Saturday 24 August 2013

Nothing to write about.

Why do people go jogging?
Why does slow motion exist?
Why does Alcohol work?
Why is nothing ever how we want it to be?
Why do things change?
Why does the sound go up and down on the radio?
Why do people have to get married?
Is it wrong for me to not want something thst others cant have?
Why do people make other people angry?
Why are you so interested?
Why do people make art?
Does art make people?
why do we listen to other peoples questions?
Why do people disagree with reason?
Why do people get sad?
Why is it okay for rich people to be rich?
Why is being poor a bad thing?
Why do people get happy?
Why doesn't it last?
Why am I more important than other people?
Why cant everybody dance?
Why do people judge each other?
Where did religion come from?
Why do people ask questions?
What's up with that?
Who made cartoons?
Why does the phrase "Don't cry over spilled milk exist"?
Why are some people uncomfortable with things that others find normal?
Why are some people morning people?
Why does language exist?
What even is that?
What is a friend?
Why do they need things?
Why does nail polish make you girl-y?
What makes cars manly?
Why do we box ourselves in with these gender roles?
Why don't people find that strange?
Why is it called Westernisation?
What is paradise?
Why cant everyone just get along?

Friday 16 August 2013

#5 Dan Harmon

#SIXSEASONSANDAMOVIE

Dan Harmon is the creator, and up until 2009, was the executive producer and writer of the cult tv show- Community.
The show, while only having 3 full seasons and a 12episode fourth season quickly gained a cult following. 

The show follows the lives of six community college students, dealing with the consequences of not having made the life choices they need to get into an ivy league school.

The main character Jeff Winger, fakes his Lawyer Degree and got found out, with his sentence begin ti go back to community college to get a certified certificate to practice law. 
He starts a study group to get the number of an attractive student but word spreads and he is now stuck with his band of misfits known and the 'Study Group'.



Harmon made the announcement at comic con that he and newly appointed McKenner will return to the show for Season 5 of Community. He will focus on the characters more than the highly conceptualized outings they normally go on.

"Anthropology? Anthropology? Anthropology?"
- Jeff Winger

&Kathryn

#4 Josh Shwartz

Josh Shwartz is the executive producer of some of he best Teen Dramas to have hit the small screen since Dawson's Creek. Here's a fun fact: He is the youngest person to be in charge of running and producing a television show.

He got his tart producing the Drama series The OC, with 27 episodes commissioned for the first season. 
The show was set to air during the American Summer Hiatus, just before the start of their Baseball Season. The shows pilot aired three times before it got a following making the next 7 episodes of the show highly crucial.

The characters gained a huge following making them the most recognisable characters on television at the time.

Since then, Josh Shwartz has gone on to produce other hit teen dramas, including; Gossip Girl, Hart of Dixie and most recently The Carrie Diaries.



“The idea behind that was that Orange County sort of had a very distinct musical sound at that time—there was sort of a scene coming out of there. I always viewed it as wanting the music to feel like an extension of the emotional lives of the characters, which I guess sounds kind of pretentious. When I was sitting down to write the pilot, there was this Joseph Arthur song that plays at the end of the pilot, and when I heard that song, it was like, ‘Oh, okay, this is how I want the end of the show to feel.’  That it was less about the place and more about how our characters were feeling. It was a lot of the music that I was listening to, that other writers were listening to, that the actors were listening to. We didn’t have a lot of money for music back then, and it just happened to be indie rock that we were all listening to. It was cheaper to license, so that was a happy accident."
- Josh Shwartz

&Kathryn

#3 Chuck Lorre

If there were presidential-type elections for who would be God of the universe, and everything in it, I think Chuck Lorre would be a really good contender.

You may recognise the name form the screens fade to black, where his name is presented in white reverse type in the bottom, left hand corner in most of your favourite TV shows. 
Thats because he is the creator of some of my favourites like; The Big Bang Theory; Dharma and Greg; Two and a Half Men and a whole bunch more!

