Archives for October 2007

The road flows like a river, and pulls me around every bend.

October 30, 2007 by krisis

I think that was a sufficient amount of time to bask, uninterrupted, in being a fiancé.

Much stuff is afoot in chez krisis, and not just our impending wedding. I have more to say on that topic than you could ever hope to consume in a single sitting, so I’ll be dragging the whole mess of it through National Blog Posting month, and beyond.

Okay, I’ll say one thing now: I love all the dire wedding warnings that come from every quarter when you first get engaged. I suppose it’s a cultural hazing thing? I just don’t get it. Each of our favorite weddings were relatively lacking in insanity and drama according to the various brides. Also, we’re both OCD project managers with the same taste in everything.

Right. Remind me to come back and read this post in about twelve months and see what I have to say about it.

If that was all that was happening it would be, oh, say, the most exciting time of my entire life. However, chattery on the topic of engagedness tends to eclipse the fact that there are also some other life events in motion, such as the massive behemoth of posts that is NaBloPoMo looming a mere two days away.

You should be comforted to know that I’ve drawn up a comprehensive content grid so I’m never lacking for post topic (see, OCD project managers). The challenge will be finding myself awake and at a computer long enough to do any posting.

Part of that challenge is that Gina and I (AKA Arcati Crisis) are playing a second trio of songs with a rhythm section on November 9th at the Rotunda, followed by multiple holiday performances, and moving through a half-hour set at Doc Watson’s in January (and, possibly another appearance at the Tin Angel), all of which results in plenty of rehearsals, both together and separately.

Oh, and the normal busyness, such as having four of my projects reviewed (and approved!) by our CEO over the last month, learning various exercises and arias for my weekly voice lessons, working up a communications plan for our homegrown music festival, and trying to drag my sorry ass out to East Falls every Thursday to play our favorite open mic.

And, last but certainly not least (though, what could really be least in this list?), I suddenly – and completely out of the blue, I assure you – can play piano. I’m still slow to learn actual pop songs, but I seem to have collected a modest enough palette of rhythms and riffs that I can bang through my own stuff with increasing ease and surprising variation, and I actually prefer some of it on keys to guitar strings. Imagine that!

Anyhow, that’s life, at the moment – full of activity, but paradoxically forcing me to take frequent naps in order to keep up with it.

How have you been?

We interrupt this interruption in service…

October 24, 2007 by krisis

Over the past five and three-quarter years of blogging you’ve all become acquainted with Elise.

I always used to joke that my paucity of girlfriends was due to the fact that I’d only date girls more intelligent (and talented) than me, and Elise certainly fits that bill.

She not only fits that bill, but she’s also gorgeous, hilarious, and perfectly equipped to at once complement and endure all of my flaws.

Well, as of last Friday night at about 6 p.m. that gorgeous, brilliant, hilarious, talented, perfect-for-me girlfriend of mine is now my fiancée.

Our engagement was totally unique and unbelievably flawless. And, if you want to hear about it, you’re going to have to tune in next month, because you had better believe I’m saving all that awesomely schmaltzy writing for NaBloPoMo.

As for blogging before then? I’m otherwise engaged.

(a)Live, (and back) From Australia: Part 2

October 16, 2007 by krisis

Elise and I being… well, being us, one of the early Australia topics we hit upon was music.

We actually started discussing it before Elise even returned, when she phoned me from an HMV to ask if I wanted her to buy me anything (including a t-shirt, at which point I calmly explained that HMV was not an Amoeba-like rarity, and that we used to have an HMV in Philadelphia that’s now either the Gap or City Sports, and that it’s basically just Tower Records with a Euro-skew).

Five or six years ago my eyes would have popped out of my head at the idea of all of the special tracks to be had down under, but in the iTunes age it’s not such a big deal; I advised that she pay more attention to the local stuff she wouldn’t be likely to find in the States.

Upon return Elise blithely informed me that Australia is for all intents and purposes her own personal radio utopia. They predominantly play the hits of the eighties, nineties, and today, plus an eclectic blend of local music.

As for the latter, Elise was psyched to hear a new Missy Higgins record on the radio, since we’re still on her last one here, and also came back singing the praises of The Waifs.

However, she was most excited by a band called Cream Vs. The Hoxtons.

What an unwieldy name for a band, I thought (and said).

She insisted they were worth the unwieldiness. She had caught their video several times, and they were seriously cool. I would totally like their single.

Despite their supposed cool factor, CvtH proved to be unfindable on domestic iTunes, and a Google search for their domain was equally fruitless. However, I noticed that we turned up a single hit for them on YouTube.

Realization dawned as I loaded the page. Dawned on me, anyhow.

“Honey,” I queried out to the hallway, where Elise was bustling about with her laundry, “I don’t suppose the video you saw was for ‘Sunshine of Your Love.'”

My room was suddenly filled with a a tan, lithe girlfriend trailing various and sundry laundries.

“That was totally it! Did you find them?”

I stared at her, agape.

“What?”

“Honey, I think their name is probably just The Hoxtons.”

“Why?”

“Because this is probably a cover of ‘Sunshine of Your Love.'”

“What’s that?”

Now I was growing a little flustered.

“It’s a song. A song by Cream.”

“Who?”

