krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

not failing my first New Zealand test

July 8, 2017 by krisis

I love tests.

I love them because I delight in my ability to pass them. I was always that weird kid in class who loved when we were forced to take standardized tests. I can’t think of a single final in college I didn’t ace. Even my driving test, which caused me over a decade of agita, was just one more set of objective criteria for which I could learn the correct answers.

Ultimately, tests are no different than playing a song in front of an audience – all it takes to pass them is rehearsal. Plus, with most tests there’s not the subjective grading level of the audience rejecting you because of how you look or because you’re playing the wrong kind of guitar.

(But, seriously, Flying V guitars are lame and Gina and I will judge you.)

It’s only the tests you can’t rehearse for that give me any unease, which is why I was very nervous last week as we embarked on a two hour drive to northern New Jersey to one of the only three doctors in driving distance who may conduct a physical for our New Zealand visas. (There are presently only 34 Immigration New Zealand panel physicians in America – you’re screwed if you live in the Midwest, or even parts of the Pacific Northwest!)

Objectively, I knew the questions with which this test was concerned. New Zealand’s health care system isn’t socialized single-payer, but it’s government-subsidized enough that the “good health” of their potential residents is paramount to them granting a working visa.

What’s “good health” in this instance? They make it sound so simple on their friendly immigration site…

unlikely to be a danger to the health of the people already in New Zealand

unlikely to cost New Zealand’s health or special education services a lot of money

able to work or study if this the reason for your visa.

Simple, yes? Yet, getting there while over the age of 55 isn’t easy, and you can be rejected in one fell swoop for having certain medical conditions “deemed to impose significant costs and/or demands,” which include HIV and M.S.. In all of those cases, you can certainly be in “good health,” but it might take more state dollars to keep you there.

Not an approved INZ panel physician (I checked).

I’m not that old nor do I have any of the conditions in question. I’m in decent physical shape and quite limber. I have near-perfect eyesight. I wasn’t feeling congested enough to be anxious that my chest X-ray would give a false positive that I had tuberculosis.

The only unknowns were a urine sample and a blood test, but I would be fine. As for “preparing” for these tests, they only had three suggestions – which of course I studied carefully:

How do I prepare for my immigration medical examination?

If you are mildly unwell or on a short course of antibiotics, wait until you are better before having your immigration medical examination.

Do not have alcohol or high fat meals 48 hours before your blood tests.

Do not consume kava for 48 hours before your blood tests.

Easy.

Except, in that most Peter of Peter decisions, 24 hours before the test I did something very inadvisable (see also: shaving off my guitar callouses before a big gig; not sleeping the night before my driving test).

Here’s the inadvisable thing:

Yes, that is a Friendly’s Wattamelon roll. [Read more…] about not failing my first New Zealand test

Song of the Day: “Liability” by Lorde

July 3, 2017 by krisis

I am always fascinated when a teenage musician – not just a singer or player, but a songwriter – becomes a global star.

It’s a selfish fascination. I remember being that age and being full to the brim with inspiration. I recall feeling like songs were bursting out of my brain every single day, sometimes faster than I could write them down. I would naively follow all of my melodic impulses, no matter how transgressive, and for as many awful choices I see in hindsight there are the occasional flashes of brilliance.

I can never decide whether it is good or bad that YouTube didn’t exist at the time. I love that the teenaged songwriter version of me is a Schrödinger’s cat of internet fame; we’ll never know if he would be beloved or ridiculed.

For those selfish reasons, I have been more fascinated but the journey of the precociously talented Lorde than I was with the slick Justin Bieber or the initially folksy Taylor Swift.

All three are mega-talented songwriters, but they both express that in different ways. Bieber’s expression was about the casual, effortless coolness of being in the in-club. Taylor Swift was about transformation – from country kid who sang about being an underdog to pop bombshell sweeping up Grammys.

Lorde’s expression has been the utter opposite of them both. She’s almost too full of effort compared to Bieber, and as self-conscious as Swift but more wild and free than she has ever allowed herself to be.

Lorde’s songs are brimming with that wildness, starting with “Royals” – a song so basic yet so vividly evocative. Each feels like an aperture into her wildly buzzing creative mind, controlling the flow, letting just enough of her interior world through that we can make sense of it.

Despite the electricity of her songs, Lorde’s Pure Heroine wasn’t the world-altering smash of, say, Alanis’s Jagged Little Pill. It’s not a singular, unassailable achievement. She could and would be able to follow it up, and just has with her sophomore effort, Melodrama.

