Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Tori Amos

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It just occurred to me that i haven’t listened to a Tori Amos record since January, and then it wasn’t because i felt like listening to Tori but because i needed a specific song to comfort me. But, then a month went by without listening to her at all. I have months like that sometimes… usually alternating Tori and Ani. For some reason i can’t deal with both of their tremendous song catalogues all in a single span of four or five weeks. So, anyhow, i figure i should fit some Tori in now before Ani’s new double album takes over my life next month. Right now: Under the Pink.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/03/2661073/

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*swoon* – Shirley Manson of Garbage mentioned in her personal diary that my favourite sexy bitch of a drummer, Matt Chamberlain, is going to be playing on a song or two on their new album. Does it get any better? Shirley even mentioned how she crushes on Tori! I love mutual appreciation societies!

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/02/2241550/

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Matt’s amp is buzzing. To get any kind of volume out of it you have to turn up the Gain knob, which distorts the signal a little and leaves you with this constant amplifier hum. It feels expectant, as thought some rock band’s big sound is going to come crashing out of the amp any second in a tidal wash of big guitars and growling bass, but really it’s just me sitting on the floor trying desperately to read sheet music from the Bass Cleff of a Tori Amos book.

The apartment is otherwise empty. I did a lot of wash yesterday, so the bedroom looks somewhat organized. In here is another story … everything scattered – papers, cds, jackets, shoes. It’s really the fault of this weekend; i didn’t spend much quality time with the apartment this weekend. Saturday night Drexel had their homecoming dance and i have this single glowing picture of me with a tie tied around my head as though i was some kind of savage, sweating like a horse and smiling madly. I love to dance, that’s all there is to it.

It took me fifteen years to learn how to do the mashed potato correctly. I’m not sure that the learning curve is so steep … i think instead i had to spend time learning all sorts of other little rhythmic pieces of the puzzle before i could put it all together. A decade and a half is a long time to have spent doing anything. I’ve been in school for fifteen years now… i’ve been out of my first house for fifteen years… i’ve had my Thundercats for fifteen years. it’s funny, i only have a decade on my closest cousin and he won’t ever know the same things i knew as a child. Thundercats, GI Joes, Madonna, George Michael, Casey Kasem’s countdown, Johnny Carson, Ronald Regan, the Gulf War … all of those things are vivid emotional and psychological building blocks of my life.

I’m the only one of my cousins that will remember my Grandmother. My nine-year-old cousin Dale wouldn’t have any memories of her active and laughing since he was five or younger, and all of my other cousins are only four. I’m the youngest person in the family to know her; we spent hours sitting at her kitchen table playing solitaire, lying on her living room floor watching Golden Girls every week, eating Golden Grahams before i got picked up by my carpool on the way to middle school. Last night i was on the phone to my mother and she reminded me how long my father’s mother had been in a managed care facility … time had shrunk it down to only a year, but she was out of her own home months before we left my home of sixteen years in SouthWest Philly (which she owned).

That was almost three years ago. It’s been a long time since i’ve sat and played solitaire with her, but to me it doesn’t really seem so expansive. She’d always get up and dance when she won… singing “Let the Good Times Roll” and dancing around the kitchen. I eventually learned to jitterbug so i could join her, but by then it was too late.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2182260/

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So, my mother doesn’t share stories from her youth too often, but there are three very infamous tales from when she was my age about David Bowie. You see, my mother used to be obsessed with Mr. Bowie. If you were to take my fanatical worship of Peter Mulvey, combine it with the awe in which i regard Tori Amos, and then send that all through my nearly frightening dedication to the cast of Friends, you might get to somewhere near how my mother felt about David Bowie.

Her one claim to fame is that she met Bowie in the Sigma Sound studio while he was recording Young Americans here in Philadelphia. At first this story was simple… her friend knew the percussionist, so they got into the studio and then Bowie came out and motioned vaguely in their direction. Over the years i managed to eek some more details from her, like the fact that Bowie was discussion a saxophone passage with David Sanborn (who played on the record). Then i learned (from VH1, which never lies) that David Bowie was on so much cocaine when he recorded in Philly that some of it is actually a blur to him now. I made sure to rub this in my mom’s face at every opportunity, but she’s trumped my coked-up-Bowie with a brand new detail divulged this weekend. Apparently, she got into the studio not because her friend knew the percussionist, but because the percussionist stepped outside for a smoke and asked if anyone had any rolling papers. Of course, my mother’s friend did have them, and somehow they got them into the studio, where her paper-possessing friend proceeded to vainly attempt to make conversation with a surely glazed-over Bowie.

Isn’t she a fun gal? I’m starting to have suspicions about why she doesn’t recall the experience too well…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2000/12/1787405/