Nancy Rommelmann

Andrew Sullivan's Best Practices for Bloggers: Honesty, Integrity, Corrections, the F-Word

via Thompson on Hollywood

I Am Not a Food Writer

Hi everyone, and in particular, those writers who, for various reasons, need to quote me in print. How are you? Having a good day? Great. If I may, let me direct your eyes to the column on the left, where it says, "My Articles." See those? There are thirty or forty. You might run over, also, to my website, www.nancyrommelmann.com. There are a features posted there, not complete, but enough to give you a sense of what I write about.

People often ask me this question: what do you write about? I tell them, about culture, crime, and deluded people. I also write a lot about books. It's been a good few years, writing about literary con artists and cults and sociopaths and child murderers and the complete loss of common sense some people experience when they catch kids sexting.

Now we've got that out of the way, I have a request: when you quote me, or refer to me, will you please resist the urge to refer to me as a "food writer"? I appreciate it.

Ristretto Reading Series: Kim Boyce, "Good to the Grain," October 29

The only thing that could make us as happy as having Kim Boyce's outstanding pastry in our pastry cases every day, is if she read for us from her spectacular baking book, Good to the Grain. And maybe let us throw her a little party.

So we asked. She said yes.

Please join us on Friday, October 29, at 6 PM, at Ristretto Roasters Williams, for coffee, pastry, reading and Q & A with Kim Boyce, pastry chef extraordinaire.

Want a preview? Check out "Afternoon Delight," a profile of Kim in Willamette Week (Oct. 27).

Kim Boyce is a former pastry chef at Spago and Campanile. While at Campanile, she helped Nancy Silverton with her Sandwich Book (Knopf, 2002) and has cooked alongside chefs like Mario Batali, Claudia Fleming, Lidia Bastianich, Alice Waters, and Anthony Bourdain. She has contributed to Bon Appetit and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times on numerous occasions (both as subject and contributor). In 2010, Kim and husband, chef Thomas Boyce, relocated to Portland with their two children.

This event is free and open to everyone, as are all Ristretto Reading Series events.

Coming November 11: Steve Dublanica and Keep the Change: A Clueless Tipper's Quest to Become the Guru of Gratuity

Pierced Vaginas and Hollywood Whackers: the Randy Quaid and Wife Show Commences* [updated]

I woke up to the following link from my sister-in-law, Hillary Johnson, who prefaced it with a simple, "Ha! Check this out":

Actor Randy Quaid told Canada's immigration board that he and his wife are seeking asylum from "the murderers of Hollywood" and will therefore apply for refugee status in Canada, after they were arrested on US warrants related to vandalism charges.

The pair were arrested on Thursday afternoon in a shopping area of an affluent Vancouver neighbourhood and were jailed on outstanding US warrants...

The couple told the immigration adjudicator they are being persecuted in the United States.

Evi Quaid begged a Canadian immigration adjudicator not to force them to return, saying that friends, such as actors David Carradine and Heath Ledger, have been "murdered" under mysterious circumstances and she worried something would happen to her husband next.

"We feel our lives are in danger," she said. "Randy has known eight close friends murdered in odd, strange manners ... We feel that we're next."

During a break in the proceedings, the Quaids' lawyer, Brian Tsuji approached the media to read a single-sentence statement from the Quaids. "We are requesting asylum from Hollywood star whackers," he read, declining further comment on the mental state of his clients.

No sooner had I put a link on Twitter than I received a message from my friend Heather John, aka, The Foodinista:

Randy's wife once showed me a series of self portrait photos of her pierced vagina. No, not uncomfortable at all. She was having a private show at Les Deux [Cafe]. [Le Deux] owner Michele Lamy grabbed me from my table in the restaurant insisting that I meet her and walk thru the exhibit. I've sort of blocked it out but I feel like maybe the piercing was magnetic? I can't remember if it was an actual piercing in her vagina or for effect, but regardless the photos were not small. It's when I was Style Editor of the LA Times Sunday Magazine. PS: Lamy's fingers were covered in black wax. She informed me,"I just did my nails, what do you think?" I guess I miss working in fashion?

For those unfamiliar with Les Deux, it's a Hollywood cafe that, at least in the 90s, was fabulous and louche and everyone looked good and behaved badly. It was the place to be and if it felt rotty at the core, what could be more Hollywood? That Evi Quaid would feature oversized photos of her faux pierced vagina, and that Lamy would summon a journalist from her dinner to gaze at such photos, sums up the place very nicely. It also shows you what Evi Quaid will do for attention.

