I Like Giants

Let's Play , a film by Emily Cohn on Vimeo. Music: "I Like Giants" By Kimya Dawson

Remember the good ole' days when hanging out with your friends was called a playdate? (I actually still call it that) Well, every once in a while (ok, more like every day) my friends and I get nostalgic for the time when hanging out consisted of eating candy, playing with stickers, trading wacky packages, and choosing activities from a wondrous cabinet full of board games, so we try to get back to those roots a lot. One of my best friends, Emily Cohn is really into film-making (she even interned for OCTV this summer… go Em!) and had the idea to make a stop-motion video as an ode to childhood nostalgia. The storyline for the video is basically us girls having a playdate as items around the house start coming alive, dancing around us.. dancing to Kimya Dawson, that is! You probably know Kimya's music from the soundtrack for Juno, but her genius extends far past that. Kimya's song “I Like Giants,” that was used in Emily's video, makes me so happy and is one of many reasons that I watch this video again and again. 
My favorite moment to make was at the 1:29 minute mark, when all of us are balancing candy corn in our mouths. When we shot the stop-motion stills for this part, Emily blasted Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” (one of the many anthems for our play date years), which obviously spurred us belt the lyrics, but also caused all of the candies to keep falling out of our mouths... 'twas precious to say the least. 
Now it’s your turn: WATCH THE VIDEO! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO! 

Before the video shoot Emily told me to bring over lots of my items that were evocative of childhood, so I brought over a huge shopping bag full of fun stuff like candy necklaces, my gnome lamp, a plastic rubber ducky toy from my bathtub, and oodles of hairclips.  Here Delilah and Katie are wearing my star sunglasses and lots of stickers we all bought. And yes, that is an Oreo over my eye. 

We’re all looking matchy-matchy in Emily’s gingham clothing. 

I will always love my Zac Efron pin, especially because my grandma got it for me not knowing who he was and just thinking he was some nice Jewish boy that added to my Channukah present. 

Terrifying Chuckie Madame Alexander dolls I got from McDonald’s when I was little. 

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D.I.Y. Time: Candy Jewelry

My school’s cafeteria goes all out for "theme" days. For Halloween, the lights are always dimmed and the Monster Mash plays on a boom box. Every Valentine’s Day since I was Elementary School, the room is decorated in hearts streamers and posters and has a special ice cream sundae station set-up. Although I’m usually ambivalent towards Valentine’s Day, this year I got really into it and sent my friends secret candy grams. For art club I brought in candy sweet hearts, licorice, heart lollipops and jelly beans to make into jewelry for a super-fun crafty project for us to undertake. Licorice especially is such a pretty (and tasty!) candy; I’m surprised nobody has done a runway collection inspired by it. Although the other members of my arts club weren’t as ecstatic as I was to be working with candy (note to self: I think they are secretly robots), I created my own candy crafting corner and really got into the zone, making a lot of fun jewelry that I will actually wear out...that’s the best, when art is both visually-satisfying and functional!

If you want to make any of the pieces seen in this post you’ll need these:

·         A mix of different colored pipe cleaners

·         Glue guns + extra glue sticks

·         Clear nail varnish (to put over the candy so it doesn’t rot or melt)

·         Barrette clips/headbands/picture frames (whatever you’re putting your candy onto)

·         And um, CANDY, duh!

The pastel color palette of the candies reminded me of sock hop vibes. You know, the kinds of girls who work at their local diner, rollerblading around to take customers’ orders, all the while enticing boys with their poodle skirts with musical notes on them and mohair cardigans to share a milkshake with them? That was my inspiration behind making these pieces and also just the fact that candy is sheer deliciousness and should be emblemized.

The only sweet hearts left in CVS were internet-themed, but I thought was kind of fitting. Internet has even invaded our candy! All of the messages are really funny and sexual, as if to say, “Who needs texting when we can have a communicative relationship via candy grams?” I’d like to think this headband is really like a dainty crown, fit even for Lord Licorice from my Candy Land board games. 

As you can see, this headband is a little messier than my first try, because I experimented with using the glue gun to seal the candy from rotting/melting. The top of the headband has one of the sweet hearts from the *~*~ internet *~*~ collection. The glue actually adds a foggy mystical effect, so I guess it’s alright.

Pipecleaners really do look like caterpillars

My favorite thing I made during that art club session was these pipe-cleaner rings. I just took two pipe cleaners and twisted them together, wrapping around my finger to calculate the approximate length needed to create a cool ring. Then I just glue-gunned the licorice onto it and lacquered them with clear nail polish. The rings look so tasty that it will be hard not wanting to use them like Ring Pops, to lick during class. 

