Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

essays

Personal essays from Krisis on everything from parenting to immigrant life to driving, and much more.

Not Stamps, Nor Coins

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As sad as a commentary as this is on my recent listening habits, the excitement I feel about purchasing new music is as of late hardly ever a tangible one.

Really, it’s just the thrill of acquisition, and the subsequent thrill of careful examination and deconstruction. I could just as easily be a philatelist or a numismatist, so irrelevant can the actual fact that I am acquiring or examining a song be.

That said, at the moment I have two discs on my desk that I’m profoundly excited about.

The first is Grace Potter and the Nocturnals This Is Somewhere.

GP&N were one of the bands I had penciled into my Bonnaroo itinerary last summer. The festival was dotted with a precious few front-women, and most of the review I read were positive. So, on Saturday shortly after noon I planted myself in a dusty side-tent to hear the band for the first time.

They utterly blew me away. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals sounded like a feral, weedy, Joplinesque overgrowth of Sheryl Crow’s funky self-titled disc. Grace was an incendiary lead singer, wailing, screaming, thrashing her guitar, dancing behind her Wurlitzer, and leaping off of stage pieces to mark a number of huge crescendos. However, through all of that she was somehow still folksy – more an analog to Bonnie Raitt than to the PJ Harvey she was invoking.

Also of note, guitarist Scott Tournet was terrific, not only to listen to but to watch – a trait so many of the jam band guitarists I witnessed in passing didn’t seem to possess. (Listen below to his superb solo on the still-unreleased “Over Again” – I’m in there, screaming, somewhere. It’s currently available only on the overseas versions of the new disc.)

On the drive back I insisted we stop at the first civilized-looking mall to pick up the debut GP&N disc, but I was quickly disappointed – the disc was a calm, sterile affair, showing none of the vim of the live performance that had riveted me the day before. And, all of the best songs were absent from the disc!

This Is Somewhere has a few of those songs, and I’m hoping it fulfills the promise the Nocturnals made to me last June. Even a whisper of it would make my day.

If Grace Potter represents yet-unheard promise, then Rilo Kiley’s Under the Blacklight is a reverent hope for a return to form.

In 2002 I had no idea what Rilo Kiley sounded like – just that they were fronted by a woman and on Barsuk Record (which, back in the Death Cab’s better days, really meant something). I remember distinctly my first listen to their second disc, The Execution of All Things; I was meant to be drifting off to sleep in Elise’s bed, but I was instead riveted and wide awake.

At first RK seemed like a sort of indy-rock version of Garbage to me, one whose lead singer – lacking the queer confidence of a supervixen – instead wrote wryly about friends and potential apocalypses. But as I continued to listen I came to appreciate the significance of contributions from co-leader and guitarist Blake Sennett, who brought a tuneful, Elliott Smith-like melancholy to the proceedings, even when he was relegated to the background.

As my appreciation for the Rilo increased I also continued to play – and, now, co-write – with my best friend and musical partner Gina. One day, listening to two of Gina’s best paeans to the end of the world – “Real End” and “Fisher Price” – I realized that the strange pair of us had a chance at the same hooky, kitschy relevance that I had grown to love about RK.

It was like realizing for the first time what you want to do when you grow up – because I had. So, it was with great excitement that I purchased 2004’s More Adventurous – hoping to vicariously live out the next chapter of Gina and my musical development. Unfortunately, my excitement was quashed from track one – despite its title, the disc was a shapeless lump of peculiarly unhooky narratives, headlined by a spare duo of the superbly indie “Portions for Foxes” and the 60s Country spin through “Never Again.”

Having conceded that Rilo had lost their touch to the sappy post-folk, it came as no surprise to me when lead singer Jenny Lewis struck out on her own with an acoustic solo disc – Rabbit Fur Coat. More meandering nonsense, I assumed.

Well it wasn’t. Not quite, anyhow. As opposed to Adventurous, on which the band often seemed aimless if not excessive, Rabbit seemed like an eager bed made for absent riffs. And, it made some waves – indy and not.

Under the Blacklight is Rilo Kiley’s first major label disc, and its first after Jenny’s solo breakthrough. And, from the throbbing bass and reverberating guitar on the – yes, queer – lead single “Moneymaker,” I think the band may be back on some sort of track, even if Gina and I have since gone off the rails in our own direction.

