Nancy Rommelmann

Home Remedies to Avoid Swine Flu

Wash hands more. Drink less booze. Sleep more. We're all doing it, including my teenage daughter, who has become something of a hall proctor amongst her friends, telling them every ten minutes, "Wash your hands. Wash them again."

I only recall having the flu once. I caught it on December 30, 1999. We walked into a Hong Kong banquet hall in downtown Los Angeles, I felt a little woozy just about when we ordered the tea, and ten minutes later, Din and his friend were carrying me out; it landed that swiftly and that hard, and boy, was I sick; 104 fever for two days, alternately shivering and sweating (yeah, it was a great millennium new year), and, after breaking out of the fever, lying in bed and literally having only enough energy to stare at the wall for two days: no TV, no reading, no nothing. I'd rather not get something like that again or, you know, die.

Which brings me to a question: anyone here been on any commercial flights since we've gotten word of the outbreak? If so, were people wearing masks? I'm getting on a plane in two days, and while I highly doubt I'll don a mask, part of me thinks, well...

Every Little Step

There is a new documentary about the Broadway hit, A Chorus Line, called Every Little Step. I saw the musical when I was a teenager, when I was as certain I was going to be an actress as I was I wanted to draw breath. I know it seems sappy, but anyone who's ever wanted this knows the spell you can come under watching a musical, the feeling of there being wires hooked in your chest and pulling you toward the stage.

In the course of looking for a link to the film, I remembered Tafv's high school graduation last June, and how when they played a song from "A Chorus Line" and came to the line, "Look my eyes are dry," I started to cry, which I did again just now. I include a link, just in case you feel like tearing up.

Reasons to Like Portland

You have no idea of the cranky, cranky emails that fly between myself and a group of writers/editors (you know who you are!) about some of the things Portland does less than right. But then, there's some real original greatness, in the form of The Decembrists, of whom I've blogged before and whose music I certainly do like, even love. In addition to that: will you please check out the outfits of the girls in the band? You have no idea what great good heart they give me for this city; this, my babies, is rock 'n roll on its very special Portland astral level, and illustrates, for the fifty-fifth time, why I am so happy my daughter is carving out an arts/fashion career here rather than LA; where, had she been prepping for her fifth fashion show, as she is now, someone's dad would have said, "Oh, we'll get a stage at Universal for you kids," and the parents would have surreptitiously plowed in thousands of dollars, and their teen designer daughters would have all looked like little Gossip Girls, as would have their designs. In Portland, the kids get to punk rock it, they get to find their own venues and make whatever it is their beautiful little minds can come up with, damn the lode star; there is no lode star, as evidenced by what these girls wore last night on "The Colbert Report."

Editorial Changes, Big and Little

News of publications trying to outrun the pirates, tossing people overboard and veritably sinking is not these days news. Two new casualties as of yesterday: Portfolio is closing shop, according to it's editor, "because of financial reasons at Advance," Conde Nast's parent company. I can't say this is surprising; I recall Laurie Ochoa, editor of the LA Weekly, saying early last year she'd heard they were about to go belly-up.

Closer to home, Paige Williams, who took over last fall as editor-in-chief at Portland Monthly, was fired by publisher Nicole Vogel. Byron Beck was the first to report it. I heard it soon after from my former PM editor, whom Williams fired in January. I never had a chance to work with Williams and have no comment on what she could have done for the magazine. I did like her pictorial essay on beards, which got some national play. Anyway, in as editor-in-chief is Randy Gragg, current EIC of Portland Spaces, who will now be steering both ships.

It seems any journo I meet who has or has had any interplay with the Portland editorial world has ideas of how to make Portland Monthly into a great magazine; I've had this conversation twice in the past two weeks, once with an Oregonian star, once with an editor from Seattle, both of whom have worked with Gragg, and sing his praises. Here's hoping.

Natasha's Ballroom

I have a piece in the new issue of City Arts Tacoma, the kind of fly-on-the-wall article I really love to write. If you get a moment, check out Natasha's Ballroom; that's her dancing in the photo. And a clip from the opening:

Before one can find a business sign [for Studio 6], a very tall gentleman is sliding out the door on soft-sole shoes. His fitted black trousers and burgundy blouse, unbuttoned perhaps one more button than typical of a man approaching sixty, are stage- show-bright here on the sidewalk.