One supposes things have not worked out so well for the Quaids in the past decade, that there has been a reversal of fortunes. They were recently caught squatting in the guesthouse of a property they once owned. In their mugshots, Randy looks like he's being sat on by a sack of cement, and Evi, elated.

Hillary, Heather and I have all done time in the Hollywood trenches, and what is happening to the Quaids surprises us not at all. Here are my predictions as to what is going to happen. I invite you to submit your own:

1. The Quaids will take refuge with a New Age guru, who will speak for them at press conferences, and later, fleece them.

2. There will be an intervention for Randy, perhaps from leveler-headed brother Dennis. Randy will go through rehab/therapeutic recuperation. Evi will become increasingly angry and reveal disgusting things about her soon-to-be-ex-husband. She may be represented by Gloria Allred and, later, appear on "Dancing With the Stars."

3. Randy, as above. Evi will go batshit crazy. There will be violence, and perhaps lurid death, involving one or both parties.

I am already writing the Vanity Fair story in my head, and suspect it will be nuttier than I imagine.

*From my friend Jackie Danicki, the view from DListed, a site I used to read every day. [Why did I stop? I don't know. Back I go.] Look how happy they look! Simply delighted to be having their pictures taken while getting arrested! Or, as my daughter might put it, "That's two cups of crazy." 

Vincent Thomas Hayes, 1916 - 2010

My mother and uncle asked me to write my grandfather's obituary. It was not hard to do, but upon reading it felt so odd, as though I had distilled 94 years down to an index card. But my mother loves it and that's what is important. RIP, Granddad xx

VINCENT THOMAS HAYES died at his home in Honolulu on October 19, 2010, at the age of 94. The son of Thomas Robert Hayes and Mary Hennessey Hayes, Vincent was born on April 2, 1916, in Brooklyn, New York. The family soon moved to Baldwin, Long Island. Headstrong and independent, Vincent left home at fourteen and made his way to Palm Beach, Florida, where he found work at a tennis club. Back in New York in 1936, he met and married 17-year-old Diana Pappas, a Greek immigrant. The couple initially lived in Queens, where daughter Katherine was born in 1937, and son Thomas Robert in 1940. In 1942, the family moved to New Hyde Park, Long Island. In 1943, Vincent was drafted into the US Navy, and was part of a landing craft infantry stationed in the South Pacific for the duration of WWII.

Upon return, Vincent found work in the Bell Helicopter Division of Textron Industries. He was also a member of the New Hyde Park Volunteer Fire Department, and actively involved as a Boy Scout leader. Vincent and Diana had a second son, Allen Andrew, in 1949. Throughout his life, Vincent was a proud member of the VFW.

After Diana’s death in 1962, Vincent moved to Miller Place, Long Island. He also traveled widely, throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States; as he was fond of telling his grandchildren, he’d been to all fifty of them. He also kept in peak physical condition, running marathons and downhill skiing well into his 70s. He was also an avid sailor, and in his later years, spent much of his time in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico before settling permanently in Honolulu.

His parents, his wife, and his sisters, Muriel and Florence, predecease Vincent. In addition to his three children, Kathy Hayes of Brooklyn, NY, Thomas Hayes of Clifford Township, PA, and Allen Hayes of Safety Harbor, FL, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren survive him.

Services in Honolulu will be private.

Quote of the Day

From a defense attorney I am writing about. Rereading it, I am struck by the similarities of what he and I do, or try to.

“If I had to do wills and deeds and corporate minutes I would have retired ten years ago. They’re just not very interesting, not very sexy. [What] we’re working, in these cases, it’s tough and it’s torturous but it is interesting; it’s fascinating. You read the newspaper, and I have to laugh sometimes; they are so far off from what the case is really about, or the things they try to make up, or they think they know. There’s a certain high from it all, I guess, when you know you’re working on something that you’re going to help bring out the truth."

Playboy, the Next Generation, or, a Little Story Featuring Tafv, on Her Birthday

Playboy: The Next Generation

Din came home from work and asked, “Where’s Tafv?” I told him, she was at the Playboy Mansion, again, whereupon he said, “Oh, great,” very heavy on the sarcasm.

I didn’t understand why he was testy; didn’t he think it was sort of wacky? He did not. Was it that he hated rich people?

“I don’t hate rich people, come on,” he said. “I just wonder why you don’t say, she’s over at so-and-so’s house. I don’t even know the kid’s name. It’s always, ‘She’s at the Playboy Mansion,’ as though you’re very impressed. I think you think it’s cool.”

Well, maybe I did, I mean, the place is so iconic.

