Crushing Krisis

accumulate

September 18, 2016 by krisis

Last week on one of our trips to the library EV had to hold on to my belt loops rather than my hands to cross the parking lot because I was juggling a massive box of books to donate.

In it were books that E and I have been carrying around since college – over a decade now! Textbooks, college literature, and pleasure reading that has been forgotten or fallen out of favor. They travelled from our separate apartments to our combined one, then to our house on Greenwich Street, and now here to the suburbs, never once cracked open in all that time.

It never felt like we had a lot of stuff before we moved to this house. I’m not sure if it was because we didn’t have the space for it or because we were better at hiding it all.Or, perhaps it’s that we’ve given up a third of our physical space and much more of our time to the tiny third human now rooming with us. Likely some combination of the three..

I used to scoff at the idea of someone who needed to clean out their attic or garage or basement – how could you have so much stuff in there that you needed to dedicate time to throwing it all away? Yet, earlier tonight I waded into our box-strewn attic to try to reclaim my recording space for upcoming projects.

There was barely room to take a step. When we first moved here six years ago the attic felt cavernous – so large you could hold a concert or install a bowling alley. Now it is cramped, a scene from hoarders, packed to the eaves on each side with boxes of comic books, CDs, instruments, sheet music, board games, and random knick knacks I have accumulated and not yet purged.

I managed to eliminate six entire boxes from the hoard, consolidating three boxes of print samples from my old Creative Services job down to one (do I need five copies of a 2010 individual health care plans booklet?), mercilessly eliminating items from boxes marked “computer errata” (a spare copy of my original 1999 demo encoded at the wrong speed – was I hoping it would become a collectors item?), and combining several boxes of books (perhaps communications history books and grammar guides can share a space?).

Now there is room to breath in the attic – though still not enough to record. Eventually I’ll run out of obvious trash to dispose of and get down to the harder choices… books that I’ve read and still love, board games we play but not often, and stacks of handwritten revisions to lyrics.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about accumulation in this digital age. I have some friends who are notoriously sparse in what they allow into their homes, constantly pruning possessions back to a few favorites. I have further friends who eschew any physical item if they can have the digital version.

I don’t know how to get there. I’ve wanted so many things for so long that just now my urge to possess is starting to feel sated. Now the constraint is not budget but space and, terrifyingly, time.

I’ve been working on a song about this feeling before EV was born. It’s never quite finished – just one more possession I’m hauling around, although this time it’s my mind that’s being weighed down. Now that I’m nearing a half year of spending time at home as a parent, I think it’s high time to start putting these things to use or discarding them.

Are we all that we accumulate
Because I don’t want to be defined
By melted liquor bottle chocolates
That fell behind my dresser
The night we thought we ought to eat them all at once
To see if we would get drunk

Am I a thousand paper backs with creases on the spine
And every Beatles record I have bought since I was nine

I don’t want to live alone
I don’t want to be a hermit crab
Carrying my possessions inside a shell
Winched onto my back
Moving to a larger home when I’ve outgrown the last

Children’s Book Review: Mr. Tiger Goes Wild & The Curious Garden by Peter King

September 17, 2016 by krisis

We’ve been reading to EV since the first days of her life, but reading to a tiny squirming baby is a lot different than reading to a curious and opinionated three year old.

Peter Brown in a YouTube video for his book The Creepy Carrots.

Back then I read whatever I liked, and baby EV issued nary a complaint unless the language wasn’t smooth and consistent enough to hypnotize her into a lull. As long as I was enjoying the reading, she was enjoying the reading, too.

Three year old EV is a little different. She has a long attention span and a voracious appetite for books, but she’s got some preferences to work around. It’s not so much that she dislikes any one book, but that she likes others a bit too much.

We don’t do any “put it on repeat!” behavior in this house (another post for another time), but if EV is crushing on a particular book it quickly turns into a twice-daily read for a few weeks. As the designated reader for at least another two years, when a new book hits the “Crushing EV” list that means my preferences come into play beyond my typical “is this a good message?” filter.

I don’t want anything with language too simple or silly, or prose too basic. I enjoy books with different character voices where I get to do a little acting or situations that leave some room for imagination so I can editorialize. And, strong graphic design and typesetting can’t hurt – after all, these are books I’ll be spending hours with each week!

