Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

thoughts

In the Air

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A note for those of purchasing all manner of sexy netbook laptops such as my own, newly-acquired, darling, cobalt blue Samsung NC10:

Just because your laptop lacks a CD or DVD drive doesn’t mean you have to buy an external USB drive to use discs with your computer.

If the only reason you need the drive is for installing software or ripping music you can simply share the drive from any other computer on yor network by right clicking the drive in question and altering its share properties.

Sharing CD-drives in that fashion is a cinch; with DVD drives you might encounter the same error I’ve been hitting, which is that the drive is unavailable. (By contrast, Elise’s DVD drive shares with no issue.) As soon as I figure that one out I’ll get back to you with a solution.

Just now I installed mixing software from my tower’s CDROM drive to my new laptop over the airwaves of my wireless network so that I can work on mixes for potential freelance clients while on the plane to my honeymoon France.

If you told protozoic Peter I’d be doing that in 2008 his head would have probably exploded.

a protozoic peter

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I’ve been methodically tagging old CK posts in seemingly every spare moment ever since I first transferred from Blogger to WordPress in November of 2006.

At first the process was easy – I started with a list of my common post topics, and the content was new and familiar. It didn’t begin to get difficult until over a year later, when I found myself in the 2002 era. There I began to encounter memories I didn’t remember, or oblique themes I didn’t anticipate. I found myself walking over to E’s office to ask her about details I had forgotten, and constantly adding new topics to encompass some of my older worries.

As my excavation continued into the fall of 2001 I began to pass by the start of some topics – time traveling into the mind of a former me that had never been in a positive relationship, never met Elise, or never lived with Lindsay and Erika.

I already wrote about my sympathetic response in the current day, about how getting into the headspace of those old posts alters the current me. I’m past that now, though, past the first time I met Selina and the last time I was cast in a play.

It’s hard to imagine a Peter, less those milestones, but easy to understand why he’d seem so foreign without them. Every time I catch myself thinking, “this blogger is so young, so naive,” I remind myself that it’s not the years between us that cause that impression, but the experiences.

The last signpost of the modern me is Rabi, her personage and page omnipresent in my life for a seeming eternity. Yet, she too had a first post, and as I checked the box next to her “Rabi” topic I had a twinge of sadness that I wouldn’t get to check it again, so far back am I into my pre-history.

Two years after my big move from blogger and I am finally entrenched in my first three months, my first 900 posts. Posts about papers I had to write. Posts about days at the coffee shop. Naive posts. Posts about nothing. Posts prior to all of the major players in my current life. Is it even me that’s writing? Would that blogger recognize this current writer, content and a scant 14 days away from his wedding?

As I drilled through another dozen posts of tagging this morning I had an inkling that it might be time to give up, but there this OCD quality of mine to obey: I can’t let it go unfinished.

Will anyone care whether or not a three line post from December of 2000 is categorized in “rain”? The likely answer is no, but if I didn’t care about that I also wouldn’t care about a dozen other things that have kept CK lurching forward for over eight years. It’s the very point of CK – that I can excavate and time travel. It’s why I started it, and why it’s still here.

That’s the connection between your author here and your author then. That’s why I have to tag another 899 posts, no matter how tiny they seem from this great distance.

FaceBook flash mobs crash British bashes

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You might have to read this one to believe it.

The Daily Mail reports that police were called to shut down a local club when more than 500 youths decided to crash a private 18th birthday party that had been advertised on FaceBook.

The hilarity here is that the mob clearly didn’t log in to FaceBook en masse and click “Attending.” An agent of the mob took note of the event, and they colluded in some other way to converge upon it. They must have a special “mob of louts” social network, or perhaps a loutish bulletin board where such anarchy can be planned.

Even more hilarious is that this isn’t an isolated incident, but one in a string of flash mob usurpations of teenaged Brit bashes. Behold the final paragraph:

And in February, thousands of pounds of damage was caused to a house when hordes of louts barged their way in and staged a drug-fuelled orgy at 15-year-old Gemma Johnson’s bash in Worthing, West Sussex.

Except, doing a touch of background research reveals that Ms. Johnson was actually aiming for a drug-fueled orgy, which doesn’t seem to be the case in this new story.

Gemma had an interesting idea, but her execution was off. I think the ultimate in hilarity would be to stage a party that specifically benefits from being crashed, but I’m hard-pressed to think of any kind of event that benefits from the attention of over 500 drunk, drugged, possibly libidinous louts.

Thoughts?

Stuff Takes Time

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I rung in 2009 the same way I spent December 25th – quietly at home with Elise. The reality is that every other day has become its own holiday spectacle, so the actual holidays are one of the few chances we have to lay low and relax.

Our wedding is a scant 16 days away. When we set the date for January I was concerned that it would compound all of the craziness of December. Now that we’ve crossed over to a new year I feel exactly the opposite. We’re changing in a time of change. The wedding extends the exfoliation of a prior year, as though our NYE kiss will last from midnight yesterday through when we touch down back in Philadelphia after honeymoon.

My mantra in 2008 was “stuff takes time.” If it sounds unspecific, good – that’s the point. The point that everything in life – my education, my music, my blog, our relationship, our music festival, my career, and our band – has taken a lot of time and effort to get to this point. The point is that no goal worth attaining is instantaneous. I didn’t have a senior position at work and four CDs with my band in 2004, yet here we are. We couldn’t have gotten married in 2004 or rented a farm for our music festival in 2006, but that’s where we’re headed.

It would be pointless to spend the rest of the post back-patting for all of my accomplishments in ’08 – I sortof already do that once a year, anyway.

