Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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high hot pressure

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The airplane was a pressure-cooker.

I felt like some sort of crock pot meal in my window seat, gradually stripping off layers of clothing and carry-ons and pressing my arms against the cool metal of the seat dividers. My window onto to the southern sun with was hot to the touch, even with the plastic shade snapped shut. The radiating heat made me feel as though I would brown beneath my v-neck t-shirt.

Our flight was absolutely full with an interesting cross-section of people. Golfers, gamblers, bachelorette parties. A cheerful murmur rose from the collective when we first boarded. Now it was much quieter. Everyone was wilting and dozing.

I hadn’t said anything to E, as she was deep in conversation about javascript with the web developer seated beside her. I let my head nod to one side, half exhausted, half in a meditative trance.

Eventually, E turned to me and said, “it is too warm in here.”

“Yes, I know,” I replied, roused. “Feel my window. It’s hot.”

“I’d rather not. I’m already quite warm.”

“You can have my blower, if you need it,” I said, gesturing up to the tiny air-expelling port in the ceiling above us. I could not feel the slightest drift of the breeze it was supposedly blowing onto my face.

“I already took it.”

“While I was asleep?” I exclaimed.

“Yes.” Well, that would explain why I could not feel the breeze.

“What if I needed that air?”

“Clearly you didn’t.”

We’ve been very aligned this entire time. In Philadelphia, plenty of disagreements – all trivial, mind you, but differences of opinion. Outside of it, we react to all things as one. Things that would fall below most people’s threshold of notice, like poorly phrased directional signage or a particularly cool piece of luggage in a crowd. It’s as if our minds are tethered together, having the same reactions at the same time. One massive game of Jinx! You Owe Me a Coke, except for we do not drink soda.

The last 45 minutes of the flight were a sheer test of endurance. I was so hot I thought I might explode in a seizure of thrashing and cursing. I decided I had to accept the heat rather than resist it. I cracked my plastic window frame an inch and pressed my eye up to the crevice, watching the mountains below us turn from black to brown to sandy foothills until my face couldn’t beat the warmth any longer.

We were relieved to step off of the plane, and were greeted with slot machines all of ten feet from our gate exit.

“Play a slot?” I asked E. “They’re pennies.”

“No.”

“Me neither.” I replied.

travel exhausts me

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He sang me songs. Classics. The bands were new to me. Boston, Kansas, America, Europe, Asia.

[Hedwig stops Tommy from playing]

Travel exhausts me.

I do not enjoy travel.

Actually, I can think of some travel I have at least nominally enjoyed. It’s more that I don’t like the idea of traveling – interrupting my daily routine to pack up a limited amount of my possessions to go some other place that won’t be as comfortable or entertaining as my own home and be expected to do the same boring things as all of the other tourists staying there.

I remember going to Jamaica twice as a pre-teen with my mother and a family friend. Paradise, swimming, beaches – right?

I brought an entire suitcase of books. It’s not as if I didn’t enjoy the beauty of it or swim or go on the beach. I was disenchanted by all of the other children running around. At age 10 I thought I was actually 40. I wanted to lay around tanning, reading books, and drinking virgin daiquiris.

I remember at one point the Children’s Activities Coordinator stalked over to me at the poolside to interrupt my reading of a rather thick book and demanded I act like an actual child and play some sort of game that involved eating bananas and acting like an actual child.

In my memory of the event, I tried in vain to wave the coordinator off until, finally, my mother leaned over from the next chair.

“Do you see that book my son is reading?” My mother asked.

“Yes. Why is he reading books in Jamaica?” She said this as if customs should have confiscated anything with pages while we were still in the airport. “We have many fun activities for him.”

“He likes reading books.” My mother replied, flatly.

“He can’t possibly be enjoying reading a book of that length. He should be with other children his own age.”

(“I don’t like them,” I may have interjected.)

My mother leaned in a bit closer to the woman. “Listen, hon.” (I may have grinned a bit, as this was always an indication she was about to put someone on blast.) “My son likes reading books. Long books. This is the fourth book he’s read in Jamaica. We’ve been here for three days. The books are several years above his suggested reading level. And he likes them. Unless you want to tell us more about the educational value of your banana eating contest, I think that’s the last we’ll need to hear about your ‘activities.'”

That was the last I saw of Children’s Activities Coordinator.

As an adult I feel much the same way about vacations. I want to use them as a chance to do something I love that I would never have the time or inclination to do in the midst of my daily routine. Reading, writing, working on new songs, learning new things – mixed in with some local sights and delights. Vacations I have enjoyed – LA, Paris, St. Louis, Vermont – have all managed to strike that balance. Others, not so much.

We are leaving for Las Vegas in the morning. I have tried to do everything within my power to avoid my disinclination to travel, yet I still find myself disappointed that I am about to spend money and time to visit another place when I could just spend it in my house.

We’ll see how I feel about that once I am on the strip.

secret gourmets and undead dreams

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We got home late last night from having a minor dinner party with some friends.

The dinner party surprised me. It turns out that in addition to being a terrific actress, natural marketer, and one of my favorite dance partners, our friend Gina-O (i.e., not BFF Gina, but a different, second Gina with a nearly identical last name) is an amazing gourmet cook and furniture refinisher.

How did I not know this about her after knowing her for nearly five years? This is someone I absolutely gravitate to whenever we’re out with a group of people, and I am just learning these major facts about her.

Another thing to chalk up to my self-centeredness? Or is it entirely possible that other seeming extroverts don’t wear their entire lives on their sleeves.

(I only do it on my blog.)

I do not do late on weeknights anymore, unless it is for a show and I have the motivating energy of rock to keep me propped upright. I was so unbelievably tired that I think I may have intentionally driven over the speed limit for the first time on my way home in an effort to get into our bed that much more quickly.

E woke up crying in the middle of the night, which made me wake up and hug her in response. She was quite inconsolable, but said it was just a bad dream, and we were both super-exhausted, so we fell right back to sleep.

As I was fishing through my sock drawer this morning, I looked back over my shoulder at her as she stretched across the bed like a cat.

“So, the crying. What was that about?” I asked her.

“I told you, it was a bad dream,” she replied.

“Like, a depressing dream?”

“It was kind of an post-apocalyptic scenario. With two different kinds of undead battling for supremacy. Like 12 Monkeys meets Walking Dead. And I was the leader of the one tribe!”

“That actually sounds like an awesome dream.”

“Then I died at the end. Well, actually, I was dead already, so I regained my humanity. But it was still tragic.”

“Did you win?”

“Unclear. It was more of a set-up for a sequel.”

“Ah.”

Crying in her sleep about leading her tribe of undead to an uncertain truce only to become a martyr … until the sequel to her dream is optioned for production, anyway.

My wife, ladies and gentleman.

tuesday morning brain

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Scene: 8 o’clock in the morning, I am rounding my neighbor’s inordinantly large front yard in my business clothes and running sneakers, en route to my trolley.

Thoughts as follows:

This walk is boring.

Their yard is too big. It adds at least a tenth of a mile to my walk to work. That’s, like, a minute. I wish I could cut through their yard instead of going around it.

This is taking forever. I wonder if they would mind if I cut across their yard. That seems like the sort of thing you should maybe ask permission before doing. I could just try once, to see if they say anything.

Who would want a front yard this big, anyhow? It’s not good for anything. It’s not as if you would have a picnic out here for all of the neighborhood to see.

Do you know what would make this better? Music. I could listen to a third of a song while walking around this yard. Or, I could sing a song. It’s a little early for that.

It would be great if I had some way of playing a song right now. Like, if I had a device with me that did that – a portable music player of some kind. And headphones. That would be ideal.

Finally, the damned yard is over.

Oh, shit, I left my iPod on the hall table.

(I glance back over my shoulder at the expanse of the neighbor’s yard.)

Their yard is too big.

In case you ever wondered, this is how my brain actually works.

Defending Our Ride on CBSLocal Philly!

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E and I are sharing a slice of Internet Fame today courtesy of CBSLocal Philly via their auto correspondent @MikeyIl (who you may recall from my epic interview with him last summer).

Shot by MikeyIl for CBS Local.

My only prior auto-related run-in with Mikey was when he drove me to a concert in a pimped out ride he had on loan for a week to write up for a blog. Many months ago, Mikey put out the call for Philly residents with cars they really loved that were less than five years old. Feeling pretty strongly about the utility of our Toyota Matrix, E and I volunteer and wound up with an interview and photo shoot with our car! It’s our first shared press!

You can read the entire interview and see Mikey’s photos at CBSLocal Philly. As a bonus, here are a few exchanges from our interview that got wound up on the cutting room floor:

DYR: Does your car have an nickname?

E: I’m leaning towards Molly, though after Molly Weasley or Molly Bloom, I’m not sure.

 

DYR: Where did you get your car from? What/where was the dealer?

P: I didn’t even have my license when we bought the car, so a big test for us was if the dealer would actually talk to Elise about car stuff. I didn’t even know which side the gas pedal was on – I was there solely to haggle. I actually staged a walk-out mid-conversation at one dealer who didn’t seem as though he was actually listening to what Elise was saying.

Locally we work with Ardmore Toyota. Except, if you’re me, you sometimes call Toyota of Ardmore OKLAHOMA … which would explain why everyone answered with southern accents for a whole week that one time.

 

DYR: What’s your favorite or worst part of your commute?

E: I’ve driven it to work a few times. My favorite part is when I can first see the skyscrapers, and my least favorite part is when the radio cuts out in the parking garage. :)

P: I commuted to work once all summer. It was about five minutes shorter than my SEPTA commute but, unlike the El, I was not afraid of catching syphilis during the ride.

 
Oh, and this non-sequitur:

P: Elise is the best car-packing Tetris player I’ve ever known. She can make anything fit into anything.