Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

essays

Personal essays from Krisis on everything from parenting to immigrant life to driving, and much more.

Fashionista

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I am a fashionista.

Perhaps this requires some explanation.

Often I know, without even thinking about it, what trends are worth engaging in and what will seem ridiculous in just a year’s time. Furthermore, I can spot a lamentable fashion option at fifty paces. It’s not a queer eye for a straight guy so much as a wary eye for the well-dressed man.

It’s a power that I cannot explain. Well over a year ago, i was touched by a nearly-physical urge to own brown and orange clothing. I spent months culling brown dress shirts from thrift stores and orange t-shirts from speciality shops; I beefed up my earth-toned repetoire. And then, suddenly, this fall brought as many pieces of clothing in those colors as it did leaves. I haven’t bought a single piece of this new, Post-Fall raft of clothing; my collection was established even before the colors were launched.

My innate fashionista radar sometimes picks up trends passively, leaving me unaware that my tacit endorsement could be akin to a butterfly in Africa — creating a fashion hurricane in the greater Philadelphia area months later. Last summer in a hip village thrift store i became obsessed with their retro ties, and after much deliberation Rabi and i decided that they could be used as belts. I purchased two (one was brown), and trotted them out on several occasions with jeans, to the bewilderment of my classmates and co-workers. Imagine my shock and horror to walk into the dreaded Gap this past weekend to find a near-fascimile of my brown tie being sold as a… get this… BELT. Yes, a fucking belt.

No, I’m not bitter. Just a little bitter.

The whole motivation behind this tirade is a current trend that my Spidey-like Fashionista-Sense has let me down on: pink.

As far as I was ever concerned, Pink was for distinguished men, men who golfed and wear polo shirts on Friday. I thought of it as a good’ol’boy-badge. Suddenly, it is everywhere. Pink shirts. Pink ties. Yahoo dating aids proclaiming “He looks good in pink,” as if to infer the superior quality of their pink-wearing catches.

You want some pink, the world is telling me. Have some pink.

The thing is, I’m not getting a read on the pinkage. I’ve seen a couple men look very sharp with pink-dotted ties or dusty-rose colored shirts. However, I’ve also seen some hideous pink-on-pink ensembles that leave me wondering if we’re headed in the regrettable direction of pink denim in the near future.

Given the subjectivity of this this particular trend, I think I will pass, but I’m not sure if I’m making that choice as a Fashionist or a trend-hater. In my mind, just as both turquoise and lime green seemed like a super idea at certain points in the 1980s but dated about as well as reruns of The Facts of Life, I think the people who could wear pink to begin with are the only ones who are going to escape this unscathed. Yes, a pink and grey tie is a lively accent to wear on Monday’s, when everyone needs some accenting, or on Fridays, when you’re headed out for cocktails afterwards. Otherwise, I think all of the early adopters will be limping back to their closets to find a conservative blue shirt within the span of a few months.

Unfortunately, that opinion is not fueled by my wary-eye sense, as far as I can tell, so I can’t really speak to its ultimate veracity. However, I do know that the “Look at me, I’m metrosexual” rating of this trend is through the roof, and that all us real metros are not going to let it get out of hand by offering our endorsement.

In closing, just remember: say no to your bourough as a mispelled designer name, say probably not to pink, and don’t wear your first initial as a monogram unless you are Madonna or have a name starting with E.

Also, keep your eye out for dark purple. Maybe. We’ll see.

In which i attempt to review a movie, but in actuality do no such thing.

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There is a certain romance to a love unrequited. That’s what we are taught, what has been ingrained in our heads since the days of cartoons with their eternal suitors, never suited, and in books and films where the protagonist strives but never to have.

And then there is Spiderman. Spider Man. Stupid red and blue comic hero who, truth be told, i never liked very much. He caught my childhood attention as a cartoon because he was smart, and witty, and had my name, but he never played a favorite in my world of superheroes. I eschewed his toys. I rarely bought his comic. But his movie. How could i resist his movie?

