The Jamjar

Celebratory New Years' Croissants

How To Make Celebratory New Years' Croissants
(inspired by Nigel Slater's caramalised apple croissants and the entire S'mores genre
)

1. Halve two croissants


2. Put under hot grill/broiler to get hot and crispy


3. Cut two Buzz Bars in half, longways


4. Put buzz bar slices on two of the croissant halves and put back under grill for further meltination


5. Take out of oven, put some scoops of good vanilla icecream on top of be'chocolate'd halves, top off with other half of croissant and eat quickly

Articulate

Maybe I mumble.

I know words tumble round in my head and sometimes come out a bit gobbly-gooped but I thought, even though they didn't make sense, they were generally audible. But maybe not.

Maybe I didn't say my flight was at 9:25am outside my head quite as clearly as I was thinking it so you only heard the 9am part which is why you parked in the dropoff zone and not the proper parking and then had to move the car once you realised we actually had about 45 minutes left together before my flight (which was a good thing in my opinion and in this instance).

Maybe "World's Fastest Indian", when spoken, does sound enough like "Flightplan" to get you into the wrong theatre (which I thought was almost a bad thing, but I moved theatres and found out it was six of one / half a dozen of another - I know, I'm a little fish swimming upstream of public opinion but the World's Fastest Indian is actually the World's Slowest Movie)

And maybe, the same audio hiccup happens when saying "One Adult for Howl's Moving Castle: 9:20pm session, please. And a bottle of sparkling lemon. Please." and I end up in the most perfectly centred seat in Cinema 6 watching "Little Fish" instead. (which was okay before it even started because it's a movie I wanted to see and it gave me an "in" to blog about me mumbling)

I dunno.. it all sounds okay in my head but the outside world is thinking maybe I need new teeth or something.

It's a lesson in speaking clearly and of checking tickets for more than the Cinema number.

I did want to see Little Fish, but I had my heart set on Howl's Moving Castle tonight. The lights flickered and dimmed in the gorgeous new Rialto in Newmarket and I settled into my very generous and comfortable $15 seat to slowly realised I was in the wrong theatre for the second time in a month. Last time, I moved to the right cinema, this time I settled back and enjoyed the movie.

How great is Cate Blanchett? bloody great, that's how great. And Hugo Weaving, bloody awesome. And what about that whole threading the water theme through everything - starting with the sea, ending with the sea, the swimming pool in between, of treading water, of being apart, the idea of "jumping into love" and drowning in it, of being together, and that clear blue colour? the little fish.. the water.. even the shipping containers. And family. And love. And fuckeduppedness. Yeh, I agree, bloody marvellous.

And yes, that is the guy from 21 Jump Street.

This is about as good as movie reviews are going to get - let's recap:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Whatsit: must see / see it / see it if you like good cinema / don't see it / not fussed (solid: MEH) / avoid like the plague

World's Fastest Indian: must see / see it / see it if you like good cinema / don't see it (I would have left half way through but I lost the will to live) / not fussed / avoid like the plague

King Kong: must see / see it / see it if you like good cinema / don't see it / not fussed / avoid like the plague

Chicken Little: must see / see it (it's fun AND short) / see it if you like good cinema / don't see it / not fussed / avoid like the plague

Little Fish: must see / see it / see it if you like good cinema / don't see it / not fussed / avoid like the plague

Achieve

See all the photos here.

Kiwifruit Fangirl

I did - I yelled at the screen.

KEVIN!

I yelled.

Of course, he didn't hear me - he was on the telly-vision hosting KiwiFruit. (that's a horrible photo of him btw - splattered tshirt guy)

Surprised and delighted to see the fabulous Kevin Alexander on the TV screen. Yes, I knew him before he could foodge!

Best line from Kevin before I saw him on the tv: He slammed his leg up on the table, his boot huge and worn (but in a fashionable way) on the table in front of me. "Big Foot" I said.. he said "you know what *that* means" and I looked at him and smiled and he said "yup.. HUGE cock!"

Best line from Kevin on the Tv: *dressed in lederhosen and playing with a particularly thick salami* "Summer holidays in Winter destinations - so hot right now."

