Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

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RuPaul’s Perspective & Lady Camden’s “I Don’t Need a Reason”

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Another season of RuPaul’s Drag Race has come and gone.

Several, actually. We’re already on a third one this year, with Drag Race Espana giving us no chance to rest after the run of UK vs. The World and the final of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14, with another one season starting later this month and more already shot and ready for announcement.

The series coming later this month is an All-Winners edition of All-Stars, and between the Season 14 finale this weekend and the upcoming parade of winners I’ve been thinking a lot about queens who do well on Drag Race versus queens who win.

If you look at the winners of all of the regular seasons of American Drag Race, I don’t think we could say any of them are solely a lip syncing, dancing, performing queen. That’s an important part of drag culture and drag performance, but often the winners of Drag Race aren’t the best lip syncer of the season – even now that each season culminates in a lip sync for the crown.

Bebé, James (fka Tyra), Raja, Sharon, Jinkx, Bianca, Violet, Bob, Sasha, Aquaria, Yvie, Jaida, Symone, and this weekend’s winner (no spoilers, here!) all share something in common, and that’s perspective. They each bring an eye for drag that is uniquely their own, and often talents along with it.

Not everyone can have Sharon’s spooky glamour or Bob’s killer comedy chops. Even if we zero in on the queens on that list that seem a little less unique in their skills, they brought something else to the table along with that. James had her unflappable confidence and her masterful seamstress skills. Aquaria had a depth of fashion knowledge and pop culture reference unheard of for a queen her age. Jaida brought pageantry alongside impeccable styling and a deadpan sense of humor that invited us to laugh with her and at her.

If other queens won those seasons, could we say the same for them? I don’t know. I think there’s a certain inevitability to the artists who win Drag Race because I understand now that RuPaul is looking for that perspective in her winner. Some of the runners-up had perspective (Kim-Chi especially stands out), but others don’t feel like the could bring what the winner brought in that moment even if they seemed neck-and-neck at the time and have blossomed afterward

(Courtney Act and Brooke, two of my all-time favorites, both illustrate this perfectly. They are both stunningly perfect drag queens, but neither of them were at the height of their powers at a potential winner. They had more to do. They had more perspective to form.)

This is why it’s almost a slur when RuPaul simply labels someone “professional.” Professionals don’t have perspective because they are adaptable. RuPaul is a professional now, but that’s not how she came up in the world of drag. She didn’t have a BFA or a background in professional theatre. She was a punk. She was a chameleon. She was adaptable.

She is looking for that same punk hustle in a regular season winner. It doesn’t mean you have to have a punk rock aesthetic. It means you’ve got to have a way that you see the world and reach out to demand things from it. [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Perspective & Lady Camden’s “I Don’t Need a Reason”

slow mo(nth)

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The speed limit in Wellington varies from 30 kilometers per hour to 100 kilometers per hour, depending on if you are on a residential street or a highway.

I spent all of March moving no faster than 8 KPH.

Not coincidentally, that was also the speed I had been moving in January and February, but for an entirely different reason: I ran over 80 kilometers the first 59 days of the year.

When we lived in Philly proper over a decade ago I walked everywhere. Even home from work several days a week.  I never ran.

I walked everywhere and it felt like I was capable of everything. I walked and got promoted, walked and composed songs in my head, walked and wrote whole blog posts.

That’s why I went on my first five kilometer walk the first week in January while E and the kid were off camping. Not for some New Year’s Resolution. I walked because it was a lovely evening. I walked because I wanted to relocate that powerful creative space in my brain.

Walking was easy. Too easy. Not enough resistance for my body or my brain. Walking quickly turned to running, which quickly turned into the fastest I’d ever ran. Not fast for a real runner, but a high speed for me. Eight kilometers an hour.

For my brain it was slow motion. It was the most cumulative time I got to spend alone with my thoughts away from my family and the internet in a long time. I was getting faster and faster with every incremental 5K and the acceleration was starting to bleed into my home life.

I was ready for a big March full of projects.

Nothing in specific, mind you. It was more a general thrum of positive, productive energy waiting to be unleashed.