Let’s not look back. Let’s just devote our time to the people and the things we love, and move inexorably closer to our goals, one year at a time.

getting up to speed / my musical existence

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Who could have known that after my night in the smokey room the voice I would lose would be this one, rather than my physical one?

The last week has been an awesome proof-of-concept that I truly am living a duality of professional and musician, which is something I’ve wanted for myself for many years.

It has also illustrated that I a wee bit over-extended, and that after blogging the next thing I have to sacrifice to keep things up and running is my own sanity – not necessarily a bad thing, but not always a practical choice.

So, here’s essentially a week full of posts, because I really don’t have enough time or willpower right now to go back and post them all to the days they ought to have been posted on.

Wednesday. The story starts ten days ago, when I took the day off from work to record a new Live @ Rehearsal disc with Gina.

We had plans to just hit the four songs we had never recorded, but we wound up with eleven, including one I didn’t plan to record, three oldies we took random (successful) shots at, and three of our most frequent covers. Of the eleven I only discarded two for being a little subpar, which meant I had nine songs to mix and master and six days to do it.

Thursday. I could have just locked myself in the house and mixed for a week, but I had so many other plans that I was hesitant to sacrifice. Plan #1 involved dashing out of the house still chewing the last bite of my dinner to leap into the car of Mike from Shackamaxon, who organizes an amazing Philly Songwriters In The Round concert once a month at The Auction House in Audubon, South Jersey.

I attended to have a chance to see Mike and support his event, but I came away a huge fan. Mike’s trio of ITR artists were the increasingly national John Francis, Joshua Britton of melancholy favorite Sweetheart Parade, and one unknown quantity – Mike Baker of The Spinning Leaves.

I couldn’t get a read on Mike Baker in the car on the way to the show, and when I asked host-Mike what kind of music to expect from him I effectively heard “you’ll see.” And, see I did. And hear. Mr. Baker is an absolutely gem – a treasure of the Philadelphia scene. His stuff swung from key-shifting freak folk to lilting murder ballads to an impromptu, note-for-note take on “Paranoid Android” (with the other gentlemen completing the verbatim arrangement acappella). He also added harmonica wailing and pitch-perfect harmony to the songs of his compatriots.

Auction House features Philly Songwriters In The Round once a month, and if this one was any indication it’s always an amazing evening to drop $7 on.

Friday. So, despite my dire post about smoke inhalation, this was actually an amazing concert. I’m shocked again and again by the depth of talent in the Philadelphia music scene – you can hit a show full of people you’ve never heard of and wind up seeing some of the best musicians in the city, and you can probably replicate that experience multiple times a week, because Philly has that many amazing musicans.

Friday’s show was sponsored and anchored by The Spinning Leaves, who were every bit as great as Mike’s Thursday performance presaged – paired with his female half the band sounds like Arcati Crisis through a filter of Devendra Barnhart. However, I was equally delighted by Joshua Park’s melodic blues, and absolutely entranced by the sparse arrangements and killer fretwork of Chris Kasper, who at one point was joined on harmony by Adrien Reju – one of the Philly acts I have been the most delinquent in catching.

(I sadly missed Tin Bird Choir due to my smoke-induced illness, but I definitely plan on seeing them in ’09 – boy/girl acts are hard to come by!)

Saturday. After a quiet day Elise and I ventured out to catch the 2nd Annual PhilACappella – one of three yearly acappella concerts organized and hosted by The Drexel Treblemakers.

I was around at the outset of the group in 2001 when they hurriedly threw three songs together for their debut at the concert of another group. I’m so, so, so very gratified that in 2008 the group is over a dozen singers strong and full of amazing frontwomen who give the original artists runs for their money on songs like “Grace Kelly,” “Disturbia,” “Torn,” and “Dream On” (yes, Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” One of the best acappella performances I’ve seen in my life.)

The girls also debuted my arrangement of Paramore’s “That’s What You Get,” which still needs a bit of retooling before it’s as awesome as the rest of their rep. I still have machinations of doing a Rilo Kiley song for them, but cannot decide between “Portions for Foxes” and “Breakin’ Up.”

As a concession to my wiped-outedness, I missed the CD release party of Katie Barbato’s band The Sleepwells. I adore Katie and I’m so thankful for how hospitable she has been to me and my music in 2008. I definitely have to make up for my missed appearance by seeing another few shows of hers in ’09.

Sunday. Gina’s father-in-law Larry recently passed away.

I wasn’t especially close with him – I had met him at the holiday revue we’ll be playing tonight for the sixth year, and when we moved Gina and Wes into their house in 2007, plus a few other occasions. But, I very much liked him, and I expected he and his wife Joan would become a part of my extended family in the same way Gina’s parents indisputably are.

In lieu of a funeral, per Larry’s express wishes he had a wake at his favorite bar, full of food and drink, friends and family, and his favorite local live music. Throughout the day people from every corner of his life stood up to share a few words – not just extended family, but bands he had booked, scuba-diving buddies, former employees, and people he met while campaigning for Obama earlier this year.

Late in the proceedings Gina and I took the stage for an impromptu performance, offering our cover of Neil Young’s “Pocahantas.” Afterward Gina and Wes covered Neil’s “Helpless,” which I heard for the first time right hear on CK in 2003.

In the midst of sorrow for our loss, during that performance I found joy. In his passing Larry gave us all this amazing day, introducing every important person in his life to each other. More personally, he emphasized to me that I have been doing the right things with my time, because the bonds of music and friendship can last the length of a life and beyond.

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I have to burn another sixty copies of our new demo CD and figure out a way to look attractive while Gina and I are acting as the holiday revue house-band in less than six hours. Oh, and my groomsmen just called to tell me they are kidnapping me right now to get fitted for tuxes.

Bye.