Overwrought, overly animated, amateurishly directly, but oh that acting. Tobey, sweet Tobey who i’ve hated in every role he’s ever played because in reality i suspect i don’t like him at all, he brought poor Peter Parker to life in front of my eyes. Peter, me, that space that we’ve always shared inside of my head.

It wasn’t really Tobey, though, not at all. It was Mary Jane.

Mary Jane, a big-haired, ever-changing cipher in the comics, once upon a time so patterned after a certain Julia that Ms. Roberts seemed all but cast in the role. Yet, times change, and people win Oscars for terrible boring movies with no momentum, and Peter remains eternally youthful. And so, you see, it could not be Julia.

That cipher was rewritten, scripted into the house next to Peter’s with the awful never-seen father yelling from within, eclipsing – nay – supplanting Gwen Stacey to ensure that this re-imagined Mary Jane Watson was and could be the one and only ultimate love of Peter’s life.

This changed the nature of Peter, and Spiderman. He stopped being the underdog – he never let Gwen fall off of that bridge because he saved her (as MJ) in the first movie when she was – by comic book rites – supposed to plummet to her death. And he killed Green Goblin in the process. What a debut.

Really, they had no choice. If they had killed the father-figure and the girl it would have been too punishing and, after all, they weren’t about to bring Uncle Ben back to life. Dead Uncle Ben is the cornerstone of all things Spidey. But, Peter was supposed to have lost so many things, to have lost Gwen and to be afraid to ever love anyone else again. So, to make Peter the eternal underdog, they withheld Mary Jane. Teased us with her adoration, baseless, lacking foundation, but so tangible in the ever-hurt eyes of the estimable Ms. Dunst, and proving her to be ultimately unattainable at the end of the first film in that crushing, crushing scene in the graveyard.

I may have liked Spiderman 2 less than I liked its predecessor. Raimi is a hack, with his horror conventions and his guest stars. It had its comic book moments, but it was also too heavy handed, never funny or fierce enough. Tobey as Peter worked only so much as Tobey as an everyman, and Dunst as MJ was limp. Lifeless. Not the headstrong MJ of the 300s of Amazing Spiderman.

What was perfect, undeniable true, was that longing. That always wanting, never having, delirious joy in seeing, pain in saying goodbye. The tension. The tension was true Spiderman, tearing him and her apart at once, weakening him in its strength and strengthening her in her resolve. It was the dramatic backbone of the first film, and the entire skeletal structure of the second.

It was all in Kirsten’s eyes. She took the girl, the too-perfect blind date oft-pushed by good old Aunt May in the comics, and turned her into something altogether different. Symbolic. Real. There could be no Spiderman without this Mary Jane. She was as instrumental as poor dead Uncle Ben or that nameless robber and ever-suffering May. In the cinematic universe, she had been woven in so tightly, so close to the center, that Spiderman could never exist without her. In her absence, he could do nothing but unravel.

Kirsten brought tears to my eyes in every scene for being that perfect thing – that unrequited, unobtainable love, eternally romanticized and forever untouchable. Only movies show us that touch, thrill us with that perfect kiss or that glimmer of recognition in her eyes, pools of unwavering truth and belief, frightening in their realness in every scene she plays.

I have had a crush on Kirsten ever since she played against Mr. Cruise. I fancy that i look a bit like him sometimes, sans snaggled tooth, i think because that would put me closer to her. The flowergirl in my father’s wedding was perfectly little and blonde, like her, and i juxtaposed the two in my fantasy-life until high school as the girl who played my unrequited love, unsuspecting but strangely dedicated to the eternal leading-on of me.

I feel sometimes that i live to be lead on. Did i get into the right college? Did i get the part? Did i get the job? The thrill was never in the answers, but in the anticipation. This site is about anticipation; it is my endless anxious wanting to know but loving the wanting and the not knowing, the delicious tension therein. My writing, at its finest points, is searching for something just outside its grasp, trying to attain the unattainable, to pen a sketch of an infinitesimal gap between me and something or someone else that at that frozen moment in time i cannot, and will not, ever have.