That was how I felt the morning of Monday, February 28th. It was a bright, sunny morning at the tail end of summer, and I was going to have some long-put-off minor dental work done at 9am. That doesn’t sound like a good time, but it was one of those things that I had worried over for so long that it felt like it had been permanently tattooed onto a checklist of looming anxieties tallied by my brain. Finally having it done was going to free up many brain circuits for my big March.

That was the morning I woke up to discover that the minor kid’s weekend cold had now spread to E, and that the two of them were in miserable shape. COVID cases were spiking in Wellington, and while the kid is a masking pro she had also plucked a loose tooth out of her mouth on Friday at school lunch just before this cold hit.

Did they have COVID? If they did, I probably shouldn’t go to the dentist to let them spelunk around in my oral cavity for several hours.

Ah, but here was the rub. New Zealand was rolling out Rapid Antigen Tests on March 1.

The next day.

But, due to the spike in cases, all of our ample two drive-up testing locations in the city were completely overwhelmed. They weren’t even doing the shove-the-q-tip-up-the-nose PCR tests anymore. They were just slinging some special pre-sale RATs into your car window and calling it a day.

That was the official testing recommendation of the NZ COVID hotline: getting some RATs slung at you. Otherwise, the official recommendation was to wait two days and then try to buy a RAT at retail. Except, not if you thought you might have COVID. In that case, just isolate.

That was okay. It was fine. I’m good in a crisis. It wasn’t any worse than a long-awaited dental procedure. I called the dentist to cancel on account of my potential COVID exposure, grabbed my phone, my wallet, and a mask, and leapt into the car wearing the same too-small t-shirt I had slept in. This didn’t need a big plan, a water bottle, or packing up my laptop. I’d drive up to the testing center, get some tests thrown in my window, and be back in an hour. Two, tops.

Had I over-thought, over-packed, and over-prepared, would things have gone any differently? Was I moving too fast in that moment? I had all of March to think about it, and I still can’t say for sure. [Read more…] about slow mo(nth)

30 – Adele | the expectations game

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As a music fan, consumer, and review, it’s hard for me to detach my reaction to a new album from the expectations game.

That’s especially true of fourth albums, like Adele’s 30.

Everyone loves an indelible debut record. When we love an artist’s first album, we fall in love with the songs, but we’re also deeply curious about their potential. What path will they take? How will their follow-up sound?

We applaud when an artist releases a strong second album. We are amazed when it is even better than the first. When we love an artist’s second album, we fall in love with the songs, but we’re beginning to measure a vector. They’ve moved in a direction, even if that direction is to provide more of the exact same. Will they continue to progress in that same way?

Third albums are tricky. That’s when things become interesting. Third albums are when we think we really know something about an artist. We have a reasonable sample size of songs. We have three points from which we can triangulate position and estimate future progress.We can say, “the artist usually does this or that.” We can decide if their progression has been linear or if it took a hard turn into unexpected territory.

That is why fourth albums are dangerous. They are the realm of proving or disproving all those things that we thought we understood. They have the potential take an artist’s progression from a line – or even a triangle – to some wild uneven quadrilateral that might even intersect with itself. They’re often the moment where an artist solidifies who they really are and who they will continue to be for many years to come.

I think most people navigate that musical map subtly. Unconsciously. The average listener has some expectations that might be fulfilled or shattered, but I don’t think they consider a fourth album to be particularly significant.

I’m not like that. I can’t turn off the part of my brain that dissects songwriting and production, and that draws out vectors of musical style and influences. I am graphing each release as a point on a musical map and drawing the vectors between them. I can’t help it.

Adele has had a textbook progression through these first three steps Memorable debut? Check. Explosive classic sophomore effort that raised her to worldwide acclaim? Check. Stylistically rangy third record that at once confirmed her strengths but pushed some of her boundaries. Check.

Now, 11 years after her debut but a whole 6 after her third record, we’re getting that fourth album. The dangerous one. It’s dangerous for Adele, but dangerous for me, too – because I feel the weight of all of those expectations.