For the record, my daughter had not said she was going to the Playboy Mansion, but to a swim party at her schoolmate _____’s house, who happens to be the son of Hugh Hefner. The first time she went, for a birthday party, she hadn’t even heard of the Playboy Mansion.

“Oh, come on, you have so,” said her friend, as I took a left off Sunset Boulevard, past a man selling Maps to the Stars Homes. “It’s where the Playboy bunnies live.”

“What are Playboy bunnies?” asked Tafv, as a guard checked our name on a list.

The driveway was long and verdant, and opened up onto a circular driveway with a Camelot feel, a lot of turrets and topiary, and suits of armor, though I may be imagining these last.

The girls scampered in, and though I always do introduce myself to parents, I was especially keen to do so here. I’d seen the child’s statuesque blonde mother at school, and spotted her in the garden. We chatted a moment; she said she was very happy to have Tafv here, and then someone needed her attention and I wandered off among the peacocks and toward the monkey enclosure, and though I would have liked to be a fly on the wall, it was, after all, my daughter who’d been invited, so made my exit.

I returned to pick up Tafv at nine o’clock; it was dark, and raining, and the jam-up of parents’ cars in the drive was spectacular. I circumvented this by parking to one side, and then asked one of the many security guys where I might find my daughter. He pointed in the house. I found Tafv’s best friend lolling on a beanbag chair with Hefner’s other son; she said she thought Tafv might be in the playhouse.

Playhouse?

“It’s across that way,” Hef said. He was standing by the front door, in his silk smoking robe. I shook the man’s hand.

I crossed the drive, ducked through some hedges, and went inside a house whose main room was filled with pinball machines and video games, each manned by an ecstatic teenage boy. I walked further, toward voices and a partially opened door, which turned out to be one panel of a mirrored octagonal room, its floor covered in soft black cushions, and on those cushions were my daughter and a pile of her friends, eating junk food and giggling.

“Hi, mama!” she said. “Isn’t this the coolest place in the world?!”

Yes, I said, it was, though my brain screaming, don’t touch the walls! I told her we had to get going.

She followed me out to the car, and then, as we were getting in, ran back to get her bag. From my vantage point, I had a view of a set of stained glass windows above the front doorway. The windows were half open, and past them, I could see two young women, and in my memory, they have long blonde hair, and are wearing lingerie. And yet I sensed what these women looked like was all mixed up with my recollection of being eleven, and pulling from beneath my father’s bed a stack of Playboy magazines, kept next to stacks of Penthouse and Oui, and looking at the Playmates, and reading that they liked sunshine and intimate times, and disliked cigarette smoke and loud people, and thinking these women were really beautiful, their skin just glowed, their eyes were looking right at me, and looking at them made me get so...

“Mama?”

Huh?

“We can go now,” said Tafv, as she closed the car door.

Tafv Sampson, 21 Today

All my love, my darling xx

 

 

More on David Carr and the Pillaging of the Tribune

Every day we see evidence of people promulgating information that supports their view of the world, and what information they want others to know, and how they want the money to flow. 

As someone who disseminates information, the more work I do, the more I question my information: why is this person telling me this? What outcome does he or she want? It is my job to allow readers to come to their own conclusions, while taking responsibility for the information and how I have constructed it, always in an effort to make things clear, which nearly always first requires a whole lot of mucking around in the dark.

That's the journalist's job: to work from murkiness to clarity with one's best efforts. That's immutable; what every good writer knows, which makes David Carr's story, "At Flagging Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture," all more heartbreaking. Yes, my jaw dropped when I read about the bonuses. But people grabbing bits of the pie before it's gone is expected and babyish, the simplest idea in the room.

What I did not expect to see ravaged, and with such disdain, is the writing of stories, and how and what is offered. What really pissed me off is Tribune execs' pretending they understand how new technologies will allow us to do this in better ways, a stance that is risible considering their track record. Read the whole thing. You can also get a taste by reading the kicker, below, in which Carr perfectly captures the contempt of people deliberately or not (and I think it is deliberate) destroying what they do not understand and can never command.

The [Tribune] company recently announced the creation of a new local news format in which there would be no on-air anchors and few live reports. The newscasts will rely on narration over a stream of clips, a Web-centric approach that has the added benefit of requiring fewer bodies to produce.

“The TV revolution is upon us — and the new Tribune Company is leading the resistance,” the announcement read. And judging from the job posting for “anti-establishment producer/editors,” the company has some very strong ideas about who those revolutionaries should be: “Don’t sell us on your solid newsroom experience. We don’t care. Or your exclusive, breaking news coverage. We’ll pass.”