Kirsten’s eyes drew tears in my own, half drunk and staring at the screen, because in Spiderman she is it. She is my crush. She is the juxtaposition, the wanted but never had, the just two steps away. Maybe i should have acted. Maybe i should be in film. We are the same age, Kirsten and i. I could be her leading man.

We all aspire to have the perfect, filmic ideal, but we so rarely do. Now, staring into my twenties, i see joy in the successes more modest, and the achievements actually had rather than those merely anticipated. I suspect, nay, predict, that my lips will never touch Kirsten’s, in reality or as the wanly beautiful Mary Jane Watson. She, and the woman she played in the movie i did not like but eminently enjoyed, are the perfect representation of that unrequited love.

And then, at that teary wishing-it-was-me-in-the-ripped-up-suit-saving-her moment, i looked beside me, and realized that i have it. Her. That thing, that never attained thing, too perfect so that it can be endlessly redescribed by the imperfections that we call art. I remember the scant days between courting and kissing. I hid them from this website almost presciently, as if i knew that in describing the agony of the indescribable tension that i would eventually have to admit that i had overcome it, turned it from dreamed to dreamt. It’s on another page in a different place, and i rarely hint at it at all to this day. But I love Elise, love our stupid quirky banter from computers across the room more than i could ever imagine loving that unrequited, untouched tiny Kirsten-thing in my head. I reject the imagined perfection. Because, no matter how perfect our imagined life might be, how could it be better than what i am living right now?

I did not like Spiderman 2. You should go see it, and for every contrived moment, or bad shot, you should think about Peter, Peter Parker, and how he wants such simple things but goes to such extraordinary lengths in his not having them. And you should want to be him, swinging high above New York at twenty-four frames per second, twenty-four hours a day for all of your life. And, then, you should realize that like any art, Peter is a glistening imperfection, endlessly torn between want and have so much that we are drawn in droves, record setting droves, to watch him flail between the two, a gossamer moth torn between the Sun and the Moon.

You should go see it, and realize that your life is a higher art than art, because it is crystalline in its perfection, alive instead of celluloid, yours instead of everyone else’s. And you should leave pleased.

Wherein I Flex My Editorial Muscles

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Sorry to leave you hanging after that last post. I’ll get to it.

In order to write 10,000 academic words in four days, I feel that it’s important to cleanse the palate with 1,000 non-academic words. I was provided this opportunity by an article and accompanying ed-op in The Drexel Triangle that criticized elements of Accepted Students Day, the event that i emceed last weekend.

Long, long ago i was an Entertainment staff writer for The Triangle, but i was continually unimpressed with their editorial oversight. Four years later, an opinionated editorial tone has permeated the entire paper. Combine this with a historical lack of informed journalistic research, and it’s impossible to take anything it says without a massive grain of salt. This is exemplified by the fact that the editorially-minded article in question was penned Editor-in-Chief Chris Duffy who, if past practice is any indication, takes part in writing the main ed-op in each issue.

In particular, the paper loves to lambast the administration of Drexel. Sometimes they have good reasons. However, whenever they focus on Admissions they invariable misrepresent the facts, making the department of hardworking people seem like typical administrative villains. This is not the case, and this week’s article finally motivated me to fire off a response

So, since Blogger will be on the back burner for a few days, here is my editorial in it’s full 1,070 word glory. I look forward to seeing if it has experienced any substantial edits when it hits the stands on Friday.

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In last week’s editorial “Excluded Students,” The Triangle stated, “the Office of Campus Activities should have been pushing [Accepted Students Day] just as hard as it was pushing Activities Unlimited.”

This editorial statement, along with your front-page article on the subject, exposed an uninformed view of the role of the Undergraduate Admissions Office. Though I agree with the spirit of your criticism, I feel obliged to amend the perspective that it offered.

(Before I comment, allow me to offer a disclaimer. I major in Global Journalism. I served as a student employee of the Undergraduate Admissions Office for more than three years. I have also been an Orientation Leader, a Dragon Leader, and a tour guide. Additionally, I served as the emcee for the opening remarks of the event in question in exchange for a small honorarium.)