I had to listen to it two different ways. First, just to hear the songs. Then, to hear them with the weight of all of that piled on top of them.

It was terrible both ways, which leaves me fearful of Adele’s future trajectory.

30 – Adele

Adele is the biggest blockbuster voice in popular music today, both in spectacle and in sales. That makes any album of hers a hotly anticipated release. 30, in particular, has been inflated even further. The first in six years! The first since she got divorced! Got thin! And it’s accompanied by a pair of pan-Atlantic concert specials! And an interview with Oprah!

I don’t know that the spectacle could get any bigger. It threatens to overshadow the features that made Adele so famous in the first place: her massive voice, her clear-eyed songwriting, and her biting sense of humor.

Adele is famous for using that massive voice to command attention on her emotional ballads just as well as she uses it to power surprising, genre-defying pop hits like “Chasing Pavements” and “Rolling in the Deep.” She has never lacked for strong material in either category. Her songwriting skills are as notable as her vocal power, even if her vocals sometimes overshadow them.

Now at a pinnacle of her popularity, 30 finds Adele coasting through a set of charmless songs without an earworm refrain to be found. Suddenly, she is putting the schmaltz at center stage rather than her songwriting acumen. I don’t begrudge her the sales, but I wish they came with a more enjoyable record. [Read more…] about 30 – Adele | the expectations game

the influencer tax

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I have been thinking a lot about blogging lately. Mostly because of international taxes.

Taxes! Who would’ve thought that when I launched this endeavor 21 years ago that I would be tackling such hip and relatable topics such as international tax law.

When you move to a new country, you learn new things in phases. First the obvious things, like which side of the road to drive on and where to buy expensive cheese. Later, the cultural things, like songs that are more popular here than anywhere else or the sort of cheap improvised sandwiches people had for dinner as kids. And, still later, a bunch of dry, uninteresting things about international tax law.

That is what lead E and I to have a video meeting with a knowledgable but-also-hilarious tax professional last week.

(That’s really my ideal balance for any sort of professional advisor. Completely reliable, incredibly funny. Leave no stone unturned and put me at ease.)

As part of meeting with any tax professional, you are inevitably going to discuss all of your income, assets, and expenses. Which means in the middle of a lot of very serious talk about very adult topics, I had to broach the topic of blogging. Not just blogging, but blogging, comic books, YouTube-ing – my whole internet package.

Awesome Tax Person: “I see you have listed some items related to your website.”

Me: “Yes,”

ATP: “Do you sell a product or service?”

Me: “No.”

ATP: “Do you get paid to write?”

Me: “Not quite.”

ATP: “Hold on. Are you some sort of influencer?”

Me: [shaking my head vigorously in dissent]

E: [nodding her head in agreement and cackling]

ATP: “Oh, how interesting! The revenue department just put out a very interesting memo on internet influencers and I wasn’t sure if I’d need to reference it, but now I do!”

Dear readers, when I tell you that the Awesome Tax Person said this last part with obvious verve and glee you will understand why I enjoyed her so much.

I’m not really an “influencer” in the way most people mean it. I’m not internet famous. I don’t have big brand deals. I don’t think I particularly influence anyone about anything other than wanting them to read more comic books. I maintain an elderly-in-internet-years blog that hosts an reference resource about a niche hobby. I sometimes appear on audio or video to talk about it.

And, unrelated to that, I happen to have a truly stunning and noteworthy head of hair.

As far as the New Zealand Internal Revenue Department and their very interesting memo, “influencer” is the broad category inside of which the business aspects of my particular little niche fits.

That made me think back to the early days of Crushing Krisis. I would’ve loved the modern concept of being an influencer back then. I blogged more times a day than most people tweet in a week! I wanted to broadcast my life 24/7 in full video, but had to settle for sharing salacious, partially-nude shots of myself with a low-resolution hand-me-down webcam.

In a way, 2021 is the closest I’ve ever come to that. From January to June I shared well over a hundred videos on YouTube and dozens of hours of podcasts, at one point ramping up to eight shows a week. It was my internet comics person version of being on Broadway.

