Jackie Adams

"la chambre de mots"

So behind!

November 1st, 2011

Jackie

Yea, so I suck at updating, this was our weekend three weekends ago! . . .

10/7/11

This weekend we didn’t have little S so we decided to make it a date weekend! Friday night we went to see Ides of March at the Cinedome in Hollywood.

The theater was neat, its kind of like watching a movie in a giant bee hive. And Ryan Gosling was amazing in that movie! He’s going to get nominated for an Oscar for sure, you heard it here first

The next morning we planned to get up early and go do this hike in Sycamore Canyon we had read about in Sunset magazine. At 2:00 we finally got to Malibu to start hiking. It was supposed to be one of the few places you can go in southern California to see the leaves changing colors, but unfortunately I think we went a little early. no trees looked like they were on fire yet. So we took our picnic across the street and had lunch in the sand.

Then it was time for a celebration drink. I love Yelp, with it’s help we ended up finding the most amazing toes-in-the-sand restaurant called Paradise Cove Cafe!

It reminded me of a secluded beach we found in Mexico, hidden away on it’s own private beach, you could sit inside or outside at a table, or down in the sand in lounge chairs. We will definitely be coming back here one morning for breakfast and mimosas.

Then Sunday it was wine tasting at Wine Exchange in Orange. I love how they have stories to accompany their wines, I’m not much of a wine expert, I probably shouldn’t admit this, but not long ago I had a bottle of Arbor Mist in my fridge, but I do like when my drinks come with a fun story!

And of course, we didn’t end up buying wine. Just tea and this Hunter S. Thompson beer!

Then to Target to get some Halloween decorations.

I love how this picture looks so creepy!

This was our first year decorating our home for Halloween, and I think it turned out great!

Happy Halloween!

Things are getting cozier . . .

September 29th, 2011

Jackie

It’s that time of year again!!!

Every year around this time Starbucks seduces me. I go in for an afternoon pick-me-up and am bombarded with fall colors, spicy smells, and giant pictures of hip, bescarved friends standing in an autumn wonderland holding delicious looking steaming cups of Pumpkin Spice Lattes. I immediately want one.

Me: “Mmmm the Pumpkin Spice Latte looks so good!”
Boyfriend: “Where?”
Me: “Right there, in that picture.”
Boyfriend: “That’s just a generic cup with whipped cream on it. That could be anything.”
Me: “No it can’t. Look, the people are holding pumpkins.”

They make it look so good!! And every year I completely disregard the fact that I hated the Pumpkin Spice Latte the year before and order one, and only then do I remember how much I hate it. Blech.

Maybe it’s just the season that seduces me. Getting to go apple picking and then bake fresh apple pies. Or just light all those wonderful smelly candles that make it smell like I’m baking pies . . . mmm.

Yes, I love this time of year. I don’t care if it is still 80 degrees outside, I’m going to go look for a wreath . . . and then get a Glade plug in that smells like fall wreaths! Here are a few fall things that have caught my eye . . .

A photoshop tutorial to make your pictures look more autumny:

To do list: get this outfit and these Steve Madden booties!:

To make: DIY candy corn candles:

This blogger has had her etsy store up for less than a year and she’s featured in Homes and Garden this month! Check out her beautiful

fall wreaths:

Things I love Thursday- writers edition

September 15th, 2011

Jackie

What a bummer.

I emailed John Maloof, the man who discovered Vivian Maier’s work, requesting to do an interview and received an email back from his communications person saying that he was too busy working on the documentary to do interviews. So I asked his communications person if he would be willing to answer a few questions, and maybe help me to get in touch with other people related to the story, but it looks like a dead end.

-sigh-

So since I have all this time and no interviews to do, I put together a little list of all of my favorite writing related things- Enjoy!

Who needs school?

1. The Portable MFA – It had great reviews on Amazon and it gets great reviews from me. This is the first book on writing (well, beside Strunk & White) that I’ve read that hasn’t been cheesy, and has been totally helpful.

2. Lectures on tape- What?? How amazing is this? The Great Courses finds the top professors from around the country and then records their courses and sells them? Amazing!! Goodbye sucky Orange County commute, hello freeway college!

I already finished The Classics of Russian Literature by Professor Irwin Weil. This guy was so into Dostoevsky he learned Russian so he could read his books in their native tongue, and then moved to Russia. This is the guy I want to learn about Russian literature from!

I just started Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writers Craft by Professor Brooks Landon. He’s a professor at Iowa University (which has the top MFA program in the country). Don’t let the scary chapter titles like “Subordinate and Mixed Cumulatives” scare you, its not that bad! I don’t know how much it will help my writing, but it’s interesting to finally be able to deconstruct other authors prose and see what it is that makes it so good.

3. If lectures aren’t your thing, may I recommend books on tape? You can finally get to all those classics that have been sitting in your To-Read pile that you’ve never gotten around to. I really enjoy the BBC productions, they do great reenactments of Oscar Wilde and Anton Chekhov’s plays.

4. A site where you can hire published authors for an hour at a time to review your work and offer advise. Genius!

5. Poets & Writers – Who knew? Most writing magazines are so cheesy, but this is an awesome tools for writers with writing contests, information on literary journals, MFA programs, getting published, and more.

6. An amazing use of a typewriter, this woman creates visual art using hers.

7. I want! Oh how i want!!

8. And this quote, which totally inspires me:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

— Ira Glass

I’ll begin with Maier

September 9th, 2011

Jackie

I love finding patterns. When I worked at a retail store I noticed the days when all the customers who came in did the same thing. One day we sold out of our entire display of socks. We never sold socks! One day everyone who came in paid in cash, when 95% of our transactions were normally debit. I would whisper conspiratorially to my coworkers, “Don’t you guys think it’s weird? It’s a Wednesday, the 22^nd of the month, nobody’s cashing pay checks, so why is everyone paying in cash? It doesn’t make sense!” And they would look at me wearily and go back to folding V-Neck Tees. But I knew. I saw the pattern.

I got excited again when I started to notice that a lot of the authors I had been reading had begun their careers as journalists. I went online to research my theory and author after author it proved true. “Oh my God!” I shouted, startling my cat. It was true, and it made sense, a lot of novelists began in the newsroom. So that’s what I was going to do to. I was going to become . . . a journalist.

I was going to follow in the great footsteps of Hemingway, Camus, Orwell, and of course, Hunter S. Thompson. I was going to follow them right into . . . a dying industry? Oooh no. Since when were the newspapers dying? Nobody told me, I still subscribe to the New York Times! Grandma, what are you doing with that Kindle? Stop that! Put that down!

So I may have chosen poorly when I decided to become a columnist. My dreams shattered I began searching for any writing job, and my new full time job became filtering through scammy companies. No, I do not want to write SEO for you in a room over your auto repair shop . . . but thank you. No, I cannot produce 15 articles a day for $4 each, although it would be good practice.

Then I thought, why not write for myself instead? I am a curious and able person with access to the internet. I hear interesting things and nod pensively while murmuring to myself, “I would love to interview that person.” So now I will! I will start my own magazine/newspaper/chronicle of life where I indulge in my love of words . . . Welcome!

My first project: a narrative journalism article on Vivian Maier.

I love this story, I feel emotionally attached to it already. She was a reclusive nanny who took over 100,000 photographs in the streets of Chicago and New York around the 50s and 60s. Nobody ever saw them (a majority weren’t even developed) until in 2007 when a man bought her items in an auction and started posting her photos online. The response was overwhelming. There is a book about to come out, a documentary in the works, and gallery openings scheduled for all over the world. She is being called one of the greatest American street photographers, and nobody even knew she existed until after her death.

Something about this is so glamorous to me! Here was this lady who kept completely to herself, nobody knew much about her, but inside she was swirling with this passion to photograph. Without being intimate with a soul, she captured the intimate moments of other peoples lives. Artists seem to strive to be artists, to seek recognition, but not Vivian. She photographed for herself, for the love of it.

-sigh- And I don’t care if that’s not the reality, that’s how I choose to interpret the story! Nobody really knew her, so it’s up to me to try to narrate the life of this woman who silently developed film in her bathroom behind a locked door. Stay tuned . . .

Some of Vivian Maier’s work: