Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

parties

I’ll Cry If I Want To

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I have assisted in the throwing of many parties, but I’ve only actually thrown three in my own living space that actually qualified as “parties” and not just gatherings or hangings out.

Of the first we dare not speak (not anymore, anyway). At the second, someone told me she loved me, and someone passed out in my stall shower (different someones; obviously a success). And, at the third I holed up in my room, jamming loudly with a rotating slate of collaborators, oblivious to the rest of the party (my ideal evening).

We are throwing my fourth party this Friday: a housewarming slash graduation slash after-party to The Last Ever (Really, This Time We Mean It) Live Performance by the 2004-05 TrebleMakers, at 7pm in Stein Auditorium.

Or, more accurately, Elise is throwing an after-party, and I am project managing the after-party.

Basically, this means I suck all the fun of party-planning out of party-planning by charting all food by meat and dairy content, calculating the low/mid/high number of total guests, using a spreadsheet to track all ingredient purchases, and creating a gantt chart to illustrate why we need to buy another slotted serving spoon.

My project management prowess seemed to be lost on the party-thrower.

Aside from the estimated twelve hours of cooking I have to do between now and Friday, in my capacity as project manager I am most concerned about how many people will show up. Though our house is spacious, it only is equipped with seating for six – seven if I bring in my lawn chair from outside.

In the depressing attendance basement of my low/mid/high equation (affirmed via PERT), only eight people are coming, which would make for a rousing game of musical chairs for the guests while Elise and I frantically proffered an alarming array of appetizers and 60+ servings of three possible main courses.

However, on the “our friends like us enough to park in South Philly just to eat food and be adults for three hours on a Friday night” side of the list (high), there are *fifty-four* people. Not exactly enough for the neighbors to call the cops, just enough to eat all of our food, and more-than-enough to pack our house like a sold out GA show.

As potentially alarming as the potential fifty-four guests are from a planning and entertainment standpoint, they are no where near as alarming as the potential eight. As a result, I have resorted to attempting to force my friends to confirm or deny their attendance (no maybes, damnit!) by sheer force of will. As that isn’t working out so well, I am in fact living minute to minute by the fickle whims of Evite. When two of our key couples declined the invite this morning due to prior plans I went into red alert.

“E,” my morning bulletin began, “M&S and G&W can no longer attend, and N&G converted to maybe. Lo/Med/Hi has taken an across the board hit due to variance from our presupposition of attendance.” The grim reality set forth in the stark light of Monday morning, I concluded with the real conundrum: “H’or Deurves situation may require re-eval; also, in danger of three-cheese chicken roll up overrun of half-dozen or more. Alter menu, or invite more guests? Pls advise, tx! – P”

And, I haven’t even started planning the music yet.

I Do Do Meander

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Picking up cigarette butts as the scent of pancakes and sausages wafted over me, I found the sun to be bright.

Wait. Saturday was a day. All days are days, but Saturday was quite one, mostly because of Garbage. They were here in Philadelphia, and I was to see them (a fourth time) with Ayelet (a third).

Outfit after outfit was donned and dashed as I prepared – how to best recapture that youthful androgynous energy I wrapped myself in when I was first introduced to these songs? My past blasted in from the living room, each new track a flashback: I have very visceral connection to those songs, and sometimes hearing one transports me to some other place. Ayelet is slipping earphones over my head as “Fix Me Now” begins on the bus to New York. The sun has not yet risen, and Mr. Benjamin is there, somewhere in the front; Ayelet is telling me that this is her favorite one so far.

Back in the present, I decided on jeans (so unglam!) and made the trip down to South Street, eventually finding both Ayelet and my way into the TLA, which Garbage completely overwhelmed me. Each song was spectacularly re -magined while still taking me to places in time and space I cannot otherwise access. What was also incredible was running into Jen&Mel – direct from one of those flashbacks.

J&M were conspicuously inseparable, those cool older kids when we were in high school – the kind that knew everything about music, and would come back from concerts with pictures and scrapbooks and set lists torn right from the stage. I feel like they coached us – me, Andrea, and Gina a little bit too – on how to live in the world of music and culture. They’re older now, as much as I am, one married and the other an opera singer! (She couldn’t scream, for fear of hurting her voice, so every time she felt moved to scream she tugged on Jen’s shoulder and said “Scream, Jen, scream!”).