Even though it was all ostensibly about comics, a lot of it was also personal. There’s something that feels safer about sharing personal things strewn across dozens of hours of video than sharing them here as a wall of text at the top of a page that can be easily indexed by search engines.

That is the main reason why my personal blogging has withered away over the past four years. I assumed chronicling the process of living in a new country would be the perfect fodder for a blog. Maybe it could’ve been. But, those chronicles weren’t all positive things. A lot of them would’ve been about being unhappy and frustrated. I don’t always love New Zealand, which shouldn’t come as a terrible shock since I didn’t always love America and also don’t always love the X-Men.

As I continued to try to get hired to work in New Zealand so we could stay in New Zealand, I became increasingly reticent to want to share anything about my New Zealand experience on CK where it would be the literal first thing a potential colleague or client or government official would read if they Googled my name.

(Sometimes my colleagues have been government officials – something I probably hadn’t anticipated while blogging about breakups and cheesesteaks in between the salacious web cam shots back in 2001.)

While that hasn’t changed, some other things have. I am now a permanent resident of New Zealand (after a legitimately terrifying visa scare in 2020), so now I can write about how I think their ice cream is mostly horrible and it will (probably) not lead to my deportation.

That means I don’t have to work for a Kiwi employer who can sponsor my visa. In fact, right now all of the folks I am working with live outside of New Zealand. So, again, let me mention how much the ice cream sucks here even though everyone thinks it is quite good.

Which brings me back to taxes. They’re one of the only two certainties in life, after all, along with death – as so infamously highlighted by my fellow Philadelphian influencer Ben Franklin in 1789.

Crushing Krisis used to be the third certainty in my life. Not just mine, either! Comic fans around the world rely on it; I’ve even met some in person here in NZ. Lindsay always jokes that when she’s trying to recall a certain event from our Philly music scene years, she searches CK to corroborate it.

We’re living in an influencer world (and I am a material girl). It’s really not so shocking for me to be a professional while I write on a blog, tweet, appear in videos, or anything else. People are doing much wilder, more objectionable things on a much wider variety of platforms. Blogging about bad kiwi ice cream doesn’t even rank on the list of potentially salacious internet activity when every 20-something job applicant has either a Instagram, a TikTok, or both.

In this influencer world, why would I hesitate to do the thing that has brought me the most continued happiness and success out of almost everything in my life?! 2021 has continued my streak of finding personal and professional opportunities directly through my internet presence  rather than in spite of it. If I happen to post something objectionable here or anywhere else on the internet and people don’t like it, then they’re probably not going to like me anyway.

That’s the real influencer tax. Not the dollars, but the willingness to expose yourself entirely while knowing there will be some future price to pay for it.

If I’m going to have to pay the tax eventually (and continuously), I might as well keep doing the thing I love where everyone can see (and tax) it.

Updated: X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #2: Second Genesis (Bronze Age)

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This is available to everyone, but it was made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis:

The Revised & Expanded X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #2: Second Genesis

Now that I’ve re-read all of the X-Men Classic back-up stories and Marvel Team-Up issues as part of our Epic X-Men (re)Read, I had some adjustments to make to this guide. I also rebuilt my reading order database, which allowed me to catch some stray appearances mentioned in the comments of the page.

I think the most-significant change to this reading order is that I’ve promoted a handful of Iron Fist and Marvel Team-Up issues to be required reading from being optional, since they were written by Claremont and fill in actions and relationships referred to later in the main Uncanny run.

Updated: X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #1: Original X-Men (The Silver Age)

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This is available to everyone, but it was made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis:

X-Men Reading Order Guide – Era #1: Original X-Men 

Now that I’ve re-read all of the X-Men Classic back-up stories as part of our Epic X-Men (re)Read, I had some adjustments to make to this guide. As a result, I rebuilt my reading order database for all of the Original 5 X-Men + Xavier + Havok, Polaris, Magneto, & Mimic.

That didn’t lead to too many changes, but I adjusted the placement of several stories. Also, reader comments lead me to update or add placements for all of X-Men First Class, Ka-Zar #2-3, Avengers #102-104, and several other stories and guest appearances.