Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

selfy-stuff

Gina’s Bachelorette Adventure, Pt. 3

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When I left off last week we had a video game theme, an instruction booklet introduction, and a visual concept of 8-bit goodness – all for my best friend and bandmate Gina’s highly unusual bachelorette party.

Here I am shown negotiating something – possibly our surrender – with two park rangers while our live action video game was in progress. No, I am not threatening them with a baton, that’s just a trick of perspective. Still, they seemed to find me rather intimidating. Notice how the one on the left has his hand near his utility belt, while the one on the right is making an exceedingly obvious attempt to reach for his radio receiver.

As for what we’d be actually be doing during our human video game, that was another story entirely. A story with no plot or structure. Or mini-bosses.

We had to start somewhere. Since Gina is a chemist by day, we decided she should be challenged to put her chemistry knowledge to the test. I originally wanted to her to conduct a chemistry demonstration in the middle of the street with everyday groceries, but we eventually decided that might look a bit too much like an act of terrorism during 4th of July weekend within a few blocks of The Liberty Bell.

(At the time there were legitimate questions being asked, like “Do we need a permit to do that?” and “Can you even legally buy that in Pennsylvania?” We fully anticipated losing one or more attendees to some mix of boredom, drunkenness, heatstroke, or tasing by park rangers.)

With a mind to not being detained under the Patriot Act, Kelly devised an insane chemistry challenge to fulfill our needs that we could all understand as laypeople… and, possibly as drunks, depending on how the day was going at that point. [Read more…] about Gina’s Bachelorette Adventure, Pt. 3

Gina’s Bachelorette Adventure, Pt. 1

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This weekend was Gina’s (she of Arcati Crisis, high school, and many madcap adventures in between) bachelorette party.

In 2008, my bachelor party (planned by Gina and four of my other closest friends) was an 80s Prom entitled “Like a Virgin.” It came complete with DJ, decorations, catering, and friends dressed in period fashions – with hair to match. Plus, the DJ was actually a karaoke emcee, and all of the 80s tunes were sung by my friends and I.

Now, I am more than a little competitive. Not in the playing sports, head-to-head, high score kinda of way. I could care less, but not by much.

No, my style of competitive is “anything you can do I can do better.” Like, my blog is the longest running in Philadelphia, or I have the most expansive guide to collecting X-Men on the internet, or when Bruno Mars tracks came out for Rock Band 3 I wouldn’t let bro go to bed until we had 100% and were ranked in the top 30 internationally of all harmony vocalists.

Thus, when I was charged with planning Gina’s bachelorette party along with her best friends Kelly (a chemist in Belgium) and Mikki (an architecht & non-profit organizer in Seattle), I had something to prove. I had to conceive of the most memorable, most epic, and most fitting Bachelorette Adventure possible without actually having Gina go on tour with Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young.

My first impulse was to plan something with music and the 80s, but… surprise! Gina had already won the “Best Party Ever” designation in that category.

As Kelly, Mikki, and I talked about it over the course of several months, we kept coming back to a “this is your life” tour through Philadelphia landmarks. It was a cool idea, but didn’t sound fun. There’s your house! There’s your high school! Isn’t this awesome!?

No.

We kept talking. What if it was a City Chase version, with special clues and teams racing the city? Cooler, but not the best format for celebrating around a single person. But, what if each location held a special challenge for the team – half Amazing Race, half Double Dare?

Now we were getting somewhere. We picked some locations and made up a few challenges. It was sounding somewhat entertaining, but not EPIC. It was lacking a grand scale and a clear theme, other than walking around Philly for eight hours.

Then, I had a not-rare-but-not-nearly-common-enough stroke of mad genius while idly humming one of Gina’s Arcati Crisis songs, “Fisher Price,” which goes a bit like this…

There comes a time when you realize
That you don’t get anymore chances
There’s no extra lives
You don’t get big from a magic mushroom
And you don’t find coins in an underground room.

