Nancy Rommelmann

Christopher Hitchens and the Battle of Beirut

I was up rather late last week, cruising around Huff Post when I read an article (is that what they call them? A post, I guess) about Christopher Hitchens being beaten up by in Beirut, by some pro-Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party thugs. I am a big fan of Hitchens but the reason I became alarmed was because the piece mentioned that he'd been walking on Hamra Street with "Conservative blogger" Michael Totten, who is a very good friend. I instantly emailed Micheal, asking, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just woke up in Beirut," came the answer. "What's up?"

I led him to the Huff Post, which he read, and wrote back, "I'll tell you the real story when I get home."

He posted it today. Read it.

I'd like to add here that I am becoming increasingly disgusted with the Huff Post and its like, which, aside from the often grotesque spelling and grammar, seems to get, in its haste to be first, just so very much wrong, starting with the fact that Michael is not a conservative blogger. The debate about the end of reporting will go on and on, but as one who does it for a living, who gets on the ground and meets the people, as Michael does; who takes some care to get things right because I have a responsibility to the people with whom I've spoken, I am having less and less patience for the undercooked, who-gives-a-frack posts I see passing for news.

Lawrence Weschler on Magazine Writing

"It seems to me that the great crisis in this country is a media environment which is attention-squeezed, hate-driven, ink-blotted, sound-bit. Basically neo-Pavlovian, treating you like a salivating dog. Stimulate, jolt, salivate. You find that you are treated as a consumer, not as a citizen, not as someone capable of absorption and marvel and wonder.

"I write books, but what really turns me on, what really captivates my thinking, is magazine culture. That’s a difficult thing, because magazine culture is in big trouble. If I write a book, it gets read by ten thousand people, if I write a magazine article it gets exposed to a hundred thousand people who are reading about something they didn’t know they had any interest in. The kind of writing I love comes at things from the side, and it relishes narrative itself. You find yourself reading, and about halfway along, you realize that what you’re reading is the most important thing in the world."

from his interview on The Rumpus

Stoner Stories

In the previous post, Rye Krisp Express, I jotted down a little stoner story, to which, in the comments, Eric added his own. His beats mine by a mile, which made me think to open the board here for people to post their own. I'll add one more: I am 15. I have left high school, and am hanging out with a lot of street kids in Brooklyn who also do not go to school. One is named Steve, who often carts around his two-year-old brother. Their mother, we've heard, is an Eskimo, and a hooker. Steve asks if I want to come over and help him and his mom do something. We get to their place -- the bottom level of a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights which, if you can believe it, probably rented for about $200 a month in 1977 -- and there is his mother, gorgeous, young, long black 70s hair and pale skin and the sort of eyes that tell me, she's seen a lot. I can also see, she likes me, as she tells me, I can help her and a guy whose name I don't remember but let's call him Lance. Lance is about a six-foot six black dude, dressed very black dude 70s, with a rust-colored leather blazer and a 'fro. He and Steve's mom, he tells me, need to break down some pot, and also, roll some joints; they are, I take it, selling the pot. Lance sets a paper bag on the floor and rips it open; inside are two kilos of Panama Red pot, which really is a sort of russet red.

"Break it up," Lance says, and I start to tear at the pot, which is all gnarled together and but still supple, nearly moist. Steve and Steve's mom start to separate the pot into nickel- and dime-bags, Lance is rolling gigantic joints, which he is passing around, and I am sitting on the floor, in my halter top and jeans, rolling joints, which as a teenager I am extraordinarily good at. I do this for an hour, hitting the joint each time it comes around, and when I finally look up, I see Steve's mom smiling at me -- she's really a beauty -- and look at my fingers, which are stained red and remain so for days.

Last year, a friend was visiting, a friend who rolls his own cigarettes. I told him, let me roll one, I'm really good at it, only to learn that it is not like riding a bike; the cigarette flopped and came apart, to the amusement of my husband. But perhaps it's just as well.

Rye Krisp Express

Fighting a cold, I woke up this morning feeling as though I'd smoked a bunch of pot, something I have not done for many years. The feeling did, however, remind me of one of the funniest parts of last night's ceremony. Before we get to the clip, do we have time for one stoner story? We do: I am 18. I am spending the night at my dad's, where I do not live. I don't recall him being home. It's two in the morning and I am stoned and the only thing I want to do is eat and watch TV. There's nothing in my dad's pantry but a box of Norwegian rye crackers, the thin hard brown ones with the texture like a Scotch-Brite scour pad, which turns out to be kind of cool, the way, as I chew through the entire box, the crackers scrape and rasp in a pleasing, mentally engaging way. Cut to the following morning, when my lips and tongue appear to have been buffed with an industrial sander.

