Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

shopping

We Are The Goon Squad and We’re Coming to Town

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I did it. I finally broke the seal. I got an Express credit card. I know, i know, it only means trouble. Trouble, debt, tight jeans, and hot reversible belts.

It really started out with the suit i bought at Express last month. At the time it was a desperation buy – i needed a new suit jacket, and i needed to locate it in a two hour span. I had no idea that Express suit jackets would fit me as if they were personally tailored… comparing it to the two other suits i have owned is like holding an undershirt up next to a knit poncho.

Although i’ve had it for over a month, i hadn’t worn the suit all in one piece – the jacket showed up with jeans, and the pants made an appearance at work, but i hadn’t combined the two in a real world environment until I finally wore it for an offsite meeting yesterday. Needless to say, i looked as sharp as a tack.

While admiring my sharp-as-hell self in a bathroom mirror, i began to ponder: Do i look this sharp all of the time? I pride myself on it when i go to bars, or attend parties, but not at work – where i spend the most time and where it matters the most. Most of my dress clothes wardrobe was cobbled together from co-op to co-op between 2001 and 2004, with just a few shirts added this year. The assortment features few spectacular outfits, but it isn’t especially interchangeable – too often all of my clean shirts hinge on being worn with a single pair of pants. The result is that at work i often look just as random and dumpy as an intern, my more evolved sense of style smothered underneath unfortunate color combinations and fabrics subjected to too many cycles in laundromat dryers.

I decided then and there (still admiring myself in the bathroom) that if i wanted to maintain my reputation as fashonista i had to aggressively defend my title. No more pants that are too old to hold a sharp crease. More shirts that match more pairs of pants. More incredibly sexy suit jackets. I spend over a third of my waking life working for a living and, by god, i can use that livelihood to make myself sharp while doing it.

Thus, tonight i traveled to Express. My stated purpose was buying just one more suit jacket so i didn’t proceed to wear the other into the ground. One suit jacket turned into one new suits and, after discovering that they were priced at 50%, one new suit turned to two plus complementary ties. After the better part of an hour i realized that the dreadful day i had always always known would come had arrived – my Express purchase was so large that the discount that opening an Express credit card would provide could not sanely be denied.

At this point my impending purchases had become voluminous enough that I had acquired a specific helper employee to help me shuttle it to and fro the register, and to tell me i looked hot. I queried, “Would it be really good for you if i opened a credit card?,” and her eyes lit up like high beams.

And, well, long story short is that I have a ridiculously high credit limit at Express (my helper let out a gasp when she saw it), i got a free-suit’s worth of discount, i made Jennifer’s eyes light up like high beams, and i now have an entirely new dress wardrobe including major support in the BIV division of my RGB spectrum. If i can’t manage to look sharp now i have nothing to blame other than bad fashion sense.

Not My Idea

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Having now a house that i adore, i am more interested than ever in filling it with things i desire. Yes, in the past i’ve wanted that shiny piece of electronics, or that solid piece of furniture, but the space that i existed in never really invited them. Now, though… now i am dangerous in every store, because where there was once just a speculative glance at any item, wondering how it would fit into my household there is now a lustful fingering of my credit card, knowing that i can fit it under the limit.

Not good for my line of available credit, but seems to be setting us up for some wonderful entertaining and music-making opportunities this summer.

In related news, i know that i can’t carry the sectional couch on my back all the way from Snyder Ave (and probably can’t even lift the corner of the box two inches off of the ground), but i’ve almost convinced myself that i can haul the flatpacked desk from Ikea up Front Street as if i was a pack mule. This is, however, not a good idea.

Not a good idea, Peter. Not a good idea.

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Good lord, if i had to write seventy five hundred highly critical, super observant words about theatre every term i think i’d grow to loathe it altogether. I mean, for heaven’s sake, they’re made up people! And, i have to have them act the whole damn thing out in my head, since i only directed one scene from the damned play.

Anyhow, three days spent largely locked in the house with Erika, and 17 of 30 total pages due-by-Friday complete in my campaign to get Winter vacation started sooner than later.

Speaking of whom, we decided a few things while we were in the mall for five hours on Black Friday. Namely: The 80’s are not coming back, no way, no how, we deny that anyone even contemplated it. The color palette was too all-over-the place, the fashions were altogether unflattering, and the music was drenched in too much reverb. We realize that we’re on a two-decade spin cycle, and that the 90’s just rehashed the 70’s, but we don’t care.

Furthermore, women’s clothing with a single initial letter monogrammed over the breast is fucking dumb. I repeat: fucking dumb. We reserve the right to mock any such walking fashion faux-pas until she bursts into mascara-trailing tears. However, please note that giant letters worn across the whole of your chest are highly acceptable, as long as they are at least two thirds as wide as they are tall.

And, for the record, eight straight hours of dissecting a single nineteen page play is not good for one’s overall sanity. Or eyesight. It is good for one’s desire not to write the other thirteen pages starting on Thursday after Friends, though.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/12/107027200237748002/

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I was going to bitch about how I have no money. That was our scheduled morning blog. Indeed, I have no money. Less money, in fact, than I did previous to beginning my fancy corporate job. Only thirty-three dollars more than the time that I threatened to throw my roommate’s possessions out into the street if he didn’t pay me back rent. Anyway, I had this whole lament planned about how costs increase with the increase of income, and how I’m really just a victim of Philadelphia’s nine-to-five cost of living. But, really I can track my newfound poverty to a few very specific sources: smoothies & shoes. And don’t let me tell you anything otherwise.

