Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

What’s going on in France? “Portlandx10,” Nancy texted Sarah, who misremembered it as “Portland x 1000.” Close enough! Things in France are wild, fast-moving — but where are things headed? The journo babes talk revolution: the Old School ones, American vs. French, the thwarted underground radical ones of the ‘70s (Weather Underground etc), and the incandescence of crowd violence. Nancy shares gripping on-the-ground stories from Portland circa 2020. Sarah references Hamilton.

Also: Sarah has fallen for the ghost of Norm Macdonald — a hilarious, gorgeous, unavailable, self-hating, doomed genius? SIGN HER UP. Though Douglas Murray does get her hot in the pants (again, tragically, because he’s gay). Then Nancy gets steamy when Bobby Canavale is mentioned. Don’t get us started on Lafayette.

Also discussed:

* “Dumbolina”

* Zee Francch, zey do not like zee Sarah

* The Brits, they have a way.

* “I think they’re just mad at their parents”

* Peaceful vs. chaotic

* “Everything is a doomed project”

Plus, Nancy takes up “old lady” modeling, The Decemberist’s Colin Meloy is one cool dude, and Nancy loved You Can See Everything because of course she did!

Another Reporter’s Notebook, about a feature article that more than any other exemplifies why you can never pre-decide what the story is. I still recall shaking when I got to my car after sitting with Nancy’s former husband in his office at USC and physically shaking as I told my editor, “The story is not what we thought it was. It’s who she took with her.” It appeared on the cover of the LA Weekly, and is reprinted below.

A new Reporter’s Notebook every Sunday when you become a paid subscriber

Also discussed:

* The five-year-old on acid in Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem

The HMS Bounty, the bar where I sat with Alex (maybe this exact booth), Nancy’s son

You can find fantastic stories everywhere. In Los Angeles, they verily run into your arms. Buy the book!

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by John Carreyrou

“The Elizabeth Holmes Documentary, Through the Eyes of the Reporter Who Exposed Her,” by John Carreyrou (New York Times

WHO SHE TOOK WITH HER: The Husband, the Son, the Boyfriend… a Drunk’s Tale, by Nancy Rommelmann

On December 12, 1948, Nancy Schorn was born into privilege. Her father was the chief financial officer of the plumbing conglomerate American Standard, and her mother was active in charitable work. The family lived on a five-acre estate on Long Island’s North Shore, in Cold Spring Harbor, a town not unlike Daisy Buchanan‘s West Egg: Nancy was a member of three yacht and country clubs, and, like Daisy, was considered by one admirer to have been “the most beautiful person I had ever seen . . . she had almost an aristocratic air of confidence and elegance.” She attended the college-preparatory Westover School for Girls, and later enrolled at Boston University, where she met and married an MIT engineering student who would go on to an esteemed career at USC. She lived in Europe. She had a son. Upon her parents’ deaths, she inherited a great deal of money.

On December 29, 2000, Nancy was sleeping adjacent to a parking lot near the Santa Monica Pier, where she was run over by a first-time driver who claimed she swerved to miss a cat. Nancy suffered a compound fracture of the right leg, a crushed skull and the loss of an eye.

Nancy was sleeping by the beach because she‘s homeless, and she’s homeless because she‘s a chronic alcoholic. For the better part of 20 years, she’s been one of Santa Monica‘s indigent population, one of the thousands of panhandlers you might pass by and think, What a dirtbag or, if you are feeling charitable, There but for the grace of God. While even the ungenerous among us understand that people wind up on the streets for myriad reasons, we do tend to distinguish them, perhaps in a bid at self-protection, as organically different from ourselves. The filth, the aimlessness, allow us to objectify them as “other” at best, disposable at worst.

To most passersby, Nancy is little more than a fleeting sidewalk annoyance — toss her a quarter and forget about her. But what about those who don’t have the luxury of forgetting? Those who live with an intimate awareness of her past as well as her present? Those who tried to save her from herself, and who were abandoned by her? The pain Nancy has visited upon herself is exceeded, perhaps, by what she‘s visited upon others.

“You don’t have a few bucks on you, do you?” Accepting a cigarette instead, Nancy tears off the filter while taking the summer sun in the concrete courtyard of Harbor Convalescent Hospital. At 100 pounds, she‘s a tiny thing, swimming in the only clothes she has, a pair of cut-off sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt with flowers on it. Seven months after the accident, she’s still in a wheelchair, her leg immobilized by an external fixator, the bones held in place by steel pins driven directly into her shin and thigh. Through her lank gray hair, one can see a road map of stitches.