“Would you like to come inside?” he asks. He holds open the door to a dance studio with pale wood floors and mirrors along one wall. Soft Latin music plays, though for the moment there are no dancers here except the man, with his full head of champagne-colored hair and eyes that ask, Would you like to dance?

It is not a question that needs to be verbalized at Studio 6 Ballroom. Teenagers learning hip-hop, a couple clenched in Argentine tango, the fleet-of-foot and those sure they have two left ones, the professional competitors and the anxious-not-to-be-anxious wallflowers — all come here to learn to dance in a big room on a stretch of street that appears to need just a little movement to take off, maybe in the form of a rumba, which Kent, the man with the champagne hair, does twice a week during private lessons. An endeavor that fills him with what seems to be ecstasy and has the added benefit of allowing him to put his arms around many women.

“Lock your forearm close to mine,” he says. “Closer. Now: fast, fast, slow.” And away he rumbas, explaining that he dances five nights a week at veterans’ clubs and Elks Lodges. That “if men don’t dance, they’re idiots,” what with the ratio of women to men being, in his experience, four or five to one. And no, he’s not married, he works in IT, and as one continues to go fast, fast, slow, one sees Kent has a remarkable S-shaped nose, that he is bowlegged as a cowboy but precise in his steps, something he makes sure of by videotaping himself. The camera is set up in the studio’s window, between a headless mannequin in a yellow chiffon gown and a man-size gold 6 that would have looked perfect on the cover of a Bee Gees album.

Cosmetic Neurology

Absolutely fascinating, and provocative. Discuss.

Not So Bright Ideas

About a month ago, we needed to change the porch light, which previously had been lit with a $1.99 green incandescent bulb I bought, thinking it would make for a festive Christmas. It lasted three years. When it finally burnt out, Din got on the step-stool and screwed in one of those swirly compact florescent bulbs he'd bought a case of last year, and which run about $6.99 apiece. It didn't work. We tried another. Still nothing.

"Maybe the fixture's shot," he said, preparing to head down to the breaker box, but I said, wait; fetched an incandescent bulb, screwed it in. Voila: light.

I'd done this because of an article I'd read saying that florescent bulbs often don't work, often out of the box. I'd had the same experience. And while we are all constantly barraged with the scarifying idea that it's up to use to save the planet in little ways every minute of everyday, I am constitutionally and intellectually -- to say nothing of financially -- opposed to paying a lot for something that doesn't work, when what does work is cheap and efficient.

I'm not the only one: in today's NYT's Green Blog Inc., lighting designer Howard Brandston argues against the government for trying to mandate the use a product which does not effectively do what it's supposed to do, namely, light up a room. A clip:

Specifically, Mr. Brandston accuses “energy zealots” of using faulty science to determine the efficiency of light bulbs, and he says that simplistic lumens-per-watt comparisons obscure questions of how well different bulbs do what they’re supposed to do: light up a room.

The government, manufacturers and efficiency advocates, in pushing the adoption of compact fluorescents, are “forgetting the lamp has to serve a purpose for the area it’s lighting,” Mr. Brandston said in a recent series of chats with Green Inc. “It has to work within a system which includes the luminaire — the fixture — and it has to work within the room. The room is part of that system. And when you ignore the fixture, the room and the purpose, you’re going to come up with something that is not going to serve well.”

Black market for light bulbs, anyone?

h/t Virginia Postrel's Facebook link

How to Double Your CV Without Even Trying

I just now Googled myself and clicked "news" (I was looking for an old article) and saw, to my surprise, that in the past year I have been published in the Hartford Courant, the Baltimore Sun and the Orlando Sentinel, newspapers I have never written for, but all of which have rerun LA Times articles of mine. A few of these pieces have pretty long legs -- one was about California car worship -- but others strike me as woefully late, e.g., a piece about a new happening stretch of Beverly Boulevard which originally appeared in 2004. All of the papers are owned by Tribune Publishing which, with its financial woes and Draconian staff cuts, is obviously doing some recycling. It also some way toward explaining why last week I received in the mail a petition to be part of the Tribune's bankruptcy filing. I didn't have any idea when this arrived how I could be named; I haven't written for the paper since 2006, and was paid in full for what I did turn in. Well, apparently not. If I hadn't thrown it in the trash, I might have filled it out, though maybe not. I know too many people at the LAT that really got hosed, in terms of money; whatever pennies on the dollar I might have made for reprints, it's probably better they get paid the first time out. I can now say I've appeared in these papers, which I guess is sort of cool, though when this might come up in conversation, you got me.