Do Anxious Wives Make Homemade Eggrolls? or, Joy [Part 3]

In thirteen years, my husband and I have had maybe four fights. Three involved copious amounts of alcohol; one involved a book, Don DeLillo's "White Noise."

The most recent was a week ago. It involved yelling, at a party, and later, at home. It made me wake up before dawn and call a cab to take me to my truck, which we'd left at the party. I should have turned west to get home, but instead turned east because the sky was pink, and because driving felt good. I kept going. I didn't know the road. I thought about a Sam Shepard book I reviewed, and better appreciated how driving gets you out of your head, and also, keeps you away from a person or situation where you run the risk of vomiting up a bunch of half-digested emotions that will compound what's come before and which you will certainly regret.

I drove for about 45 minutes. I wondered what, if anything, I would say to Din about the night before. I played out scenarios. I set them up like pylons. Each one, I knew, I could trip over. I knew that to concentrate on them was to give them meaning. I did not want to do this; it was inviting misery. So I jumped over them, and turned the car around.

I was still jumping in my skin. I would need to distract myself to get through the day. I thought, I'll cook. I got back to Portland and went to QFC, where I have just started to shop and which I think of as the post-houseful-of-kids supermarket, a place where one does not buy 8-pound chubs of meat because there are no longer children at home to feed, which the market seems to know, and packages things accordingly, and also, offers dainties you have never before noticed, or knew existed. For instance, eggroll wrappers.

I looked at the wrappers. I wondered if they, if the store, if the thought of homemade eggrolls even occurring, were part of a purview I had yet to encounter, an unhappy-land where wives make delicacies instead of dinner. Were there others like me wandering the aisles at eight on a Sunday morning, cerebrating over almond paste and annatto and maybe a can of snails?

I bought the wrappers, and ingredients with which to fill them. Also, the makings for beef stew, egg salad, homemade noodles. I brought it all home. I plugged my iPhone into the dock and listened to RadioLab as I made egg salad, and stew, and eggrolls...

Din woke up. He looked at the action in the kitchen. "Wow, baby," he said.

I handed him a plate of hot eggrolls. He ate four.

"These," he said, "are the best eggrolls I've ever had."

They were. I kept cooking because I was afraid I would start talking. I listened to episodes about con artists, and Henrietta Lacks, and Tazmanian Devil facial tumors. I cleaned the kitchen. I contemplated going to the store for more ingredients. Instead, I went downstairs. I told Din, I was afraid, and that I was sorry. He knew what to do and say to make me stop trembling. Then we watched some football.

I don't want to fight again. The eggrolls, on the other hand, we've had three times this week.

After-the-Fight Eggrolls

6 eggroll wrappers 

1 carrot, cut into matchsticks

3 scallions, cut on the diagonal

1 1/2 cups bean sprouts

Grated fresh ginger (I keep a knob in the freezer and microplane it, skin and all)

4 ounces Chinese barbecue pork (prepackaged), cut into matchsticks

2 cups vegetable oil

Mix vegetables and pork. Lay down eggroll wrappers. Fill and wrap according to instructions on back of package.

Heat oil in cast iron pan; it's hot enough when a drop of water flicked in, sizzles. Fry eggrolls until brown on one side, turn, repeat with other side

On Writing Badly, or, Joy [Part 2]

I have sitting on my library ladder a book called, "On Writing Well." I haven't opened it, which you might guess were you to read the piece I have been working on all week. Driving this morning, I thought how I would characterize the writing-so-far: "joyless, leaden and long." I saw myself standing above a channel of liquid concrete; jesus, even I didn't want to dip my toe in there. I am only grateful that I have been writing long enough to know how opaque and wrong it is. Also, that I could turn it into my editor and he'd be fine with it, with a few tweaks. Scary. He will never of course see this draft.

I can't speak for any other writer, but I tear quotes about the work and what it should be, and stick them on my bulletin board. Here is one, from William Langewiesche, "You have this precious, incredibly privileged thing, which is the reader's attention for a little while. And you can make the slightest misstep and the reader will put you down. People will say that the reader lives in a busy world. But that's not the reason why. The reason is that the writer blows it, and loses the reader's trust."

Earlier this week, reading "Hitch-22," I came upon this: "In writing and reading, there is a gold standard. How will you be able to detect it? You will know it all right."

I ran into this standard this week, when I started Rebecca Skloots', "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks." You know it all right. I also had the spectacular good fortune to see that Skloots has structured her book very much the way I am structuring mine, and hers is a bestseller, so.

We'll get to the eggrolls another time, but a last thought, which I stuck to my bulletin board this morning: duty v: joy.