If you've ever taken the time to see what Chuck Lorre writes at the end of his shows (I know I have...) in his personal vanity cards, you'll understand my obsession. Not only is he hilarious, talented and charismatic but he is wonderfully passionate and takes the time to tell us why he hates humanity and a bunch of other waffle and I think thats beautiful and amazing and we should all worship Chuck Lorre.

You can now read them all right there infront of your face on the interwebmagicfunplace and be amazed at the amazingness.

 -Chuck Lorre

&Kathryn

Thursday 15 August 2013

#2 Tina Fey

Tina Fey is literally my reason for living.
When I was much younger, I vowed that I would be her and I would be funny and amazing and not care what anyone thought of me as long as they were laughing. This was pretty much summed up for me when She and Amy Pohler hosted the Emmy Awards, doing impersonations and making jokes on stage that were completely outrageous, and moderately offensive.

I have seen Mean Girls countless times, and pretty much know every line off by heart. It has been almost 10 years since it was released and it is still one of the most relevant movies of our time.

Tina Fey mad history when she became one of Saturday Night Live's first Female Executive writers. DOING IT FOR THE LADIES!

After searching around on the internet for a while, I found that Tina Fey is starting work on a new series, the show will be a female-centric sit-com about a woman who reconnects with her father, and starts a new family on Fire Island.
NBC has picked up the series wich is being written by Fey and her 30 Rock co-Star Robert Carlock The show is said to be produced by Colleen McGuinness. Not to mention that it is the first project to be undertaken by Fey's production company: Little Stranger.
While the show does not yet have a name it is being highly anticipated by Tina Fey and 30 Rock fans all over the world.


Tina Fey is the Bombdiggidy.
&Kathryn

#1 Lena Dunahm

Lena Dunham is a New Yorker, born and bread. She is one of the most amazing writers in the industry today. She has taken her experiences and influence from her environment and made it applicable to the women of our generation. She is a fantastic writer, being able to capture the essence of what it means to be young today, even though it is bleak and hard to digest - I think thats the true beauty - being true to the complexities and nature of people.

Also, she's Fabulous.




You might know her form her raunchy drama GIRLS, or from her film Tiny Furniture.
I should be honest, that the first time I started watching GIRLS I was a little shocked and it took me at least three episodes to get into it, but now Im hooked.

It's the most radical TV Series on air at the moment, airing 13 years after 'Sex and the City', also a complicated drama based around women dealing with relationships in New york city. Back in the 80's SATC was all about women taking back their rights to be treated equally to men in the workplace and the bedroom, we have almost come full circle with GIRLS.
The GIRLS Main Character, Hannah, is trying to fight her way through the mine field of having casual sex, keeping her friends, finding the balance, her self and making a career for herself as a writer. She soon finds out that the whole Friends-with-benefits thing is harder than it looks on TV and that she need emotional recognition from her lover.

While Sex and the City was a highly romanticised portrayal of the lives that young, well educated women lead, glamourising the casual one night stands and the relationships between men and women, GIRLS strips it back to the nitty-gritty, hard-to-watch kind of relationships, that hit close to home.


The cast of Girls on HBO


Girls is honest.
It is so honest, that people cannot process it. The charecters are so caught up in their own heads, paranoid, and always looking for the next high, wich is how we are as people but we just cant see it. We have been blind to what we have become, and I think that Girls is a crucial turning point in social commentary on the expectations of todays young women.

&Kathryn

Monday 12 August 2013

Tea and Toast

I guess I've always had some sort of existentialist side to myself, ever since I was little. I remember asking endless amounts of questions that no one could ever answer, and one I do remember, waaaaaay more vividly than the others, and that I never actually got the answer for was:
"Who invented the toaster?"

In case you were wondering it was
Charles Strite
Inventor
Charles Perkins Strite was an American inventor. He received U.S. patent #1,394,696 on October 18, 1920 for the pop-up bread toaster.

But my favourite question to ask, was why, and even to this day I love to sit with a nice cup of tea and a piece of toast and wonder what had to happen in the lives of people for them to invent things. Like the guy who discovered cheese. What on earth was he doing eating that bit of old milk?!

