Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 1 – Sidewalk to Catwalk: Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review and power rankings of the first episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – “Sidewalk to Catwalk”!

Canada’s Drag Race often feels a little more real than the American edition. It could be the editing style. It might also be that Canada’s queens come from a smaller pool of performers and have fewer expectations of fame and fortune from being on the show.

This debut of Season 3 kept this feeling of realness, but it also compressed a lot of action into one hour. We had entrances, a runway mini-challenge, the ritual “first de-dragging,” a full-on design challenge, mirror chats, a final runway and judges critiques, and miniature Untucked segment back in the workroom.

While this isn’t radically different than the tight schedule of debut episodes from RuPaul’s Drag Race Seasons 3-5, here it felt rushed. It’s not unusual for the safe queens in a debut to get very little camera time, but it felt as though we didn’t even get to know two of the queens in the top three!

Adding to that lack of balance, it felt like two of the safe queens were dominant narrators despite not being featured outside of confessional, and one of the bottom queens wound up the star of the episode despite having the least to offer.

That made this episode feel unsatisfying, even if this cast of queens are all distinct characters with memorable personalities. I’m not sure I’ve ever committed everyone in a cast to memory so quickly! It’s a group of artists heavy with talent and, past a handful of struggling queens, light on obvious weak spots.

What does that mean for the eleven surviving queens’ chances for winning the crown? Below I break down my reaction to their initial challenge performance and re-rank them from my Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Pre-Season Power Rankings from earlier this week.

If you want to watch Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 outside of Canada and the UK you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. I don’t get any kind of cut off of that – I just want you to watch Drag Race! (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best Queen (of the North) win!

[Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 1 – Sidewalk to Catwalk: Review & Power Ranking

the customer is always angry (in America)

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After half a decade of living in New Zealand I can finally see how abnormal it is to assume that the customer is always right, and that they always have a right to get angry about it.

As an American can claim you are immune to these expectations and behaviors. I promise you’ve engaged in them hundreds of minor times. That’s true even if you are someone who is often on the receiving end of that same rage. As with many things in America, the cruelty is baked into the system.

Your dish came out a little bit wrong at the restaurant? Rage and ask for a discount. Service on your car didn’t quite repair the problem? Rage and demand an immediate fix. You received an online shopping order with an incorrect or slightly-dinged product? Unleash your fury and require free return shipping.

Some people manage to make these demands without demeaning the person who has to accommodate them, but just as often we assume that absorbing our accumulated fury is part of the job. If someone wants to be able to afford health care they have to be willing to soak up an amount of capitalist vengeance.

That’s American life. It’s part of the sickening caricature that “American Exceptionalism” has become, where everyone is encouraged to be their own plucky protagonist expecting perfection at all times. It’s the land of the Karens.

For most of my life I didn’t think too hard about this. In fact, my viciousness as a consumer always seemed like a fun feature of my perfectionist personality rather than a major bug. I was infamous amongst my friends and colleagues for causing a scene and storming out of retail situations gone wrong. I learned it by watching the adults in my own life as a kid. I wasn’t trying to be specifically cruel to any employees. I just needed to get exactly what I thought I was paying for (even when that wasn’t what I actually ordered or was ever offered).

It never seemed abnormal to me in part because my own clients demanded the same level of perfection from me all of the time. I built up a thousand little defenses and extra processes to deliver things flawlessly every time, as many Americans do, and so I expected perfection from everyone else.

Becoming a people manager changed that. The first time one of my direct reports got yelled at – I mean, really screamed at – by a client radically altered my approach in a way that being yelled at myself never did. I understood how ridiculous I had always been. I “fired” several clients for the misery they caused my team not being worth their subscription fee.

Yet, if someone made similar demands with a smile, we kept them around.

I adopted the same personal approach. No more cruelty, no more storming out. Yet, my demand for perfection didn’t change. I would complain sweetly, kindly, patiently, and with many compliments to the manager of the person I was speaking to… but, I’d still get my way in the end.

Our move to New Zealand turned my last vestiges of twisted American Exceptionalism on its head. [Read more…] about the customer is always angry (in America)

Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings

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Canada's Drag Race Season 3 Promo

Welcome to my pre-season Power Rankings of the queens of Canada’s Drag Race, Season 3!

Canada’s Drag Race kicks off with a first episode tomorrow, which means now is the time to cement our first impressions of their cast of 12 drag artists.

If you’ve never watched Canada’s Drag Race, both of the first two seasons have been high quality, delivering some of the franchises most memorable challenges and lip syncs and a pair of iconic winners.