My epiphany? Gina’s Bachelorette Adventure would be a video game. A real life video game that was part Super Mario Brothers, part Grand Theft Auto, and part live-action role playing game – all with Gina’s favorite parts of Philadelphia as its world map.

It sounded suitably epic, but would it make any sense to Kelly and Mikki… or to Gina and the 20 friends she asked us to invite?

Tune in for the next installment to hear how our motley trio planned to turn Philadelphia into a massive game board, and how having crafty and artist co-conspirators elevated my insanity to a whole new level.

http://arcaticrisis.bandcamp.com/track/fisher-price

Hot Yoga, Good Omens, & Happy Endings

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A year ago if you told me I would willingly lock myself in a room heated to 105 degrees with 40% humidity to do 90 minutes of extreme stretches with a gaggle of nearly nude hipsters, dancers, and absurdly ripped gay men, all dripping with sweat…

Actually, I have no idea what I would have done if you told me that a year ago. There’s really no way to predict past me’s response. Maybe I would have asked you to mix me a stronger drink.

I have surprisingly awful balance, but I actually managed to strike this pose twice last night. The first time I promptly fell on my ass due to my complete and utter shock at getting into it. Oh, and the sweat.

Yet, there I was last night at my first Bikram Yoga class, dripping with sweat (a rarity!) and also nearly nude. Nearly nude in public! I like to wear t-shirts to the beach, people. The only time I get naked in front of other people is under carefully controlled conditions on the internet.

That was a joke; I haven’t been naked on the internet for, like, a decade.

After a few months of yoga classes at work I pestered my two fittest co-workers to tag along to a class in the outside world. Possibly as part of some form of ongoing hazing, they suggested I come with them to Bikram yoga.

There I was, half naked and sweating, at one point dropping out of a triangle pose because I was about to faint. I think at some point I also prayed to an undetermined god of yoga to strike me down where I stood. But I stuck with it the full 90 minutes.

(Don’t worry, I’m going somewhere with this. This might become a blog about homeownership or television shows from time to time, and it’s always a blog about OCD and slight social awkardness, but I swear it’s not going to turn into a blog about yoga. None of us wants to read that.)

(Unless it has to do with slight social awkwardness, in which case it is fair game.)

Nearly ten years ago I was in my first student run theatre production (and my last piece of theatre at Drexel). Being student-run means we had to do everything ourselves – sets, promotion, makeup – everything. And at the time the idea of choosing what to wear onstage seemed a bit beyond me. It had to be what my character would wear, but also say something about him.

Luckily, we had a fantastic advisor, Michelle, a Drexel administrator working on her Fashion degree. I talked out my character ideas with her, and we settled on what I ought to wear.

It turned out fine. The first time E ever saw me was onstage in that show, wearing those clothes.

Later, I had graduated and was living with E, and I decided it was time to get better at singing. I found a voice instructor I wanted to try, and headed to his house on the train. Who was sitting next to me? Michelle, who I hadn’t seen for years, and her daughter.

It turned out fine. That voice instructor didn’t work out (he was creepy), but I came away knowing what I wanted. I eventually found the ideal coach for me. My voice blossomed. My singing became healthier. Now I can rehearse two nights a week with rock bands and not get the slightest bit hoarse.

Last night. I was lying next to the window of the Bikram studio in my dri-fit shirt, already desperately sweating. I’m the kind of sweater that has to bring a second shirt to a wedding, because I will be dripping with sweat on the dancefloor … a dancefloor that’s not heated to 105 degrees or approaching some form of medieval torture.

A man laid his mat next to mine, and I was relieved to see he was not a dancer or absurdly ripped, but a normal dude in a dri-fit shirt like me. He smiled hello and set out a second mat. “For my wife,” he said, so he wasn’t gay either.

Michelle does not typically have wings or appear in a Tony Kushner play, but she still may be my guardian angel.

That put me at ease, even as I mopped the sweat from my brow for the first time and laid back into Savasana (AKA corpse pose, and even that was hard to do in the heat). When I finally emerged from it to start the class, a women’s voice called from off to the right.

“Peter?”

