Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

thoughts

Remember when?

by

I remember convincing my mother to let me stay home from school to watch news coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I remember my grade school wheeling a television into our chapel, begrudgingly, to watch Clinton’s inauguration.

I remember Chestnut Street streaming with people, adults and students, on September 11.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to remember about last night, or why.

Life is binary. Someone terrifying and monstrous was alive. His ideals and goals were completely opposed to ours. Now he is dead. There is little to digest or debate.

Life is binary. Liberty is digital. Progressive. Freedom is not an on-or-off state. After slaves were freed they still lacked many liberties. Women won the right to vote but were still treated as second-class citizens. Gays and lesbians will soon be free to serve openly in our military, but not to enjoy the status of marriage.

Life is binary. Liberty is digital. The pursuit of happiness is infinite. It is endless possibility that your life and liberty help to define. It’s who you are and what you do, and how satisfied you are about doing it.

What will I remember about last night? That it concluded four days of celebration around the marriage of two of my favorite people. That the bride’s family traveled from across the country and globe to be here. People I had heard about in stories, whose sickness and health had stuck in my thoughts. All of us in the ballroom as I endeavored to steal the bride’s shoe from her foot (a tradition). Sitting in a hotel bar watching her pose with Colonial War reenactors, a perfect juxtaposition of the men who fought to secure our unalieable rights and someone who came a long way (in distance and life) to be able to enjoy them.

I will remember Elise and I, lying in bed in our own house with my laptop on my chest, exhausted from celebrating for days. Watching reaction blossom from one Facebook status to a dozen to my entire Twitter feed. Watching President Obama speak.

I woke up this morning in the same bed, next to the same person, free and content.

If anyone ever asks me what I was doing when I found out that Osama Bin Laden was dead, I will tell them it had nothing to do with death, and everything to do with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Baby I Can Drive Your Car

by

This morning I was on the slowest possible trolley.

It made me think about travel powers, how we take our limitations for granted, and how no one can change that but ourselves.

.

In defense of my parking, that was the first time I had ever driven an SUV and I didn’t really understand the concept of its turn radius.

I drove a lot this past week.

I drove us into the city to hang out with friends. I drove Nan’s massive shuttle bus of a vehicle to pick up our fine dinner of Chinese food. I drove a tipsy E home at midnight in blinding rain.

(Which is an absolutely perfect situation to learn how to drive on a highway, and don’t let anyone tell you any different. The rumble strip is there for a reason, you know.)

My recent time behind the wheel has given me a chance to contemplate how I’ve limited my life around not being able to drive. I buy my essentials in bulk, since I can’t drive myself to the grocery store. I’m perennially absent from parties – especially ones at any distance – unless I can crash with someone else.

Even music – music – my number one commitment outside of staying married and holding down a job I enjoy – is limited by non-driving. I don’t go for gigs outside of Center City. I don’t look at concert listings outside of Philly. I assume I have to buy all of my friends’ new LPs online because I’m not going to make it out to their shows.

Of course, that all seems pretty normal. It’s been my life for my whole life. My non-driving was a serious commitment, right up there with my not watching TV, not eating meat, and not acknowledging the existence of Miley Cyrus. It was a big part of my identity.

It was also practical. And I didn’t have the money for a car, or for car insurance. I didn’t have the time to constantly circle for parking spots when we lived in South Philly. And for a long time I didn’t even have a car to learn on, so the entire point was moot.

Really, me not driving was for the best.

.

Back when I lived most of my life inside of City of Heroes I had a similar limitation: I wouldn’t take a “travel power.”

Most superheroes have them. Superman can fly. Spider-Man swings from rooftops. Batman has a mobile. Nightcrawler teleports – the whole point of him is travel! In City of Heroes every hero could choose a travel power at level 14 – flying, super-leaping, teleporting, or having super-speed.

Nightcrawler’s mutant power is teleportation. At the point that your entire super-power is all about travelling, would you even bother to get your driver’s license?

All seriously cool powers, right? But, my main superhero gal was meant to be a normal human being. Plus, why waste a power on moving around when I could be… you know, more SUPER. SUPERER!

I was super. I was a serious superhero that could kick the ass of anything near my level. But you know what? I was slow. It took me forever to get to the place where I needed to be super. Teammates were constantly standing around waiting for me.

It didn’t bother me at all … until I finally broke down and learned to fly, at level 35. It was awesome. Everything was faster. I got to PLAY the game more, instead of just jogging around the game. Within a day I was saying, “Why the hell did you all wait for me all of that time? You should have given up on me and made me learn to fly!”

They all cross their arms (really, there was an emote for that) and said, “You SAID you weren’t interested in flying. You SAID you were happy.”

.

I don’t have my license yet, but my increasing confidence in the car means I just need to wrangle up a licensed driver if I want to go for a ride. I drove to a party I would have never made it to in time on SEPTA. I got new prescriptions on a weekend, without wasting a lunch break on them!