Throw Pillow Fight

Are you watching reason.tv? You should be. I particularly enjoyed this interior design segment, if mostly for the fetching way with which Nick Gillespie spruces up his couch. And while my brother insists self-praise is no praise, I am proud enough to mention I have a feature in an upcoming issue of reason magazine.

Contest: Song You Know You Should Hate But Love

Recalling the popularity of the earworm contest, here's another, inspired by what just happened: I was sitting my office proofreading when a song started playing from my daughter's room, a song I feel some guilt about liking so damn much because I can't abide the singer. I told Tafv as much.

"Tell me about it," she said, and recalled how when she and the boy she went to Cuba with last fall -- a boy who runs a very on-the-tip record label -- were driving in upstate New York, they had no music (they were in my mom's car) and so had to rely on the radio. And the one song they kept looking for was the one that was playing from her room.

"Finally, we stop at a gas station, and Derek goes inside, and the song comes on the radio," said Tafv. "I turned it up and got out the car and started shouting, 'SOS! SOS!' so that he'd get back to the car."

So, despite themselves, everybody just likes this song?

"Yeah," she said, looking sheepish and turning it way up.

That song is below. So, what's yours? Go ahead, admit it. Best of the worst gets acknowledgment and linkage and, if it's really a doozy (but no cheating!) a bag of coffee beans.

Can You Imagine?

I have several times mentioned I read the local news briefs. I do this -- and my friend and Gambit editor Kevin Allman agrees -- because they are so arresting; because the story is told in one tight compact knot that the imagination then starts to unspool. I just read what's below, and ask: can you imagine being there when the fall happened? Being one of this guy's friends? Calling all novelists...

Body washed ashore was McMinnville man

    A body found washed up Sunday in Pacific City has been identified as a McMinnville 18-year-old, said Tillamook County Sheriff Todd Anderson.
    Tyler Robertson went missing earlier this month after falling from Cape Kiwanda.
    Friends told deputies he had gotten too close to the edge, lost his footing and landed on the rocks below. Moments later the surf washed him out to sea.

LET'S - GO! BLA-ZERS!

Man oh man oh man oh man. Wound getting a ticket to tonight's Game 2 of the playoffs against Houston. For those who do not know what happened in Game 1 on Saturday, believe me, you don't want to know. The Blazers were destroyed. With ten minutes left in the fourth, a two-year-old in my aisle vomited. "That about sums up my feelings about the game," said his aunt, before she hauled the kid out. Blazers lost by 27.

They could not lose tonight, and the fans came to let them know that. It's said the Blazers fans in the Rose Garden are the loudest in the country, and I believe it. The place becomes one giant pulsing screaming organism, and in this game, in this game we had to win until we hit the road to Houston, the noise never stopped. Not once did the Rockets have the ball on their end of the court when the crowd was not chanting, "DE-FENSE! DE-FENSE!" By the end of the first quarter I was already hoarse, and Din and I both clapped our hands red.

But enough about us: the game, the game! Neck and neck the entire time, including at the end of the first quarter, when with about ten seconds on the clock, Brandon Roy (who scored 42 tonight - 42!) took it to the top of the key, and then slowed it down, he just dribbled, the crowd was on its feet, we knew, we knew what he was going to do, he was going to take the shot to put us up by two, and he was going to hit it, and by hitting it, he would be saying, "Sorry" for Saturday. And he hit it! And we all lost our minds!

The game carried on this way until the last two minutes, no one ever up by more than five. The Blazers played the most incredible defense, they looked like a bunch of gnats out there, staying on the Rockets, blocking their shots. With the exception of Aaron Brooks, who, despite being only six feet tall, can make any shot, including two three-pointers with six seconds to go. But they weren't enough. The Blazers took it, 107 - 103, with the crowd screaming so loud, I am hoping there was some sort of sound meter in there.

Something I did not like to see: Rockets center Dikembe Mutombo going down with a knee injury, and having to be taken off the court on a rolling stretcher. Nobody likes to see this and, as Din and I sit here watching TNT recaps, we are glad to hear they think it's just a strain.

Something I did like to see: while waiting in the beer line, being approached by someone who said, "Are you Nancy?" It was Aroyo, frequent commentor on this site. I was so happy to meet him! I have several times before been approached by people who recognize me from the blog, but I'd never communicated with them, whereas Aroyo and I have been doing friendly battle since even before the election, when things really heated up! Anyway, it was a real pleasure, if a brief one, as the second half was starting.