Sort of Goofy TV Show We Like Which Reminds Me of 1970s/80s Shows Like "Hart to Hart" and "Miami Vice" and is Good Mindless Fun Even if Every Time Gabrielle Anwar Comes On-Screen I Want to Feed Her a Sandwich

Burn Notice

  

It's Monday

And where have I been? Rochester, New York; Seattle, Washington; on deadline, baking for Ristretto since we let the baker go; trying to get sick, taking off my clothes, watching the Academy Awards and wondering what the hell that "The musical is back!" catastrophe was all about. It takes some doing for Jackman and Beyonce singing and dancing make me want to look somewhere, anywhere else, but... job done!

But now it's Monday, and I'd like to say, congratulations to my boy Steve Blake, who yesterday tied the all-time NBA assist record. I love the Blazers; we go to the games, and yes, of course, Roy is steady and amazing, and Rudy is a heartthrob with a great downtown shot, but Blake, he's so tough, so consistent, so reliable. I am writing a new column here in town wherein I take local luminaries to lunch or out drinking (yes, I know, tough job) and think, maybe, I'll give him a call.

In other news, Tacoma looms. Tell me your Tacoma stories, as I am heading that way to do some, hopefully a great deal of writing. Also may be in LA in the next month or so, so if you'd like to have dinner, let me know xx

Fast Foods: Ads vs. Reality

It is true, I have a very low threshold for advertising humor, as evidenced by my laughing, quite loudly and to my husband's continual amazement, at just about every TV commercial that's meant to be funny. I also, apparently, find TV ads on the internet funny, as evidenced by this pictorial, which just had me hiding behind my hands here at Ristretto. Seeing as I am going on my fourth hour of waiting for Qwest to show up, the laughs are welcome.

 

The Death of the News

Good piece in Salon, by Gary Kimaya, on what we lose when newspapers die, namely, reporting.

At the same time that newspapers are dying, blogging and "unofficial" types of journalism continue to expand, grow more sophisticated and take over some (but not all) of the reportorial functions once performed by newspapers. New technologies provide an infinitely more robust feed of raw data to the public, along with the accompanying range of filtering, interpreting and commenting mechanisms that the Internet excels in generating.

As these developments expand, our knowledge of the world will become much less broad. Document-based reporting and academic-style research will increasingly replace face-to-face reporting. And the ideal of journalistic objectivity and fairness will increasingly crumble, to be replaced by more tendentious and opinionated reports.

The brave new media world will be one of tunnel vision and self-selected expertise, in which reported pieces are increasingly devoid of human interaction or human stories, often written by individuals who do not pretend to have a neutral stance. Raw, non-mediated video or audio will provide primary stories to anyone who is interested in them. In this imagined future, the New York Times will have died and only one or two wire services will still have reporters in, say, Gaza. In lieu of edited stories will be video interviews with Gaza inhabitants, as well as commentary and analysis from a vast army of experts, semi-experts and kibitzers. Consumers can set one info-dial to "Middle East primary feeds," set a commentary dial to "expert," "kibitzer" or "shuffle," set yet another to a targeted archival search of every academic paper written about Gaza. It will be feast and famine: There will be far less primary reporting done by professionals and far more information available to ordinary citizens.

Which, as the common reference goes, can be good when, say, reporting on Hurricane Katrina, to get authentic voices on the ground rather than those of parachute journalists. But not so good when reporting, as the David Sander did last month in the Times, on the US rejecting aid to Israel when it wanted to attack Iran's main nuclear complex. It's a stunning, complicated, years-in-the-making article that only someone with connections deep and broad and the experience to know how to use them can write. Will we continue to support this sort of reporting? If so, how?

Striptease - Part 6: The Last Hurrah?

Perhaps not; there is one more photo series, but we'll have to see if this one whips up any interest/dollars. As you may (or may not) recall, we are here to raise some money for the Oregon Food Bank (click here to donate, and remember to enter "Blog for Food" in the tribute section).

That said, any student of human nature knows we for the most part work in our own self-interest, and why not? I did this to have some fun; to see how I looked; to see if you liked the way I looked. The results have been mostly good, if for certain that men like the straight photos; art schmart, yeah, yeah, give us the real deal.

And so for this series, I said to Hillary, aka the photo mistress, please make me look, as much as possible, like a black-and-white photo strip a la Catherine Deneuve in the 60s, perhaps from a Roman Polanski film. She, instead, chose to reference "Belle de Jour." I am happy with the result and hope you are, too.

You may let me know in the comments, and/or OFB with your donation.

Last images will be posted if we raise... more.

Striptease - Part 5: Without Further Ado

Like it?  Prove it.

