Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

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Last night i went to bed with my creaky windows propped open by hangers wearing only my first pair of jeans restyled as cutoffs with piano drifting past like a breeze. At some point much later Matt came home and out of habit turned on the air conditioner to go to bed, and so i woke up freezing and sniffling from being so naked to the cold and because pollen had crept up through my window to strangle me. But, i could hear the outdoors for the first time since we shoved the drippy machine into the window, and the sounds of neighbors chuckling and saxophone pouring note by each note from the windows of the house across the street was much better than the electric holler of my alarm clock.

I feel a bit hung over, but in fact i am just water-logged from last night. This makes me suspect that being hung over is more about being too hydrated… like the liquor is hiding out somewhere beneath my cheekbones and i am heavier than it so it is trying to float up past my eyes and brain. That would at least explain that same dull pressure i’m feeling right now behind my face and below my temples … same difference. Or, it feels like the same difference, anyway.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5104265/

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After work and dinner and rehearsal we all went out into a pseudo-suburb of Philly to swim in Howard’s pool. For a while we ran around its circumference in endless counter-clockwise circles to create a current, and then it carried us along on our own. The entire situation was weird because it was all in cliques and i wasn’t in any of them … the girls lead by my bitchy co-star, and the two couples, and the two endlessly warring factions, and any way you sliced it i was certain to be the odd one out of any battle or conversation. But, it was fun nonetheless… there’s something to be said for swimming in the dark with some of your most entertaining friends and the way my laugh carries for what seems like miles and miles because everything there is so flat. Afterwards i pulled on my cutoffs, which are technically my first ever pair of jeans, and marveled at the fact that i still fit in them, and at all of the legends this flesh has amassed in the intervening 6 years. And at that i still have nearly the same waist as i did before highschool. And that i do and see any of this day to day.

But, now my entire block is silently shut off save for the refrigerator staring at me from my neighbors window across the street, and swimming always leaves me feeling warm and breathless. No artificial air tonight … i’ll sleep just with what’s out there to begin with.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5098575/

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I might not always return link love in an equal fashion, but when i am paid a true complement i honestly appreciate it and back-linking is the least i can do. In that vein, please visit Handbasket Emporium, where some sentences feature both myself and Nick Hornby (and, not just sentences saying that i want to grow up to be one of his characters, either).

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5098432/

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Two things were set into motion on Saturday, August 26th, 2000 that would forever alter the life of one jobless young Los Angeles area gaysian twenty-something named Ernie Hsiung.

The first was an ambitious little lark called SurvivorBlog, a somewhat nepotistically cast venture that featured some semi-regular Little Yellow Different linkees such as Kevin from Fury, Asian journalist du jour Min Jung, and hottie among hotties Gerard Reyes.

The second was an aimless little lark called Crushing Krisis – otherwise known as my blog.

I’m not sure what the true aims of either project were at the time, but i could venture a guess. SurvivorBlog was an attempt to pair the red-hot Survivor phenomenon with weblogging for fun and profit. Crushing Krisis was meant as a way to participate in the personal publishing revolution, and for me to have a place to bitch and whine on a regular basis. As luck would have it, both Sblog and CK were added to Blogger‘s directory sometime later that week, and the rest, as they say, is history.

(History being that we were deadlocked as #1 & #2 on PowerBloggers for almost all of our second week of existence, which was totally ridiculous, because i was trying to outblog 10 people all by myself. And, even more ludicrous i mostly won. Ha! Now, back to our story.)

Such was my introduction to Ernie and his addictive string of web reality games, which have brought him hundreds of adoring daily fans even more dedicated than myself. Of course, I despised him and his unholy creation with a passion throughout its entire original run because it represented something that i wasn’t yet a part of – something i never thought i’d lay hands on: relative blog-fame and a semi-attentive semi-regular audience. However, by the end of it I had stopped by so many times to check out the competition that I was thoroughly hooked, and so when SurvivorBlog2 rolled around I sighed a deep sigh and submitted a submission, and so began my entanglement with Ernie.

I don’t think i ever seriously expected to be cast on SurvivorBlog2, but somehow Ernie thought i’d push someone’s buttons, and so into the mix i went. And, out of the mix i came with double my normal visitors, having been cast as that annoying self-righteous boy who did nothing but write moody songs and talk about his girlfriend. After i got the boot life went on, i broke up with the girlfriend, and Ernie was off having fun as a nominee at SxSW along with various other sBlog cast members. I relegated myself to the background, content to post on PSB2 and occasionally commenting on Ernie’s site with the hope that people would recognize me and that Ernie might appreciate my contribution.

That all changed less then a month ago when i casually asked Ernie if he had any commenters lined up for his newest web-venture PuppetMaster. In that month i have seen Ernie procrastinate, speculate, celebrate, and hyperventilate while i’ve had some of the most fun i’ve had in my entire year of blogging. And that brings us up to the present: i would’ve never met Philo had i not hit on him for an entire month of PM and, somehow, when he decided to give Ern a little helping hand, he decided i was someone who should represent the cause.

August 26th is a less than two weeks away, and in the intervening year i went from knowing Ernie only as the creator of my most despised enemyblog to an actual friend who i’m planning to visit sometime in the near future. When he blogged about losing his job i was aghast, hoping that it was some kind of wicked PM crossover stunt, but alas it’s the god’s honest truth. In the wake of this news Philo has created a funddrive called ErnAid. It might seem like a bit of a light-hearted little lark, but know that this little lark really does come from the heart. I consider myself a fan and a friend to Ernie, and as such i didn’t hesitate at all to give a few dollars. If you consider yourself either of those things, think about doing the same.

