Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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lime popcorn and how I nearly died

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I nearly died yesterday, due to a combination of popcorn, caffeine, and my remarkable skill and poise in professional presentations.

Allow me to back up for a moment. Last year E and I sent our spit to 23andMe so we could receive genetic profiles. Mine revealed many interesting things, including that the fact that my body metabolizes caffeine differently than most people.

Anyone who knows me could have told you that without the benefit of a state-of-the-art genetic test. Where a 12-ounce coffee makes most people perky, it turns me into a jittery, speed-talking demon that cannot operate touch screens or complex machinery.

It was with full knowledge of that potential outcome that I grabbed a 20-ounce soy chai latté on the way into an informal client presentation, figuring that I needed at least a slight edge of insanity to get through my fifth meeting and subsequent all-nighter of writing.

You would think I would be too traumatized by the events in this post to want to eat the popcorn ever again, but it was actually really good. I mean, there are worse ways to die than to asphyxiate on a delicious snack.

Fast forward to the meeting.

Slightly high on my caffeine buzz, I am at the head of a conference table filled with my clients, one of whom made individual bags of lime-tinted popcorn for each of us.

Things are going well. I have a rhythm down: gesture to slide, explain, solicit feedback, eat two kernels of popcorn, respond, repeat.

On the umpteenth repetition of this ritual, I finish explaining, solicit questions, and place the first of two pieces of popcorn into my mouth. The question is brief, and I inhale sharply to fuel my answer.

My first piece of popcorn skitters back across my tongue and lodges itself firmly in my windpipe.

“Excuse me,” I wheeze, patting my chest gently to expel the rogue kernel.

It does not expel.

I try to gently cough it up without causing a hugely gross scene in the middle of my presentation. and discover that I don’t seem to have any air to do the coughing with.

My entire client group is now staring me down as I slowly asphyxiate in front of them. I hold up one figure in a gesture to them to wait a moment and try again – with slightly less tact – to cough up the kernel, still lodged in my windpipe.

Nothing seems to be happening. I am acutely aware of the inexorable passage of time, both from a biological “I need to breathe” perspective and a business “this is kindof a long pause in a presentation, even an informal one with popcorn” perspective.

The entire client team continues to look on, now in mute horror, as my thumps to my own chest become less and less delicate. Finally, now nearly half a minute having passed, I turn to my left to one of my clients and in the barest of whispers state the following:

“I think I might require your help.”

Said client solemnly rose to his feet, walked around my overstuffed chair, and thumped me solidly three times in the back.

The kernel popped out of my windpipe, and I promptly swallowed it before it could wreak any further havoc. I re-took the inhaled breath that got me into trouble to begin with, and plunged forward.

“Now, as I was saying…”

permitted to learn

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As I alluded to in my New Year’s Day post, I have indeed travelled one step closer to possessing a Driver’s License. I am presently the proud bearer of a Pennsylvania Learner’s Permit.

(Actually, I’ve borne it for half a month now and still haven’t sat behind the wheel, but there has been snow on the ground for a third of that, and I spent some time in a state where I don’t have permission to wield a motor vehical. But, I digress. Maybe this week.)

I’ve had a Learner’s Permit before, as the kind man behind the counter at the DMV reminded me as he waived my “New Permit” fee. I was a little surprised that we haven’t reached some statute of limitations on that information, like maybe it would be kept on some moldy punch card in a box at the bottom of a shelf in some state-appointed information warehouse, all-but-forgotten.

But, no, he could see it right on his computer. My half-a-life ago Learner’s Permit, obtained in the same place, maybe on the same dingy little touch screen testing station at the end of the row.

I remember as an early teen I was obsessed with the idea of driving. I wanted my license badly, and all of the freedom and mobility that came with it. I would even have my own car – a boon most of my friends couldn’t boast; we had my grandfather’s boxy old Ford Taurus idly waiting for me to claim while he wilted away in a hospice.

I passed the permit test. I was fine at the actual driving, except for the occasional tangle with a corner in a tight turn. I just could not, for the life of me, park.

In my hazy recollection, that was the primary reason I didn’t take the test – I simply couldn’t park. Spacial relations is my eternal week spot, from geometry to packing a moving truck, and parking a car was like an awful pop quiz of exactly that. I had a lingering dread of time spent circling our block again and again in search of an open spot, and then being unable to pull swiftly backwards into one before another car could snap it up.

(You have to understand that, living in South and Southwest Philly, a significant amount of my life to that point has been spent searching for legal parking or monitoring our illegal parking lest we be ticketed.)

It was too much spacially-oriented pressure for me. Also, maybe I came to the realization that driving equalled more responsibility than freedom, and I erred for the path of the most freedom. After all, we lived in the middle of Philadelphia. Unless I wanted to make frequent trips to the mall, which – why? I was content to ride shotgun, occasionally reclining in the back seat with my guitar to score a car trip.