“My scalp is like the Rocky Mountains.” She cackles lightly, her voice scorched with nicotine. “My cheekbones are supposed to be parallel. I don‘t really have much of a mouth left. I lost teeth.”

Nancy’s remaining eye, an intense ice-blue, is engaged and animated. When asked about the damaged eye, she lifts the black patch. It‘s a puckered hole.

“It’s dead, there‘s nothing they can do about it,” she says dismissively, waving her hand. “I don’t need very much. The treatment for [the leg] is dumping hydrogen peroxide on it, that‘s it. I get a minimal amount of painkillers here, Tylenol 3s. Not enough.” Nancy draws deeply on her cigarette, and her eye takes on the mischievous cast of a little girl who knows she’s asking for something naughty. “What I want is Percocet.”

What she really wants is a drink, preferably E&J brandy. “I drank for about two weeks here in the hospital. It was easy. Just ask someone, ‘Are you going to the store?’” She cackles again. “But I got caught, and threatened with being outed, outsky, out, out, hmm. So I quit. Now I got about 54 days.”

A spooky ululation comes from a corner room. Nancy shakes her head.

“That woman right there will make that sound if anyone touches her. She doesn‘t speak; she’s fed through a tube. She‘s been here six years.” Nancy glances at the only other people in the courtyard, two young men in wheelchairs, one with all his toes amputated, the other attached to a portable dialysis machine and a Walkman, which he listens to with his eyes closed. “The company here is bad. I have two roommates. One is Alzheimer’s, and the other is a Mongoloid. It‘s impossible to communicate with them. It’s hell.”

While a place to sleep and regular meals in a fairly nice facility paid for by Medi-Cal might seem utopian compared to the streets, to Nancy, hell is being cooped up.

“I got used to living outside,” she says with a shrug. “They say if you don‘t get your butt off the street in a year, it starts getting to you. It’s true. I decided to do it for one more year, then one more year. You don‘t want to leave; you don’t want to be under any restrictions; you‘re used to not having any bills to pay, and no real responsibilities. The weather of course you learn to deal with, and food and all that isn’t a real problem unless you make it one. Clothing‘s easy. All that basic survival stuff is no big deal. The real problem is money, always money.”

Something Nancy, before the age of 30, never had to trouble herself with. She married Michael Safonov in 1968, and was supported by him throughout his tenure in the Navy, during which time Nancy, and later their newborn son, traveled with him, until one day in 1975.

“We moved back to Jacksonville, where Mike was stationed, and it’s weird, because that‘s when I started drinking,” says Nancy, picking tobacco off her tongue and, since she has few remaining teeth, giving the lopsided grin of a stroke victim. “We had a garage apartment behind a house that was occupied by four or five different guys, and they were always drinking and partying and stuff, and here I am with a baby, and I said, ’Damn, it looks like they‘re having a lot of fun.’ So I hired a baby sitter one day and bought a six-pack of Budweiser. Took me all day to drink it. And when I woke up the next morning I didn‘t have a hangover or nothing, but I decided beer wasn’t very ladylike, so I bought a bottle of white wine, and drank half of it that night. Still no hangover. By the end of the month I was drinking a lot. Before then, I had drunk nothing to speak of. I was the kind of person who would hold a drink. Mike said, ‘I didn’t know you liked to drink so much.‘ He didn’t say anything more than that. Then I got into hard liquor.”

Mike accepted a teaching post at USC, and the family moved to Los Angeles. “We rented a house in Mar Vista, and then we bought it. We stayed there two or three years. I had gotten alcohol poisoning a couple of times. My husband put me in the hospital twice, and when the second hospitalization didn‘t take, he told me, ’I don‘t feel I have any other choice but to file for formal separation,’ which in California is nine months, ‘and if you haven’t cleaned up your act and stuff, then we‘ll be divorced.’ And that‘s what happened. Did I try to fight the divorce? Sort of, but I never stopped drinking, so it was hopeless. My mom had passed away, so I had enough money and assets and stuff like that, so it didn’t faze me. I figured, I‘ve got money, I’ve got a VW bus, I‘ve got a boat, I’ve got everything that I need — ‘I can drink in peace’ kind of thinking.” She grins the lopsided grin. “That‘s as debauched as I was.”

