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Archives for 2017

upside-down houses (or are they right-side up?)

December 13, 2017 by krisis

Of the vast catalog of cultural differences we’ve encountered in Wellington, one I have found to be both puzzling and ultimately charming is the upside-down houses.

It is utterly normal for suburban houses here to have their kitchen and primary living space on an upper floor. This was consistent across almost every house we saw in person, and anecdotally seems to be the case throughout our entire neighborhood based on glimpses of upper-floor kitchens and dining rooms through windows – since folks don’t tend to hang curtains in a kitchen.

I’m not widely-traveled enough to know if this is a Wellington-only thing, a New Zealand thing, or a British commonwealth thing. Heck, maybe Philadelphia was the only place in the world where you expect to walk into a living room and then a kitchen when you enter a house. I have no idea.

At first the upside-down layouts seemed absurd to me. Why would you want to carry groceries upstairs all the time? Why would you want to exit and enter the house near the bedrooms and clomp all the way to your parlor!

Having lived with the arrangement for a few months now, it’s making a bit more sense to me for three big reasons.

First, houses in New Zealand are known to be poorly-insulated – even modern construction! Heat rises. It’s a pretty simple equation – it makes sense to have that heat rise to the rooms where the most people in your house will be spending most of their time living. It’s easy to heat up your bedroom with a radiator for the night and then switch it off in the morning, which is more energy efficient than an empty bedroom being warm all day long.

(Plus, it means food smells from the kitchen don’t rise to the bedrooms, which is a major peeve of mine.)

Second, due to the hilly nature of Wellington, many upper floors have phenomenal views – whether that’s of the city or a body of water. Many houses have some sort of porch, balcony, or deck. Those views would be wasted on a room used primarily for sleep.

I’ve always been puzzled by American houses that have those features on a bedroom – do people really wake up in the morning and fling open the doors to walk right out onto their little terrace before getting dressed or having coffee? Those elevated outdoor spaces feel so much more useful when attached to communal spaces.

Third, privacy. When your living room is at ground level, it feels like everyone can just stare into it from the street and every passing car to see what you are doing. That means you have the drapes drawn closed all the time if you have any kind of foot or car traffic on your street.

With the living space on the second floor, I feel fine having windows un-shaded. If someone sees the tops of our heads from down on the street as we watch TV or play music, it’s not such a big deal. Meanwhile, you’re almost certainly going to have curtains on your bedroom windows no matter what floor you’re on, as you conceivably want to be able to make it dark and will sometimes be getting dressed in there. Why not leave them on the bottom and have open windows on the top?

Despite all of those positive points, I still remain a bit puzzled by some of the impractical detractions.

When you enter an upside-down home, there’s an odd disconnect between where you take off your shoes and coat and where you’re actually heading. I find myself constantly puzzled about where to set down my keys and charge my phone – things I expect to do in my living space, and not in a disconnected foyer hallway on another level.

Parlor-on-top layouts mean bedrooms tend to be next to front doors and garages and exposed to all the drafts and street noise that entails.  The bedrooms have living spaces overhead, completely with all the noise of footfalls that comes from that. And, dampness is a big issue here, which means you’re sleeping in a potentially damp space – ick.

Plus, it makes the daily routine feel a bit backwards – waking up in the morning, walking up the stairs for breakfast, and then back down the stairs to leave.

Finally, there’s the aforementioned lugging of groceries up flights of stairs, whereas I think most suburban Americans expect their kitchen to be adjacent to their garage. It’s a minor annoyance, but one that I’d be hesitant to lock in for years if I was buying a home.

All that said, as I type this from our couch looking out over the harbour, I have to say I’m really coming around to these upside down houses. E and I briefly thought about having a house built back in the states, and never once did we discuss a living room or kitchen on an upper floor. It’s one of those “of course things are done this way” cultural assumptions.

Now, if I had the choice, I’m not sure where I’d choose to place those communal spaces in a house built from scratch. There’s no right answer, and some of my objections from when we first started seeing homes now feel downright silly.

I’m sure Kiwis are equally puzzled when they visit friends in the states, wondering why their living rooms are always frigid and where all you can see from the windows are the hedges.

Filed Under: thoughts Tagged With: architecture, New Zealand

Crushing Comics S01E038 – The dangers of loving canon + Avengers West Coast (& Mockingbird)

December 13, 2017 by krisis

After I deliver a rousing monologue on the utter meaninglessness of canon in comics I unwrap a pair of books that helped the Avengers franchise branch out – the Avengers West Coast omnibuses (which brings me back to the flexibility of canon when it comes to Mockingbird)!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 38 features Avengers West Coast Omnibus Volumes 1 and 2, covered in the Guide to Avengers West Coast.

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Avengers West Coast, canon, Collected Editions, Crushing Comics, Marvel Comics, Mockingbird, Omnibus

Updated: Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu Collecting Guide and Reading Order

December 12, 2017 by krisis

As a part of Marvel’s new “Legacy” era of publishing, they’ve revived the series of several long-cancelled heroes for just one more issue. One of those heroes was Shang-Chi, which made for the perfect opportunity to update the Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu collecting guide and reading order!