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild is one book that I was delighted that EV added to her favorites, so much so that finding more by author Peter Brown was my first priority at the library. When we picked up The Curious Garden I expected it to be good, but I did not expect the two books to have such complimentary, synergistic themes.

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild & The Curious Garden by Peter King

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild: CK Says: – Buy it!

Read Time: <5 minutes
Gender Diversity: Male protagonist; society of mixed genders; children exclusively minded by females
Ethnic Diversity: not applicable
Challenging Vocab (to read or to define): loosen, peculiar, unacceptable, magnificent
Themes To Discuss: civilization, wearing clothing, differences between animals and people

The Curious Garden: CK Says: – Consider it!

Read Time: 4-8 minutes
Gender Diversity: Male protagonist; no other named characters though some female background characters
Ethnic Diversity: A set of briefly-seen wordless background characters are of different races
Challenging Vocab (to read or to define): greenery, pruning, delicate, mysteriously
Themes To Discuss: trespassing / urban exploration, pollution, how plants grow, greening

This pair of beautiful children’s books by Peter King have a lot to say about civilization versus nature, and how the ideal state of the world is a balance of the two. Both books have a positive message and enjoyable prose, and each it rife with interesting topics for discussion.

Peter King’s illustrations are a delight. His characters are all vividly colored and have a slight blockiness to their outlines. They seem to be near siblings to Jon Klassen and even give a very slight hint of Adventure Time.

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild is the whimsical tale of a town filled with very proper animals who all dress like pilgrims and walk around on their hind legs. Mr. Tiger feels like something about his routine just isn’t right. After bounding around town on all fours and enjoying some very loud, improper roaring, he decides to take things to the next level and abandon his clothing. His neighbors, already perturbed by his running and climbing, decide this is a a bridge too far and ask that he leave town.

Mr. Tiger enjoys a return to the forest, but eventually misses his friends in town. He returns to offer a compromise on the puritanical dress code only to find that many of the town’s animals have adopted some of his more animalistic habits and are happier for it.

EV loves this book – from the moment of its introduction it has been one she is happy to read multiple times a day if given the chance. Me too, thanks to hilarious pages like the when where Mr. Tiger first has his wild idea. At first, she was more enamored with the variety of the animals in the town, the comic style word balloons that made it obvious who was speaking, and the cuteness of Mr. Tiger. As she has aged, she is more engaged with the plot, why Mr. Tiger wanted to be wild, and Mr. Tiger’s return to nature (and then again to society).

EV has repeatedly initiated discussions about why the tiger is even wearing clothes and if it would be okay for her to take off her clothes outside. If you don’t like your books with a side of thought-provocation, then this might be off-putting – but, we love those kinds of books in this house. I think the topic of what it means to be civilized (and what’s just puritanically-derived custom) is perfect for a little wild thing who is learning to tame their toddler urges and interact with the world around them.

Since we love Mr. Tiger so much, The Curious Garden was the first book I plucked from the shelf the day EV got her library card. Like Tiger, it has inspired intense love from both EV and we parental units, but it’s a very different sort of book with its own message about how the best elements of nature still need some cultivation to blossom. [Read more…] about Children’s Book Review: Mr. Tiger Goes Wild & The Curious Garden by Peter King

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2E04 – “Drag Movie Shequels”

September 16, 2016 by krisis

This week on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the queens tackled sequels of three famous camp films and brought their best two-fashions-in-one reveals to the runway.

rpdras-s2e04-queen-reveal As with last episode’s lip sync extravaganza, this episode is a greatest hits of queen performances – the weakest pair of acting jobs are still hilarious and the worst runway is gag-worthy. Uneven (some would say unfair) judging casts a pall over affairs and makes the obvious winner of the week look messy as a result.

However, none of that compares to the reveal of the final frames of the episode, which found the four eliminated queens staring back at the five remaining queens through one of their workroom mirrors. The eliminated girls are back and ready for their revenge!

And now, on to the rankings!

1. Alaska Thunderfuck 5000

Runner-Up, Season 5. Pre-Season Rank: 1. To date: 2, 1, 1. Average: 1

rpdras-s2e04-alaska-maxi-01 An acting challenge is the perfect bounceback for Alaska after a week where she would have been in the bottom if not for her shrieking alien runway outfit.