She got an apartment in Santa Monica, and began several years of steady drinking.

“I’m not what you call a social drinker. I didn‘t really have any friends. It would never occur to me to go to a bar and spend money on drink after drink after drink, when I could go buy a bottle and go somewhere and that’s that. I drank at home. And . . . it just gave me a relief. Relief. I was a lot more relaxed, and happier. The hangovers were bad, though, very bad. I made the money last two years, and then I started to sell things. First the jewelry, then the silverware, the boat, the VW bus. It was scary, seeing all this stuff go, but I just couldn‘t deal with it. Then I started stealing. Stealing booze. I got evicted. I picked up a really bad boyfriend — he was on PCP. We wound up living in his car. I was really badly beaten [by him], and one morning I decided, ’I‘m not coming back to this car,’ so I just kept walking away. Walking, walking, walking, through the alleys; some guy gave me five bucks, he was out gardening. Then the cops picked me up. I had no shoes, no ID, no money, and I‘m drinking. And I was sitting on the storm drain across from the house I used to own in Mar Vista.”

The police picked her up and sent her to Camarillo State Hospital. “I was penniless at this point, and my husband was on sabbatical in England. He met a woman over there, a divorcee with two kids, and they got married and had another child. My son was about 7 at the time. It was . . . okay. I knew I wasn’t really able to . . . I didn‘t really want him. I didn’t want to be a full-time mom, so I didn‘t see him very much. And I disrespected the fact that [Mike] remarried, and they had a child together. I didn’t feel comfortable at all about trying to call or anything. It just seemed the more appropriate way, you know. I needed to be on my own two feet, anyway.”

Nancy‘s third trip through rehab was the charm. For nine years, she stayed sober, kept an apartment, began sporadic contact with her son, and had a series of low-paying jobs, the last of which was at a flower shop.

“And then one night, I was waiting to close up the flower shop. I was looking through a magazine, and there was a full-page ad for Martini & Rossi vermouth, and I thought, ’I‘m gettin’ some.‘” She decapitates another cigarette. “I bought a half a bottle, and the next night I bought a full bottle. Finally, the manager gave me a leave of absence to sober up, and that didn’t work, and that was that.”

P.O.V.: The Husband

“I had no idea where she was until I heard from her social worker,” says Nancy‘s former husband, Michael Safonov, a professor of electrical engineering at USC. His office is on the third floor of the Hughes Aircraft Building of Electrical Engineering, a stark warren whose walls are affixed with Dilbert and Gary Larson cartoons. Michael is a tall, soft-spoken man who emits patience; when discussing Nancy, whom he visited on Mother’s Day, his chest caves.

“It was the first time I‘d seen her in many years,” he says. “It was really a shock to see, not only the injuries, but also other things that have transpired in between. She looks as bad as I could imagine.”

He laughs lightly, almost apologetically. “She was a living on the edge all the time. I realize that . . . I understand that I can’t help her, you know. She can be helped, but she won‘t. She defies help.”

Asked when he first met Nancy, Michael is silent for a very long time. When he does speak, it’s as though a wound he‘s been stanching for many years has hemorrhaged.

“I was just 17 years old when I met Nancy, and she was, too. I thought she was wonderful. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. You wouldn’t believe from [seeing] the person she is now how beautiful she was then . . . She had led an incredibly privileged life. I was raised in Pacific Palisades, so I knew a lot of people who were well-off, but Nancy had that sort of New York, Eastern panache about her. I wasn‘t interested in the fact that she was wealthy at all, but I was very impressed with the way she carried herself, she was quite elegant. And so, it became my obsession to make her my girlfriend.”

He clears his throat, and continues in a tone both sad and astonished. “All the time she was at B.U., projecting an air of confidence, it turned out that she wasn’t doing anything in school. She was turning in no homework assignments, skipping classes. We were staying up all night, you know, just to be together, and then I would work all day on my homework and she‘d go home and sleep.”

He laughs lightly again. “She flunked out at the end of the first year, which was a total surprise to me, because I had no idea, you know? Within a year after that, we married, over the objections of her father, who was always trying to prevent it. I think he probably felt, you know, that I wasn’t aristocratic enough for his daughter. To him, it was very important that somebody should come from a family with money. He didn‘t see that in a kid on a scholarship at MIT, which was what I was, so he fought it all the way.