Maybe you don’t need a guide to every appearance Shang-Chi has ever made right now … possibly because you don’t know who he is! Keep reading for a brief introduction, where to start reading, where Shang-Chi has been in 2017, and why his collected edition standings are a little… unusual.

[Read more…] about Updated: Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Shang-Chi, Updated Comic Guide

Crushing Comics S01E037 – Grant Morrison’s New X-Men (and why he writes the best Jean Grey)

December 12, 2017 by krisis

I start off this episode musing about the skill of talk show hosting. It’s one thing to be able to extemporaneously monologue with coherence, but it’s another skill entirely to be able to do that while doing something with your hands – like unwrapping bricks of comic books.

The books I wind up unwrapping are a major part of the uncanny origin of my now-massive comic book collection. Grant Morrison’s New X-Men were the first trio of books I had delivered to our new house back in 2010. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with them since then, though even from my first read it’s been clear to me that Grant Morrison understood Jean Grey like no writer before him – and, none after have gotten the chance!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 37 features Grant Morrison’s complete run on New X-Men, covered in my guide to New X-Men and X-Men, Vol. 2.

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Collected Editions, Crushing Comics, Grant Morrison, Jean Grey, Marvel Comics, New X-Men, X-Men

Song of the Day: Ravel’s “Une Barque sur l’Ocean”

December 11, 2017 by krisis

I am in awe of anyone who can perfectly reproduce a performance.

I’m not just talking about concert pianists or ballet dancers. Marching bands fascinate me. E spent her high school years playing clarinet in a marching band, and it just blows my mind that she not only had to reproduce intricate music with her breath and fingers, but also hit the mark on choreography at the same time.

A famous anecdote of mine is that when I auditioned for an was cast in my first play, Agatha Christie’s The Unexpected Guest, I thought that you didn’t have to learn your exact lines in theatre. I thought you learned the general semblance of them and then just sort of did some improv from there.

I’ve spent my fair amount of time on stage since that first time, but always in plays or in rock bands. I’ve repeated performances of many monologues and songs, but I’ve never been under the illusion that I am performing a note-for-note, beat-for-beat replica of an original. It’s not in my nature as a performer. Even at my most controlled I introduce many tiny deviations into every moment, both intentional and unintentional.

(This, I think, is part of my fascination with the process of film acting – not that two of your takes will ever been seen played on top of each other, but that you must be consistent enough for the performance and energy of any of your takes to match up with another one.)

I think that fascination with perfect reproduction has a lot to do with what I enjoy classical piano recordings so much. Orchestral music is beautiful, but it’s the product of dozens of people working together to create something greater. Intellectually I know each player is a highly-trained perfectionist, but the pessimist in me insists that there could be many tiny variations their performances could be masked by several others.

That’s not the case when you watch a single person seated at a piano. They are performing a high wire act with no net on an unforgiving instrument with no slurs or bends. The piano is both dynamic and impractically linear. Despite the potential for massive polyphony, you only have ten fingers and two feet to control it – and you can transform yourself in a 12-piece orchestra where each one of those appendages does its own distinct work.

I first heard Ravel’s “Une barque sur l’ocean” just a few weeks ago, in the trailer to Call Me By Your Name. I watched it because I had heard so much about the indelible performances in the film, but for the first half of it I couldn’t concentrate on the people. All I could hear was the music.

When I hear most piano music I can almost visualize the notation dancing and alive, the staffs rolling past with notes lighting up as they’re played. I couldn’t do that with “Une barque sur l’ocean.” I couldn’t picture individual notes or those twelve appendages. Even before I knew the name of the song, all I heard were great rolling waves of notes and a wash of blue green color.

Given my vivid reaction to hearing it, I wasn’t surprised to learn that the song was from the impressionist period of composing, nor didn’t come as a great surprise to learn that Ravel was a contemporary of Debussy (who I love). Yet, it wasn’t enough just to know the song and the composure. I had to see it played. How could two hands, ten fingers, and two feet create that rich, roiling sound? [Read more…] about Song of the Day: Ravel’s “Une Barque sur l’Ocean”

Filed Under: Song of the Day Tagged With: Debussy, piano, Ravel

Crushing Comics S01E036 – When are you susceptible to change? + Absolute Planetary Volumes 1 & 2

December 11, 2017 by krisis

Do you know what you get coupons for new toothpaste when you move into a new home? It’s not just to welcome you – it’s because moving makes you more apt to change your habits!

It’s fitting that after chatting about changed habits that I pulled out one of the handful of comics that brought me back to collecting when I moved into my first house in 2010 – Warren Ellis and John Cassaday’s Planetary!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Absolute editions, Collected Editions, Crushing Comics, John Cassaday, Planetary, Warren Ellis, Wildstorm

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