I can't find a highlight reel for you, and I'm out of town/away from computer tomorrow. Until I do, thank you Blazers, and thank you fans, you really brought it tonight xx

Gratuitous Photo of 1969 Ford Torino GT Convertible

Via Iowa Hawk

Food Haiku

Or, proving that I am easily amused, part II: I have lifted this submission whole cloth from Food Dude's annual food haiku contest. A regular poster, Pollo Elastico, submitted the following. Senor Pollo is to Portland Food and Drink what Jim Treacher is to the internet, i.e., funny:

Lookee! Another
restaurant has closed once more.
I blame ______*.

*Obama
*The Food Dude
*Portlanders
*parking tolls
*poor people
*foie hippies
*the Left Wing
*the frugal
*going Galt
*Carlton Farms
*Old Europe
*New Europe
*Ayn Rand’s corpse
*corn syrup
*Beau Breedlove

Reading List, or, Why it's Okay to Hate Journalists

First: Glanced at the cover of the Oregonian this morning, a paper usually read for its sports (husband), comics (daughter) or its Metro news briefs detailing which phys ed teacher it is this week busted for sleeping with underage boys/girls (me). But today there was an article about Jeff Alan, a onetime news anchor as well as the author of a book about journalism ethics, and a labyrinthine tale of his disappearances, his many wives, his many lives (and faked death), a three-part series that had me rooting through the recycling to find part 1. The series -- which I have yet to finish and whose third part runs tomorrow -- is written by Peter Ames Carlin, the O's TV writer and a voice I like. I had coffee last week with the paper's D.K. Row, and told him the O always does such a good job on the long-form pieces. He told me, I should be writing them.

Second: While I am sure there are people who hate Alan, he is not inspiring in me the loathing, the complete rejection of the journalistic packs and their reductive, sentimental and dangerous reporting, as detailed by Dave Cullen in Columbine. We all remember Columbine -- or do we? What do you know, and why do you know it? Question it, all of it, as most of the journalists on the ground those days never did (there were exceptions, notably, the Rocky Mountain News, the Washington Post, and, perhaps surprisingly, Katie Couric); they -- as well a coterie of venal pastors and a cache of cops playing CYA... for years). The book, which is brilliant, brilliant, may I live to write something this good, will tell you why people hate and distrust some journalists, and why they should.

Third: Shadow Divers, recommended to me by someone in New York with whom I hope to do some good work. I am reading this, as well as Columbine, on the Kindle2. How's that going? You'll have to wait for the essay.

Manhattan, Woody Allen, Sex and Beauty

The lovely, charming and talented Foodinista asked me to guest blog, and so I have.

Ode to Roy/Blazer Fever

I have never loved a sports team the way I love these Blazers, the whole city is in love with them, as evidenced by the rally yesterday, photos here. Tavie and her pals braved the crowds. Din and I and whomever we're hanging with -- last night, Willamette Week's Kelly Clarke -- just sit around and gush. The team has showed tremendous heart and courage, and they've had a spectacular season at home, something like six or seven losses all year.

Now the hard part starts: the playoffs. Whatever they do, and man, I hope they charge on, we're with them; we love them. GO BLAZERS!

I Have Catwitulated

http://twitter.com/NancyRomm

The Dissidents' War: Michael Totten Interviews Tom Ricks

One thing I love about being in Portland is meeting all the writers that pass through on book tour. Amongst my pals Michael Totten, Joel Millman (staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal) and myself, one of us is sure to know or have communicated with or write in the same arena as or want to meet so badly the writer says, "Sure!", and we all wind up having drinks, before or after their readings at Powell's.

Such was the case last week, when Tom Ricks was in town. Ricks, formerly with the Washington Post, is the author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, and most recently, The Gamble. We sat in a bar near Powell's for 90 minutes before he read, talking mostly about the Middle East, but also a little about ancient Rome, the history of which Ricks' has been reading as a reward to himself for finishing the book, but the length of which is driving his editor batty.

"I think," said Ricks, "he'd rather see me writing."

Michael had a chance to interview Ricks, said interview of which appears here.

Craving

Just cleaned out the office, new filing cabinet, got rid of all the carobatole (which my Italian former sister-in-law used to refer to "dear junk"). Now I want this: