loop-to-loop just beneath my esophagus. I’m just left wondering if it’s my intent, my writing, or my editing that changed along the way. Obviously it would have to be a little bit of all three… but, what don’t i talk about now that you used to expect to hear from me? I’d really like to know.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5693168/