Marie Javins's Blog, page 45

Australia Day 2020

I make ANZAC Biscuits on Australia Day, because Turbo taught me to do this when I lived in Australia (in three-month increments for two years, 2002-2003, ducking out when my tourist visas were up), and it just became something I did every year. Sure, I've missed some years, like when I lived in Kuwait or Cairo, but mostly, I try to acknowledge Australia Day.

Why? I'm not sure. Maybe just to recall the life I might have led, and did lead for a while. I sometimes reflect on how I was still too...young to settle down? Unlikely to live in a rural environment for more than a short time? Impatient with other humans around too long? A bad match for someone equally as intimacy-averse? Only my therapist knows for sure. Or would, if I had one.

There are many days I wish I'd become an Australian. I wouldn't call it regret. More like a pining for a past life. Nostalgia? Maybe.
This Australia Day, I made the regular kind of ANZAC biccies with all-purpose flour, but I also made a batch with brown rice flour and gluten-free oats, since one of the associate editors at work can't have wheat. The regular flour kind ARE better—I tasted one of each (for research, obvs). But the wheat-free ones are okay. They just don't quite have the right level of chewy.

And I put Paul Kelly's "Comedy" on the iTunes. Crikey. Why go halfway? Maybe I'll go to work tomorrow and address people as "mates."

Here's the ANZAC Biscuit recipe I took from the local weekly newspaper in 2002, back in northern New South Wales, in a small town near Murwillumbah.

ANZAC BISCUIT RECIPE INGREDIENTS
1 cup of rolled oats (or gluten-free rolled oats)
1 cup of plain flour (not self-rising)
1 cup of sugar
3/4 cup of coconut
2 tablespoons of golden syrup (this is the secret ingredient, can be hard to find in the US)
1/2 cup of butter (let it sit out until it's soft)
1/2 tablespoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of boiling water
METHOD
Mix together the oats, flour, sugar and coconut.
Melt the syrup and margarine together in a saucepan.
Mix baking soda with the boiling water and add to the melted margarine and syrup. You should get a satisfying gurgle of buttery golden syrup. then add this to the dry ingredients.
Mix it with your hands. If it's still too crumbly, add a little water.
Place tablespoons of the mixture on a greased tray and bake at (300F) for 20 minutes. Start checking after 15 minutes.

Hanging Art

I finally got around to hanging some of the paintings I bought in Haiti.

It only took me 14 months, and I'm not done yet. There's plenty more to sort through. At least they're framed. 

Studio Tour

For reasons that will become clear in a few months, my colleagues and I went over to the lot this week for a DC-specific WB Studio Tour. We had a blast, though the day was chilly. My company is owned by WB.
Marie, Queen of Atlantis

Saturday on the PCH

MLK weekend comes hot on the heels of the December holidays, and I'm always caught by surprise. Too late to make a plan, too expensive to buy a ticket to head out of town for the long weekend.

But that's okay as I have plenty to do in Burbank. But still, I like to take one day out of three to see something new.

The Eames House has been on my short list for some time. I looked up how to get there by public transit. Easy enough, assuming I have other things I want to see in Santa Monica. I bought a ten dollar admission ticket to see the exterior of the Eames House just under the village at Pacific Palisades.

But then I looked on the map and saw the Getty Villa was just down the road, less than ten minutes north on the PCH.

But the bus to the Getty didn't stop anywhere near the Eames House. Curses.

I rented a car and added more stops to my day's itinerary.
First stop was my office. I picked up a few boxes I'd been meaning to post, wheeled them on my wheelie-cart to the car, and stopped by the post office later.

Next stop: BOCA. It's a boutique that I stumbled over on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica back when I first moved to LA. Then the boutique closed and I was sad until I looked it up and learned the Montana Avenue shop had been a temporary relocation for this Pacific Palisades store. I headed there first in my rental car, then zipped down the hill past the bus stop to Corona del Mar. Plenty of street parking on Corona del Mar, so I parked there and walked over to the Eames House.



The Eames House is lovely and fascinating, but it's also a short visit where you walk around the grounds and peer at the house and in the windows. 
I walked back to the car and drove north on the PCH to the Getty Villa. 
I'd read this was an overcrowded spot, so I'd booked ahead to get the timed entry pass. Fortunately, a January Saturday isn't the time for tourist hordes, and the Getty Villa was not at all crowded. 
Next, I headed to Topanga Canyon. I'd spotted an Indonesian crafts store online and also the unexpected--a Bhutan store. 
The Indonesian store was unremarkable and the Bhutanese store was closed. I stopped in the Topanga town center for a coffee-and-browse expedition, then headed back to the valley. 
More photos are here. 

School Photo

Here's something my mom scanned in and posted. This was a couple of years ago when I was in school.

Aren't There More Important Things?

I boarded the plane on January 1 with a slight cold. Nothing serious. I went about my next few days with a slightly worse cold, but I didn't take it seriously until suddenly I was having the kind of coughing fits where my chest ached from all that work.

I stayed home on Friday.

Today, I convinced myself to go out into the sunlight to the #222 bus over the hill to the Hollywood Farmers Market. I wasn't in the market to buy anything, but I wanted to take a look at the refill stand. It's where you take containers and fill them up with dishwashing liquid, laundry soap, shampoo, that sort of thing.

I was wandering around after checking it out, when a young woman approached me and asked me to sign her petition to legalize magic mushrooms.

I didn't sign, but I didn't blink either.

In a day where I was already kind of disoriented, the moment made perfect sense.

