Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

high school

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I somehow forgot to mention the two neatest things that happened to me yesterday, and god knows they’re pretty neat. so excuse me while i switch into banal-blog mode to update you on some happenings in my life.


Firstly, i manged to snag myself vocal lessons for next semester. Now, i don’t know how much this shows through my incessant prattling, but i’ve wanted voice training for years. Long before i became musically inclined singing was one of my favourite things to do, but i was horrible at it and was constantly being persecuted by my friends for my lack of ability. Playing guitar gave me the most basic of confidences in singing, but i’m still unsure of myself when singing on my own and i still have no formal training on how to sing. So, the fact that one of our voice instructors wants to make time for me in her schedule is very cool.

A bigger compliment came from Bill Hull, who’s currently in charge of the aforementioned Eight to the Bar. I mentioned off-handedly to him that i was finally starting voice training and he replied that i ought to audition for the next opening in Eight to the Bar. Audition! For an all male a capella group that’s half composed of Vocal Music majors! I tried to deflect what i thought was an obvious attempt at flattery, but Bill was quick to point out that he is one of the few people on campus in possession of a copy of my demo, so he knows full well that i can actually sing when i put my mind to it. He tempered his compliment by admitting that i certainly have plenty of technique to learn from voice lessons, but then reiterated that i would stand a good chance of being a member of the group’s new lineup in the fall.

Eek. I’m not used to feeling this good about myself all at once. No wonder i keep writing songs tonight…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/03/2686603/

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I’m eating turkey that reminds me of being a vegetarian.

Let me qualify that statement. Junior year of high school i was still on my normal poultry-heavy diet, and there were two events that led up to my turning into vegetarian. One was an awful encounter with an open-faced roast beef sandwich which i’d rather not revisit. The other was peppered turkey from the lunch meat department at Acme. Junior year I brought that turkey to school every day for lunch, with dijon mustard and some munster cheese. Every day. By May, my stomach was in full revolt against the spicy red edges of the turkey, and the mustard that kept it glued to my kaiser rolls. Every night i’d go to bed after having eaten other snacks and a normal dinner, and my stomach would still remind me of the turkey i’d consumed for lunch. I would lie awake at night because of it.

When i told my mother that i wouldn’t eat any more meat, at first she thought i was just being stubborn, and then she thought i only meant red meat. But, when she bought that next batch of turkey it sat in the refrigerator until it was spoilt. She was angry that i had wasted it, but she got the point.

Obviously she still buys the turkey from time to time, as it was in stock just now when i raided the fridge to make myself a sandwich. I didn’t really realize what it was when i took it out and pasted it down to my kaiser roll with dijon mustard, but one bite sent me back to sitting on the floor of the basement hallway at JR Masterman, opening up my bookbag and pulling out a turkey sandwich.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/02/2571509/

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I’m sitting here with a bag of frozen white bread and a tub of hummus that i accidentally stole from my girlfriend’s roommate two weeks ago snacking away while my ftp server mysteriously blinks in and out of existence. To get the white bread defrosted enough so that it’s not similar to eating cardboard i’ve got to hold it close to my mouth and breathe into it slowly, feeling the frost evaporate onto my fingers on the other side as my snack gets soft and flexible like it’s meant to be. I’m not sure if you’re actually reading this at this point because of my FTP issues, and that surely explains the lack of a new Trio despite my obviously having new material to work with.

The play goes up next week … 10 days from now. That’s scary. I mean, i can track my entire experience with the play through this log and it just doesn’t seem long or substantial enough. Not so long ago in the archives i was contemplating whether or not i should audition and now i’m contemplating if enough my extended family are going to want seat to gets a group discount. Maybe it’s because i haven’t had such a large role since high school, where we’d rehearse from January to nearly the end of March every single day, that i feel so grossly underprepared for this show; i don’t know my lines well enough, i don’t sing my song well enough, and i’m still finding my character. Of course, none of that really matters when i’m on stage, because somehow i just make it all work. I’m looking into getting some digital video to post to the page, so… we’ll see. I’m off to munch more hummus and rehearse for my rehearsal; take care of yourselves.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/02/2455899/

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So, yeah, theatre. First i bitched about it, and then i got sucked into it, and here i am bitching about it again. I don’t like to act. Maybe i’m good at it, and maybe i’m not, but i only really like the attention i get and being able to stand on a stage above everyone else. That’s it, though. And, yet, somehow i’ve managed to have rehearsal every night and a song i have to arrange and sing and now i’ve got to learn how to method-act my hand being crippled for half of the show. And i have to learn how to scream.

I’m thinking that last bit won’t be to hard. In the show i get struck hard with a hot curling iron, and it both breaks the bones in my hand and burns me badly. My director keeps trying to give me suggestions on how i could perfect this prolonged scream of anguish and despair, some of which were: “Haven’t you ever put your hand into a fire before?” “Go home and try pouring hot wax on yourself. I can give you some pointers on sensitive spots to try.” “Stick your head into an oven later! And make sure to vocalize through the pain.”


Good direction, isn’t it. It’s like in high school … i had to play these two brief minutes of being drunk, and i just didn’t know how to do it. I was straightedge, i was innocent, and i had no idea what alchohol did to human body. My director coaxed and fixed and pointed and when it came time for performance i still looked like some foolish kid who was a little bit dizzy. In retrospect, he should’ve just bought me a bottle of vodka and let me learn the easy way. So, i’m off to find some hot wax… yum.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2110463/

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My life weebles and wobbles but it just doesn’t fall down. I can’t explain it. Despite the most awful things happening, they always turn out for the best in the end.

My mother and i were essentially kicked out of our house at the end of my Junior year by the owners because they wanted to sell it. I had lived in that house for all but three years of my life. I refused to leave. My mother wanted to buy a nice little house somewhere verging on suburbia, but there was the small matter of my attending the best highschool in the state, which i would hardly have left just for senior year. In the end i convinced her to rent a house on the verges of South Philly, because i know that when she actually buys a place it should be one she loves, not one she settles for. It was all very depressing at the time, but Senior year wound up being one of the best of my life, despite all the shitty parts. I wound up living within walking distance of Gina and Anastasia, and i could actually take a shopping trip to South Street at my leisure. I had my own room on my own tiny third floor. Our kitchen was nice. I was happy.


Lots of other things have righted themselves over the years to keep my life going at its usual pace. I only got into a local university but they gave me lots of money and inexplicably wound up happy there. I almost didn’t find an apartment (chronicled at length in the first week of the archive) but wound up in a super-cheap and easily accessible one. But, life doesn’t always work out so perfectly. For some people, it doesn’t work out at all. I have too many friends who got into a local university and got zero money who are now unhappy and in debt. I know too many people who had to move home because they didn’t figure out where to live in time for the beginning of the semester. I know too many unhappy people.

Yesterday i confronted the fact that my smile might have finally become used up. For years and years i just glided through my occasional problems with a grin pasted onto my face, because they all got fixed eventually and life moved on. Suddenly i’m starting to realize that not everything fixes itself, and that i don’t know how much good cheer i really have left to get me through the bad spots


Imagine that… i’m 19 and just learning that “happily ever after” only really happens in fairy tales and first-date movies. I’ve never had to confront the possibility before; i always assumed that bad things only happened to people who weren’t thinking positively. Now i’m starting to realize that keeping a smile on my face isn’t the best defense, and that sometimes it cuts as cruelly as any situation i might be unsuspectingly plunged into. But my life is still all-good, and that scares me. No one is continually blessed. The gods only have so much attention to give.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2097862/