“In Boston, Nancy worked as an office assistant at various places, and eventually she got a job as a secretary at MIT, in the biology department, working with a Nobel laureate and a Nobel laureate-to-be — Salvador Luria and David Baltimore, who is now the president of Caltech — so she had some interesting company in those days. But it was the time of the Vietnam War, and they were very radical over there, especially in the biology department. Over in the electrical-engineering side of the university, where I worked, people didn’t worry so much about those kinds of things — they were more concerned with research and mathematics and things like that — so it began to build a little bit of tension between us. I didn‘t feel that way about the war. I felt sort of neutral. And when it came time and I got a very low draft number, I didn’t run away to Canada, I didn‘t declare myself a conscientious objector, I signed up to join the Navy as an officer, so that was kind of a blow to Nancy. She stuck by me; she traveled around the Mediterranean while I was on an aircraft carrier there. Then our son, Alex, was born, and she traveled around Europe to be with me, but she had a seething anger about the Navy. It became a crutch, a focal point, a ’You‘re away from me and I hate you for that,’ and she began drinking to help ease the pain when we were separated.

“She made up her mind, she just wasn‘t going to travel around anymore. She was going to stay in Jacksonville, where I’d been stationed. And apparently she began drinking because she got courage, it made it easy for her to go out and meet people.”

Michael looks out his office window for a bit. “Anyway, she met people, and she took a number of lovers and so forth when I was away. This was the ‘70s, free-love time, sort of these utopian ideas. Instinctively it didn’t feel right, but somehow you‘re supposed to do that, because it’s modern times or something, or seems like it, so I didn‘t make that much of a fuss about it. But she got involved with the most awful people, people in motorcycle gangs and . . . She was caring for our infant son, who while she was off doing things was on his own, and he shouldn’t have been. He was quite neglected, I‘m afraid, while I was off at sea.”

He pauses, and when he begins speaking again, does not stop for 40 minutes.

“Anyway, I didn’t want to see my marriage wrecked, so we got back together again. I had two more years at MIT to finish my Ph.D., so we moved up to Boston, into university campus housing for married students. It was a nice little apartment complex with a playground in the middle for the small children. It should have been really a good place for us to be at the time, but at that point it became clear that she was really having a problem drinking. She would drink almost a bottle of liquor a day. Usually hiding it, you know, because we didn‘t have that much money and the expense would be obvious. She would sell things, my books and silverware and stuff like that, hoping I wouldn’t notice, and she‘d buy herself alcohol. I gather that our son was . . . somewhat neglected. At one point some social workers came around and complained that he’d been left outside in the icy weather without a jacket and so forth. Our son spent some time at a preschool, and they noticed that he was a bit slow learning to speak. I suspect it‘s because he was left alone so much of the time, he just didn’t have anyone to talk to, because he was always locked in his room. Well, not locked in, there was a door open, but he was off by himself most of the time.

“By the way, Nancy‘s father was an alcoholic in a sense. Not a debilitative alcoholic, he just couldn’t keep away from drinking in the evening; if he didn‘t drink, he just became unbearable, nervous and angry. So he was always drinking, but he was always under control, too. In most respects, Nancy was a functioning alcoholic at that point, too, except she didn’t have any function to do. She stayed at home, she didn‘t have to work, she was supported.

“Anyway, when we came to California, over the next few years things really began deteriorating rapidly. She would just consume enormous amounts of alcohol. There would be times I would come home and I’d find her, it was like she had died or something, she couldn‘t move, or be awakened. It was really scary at times. Then she’d get into this routine where every day she would sleep until noon, then she would drink again and become really euphoric by late afternoon, and then a couple of hours later she‘d become an angry tyrant, screaming and throwing things. That would persist well into the night, probably until 2 or 3 in the morning; I wouldn’t be allowed to sleep. She would always be attacking me, throwing plates and knives, you name it, anything she could get her hands on. I‘d finally give up and pack it in and go rent a motel room just so I could sleep.

“Eventually, it became clear something had to be done, and I wasn’t sure what, but I got myself an apartment and moved out. I guess it was about that point she agreed to go into treatment. She spent a month in a hospital in Marina del Rey; they dried her out and counseled her and so forth. I saw her every day. But she began drinking as soon as she got out. She was hiding it. I‘d come into the house and she’d have a tin of soup or something, and the bottom had been taken out, and underneath there was a glass of something. She‘d be drinking all the time, but pretending she wasn’t.