I drove the Nan-Tank to get Chinese food like it was nothing, electing not to dwell on the fact that it was my first time driving a car other than my own, and it was in flood conditions.

(“Just think,” Nan pointed out with glee, “if we weren’t in [the Nan-Tank] that wall of water we just kicked up would have swallowed your entire car!”)

(I can neither confirm nor deny if that was followed by a subtle “yee-haw!”)

As it turns out, real life isn’t entirely different than City of Heroes, except I wasn’t stubborn enough to wait until I turned 35 to learn to drive. In both places I insisted I spent my time, effort, and money on the most high quality parts of my life and not letting anyone convince my otherwise.

That’s great when it comes to not wasting money on cable TV or never having heard a note from Miley’s lips, but not when it hamstrings me from doing even more of the high quality things I like to do.

Soon I will be a sure enough parallel parker to obtain my lisence, and then that housebound, SEPTA-reliant portion of my life that I’ve always taken for granted will be over. I can go to parties. I can go on a vacation alone! I can go on a road trip!

Odds are you probably have your own travel power, but maybe you have some other limitation you’re taking for granted. Do you have the power to eliminate it? How would your life be better without it?

Or, is it there for a reason – like paying for cable television would just give me a pointless way to waste my money and time?

Joining the Boys’ Club

by

I have never been “one of the guys.”

Except for live-nearly-nude-dancing-girls, apparently.

I don’t do a lot of typical dude things, like ogle women or watch sports. Most of my friends are women. Even in my dim memories of kindergarten, I surrounded myself with girls.

That’s not to say I don’t have any close male friends. We just don’t do dude stuff together, like … uh, I’m out gender stereotypes already. This is how little I am connected to my dudeness.

That said, I have found myself in the groom’s party of one of my longtime male BFFs and – unlike my wedding party – this one is a single sex affair. A fest of sausage, if you will. Which means not only am I in for some guy-on-guy quality time, but I was in for a bachelor party.

Prepared as I might be to drink other men under the table while watching sports (seriously, just try me), inherent in the looming bachelor party was a looming visit to a strip club.

I dreaded the concept. The only time I was nearly convinced to attend a strip club with friends I wound up having dry heaves before I could even get in a cab. I’m too little of a stereotypical dude and too much of a feminist. Paying to objectify strange, naked women is really low on my list of things that sound fun.

(To wit: my own bachelor party was a co-ed 80s prom entitled “Like a Virgin.”)

I can't deny it - I honestly did resemble him a bit on Friday. You know, with the unbearable hotness of me.

Yet, at a strip club is where I found myself on Friday night. Well, they had tops and bottoms on, so I guess it wasn’t a strip club. A pole dancing joint? Is that more accurate?

Hilariously, I turned out to be a live-nearly-nude-dancer magnet. E thinks it’s because I looked like Bradley Cooper in the episide of Alias where he pretends to be an Australian rock star.

She was probably right.

And, folks, point numero uno everyone failed to tell me about strip clubs? You might have to be careful how you touch the women, but they do not have any hesitations about how they touch you.

Yeah.

You know, I can’t not be polite and chat for a minute if someone is nuzzling me with her breasts, and then I feel bad for taking up her time, and then I am obligated to fold dollar bills and slip them into improbably small straps holding together even more improbably small garments.

The whole thing is ooky and disgusting slippery slope (not unlike a stripper pole … HEY-OH!)

After the first hour I was tipsy and having fun with the guys and alternatingly glowering at my cell phone in an attempt to ward off further elbow-molesting bosoms, having driven off the last woman by going on at great length about how my beautiful wife helps me select all of my fashion after she complimented my scarf.

I can't even contemplate the coordination it would take for me to be able to do this. I'm still working on mastering tree pose.

I felt another pair of breasts at my elbow (seriously, my elbow = SO POPULAR), and turned for my casual brushoff. This woman’s opening gambit was to ask me what I did for a living. When I said, “communications – marketing, really,” she exclaimed, “That’s my major! Well, really I’m journalism.” Which, as we know, I was too.

That’s when I started to have a little fun at the strip club. At first it was a room full of strange women, none of whom where even vaguely as attractive as my wife. As aerobic as their gyrations were, it didn’t feel much different than watching a class at a gym.

Then I actually took the time to meet one of the women – a perfectly sweet Italian girl – and give her advice on how database classes are going to help her if she ever has to do any direct marketing. And then I met another woman who was a fitness instructor and collected comic books.

You know what, I didn’t mind watching them dance. They were real people with great legs. And we kept chatting after they danced.

(Of course, there was still the inherent weirdness of having to tip a girl to have the sort of conversation I’d have at a networking night at a bar…)

Does this story have a moral?

I am one of the guys, even if I’m not a stereotypical guy. I can drink and carouse and have fun without being a chauvinist, so I need to get over my fear of “The Boys Club.”