I can’t yet recommend either disc, but I recommend getting this excited about a record. Not because you have to have it to complete your collection, or because you love an artist so much you can’t stand the wait, but because you have a fervent hope that you are about to be introduced to life-altering music.

Many Splintered Realities (or, The Conclusion of NaBloPoMo)

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I began this month by comparing my entry into National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) to a DC comics-style Crisis – a reboot of me and my entire multi-verse of blogging, all for the benefit of any new readers that might stop by. Everything familiar would be eliminated, or re-imagined from scratch.

 

 

I was never a DC comics fan, so fittingly this month wound up more of a Marvel Comics event, even if i didn’t intend it. Marvel doesn’t have a hand catchword like “crisis” for their crossovers, and they usually don’t destroy the entire universe to make their point.

Age of Apocalypse is a particular favorite of mine, because it involved the X-Men, which was my concentration in Geekdom. In it, Professor Xavier is assassinated in the past, causing decades of history to shift radically.

For four months all of the many X-Men books were canceled and replaced with their alternate reality counterparts, similar at the core but alien on the outside. Wolverine and Jean were mercenary lovers. Magneto formed the X-Men, and Scarlet Witch was the first to fall in battle. Beast was an evil scientist, and Shadowcat a heartless bitch.

Unlike DC Comics, Marvel never really eliminates the past. At the end of four months the history we knew and loved returned. Not unscathed, though … it came along with new insight onto characters, and relationships, and some new characters mysteriously brought over from the alternate time line.

 

 

My little Krisis of the Infinite Crises (AKA NaBloPoMo) wound up a lot like that.

Clearly I am still me, and everything I’ve written over the past six years of Crushing Krisis remains part of my personal canon. Yet, during NaBloPoMo I recast some of my major characters, topics, stories, and songs. Certain themes, previously prominent, didn’t merit a mention. Others were played up anew for dramatic and comic effect.

Some changes were temporary for the sake of simplicity, like the comedification of my mother, and the suspension of archives and backlinking to old posts.

One universe-shattering change is here to stay: the port of my blog to WordPress.

Other, smaller changes may or may not stick: The return of Trio, the web’s longest running single-artist web session (AKA podcast). Reinstatement of comments. Retirement of certain prominent persons and topics. New favorite reads. OCD Godzilla.

 

 

As I re-imagined my personal narrative for NaBloPoMo I was reminded about the best aspects of myself and my life, and how they could be reflected in the best aspects of my blogging. I realized how blessed I am to have a six-year-old website that I still enjoy updating, and how unique I am to be able to express some of my sentiments in song.

I realized how truly, truly lucky I am to have such fascinating people interested in reading about it and hearing it.

I thank each of you for your attention, patience, and support. I sincerely hope that you decide to stick around to see what the future holds in store.

 

 

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Rabbit-Totems and Purple Dragons

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Even before I had the internet I was always interested in connecting to people who I could understand on some intrinsic level.

In my pre-internet age, one of my favorite comics was Sam Kieth’s The Maxx. Many issues of The Maxx had a pen pals page tucked into the back. The idea of it thrilled me – some equal yet opposite alterna-comic fan flung far across the country could trade significant thoughts with a distant speck of me.

I whined and begged my mother for permission to write to some pen pals or, even better, to send in my information to be listed (because, surely each pen pal was reaping hundreds if not thousands of letters from eager writers such as myself).

I was flatly rejected. Repeatedly. Because, as far as my mother was concerned, it was the goal of the entire population of America to seduce me into acquiescing to a quiet, tidy kidnapping. Who knew what kind of lunatic was lying in wait for impressionable young comic fans such as myself to engage them in witty adolescent banter, only to suss out the likeliest kidnappees and stealthily infiltrate their homes in the night.

I shortly and unsuccessfully agitated for a P.O. Box, and that was that.

(Why didn’t I just send in the damn letter with telling her? Who knows. That is how good of a kid i was.)


