Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

stories

always crashing in the same car

by

I don’t know how else to start this story, so I’ll just say it.

I crashed our car.

Into our house.

Yes, you read that correctly. Don’t worry – there were no casualties. I’m here. The house is no worse for the wear. And the car… well, the car lived to tell the tale.

It was not quite this bad.

Before you start to make a number of assumption about me and my driving, allow me to point out that I have not so much as nudged another vehicle in my first year behind the wheel. On the road I am a cautious, defensive driver.

It’s off the road where I’m a danger. Particularly, in my driveway. I just don’t have the spacial relations skills to navigate the tiny space. Our car earned its first, tiny, quarter-sized ding in a tango with our garage doorframe last year. It’s just scant inches wider than our car.

This time I made it past the garage, but realized far too late I was still angled towards our house. In my defense, the house actually starts being houselike within the bounds of the frame of the garage door. You have to cut hard right to avoid backing straight into the house.

(If getting out of our driveway is starting to sound like a difficult geometry problem or a question on a Mensa test, you are starting to catch on.)

Angled towards the house does not equal crashing into the house. You see, I actually had not yet crashed. I stopped the car and got our to investigate my predicament. I had barely kissed the side of the house with the back fender of the car. I could reverse course and drive back into the garage and pull out again.

I returned to the car. I put it in drive and gingerly nudged it forward only to hear a terrifying metallic shrieking noise. Creeeeawwww-oy-eeeeeeeeee. I threw the car into park and leapt out to discover that the tiny, tangential kiss I had delivered to the house resulted in our stucco gripping the edge of my fender, and now it refused to let go – to the tune of pulling half of the fender off the car!

I’ll admit it: I panicked. How the hell was I going to get out of this? My crisis logic said, back up a little bit so there is less tension on the fender, and then pry it loose from the wall. And, well, since that was the smartest message running through my brain, I did it.

The problem was that I did it with a little too much verve. I put the car in reverse and tapped the gas slightly too hard, resulting in me colliding with the house at full ramming speed. In addition to my crumpled fender, I now had a shattered taillight, and had bent the spigot on the side of our house in half.

I meekly pulled the car forward a hair and got out to investigate the damage. The spigot was twisted back on itself like a pretzel. I applied slight pressure to try to return it to its former shape and it snapped off in my hands, spraying me with a blast of water.

Suffice to say, this was not one of the finer days in my personal history. To my credit, I had the spigot replaced and a taillight ordered by the time E returned home, which left only the bruises to the rear of the car and my pride as evidence of the mishap.

I don’t understand why the beginning of summer has officially became car calamity season, but I’m happy that last year’s exploits taught me to budget for the worst possible levy of my own personal stupidity tax against my bank account.

What Happens In Vegas…

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Scene: Yesterday at the Las Vegas airport, just after 9am PT.

I am scheduled to rehearse with Arcati Crisis in approximately six hours. E and I have just been deplaned. I texted Gina an update on my flight.

This is our actual text message conversation, unabridged.

Peter:  Our plane is delayed due to a bad smell. Will text you upon arrival. I still might be home in time.

Gina: Bad smell like a rotting carcass, or like an “OMG PLANE CRASH” kind of bad smell?

G: I don’t know what the latter would smell like. Fuel?

P: I suspect a dirty sock has been sucked into the air circulation system. We have been grounded due to a dirty sock.

G: Probably placed there by an angry flight attendant.

P: They keep beckoning the attendants back into the plane for a “sniff test.” I do not think “sniff” is a technical acronym. I believe they are actually testing our safety with their finely trained noses.

G: That’s amazing. “Flight attendants: it is time for you to sniff once again. This is what we’ve been training for all of our lives.”

G: If there was a chemist there, they’d make sure people were wafting.

P: Do you think I should go over and explain wafting to them? They seem very pleasant. Maybe they are lifelong learners who would appreciate the knowledge.

