If you’d like to keep track of me in blog-form, the current BEST way is my – http://jessreynolds.tumblr.com/  Has most of my updates, as well as LOTS of links that will lead you back to me.

This blog will now go back to collecting dust.

I’ve met some great people, I’ve gone to some wild places, and I’ve picked up some of the most random jobs, things I never imagined myself shooting.

Fast forward to today, I’m preparing to spend the summer working as a videographer.  VERY exciting.  The steady income from it is also a plus.  ;)  Health insurance, here I come!

I still miss the east coast dearly, and look forward to one day having a small apartment in Philly or NYC to run away to…  Until then, North Hollywood will just have to do!

I’m contemplating bringing back this blog.  We’ll see.  It’s no tumblr, but it definitely has it’s own purpose I suppose.  …in other news, Marcelo has just fallen asleep playing Assassin’s Creed.

~jess.

But I’m trying.

I’ve been here a couple of weeks now, and finding work is tough.  I hate sitting around at home ALL day doing NOTHING.  I can’t handle it.

Marcelo has a ton of friends here, a ton.  He is set with a car, and he doesn’t necessarily have to get a job ASAP to pay his bills.

I’m feeling a lot of pressure as far as my finances go.  I have to buy a car, which I have $3000 saved away for…  However, I have to pay rent at the end of the month, and since I don’t have a job, $800 of my car money is going to go to that.

Not only that, but I feel so fucking lonely here.  I’ve been trying to keep myself entertained, going to the beach, going roller skating…  But I’m usually by myself, and even if I’m with Marcelo, there are usually at least one or two of his friends there, and you boys know you just aren’t the same when you are around your guy friends.  You always have to impress each other.  BORING.

Marcelo tells me today how much he misses his friends in Brazil…  Well, I miss friends period.  I’ve got nothing and no one down here!  I can’t help but feel like he is a little greedy to complain about missing friends when he has about 10 best friends in the city, as well as family!!!  :’(

It’s a shame because, believe it or not, I really love the city, and I really love the house we’re living in.  I guess I probably just have to deal with only a couple more weeks of isolation, then maybe I’ll get a job.  HOPEFULLY I’ll have a job by then.

Typically that isn’t my style, but right now I find myself in South Jersey where I just saw a man walking down the street in American Flag shorts and a sleeveless T-Shirt that read, “Silly Faggot, Dicks are for Chicks…”

I can’t get back to California soon enough..

Anyhow, I have about 60 gigs of images from France (jesus…) and about 3 gigs of pictures from this weekends Cadet 75th Anniversary.  What a truly special event.  Reconnected with old friends, healed a little bit by speaking face to face with my ex-boyfriend who I dated for 4.5 years but haven’t seen in a year and a half, and best of all, got to meet Cadets from 1934!!!  I can’t even begin to describe what a magical weekend it was…  It reminded me of what the Cadets make of us members, and how it affects us once we’ve aged out of the corps!  I upheld that title of a “Cadet” fine in college, Valedictorian nominee son! But I felt like after graduation I got away from it…  Being there this weekend reminded me of what I did as a member in that corps, all that we accomplished…  And really, nothing else is a challenge.  I guess this weekend gave me courage!  I feel like me once again, something I couldn’t say in about 2+ years…

Anyway, more on that later when I update.  What stinks is I don’t have internet at my parents house, so now I find myself sitting in the Hammonton Public Library which, actually?  Isn’t such a bad thing.  I swear I’ll update and add lots of photos!

Primarily for David, because I’m pretty sure he’s the only one who reads my blog.

My ten days in Paris are done, and I am now in Avignon. Lot’s of things happened in Paris that I will back-blog eventually when I get a little bit more time.

As I just mentioned, we are now in Avignon. We took a speed train and made it down here from Paris in about 2 1/2 hours… Driving takes 6 hours. Cool!!!

Avignon is a REALLY amazing place… It has a ton of history religiously speaking, and I’ve enjoyed immensely the short time I’ve spent here. Remember when we had two popes?! This was the other place!