I know, he wouldn't remember me now - afterall, it was a long drunken night that started with his boot and ended up with a foodge session and I was wearing a cardigan. Cardigans have a habit of obliterating memories. But I still have tapes of his voice.. somewhere... [stalker music]

Giant Jelly Fush

We have talked in the past about Giant Squids and their lack of hand-eye co-ordination when it comes to lovemaking. We have also talked about JellyFish. So it seems that it is time to draw these loose threads together in the glorious topic of Giant JellyFish.

Did you know there exist jellyfish that are 7 feet wide? The biggest one ever had 120-foot-long squidly tentacle bits.
I think there should, like, be a law against jellyfish getting that large, especially since they are not exactly the most intelligent of creatures.

While I have your attention, I would also like to draw it towards the website for a restaurant that is in downtown Auckland and is very nice thank you very much, only I suspect the graphic designer should have kept a tighter grip on the access to editing the site:

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Back in the day, when I went to school - you know, way back when we'd have to walk 10 miles barefoot in the snow for the privilege of an education? that's right! and by the time we got to school we were too tired and hungry to learn, so the teacher used to read us stories. Yeh, Back in the Day.

My teacher, Miss Klitcher, read us The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was in Standard Three. That would have made me about 9 years old. I remember her sitting on a chair at the front of the class reading each day - a chapter maybe, who knows, I was too busy hanging on every word.

I loved that story. I loved it so much, the very first chance I got to get my hands on that book I did. And I read it. Then I read it again. Over and over. By the time I got to McKillop College, aged 11, I had read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe nearly a dozen times.

I was so excited when I heard that they were making a movie of the book. I was never a Tolkien fan, and I've only read one of the Harry Potter books, so I've not had the investment in the worry of a book-to-movie before. And to be fair, worry is too strong a word. I wasn't worried as much as looking forward to see how the story would look on the big screen and secretly hoping no one would muck it up.

Andrew Adamson was to direct the film and I was pleased about that. I base that pleasure only on the fact he made Shrek and I thought Shrek was a great story, and the fact he was a kiwi - really, I am clueless as to who makes good movies and who doesn't. But surely, filming it in New Zealand, and having a sensible kiwi male direct the action, that's a great start. Not to mention The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a bloody good tale.

I have never said what I am about to say about a movie before. It's a cliche, but I don't care. That movie, Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, was exactly as my inner 9 year old remembers it as she hung on Miss Klitcher's every word. The coats, the lampost, the beavers dam, the scary Ice Queen, the turkish delight, the fluttering flags on the tents as the army camped, the stone alter, the mice on the ropes, Cair Parvel - everything.

I have no intention of re-reading the Chronicles. I like the way my childhood memories are stored and don't want my adult-self seeing past the magic - and Andrew Adamson has already captured those images from my memory perfectly. Perfectly.

If you loved the book and have an inner 9 year old tucked away inside you somewhere, I hope you love the movie as much as I did.

PS and off topic: the 2002 Old Jam link below takes you to the best blogpost this site ever produced. Ever. If you're interested. which you should be, cos it's the best blog post this site ever produded ev0r!

White Lies

I was in a store today and overheard a woman talking on her cellphone. The thing that made me suddenly tune in on her conversation was her line "Look I'm standing at the checkout counter in a store and I really must go." I stopped mid-rack-surfing to see her crouching by a large pillar, talking into her cellphone, no where near a counter or a checkout. So why did she need to lie to the person on the telephone. Was the truth that she was in a store and unable to talk right now not a strong enough reason to end the call? Why did she need to add the "at the checkout counter" part?

I [heart] Christchurch

Tangents

This year hasn't been a whole lot of fun in many ways. Lately things have been getting the better of me, and to be honest, I didn't have the energy to not let them. Oh, I've still been going to work and managing after a fashion, but everything else outside work has been done with low energy and handled half-arsed at best.

Trouble with that situation is, the things I let get on top of me and don't attend to are the very things that weigh me down. They contribute to me feeling low, and sad, and generally I forget how to be me. It's a stupid, self-created, self-perpetuating cycle of crap that, eventually, needs to be kicked out of gear.

I like lists. I like making a list of things I'm going to do or movies I want to see or photos I want to take and then cross the items off as I achieve them. Or not, as the case may be. I like making the list though. This last cycle of crap needed a list as most of them do; but not a list on paper - something more visible - something I would see every day but not something with the power to crush me with the pressure of it all.

I'm such a delicate bird.

Everyone loves post it notes. I know this to be true because everyone is always nicking mine. You can write on a post-it note but you can't write much. They are self limiting and bite-sized. I decided to break down all the things I needed to do into these bite-sized post-it pieces and write each on a colourful note to stick to the wall by the bathroom. This way I would see the notes every day as I passed by, but it wouldn't be staring at me continuously and taunting me with my slacktitude. It was a joyful, cheery list of little goals and tasks I could tackle one at a time. The added bonus was as I achieved each of the tasks, I could remove that post-it note and throw it away. When the wall was empty, the things I wasn't managing to achieve at the moment would be done and gone.

Now I'm not talking about big achievements like learning to play the piano or running a marathon. I mean tiny achievements such as doing laundry, creating a PDF of a business card for the printer, returning library books - that kind of thing. Michelle's-life-is-freying-at-the-edges kinds of things.

All geared up with a clutch of post-it note pads in assorted colours and a black Sharpie, I started writing and sticking my "to do" list on the wall. By the time I was done I had a jaunty, bright, very achieveable wall of post-it note tasks. And, as one of the tasks was to write a list of tasks, I could remove straight away! I was loving this idea.

Loving it.

I went to bed a happy little camper, and slept the sleep of the organised.

When I woke the next morning, I didn't instantly remember my list stuck to the wall of my hall. In fact, I didn't even see it as I passed to grab breakfast from the kitchen. But I did see some of it when I looked down to see what had stuck to my foot on my way to the kitchen - a lime green post-it note with "Farmers' Business Card PDF" scrawled on it. I looked back, and there, all over the floor, were all my post-it notes.

My beautiful, jaunty, merry list of tasks. The damn things had fallen off my wall over night. God dammit - when did post-it notes get so unsticky? They used to be stickier than this, didn't they? or were they always this crap? who invented this crap anyway?

I did what anyone does when they want to know stuff, I phoned my sister Jo to ask. Her line was engaged because she's still on Dialup. So I turned to my computer and I Googled. And it seems my problem wasn't the notes so much as the wall, and the fact it was vertical. Funny thing about walls is, generally, they tend to be vertical if they're doing their job properly. Seems during the 1960s, a man at a company called 3M accidently invented a not-very-sticky adhesive made up of tiny, indestructible acrylic spheres - no, not luminous spheres, acrylic spheres. They would stick stuff to stuff so long as the stuff the stuff was being stuck to was on a tangent (see my problem re: Properties of Walls mentioned earlier). This man's name was Spencer Silver.

Spence figured he was onto a winner although not entirely sure how to use his tiny, indestructible acrylic spheres of stick (but not too sticky) he went about the place telling everyone about them. Anyone and everyone - informally and formallly, in seminars, everywhere. God can you imagine how boring this guy must have been? You know the type: crazy, passionate person with a whole lot of sticky acrylic spheres he doesn't quite know what to do with and not a leaning wall in sight.

5 years he talked about his spheres. I can only imagine the lengths people went to avoid this dude.

Meanwhile, Arthur L. Fry was in church singing all the wrong hymns. He had been cornered on more than one occasion by the sphere-talking sticky Spencer Silver, and while not exactly driven to church, one must admit - it was a grat place to hide. But religion isn't as glamorous as it looks and soon Arthur realised the bits of paper he used to mark songs in his hymnal kept falling out all over the floor (not unlike my list of post-it notes but that's by-the-by) and it was annoying him a lot. Not to mention everyone else who were singing one song and Arthur, bless him, who was always on the wrong page.

The story goes that during one particularly boring sermon (there's any other kind?) Arthur was thinking about his hymnal bookmark problem (as you do) and he remembered Spence Silver's tiny sticky spheres (as you might). And suddenly (cue angelic music) everything came together in a simple, beautiful idea. When Arthur got to work on Monday, he wrote up his idea to make paper sticky, but not too sticky, as a proposal. Although the company both he and Spence worked for, 3M, worried post-it notes seemed wasteful, his colleagues couldn't get enough of the post-it prototypes (of course not, they keep falling off stuff) .

By 1980 Post-it Notes were introduced to the world by 3M and we've been pulling them off our bare feet ever since.

I am able to remove the Post-it Note "put thejamjar.com back online" from the floor. Thank you for your patience.

Christchurch Kebabs