G: Well, I suppose wafting would only be useful if they are looking to stick their noses into bottles or cans of questionable materials. If there is an exhaust pipe somewhere with a dirty sock in it, I guess that counts.

G: It is my opinion that they should have hired people who walk around in lab coats with the airline emblem on them to do the sniffing … to add legitimacy to the whole thing. Nothing says “legitimate” like a lab coat.

P: Maybe they have the lab coats in the overhead bin with the sample oxygen mask. Maybe SNIF stands for “sensing nefarious intrusive fragrances.” They serve many roles, flight attendants.

G: It’s true. Perhaps they just ran out of miniature liquor bottles and they’re trying to come up with how to handle the passengers without them.

An hour passes.

P: Now we cannot reenter the plane to retrieve our luggage. I will be secretly thrilled if the bad smell is actually toxic.

G: Wow, you still haven’t taken off yet? Are they going to put you on another plane?

P: No. We are relocating Arcati Crisis to Las Vegas. We will be staying in the executive suit of The Flamingo. We will be alternates for Donnie & Marie.

G: This all sounds completely reasonable and appropriate.

G: Of course we would be staying at The Flamingo. This would only be more sensical if we were staying in a suite next to a penthouse filled with Elvises.

G: Elvi? I don’t know.

P: Oh, it gets better.

P: There are paramedics with a stretcher waiting in the jetway. Except, everyone from the flight is seated out here at the gate.

G: I am guessing they found an alien life form in there. You might actually be living out Terror at 30,000 Feet … but … at sea level and not trapped in a plane … and without William Shatner. So, not nearly as dynamic or exciting.

G: It occurs to me that the presence of William Shatner in any form at this point would improve your situation.

Several minutes later…

P: They just took a single large bag out of the plane on the stretcher.

G: Oh my god. There is a human head in it, isn’t there?!?

P: Or a small E.B.E.

[That’s Extraterrestrial Biological Entity, for those of you who did not watch The X-Files.]

G: I think this entire conversation will be making it’s way onto my blog.

P: Yes, mine too. Clearly.

G: So, rehearsal’s off, then?

Epilogue, three hours later … around when rehearsal was set to begin.

G: Have you made your way onto a plane yet.

P: No.

G: Oy. Did you find out any fabulous details about the Mysterious Odor?

P: No further information. I was told by an airline rep that I was “very nice,” so clearly they are trying to cover something up.

G: Intrigue!

P: This is an actual message I just heard on the overhead: “We want to let you know this flight does not have running water, which means you will not have coffee service, or be able to flush the toilets.”

P: Then, after a brief pause: “We jut want to clarify – you will be able to use the toilets, but will be unable to flush them or wash your hands.”

G: Wow… just wow. Purell for all!

E and I touched down in Philly just after 10pm. Our plane smelled lovely and did have running water.

Lies Adults Tell Because They’re True (or: I’ll sleep on the floor and like it)

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As I grow older I am starting to realize that all of the annoying things that adults told me when I was younger were not the baldfaced lies and emotional blackmail that I assumed them to be at the time, but simply the rules of the world viewed through the lens of someone whose body incrementally decays with every passing moment, drawing them nearer and nearer to death.

My answer will NEVER be "no." Never.

While my recent birthday might put me firmly on the side of the slowly dying, I’m hoping using my blog as a reference point can keep my attitude eternally young so I don’t turn into a curmudgeonly old person. For example, now eating too much ice cream or candy makes my stomach upset, but that was never true for the first 27 or 28 years of my life. It was a lie old people told me. I know not to try to impress this fact of my old-person life onto a ten year old enjoying the chocolate carnage of Halloween or the unbidden joy of an all-you-can-eat sundae bar.

I bring this up not because of the impending holiday of chocolate sacrifice, but because of sleep. I never used to need very much of it. Three hours served me just as well as twelve. Presently, I require seven hours and fifteen minutes a night or I will be the grumpmaster the next day. Note that this excludes eight hours, or even nine hours. We’re talking about an exact science. Oversleeping is just as bad as a restless night.