When I first started Crushing Krisis one of my favorite things was to not only find and link to a new blog, but to get into a longterm habit of reciprocal linking – carrying on a sort of turn-based dialog in a series of blog posts meant not just for each other, but for our entire audience(s). In a way it was like a comic-book crossover.

Sadly, in most cases only my side of the chat still exists – six years of blogging yields quite an attrition rate. Of my virtual pen pals even the most venerable and permanent-seeming blogs I exchanged links with are gone. All but one.

Wockerjabby was a strange creature – six years ago just a clean layout emblazoned with a purple dragon, talking about college and exercise and veganism and astrophysics. Rabi, pronounced just like “Robby” (cotton on?) was… a girl? A girl named Rabi living just a few miles from my apartment? An awesome, intelligent, health-conscious, blogging girl name Rabi going to college around the corner from my favorite malll?

I was hooked from minute-one. And, just a few hours later, Rabi noticed my link and wrote me a nice email. And (nearly causing me to have a heart-attack in excitement) linked back.

Afterwards i started a (somewhat embarrassing, in retrospect) linking campaign professing my blog-love, and Rabi continued to reciprocate, carrying on merry conversations via email all the while.

If the story plateaued there – two bloggers trading links for six years – it wouldn’t be too remarkable.

It didn’t.

We decided to meet – Rabi was the first internet person i ever met. In the middle of a field, actually. Well, at a train station, and briefly in a grocery store, but predominantly in the middle of a field, where I sang songs and she read poetry.

We continued through Blogathonning and late night IM conversations discussing “Peter’s-Head Romantic Gravitational Units,” and a lengthy walk through night-time Philly, and somehow wound up flying together and then road-tripping together to Boston for concerts, followed by multiple iterations of walking the breadth of NYC and Philadelphia, eventually coming-of-age and enjoying martinis in both locations.

All of that from one link, six years ago yesterday. Not only a best internet friend, but a best friend.

Ever since Rabi’s link has always appeared on my link list. And, six years later, CK is still on hers.

It’s hard – still hard, even with blogs and MySpace – to thwart the natural tendency of our social circles towards homogeneity. Your friends will always have something in common with you, because if you have nothing in common the spark of friendship never catches, and a year later you’re left wondering why someone is still on your friends list. Because of the limits of the physical world, usually many of our friends wind up having the same things in common with us.

The allure of The Maxx pen pals and, later, the internet, is the offer of hundreds of different tangential contacts – small intersections of interest. The long tail of meeting people, the joy of which is following that connection to find even more connections.

In Rabi I have found the unique overlap of blogging, of loving music, of eating strange vegetarian foods, of remaining dedicated – even obsessed – with staying vibrant and real.

Probably way cooler than anyone i could have met from The Maxx.


(ps: Rabi, your Trio got usurped because i don’t know how to play two of the songs yet. Consider this your Trio IOU to be redeemed when i have more than a day to learn three songs.)

How the Long Tail Ruined Shopping

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Though I can’t say that I’ve ever been a tremendous fan of Black Friday, i readily admit that i had my moments of being a shopaholic. I delighted not only in the shopping, but in the browsing and discovering, and in immersing myself in a sea of other shoppers.

Recently this delight seems to have evaporated into thin air – heading out to a store is a chore, and more often than not i just do a quick browse before i’m ready to leave. I didn’t even contemplate heading out on Black Friday.

Why? Don’t i like to shop anymore? Have i outgrown it? Is my budget taking the fun out of it?

For months i couldn’t figure it out. Then, last month I read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail (a book, though that link is for the author’s website). I realized that it wasn’t that i stopped liking shopping, but that the Long Tail ruined shopping for me, and maybe for you too.

Let me try to explain.

Think back five or ten years ago. A shopping trip wasn’t necessarily a buying trip – it was a voyage of discovery. Especially on Black Friday. You might know about a few tentpole items from television commercials or word of mouth, but you needed to walk the aisles to learn about everything that had been unveiled for the season. And, you needed to hit multiple stores before you could find the best deals on items from your wishlist(s). Shopping was a necessity to achieve your buying goals goals.

If you’re the least bit internet savvy, today much of that discovery process can be conducted virtually. In-store deals aren’t all that attractive… getting to Walmart at 5am on Black Friday might score you a few door-buster deals on their loss-leaders, but any price that they can afford to slash in a physical store is sure to be equally slashed somewhere on the infinite internet since websites don’t have to pay for employees and shelf space.