Happy Valentine's Day

I can't say I even remembered that Valentine's Day was coming, much to the chagrin of my daughter, who two days ago asked, with much throat-clearing and importuning, "What are you and Din doing for Valentine's Day?" That we'd forgotten is not as bad, I guess, as the time she overheard us talking about how our wedding anniversary was coming up, and we were pretty sure it was in two days... or maybe three...

"It's tomorrow, you idiots!" Tafv called from the other room, if with love. She wants us to be romantic, and why not?

But the thing is, and please cue up your sappy music now, I feel like every day is Valentine's Day with my sweetheart, I love him so much, and I even made a card this year, and when I saw him this morning, did I jump a little in my seat because I got to say, "Happy Valentine's Day, honey!"? I did. And now he is downstairs making us a homemade macaroni and cheese and opening a bottle of red wine, which sounds like perfect romance to me.

I wish you all a day and an evening, many days and evenings, of love xx

Above photo, and others, from a beautiful series over at Slate

Weirdest Story of the Day

Wife exercises husband to death

Striptease - Part 4: Turnabout

Eagle-eyed readers might be thinking, "Hey, where's part three?" which a few might even have seen yesterday, before I took it off-line, necessitating I tell a friend not to link it, and mentioning, to my mistress of photography, that I was just feeling weird and icky about the whole thing.

"Hm," she emailed back. "It can't be modesty or shame, so what is it?"

What it is, is impression. A lot of the readers here -- well, maybe six -- have taken the time to read my work, be it an 8,000-word feature (which, ahem, has just been submitted for this), or my posts. The stripping-for-food is a little fun within this, a fillip, a way to stir things up and, in all likelihood, a swan-song of public exposure for my private parts.

Not that I would get all that private.

And not that that matters, because readers are free to take away whatever impression they like. And I have been touched that the photos have been received in the manner in which they are intended.

That said, it's 2009. I made a plan this year that I have kept; that I would be doing new work, in new places. Thus far, the plan is spitting nickels, even silver dollars, new places to write for and one, maybe two books on the horizon. I have, in the past two weeks, taken two road trips for work and interviewed a dozen people, sometimes about the very hardest things in their lives, the safety of their children, their worries for the future. And I thought, we live in a Google world, and do I want the person I am about to meet - the cop, the attorney, the author -- and whom I am asking to trust me, to have as his or her first impression a photo of me displaying my ta-tas?

I think not.

But did not think about, or not quite in this way, beforehand. As my ex used to say, "You never know if you never go."

All of which the photo-mistress understood right away. She understood you have to do what said you were going to do and rework it to show what you've learned. She suggested, she might even make me into a cartoon character.

Which might strike some as redundant.

Anyway, the strip will continue, and seeing as folks have donated more than $450, today, off come the shoes AND the stockings.

You know what's next, if you click here and donate to the Oregon Food Bank (making sure to enter "Blog for Food" in the tribute section): for every $50 raised, I'm taking something else off.

What you will see, or rather how, remains to be seen.

Debra Gwartney Tonight at Powell's

Gwartney will be reading  tonight from her new book, Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love, about the years she spent trying to find and bring home her two young teenage daughters. The book is great, as is Gwartney and her family, whom I recently had the very great privilege of interviewing; Powell's also has a Q & A. I'll be at the reading,with my own teenage daughter. See you there.

Debra Gwartney reads from "Live Through This"
Powell's City of Books, 7:30 PM, Febuary 12, 2009
1005 W Burnside

Striptease - Part 2: Skirt Edition

Why is Nancy taking off her clothes? Start here.

So let's just say, I had a few qualms about this whole "taking off the clothes" thing, even in service to a good cause, which feeding people certainly is. Not initially, when I woke up and thought, good idea! But later, when I remembered the photos will float around the blogosphere for as long as there is a blogosphere (or until Typepad crashes again), viewable by anyone with online access, including potential employers, college friends, elderly relatives, and that nice mother and her two little girls I met the other day on the train...

Ah, frack it. I know it's okay, and here's how I know: because my two barometers told me so, these being my husband and my daughter, each of whom sort of pepped up at the idea, no clouds of excruciating humiliation passing over Din's face, Tavie saying only, "Hot mama."

As for that hot thing: would I feel any better about the photos if I looked like this? Well, probably. I've been in discussion lately about why young women choose to take graphically sexual images of themselves and send them out into the technological beyond, and the easiest answer I can come up with -- and we're talking garden variety gals here, not the pros -- is because, they want to. They have these pretty perky body parts and, well, they just want to show them off.

