The Blog is Back in Town

So it’s been over a year since I last blogged.  That's embarrassing.  And although I hate blogspot and don’t know how to format anything and feel so totally unhip with this outdated blog, I really miss it!  Writing and blogging allow me to do so much—reflect on what I’m learning, document my life, challenge my writing skills, and encourage my transparency.  And to just be my funny and charming self, of course.

I could try to update you on my life since I last blogged in several posts, but that would be too hard.  Instead, I’ll just tell you in a few sentences—I turned 30, got engaged, was laid off, got my Master’s degree, have an awesome new job, and am planning our wedding.  It’s been one of the hardest years of my life, with some of the most exciting and most wonderful things sprinkled in.  Aside from those major life-changing events, not much else happened :)

 

Now that we’re up to speed…just know, I’m back in blogging action.

Watson's Drugstore

Check out my latest article in the April issue of The O.C. Gazette, about the history of Watson’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain in Orange. Research for this assignment included lunch with a girlfriend at the counter, noshing on fries and burgers and sharing an Oreo milkshake. Such hard work...

I love the atmosphere of this place. It's such an escape. If you have not been to Watson's, you have not fully actualized life. It’s so fun and delicious.

For all things awesome in Orange County, check out The O.C. Gazette.

Hometown Pride

My sweet friend Kylie calls my neighborhood the Hundred Acre Wood, because I live among about a billion eucalyptus trees. In the summertime, the breeze gently whispers through their leaves. And in the winter--well, a lot of them clunk over into the street when it rains (shallow roots, you see.). Still, they give Lake Forest a unique beauty.

The trees were planted in the late 19th Century because there was a lumber shortage in California at the time. In the woods behind my house where I used to help my big brother build tree houses when we were kids, you can still see perfectly straight rows of planted trees.

Want to learn more fun facts about my great hometown?

Check out The O.C. Gazette's February issue for my article on the history of Lake Forest.

I love the Gazette and am already working on my next assignment for them. I think I'll try typing up my next article. Real journalists use typewriters, right?

Our Old Courthouse is a very very very fine courthouse

Click here to read my latest article in the November issue of The O.C. Gazette. I had the privilege of writing about the Old Courthouse, the oldest court building in Orange County.

This is my first history piece for the magazine and I had a great time taking a couple of trips to this beautiful building and learning all about it. The structure itself was fascinating to explore, but learning about all the landmark court cases and movies filmed there was what really intrigued me. There are remarkable stories everywhere, aren't there? I wonder how many we miss because we're not looking for them...

The Blog is Back in Town

I miss blogging. I can't believe it's been so long since I've written a post of substance or interest. Shameful.

And I want to apologize to you, my readers, for the neglect, even though I'm not really under the delusion that anyone really reads my blog except my dad (Hi Dad. I love you. Go Phillies!). But if you have indeed missed my blogs, I am sorry, and I want to assure you that I will be blogging more regularly now.

One reason is because I actually got a new laptop! His name is Ishmael. The last one I used was a high school graduation present. (I graduated in 2001. That means my old laptop is nine years old. In computer years, that's, like...nine years old.) Not having a good computer definitely hinders one's ability to blog. I am loving the Ish.

Another reason is because I want to and need to write more. I have been thinking about some goals that I want to achieve, and one of them involves improving my writing skills. It's a craft--an art--and I need to do it as much as possible if I want to be good at it.

And lastly...I love writing and blogging and have genuinely missed it. So, Dad, even if you are the only person who reads my blog, that's fine with me. Stay tuned...

Garnier

This is not a post about shampoo. This is a post about an amazing O.C.-based photographer named Jacques Garnier. But if you want, you can say his name in that same coy half-whisper that they do in the shampoo commercials.

I had an incredible opportunity to interview Garnier for The O.C. Gazette's August issue.

Click here to read my article about Jacques and his 15-year documentary photography project of the El Toro Marine Base. And check out his website here to look at his amazing photographs.

Seriously, you'll be shocked at how beautiful these photographs are. I have always seen the base as an eyesore, but Garnier's pictures, like all great art, challenges you to see something more....

Letters of Note

I had read about a book that was released earlier this year called Other People's Rejection Letters, a compilation of, yep, people's rejection letters. I haven't read it myself, but it includes everything from Jimi Hendrix's rejection letter from the Army to a kid's note to his parents: "I hate you. I'm running away." Sounds like an entertaining book, and a good read for anyone who's ever felt devastatingly rejected!

Anyway, a bit of internet searching for famous letters led me to an incredible website that I just can't stop reading. It's called Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience.

The site is an online collection of famous, important, tragic, and sometimes just darn funny postcards, faxes, memos, letters, and notes. There are actual scanned photographs of the correspondence as well as typed up transcriptions so they are easy to read.

Some of the many letters I looked over today included a note from Conan O'Brien to a girl who asked him to her senior prom (he couldn't go but was kind enough to write back!), a letter from Christa McAuliffe to a young fan about how excited she was to be the first teacher in space (she and her entire crew perished when The Challenger exploded 73 seconds after take-off), and a fascinating note to Marlon Brando from Jack Kerouac, trying to convince him to star as Dean Moriarty in the movie On the Road...which has still never been made into a movie. Could you imagine Marlon Brando as Dean? Oh, gosh!

I love letters, notes, and handwriting. A couple of years ago I went to the British Library in London and got to see Jane Austen's letters (I wish I had her handwriting), Captain Cook's journal, Handel's handwritten Messiah, and Beatles lyrics. They were so delicate and beautiful.

It's easy for us to see handwritten stuff as archaic and disposable, which makes me sad; letter writing has become a lost art. Letters are so personal and intimate. I feel like I shouldn't be reading some of these letters online, letters that were meant for a single person to read. But now they are historic documents that give insight into people's thoughts, motives, relationships, and personalities. They are just fascinating to me!!

Check some of them out on Letters of Note!

Crimes of the Heart

Thanks to my dear friends at the O.C. Gazette, I was able to see an amazing production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Crimes of the Heart last Saturday night. I was so excited about seeing this play that I even bought it and read it before seeing South Coast Repertory's incredible production, which runs through June 6th. Go see it! I love plays, and this is one of my new favorites!

Check out my review of Crimes here, and click around on the Gazette's blog and website while you're at it ;)

New ARTicle

Check out May's issue of the OC Gazette for my article featuring OC artist Brian Lindstrom of Newbaric Designs. AND...check out his website because he posts a new design daily, and they're amazing! The above design was to announce the article. So cool, right?!

I Got Nothin

I've mentioned how much I love books, reading, and stories. ("We get it, Lisa," you must be thinking. I know.) But reading books for me is more than enjoying a narrative; it's the prose that I obsess over, too. I love good writers' writing--when they violate punctuation rules, spell dialogue phonetically, and come up with their unique styles. Style, voice...they're tough things to have.

I love the art of writing. I love the English language. I'll never master it, and I like that about it. I'll be learning it forever and ever, and blogging is part of that process--what should I write about, and how should I write it? I feel so much satisfaction when I am able to post something that comes from my heart and is articulated well, creatively written, funny, didactic, meaningful...I love being proud of something I've written.

And other times, like right now, I mistakenly believe I hate writing. I can't think of a single thing in this indefatigably fascinating world--full of succulent, delicious, tantalizing, mouth-watering things--that I want to write about. Or is it the other way around...are there too many thoughts swimming around in my little brain that they're all just drowning each other, and I'm left with nothing?

One of the best feelings in the world is being able to strike when the Iron of Inspiration is hot. Yet, often, it's a cold war between Fleeting Thought and Smug Cursor--oh, how it taunts me with its blinking.

I wish there was a way to manufacture inspiration as I fancy it, to yield creativity on a whim, for ideas to come a-knocking when they're beckoned.

Maybe I'll figure it out someday...

On Assignment

Thanks to my friends at The O.C. Gazette, I had the pleasure of moonlighting as a semi-real journalist last month when I interviewed Hal Landon Jr. for an article in the December issue of the magazine.

Mr. Landon stars as Scrooge in the South Coast Repertory’s annual production of A Christmas Carol. This was a special assignment for me, since I’ve seen the play nearly every year for a decade! Mr. Landon plays a perfect Scrooge, and he's such a sweet and humble man. A night or two after the interview, I saw him on My Name is Earl as I was flipping through the channels. “That’s my friend, Hal!” I thought to myself. Ha.

Read my article here.

And…go see this show! This will be Mr. Landon’s thirtieth year playing Scrooge!!

Outgoing Guts

Jaime sent me this quote, and it's given me more confidence to write...and to enjoy writing:

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

--Sylvia Plath

P.S. Note the awesome typewriter.

Is all our life, then, but a dream? --Lewis Carroll

This painting by Maxfield Parrish, titled "Morning," is featured in this year's Pageant of the Masters. Isn't it beautiful?

Read my latest article about the Pageant of the Masters in this month's Gazette.

The OC Fair

The OC Fair is coming soon! Read my article about the fair in the July issue of The Gazette here.

So...meet me at the fair?

Artickled Pink

I am a published writer! Check out my article on the Getty Villa in the March issue of The Gazette here!

I had a blast at the museum with Jen, Amy, and Sara, who all work for the magazine. Thanks, girls, for this incredible honor.

Very Creative Writing

My friend Hayley is almost finished with her first year of teaching high school English and sent me a list of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays that were collected by teachers from across the country. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

2. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

3. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

4. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

5. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

6. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

7. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

8. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

9. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

10. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

11. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

12. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

13. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

14. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law, Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

15. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

16. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.