In fact, both prior casts were thoroughly memorable, and it didn’t take long for their Canadian kindness to give way to serious competitive streaks. If Jimbo is the only Canadian export you know so far, you’re in for a treat!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 11 runner-up Brooke Lynn Hytes is the dragged up face of the show, but in practice she shares the spotlight and the hosting duties with other hosts each season – which had included supermodel Stacey McKenzie, actors Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman and Amanda Brugel, sassy stylist Brad Goreski, and TV presenter Traci Melchor. Having a team of talented coaches gives the franchise a decidedly Canadian flair unique from the other Ru-hosted English-language editions.

Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 released a colorful promo trailer that shows off its dozen queens much better than prior promos, which have been slightly drab. Alongside the promo trailer, they also produced a series of 90-second “Meet The Queens” interviews with the cast.

For this initial Power Ranking, I’m only going by what I can see in those 90-second interviews plus the queens’ social media accounts. I’m not even going to review the trailer a second time, since it might make obvious some of the queen’s placements based on how many outfits appear. (Nancy Drews on Reddit are already on top of that, but I’ve abstained from their detective work.)

Remember: this is all in good fun. If I had Power Ranked last season’s queens, I doubt I would’ve picked our top three! These are all outstanding drag artists, but being a great drag artist doesn’t always translate to doing well on Drag Race.

If you want to watch Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 outside of Canada and the UK you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. I don’t get any kind of cut off of that – I just want you to watch Drag Race! (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best Queen (of the North) win! [Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings

D&D 5e-Compatible Kickstarter Round-Up: Humblewood Tales, Iron Kingdoms, Oracle Magazine, & more!

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Image by ScalyDragon from Pixabay

It’s time to ready an action, because I’m back with another review of the Dungeons & Dragons and 5e-Compatible Kickstarter projects, including the gorgeous Humblewood Tales, a pair of legacy campaign settings getting a 5e update, and several affordable adventures and informative zines!

This week, I reviewed the 12 new 5e projects on Kickstarter to find the must-buys, the best values, and the most unusual concepts.

For projects with a scope that extends beyond being a single adventure or specifically-focused supplement, I review them based on the 9-point criteria I established in “What makes a good Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition official release or 5e-Compatible supplement?”

Here are links the 12 new 5e-Compatible projects out this week, all of which I review in this post:

Plus, there are another 14 currently-running 5e-Compatible projects that I already covered at length last week:

If any creators of those projects happen to swing by: congratulations on your awesome work! I might have a few critiques about your campaign page, but your labor of love is still an impressive effort.

Do you have an upcoming 5e-Compatible Kickstarter project? As I continue this pilot series over the next few weeks I’d be happy to check out your sample pages or give you comments on your campaign page. Just leave me a comment below or reach out to me @CrushingComics on Twitter. [Read more…] about D&D 5e-Compatible Kickstarter Round-Up: Humblewood Tales, Iron Kingdoms, Oracle Magazine, & more!

Music Monday: “Underdog (Save Me)” – Turin Brakes

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I have a secret favorite band.

They’re not only a secret because I never talk about them publicly. They’re also a secret because I don’t know a damn thing about them. I don’t know who they are, what they look like, why they’re a band, what their politics are, or when they’re putting their next album out. I’ve never seen them on tour and never watched a video of them. I don’t even know if they play live!

Turin Bakes - Underdog Save Me Single Artwork

All I know is I love every song they have ever released.

It is highly unusual for me to fall madly in love with something and not want to hoover up every single facet of its existence. You’ve seen the name of this site, right? That’s what the “Crushing” part has always been about – what I’m crushing on, and what’s crushing me. When I have something crushing, I want perfect 100% knowledge of its complete breadth and depth.

Except this one band.

Turin Brakes.

I don’t know anything about them, but I can tell you exactly how I found out about them.

Their song “Underdog (Save Me)” was on the Q Magazine’s “Q Best of 2001” sampler CD that came with their end of year issue that December. I almost certainly bought it at an airport magazine stand en route to stay at my grandmother’s condo in Florida for the holidays. That was pre-iTunes, so I probably listened to it once or twice on my CD Walkman and then shelved it’s paper sleeve alongside the rest of my compilation CDs and promptly forgot it existed.

Then, in 2003, iTunes came to Windows and I spent a month converting my massive CD collection to MP3, including that Q sampler on November 8th, 2003. And then I didn’t listen to it for another year, until I bought my first iPod for my solo trip to California to hang out with Laura and Sara.

Clearly I was working my way through a playlist of unheard songs while on my trip, because several other tunes from that sampler have their first (and only) plays in that period. And then, the very day I returned to Philly, I added two Turin Brakes records to my collection. I might’ve even bought them at the historic Amoeba Music in Los Angeles!

Why? What was so special about “Underdog (Save Me)” that made me so eager to hear more of this band?

I can tell exactly why: they were the first new band I ever heard that entirely reminded me of myself. [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Underdog (Save Me)” – Turin Brakes