Walking around the streets has been a pleasure also. It’s a gigantic, cobble-stone maze, where the French people are quite nice, unlike in Paris. I adore it here.

On an entirely different note, this is the first night in about two weeks that I’m sleeping in a bed. Somehow we ended up at a VERY nice hotel, and this bed is ridiculously comfortable.

I’ve never been to France before.  I like to pretend I’ve never been to Europe before.  I was in Ireland once, where I spent the majority of the time at pubs.  Given the fact that I didn’t touch alcohol at the time, it wasn’t a super time.

Anyhow, Marcelo has been here, a few times actually.  So he decided we should just hit a section of town and take it from there.  We grabbed some almond croissants on the way to the train station, and they were fantastic!!  Is that cheese in there?  I think it is!!

We quickly made our way over to the area where the Musée de L’Orangerie is.  Getting onto street level from the station was pretty overwhelming!!  The day before we were just in Dudu’s neighborhood, which isn’t too unlike any other city, but here it was different – GIGANTIC buildings, easily hundreds of years old, gardens, sculptures, monuments, a replica of that thing in front of the Paris Las Vegas hotel (im kidding), amazing clouds…  Yeah!!

We went into the Musée de L’Orangerie, where there are two oval rooms with gigantic Monet paintings, lit only with natural light.

Underneath the main floor which is entirely dedicated to Monet, is many more galleries filled with other French artists…  There are some things down here that I’ve seen many times…  Cezannes, Renoirs, Picassos….  But I came across three artists that I’ve never heard of and REALLY enjoyed.  One was an artist by the name of Maurice Utrillo who has really nice street scenes of Paris.  The next artist that grabbed my eye was Chaime Soutine.  He has some funky stuff!!  His portraits remind me of Alberto Giacometti sculptures…  He also did some still life’s of what looks like animals on the chopping block.  Nice!  It’s great coming to a museum and finding new artists that you love!!

The one that really was the most pleasant surprise was an artist by the name of Didier Paquignon.

First off, homeboy is still alive.

Secondly, WHOA!

I’m a photographer through and through, and I always thought my eye saw things differently than painters…  While I can appreciate what painters can do, I never felt like I could connect fully with them and become an actual FAN of any of them…  Illustrators are a different story.  William Kentridge is just one example of someone whom I think is a pure genius!!!  But I never had that relationship with any painters.

Anyhow, the first painting of Didier Paquignon that I saw was this one….  It was the first painting as I entered the part of the gallery that was entirely his exhibition.  I guess what caught my eye first was his use of colors, secondly his content.  It was the initial “what the hell IS that” followed by the “oh my god thats so cool.”  (not my photo)

I glanced in and was delighted to see photo-realistic pieces…  And even more delighted when they revealed themselves as paintings once I got closer!

His use of color really is fantastic.  I don’t want to say he “has the eye of a photographer”, but his pieces show a certain attention to elements that painters don’t usually have, in my humblest of opinions.  He had a couple of building sides that he had clearly done during “magic hour”, that very special time of day, either at sunset or sunrise, where light just makes everything look delicious.  He had pieces where a building was half basking in delicious light, half cast in shadow.  It’s the things I delight in seeing as I walk through cities, and this may be the first time I’ve seen an artist (not a photographer) do it.  Here are a few more paintings of his from the exhibit that I loved.  (these ARE my photos)

That last painting was one of my favorites.  He did a whole series with this pod-like structure, and I completely fell in love with them.  Instead of looking at paintings and being ushered back hundreds of years to a time where it was okay for women to have bellies and for artists not to know how to paint children, here I was seeing something almost Sci-Fi, throwing me forward in time, imagining our world in maybe 100 years, looking forward and being forced to imagine, because it hasn’t happened yet, as opposed to looking upon the paintings and seeing “what once was…”  I don’t know…  It was just a nice change I suppose.

