Nancy Rommelmann

Panama

 

 

What I'm Reading/Where I've Been

Wow, am I behind. There are reasons! Will be heading to New York this week for the third time in a month, also smashed in ten days in Panama, and a wound about which the less said the better, so we'll leave it at: I had a tube hanging out of me for five days. All better now, but for the Chloroquine I am still taking once a week to ward off malaria. I don't like this drug; it makes you nauseous, but worse -- and I only figured this out eight days in -- it gives you nightmares. I have, in the past ten days, dreamed of being raped, murdering a child, having to save my child from a horrific fate, and -- over and over -- having to save people from the apocalypse and/or various untenable and terrifying to life and limb situations. There are also the little annoyances, like dreaming of my husband telling me, he's just signed on with Match.com. Suffice to say, each night is fraught; I need some sleep.

But sleeplessness does give one time to read, and much of it has been very, very good. A lovely new discovery, via my friend Kate Coe, is Charles McCarry, whose "The Miernik Dossier" is espionage at its best and much more. I am so very tempted to print here the section titled, "66. From Miernik's Diary," to show you not merely tremendous writing but tremendous thinking, but it needs context. I highly recommend the book.

Also just catching up with Michael Totten's two-part interview with Christopher Hitchens, a lunch I also attended. Hitchens asked me a question, regarding the book I am writing, that proved valuable, which was, "Did she think the children would be going to heaven?"

#Sundance: Jett, Currie, Stewart, Fanning Talk Runaways - Thompson on Hollywood

My friend Anne Thompson does the interview. So excited to see this movie. And wow, are these girls gorgeous.

#Sundance: Jett, Currie, Stewart, Fanning Talk Runaways - Thompson on Hollywood.

National Book Critics Circle Finalists Gwartney and Huneven

Two friends are finalists for this year's National Book Critics Circle awards : Michelle Huveven, for her novel Blame, and Deborah Gwartney, for her memoir Live Through This. I had the privilege to visit with Gwartney and her daughters last year; that interview is here. Congratulations to both writers - well done xx

Food Scraps from the Week-End

Had a really good burger at Rontoms. Nice bartenders, too.

In contrast to other opinions, thought Ocean City Seafood good, not great. Do get: salt & pepper calamari. Avoid: sauteed pea shoots.

Anju, the Korean bar food restaurant at the south end of The Hub, the N. Williams building with Ristretto is also located, has closed. They did not generate much heat when open and, sorry, a Korean bar food restaurant with no bar?

Look Who's On the Cover of Roast Magazine

Why, that's Josh Gibby, of Ristretto Roasters. For all you coffee non-geeks, Roast is THE technical trade mag of the coffee roasting industry.

Movie Recommendation

Dispatch from the Front Lines of a Porn Addict

This piece, by a guy about to enter the same sex-rehab as Tiger Woods, is like a frying pan to the face, the writing is brutal. I certainly have some familiarity with shame-and-sex department. But not like this guy. A clip:

I'll usually open a few different browser tabs and hit the sites I like best. By now, I'm so far gone in my addiction that your average penis-in-vagina scenes, even by the grimy gonzo standards of internet porn, may as well be Victorian courting rituals. My favorite message board features only the most hardcore, exploitative, gang-bangiest, piss-drinkingest, public-floggingest scenes you could imagine, and then some. A few months back I horrifyingly noticed myself jerking off to video of a Japanese girl being penetrated with cockroaches. A real girl, not animated. Chuck Klosterman once wrote that some of the more extreme online stuff is about as sexy as watching someone get hit in the face with a frying pan, and he's right, though I don't usually get to the invertebrate smut until the fourth or fifth hour of my sessions.

On Books, Writing, Writers

I have two new articles out, a book review of Sam Shepard's "Day Out of Days," in the Sunday Oregonian, and "Live from the Cannabis Cafe" in the February issue of Reason. Have a read.

In other writing news: turned in my book proposal for "On the Bridge" the day before I left for Panama.

More writing, as in, my current favorite: Charles McCarry, former spy and espionage author extraordinaire. Start with "The Miernik Dossier." Prepare to be awed. Writing does not get better than this.

Russian Stray Dogs Recovering Wolf Genes

"Moscow's Stray Dogs," from the Financial Times, is a fascinating bit of social and genetic reporting, starting with a fashion model stabbing a stray in broad daylight, to many Muscovites thinking the dogs, in their various feral stages, have as much right to the streets and trams as people. A clip:

Moscow’s strays sit somewhere between house pets and wolves, says Poyarkov, but are in the early stages of the shift from the domesticated back towards the wild. That said, there seems little chance of reversing this process. It is virtually impossible to domesticate a stray: many cannot stand being confined indoors.

Back from Panama

And almost in one piece! Lots to report -- the death-defying cross-country driving; the tropical storms; the howler monkeys; the injury I flew home with. But those are a teaser. Will report in full when I have some digital photos at my disposal, hundreds of which Heather James happily snapped, while I took zero.

A good trip, and good to be back x

Masturbator, Caught!

So my second "daughter," actually my own daughter's best friend, was walking home last night when she noticed a man across the street, wanking off against a car.

"What the fuck are you doing?" she shouted at the guy, who proceeded to jog across to her, pulling his pud, asking, "You want some more of this?"

"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!" she screamed, then ran into her house. The first call she made -- of course -- was to my daughter; they are twenty, after all. Then she told her male roommate, who ran out to look for the guy, then she called the non-emergency police line. They sent ten cops, and they caught the guy! Who'd apparently just done the same thing to two other women. He was arrested.

His name is James Peter Old. One more time: JAMES PETER OLD, a 60-year-old man who thinks it's a good idea to publicly jack off in front of young girls in Southeast Portland. Anyone thinking it's rude of me to name this man: Sorry. He deserves to be shamed, and if you know him, you deserve to know this is what he's up to.

I am so proud of Mary for screaming and having this guy pursued. She's proud of herself, too.