Yes, Michelle was in my yoga class, sitting next to her husband, the normal dude in the shirt.

Despite at points thinking I really was going to pass from this life onto the next, Bikram yoga turned out fine. I stuck it out in the room the entire time, emerging with a new appreciation of 80-degree weather, drenched in sweat on a crazy endorphin high.

Though I hugged Michelle goodbye, I’m starting to think she isn’t real. I mean, I definitely touched her (I wasn’t that high on yoga), but what other explanation is there for her appearing at important junctures in my life to signal that a major decision lies ahead, and it will turn out fine.

Even if she isn’t a Roma Downey-style angel, she’s definitely a good omen.

Joining the Boys’ Club

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I have never been “one of the guys.”

Except for live-nearly-nude-dancing-girls, apparently.

I don’t do a lot of typical dude things, like ogle women or watch sports. Most of my friends are women. Even in my dim memories of kindergarten, I surrounded myself with girls.

That’s not to say I don’t have any close male friends. We just don’t do dude stuff together, like … uh, I’m out gender stereotypes already. This is how little I am connected to my dudeness.

That said, I have found myself in the groom’s party of one of my longtime male BFFs and – unlike my wedding party – this one is a single sex affair. A fest of sausage, if you will. Which means not only am I in for some guy-on-guy quality time, but I was in for a bachelor party.

Prepared as I might be to drink other men under the table while watching sports (seriously, just try me), inherent in the looming bachelor party was a looming visit to a strip club.

I dreaded the concept. The only time I was nearly convinced to attend a strip club with friends I wound up having dry heaves before I could even get in a cab. I’m too little of a stereotypical dude and too much of a feminist. Paying to objectify strange, naked women is really low on my list of things that sound fun.

(To wit: my own bachelor party was a co-ed 80s prom entitled “Like a Virgin.”)

I can't deny it - I honestly did resemble him a bit on Friday. You know, with the unbearable hotness of me.

Yet, at a strip club is where I found myself on Friday night. Well, they had tops and bottoms on, so I guess it wasn’t a strip club. A pole dancing joint? Is that more accurate?

Hilariously, I turned out to be a live-nearly-nude-dancer magnet. E thinks it’s because I looked like Bradley Cooper in the episide of Alias where he pretends to be an Australian rock star.

She was probably right.

And, folks, point numero uno everyone failed to tell me about strip clubs? You might have to be careful how you touch the women, but they do not have any hesitations about how they touch you.

Yeah.

You know, I can’t not be polite and chat for a minute if someone is nuzzling me with her breasts, and then I feel bad for taking up her time, and then I am obligated to fold dollar bills and slip them into improbably small straps holding together even more improbably small garments.

The whole thing is ooky and disgusting slippery slope (not unlike a stripper pole … HEY-OH!)

After the first hour I was tipsy and having fun with the guys and alternatingly glowering at my cell phone in an attempt to ward off further elbow-molesting bosoms, having driven off the last woman by going on at great length about how my beautiful wife helps me select all of my fashion after she complimented my scarf.

I can't even contemplate the coordination it would take for me to be able to do this. I'm still working on mastering tree pose.

I felt another pair of breasts at my elbow (seriously, my elbow = SO POPULAR), and turned for my casual brushoff. This woman’s opening gambit was to ask me what I did for a living. When I said, “communications – marketing, really,” she exclaimed, “That’s my major! Well, really I’m journalism.” Which, as we know, I was too.

That’s when I started to have a little fun at the strip club. At first it was a room full of strange women, none of whom where even vaguely as attractive as my wife. As aerobic as their gyrations were, it didn’t feel much different than watching a class at a gym.

Then I actually took the time to meet one of the women – a perfectly sweet Italian girl – and give her advice on how database classes are going to help her if she ever has to do any direct marketing. And then I met another woman who was a fitness instructor and collected comic books.

You know what, I didn’t mind watching them dance. They were real people with great legs. And we kept chatting after they danced.

(Of course, there was still the inherent weirdness of having to tip a girl to have the sort of conversation I’d have at a networking night at a bar…)

Does this story have a moral?

