Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

thoughts

swimming with rock

by

“It is now stupid o’clock.”

This was Jake. Or Gina. I don’t say it, generally, and I know that I saw Zina nod in response.

It is impossible to deny that – after a certain amount of evening rock on top of each of our full days at work – our quartet of brains begin to dribble out of our ears, at which point they promptly get blasted into a fine mist by the power of rock emanating from our various amps and speakers, until the air is swimming with rock and thoughts and laughter.

This is usually around the start of hour three, if we have paced ourselves.

I have nothing left in my body once it is over, no brains or thoughts or anything. Last night I tried to send an email to the band after they left, and like a bad dream about garbled numbers on a phone dial I couldn’t get it right. I kept sending it over and over, missing addressees, words, and attachments – a mini episode of Groundhog’s Day on All Marmot’s Eve.

I used to resist rehearsal reaching a point of silliness. You know me – I’m too elitist and serious and scarf-wearing for that. Eventually I began to appreciate it, and the brain drain I feel in its wake. Silly is good. It means we’re limber and willing to try things, like playing a dance cover twice as fast as we’ve ever done it before (and nailing it).

Brainless is good, too. It means we left everything in the room. In the air. I wouldn’t want to feel like I had a sparkling wit to wield after rehearsal. Then I think we would have done it wrong.

Arcati Crisis always experiences a bit of a lull in December and January, but this year it made me feel particularly desperate. We had been playing so regularly in 2011, and the songs were reaching an amazing locked-in state. Then came holidays and flu and travel, and when we met back together on the other side it had been over a month since we last played – out or in – and the songs were feeling a little flabby.

I’m impatient, and I wanted the tightness back immediately, but it doesn’t work that way. With four people making music in a room – our music, anyway – it’s not just about notes.We’re not an orchestra that tunes up and unfurls the same notes every time with precision. We need to loosen before we tighten.

Sometimes we become a little silly in the process.

Sing me to sleep, Scully

by

I talk a big talk about my avoidance of television. Friends trumpet their favorite new shows, and I gladly ignore them.

My life is already so exciting and hilarious, see, that I don’t need situation comedies and crime thrillers to insert hilarity and excitement.

Except, lately that a bit of a lie. It has come to my attention that Netflix Streaming has added The X-Files to its extensive repertoire. And while I may be safe from the temptation most new television has to offer, I cannot resist forty-two minutes spent with my friends Mulder and Scully.

(What’s amusing about this is that we have the seven seasons of X-Files on DVD sitting just beside the television, but am I watching those DVDs? No. I am too lazy to load them into the DVD player. I would rather watch a stream.)

At this point I have this shit memorized. Every re-watch is like seven seasons of Rocky Horror Picture Show talkbacks (“You’re a backhoe!”) and Top Ten Lists. (Top Ten Times Mulder Screams “SCULLY!”)

So, every night – usually just after dinner or rehearsal – I say to E, “Let’s watch an episode.” (Top Ten Times Scully Shoots a Perp (or Mulder)) And we do. It’s great. It ends with my lying somewhat prone on the couch, carefully prodding at my laptop

(Top Ten Oblique References to Mulder’s (okay: Duchovny’s) Porn Addiction)

Then, I suggest, “One more?”

(Top Ten Times Scully is Captured)

This is where we enter the danger zone. I cannot stay awake for two consecutive episodes of TV I have already seen and possibly memorized while lying somewhat prone on the couch.

(Top Ten Times Scully is Knocked Unconscious by Walking Into a Wall)

And so I allow my eyes to drift closed, spirited towards fitful rest by the dulcet tones of Agent Scully.

(“Mulder, toads just fell from the sky.”)

It has got to stop.

 

Circus Circus

by

I did not have many must-do items on our itinerary. Just one, really.

Circus Circus.

I am a huge fan of Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo Journalism, and one of my favorite books is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Many of the locations from the book have since been demolished or converted into something new, yet two significant ones remained: The Flamingo and Circus Circus.

As luck would have it, we were staying at The Flamingo – the scene of Thompson’s freak-out trip and his attorney’s accosting of a hapless maid turned informer. I gleefully read these passages to E, who shook her head in a mixture of bemusement and disgust.

The other intact monument to the book is Circus Circus, a casino complete with its own trapeze act and merry-go-round bar. Since the casino is farther north on the strip, it wasn’t somewhere we would idly walk past. We had to plan a day around it.

We finally arrived on day four of five, fresh from our arial adventures atop the Stratosphere. Circus Circus looked exactly how I pictured it – a low dilapidated facade dominated by an eery neon clown.

Circus Circus is now a children’s amusement park.

I don’t know what else to say, really. The merry-go-round bar that Thompson mercilessly ejected his attorney from now serves pretzels and sorbet, and the acrobat show is a purely family-friendly affair with no rabid wolverines in sight.

I thought the Circus Circus revelation was pretty much the final nail in the coffin of this trip for me. It represents the ultimate disappointment of Las Vegas. Everything here is an illusion or a faded recollection. Everything needs the night air and a neon facade to brighten the corners of an otherwise dismal and callous place.

(Then my travel companions brought a bottle of champagne on a roller coaster and we had a major dance party to an 80s cover band, which helped reduce the Circus Circus disappointment to merely an amusing sidebar to the best day of our trip.)

(I still don’t like it here.)

 

girls at your door

by

The Las Vegas strip is a relative joy to walk, day or night. Both sides of the street are a wide promenade of adult playground lined with fake classical sculpture, walk-up bars, and slot machines as close to the sidewalk as legally allowed. The sidewalk is filled with milling drunks, bachelorettes, and people dressed as Mickey Mouse and Sponge Bob while double-fisting 40s.

(There is no open container law in Las Vegas. Or, rather, if there is a law, it is one that allows open containers. The next casino over sells drinks in massive containers shaped like miniature Eiffel Towers.)

(There is a strong possibility you will see a picture of me wielding one in the near future.)

Every ten feet of promenade there are hucksters. At first I assumed they must be trying to pull people into different casinos or parties. No. There are 100-foot-tall billboards of Celine Dion for that.

They are hucking girls. Girls delivered right to your room. That is the gist I have been able to discern without actually taking one of their flyers.

That doesn’t surprise or offend me in the least. The disturbing part is the manner of hucking. I do not think they can actually say anything about the girls or what the girls are legally allowed to do with you in the state of Nevada. As a result, the group of silent hucksters are uniformed in neon-colored shirts crammed with text explaining their service model.

Even more prominent, they whip their fistfuls of flyers to and fro, creating a viscerally disturbing smacking sound. Like some pornographic echolocation, they begin to aim the smacking at you from a distance of about ten feet, and if you make even the slightest visual acknowledgement of their existence they will know. Even a sidelong glance at the color of their neon shirt.

Then they are upon you.

The closest I have come to pumping money (or anything else) into their business model was when a particular copse of the silent, smacking hucksters was accompanied by a sole verbalizing huckster.

He was hucking their neon shirts in every possible color.

high hot pressure

by

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.