Slightly exasperated: “Like, you know, if some boring sitcom dad (or Giles) is going to sing along to one classic rock song not by a usual suspect like The Who or The Kinks or Pink Floyd, it will inevitably be this song. Or, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Possibly both.”

“In a god a the what now?”

At a loss for words, I fired up the YouTube clip, to be met by this:

We listened in rapt silence.

“Um, Elise, when does The Hoxtons song start?”

“What do you mean. We’re listening to it.”

“No, this is just a bunch of overly made up girls miming to ‘Sunshine of Your Love.’ By Cream. Can’t you tell that this is Eric Clapton?”

“Oh. Yeah, now that you mention it. Wait… I thought you said this song was by a band called Cream.”

(Here’s where I may have slammed my head onto my desk repeatedly.)

Suddenly, fifty-four seconds (and several thousand deceased brain cells) into the clip, extra drum beats and a horrific Euro-disco bassline are introduced into the song.”

“There, see,” Elise proclaimed, triumphant. “That’s it. That’s the Hoxton’s part.”

I listened for a few more seconds.

“Honey, now it’s just a lousy dance remix of Cream.”

“Oh.” Sheepishly. “I just thought she had a manly voice…”

(FYI, The Hoxton Whores are a pair of British house DJs slash remixers; they are not the band of leggy ladies depicted in the video, above.)

(a)Live, (and back) From Australia: Part 1

October 15, 2007 by krisis

You may have detected with your keen bloggy-senses that I took a weekend holiday from CK to commemorate Elise’s return to American soil.

Well, half of it was in commemoration. The other half was spent in a ridiculous house-cleaning freakout fueled by the inexorable OCD Godzilla demon that resides in the hereditary depths of my soul.

(And, actually, about a fifth of that half was spent on the couch watching season five of Buffy and eating peanut butter out of a jar. But, I digress.)

I am still absorbing the national wealth and wonder of Australia via Elise’s stories (the best of which is about how she kidnapped a small boy to tow her kayak) (no, really), but right now I have to share the two that paint the pair of us in the most ridiculously naive light.

I’ll go first.

I’ve always assumed that kangaroos are are… you know… special. I’ve only ever seen one or two of them in my life time and, after all, they are a national emblem. So, while they might not be bald eagle special, I’ve spent my entire life assuming that they are least as special as a grizzly bear, or maybe a dolphin – something you don’t often see in your daily travels unless you live adjacent to a very specific terrain.

Plus: marsupials!

Also: adorable, in a strangely rodent sort of way.

Well, if you thought something similar in your decidedly nationalistic naivety I hate to shatter your illusions, but apparently we were dead wrong.

Not about the latter two things, mind you; no one can take those away. We’re just wrong about the relative scarcity.

Because, you see, kangaroo are common. Quite common. As common as deer are in Pennsylvania, especially in that you are most likely to encounter them grazing in your yard or narrowly averting them in the middle of a road, and they are fair (and even welcome) game for hunting and eating.

This seems like the sort of imperatively important thing I should have learned in second grade, or whenever the teacher reveals to a shocked and awed classroom that there are other countries where people don’t spend American dollars.

(Actually, I knew that all along, and as early as kindergarten and as late as fifth grade I was endlessly amused by ~~the morons~~ my peers who didn’t understand that Philadelphia was a city and Pennsylvania was a state, let alone the nuances of zip codes. But, here I have to digress yet again. Back to kangaroos.)

I mean… deer are just Bambi, you know? They don’t do anything special like, say, fucking hop at speeds up to 44 miles per hour, or carry their young in a built-in fanny pack. They just walk around and… well, that’s really all they do.

My point being, deer aren’t magical, imaginary, cartoon creatures that just happen to be real.

Illusions shattered. Seriously, I can never go back.

Tune in tomorrow for Elise’s way, way more flagrant display of nativity, which – unlike mine – can’t even be blamed on being an ignorant American.

Lessons Learned as a Temporary Bachelor

October 12, 2007 by krisis

As of tonight Elise has been away from Philadelphia for over two weeks.

That not only marks the longest time I’ve gone without seeing her since January of 2002, but also the longest time I’ve ever lived alone.

Effectively, I’ve been a bachelor for the first time in close to six years. which was a pretty big eye opener. What I realized is that even when you function independently as part of a pair, somewhere in your mind you are considering what your other half is doing, and when you’ll see them next. With Elise half the world (and about 24-hours of travel) away, those back-of-mind ticklers were rendered inert.

Here are the ten things I learned while left alone with my brain.

10. I can easily get up on time if I don’t have another person’s alarm clock to confuse me…
9. And, I sometimes really do prefer to sleep on the couch.
8. I enjoy going out for drinks. A lot. And, I don’t tend to drink to excess if I’m coming home alone.
7. Playing guitar alone in the house is only a priority when I have a limited time to do it. (Like, more limited than two weeks)
6. Begrudingly adhered-to habits (like dieting or room tidying) are only fun when I have someone else to gloat to about my success.
5. Conversely, enjoyable or self-affirming habits (like blogging or teeth whitening) are easier to keep up when I’m entirely under my own recognizance.
4. I never, ever, ever turn off the hallway light, even when I am convinced that I recall turning it off.
3. I know absolutely nothing about the function or repair of toilets.
2. My main motivation to do laundry is not lack of clothing – it’s actually peer pressure.
1. I really like Elise.