In an attempt to abet my adult habit of fruitful sleep, I have recently campaigned for us to buy a new mattress. The one we’ve been sleeping on just passed its ninth birthday, and over the course of our five homes in those nine years its coils have given up the will the live. When I sit on it, the area around me dips to half its height. Sleeping on it – or, rather, in it – requires several pillows inserted around my body as wedges and cantilevers, and is generally a miserable experience.

Ikea Futon, side view

Thus, times when I absolutely require quality sleep, I wil abscond from the bedroom to our trusty Ikea futon, which has all the give of a cinderblock and imbues me with the energy of my much younger self when I arise the next morning.

This is what lead us to the Great Mattress Shopping Adventure Slash Possibly Catastrophic Money-Pit of 2011 two weekends ago.

I was convinced I wanted a firm mattress, but refused to simply buy an Ikea futon pad as our permanent mattress. That would be declassé. I am through with Ikea. I want expensive, non-modular, fugly, adult furniture that is three times as much money and comes blessedly pre-assembled.

Deep in the bowels of a King of Prussia department store (which, FYI, in my life is utterly synonymous as a scene setting to “fourth or fifth circle of hell”) we discovered their mattress area.

This was mistake number one – why were we in a department store instead of… gee, I don’t know… A MATTRESS STORE?

Then, I committed a second error, uttering the following sentence: “I’d love the firmest possible mattress. Given the choice, I sleep on the floor.”

I quickly discovered that, as with any boutique industry, the more specialized your kink, the more it costs to get you off. I wanted floor, and he would give me glorious floor – glorious, expensive, mattress-shaped floor that had all the features and benefits of sleeping on the floor except for the possibility of getting your clothes snagged on a stray carpet staple.

I stole this from a travel blog. I have to admit, it looks sort of awesome - but that's not the kind of thing you should ever admit to a mattress salesmen, or they will get you on a "ditch filled with sharp pebbles" model.

Why mattress companies are making high end beds that emulate the floor I could never tell you. Anyone who can afford these mattresses can afford and probably possesses a mattress-shaped area of floor that they could sleep on, unless they are so fancy that their mattress is suspended in mid-air, possibly by some sort of anti-gravity ray.

That would be a very valid reason to buy a floor-like mattress. Sometimes you yearn for simpler things.

E and I do not have that problem. We have lots of gravity, and lots of floors that our gravity makes it very easy to appreciate. Yet, we bought the second very firm bed we sat on. To my credit, after we selected it I insisted that we walk around the mall (or, “fiery inferno”) and sit and/or lay on several other surfaces before coming back to the department store to initiate a transaction. I did not want to be the one to later complain about our major purchase which MAJOR PERSONAL DISCLOSURE I always am, unless I had the chance to research it for several months on the internet and it has never received a seemingly valid 1-star review on Amazon.

Nay, not this time.

Said mattress arrived at our house on Saturday, ahead of schedule. When first I sat on it and its firmness bruised my supple cheeks, I proclaimed it good.

Then I tried to sleep on it that night.

You know the downsides of sleeping on the floor? Like, if you turn on your side your hip grinds to dust against the ground as an entire half of your body falls asleep? This mattress has all of those features, too. Like I said, everything but the carpet staples.

An example of E enjoying a firm sleeping surface. I can neither confirm or deny if she is passed out drunk.

Basically, the mattress is for two kinds people at opposite ends of the sleep spectrum: those who fall asleep intent and motionless, flat on their backs, and those who collapse limp and facedown, like a drunk college student. I’ve never been a back sleeper, yet while I may no longer be in college or especially drunk at any given time, I still sleep the sleep of the dead drunk at least half of the time. In that half of the time our new floor-board style of mattress is highly satisfactory.