Also, I was reminded of something important: attraction is context. My wife is more attractive than any stripper not only because she is smokin’ hot, but because she’s my mega-talented best friend. Similarly, I think my friends’ wives and girlfriends are beautiful. Why? I know them. They are not random pretty faces on the street – they are dynamic people with a myriad of skills and interests.

So are the women in a strip club – but you don’t really get the chance to hear about that (unless you keep tipping them). I guess most men are fine with that, but my not being fine with it doesn’t mean I am not a man, guy, dude, or boy.

Next up? I hear it’s traditional for us to kidnap the bride at the wedding and barter in liquor with the groom for her return.

That, I think I can handle.

Want Not, Waste Not

by

This isn’t a post about environmental righteousness. It’s about waste.

When we lived on our tiny side-street in South Philly I was fascinated with how much trash each household could produce, as if the size of the houses and the width of the street ought to have any bearing on how much a single home could waste in any given week.

We generally put out one tall kitchen bag; our neighbors put out three massive, black trash bags. With a garbage disposal and recycling for paper, glass, and basic plastic, it turns out I don’t throw out very much at all.

What doesn’t fit into those categories? Pretty much just used tissues, old guitar strings, dead ballpoint pens, and fuzz from the lint trap in the dryer. The basket in my home office fills very slowly.

Even in our big new house on our wide suburban street we have the least garbage on the block. We struggle to fill our single lonely can. Some weeks it’s not even worth hunting through the house for fodder to fill it with. And, while neighbors don’t have the mounds of garbage they did in South Philly, it’s still always two or three times what we toss.

I think about all that garbage, and where it goes. Then I think about the people who lived on the block in the 90s, the 80s, the 70s, and on back until the houses were built in the 20s. All of their trash, before there were garbage disposals and recycling programs.

I even think about our lonely little trash bag, if it even makes it out to the curb. What if we could only dispose of garbage once a month? Would it change the way we lived? Would our house be cluttered with trash? Even if that yielded only one full can a month, what would we do with those twelve cans a year?

Would we waste less? If we wasted less, would we want less?

I always think I eat too much, buy too much, consume too much – but I don’t leave much evidence on my body, bank account, or curb. I wonder, what is it everyone else is consuming and wasting so much of to create those piles of imposing black bags?

Maybe all my waste is intellectual. If I don’t write for a month, are those saved up words in my head waste or product? Did I put the thoughts to good use or toss them away?

What about you? How do you cut down on disposables in your house? And, do you think your blogging, Facebooking, and Tweeting is a valuable product or something you are discarding?

continuum

by

I’d love to peer into some alternate reality and see what I’d be doing with my time (and money) in the new house if I hadn’t simultaneously taken up playing bass and buying (and reading) an entire lifetime’s worth of X-Men comic books in graphic novels in a single year.

Imagine it. More time. More money. More sanity.

I don’t know what it is about me that every time I find a new way to occupy my spare time (like, you know, being a rock star or homeownership) I need to find a preoccupation to distract me (like writing a novel), but that’s how it works.

At least I’m getting better at playing bass. The comic books I just have no excuse for.

As for being a rock star, I’ve been so focused on Filmstar and Arcati Crisis that my playing on my solo material has become decidedly flabby. I spent hours warming up a few dozen older songs. Bass and comics notwithstanding, I really want to record something for you to hear soon, because without new music I’m not much of a rock or a star. Until then, download Brown Bag Demos, Vol. 1, if you haven’t already.

On the homeowner front I did a slew of things you have absolutely no interest in, along with dining with Cecily and Charlie, who live down the literal street from us.

Charlie has this perfect resonant-but-aerobic voice that makes me want to write something for him to narrate, and there’s nothing like having Cecily as the person you’d borrow a cup of sugar from. I learned about some sort of disturbing play gak made up of tiny dippin’ dots, we traded stories and opinions on films, and I think I shocked Cecily a little with the vehemence of my hatred for the anti-feminist Anti-Christ that is Katy Perry.

Come to think of it, I had one actual occupation this weekend – house managing for Ocelot on a Leash‘s spectacular production of Stop Kiss. I only miss acting from the “anything you can do I can do better” perspective, which is maybe the only reason I got into theatre to begin with. Ocelot productions make me feel comfortable as an audience member, because there is nothing to question and little to improve upon. (Although, I sort of want to write a piece for their Twilight Zone Fringe play.)

(See? Preoccupation.)

This week I’m faced with seeing bro in his first paid production in Philly, and also with traveling with him, E, and sis J to a family funeral.

Nineteen year-olds gunning for stardom and 90-somethings who crossed oceans to start a family and become the best in their field in NYC at a time it was unheard of to do that, let alone be Chinese while doing it.

It’s all on the same continuum.

Sometimes I’m on it too. Even when I’m playing bass.

Maybe not while reading comic books, though.