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Home Ec Project #20: Hanging Shoe Organizer.

The quality of these pictures is sooooo terrible (damn PhotoBooth), but if you squint while you’re looking at them they don’t look as bad. I’m taking donations for a digital camera, so feel free to contribute… uh, but seriously.

List-O-Mania: 9 Television Series Opening Sequences.

Most opening sequences for television shows are just a quick way to tell you who the stars are, but there are a handful of opening sequences that take it to a higher plane of true artistry, and that embody myriad motifs of the show as a whole. Most of these opening sequences are from my favorite shows, but personal bias aside, I think they can stand alone as brilliant and artistically robust short videos that just happen to complement the shows they belong to.

1. Weeds
The song and the opening sequence go together perfectly, hilariously poking fun at the cookie-cutter upper-middle class conformist lifestyle that Nancy Botwin tries to maintain through non-conformist means, aka dealing weed in the ‘burbs.

2. Mad Men
[NOTE: I couldn't find a video for this opening sequence that I could embed, but you can click on the video and find a link to watch it on YouTube.]
I think this opening sequence captures so well the aesthetic of the time period, as well as the mystery and the sensation of losing control that, as Don Draper has shown us, is such a big part of the advertising world.

3. True Blood
A perfect visual marriage of the fierce religiosity and darker underbelly (sex, racism, etc.) of the South, a paradox that is a cornerstone of the show. And I love the clever subtle nods to vampires, especially the “God Hates Fangs” sign and the little boy with strawberry juice all over his face.

4. Flight of the Conchords
Just plain funny, and encapsulates the quirkiness of the show perfectly.

5. Big Love (Seasons 1-3)
The Mormon imagery (passing through the veil, a planet for the celestial family) is so captivating and ethereal, and I love that such an All-American song as The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” is paired with such an unconventional American family.

6. Big Love (Season 4-Present)
Even though I’ve written on this sequence before, I had to include both sequences because they each have their own merits and distinctness. This sequence is just a perfect visual metaphor for the spiralling out of control that comes with leading a double life like the Henricksons try to do, and the cinematography is simply stunning.

7. Felicity
One of the WB’s late greats, Felicity’s opening sequence takes the newness and exuberance of the just-starting-college lifestyle and translates it into a slideshow of gorgeous, moody black and white photos.

8. Dexter
I’ve also written on this sequence before, but I never get tired of the visual tricks that get played on the viewer into thinking they see violence when really all they’re seeing is a daily routine. It humanizes a person that most would jump to categorize as inhuman.

9. Six Feet Under
I could probably watch this opening sequence one hundred times in a row and not get sick of it. Such incredible cinematography that shows physical decay and death and the formality of the rituals we abide by when dealing with and finalizing the death of the dead. This is as close to perfection as an opening sequence can get.

ANNOUNCEMENT: New Blog Address.

After two years at kgeeee.wordpress.com, it’s time to move on to greener and more professional pastures. When I studied abroad in South Africa two summers ago, our program blog was through WordPress, and because my bestie Mia always called me KG, I chose that as my super-simple and kind of cutesy username to be able to write on the group blog. It stuck when I branched out into my own blog and it has served me well, but much like when I stopped wearing outfits that gave the appearance I got dressed in the dark and when I dyed my hair from platinum to a more human-looking shade of blonde, it’s time to grow up. No one calls me KG anymore, and I feel kind of silly typing my blog address on my resume.

So, in an attempt to be taken a little more seriously (by others and by myself), I am embarking on a new blog address, which henceforth will be kendallgoodwin.wordpress.com. Easy enough, right? A little more straightforward and professional, and, I’m hoping, will be a smooth transition when I (hopefully) make my blog a dot com someday. I’m going to leave this blog up for about another week or so, just to make sure that my five faithful readers get the memo, and continuing to post on this and the other, and then I will be deleting this address. Follow me, earthlings, to a new uncharted territory that I will attempt to conquer with relative ease and aplomb!

Home Ec Project #19: Leather and Canvas Purse.

Oh gosh, this project took ages to finish. It literally took me six hours to make this. But I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

I substituted leathery-looking vinyl for leather because it’s cheaper, but in hindsight, it might have taken less time to finish if I had used leather… because apparently my sewing machine hates vinyl and spits it out like its sour milk. To make the process go a little quicker, I put paper over each vinyl side as I was sewing, but then I had to rip the paper off after I had sewed it and meticulously pick out all the little paper specks stuck between the threading. So in actuality, it didn’t really save any time.

I love the inside lining. Some of my favorite fabric I’ve bought so far.

A little close-up of the flower detail. Another person in Home Ec explained how to apply these flowers with a glue gun, but since I neither had a glue gun nor could find my hand-sewing needle, I had to apply them via machine, which took forever but I think adds a lot to the bag.