“After we finally split and divorced, she almost immediately remarried an old man who was living in Santa Monica. This old man, who was obviously very poor, managed to persuade her that he was actually very rich and he was going to buy her a Mercedes and take her all kinds of places, when the reality was he was some kind of retired bricklayer on welfare or something. But she married him, and they lived together for quite a long time, and then she drove him off, I guess with her alcoholism, until he left her with his welfare apartment right there in Santa Monica.

“She seemed to remain sober for some time after that. She got herself a job. She worked at a juice place in Santa Monica, where they served fresh-squeezed juices. I saw her there once. Her teeth were deteriorating — they were really discolored, and she really should have done something about it. I tried to persuade her she should, but she wouldn‘t.”

He pauses, visibly discomfited by the next memory.

“Anyway, I remember she lost her job — maybe they thought she was pilfering money from the cash register, that’s what she said — but eventually she found another job, in a flower place. And then she fell off the wagon again.”

Which was over seven years ago, during which time Michael did not see her.

“Somebody called me several years back and said that she‘d been living on the beach, so I’d heard she‘d fallen back into the worst state she’d been in some time. It didn‘t really surprise me that something awful would happen. I had this feeling that something like this would happen to her.”

After receiving the phone call from her social worker, Michael visited Nancy at Harbor Convalescent.

“She was very proud of me when I went to visit her, you know, she obviously had been waiting for me, and our son, Alex. She immediately began introducing us to everybody in the hospital — you know, she was just beaming with joy. ’See, I‘m not really like this,’ is what she was saying to all the people. ‘See, here’s my beautiful son and ex-husband who‘s successful.’ I‘m sure all the people in the hospital just thought she was telling them stories when she told them about us, so [us being there] was kind of a way of proving that what they saw wasn’t all of her. I‘m sure that’s what she was saying to them, because I‘m sure part of her wishes that she still was the person she was before. It’s not just us, it‘s her whole past, her parents, her family upbringing. It’s just . . . she‘s gone so far since then.

“You know, when she was a kid, her home sat on five acres, surrounded by woods, you couldn’t see the next house, it was just . . . To me, I had no interest in that, I was just glad when she managed to run away. Her parents wanted to cut her off. But I thought, I can look after her, she‘s mine. I felt guilty taking her away from that, in a way, at first, and I wished I could have made up for it . . . [But] she’s never been one to assume responsibility herself. When I first knew her, she had very high standards for everybody else. One of the things I found especially fascinating, why I thought she would be good for me, was because she seemed to have such high standards. I had this feeling that she was going to drive me to do great things, you know? But she wasn‘t doing anything herself. She never had self-discipline, she never did assume responsibility for her own actions, not ever. Strange, isn’t it? As long as we were together, she knew how people ought to do things, and knew the right thing to do, but she couldn‘t manage anything herself.

“I would have done anything if I could have somehow made it possible to restore her in some way, that she would be possible to live with. We were together 13 years, though we only ever had two glorious ones. The rest were all downhill. I stuck with her for 10 years, trying to put it together some way, desperately hoping against all odds that somehow I could do something. In the end, I only left because I realized I was part of the problem, that by supporting her the way I was that she was getting worse.

“For years after, even after I remarried, I felt really bad that I couldn’t do something. I felt guilty about the fact that she had become the way she was. She blamed me, too. She always insisted she was an alcoholic because I joined the Navy.”

When Michael stops speaking, one gets the impression he has held this story in for 20 years, and now that it‘s been told, he will not speak of it again. When asked how Alex has dealt with Nancy all these years, his answer is economical:

“Our son has done so much to isolate himself against his mother, because she’s caused him so much pain and angst.”

P.O.V.: The SON

“It‘s kind of interesting that you should be asking these questions, or someone is. No one really has,” says Alex Safonov. “No one really knows how to deal with it.”

Nancy’s son, Alex, is 27 years old. Tall and painfully thin, he wears skate-ratprep attire, a baggy plaid shirt and khakis. He left USC six units shy of getting his architectural degree, and works in commercial animation and experimental video. Drinking a beer in the bar beneath the mid-Wilshire hotelapartment where he lives, he appears wary, leaning so far back in the dimly lit booth it‘s as though he’s trying to disappear into it.