I'm quite the existentialist - modest too- but I always find myself asking "Why?" and not just about existential things like my existence and purpose, but also about things that I do and think are mundane, but have deep seated reasons and I like to figure them out. Like a scientist, proposing personal hypothesise.

Existentialism 
(ex·is·ten·tial·ism ) 
noun
A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts.

The most recent 'Hypothesis' I have proposed to myself, is one where I wonder what on earth fascinates me about the whole Television-Series-Thing.

I can bring it back to a few childhood memories. The first is watching an old, British, TV show called My Family every Wednesday with my Mom. This was tradition, and somehow there were enough episodes of My Family to watch for what feels like years and years of my life.
The second is watching the Emmy's every year. I absolutely love watching the Emmy's, and not because I'm obsessed with celebrities and whose the best etc, but rather for the first hour (or so) where they give the people behind the scenes awards - not to mention that the people who actually write the scripts for the award shows, are fantastic.
The writers, the directors and the producers. They're the ones who I'm the biggest groupie for. They're funny, and talented and spend so much time being able to articulate a concept and idea into the characters they develope, putting small snippets of themselves into each of them, watching them come to life on the screen.

I'm completely in awe and envy of those people, because all I've ever wanted is to be able to have the people and characters that I think of come alive and exist amongst the magnificent calibre of the greats. Often I think about weather otr not I'm on the right track in life, I wonder if this whole Design business if for me or if I should have just gone off to Rhodes to do journalism like I wanted to in the first place. I guess this is where the existentialism thing comes in. I'm always left wondering and unsure, a bit lost even, wondering if I made the right decsion going to Vega, or if I took the easy way out, and deviated from the path I'm meant to be on. But then, I have my own, personal, debate inside my head because I truly believe that things happen for a reason and that even the mistakes or bad decisions you make are planned and you're meant to be making them so that you can get to the place you're going to.
But is the point of life to get somewhere?
Isn't it all about the journey?

and in the great words of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (Screenplay)
Max's Father: Goddammit, Max! Get serious, for once! What are you going to DO with your life?
Max: Why is it always what will I do? "What will he do", "What will he do," "Oh, my god what will he do", Do, do, do, do, do. Why isn't the issue here who I am?
Uncle Teddy: Because, Maxwell, what you do defines who you are.
Max: No, Uncle Teddy. Who you are defines what you do. Right Jude?
Jude: Well, surely it's not what you do, but the, uh... the way that you do it.

This brings me to the first part of my new assignment:
"5 Pictures that represent your interest from a secondary source"

I hope you're ready for the next five posts about the best writers in the industry, because I know I am!

"Learn French or die"
&Kathryn

Saturday 3 August 2013

When I Grow Up...

This woman is my favourite person at the moment. I stumbled across her work whilst procrastinating having a real life and decided to see what else she did.

Dina Goldstein is a Conceptual Photographer who has done many pieces as a commentary on society and the world we live in. You can check out more of her work on her website: http://www.dinagoldstein.com/

Forgotten Princesses tells the stories of our favourite Disney Princesses after the Happily Ever After that we all grow up dreaming about. Snow White the Mother of four in an unhappy marriage, Cinderella the Alcoholic and of course, Rupunzel gets Cancer.

She tells these stories in such a fantastic way. I'm really intrigued as to the way she takes the photographs and the fact that you can see the shadows of the subjects and props in the frame on the background. This to me also represents the kind of 'Posterised' and 'Pre-misconceived' Ideals of society that we grow up in.




The Doll House tells the story of Barbie and Ken, a relationship seemingly perfect, but flawed behind the pristine plastic walls of their Dream House. Her images tell the story of their relationship falling apart and the impact a life's worth of lies coming to the surface can really have on a girl who thought she had it all.




What a crazy mixed up world we're all living in.

&Kathryn

Friday 2 August 2013

A Cupcake for Me. A Cupcake for You.

Early this lovely, chilly, Friday morning I awoke with an entire list of very important things to do. I gave myself the whole day to do them, but instead I found myself baking away in the kitchen, procrastinating all those things on that very long list.