While her results were bit mixed, the show’s reflexive applause for her efforts prove that this season was designed for Alaska to win in the same way All Stars 1 was Chad’s game to lose.

Be warned, fair readers: I’m about to drag this beloved drag queen a bit despite her top ranking.

Alaska was gifted with the most gag-worthy, meme-generating character in the trio of acting scenes, Bette Davis’s legendary Baby Jane. I have to believe that this script was destined for Alaska no matter what, just like the script with the “tired old showgirl” joke was going to be Phi Phi’s (who knows what would’ve happened if they paired up).

rpdras-s2e04-alaska-runway-01 Alaska slayed in her uncanny Baby Jane impression, which proves she could have easily done Bette Davis for Snatch Game (a Jinkx favorite on the Best of the Seasons tour). However, all the mugging as her impressive caricature made her scene also feel like the Snatch Game – it was joke-to-joke instead of moving smoothly through a story as the other two did.

While you could blame the script for the herky-jerky quality of the scene, it didn’t help that every one of Alyssa’s interjections felt like a full stop in the action. Alaska was a clear winner, but she doomed Alyssa in the process.

As for the runway, this was one of Alaska’s weakest of all time yet she got a pass for being Alaska when Alyssa got a fail for being Alyssa. The runway theme was a dual-fashion reveal, but Alaska’s lumpy trash bag burqa didn’t qualify as fashion. Beneath, she presented a decidedly inelegant take on her legendarily foul mini-challenge creation, Lil’ Poundcake. It was shabby when it should have been stunning, which would have only further sold her petulant mugging as Poundcake.

rpdras-s2e04-alaska-runway-02 (Non-fan E caught a glimpse and said, “Well, that was pathetic.”)

Luckily, the judges love in-jokes (as do fans) so they ate it up. However, it’s insulting to see such applause for Alaska in joke-mode when everyone else in the field smoked her on reveals and were all considerably more elegant. She then delivered a lackluster, unserious lip sync on one of the best lip sync songs of all time – “Got Be Real” by Cheryl Lynn – all while Phi Phi destroyed it with perhaps the best sync of the season.

We get it Alaska – you’re a skilled impersonator, even of your own characters (including yourself). I came into this season rooting for Alaska, but after four weeks of All Stars I’m looking for something a little bit more. Hopefully Alaska delivers in spades for next week’s comedy challenge to keep some semblance of objectivity going in this race since it’s not destined to be suspenseful.

Otherwise, I’m hoping for an upset by the queen who has Charisma Uniqueness Nerve and Talent right in her name… [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2E04 – “Drag Movie Shequels”

on Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent, and Transmisogyny

September 15, 2016 by krisis

This weekend the heavy favorite to take home the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series is Jeffrey Tambor, who plays a woman on Amazon’s show Transparent.

More accurately, Tambor plays a trans woman – a woman who has transitioned from being a man. It’s a stellar role on a series that spends a lot of time on voices we don’t traditionally hear from in sitcoms.

And I really, really dislike it.

Jamie Clayton and Freema Agyeman, stars of Netflix’s Sense8.

This isn’t my typical hyper-critical nature rearing its head. The show is fine. The thing I don’t like is Tambor himself in the role.

Having a cisgender man (i.e., “a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to their biological sex”) cast in the role of trans woman not only takes the role away from a trans actor, but also emphasizes the inherent maleness of the character. That’s a trait most trans woman characters are trying to leave behind as they live an external life aligned with their internal gender identity. If a trans actor wasn’t available for the part, a cisgender woman would be more appropriate since the truth of the character is as a woman, not a man.

No matter how much Tambor transforms into the role, we will still see him at awards ceremonies as a man. His next role will likely be as a man. Tambor is sensitive and supportive in every media appearance for the show – a true ally – but all the accolades he’s won and will continue to win for Transparent will be about how bravery and honesty of his portrayal of a woman in transition.

It would be more brave and honest to have an trans artist like the Jamie Clayton on Sense8 or Laverne Cox in Orange Is The New Black (two shows with their own set of other representational challenges).

I’ve had trouble articulating this discomfort to friends in conversation, especially as a cisgender white dude who doesn’t really have a stake in this discussion. Why do Transparent and The Dutch Girl bother me so deeply when I’m fine with the way Drag Race and Hedwig and The Angry Inch dissect gender roles with men portraying women?

Then, a few weeks ago, I came across a powerful series of tweets from writer and actress Jen Richards. Richards articulates my objections concisely and crystallizes them with additional detail. I present them here, unedited, in their entirety. [Read more…] about on Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent, and Transmisogyny

the twin challenges of reading and other children

September 14, 2016 by krisis

EV had a 36-hour runny-nosed cold yesterday and I’d really like to blame it on other children, but I refuse to let them take credit for all of the books we read together.

On Monday I finally went to the gym at the local YMCA, five months into this stay-at-home experiment that was supposed to be at least fractionally about getting back into the shape I was in five years ago. Going to the gym by day meant depositing EV into a kid’s playroom for the better part of an hour – something that has always given me pause.

I’ve met the director at the Y and would trust her chosen child-minders implicitly, plus the environment is a room filled with toys and books without a screen in sight. The pause comes from the children they are minding. I don’t know them or their manners or what vapid TV shows they watch or what their parents have been teaching them.

It’s tempting to assign this fear of other children to a yuppy millennial helicopter parenting, and I’m sure some portion of it has to do with that, but my fear of other children influencing EV comes from my own distaste for other kids growing up. I wanted no part of them and their messy, silly, rough ways. Even though I watched all the TV they did and played with a lot of the same toys, I never wanted to be associated with other kids. I didn’t even want to be one myself, which was an easy illusion to maintain as I hung out in bars with my father and went out to dinner with my mother.

I’m not trying to raise EV to be a mini-me or to have the same mistrust of her peers that I had – to this day it remains as an unhealthy habit of keeping my peers at arm’s length. Yet, when I see kids EV’s age who act up, always have their hands in their mouth, spout nonsense words, are picky with food, yell and screech, or play rough and imitate guns, I can’t help but sneer at them just as I did when I was a little kid. I don’t want EV to miss out on important peer interaction, but I don’t want her to think that behavior is the acceptable norm, either. You can be more of a kid than I was without being a terrible little snot-nosed monster.

So, I gritted my teeth and left her eagerly exploring the play room while I huffed and puffed and lifted weights for an hour. She was perfectly cheerful when I picked her up.

Four hours later every part of my body was sore from class and EV had a definite case of the sniffles. “It was those damned runny nosed play-room kids,” I raged over internet chat to E and Lindsay. To their eternal credit as my life-parter and BFF, respectively, they replied separately but in verbatim unison: colds don’t incubate in four hours.

In other words: cool your jets, helicopter pilot.

The sniffles continued into yesterday, which put a whammy on some of our plans – I didn’t want to be the asshole parent who brought a contagious kid to the playground. (This led to me trying to explain the concept of “contagious” to EV – I love that we’re in the explaining things phase of parenting). Instead, we made a return trip the library to pick up a new batch of books to read at home. There, the librarian talked us into joining their “1,000 Books Before Kindergarten Challenge.”

“We’re starting this a bit late,” I said, trying to dissuade her from signing us up.

“It’s plenty of time!” she responded cheerily as she began to copy EV’s information down onto a registration card. “Plus, you can always count re-reading the same book multiple times.

It was as if she said the magic words. I could feel OCD Godzilla revving up in the interior of my gut, sharpening his nails within my bile duct as he contemplated that most kids were doing a SELECT ALL instead of a COUNT DISTINCT when querying their book reading – the obvious tactics of a book challenge cheater.

Godzilla and I quickly did the math. We had 24 months until Kindergarten, which meant maintaining a solid clip of 42 new books a month to hit the mark. But that was barely a book a day! We easily did 5-6 even on a slow day, but those were repeats from our own collection. Surely we could do better with 26 branches of the Delaware County Library System at our disposal and me as a stay-at-home-parent.

“Let me ask you something,” I said, giving the librarian a sly sidewise smile, “what’s the fastest anyone has ever completed the challenge.”

We’ve read 30 books in the last 24hrs and have another 20 ready to pick up at the library tomorrow. Today we cleared off our entire bookshelf to begin plotting our path through re-reading them and logging them for the challenge – which, to EV, is like letting her loose in a candy store. I quickly tired of hand-entry on the challenge sheet and switched over to a database format that would also track durations and duplicate reads.

I think we can nail this thing down in less than 100 days.