The rest of the time, not so much. Also, it never occurred to me that the department store version of the mattress had been prodded by people and jumped on by children for months. It did not represent a Day 0 version of the mattress. I would have to work it like a mound of clay or a block of unyielding marble in order to get it to the state of older, carpeted floor boards that have a little give and some weak spots. Fresh out of the plastic bag its consistency was more like “kitchen tile,” or perhaps “cement floor of a prison cell.”

If this was disconcerting to me at least half of the time, E’s percentage was much higher. She’s not of the collapsing drunkenly to sleep persuasion unless she is, you know, actually collapsing drunkenly to sleep. Otherwise, she has a very specific evening ritual to wind her body down towards the gentle embrace of slumber.

Our new mattress, front view

Nowhere in the product catalog for this mattress do the words “gentle embrace” appear.

Two nights later, let’s say I am not married to the happiest woman on Earth.

Yet, I remain dedicated. I am certain I can wear the mattress down to an acceptably firm sleeping surface. We have sixty days to break it in before the manufacturer will accept that we don’t like it and take it back, but I refuse to admit defeat.

Why not? Because I am stubborn? Sure. Because I do yearn for a floor-like sleeping surface? That too.

Yet, one of those reasons is surely that when I was a kid I loved falling asleep on the floor, and adults would needle me: “Don’t you want to go to bed? It’s much more comfortable.” And, even if my slowly dying body now needs much more sleep every night, I refuse to admit that I am so old and decrepit that I require a pillow-top mattress for quality rest. My bones are not yet quite so brittle.

I will take a pass on that Halloween candy, though.

Don’t you people watch disaster movies?

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I work on the thirty-eighth of forty five floors, and sometimes the floor shakes.

This is the reality of working in a high rise office building. There is not always a reason for it. There seems to be a certain square of carpet positioned half the office away from me that, when walked over with vigor, causes my chair to shake.

I’ve never quite discerned which square of carpet it is, but yesterday a little bit before 2pm I was ready to find it because clearly someone with a little bit of heft to them was jumping up and down right on top of it.

I stood up from my chair.

I kept shaking.

Plan B. Maybe I was having a white-out? I used to have them in high school when my diet consisted entirely of allergy pills and Altoids. The world begins to go white around the edges and you have the sensation you are shaking and try to correct it, but really you weren’t shaking in the first place, except the shaking correction turns into you anti-shaking.

It’s all very confusing. Except, yesterday I didn’t feel confused. Well, I was confused about the shaking, but it didn’t seem to be originating from my person. And I wasn’t seeing white.

Also, I had just eaten a really big lunch.

It was at this juncture that I picked up my phone and tweeted:

Um, did Philly just have an earthquake? Our building is shaking.

Here my cultivation theory kicked in. If life is like the movies, we’ve all seen the disaster movies – we all know what not to do.

I checked to make sure my enceinte cube neighbor was okay, picked up all of my things (people are always going back for their cell phone or laptop), and walked to the doorway to the fire tower stairway, where I continued tweeting. After all, one wall of my cube is solid reinforced glass windows. Not where you want to be in the event of an earthquake or alien attack.

I just watched Skyline. I know what’s up.

Camped out by the stairs it took one swipe through my Twitter stream to see the shaking was not localized to Philly. I noticed mentions from Syracuse and Arlington.

We all know the story from there.

There is a beauty in shared experiences on the internet. And, while a pretty big percentage of people might see a certain television show or comment on a political revolution a world away, nothing tops direct, personal experience with natural phenomenon. Twitter was abuzz for Snopocalypse and it’s been abuzz during our summer deluge of rain.

For an earthquake felt by the entire disaster-deprived northeastern seaboard, it was electrified.

I felt only slightly reassured once tweets identified the source and magnitude of the earthquake was in Virginia. What about aftershocks? Or, what if it was just a pre-tremor tremble presaging the big one?

Also, there was still the alien angle to consider.