For more reasons to donate (including exclusive photos and a new song), check out my stint as guest-host of ErnAid tomorrow @ East/West.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5072807/

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I’ve never found very much of my music collection to be too implicitly sexy; sure, certain songs have their own sex appeal and others somehow took on one over the years, but what it comes down to is that i frankly don’t have a lot of albums that i would leave on while making out. Of course, for the longest time my rules of album buying went something like “there has to be a girl or an acoustic guitar, and both if i’m really going to enjoy it.” And, while this still is the most ultimate truth in my hunt for new music, it is no longer my sole critera for purchase, and it’s because of this that i feel like i own some music that’s a wee bit sexy now.

The crux of it is that the female voice doesn’t have a scandalous effect on me. Tori Amos sings some sexy songs, Elastica has one about feeling one’s back on the hood of a car, and Garbage has a web of darkly electric songs that are simply churning with sexual energy. That’s all well and good, but i’m compelled to listen to them rather than have it on the score of my lovelife. These songs are soundtrack music rather than scores… they talk about the movie but they don’t always click with the emotional content of the scenes themselves. However, today i realized that i do have the elements of the score lurking in my music collection (although theoretically half of it would come from hers), and it’s all because of the effects of a single girl.

We never kissed. Not once. Not even goodbye. Such was my relationship with Anastasia. However, what we did do a lot of was going to the movies and lying on her floor on Sunday afternoons arguing about music; she had the same sort of exception to women singers that i did to men, only really harbouring a great love for Tori Amos, Bjork, and Heather Nova. Her soft-spot was for men… and not aggressively loud alternative men, but squeaky or thoughtful or nerdy men: Soul Coughing, Ben Folds Five, Elliott Smith, Evan Dando, Get Up Kids, and a whole raft of even more indy rock guys whose albums i know on sight but not by name. And, so, we’d sit on her floor and we’d argue about why i didn’t like any of those bands and why she should really buy an Ani DiFranco album (which she eventually did, with Dilate).

Anastasia and i had a falling out near the end of Senior Year when the mess of applying to college was over and i felt as though i could actually talk to my old friends again. It was too late for my record collection, though, as a tiny kernel of the future had already taken root; on a total whim i had bought the just-released Keep it Like a Secret by one of her favourite bands, Built to Spill. I knew that i liked them a little, but i saw it and it was $13 and suddenly i needed it. But, when i got home it laid untouched on my desk in it’s perfect cellophane wrapped sitting on top of a brown bag containing its receipt. I wasn’t going to open it … it was simply symbolic of my lost relationship (and lack thereof) with Anastasia and there was no reason for me to open it let alone to buy it to begin with.

And, while i was at school the next day, my mother walked into my room for the first time in weeks, ostensibly to take out the trash, and she threw out the empty brown bag i had sitting on my desk. Afterwards it was inevitable – i could scream at my mother all i wanted to, but that album was a part of my collection as much as it was a part of hers, and i couldn’t not listen to it. So, in into the cd-changer it went.

It seemed so harmless at the time, just one happy springtime record in my collection of disappointed and jilted women, but the damage was done. I listened to it with my windows open, i put it on during showers, and i played it while working on my webgame. Built to Spill was like a pot slowly boiling all through my Freshman year; an album i would return to at the drop of a dime. And, suddenly, with this school year came restlessness and disposable income, and suddenly i was coming home with Ben Folds Five and Elliott Smith and even striking out on my own to find things she would like, like Deathcab for Cutie.

Today i was trolling through the used section at AKA Music and i bought, among other things, the Matador Records 10th Anniversary 3 disc set. The first song on the first record is “Stereo” by Pavement, which is a sort of innocently thumping bass groove with a nearly-spoken almost unattentive vocal that trips its way through the song unselfconsciously as it accents and squeaks and turns. And, somehow, to me the geek sound of an indy rock voice paired with at once carefully crafted and lo-fi instrumentation is a seductive sound to me.


There is a Built to Spill album called “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love,” and the cliche of the title mocks the a-typical and affecting songs therein. I remember that once we were lying on her floor talking and she told me how Ben Folds loves Built to Spill and how they both do “Twin Falls Idaho” and how the song after that on the Spill disc mentions David Bowie and at some point while i was sitting there nodding along and listening attentively my brain decided that the upward curl of an untrained mail falsetto or the persistent movement of a band with just a lead or bass guitar rather than a rhythm guitar was an attractive sound to me. Men have a way of writing about girls and sex that women obviously don’t, and while it’s not always the most artful thing in the world when compared to one of my Tori Amos cds, i understand when Ben Gibbard says things like “i hung my favorite shirt on the floorboard, wrinkled up from pulling pushing and tasting tasting” because even though the lyric is obvious, the effect the girl had on him is inherent to the lyric more than the lyric is demonstrative of it. Or,… i don’t know, maybe my brain is just forever trained to create sexual tension around Anastasia’s sort of music the same way i can get whiplash if someone walks past me smelling of Happy


The funny thing is that she’s in New York or Boston now because she got into college a year early and is this amazing artist and has all sorts of direction and i’m still sitting here in Philly listening to her sort of records as if she’s ever going to make it onto my top-five breakups list just because she’s influenced at least one song on every relationship mix tape i’ll ever make while in college. In a way she transcends my hardly populated list of heart-breaks because we never happened, so that in my memory i can keep us lying on her floor together perfect and separate forever without any tangles to comb out. So, here i am listening to Pavement and wondering if it could really underscore a perfect kiss. I wonder if, hundreds of miles away from here, the thought ever crosses her mind while she’s listening to Dilate.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5056420/