Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

parties

I (mostly) #blamedrewscancer for my disappearing week.

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By rights and logic I really ought to be asleep right now, but if I don’t recount the past week it’s going to sleep out of the memory banks and completely disappear into the ether. At least this way I can prove that it actually happened.

So. If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been since that last post and why I am not writing you wonderfully detailed bulletins about my life, here is the download.

A week ago right now I was up late on the couch, laptop on my chest, firing out #blamedrewscancer emails. (Yes, I know I owe you the last chapter in the skydiving story. All in good time.) Around the time I planned to go to sleep National Mechanics emailed me and Mike(y) to ask if we were planning to bring some live acoustic cover music with us to the #bdc event next Thursday (i.e., TODAY).

Um, no. We had talked about it and thought music might be overwhelming. Given the open invitation, suddenly I was firing emails to all of my Philly artist friends who carry a bevy of covers, trying to find a bill for the night.

I fell asleep mid-email in that same position – lying on the couch with the laptop on my chest. When I awoke just shy of ten on Thursday morning (don’t worry; I had the day off) I literally opened my laptop before I opened my eyes. I had originally allotted the day half to #bdc and half to myself, but it wound up being double #bdc, and then some. Project managing, writing emails, talking to Drew, rinse, repeat.

It kept churning into the night (interrupted only to spend three hours researching my own well-documented credit history because – to the best that I can discern – CHASE is a bunch of predatory frauds. Without getting into my personal finances, they sent me a letter changing my terms that was blatantly untrue. Like, each “reason” they listed was immediately and factually refutable. The letter I wrote to them in response, it’s a beautiful thing. Elise speculates that they’ve never encountered such a document before in their lives. I can’t wait to fax it.)

Then, Friday. After work I found myself in a telecommuting menage a trois with Drew and Britt. What I couldn’t tell you then and can now reveal thanks to TechCrunch breaking the story earlier tonight is that I was working on a sponsorship proposal for 23andMe.

I started occasionally following 23andMe shortly before they were a Wired cover story in November of 2007, to the point that I knew just who they were when Cecily K. recapped her experiences with their commercial testing kit a few months ago. The reductionist version is that you spit in a test tube for them, and they report back to you about your predisposition for health and disease, and on your family history.

Point being, 23andMe is a real, tangible brand to me – a brand providing a valuable and potentially life-altering service. And I was proposing that #bdc (and, by extension, me) should be their business partner in a sponsorship.

So, yeah, just a little stress on Friday. Luckily, Drew is a wonderful human being who can make me laugh and cry remotely via instant message, and between the two of us everything was fine and from Britt’s abstract we all created a really wonderful proposal.

Saturday E and I headed to the burbs to assist in moving some friends into their first house (YAY!), and then I had a two hour intermission before heading with Gina to West Philly to play a house party fundraiser for her FringeFest play, Fefu and Her Friends. I’ve never played a house party before in a formal sense, where I was billed as a feature and was expected to play for some certain amount of time. It was awesome, but it kicked my ass – even when I wasn’t on I was still ON, from six at night to four in the morning.

In that ten hours, I played three or four hours of music. I also met, mingled, sang, and danced with some of the most beautiful and talented people in Philadelphia, namely the cast of Fefu and their amazing friend Ed, who is half lounge-singer and half space alien come to earth to reclaim Prince as one of his people.

Also, I played an on-command version of Cher’s “Believe” totally off of the top of my head, and at some very late point (possibly as late as present?) Gina, Wes, and I sang an epic three-part harmony version of “With or Without You” with Gina and I clustered around a single mic in a vague sketch of Springsteen and Van Zandt.

Then I slept. Until, like, seven at night on Sunday? All I know is that any time I was halfway roused during the day I would restart The Matrix and be asleep before the scene with the pills.

Um, where are we? Monday? Three or four hours of rehearsal with Gina directly after work (as we are providing some covers support TONIGHT while we await the arrival of the proper musician who will grace us, one Chris Huff), including playing an entire set live for TwitCam, followed by further rehearsal on my own.

Tuesday one of my other cover-songs leads came through in the form of my good friend and former TrebleMaker Kate, who showed up at my house with a setlist of 20 songs to bash through with me – out of which we were to craft 45 minutes of rockin’ cover music for TONIGHT (which is rapidly approaching as I continue to write this post).

Another four hours of rehearsal later and we had our set, packed with lots of stuff I had never played before, like Katy Perry, Aerosmith, and Evanescence … plus some familiar favorites.

Then, tonight, I baked. You see, somewhere in the midst of the days/paragraphs above, team #bdc decided that the best possible component to add to a benefit night at a local bar packed with acoustic music was a bake sale, and I – inexplicably and against my nature and better judgment – volunteered. (My altruism may have had something to do with wanting to play with the Kitchen Aid standing mixer my groom’s party bought us as a wedding gift.)

A dozen dozen cookies, half-a-dozen lead sheets, and half a half-dozen loads of laundry later, and it’s 4am. Music starts at our event in a mere 16 hours. I still have not had a proper rehearsal for myself, and I just hours ago realized I don’t have another set of my preferred strings (a particular issue since I just broke one).

Goodnight.

In Which I Confess to Lazing

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If we define me by being musical and active and despising passive expenditures of time, then I think it’s safe to say that I went through a bit of an Anti-Me month in February.

