Game 5: Rosemary Garmong - Fruit Salad

Rosemary Garmong, Jerry Buss’ former administrative assistant died at the age of 89 on 8/21/2010 in Santa Ana, CA. She was a member of the Queen Beach Chapter of the National Secretaries Association. Before working for Dr. Buss, she worked the same position for Jack Kent Cooke, the previous owner of the Lakers, Kings, and The Forum. Her two line obituary in the Orange County Register mentions no family members, just a number to call for service information. That is all the information I can find about Rosemary Garmong. 

As a former producer’s assistant, I used to sometimes fantasize about the “career assistant,” a position greatly outnumbered by “normal” Hollywood assistants like myself. Us normies worked for minimum wage with little/no benefits and long hours in hopes that fighting through this cliched  would someday open up a more lucrative and/or creatively fulfilling career: Writing, producing, agenting, managing, acting, PR repping, etc. I was fortunate to have a boss who was nice -- treated me with respect and paid my health insurance premium -- but not nice enough to start me are more than $500/week. Since leaving that job, I’ve mostly worked as a researcher on TV shows and movies, but I am still actively looking to cut my pay by getting an elusive writers’ assistant or showrunner’s assistant job. Those jobs, while not a guarantee of any higher employment, literally get you into the room.

Career assistants, on the other hand, are not looking for That Next Step. In entertainment, they are the rarest breed of all: A sound, logical person without a foolish dream. Career assistants assist A-list actors and C-level executives and have no desire to move on up. And they are paid very handsomely for it. Job postings seeking career assistants always mention salaries that begin around $70-80,000 with full benefits. One of the more famous career assistants is Sona Movsesian, Conan O'Brien's personal assistant since 2009. See how happy she looks during his remote segments? It’s because she and her husband make enough money in Los Angeles in 2019 to buy a house. 

Rosemary, of course, did not have a choice in becoming a career assistant. She was already in her 50s by the time the women's liberation movement started changing the workplace. She wanted to work, but it likely came at the cost of a family -- her obituary mentions none -- in a time where society viewed a woman’s worth solely through the lens of the husband and children she served. In the end, Rosemary did devote much of her life to waiting on two overgrown children: the notoriously mercurial Cooke and the quintessential womanizer Buss. I just hope that at the end of each day, when she got home from the long drive from Inglewood, she partook in the ultimate pleasure that separates career assistants in Hollywood from us normies: The ability to unplug from work life.

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Fruit Salad

3 oranges, peeled and diced

3 apples, peeled and diced

1 pineapple, cut into chunks

3 peaches, peeled and diced

4 bananas, peeled and sliced

Strawberries or melon, any quantity desired

Dressing:

1 cup pineapple juice

½ large bag of mini marshmallows

¾ cup lemon and orange juice, combined to equal ¾ cup

½ small tub Cool Whip

Place apples in a bowl of juice from 1 lemon and water to cover until ready for use. Dip banana slices in lemon juice. This will keep both from turning brown. Drain water from apples before adding to salad. Combined all fruit in a large bowl. Top each serving with dressing prepared in the following manner: Place all dressing ingredients in a saucepan and stir over medium heat until marshmallows are melted and liquid becomes thickened. Put in refrigerator to cool. Then fold in Cool Whip. Serve over fruit.

I was not looking forward to this recipe. Fruit tarts, fruit salad, or even just a big ass bowl of assorted fruit is one of my favorite desserts. But when I added this recipe to my list of 82, I didn’t realize this was a classic mid century American style of fruit salad: An ambrosia salad. There’s no nice way to describe this dish. It looks like 35 minutes into a bukkake shoot.

I decreased Linda’s recipe by ⅓  because I knew the chances of me taking a bite and throwing it directly in the trash was high. And I was right. So much delicious Californian, Mexican, and Hawaiin produce ruined by dumping half a bag of marshmallows and half a tub of Cool Whip into it. A few bites was all I could get down my gullet before tapping out. Even with ⅓ of the recipe, I tossed the remaining gunk in a Rubbermaid just in case I was stoned enough to eat my food waste guilt away. A week went by and it was left untouched. And I smoke a lot of weed.