It is impossible to discount the important role that campus activities play in recruiting new students to Drexel. I have witnessed the staff in Admissions strive to stay updated on the current slate of activities via their connections to the student body, which are represented by (but not limited to) the Student Ambassadors who work in the office. Academic departments regularly brief Admissions staff with up-to-date information and revised points of contact to be passed on to prospective students, and I cannot see why OCA would not be eager to do the same. I would hope that the two offices begin to build this relationship in the near future.

Your article briefly highlighted the limited student involvement in Accepted Students day via screening the Fashion Show, featuring student performance ensembles, and showing student-produced films. What it failed to note is that many of these options were pursued by Admissions based on suggestions and feedback gathered from current Drexel students. This practice leaves me convinced that any student group that made a reasonable request to be involved in an Admissions event would be gladly included.

In your criticism, you called the “lack of space” issue preventing an Activities Unlimited style of event “implausible,” offering the Quad as a possible staging ground. What you failed to address is that during the course of an open house, hundreds of families cross the Quad repeatedly as they move from session to session. Filling this space with students and tables during any large-scale admissions event would only serve to slow the overall schedule. The OCA might occupy another space during the event, but that would further aggravate the reservation of available facilities, a practice that you rightfully criticized.

Ultimately, the solution to the perceived injustice referenced in your coverage is not the combination of Accepted Students day with an OCA-sponsored event that attempts to feature representatives from all of the active groups on campus. Such an event would be a logistical nightmare that, most importantly, would be completely overwhelming to visiting families.

In short, it’s an “implausible” solution to a simple problem.

A logical solution, based upon a review of the Accepted Students day agenda, would be to for the OCA to become a more visible participant in the Activity Fair that is held in the North Gym prior to introductory remarks. The OCA, instead of occupying a single table, could arrange for student volunteers to staff a number of tables representing a wide variety of campus groups. Students would not act as recruiters for their specific groups, which would be inappropriate prior to our deadline for matriculation, but could speak to the vast array of cultural, service, and recreational opportunities on our campus. Prospective students could then follow up with multiple points of contact regarding their specific interests.

Out of dozens of on-campus Admissions events, only Accepted Students Day and Scholars Days offer attendance by invitation only. As a result, it is not widely publicized. Your editorial calls this reasoning “absolutely ludicrous.” “Why would someone waste the time and energy,” you rhetorically questioned, “when they weren’ accepted?”

In actuality, there are several “answers” that the staff in Admissions encounters regularly. Rejected students often come to plead their case without investigating the proper channels for an appeal. Students applying late come looking for basic information that the event is not geared to supply. The families of high school juniors see no problem in planning their trips around an inapplicable event that fits their schedule rather than the Junior Open House offered in May. Accepted Graduate students also conclude, incorrectly, that the event will be appropriate for their needs.

Based on my experience, I can attest to how frustrating it can be for a family to travel to our campus for an event is not geared to their specific needs. Accepted Students Day is a special occasion meant for students in the final stage of their college search process; it is by invitation only and should remain that way.

Drexel’s student body should definitely be made aware of the full schedule of recruitment events as they approach, especially when an event will alter the normal availability of university facilities. Drexel students could easily be forewarned of events and their effect on the campus via the Drexel Daily Digest. I would encourage the Admissions office to explore this method of communication in the future.

Drexel students love to vilify our Administration, often with good reason. However, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions is not, and has never been, a villainous presence on our campus. The office’s staff is competent, committed, caring, and responsive; they recruit students in good faith with a belief that they are building a better student body for our University. They are not interested in presenting an “approved” Drexel Experience so much as they attempt to frame the entirety of our University in a way that lets prospective students form their own opinions.

Ideally, The Triangle serves a similarly important role on the campus: that of an impartial watchdog. In this case, I humbly submit that your article was overly concerned with opinionated reaction, which was emphasized by the tone of your editorial. Many of your barbed editorial questions lacked a basis in fundamental journalistic research, and as a result were as “ludicrous” and “implausible” as the policies they targeted. In short: you did not provide balanced coverage.