Home Ec Project #18: Full Apron.

People Who Hate Each Other Making Music Together.

Last night I watched a documentary about Wilco. It’s called I Am Trying To Break Your Heart and it was filmed while they were recording Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2001. I love Wilco, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is one of my favorite albums of all time, so it was really interesting to see the behind-the-scenes of how it was made and Wilco’s creative process. While they were recording, Jeff Tweedy explained that they would first get the song down in its simplest form and then deconstruct it, and see if there was something more interesting or creative they could do with it. Obviously I don’t know very much about songwriting or recording, but I think that’s a really ingenious way to go about things, exploring capabilities through multiple avenues.

Another fascinating part of the film: a senior editor from Rolling Stone posits that the reason why Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wasn’t received well by the record label (Wilco was dropped upon delivering the finished album) is because it didn’t cater to our culture’s mentality of instant gratification. Listening to it didn’t tell the record label who was going to like it and how many albums it was going to sell, and thus they wanted the band to make changes. Which makes sense, to a certain degree. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot isn’t an easy, straightforward record: it has mystery, and melody paired with dissonance, and it takes effort to listen to it and appreciate it for what it is. But I think those kinds of records are often the most rewarding to listen to, and end up sticking with you longer than easy albums.

One thing that was kind of glossed over (I felt like) was the conflict going on between Tweedy and Jay Bennett. It was like, they had one pretty bad argument and then once the record was completed, Tweedy asked Bennett to leave the band, but no one really went into detail about why it happened. Bennett, when interviewed, said that he thought it was because Tweedy felt threatened by him and didn’t want to have to struggle over creative dominance with him. I feel like that’s kind of a cop-out, though.

Seeing the tensions between Tweedy and Bennett reminded me of an article I read about Interpol in Spin a couple years ago, right around the time Our Love To Admire was due to be released. Essentially, the article explained how Paul Banks and Carlos D. hated each other, and how Daniel Kessler was trying to keep everything from falling apart. I found that really shocking at the time, because somehow my subconscious image of a band is a group of friends who hang out a lot and jam together, and I think a good deal of the time, that’s the case. So to think that the members of Interpol didn’t really get along was perplexing. At the same time, I think it’s a real testament to the power and importance of art, that people who don’t like each other and who wouldn’t voluntarily subject themselves to each other’s company would do so for the sake of creating something that they love and believe in. And I think it says a lot about the vision and dedication of both Wilco and Interpol to their music that they continued to make music together for several years while certain members weren’t getting along.

I think about if I were making music with someone that I didn’t get along with, and I think that I would probably stick it out with them as long as it was contributing to the vision we had for our music. But if that person was getting in the way of the vision, I could see myself wanting to part ways. I think it would be incredibly difficult, though, to have three or four people with identical visions of what their music should be, which is probably a big reason why bands break up. With conflicting ideas for musical direction, one person’s vision has to be put first, and the other person’s has to be secondary. And if your vision isn’t being realized, why would you want to stay in the band? I think there are probably a lot of musicians who just want to play music and don’t have any qualms about playing a role and surrendering to someone else’s musical vision. But when you have two people who are creatively driven, like Tweedy and Bennett, or Banks and Carlos D., there is bound to be butting of heads. Making music with other people seems to be so much about compromise, and it makes sense that a person would sometimes not want to compromise on what they think is important for the music they’re making. I just find it interesting that it’s rarely a personal issue that tears bands apart, but is rather an issue of the music.

Home Ec Project #17: Padded Laptop Case.

My aunt gave me this fabric, and if it were a boy, I’d have a big fat crush on it. And you can’t tell from these photos, but the buttons are also really pretty and antique-looking. I tried to sew a pocket on the case just beneath the flap, but as it turns out, my sewing machine isn’t strong enough to go through four layers of fabric and a 1/2 inch of foam. Boooooo.

I wanted to get a picture with my laptop inside the case… but my camera is my laptop. So, that didn’t work out.

Home Ec Project #16: Fabric Storage Cubby.

Gah, making this was terrible. It’s so much harder than it looks. I was using my brother’s digital camera while he was around to take pictures of all my projects, but now that he’s gone back to school in another country, I’m (as you can probably tell) going to have to learn how to be creative with my PhotoBooth until I can afford a digital cam of my own.

Poetry Baby.

I have become completely obsessed with these two videos… I’ve watched them several times a day for the past couple days. Poetry is wonderful, but somehow it sounds even more beautiful and profound coming out of the mouth of a three-year-old. I’m totally inspired by this little babe to start memorizing poetry, and I’ll probably encourage my future babies to do so as well.