Inside this picture frame I decorated is a postcard that I found in a stack in my room. It’s of teens in St. Louis, Missouri photographed by Martin Schweig and epitomizes the sweet heart look at play here. I want their Beat Generation varsity jackets!!!

Left: barrette clip made of candy hearts Right: cuff bracelet made of jelly beans

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Did They Really Get Pinned?

Thrift uniform plaid dress, miscellaneous pins

The psychology behind collecting is really fascinating to me, especially because it’s a practice that has been enduring since as early as the Egyptians. There are so many different reasons to explain why people collect things, be it nostalgia, to reduce stress, or even that accumulation makes them feel wealthier. Like with many things, there are very different degrees of collecting. If you've seen Hoarders before, this an example of how some people allow collecting to define and consume them. Andy Warhol's personal collecting  fetish was cookie jars. He only had a healthy 175 cookie jars --- primarily from the 1930's and 1940's --- which he found at flea markets like the Antiques Garage, but all of which he justified “time pieces.” Watch this video about them here. All of his cookie jars are just as much works of art as anything else he owned and look like they could come alive and talk and tell secrets about his wacky life. I love this man so much!  

I also love making mood boards (perhaps, you remember my post about my bedroom collage walls?), so I thought, why not make wearable mood boards? Between me and my mom, we have so many random pins in our house that they don’t even really belong to either of us, they just sort of float between our rooms and we trade off. So for me, my collection of choice is pins. Pins are really easy and fun to collect. You can find them anywhere from your local bank to rural flea markets. My only rule of thumb with collecting is that its not a race. I like to stumble upon things, not feel like I should constantly be on the move to seek them out, because that takes the serendipity out of it. 

In the photo above I was going for an early 1960’s vibe, when America is still in transition from the 1950’s.  British Invasion hasn’t come ashore and a school girl's values would still be very traditional. 


From left to right: the first pin is a Martin Luther King Day remembrance pin that my mom actually got in Paris. Above it is a dainty floral wishbone. This one in particular has a lot of significance. Next to it is a plastic stamp pin from the 1964 World’s Fair. The Denmark pin is one I found in a jewelry box in my grandma’s house; it looks like porcelain plates from the 1960's I’ve seen from Denmark. The choo-choo train one is enamel and very early 60’s. I honestly have no idea where this metal cowboy boot came from but I can see a little boy playing cowboy wearing it. And then of course there’s the Zac Efron pin which I got on some Channukah present. Obviously Zac Efron isn’t from the 1960’s but he goes with the whole “getting pinned” school girl innocence at play here. 

This dress that I am wearing is actually a girl’s uniform I found at the Salvation Army by my school. It has a patch on it that says “SAS,” so I like to refer to it as my SAS-sy Academy dress. I bought it mainly because it resembles one of my favorite designers, Rachel Antonoff’s Fall 2011 plaid farm girl collection. 

My pin mood board matches my kitchen magnet board!

This mood board for me represents the latter part of the 1960’s. This school girl is probably now listening to records of The Kinks     and The Monkees and trying to get her mom to let her dress like Twiggy. Afterschool she'd sneak away from her sewing class to be a part of the peace protests in Washington Square Park. 


From left to right: the swirly, resin pin is from Israel. I think my grandpa must have bought it there since he was a travel writer. It reminds me of the inside of a lava lamp. Above it is a pop art pin from the iconic Keith Haring pop-up shop that was in SoHo (where Bess is now).  Below it is a self-portrait by Andy Warhol, because who wouldn't want to be Andy Warhol’s muse???  The giant blue pin I got at the premiere of Bill Cunningham: New York, at Film Forum, along with a special Bill Cunningham popcorn bag which I have in my room. The movie was so sweet and it made me cry, and then right after I saw John Waters going into the theatre and I knew it was a really magical day.  I’m not really sure how the Tim Gunn pin fits into my theme, but it says “Make It Work,” so I did. Next to Tim is a Fiorucci pin. Fiorrucci is an Italian label started in 1967. I love it because a lot of its logos mix these kitschy bright colors with Renaissance-style cherubs. In its heyday, the Fiorucci store was said to be like the “daytime Studio 54.” My aunt went to an open Andy Warhol Interview Magazine party at its 59th Street store in the 1970’s, and she got the pin/ his books signed AHHHHH!  

On the note of collecting, I’ve been thinking a lot about diary keeping lately. My computer has been crashing a lot this week for some reason. But it’s made me think that I need to stop relying solely on this blog for diary-keeping, and write down tangible notes that can’t be lost at the quick of a click. I found this book going through my grandparents’ house called Mind Your Own Business. It’s supposed to be a  how-to guide for keeping your life on track...whatever that means. For some reason though it was never filled out and so I’ve been using the empty pages to take notes in. The cartoons are so funny. 