Movie Reviews

Here's my review of Cats, which I attended last night with some friends from work.

Note the theater was PACKED. This is not an opening weekend. It's not the Chinese Theater. It's a multiplex in Burbank on a Tuesday night. We struggled to find four seats together.

What?
What?
What?

Jamie, is that the Taylor Swift-cat? (He says no, it's the ballerina, and this is the first time I notice he brought a flask. It comes out more and more as the movie progresses.)

Is that a fat joke? Is that another fat joke? I didn't know fat jokes were a big part of Cats.

What?

(At this point, I notice Andrea has her hands frozen in front of her mouth, which is slightly ajar.)

What the hell is going on here? How many people from major studios and production companies were part of this, and yet no one stopped it?

What?

I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed a movie so much.

Every time Ian McKellen-cat looks at the camera, we all snicker. I expect him to roar "You shall not pass." Spoiler: He doesn't.

Judi Dench-cat is completely bizarre. What is she doing in this movie? Did she lose a bet? How can she play it so straight? Why would a cat need a fur coat?

What are any of these stars doing in this movie?

Oh. Wait. All the dark cats are either bad or down-on-their-luck.

Is this a white savior cat movie?

Jamie pulls out the flask again.

For some reason, some cats have clothes and some run around naked. Like Cheetah, I say. My colleagues crack up. Naked Cheetah is a real thing. Or a comics real thing.

Idris Elba wears clothes for most of the film, and then when he shows up in nothing but black fur, the audience gasps. Did we just see Idris Elba naked??

We sit in silence to the end of the credits. Rob always likes to sit to the end. I think this time it's because he is stunned and can't move.

Jamie says he is impressed by the sheer audacity of this movie. I don't think our home studio had the audacity to put naked Cheetah on-screen this year, and we are likely the better for it.

"What's a Jellicle?" I ask.

"They literally explained that in the first five minutes, Marie." Andrea is always the one digging into story.

Cats really went for it. No one is sure what "it" is, but these people would never have backed down from naked Cheetah.

(Disclaimer: I find naked Cheetah revolting. At least Tigra wears a swimsuit. Of course, cats don't go to the beach, so Cheetah is probably more realistic than Tigra. Would Taylor Swift-cat go to the beach, I wonder.)

"Five times," yells one attendee. "I've seen this five times!"

Once was enough for me, but then, I don't partake of California's famed edibles.

All Human

I went through Iran in 1998 as part of an extended commercial overland truck trip, starting in Kathmandu and driving through to Damascus.

Overland trucks carry cooking gear, luggage storage, safes, spare parts, camping equipment, treated drinking water, group refrigerator, reference materials, and bus-like seats, as well as two driver-mechanics. (In some trucks, there is also a cook, but this trip was based in local hotels rather than campsites.)

We carried 8 tourists and 2 driver-mechanics. Last night, I found myself going over photos of that time, because it helps me to see what is being demonized, to remind myself of the place and people being reduced to "supervillain."

Dichotomy and Compartmentalization

I have a cold. I'm trying to decide if I should go to work.

Meanwhile, the world waits to see if Iran is capable of being the adult in the room. We all gasp in horror as marsupials and reptiles die by the thousands down under; the first victims of Australian climate change were incapable of even having a voice. A failed casino investor tears down women's health after the disenfranchised and disillusioned are manipulated by entertainment news and relics of the Cold War. White supremacy glowers in the dark corners, edging slowly into the flickering light of Tiki torches.

And I haven't written anything since I went back to the traditional workplace. I'm struggling with middle age, trying to figure out what to fight and what to settle into. I haven't washed last night's dinner dishes. I have a hole in my left sock.

I have a cold. I'm trying to decide if I should go to work.

New Year's Day Thoughts

I have a New Year’s Day routine, where I get a taxi to Newark Airport at the crack of dawn, then I eat breakfast in the “secret” Terminal C restaurant behind Gate 120.

The food is the same crap you order off an iPad at every other restaurant in Terminal C, but it costs a little more and comes with a better atmosphere.

And so here I am as the sun seeps through cracked gray haze, watching a long line of lights in the sky—planes on their landing approaches. Each carries hundreds of people, all having individual experiences, all burdened with their own circumstances determining their optimism or sadness as they approach the passage of time.

My particular burden is I’m the walking definition of Gen X, in a way. The bridge generation between old ways and new ways. I am ambivalent about many things, came of age to indie rock in a world where entitled people always won and we less-entitled knew we were screwed, because we weren’t those people. Counterculture wasn’t cool when I eked out my own definition of how I would live to no one else’s standards. I’m so Gen X, my name’s in the Slacker credits.

Of course, so is everyone else’s of a certain era.

So I’m a bridge. That means I will never quite make it myself. My job is to make things easier on my successors. Life is easier once you acknowledge this and relieve yourself of the pressure of having to master the world. And it’s not a conscious choice so much as an awareness the world has only superficially changed.

The game is rigged. We were all set up, our fate predetermined by class, gender, race, identity. The masters of the universe are still the masters of the universe. I’m still a tenant farmer who stands back and looks at a great harvest, then sees the king’s newest knight, the one who has never been in battle and never earned a damn thing, cruise in and tell me what a great harvest it is and how he looks forward to the day he is king.

So as I sit on the morning of a New Year, watching the ping come in about my flight being delayed, realizing I’m not getting upgraded as I have the last three New Year’s flights, and my seats on the left of the plane so I won’t see the Grand Canyon, I realize and resolve.

I can burn that garden, can’t I?

I can’t think of a better example for the next generation.