After the museum, we walked along the gardens until we got to the Promenade area where we were going to grab a quick lunch.  I did my best to convince Marcelo to go on the ferris wheel with me, but he promised later.   Hear that?  He promised!!!  Let’s see if we do it or not…  :b

For lunch we went to Angelina’s which boasts about having the world’s best hot chocolate.  I went with a smoked salmon salad first which had… a WHOLE AVOCADO!  YEAH!  You know I’ve never even had an avocado until went to California?  Crazy.

Afterwards, we split a Mont Blanc which is a dessert that they are also famous for, as well as the hot chocolate.

The Mont Blanc was… incredible.  It showed up on the table, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  The outside was a chestnut paste, the bottom of it was meringue, and the inside was whipped deliciousness.  We went through that in about 60 seconds tops, then waited around for the hot chocolate…  It came out in a gigantic pitcher, with a bowl full of hand whipped cream on the side, un-sweetened.  This hot chocolate is pretty excellent…  It’s SUPER thick, and really, it is high quality chocolate melted that you’re drinking.  Not watered down or diluted with anything.  It was incredibly rich however, (which I never thought I’d say) and we only had a little bit each.  The other desserts they had looked pretty spectacular also.

After lunch, we walked along the banks of the Seine River towards Notre Dame…  They do this funky thing in Paris…  They put up scaffolding on buildings, yet COVER IT UP…  I guess appearances really *ARE* everything here.  It’s funny to me that even something like scaffolding, which is usually a sign of improvement, is still hidden.  They hang vinyl coverings that mock the design of the building over the construction sites…  Some people might say, “SUPER!”.  I say, waste of resources!  It’s just scaffolding!  It’s temporary!  Instead of spending all of that money getting your vinyl printout and all of the time hanging it, put that money and handy work toward finishing the job in the first place and getting the scaffolding down!

So Notre Dame…  I guess they cleaned it recently?  The front of the building is… REALLY clean!  The back of it, not yet.  :)  I prefer the back of it!

Anyhow, there are lines everywhere to go anywhere.  There were two lines to get into Notre Dame, one moving REALLY quick, the other not.  We went to the quick line which got us in…  The long one takes us up to the top.  Wha!!  I wanna do that!  But there was no time.  So we just went inside…  Which is still incredibly impressive!  The masonry, the stained glass, the hip 1970′s altar…  This place was incredible…  It was ENORMOUS.  Really noisy though which was weird to me.  Dot asked me to light a candle, so I did just that.  In the second image, it’s the one in the front.  Some of the sculptures in there were pretty creepy, giant skeleton over the casket of some dying saint…  crazy!

The exterior of Notre Dame is pretty impressive, the sides and the back being FAR more interesting than the front.  There are gargoyles all over this place!  Each has a different creepy face, some missing heads altogether.  I wish I had a better zoom lens with me, I could spend a whole 4GB CF card just shooting them.  And yo, who is that guy holding his own head?!

After the museum, we hit up some crepes/ham and cheese sandwiches, caught the train home, chilled out, and had some tajine for dinner…  AMAZING tajine.

That’s it!  The Louvre tomrorrow, maybe a ferris wheel!

We walked a small bit to get lunch.  We stopped at some cliché French bistro which was my first taste of being far from home, in terms of attempting to order and be courteous in French, as opposed to being the stereotypical, “I’m American, you speak English?”  Despite a whole year of French in Camden County College, I’m still incredibly awkward at it.  Anyhow, I had some figs with parmesan, followed with a tuna steak.  Very nice!  Then we made our way back to Dudu’s where we passed out for easily a few hours.

I awoke to find Marcelo getting ready, as some people were coming over the apartment for a party…  I went back to sleep for probably another hour, until I started to hear voices in the other room which made me drag my ass out of bed and get into the shower.