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Shoebox Secrets

I wrote my second post for my column for The Huffington Post’s high school site about The Mortified Sessions. You can read the full article here.

The Mortified Sessions is a project started by Dave Nadelberg, which began in a live stage setting where celebrities and amateurs alike are asked to bring a shoebox full of all the songs, poems, art, love letters from their adolescence, to chip away at our exterior and expose our inner geek. Sundance has the televised adaptation of the project, where each week Dave interviews new subjects, who bring Dave a shoebox full of their past. It is interesting to see what these childhood artifacts, unearths not only about their pasts, but even often unlocks something that they hadn't realized about who they are today.

I never really think about the opening credits of a show. But The Mortified Sessions’ opening credits are really just an extension of the project itself so I felt it necessary to screen cap  them for this blog post. The show begins with a shoebox with "PRIVATE: KEEPOUT" written on it, spilling open with precious childhood memorabilia.  As intro begins, a series of different shoeboxes filled with milestones are projected onto the screen. The first shoebox is like a shrine designed to look like a Teenage Bedroom, with crush lists and five year diaries, friendship photos, and key necklaces.   The next shoebox was filled with prom memorabilia: A Back to the Future video, a “Prom of Your Dreams” ticket stub, a disco ball, and cheesy prom photos galore. Then there is a box that is a filled with a girl escaping through the power of the written word by reading/writing angsty poetry.  

The last box of course, is filled with Dave’s own photos. Dave hearts pizza!

The first season began back in December 2011 and ended just last week. The premiere episode that I saw was with Ed Helms, who plays Andy, my favorite character on The Office. Even in the first few minutes of the show, when Ed read a diary entry he'd written when he was little about refusing to give out Valentine's to the girls in his class, had me hooked on the project. The other guests this season were equally illuminating. Everyone from Danny Pudi (Community), Alanis Morrissette, Mo’Nique, Anthony Michael Hall (any great John Hughes movie ever) Paul Feig (Paul Feig is Paul Feig and doesn’t really need a parenthetical explanation. But he is the mastermind behind Freaks and Geeks and Bridesmaids among other things.) joined in. 

Here are some suggestions I have for guests I’d love to see appear in season 2:

1.      Aubrey Plaza

2.      Amy Sedaris

3.      Jimmy Fallon

4.      Fred Armisen

5.      Lou Reed

6.      Carmen Sandiego (Dave would have to find her first, but I think this would be a riveting interview.)

7.      Kathy Griffin

8.      Ben Savage

9.      Raven Simone

10.  China Chow

11.  Stephen Colbert
12. Iris Apfel

Margaret Cho's Mortified Session was also really interesting getting to hear about her experiences growing up in San Francisco and the influences that the community had on her fast maturation.

Sometimes the guests on The Mortified Sessions will say things like "this is like a therapy session," or "Dave, you know me better than I know myself," I guess that sounds a little cheesy when I write it out, but ever since I've watched The Mortified Sessions every week since its premiere, it feels like I'm hanging out with my heroes in their living room (literally, the show is often times filmed in their living rooms). But more than that, it's getting to open a time capsule with them, through hearing about milestones like crushes, first jobs, college, and beyond -- not only do you realize how they became the person they are today, but how they are really not that much unlike the awkward teenager they once were. Which is nice to hear, because we're all human, you know? It makes me think that there's no reason to fetishisize celebrities and put them on absurd pedestals, when really, their jobs, be it acting, singing, directing, whatever it is, is just a job for them... It's us as audiences who make it anything more. 

This little diva in the two photos above is Megan Mullaly. 

My favorite episode of this season was about comedic geniuses and married couple, Megan Mullaly and Nick Offerman. In looking at what they shared from their shoeboxes -- Nick was kind of the "class clown" and into sports while Megan loved to write and spend time alone in her room making up stories about fairies -- both of them did things to seek attention in their own right. It was in seeing that episode, going through their old photos, old homework assignments, and such, which you could see they had realized even from a young age they were meant for each other. I was weirdly emotional when watching this episode because it made me so happy that they were together.

I continue to wonder who Dave Nadelberg's target audience is, because everything about his project makes me, as a 16-year old, so incredibly happy. Watching the show somehow makes me nostalgic for a time that I am currently going through. What I mean by this is that I wish I kept everything I ever wrote, a diary, and was generally more sentimental about things pertinent to my childhood. Ever since the show started, I've been a packrat, though, making sure to keep everything for a shoebox session that I will someday have with myself. Maybe Dave will join me for this.

I have dreams that for season two, Dave Nadelberg will ask me to switch places with him for episode so I can interview him for his own Mortified Session... Do you hear that Dave???

Go check out getmortified.com for more info!

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