Plus, I still had that pregnant co-worker. If this really go down like a real disaster movie my chances of survival as a gawky meta-aware white guy were ever lower with her in the cast.

I have seen 2012.

With our expectant friend safely making her way home our office belatedly made an announcement about our relative safety and encouraged us to do the same.

Everyone in the building ran for the elevators. It was practically an aftershock. Because you totally want to be packed into elevators with 3,000 of your closest friends right after an earthquake. That sounds awesome.

I proceded back to the fire stairs and walked down them. All thirty-eight flights. I emerged from the lobby just ahead of my co-workers who took the elevators.

Then I walked twenty-five blocks. Sure, I could have jumped right on the El near my building. But I thought of people. People on the El are incredible stupid and rude on any day of the week. In the aftermath of an earthquake with the entire city dismissed from work all at once?

I have seen War of the Worlds. I know how that turns out.

I had no interest in being underground with other human beings. I walked to 46th street and waited in beautiful sunlight for the El to carry me home.

I’ve got a beautiful feelin’ nothing is goin’ my way.

by

I think Mel should tweet the punchlines to all of my posts before I write them.

I’m not sure I can make this story any funnier than that tweet, other than to point out that there is clearly some sort of voodoo curse on our car.

Here goes…

Early in my process of learning to drive I decided it might be a good idea to save our local service center’s number to my phone. You know, in case I got stuck in a situation where knowing the price of, say, a new car door would impact my decision-making.

Being a denizen of the mobile age, I punched “Ardmore Toyota” into my phone’s Google search, added the number to my contacts, and went on with my life. Thankfully, I didn’t have any occasions to call them while I had my learner’s permit, aside from inquiring about getting an iPod dock installed.

A few weeks ago I called to get the price of my replacement car keys. Oddly, all of the hold messages were spoken in a southern drawl. Why would a dealership in Philly advertise with a southern accent, I wondered. It seemed a little counter-intuitive, given the well-to-do, perfectly-coifed mainline clientele they serve.

My question was answered this week when I ordered my keys. Everyone I spoke with had a southern accent! Clearly our local Toyota dealership was a family-owned business, and the family was transplanted from The South. Why not have hold messages with accents – their accent is part of their brand! They assured me that getting a Saturday appointment would be no problem, even if I called on Friday.

Wow, I thought, our dealer is awesome. They made their regional heritage part of their brand identity, they had plenty of Saturday appointments available, and they were all so darn friendly even though I speak about four times as fast as they do.

On Friday I dutifully called to make my Saturday appointment. At the time my cell was buried under a pile of proofreading, so I Googled the number and used my desk phone to call.

Ardmore the county seat of Carter County, Oklahoma, United States, and is generally considered the hub of the 10-county region known as Arbuckle Country or Lake and Trail Country. It is located 90 miles equidistant from Oklahoma City and Dallas/Fort Worth. Ardmore was named after the affluent Philadelphia suburb and historic Pennsylvania Main Line stop Ardmore, PA.

Weirdly, the dealer had no record of my order. And, even stranger,  no one I spoke with had a southern accent.

While on hold while they looked up my order confirmation again I glanced back at my computer screen and saw that there are two Ardmore Toyotas. One in the Philly suburbs, and one IN ARDMORE, OKLAHOMA.

I gingerly hung up the receiver and called over the wall to Mel.

Me: You know how I ordered those car keys on Tuesday?

Mel: To replace the ones you lost in the middle of a field in broad daylight, possibly stolen by some sort of highly intelligent vole?

Me: Yes, those. I think I may have ordered them from Oklahoma.

Mel: You mean, they had them in stock in Oklahoma and are shipping them to you?

Me: No. Like, now I have to drive to Oklahoma to pick them up.

Thus the above tweet.

To Ardmore of Oklahoma’s eternal credit, they do outstanding PPC mobile search targeting, and they were very good-natured about shipping my keys to Philadelphia.