As for the first, you know those Christian Relief Network commercials where they play all the schmaltzy music and tell you that you could feed a child somewhere in the third world by giving up your shitty 7-11 large coffee every morning because, really, you’re better off with Maxwell House than buying coffee from a place with a 24-hour self-rotating hot dog grill, and also because starving children in the third world will not be receptive to Christianity unless they’ve received some nourishment first? Right. Well, I could probably keep an entire block of these underfed unfortunates supplied with more rice than they’ve ever seen in their life if I could manage to give up my daily smoothie/salad routine. The smoothie is nearly $4 for some strawberries, orange juice, sundry other fruit, and honey for my poor abused vocal chords. As Erika pointed out last night: for christssake, I’ll put some strawberries and OJ in a blender for you every morning if you pay me $20 a week. Which makes me think maybe the Christian Relief Network should just tap into the overpriced smoothie market.

Point being, I am ADDICTED to having a 20oz all fruit kick-off to my slam bang cube-shaped day, and between that and my narcotic-like addiction to Caesar dressing alternating with wasabi drenched salmon rolls I’m shelling out upwards of a Hamilton a day just on overpriced city nourishment, which is half convenience charge and half just being ripped the fuck off. Time to switch over to bag lunches.

As for shoes, I bought some shoes. Okay, I bought four pair of shoes. I couldn’t help myself – never before in my life have I allowed myself the luxury of having multiple shoe options for the same occasion! Imagine me, a creature of art and logic, confined to only a single pair of black dress shoes every morning! Now the pre-smoothie portion of my morning routine has been brightened by the endless possibilities (that would be three, for those of you who did *not* major in Communications). My quality of living has gone up immeasurably.

The one pair I am most enamored with is an otherwise dorky pair of Saucony running shoes that are bright orange. When I wear them I feel like I have springs on the bottom of my feet – they make me feel effervescent. Last week I wore them on casual day and became convinced that if I really put my mind to it I could perform complex wire-work choreography from The Matrix. One slim hallway seemed to call out to me every time I would pass it on the way to the restroom, screaming for me to pull a Trinity-in-the-Lobby and run up the wall, only minus the sexy black leather and shotgun, neither of which would go with my orange shoes anyway.

So, next time I bitch about how poor I am, just remind me that: a) I could be feeding starving children who could otherwise be born again b) I just spent more on shoes than I did on guitar related equipment in the last year and c) I am more easily amused than a squirrel in a Planters nut factory.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200295528/

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The primary reason that malls bother me is that i don’t think so much pop culture and watered down fashion should exist and commingle in one place. I cannot bare to look at another Lord of the Rings cross-promotion. I cannot watch my girlfriend try on jeans every fifty feet for three hours anywhere but a mall. I almost cannot stand the ability to comparison shop for video games, Magic cards, stretch jeans, and Pat Benatar cds all at once.anywhere but a mall.


New Jersey, for those of you not in the know, has almost reached mall saturation-point. Really. And, when Elise asked me if i wanted to go shopping today, i had no idea that it would be a multiple store, multiple mall, multiple highway endeavor. NJ needs its malls, because they represent a commercially and spatially sound means of starting up a highly visited business venture in a state that all but refrains from imitating the metro Philadelphia and New York settings that it exists as a suburb to. However, i don’t think that i need them.

There is something distasteful about obviously thirteen year old girls in tube tops and capri pants with little wicker purses trying to catch peoples eye. There is something gut-wrenching about the Disney characters pressed onto black cotton shirts in startling standard alternative store Hot Topic, whose should-be motto was on sale as a witty Tee. Express is hedging their bets heavily on pin stripes and retro-hemmed skirts, while Wet Seal is leading the pack of outlets selling peasant-style blouses in ridiculously busy prints. Aeropostale seems to be convinced that terrycloth, baby animals, and sparkles are the undeniable keys to fashion success – and are willing to offer you an obscenely cheap PDA with your $50 purchase to prove it. And don’t even get me started on how hard i laughed when i looked inside the store that was (nearly fictionally) titled Rave Girl, or about the swimsuit at the Macy’s entrance that appeared to be depicting a 9/11 memorial somewhere just above the crotch.

It’s not that the existence of malls bothers me so much as the ways in which people rely and depend on them. At a time when everything from the songs you hear on the radio to the fashions you see on campus are dictated just as much by brute force marketing as by public opinion, how can a mall be anything other than a virtual cesspool of what corporate America thinks you should buy? Of course they only have a handful of independent albums, of course their size six jeans wouldn’t have ever fit me in my anorexic heyday, and of course the price of Neverwinter Nights is nearly the same at every store we visit. It is not a coincidence, it is a calculation, and every striped polo shirt that you buy means that everything added up just as planned.


If my Communications degree means anything to me, it is the ability to see through corporate curtains to the strings being pulled, even if it also means Elise might never take me shopping again.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/385361875/