There are a lot of interesting, mature moments on Melodrama, but none so arresting as the bare piano balled “Liability.” Maybe that’s because Lorde is an obvious mastermind, controlling every little flutter and breath noise across her discography, but “Liability” is her sparest song. It’s a bare piano ballad – just keys and her voice.

kiwi-flavoured future

July 1, 2017 by krisis

I first proposed that Crushing Krisis might be the longest-running blog in Philadelphia back in 2003 (at which point it almost certainly wasn’t), going further to verify that claim in 2008 (at which point it almost-surely was), and finally started owning up to it on CK’s anniversary in 2009.

Crushing Krisis’s claim to that auspicious title will finally come to an end later this summer, when it relocates from Philadelphia to New Zealand along with its author, moi, and supporting players E and EV6. Oh, and of course, OCD Godzilla will be coming too – I’ve already been assured of that. Repeatedly.

Yes, that New Zealand – the one that is “Down Under” along with Australia. The one where people refer to themselves as “kiwis.”

No, I am not joking.

There is much more story to tell along with the announcement of this major transition but I’m not prepared to unfurl it all at this very moment. Considering I don’t even especially like to travel (or, at least, to pack for travel) and have only left the country a handful of times in my life, this constitutes the biggest possible change to my personal status quo I’ve ever experienced, save for perhaps leaving my amazing job, having a baby, and leaving my previous amazing job for a potential unstable amazing start-up job.

All of that definitely helped me prepare for this and I do plan on talking about it here. A lot.

Suffice to say that my plan was not to stay at home fathering and blogging quite this long. As the possibility of our relocation loomed it became obvious that the present was not the time for a Philly-based job search for a long-term and executive position!

It also explains why I was a bit preoccupied with life in June and fell off of my ambitious (but, not impossible) posting schedule for the month.

Now, in addition to reading my talking about listening to music, writing music, reading comic books, and fatherhood, you’ll now be hearing about the process of becoming an American expatriate as well as us getting to know New Zealand, plus my utter glee at finally having an excuse to spell “colour,” “flavour,” and “favourite” with a “u.”

If you’ll excuse me, OCD Godzilla and I have to get back to a several-hundred line project plan to figure out how and when I’m going to ship an entire home recording studio and over 25,000 comic books halfway around the world.

In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of a kiwi bird:

feeling heated

June 20, 2017 by krisis

I’ve always been constitutionally incapable of dealing with heat.

My mother was the opposite. You’ve never met anyone more eager to bake in the sun on a sandy beach than this woman. She would wake me up before 7am when we were vacationing at the Jersey shore to let me know she was headed down to the beach, already equipped with her chair and her book.

(I would spent the day reading in the cool confines of the hotel room, punctuated by occasional trips to the pool.)

Memories of being hot as a child are on my brain because our central air conditioning is mysteriously on the fritz at the moment. It turns on and works mightily for anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes, and then its double-breaker in the basement trips with an audible CLACK. The first few times it happened I simply reset the breaker, but breakers trip for a reason and continually flouting that reason with manual intervention seemed unwise.

We’ve kept EV6 and I entertained and cool throughout this week with a combination of car trips, mall walking, and cold showers. It’s the nights that are getting to me. Like a video game character who cannot recover hit points while he’s poisoned, I don’t actually seem to derive any sort of restorative qualities from sleep when I’m feeling too hot. We are now on day five (the repairman is due tomorrow) and I am starting to feel delirious.

It reminds me of childhood nights spent at my paternal grandmother’s house, which was equipped with fans and a single air conditioner suspended above the kitchen door which I saw turned on only once in my life. On those hot nights I would sprawl in the middle of a couch or bed, arms outstretched to find the hidden cool spot on the top sheet or beneath a pillow as I counted the slow seconds until morning. [Read more…] about feeling heated

Song of the Day: “Love Me Down” by Jason Derulo

June 19, 2017 by krisis

It’s often the case in my insular little world of no TV or radio that I’m aware of an artist for years before I hear a single note of their music.

That was the case for Jason Derulo. I knew he was an R&B singer and a good dancer, but hadn’t heard a single song of his before the band tackled “Want To Want Me” when it exploded as a song of the summer in 2015. I don’t know what I was expecting from him, but it wasn’t the sparse, slightly campy, almost retro vibe of that tune.

(We discovered it medleys perfectly with Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”as we tinkered with the arrangement to save me from singing the entire thing in falsetto.)

I was enamored enough to check out the entire Everything is 4 LP from which the song was plucked. I liked a lot of the LP and its breezy, synth-filled, 80s R&B vibe, but no song hit me as squarely as “Love Me Down.”