I used to do this, too. I've posed nude for more painters and photographers than I can remember, appeared topless in a Susan Seidelman movie I've never seen, and each summer get a day or two without my bikini top at the naked beach in Martha's Vineyard. It's an interesting experience, that beach, as I am often the youngest person there by 20 years ("Why," Tafv asked last summer, "is it old ugly people who want to be naked?"), and by comparison I look... better, my skin still affixed to what's underneath; hair where it should be and not where it shouldn't; free of skin-tags and bunions and those rocketing veins some men get on their ankles. Last summer, an attorney in his 60s, a very nice man who went from blanket to blanket talking to all the other naked people, decided he wanted to be my friend. He would occasionally sit with me or ask me to take a dip; one day, I did the latter.

"Aren't you going to take off your bottoms?" he asked. I told him, no, I was fine, at which he looked remarkably concerned.

"But... it feels so good to be in the water naked without them," he said. I smiled and kept them on. He aahed a bit as we stood chest-high in the waves, letting me know, possibly, just how pleasant the full saltwater immersion was, and mentioning that, if I wanted to take my bottoms off now, his throwing arm was probably still good enough to heave them to the shore. 

 I demurred; he sighed, and realizing the battle was lost, told me that he still got such a thrill coming to a nude beach ("all these naked women!"), and that when his generation was young, you rarely ever got to see a naked woman unless she was your wife, and the freedom of the nude beach was, to him, astonishing and wonderful, whereas his grandson, who'd just started college, "had chosen to be in an all-male dormitory," he said, "which I just couldn't understand!"

I knew what a thrill it would be, had he gotten a glimpse of my ass (or better), but something stopped me, something about tipping the balance of offering and withholding, something we'll get to next time, should you folks pony up at least another $50 for the Oregon Food Bank. Don't forget to let me know in the comments here, and also, to to manually enter 'Blog for Food' in the tribute section on the OFB page.

Striptease - Part 1

Why is Nancy taking off her clothes? Start here.

I realize I did promise to bare-all for charity last week and have thus far taken off not a thing. Call it a deliberate ploy to up the anticipation, or the fact that I could not find the right stockings, or that I had to go to Seattle at the last minute, think anything you want, but grab those wallets, boys and girls, and cue up that music I first heard on an old Noxema shaving cream commercial... 

I am not going to pretend there aren't a million more pulchritudinous gals you can look at online, or ones that will show more skin, in my opinion, too much skin, or, the wrong kind of skin: Din and I saw a clip on TV last week from some MTV dating show that could have been called, "Out Transvestite the Transvestite!" but which was, I think, made up of biological women, women who'd had their breasts enlarged to the size of basketballs and beyond, who wore those kind of booty pants that camel-toe up into the uterus, and whose hair and make-up... sigh, need I go on? I said to Din, there have got to be guys who like this sort of thing, I mean, haven't there? But he's the wrong guy to ask; he gets even a glimpse of "The Real Housewives of Orange County" and wants to throw a chair at the television.

So you know that's not what you're going to see here. Which is, I'm afraid, rather... real.  We've already raised $50 for the Oregon Food Bank, and fifty is the magic number that gets another item taken off (or put back on), though you don't have to give in increments of $50; you can give five or ten or $100; just let me know in the comments and I'll keep things square. And do remember to manually enter 'Blog for Food' in the tribute section on the OFB donation page so we know whether my ministrations are working.

Anyway, since we've got the $50, here goes:

 

Photos and photo-shopping by Hillary Johnson, that would be Din's sister, and for those afraid my husband is, you know, dreadfully embarrassed by this, let me assure you, no more than usual.

Part 2: Skirt Edition, here

I Heart Little Walter

And certainly as Columbus Short plays him in Cadillac Records. Dang, this boy is hot. Thanks to my pal Joel Millman for getting us out of the house for two-dollar Tuesdays at the Bagdad.

Need a Hotel in Downtown Seattle

Suggestions? This Saturday night; won't be there much; close to the Seattle Center.

WL STRP 4 FD

So I woke up at five this morning wondering what to do, as one of 37 local bloggers asked to take part in the Oregon Food Bank's Blog for Food Campaign. I thought, I might write some rather poignant hunger stories in an effort to raise funds, or offer free cups of coffee at Ristretto, or talk about the very real need to feed people this season.

Or I could take off my clothes.

Yes folks, I am going to strip for food. For every $50 raised, I take off another item. Conversely, since I am over 40, perhaps you'll pay for me to keep my clothes on. You may specify which in the comments section and, in fact, my husband is threatening to match donations dollar-for-dollar to keep me dressed.

I promise to keep things reasonably dignified, and to not begin the striptease looking like this:   

To donate, all you need to do is hit this button; you'll need to manually enter 'Blog for Food' in the tribute section on the OFB donation page. Entering how much you've donated in the comments section here will keep me up to speed.

Part 1, here.

!!! [2]

h/t Oregon Media Insiders