“So, what was it like growing up with her? I don‘t know, it was kind of a nightmare a lot of the time. It really gets me all wound up, actually, thinking about it. So, I don’t know, whatever. I remember things like, I never really had the cool lunch at school like other kids, no Capri Sun and fruit roll-ups, just like an apple and a cheese sandwich. I remember some kid I used to play with, his mom asking me, ‘So, when was the last time you had a bath?’ At that time, I didn‘t care, I’d go, ‘Uhm, I don’t know, a week or something.‘ And I remember that the house was always kind of . . . not nice. It was not a nice house. My bedroom was like a mattress and some Legos over on the side.”

Alex stares at his hands holding the bottle of beer. “I think the best memories I have of hanging out with my mom is, in the mornings, we’d go for walks on the beach, and that was nice. My dad would be out of town a lot, and he‘d leave me alone with her. I was always so glad when he got back; it was always good to see him when he got back. So when they split up [and Alex lived with him], I was more or less happy about that. I remember I used to go hang out at her house on weekends, and that was kind of lame, because her shitty boyfriend would always be there. There was the old guy — he was just an old fart, I wondered why my mom married him. He was pretty benign, but the others were really animals. I couldn’t even believe where she found them, they were lousy motherfuckers, man. I think at some point, eighth or ninth grade, I just said to her, ‘Fuck it, I’m not talking to you anymore.‘

“Maybe it wasn’t the nicest thing for me to do, whatever; kids don‘t always know how to be nice, but I saw the way she was living and I just got disgusted with her. I was like, ’How can you live like this?‘ Maybe she was working at Orange Julius and living in a halfway house or something, and her clothes were all secondhand. I wanted her to be kind of normal, and she wasn’t; she was just like a total recovering fuckup, and I didn‘t really have any pity for it. It was embarrassing. I remember she wanted to take me to see movies on weekends, so we were in Westwood, and we saw a bunch of my friends from school, I mean, I just got so embarrassed, and I told her about it. I said, ’Aw, Mom, it‘s kind of embarrassing, the way you dress and stuff,’ and she got really offended and she stomped off. And I was kind of relieved, almost. I felt a little bad, but then I was like, well, it‘s the truth; she’s a weirdo and it‘s embarrassing. And she went one way and I went the other, and I was like, cool.

“I actually did live with her for a while when I was 17. I was fighting with my dad a lot, so I went and moved in with her. My mom was sober then; when she’s sober, she‘s a real nice person. That was the summer before I went to school at USC. I stayed in touch with her pretty much all the way through school, until she fell off the wagon, which was about fall of ’94.

“I was driving around with her when it happened. She had a job at the time, working at this flower shop, and we‘re driving in the flower truck, and she stopped at the liquor store, and I was like, what? And she went in and got some booze, and I just . . . I didn’t know what to say. I was kind of winded . . . I remember being kind of sickened by it, but things hadn‘t really gotten that bad for her, at that point. She still had a job and residence and everything. The thing is, though, she’d inherited a lot of money, and that‘s basically what pushed her off the edge, because she didn’t have to work. So, when she didn‘t have to work, I guess she just figured, fuck it.

“When she inherited the money, she said to me, ’You know what? I want you to have it all, because I have a lot of creditors that would be after it.‘ I said, ’Well, okay.‘ My dad thought it was a bad idea, but he didn’t really tell me exactly how bad an idea. So, I just gave [money] to her whenever she wanted some, but she just kept asking for more and more, and she was drunk all that time. I was on Venice Beach one time, and she came up and asked me for change. I was by myself, and I was like . . . I didn‘t know what to say to her, man. I said I couldn’t really help her. She asked me what happened to all her money, and I told her I‘d given it to her, that she’d had it, and it‘s gone. And she just ran away horrified, and I was horrified, and I ran away, too.

“For a while, I thought, maybe I can try to help her, you know. I’d help her get into a rehab thing, and she‘d just check herself out, and I was like, this is making me sick, too. She hung out with such creeps, man, goddamn, fuck. They were mostly drinkers, I think, they just were such roustabout lousy motherfuckers. One night, when I was all jacked up on speed, me and my compadre, he was a much bigger guy than I was, called my mom’s house while she was still in rehab, and I said to this guy that was staying there, ‘Oh, hey, dude, why don’t you be at my mom‘s apartment at such-and-such a time, because we’re bringing her home and we want to make sure someone‘s there.’ But we weren‘t bringing her home, we just wanted to go kick his ass. He was asleep. I just straight walked in, kicked him, and said, ’Get the fuck out. Give me your keys and get the fuck out,‘ you know? I’m sure it scared the crap out of him, and it was very satisfying to me; I was maybe 21. He split, but when she got out, she just let him back in anyway.