Stores are disappointing to me not only because i do a lot of discovery and deal-finding ahead of time, but because I find myself distrustful in physical stores – i see an interesting new widget, but without at least 10 user reviews i can’t possibly know if it’s worth buying.

As a result I’m just not excited by a brick and mortar shopping trip anymore. Now that you are thinking about it you might agree.

Furthermore, as our tastes splinter into ever-more distinct niches (as abetted by vast info on the internet) a physical store is less and less likely to even have what we want. Guitar stores hardly ever have the brand, model, or color that i’m looking for. I’m sure knitters feel the same way – after knitting for years will a Yarn Emporium have all of the special brands, blends, and colors that you want for your project? If not, while not just order all of it on the internet for a bulk discount?

There are still reasons to shop physically. Two primary reasons are expertise and hands-on experience. That’s why it’s so hard to eliminate clothing stores from our physical routine – we need help finding our size and we need to try things on to find out what looks good.

Groceries are another excellent example – when you have an indeterminate goal the physical act of browsing often yields the best results. Unless you have a specific meal in mind, grocery shopping is about options and ideas. Shopping for home decor falls into the same category. Since i don’t travel much, preparing for a vacation also fits – I spent hours shopping for Bonnaroo, looking for little items that might increase my chances of survival.

Yet, even these experience are being intruded on by the internet, with similarity-searches and tagging making the virtual experience more and more like scanning a shelf.

The Long Tail is not just a matter of quantity of choices, but of quality of information. As I become more and more accustomed to both I find that I am unsatisfied by a trip through a big box store that carries only the most popular (not necessarily best) items. Every trip is a disappointment – i can never find exactly what i need for the price that i want.

Reading The Long Tail changed my perspective on a lot more than just shopping through the utter obviousness of its conclusions. I have some more to say about that – hopefully before NaBloPoMo has ended.

Richard

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My headache began a few days ago as a pair of too-wide yawns. The first flexed the right side of my jaw a little too far, and with the second there was a slightly audible crackle of bones being uncooperative. “Stop trying to unhinge your Jaw,” Elise said, “you don’t have to eat those rabbits all in one piece.”

Yes, my girlfriend is amusing.

The ache persisted for a few days, and by last night it was on the move – the pain slithered in to my mouth, up to my temple, and down the side of my neck. The ache became the headache, which in turn became one of the top three worst headaches of my life. (Another is here).

The headache is so persistent and distinct that I feel as though it is some separate entity – a symbiote – inflicting its will on me. It is like Spidey’s black suit, attached to me at the jaw, trying to envelop my entire head so that it can control my brain.

For sanity’s sake, I have named it. Meet my headache, Richard. You can call it Rick for short.

This is an important distinction for me: I am not my pain, and visa versa. I refuse to walk into work defined by a headache, or anything else, for that matter. On the outside I am committed to being my same vivid self, no matter the interior conditions.

(I would compare this to stepping onto the stage, but that analogy has the negative connotation attached to it from the time I tried to sublimate my 103 fever for a dress rehearsal but wound up with Bronchitis and Pneumonia. Because, you see, a fever is not just a symptom, it’s a condition, and you are your conditions.)

I’ve been surrounded by lots of headache sufferers in my life – a certain ex convinced it could be a brain tumor, and two former bosses whose headaches increased sensitivity to light and destroyed appetites.

My thinking on the matter is that pain is just a perception – just another sense. And, in the same way you can tune out a droning noise or adapt to a familiar smell, you can work your perception around pain. Certainly, some pain is of a source and magnitude much too high to ignore; after all, you can’t exactly tune out a jackhammer.

Richard will not be reaching jackhammer significance in my life. Because, unless some part of my is cracked or broken or abcessed, Rick is just an illusion of my perception. I can tune out Richard just like screening a call. He could just be an itch, or a tickle, or a gnat.

Richard has no magnitude because, there is no Richard. He’s just a yawn that got too wide. As easily as he interrupted my sleep and made me late for work he is banished back into the ether from whence he came.