All of that flashed across my brain when I settled at the battered test screen a few weeks ago. It was the first test of any meaning I had encountered in over half a decade. Can you believe I was nervous about failing? I read and re-read the driving manual I-don’t-know how many times. I took the self-quiz over and over, writing a sentence about any question I got wrong.

I got a 100%, of course.

I trundled back through the sub-freezing wind to the trolley station in Darby, watching the landmarks of my teenage life slide by in my peripheral vision. I lingered at the station out of habit. It used to mark the outer bounds of my known world, the streets behind obscured like white spots on a map – there be monsters – up until the mall.

I slid my headphones on and cued up The Suburbs, beginning the long, frozen, uphill hike through three townships back to our house. A different direction, an older me.

Now, I reflected, driving means more freedom than responsibility.

abdominal revolt

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This morning my body is in revolt, and it’s all Jillian Michaels’ fault.

I have never been an exerciser. High school gym class jumping jacks and 8-minute buns? Sure. But cardio? Circuit training? No sir.

At the old house I at least had walking. We were three miles on the dot from my office, and as soon as Spring was sprung I’d power walk at least one way a few times a week. If I got on a fitness kick or SEPTA went on strike I’d do the entire six in one day, sometimes pretending to jog for a few minutes in the middle.

I hate jogging.

The new house is seven miles away from the office, and I don’t forsee myself making that walk quite as frequently. Or, you know, ever. I’m in a nice neighborhood for jogging, but I really, really hate jogging.

So now I’m an exerciser. Out of necessity, really, because I don’t think guitar playing counts as enough cardio for me to maintain my boyish figure. I naively thought that – with the natural reflexes of a trained assassin and the freakish untrained flexibility of Spider-Man – I would be able to jump right into P90X.

Yeah, about that. My co-workers told me that there was a pre-test on the P90X website to gauge your level of fitness. I took it.

I failed the pre-test, y’all. That’s the first time I’ve failed a test since AP Calculus. Apparently my untrained reflexes and flexibility were nill, and god help me if I had to elevate my heart rate. My physical skill amounted to being able to walk any distance at a constant speed of 5MPH, and that was it.

Basically, I had the physical fitness of a pack mule.

Now I am exercising several times a week with Jillian Michaels, which is a whole post unto itself. Let’s just say I had no idea who she was, but I liked the sound of getting “shredded.” Thanks to Jillian’s undying support and fierce, carnivorous smile that tells me that she preys on the weak once the cameras stop rolling, my aspirations have grown beyond managing the size of my supple bottom to perhaps one day being worthy and able enough to make it through the P90X gauntlet. And what if… what if I had actual abs? Like, abdominal muscles you can see through my skin. You know, like Brad Pitt in Fight Club?

I was repeating that abdominal mantra to get to sleep last night, because my abs were trying to declare their secession from the rest of my body. I did my longest Jillian workout DVD yesterday, and about halfway through my abdominal section decided it had enough of the circuit training, the added resistance, and being a “strong core” for my legs and arms.

My “powering through” the rest of the workout only worsened the tensions between my abs and I. Despite ample stretching, an hour later I felt like Jillian Michaels was walking up to me and kicking me in the stomach about once every twenty seconds.

I described my agony to E, seeking comfort. “Is this what cramps are like,” I moaned pathetically?

That was a tactical error.

She scoffed. “Like having cramps?! Are you curled up in a ball on the ground, crying? Does it feel like something is trying to tear itself out of your stomach for days on end?”

“Um…” I considered bringing up the whole abdominal secession issue, but it seemed imprudent.

“Then, no, it is not like cramps.”

I went to sleep, abs still throbbing with phantom Jillian kicks, on the back of a new mantra:

“No, it is not like cramps.”

the future is here; where is my jetpack?

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I am writing this post from 2011, which feels like it ought to be the future, even if it is really just the present.

I remember being a kid and charting out the major milestones of my life. Not things that were going to happen, like when I’d get married, but certain thresholds. When I’d graduate high school, when I’d be half as old as my parents. And, from there I remember thinking, I’ll be 30 in 2011.

And we’re here!

I don’t make resolutions – at least, not for the new year. Why should 1/1 be any different from 4/5 or 6/6 or any other day of the year?

I don’t make any promises to myself, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have goals. I have a hugely complex spreadsheet of goals that I grade each year, like my own personal annual report, but I also have a very simple, overarching trio of goals I set forth here seven years ago today: know what I’m spending, what I’m eating, and how I’m using my time.

I feel like that got away from me a little in 2010 with the annual report-grading, house-buying, bass-playing, comic-collecting, gig-headlining, soundtrack-writing, novel-authoring, learner’s permit-getting(!), and other related madness.

I’m excited for 2011 because all of those things all already in place. The house is bought. The bands are rocking. The graphic novel bookcase is established. My recording gear isn’t in the same physical space as my suit jackets and my home office.

I am writing this post from the future, and it is filled with opportunity.