“Actually, during that whole time, I was really into amphetamines. I finally quit it around fall of ‘97. It was driving me crazy, the whole scene was driving me crazy. I said, fuck her, fuck speed, fuck everything, and I just started taking care of my life. We were kind of doing the exact same spiral. She went way further than I did, but it was very similar.”

Alex orders another beer, and moves to a well-lit table, where his voice rises.

“The day I find out about her [accident], I hadn’t spoken to her for a while. I was pissed off when I first heard about it. When my dad first called me, I was like, god damn her, what the fuck! Now this fucking fuckup has to go ahead and do this, has to get run over by a car? I got so pissed off, I almost said no, I‘m not going, I’m not going to go see that fuckup. But I did. We went and visited her, which was . . . pretty horrible. I hadn‘t seen her for a while, and when I see her she’s missing an eye and most of her teeth, and she has this bandage on her head. I was like, oh, Jesus Christ. It‘s like my dad said, she looked like she was 80 years old, and she’s only 52.

“After my dad dropped me off [at home], I just had . . . I kind of had this panic attack, this whole thing threw me off, and it felt like my heart was going to explode out of my chest, oh my god, what the fuck, the whole thing just horrified me. I don‘t see how she can go any lower than this. I’d like to think that at some point I‘d be making enough money that I could at least give her some. I’d like to be able to help her, like a good son should. A lot of people have to take care of their parents. They may not when they‘re as young as she is, so maybe I just have to start a little earlier than some kids should. I mean, she’s a fuckup, but at this point she‘s so old that she’s just such a mess. Who else is going to help her but her family? I think that partly she got the way she was, maybe she didn‘t have enough family to help her, I don’t know.

“I sort of know I come first. If she wants to die, fine — I gotta live. That‘s why I said to hell with her before. Honestly, I hate to say this, this is a shitty thought, but I think she’d be better off dead. Honestly. I mean, I thought, why couldn‘t the accident have just killed her? Fuck, man. Why must she hang herself around my neck like this, like some kind of albatross? It’s a drain. Parents shouldn‘t be there to drag you down, they should be taking care of themselves. You can fuck yourself up, but don’t make other people take care of you.

“And my dad . . . he never really gave me any good advice about how to deal with her, either. He knew what she was like, that‘s the thing that kind of pisses me off sometimes. When she fell off the wagon the second time, around fall ’94, he just didn‘t warn me, he didn’t say, ‘Look, it’s not worth your time,‘ or ’You oughta step back, don‘t get involved with it.’ He didn‘t say shit to me! He knew, though, because he had gone through the same thing, but he didn’t tell me anything. That fucker. I‘m pissed at both of them. I mean, he’s such a cold fish; he‘s a fucking robot, that’s how he can be so good at what he does. He only hears the voice of the equation, not a million voices like a lot of other people. Fine. He‘s very well-respected for what he does, like the Chinese have translated his texts so that they can study from them. He’s damn good, yeah. But he didn‘t protect me. No, he didn’t, he did not! He left me so open to that, this monster. He just, fuck, man, fuck . . . He wonders why I am the way I am, why I went fucking nuts when I was 17, like it‘s, ’Oh, it‘s a mystery.’ He just doesn‘t, ahhh, whatever . . . if he doesn’t see, he doesn‘t see. It’s all water under the bridge.

“People ask about my mom sometimes. I say, ‘She’s nuts, I don‘t talk to her anymore.’ I keep it brief, or else it invites a lot of questions I don‘t want to . . . I don’t know. It‘s just not fun to talk about. You’re the only person who really has even got this close to the situation, so maybe you can understand, but no one else does. No one in my family ever asked.”

Nancy and Mack

“They‘re for Mack,” Nancy says of the two ham sandwiches and container of cottage cheese she holds in her lap during a drive in early July to Rancho Los Amigos, where her boyfriend has been receiving care for the past six months. Mack was sleeping next to her on the night of the accident, and was paralyzed from the chest down.