There were probably 10-15 people here, a mix of Brazilian, French, English, and Chilean…   It was mostly all women for the first couple of hours, which typically I can’t handle, but I did pretty well considering…  Later some guys showed up and I was immediately more comfortable.  I guess it’s a guys ability to just lay it all out…  They’re crude and really don’t need to impress anyone.  Women, however, always seem to paint on a different face for every person they speak to, and I found at a very young age that it is just too much to keep up with.  I’ve tried to weed out unnecessary conversation and niceties, preferring to choose to spend my time with people who can contribute to my life.  Callous, maybe, but the way I turned out somehow.  Plus, the one time I decided to have a female “bestie” it turned out to be a sloppy disaster, so never again…  Unless she’s a tomboy.

Anyhow, the evening was fine.  I drank too much wine, and even more cachaca, and it wasn’t until some girl in a red one-piece jumpsuit scoffed at me and handed me some pretty hostile facial expressions for having to speak English on MY account, that I became upset at first, then angry…

First off, you’re not even French yourself, you’re Brazilian, secondly, you have a big nose, and thirdly, who told you what you were wearing was cute?  I can’t really explain the 10 second interaction that happened, but it bummed me out that a human being would think it’s ok to treat another human being like that.  I’m over people hating on Americans just because our government sucks.  I can’t control where I was born, like you can’t control what your nose looks like, so why wouldn’t we all just get along?

Anyhow, I drunkenly bitched at Marcelo about the whole situation in the kitchen, then we went to bed.

One other thing real quick, business class is THE DEAL!!!  Tons of food, GOOD food, tons of drinks, strong drinks, TV, movies, games, all free mind you, and a seat that lays down into a bed!?  Wow!!!  I’ve never done anything like that before!

Today I colored a World Map, as you can see above.

This is the color key:

Green – The Places I’ve Been

Blue – The Places I see myself going in the next year

Yellow – The Places I’d like to go at least SOME TIME in my life

Red – Places I never desire to set foot in ever in my life

As you can see, there are no red countries!!!  That’s exciting…..

But as you can also see is that there aren’t too many greens…  :o/

So hopefully Oprah comes to my website and donates me a cool $150,000!

I’d love to see the world…  Antarctica is actually the #1 place on my list that I’d like to go.

<3

Feel free to donate over at howisjess.com

~jess.

Throw Away Something You Like…

I threw away something I liked today.

Page 3 in the book I’m following.

I got a little behind, due to the fact that my sister got married and all of that.

So what did I throw away you ask???

WELL…

If you would please refer to the image below, you will see what it is.

Upon first inspection, you may say, “So what’s the big deal with a dusty, Poland Spring bottle of water?”

Well thanks for asking!!!

Here’s the big deal.

On my 18th birthday, I won backstage passes to meet Pennywise.  I wrote in to the website and answered the question of “Why do you love Pennywise?”  My fingers flew over the keyboard and after a few paragraphs, I sent it off…  And easily won.  :)

Since my birthday falls on Veteran’s Day, and since I was in a brass band, we had to participate in our obligatory Veteran’s Day Ceremony of the National Anthem, Taps, etc…  Once that was over, I jumped in my maroon Ford Escort and raced from Hammonton NJ to the Trocadero in Philadelphia.  I didn’t even bring anyone with me…  I didn’t have time!  And I especially didn’t want anyone there that wouldn’t appreciate it the way I would.

Again, I was freshly 18, so this would mark the 6th year of Pennywise being my favorite band.

I watched the show on the floor, and when it was done, I made my way to the side door and backstage.

I walked up an old ruddy staircase and made a right to the rooms where everyone was.  Skinny girls in short skirts, nerdy guys with recorders trying to get interviews, a table of untouched salad, and Fletcher.  FLETCHER!!!

I was quiet, under-dressed, messy blonde hair, and glasses.  Oh, and young as hell.

Fletcher saw me and saw my empty hands.  “Whattaya want to drink….”  Not so much a question as much as it was a command.

He flipped open the cooler lid and offered me Zima…  I said that’s not my type of thing.  He offered me beer.  I admitted that I “didn’t drink”, nevermind the fact that I wasn’t even CLOSE to being old enough to drink!!!