As a former employee of the Admissions Office and as a former writer for The Triangle, I hope that in the future this publication can offer a fairer, better-informed perspective on the Admissions Office and the events that they plan.

There’s Something About Zeitgeist

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Zeitgeist. In one of those late nineties years it got to be a popular term to bandy about in conversation, though not one that could be easily defined. Paradigm? Sure, you can pick that up from context. Modernity? Its word root tells you the whole story. But Zeitgeist? It was always used in association with (pop)cultural trends, but in my anorexic teenaged mind all it did was draw up a picture of Linda Blair reading a little bit of Vogue every time her head spun around to the front.

You can look at the dictionary definition, but i think to really understand this work you need to understand another accompanying term: Jumping The Shark. It originated on Happy Days. The internet pretty much specializes in defining Shark Jumping, so i won’t bore you with an extended explanation. The short of it is that when something very popular becomes uncool or passé, it has jumped the shark. It has reached the end of the cool spectrum. People at the water-cooler are now openly mocking it, when at one point they were climbing over each other just to talk about it.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is zeitgeist. Z is the way you can measure of whether or not something even ranks on the sliding scale of coolness to begin with. It’s like a Technorati or a Blogdex of culture at large; a cultural trend-line. Z is the difference between invisible and up-and-coming, between Visqueen and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, between Line of Fire and CSI: My Ass.

Z can be a undertow you are swept into and a crest that you ride upon. To further beleaguer my metaphor, depending on how far upstream in cool river you are, you will get early indications of new phenomenon. I tend to have good advanced warning of new music, decent knowledge of upcoming movies, and relatively no knowledge of hip technology stuff.

I have prepared three examples to make light of this, but you’ll have to come back after i get out of class to see what they are (see, isn’t that responsible of me?).

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When was it that i learned how to tuck the corners in so deftly? This is the first year that i’ve been good enough to warrant the question; the first time that i haven’t hollered frantically for Erika to hold down the folds for me while i taped them. I remember how i used to do it not so long ago, wrapping paper around and around a box and then practically fashioning a bow out of scotch tape to hold it all down. I hated wrapping, and i hated wrapped presented. I told my mother not to bother; “Why use all that time and paper,” i said, “just so i can rip it open?”

When did i start to thrill in surprise? High school’s last Christmas Anastasia and i sat on her floor with empty shoe-boxes and packages of tissue paper trying to decide how to best obscure our killer compact discs. I taped mine down in a goloshes box and covered it with layers of tissue while she created a protective exoskelton to protect the tell-tale shape of her jewel case. Still that mass of paper, still that scotch tape bow, but i understood something about the thrill of surprise; it wasn’t enough just to buy, but to keep guessing until the last possible second.

When did i make it my own? Last Christmas i got a few excellent gifts, but i was more intent on giving. Elise helped me hunt down a wonderful list of bottle stops, DVD players, chess sets, Dr. Seuss Books, and Guiness playing cards in a whirlwind weekend while i slowly amassed her own pile of presents solo. I shopped fearlessly into late December not because i was fearless, but because i was no longer celebrating the same holiday as the people in the line in front of me. When all was said and done i had re-charged half of my credit card, but i was too happy doing it to stop. Christmas had finally stopped being a season, or an obligation — it was an excuse to give something to some of the people that i loved the most.

I almost forgot that this year, creating invisible, impractical, self-imposed timelines and deadlines for myself. Yet, as i lined up the pattern on the wrapping paper so perfectly a few minutes ago, as i cut out my own inventive little gift tags and wrote in the cards, i realized that i have come all the way around: from understanding the joy of surprise, to understanding the joy of the season, to understanding the joy of creating the surprise.

I will never submit myself to the Christmas celebrated by the people i stand in line with at the cash register. It isn’t about their idea, or my idea, or the cash register. It’s about liking the giving so much that you hardly care about what you get in return. It’s about liking it so much that you let it creep into March and September, buying things just because, so that when you look down your list sometimes you can say “i already gave them the perfect gift.”

But, it isn’t about my idea, and you’re giving me an excellent gift right now. Here’s to hoping your ideas are working out just as perfectly.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/12/107216091026681200/