This is what I happened to make.

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes!
Ingredients:
125g Softened Butter
125g Light Brown Sugar
2 Eggs
150g Self-raising flour
3 Tablespoons of Milk
25g Cocoa Powder

Don't forget to Pre Heat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius!

Basically just mix everything together.
1. Cream the butter and sugar until its light and fluffy.
2. Add the eggs one at a time and then mix in the flour.
3. Gradually add the milk and the cocoa.
4. Get that delicious mix in the baking tray and pop it in the oven for 20 minutes, allow to cool.

For the Icing:
1. Add 25g of butter and cocoa powder, with a tea spoon of hot water and mix it all up until its creamy.
2. Add some icing sugar to get a thickness and add more cocoa to taste.
3. Then you can go right ahead and ice those babies!
4. Then eat them.
5. With tea
6. Whilst listening to music from the 80's

Those final steps are mandatory.


Enjoy!
&Kathryn

Thursday 1 August 2013

Compulsory Post #1

For my first "Compulsory Post" based on this weeks Brand Strategy Homework, which I only actually did in class - you know how it is. 
We had to find an article (Look I even managed to find it again) relating to our chosen topic, read the article and come up with 5 Insights, from that article. 
After all that hard work, there was more. 
This involved struggling through someone else's homework, trying to read their handwriting and understand what exactly they were talking about on their blog, and then having to awkwardly find the person in our class to return their homework to them. 
It was after all that, that we got our crumpled pieces of paper back with a few new (or in my case not so much) insights.

This is the photographic evidence of such homework.


Well, I dunno about you but that wasn't all that interesting, and had very little (unless you read the paper) to do with TV Shows and how they inspire our life journeys through emotional problems and all that weird psychological mush so I have a cool song/video for you to listen to/watch.

I can just about hear your minds a reeling with what on earth this wonder could be, you might even be asking yourselves "What Even Is That?", so, without further adieu:

Barenaked Ladies - The History of the Universe 
(The Big Bang Theory Theme Song - Full Version)

Check yah on the flip side
&Kathryn

Couch Potato - Shortstraw

A little bit of light hearted, indie music to get this whole show on the road.
This song pretty much describes my life. 

I pretty much love Shortstraw. I've seen them quite a few times since I turned 15 and would spend my nights trawling bars and Live Music Venues, being caught up as a part of the unbelievable city night life that Johannesburg has to offer. 

The most memorable time I ever saw them live was at Cool Runnings in Fourways. They were playing the gig with none other than Desmond and the Tutus and The City Bowl Mizers. It was a crazy-amazing show and a night I wouldn't soon forget - because that was the night I went Stage Diving.

The crowd was insane and absolutely wild as I stood on stage, the blinding lights shining in my eyes. The people were pulsating along with the music jumping up and down in rhythm to the band playing their well rehearsed set and dripping sweat all over the stage. I was with a complete stranger, tall and with dark, wildly curly hair. I looked up at him, because he was so tall, uncertainly but he smiled reassuringly and shouted "GO!" and pushed me to the edge of the stage. I jumped, free falling for what felt like a life time into the crowd with nothing but a the hope that some one would catch me. 
It was amazing.
I felt like I was flying.
The floor was hard and slightly slippery under my feet. I fought to regain my balance as I pushed my way back to the front of the crowd and joined the sweaty, smelly writhing mass of people that we're jumping and dancing to the beat of the band.

Listen.


I am the Potato God.
&Kathryn

A Bit of Brand Strategy

So for college, and in order for me to get a degree, or at least pass first year, I have to make and keep up a blog for a while based on an interest of my choice.

So here it is: A blog dedicated to the life lessons, as well as; fashion choices and musical inspiration though the wonderful world of Television.

"For the next two and a half months, I, Kathryn Henning, will be entertaining the internet with some casual musings about stuff I like. Are you excited? I am. This means I get a degree!"

Eat your heart out Mike Teevee!

What Even Is That?
What Even Is That?
What Even Is That?

&Kathryn