I am one of the guys, even if I’m not a stereotypical guy. I can drink and carouse and have fun without being a chauvinist, so I need to get over my fear of “The Boys Club.”

Also, I was reminded of something important: attraction is context. My wife is more attractive than any stripper not only because she is smokin’ hot, but because she’s my mega-talented best friend. Similarly, I think my friends’ wives and girlfriends are beautiful. Why? I know them. They are not random pretty faces on the street – they are dynamic people with a myriad of skills and interests.

So are the women in a strip club – but you don’t really get the chance to hear about that (unless you keep tipping them). I guess most men are fine with that, but my not being fine with it doesn’t mean I am not a man, guy, dude, or boy.

Next up? I hear it’s traditional for us to kidnap the bride at the wedding and barter in liquor with the groom for her return.

That, I think I can handle.

it’s a glam rock life

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At about midnight on Saturday Gina and I were having some issues.

At that time we were on the third song of our full-length, fully-electric Arcati Crisis set at Fergie’s pub.

Actually, we were about four minutes into trying to start our third song, my one-minute and six-second tune, “Glam.”

In case you are bad at rock math, 4:1 is not a very good prep-time to play-time ratio.

On the left side of the stage, one of Gina’s two lowest strings was a hair out of tune. On the right side of the stage, I was playing the opening riff to my own song in the wrong key (which sorta made Gina’s ever-so-minor tuning issue a moot point).

Even in the moment I was struck by the Alanis-Irony that after six months of preparing for our big electric debut we were having the kind of rock-stoppage that regularly felled us a decade ago when we were acoustic teenagers, all while our brand new drummer looked on, bemused.

That’s rock for you. You can practice all your high flying solos and set up an awesome effects chain, but rock has some basic requirements to fulfill and one of them is playing in the same key as each other (unless you want to play more experimentally and/or with a lot more distortion than we do).

You don’t think about this stuff when you watch a pop band play their new single on Saturday Night Live. They have guitar techs. The drummer has a click track in ear so they can cue samples. One of the guitarists is actually playing into a midi sequencer so it doesn’t matter too much if he’s a hair out of tune. And on every chorus the singer is doubled by a ten-track, four-part harmony pulled right off of her record.

That shit is way above our heads.

Of course, if one of them forgets what key the song is in they’re still in trouble, so I suppose what I’m saying is Gina would do fine on Saturday Night Live, but I would be immortalized in my own Ashlee Simpson moment.

But not really. Because I am a freakish perfectionist, and we had played all of these songs hundreds of times already, and we already played an awesome sneak preview date and teaser set and two awesome songs, and I was not about to let me forgetting for three measures the song was not actually in F ruin my night.

The upshot of this story is that the gig was awesome. The whole “Glam” snafu was barely a blip. On our third try we just started the damn thing, and after the eight seconds of dischordant intro all of our issues were over. We proceeded directly from that into a raucous debut of our cover of “Moonage Daydream.” Then we played Gina’s brand-new “Song for Mrs. Schroeder” for the first time, and turned in pitch-perfect versions of “Apocalyptic Love Song” and “Love Me Love Me Not” to end our first set.

I even hit the little hammer in the last verse of “Love Me Not” I had missed in our last few rehearsals.

Over an hour later we closed the night by launching into one of the most awesome, hard-rocking versions of Gina’s seven-minute epic “Brother John” that we’ve ever unleashed.

When it was over we said thank you, doled out sweaty hugs to our friends that had hung around until last call to catch every song, and got paid.

And then I drove a car inside of the Philadelphia city limits for the first time ever – at 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning – and I didn’t even kill any drunk douche bags on Walnut.

In sum, the “Glam” incident barely even ranks. I’m only devoting precious digital column-inches to it as a reminder that the stupid crap that happens to me in the middle of a show only has to matter if I let it.

Otherwise, it’s eight painfully out-of-tune seconds out of a three-and-a-half hour gig, and that is a really effing good out-of-tune to awesome ratio.