He put down his beverage and dug through the cooler until, eventually, all the way at the bottom was a bottle of water.  He handed it to me.  I said thanks and rushed away into the other room.  I wanted to leave while I was ahead and not make an ass out of myself.

I stood in the corner quietly by myself and just took it all in.  Watched everyone mill about.  Not too long after I even got up there, the employees of the venue were rushing us out…  But….  but…  but I still had my camera in my pocket that I wanted to use to get pictures with the band but was too chicken-shit of looking like a loser!!!

Well…

I still silently waited in the corner.  Fletcher was being interviewed by some guy.  Probably a college paper.  Byron was around, I hadn’t seen Randy, but he was new to the band at the time so I wasn’t too concerned, but the one who I cared about….  The one who I *REALLY* wanted to meet…  was Jim Lindberg, and he was no where to be found.  He was who I was waiting for.

It got to the point where I threw in the towel.

On my way out I stopped Byron, got a pic.  The guy interviewing Fletcher was still going on and on, so I left.  With the bottle of Poland Spring in my hand, I made my way down the stairs.  Only a few steps down, I looked out onto the stage floor, and there was Jim!!!  Talking to some guy….  And then he looked at me!  And then he smiled!!!  I was pretty excited, but of course refused to show it on my austere face.

I made my way down the remainder of the stairs and walked over to Jim.  I stuttered out something about how amazing he is and how I love Pennywise.  You know….  The same things kids always tell their favorite musician.  I don’t remember every detail, but I do remember him being extremely kind and gentle natured.  I handed some girl my camera.  I remember telling her, “Just look through the hole and press the button.  Everything else is set.”  I’m guessing I had my SLR, but the photos were clearly taken with a flash.  *shrug*

Anyway, I thanked him for giving me the opportunity to meet them, and made my way back out to my car.  I didn’t want to be demanding of anyone’s time.

I was parked just next door to the venue, so I hopped in the car, drove through China Town, over the Ben Franklin, (I hated the Walt Whitman at the time for some reason) and made my way back to Jersey.  I came into the house, down the hall, and into my bedroom.  I pulled the backstage pass off of my shirt and slapped it onto a Pennywise poster in my bedroom.  Little did I know I’d soon be adding a few more to the same poster down the road!  I still had the bottle of water, so I placed it on a shelf where I had an assortment of random bottles, Japanese dolls, and plates with chimps on them.  All my favorite things.

And it stayed there!!!  It was from the first time I ever met my favorite band.  All I had from the experience other than the backstage pass and two photographs.  It was a prized possession!!!

So when I got to the page that told me to throw away something I liked, it was great that I was in Jersey for it.  I scanned the room and said, “No, not THAT….  I can’t get rid of THAT…  What else is there….”  but then realized that was defeating the purpose of the assignment!!!!  So off it goes into the recycling, still with some water in the bottle.  10 years after it made it in here.  Wow, that means I’ve liked Pennywise for more than half of my life.

Here are the pics below from that day.  If you are an RSS reader, you may have to go to the actual blog to see them.  www.howisjess.com

~jess.

Being that I actually don’t LEAVE the house all too often, I wondered how this would work out.

Eventually though, I did leave, and actually went to a ton of places!!!  I didn’t remember my assignment until I was in DSW shoes.

I looked around and there was only one person there…

A woman in her mid to late 40’s, kind of angry looking, a little rough around the edges…  She may have been a phys-ed teacher, I’m still not sure.

Anyway, I took about 15 seconds and gazed upon her as per my assignment in “the book”.  She didn’t look at me.  In fact, she knocked over a box of shoes, turned and looked at it, then kept walking.

Needless to say, I was very fired up by her wreckless behaviour, so I stormed over, fixed the box, and glared at her as she walked out of the store.

Maybe today’s assignment wasn’t quite for me!!!!!

Then I instantly forgot about it again.

It’s probably better that way, I’m sure Marcelo will be happier if I don’t do a repeat of Page 2!  Because I’d kill him if he did it.

~jess.