I devoured their phone numbers after the show, crossing my heart to call, that it wasn’t just an act of acquisition. I do love to acquire; no toy is ever as good as the next toy. I’ve found that eventually this leaves you poor, and with too many toys you don’t really want or use. It made me think that I treat friends and their phone numbers too much like toys, always looking for new ones, and not too concerned if I lose one. It shouldn’t be that way.

After the concert (at the party; I haven’t mentioned that yet) I had a great time. I hugged and kissed our newly returned Jack profusely. I learned about contemporary architecture from ‘Cesca, and the history of the Marshall islands from Kate. I danced with Laura without feeling as though I’d go into cardiac arrest. The day eventually overcame me, and I nodded off on a couch, with someone laying a blanket on me as they passed by from dancing to the kitchen.

Picking up cigarette butts in Ross’s yard, I checked the brands on the stubbed ends and imagined which of my friends had probably smoked them. Some were butts were longer – a few ill-advised drags, quickly abandoned. Others were sucked down to the filter. Every one a story.

I love my friends. All of them – even the ones who I might not even recognize anymore.

I wish they would all stop smoking, though.

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There is someone asleep in my shower.

Actually, he’s not in my shower… he’s more half-in my shower, with his legs splayed out over my seafoam green rug in such a way that i cannot possibly get in to grab my toothbrush and face wash.

Apparently it was a good party.

I’ve never thrown a party before; the small gathering i arranged last month paled in comparison to this one. This, though, was a party … furniture rearranging, obsessive vacuuming, nearly eighty assorted jello shots, fifty dollars just in soda and chips, and two refrigerators full of assorted beer-like substances. I have yet to figure out how many people were here… twenty just from assorted a cappella groups, another ten certified friends of the house, and lots of random non-house friends. A large group of people, to be sure. And, funny things, too. For one, our extra room got turned into a concert hall when i brought all but two of my guitars out to play, and sudden i was being treated to a whole spectrum of songs — from a multiple-MC version of “That Thing” to what amounted to a full-band treatment of “The Only Gay Eskimo.” Recitals of Weezer songs upstairs. Me parading around nearly naked with a pair of underwear on my head.

I didn’t drink a drop.

Right now everything that i spent all day cleaning looks like it was swept over with an alcohol tinged cyclone, and we three roommates have decided to not do a damned thing about it until tomorrow morning when we wake up.

I don’t suppose that our friend in the shower is opposed to the plan.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/10324999/

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Cast Parties are always an experience that involve nearly as much drama as the show they are celebrating, and last night wasn’t an exception. What was an exception was that i didn’t drink; i’ve never drank at a winter show party, and decided to turn the trend into a tradition. It was interesting, if only because everyone finally got the point that i am really a fucking lunatic whether or not i’ve got a couple of drinks in me. There was simulated sex with multiple cast members. There was a contest to see who could grab the most genitalia, both male and female. There was me singing along and bopping around to the entire Immaculate Collection.


Oh, and i might have attempted to kiss someone.

When i’m drunk i flirt, but i’m usually doing it in a generic drunken way. Being sober, last night i was flirting with some amount of purpose. And, oddly enough, i was being flirted back at. I still don’t quite understand what was going on, personally, but apparently Laurel knows the whole story and will explain it to me before the show tonight.

See, i’m a stupid fucking lunatic who can’t even manage to lean in for a kiss whether i’m sober or trashed. Don’t you love the consistency?

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9552150/

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Having never hosted a party before, i was somehow blissfully unaware of some of the cardinal rules. Sure, they seem obvious, but when said party is really just a handful of friends kicking back with some mixed drinks nothing seems life or death.


For those of you not in the know, cardinal rule numero uno is that the host should not attempt to drink the drunkest party-goer under the table, especially when being “under the table” involves locking oneself in a bathroom for multiple hours while shouting out pleasantries like “How’s the cake?” and “Could someone please check Matt’s pulse.” Apparently, it’s bad behaviour for a host to lie crumpled half-naked on cool tile floor while his roommates and party guests make sure that everything gets put back where it belongs and that everyone gets home okay. Who knew?


For those of you keeping score at home, i now owe a big favour to all of my guests and roommates. Big. Like… do any of you have a line on this world peace thing?

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8881175/