Mostly due to video games.

Let me back up a step. In 2004 I gave up network television as a concept; it figuratively and literally doesn’t exist to me anymore, the latter because we haven’t had a vestige of television reception for going on three years.

Since 2004, 95% of the television I have watched (intentionally or not) has been Eagles games. And, because we don’t have reception of our own, most of my Eagles-watching is done with friends.

This season the group of friends happens to also be a group of depraved video-game maniacs, and when we decided to get together for one post-playoffs hurrah we did nothing but play video games.

I haven’t given up video games in the way that I gave up television, but they do make me wary … mostly because I spent a year and a half of my life doing nothing but playing City of Heroes. Sure, there are a handful of site updates and new songs to prove I was alive, and also I was apparently maintaining a relationship at the time, but I was also putting in 40+ hour weeks in at work and on the game.

Well, after our little party I decided that owning a video game system wouldn’t be the end of the world. It wouldn’t be connected to the internet, so it couldn’t suck me in the same degree as City of Heroes. And, much in the way we selectively view TVDs of good shows to replace our lack of television, I would only buy and play games that were compelling. It would be a social and intellectual pursuit.

Right. And then I bought We Love Katamari and a month of my life disappeared.

It’s not that I played video games for the entire month, so much as that video games were emblematic of my lack of energy for creative pursuits. Not lack of inspiration, mind you, but lack of energy.

Merrily, I was right – a non-networked PlayStation doesn’t have the kind of grip on my immortal soul as an internet world full of unique superheroes. This iteration of gaming in my life is merely a distraction, not an addiction.

But then I think – how much blogging could I have done while I was thumbing a joystick? How many songs could I have recorded? Et cetera, et cetera?

Who knows. Life doesn’t work like a metric conversion scale. Could I have recorded an awesome album, or did I simply not have anything to say creatively?

A retrospective answer is meaningless; it’s a question you and I need to ask ourselves each time we pick up a remote or a controller.

This week my answer is “you have plenty to say – start talking.”

with a couple of warm beers and watched the fireworks explode in the sky

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Despite previous independence highlights, today’s pre-fourth could have been my best. How many other days can you succeed at work, see one of your favorite people engaged, and get rip-roaring drunk with the best of your bestest of friends (actually, family). I love it.

In other notes: A great random-topic blog, Kinkish. Some art, some recipes, some musings. All good.

Also, I don’t completely understand what it’s about (something about gay men, i think), but Ballroom Rockstar is a wonderful name for a magazine.

And (fittingly, though you might not be able to tell by my typing), the 86 Rules of Boozing. Which maybe sounds a little tongue-in-cheek, but if you’re someone who doesn’t go out to bars very often a lot of them will serve you well.

Happy freedom to do whatever it is you’re doing.

Sunday Morning

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The party was a huge success, and I probably have enough leftovers to last me all week (which is good, because I’m going to need to skip lunch for a month to repay my party debt to my budget). Also, Elise is now graduated, or commenced, or whatever, and along the way her arrangement of the Star Spangled Banner sounded fantastic, took everyone by surprise, and garnered lots of random congratulations out on the lawn after the ceremony was over.

Lots of post-party mopping awaits me downstairs, but i thought i’d unload some scant links on you all first.

A Bookslut interview with the founder of Guys Read, a non-profit organization that encourages boys and men to find literature that’s right for them. I’ve been a reader almost my entire life, but that’s probably because my mother always bought me the right things to read, so i am pleased and fascinated by this cause (found via Neil Gaiman).

Word has it that Blogathon is a go, and will be held on August 6th. I’ve never liked the last-minuteness of the planning of the ‘Thon, because it sells short the opportunity to support it and it disqualifies possible participants who have a life and like to plan ahead for it. I myself already have plans for August 6th (i’ll be on stage!), so it looks as though my participation with the ‘Thon has ended. I might still be doing some promotional writing for the event, and otherwise wish them the best.

MusicLab is a study on how you like music. I haven’t done it yet, but in exchange for being a test-subject you get to download all sorts of free indy tunes. Link probably from Coolfer.

Also from Coolfer, a cool girl band Jessie Diamond and the Thousand There was another band i wanted to link to, but i lost their link. Instead, read the best guitar-oriented interview with Ani DiFranco ever.

Okay, off to mop.

The Hardest to Learn….

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Somehow, incredibly, all the food is ready.

It seems incredible because, well, I haven’t cooked in a year. There, i’ve said it. I made some cookies for the office Christmas party, and boiled water for plenty of pasta, but i hadn’t cooked as in carrying out a recipe in over a year. So, the idea of having a multi-course, multi-dish party where i was responsible for making half of all of the food items was a little daunting.

And, frankly, it continued to be daunting, right up until twenty minutes ago when (admittedly, slightly blitzed from taste-testing my Continental Strawbursts) i fused all of my chocolate covered pretzels together in the freezer and while removing them discovered that all of my gnocchies had (also) fused together in the refrigerator.

However, the food is made, including food i could make in my sleep (quiche, three-cheese chicken, aforementioned strawbursts) and foods i’ve never even attempted before, out of sheer intimidation (cheesecake, philly rolls, fresh gnocchi).

Anyway, now all i have to do is figure out where to serve it all from, and how much to drink. Oh, and I have to assemble equipment for and mix a Treblemakers concert in …. 40 minutes.

!