“I met him on Thanksgiving Day. There was a group of us gathered in what we call Cactus Park, near the pier. We were waiting for people to bring turkeys and things. He winked at me, is what happened, and that was that, I just forgot about everybody else. We were together one year, one month and a couple of days before it happened. Except when he was in jail. He likes crack cocaine, which will land him in jail occasionally.

“We were pretty much dedicated to each other. We kept, you know, a routine. Somebody would always watch the bedding and clothing, while the other one went out and did something or other to get money. I did most of the panhandling. He didn’t like to do it; I put up with that. I averaged about $20 or $30. Sometimes I was in the mood, sometimes it was drudgery.”

As for the smashup that separated them, Nancy is fatalistic.

“The accident was so freaky. It could have happened to anybody. More than Mack and I had used that slab to sleep. It‘s a concrete porch in front of a city-owned utility building that has to do with monitoring the chlorine that’s sent into the sewage pipe that goes down to the Hyperion plant. There was a concrete porch about this high, and the car came from the north, I guess. She had to drive the car onto the concrete. It hit the wall of the building, and in the process of doing all that, she ran over my leg, which made my body go up, and my head connected with her bumper. I knew I went blind instantly, I knew it. I called out to Mack, I said, ‘I’m blind!’”

Nancy wheels herself around the spinal-cord injury ward, looking for Mack. He’s not in his room, nor in Occupational Therapy, where a young quadriplegic on a respirator is having his hand squeezed into a ball over and over by a nurse.

“My goal is to look for a place where Mack and I can live under the same roof. I‘m not talking about the same convalescent home, but a place where we can make it possible for him. I mean, he’s a quadriplegic, he needs incredible care. You have any idea what that entails? He can eat, but he has to have a suppository twice a day. He has to have what is called range of motion, he has to be exercised. He has to be turned. He has to have a Heparin shot, which is a blood thinner, to prevent blood clots. All kinds of different things. He‘s a diabetic, he has to keep checking his blood sugar. It’s complicated. The state will help with a nurse up to a certain number of hours, and the rest will be up to me. Ideally, I‘d like to be able to find somebody who has a guesthouse. An arrangement is what I’m looking for.”

Nancy finally runs into Mack in the hallway.

“Hi, Mack,“ she says, coyly lifting her eye patch.

“Where you been?” asks Mack, a very handsome black man who, were he able to stand, looks to be a good deal over 6 feet. Their respective wheelchairs make an embrace impossible; Nancy reaches out her hand, but does not quite touch him.

They go to the cafeteria, where Mack asks a visitor to position an elastic band around his left hand, in which she‘s instructed to stick a plastic fork.

“This is how I eat,” he says, as a visitor lifts the lid on his lunch tray; a steamy gravy aroma rises from the chicken leg and canned peas. He eats peas, bits of which stick to his cheeks, as he half-listens to the plans Nancy has.

“I’m hoping someone might have a guesthouse on their property that we could wheelchair-accommodate,“ Nancy says, ”and we could live like that, without having any interference from the rules and regulations of HUD, a which say you have to be married” — she is misinformed on this — “which even though, I mean, they‘ll come out and perform that, but . . .”

“I’m fixing out to a nursing home, trying to get closer to where my sisters at, that‘s Fontana,“ says Mack. ”My social worker trying to get me as close as I can to them.”

Hearing this, Nancy deflates. “I’m gonna go out and have a cigarette,” she says, wheeling past the young man from O.T., who is being fed lemonade through a straw.

Mack‘s life story, which he tells in exhaustive detail, is laden with bad decisions: knocking out the windows of downtown L.A. department stores before the age of 10; burglary and car theft; two-thirds of his 55 years spent behind bars in juvenile halls, Soledad, Jamestown, Paso Robles, Folsom; and a 30-year relationship with crack cocaine, which he does not consider a factor in his misfortune.

“I was going to jail way before I knew about cocaine. It hadn’t had nothing to do with me, ‘cause see, I never have been busted for drugs in my life.”

He asks a visitor to butter his bread, and then does not eat it.

“They got me for running on parole, ’cause I would not come up there and [drug] test — I stayed dirty a lot. Last time I got discharged, I caught the bus and went to Santa Monica. I met Nancy on the beach. She say I blinked at her,“ he says, watching Nancy wheel back in. ”But I didn‘t like that beach. At first I used to say to Nancy, ’I don‘t know how you can do it, I got to get the hell away from here.’ It was too cold, rain. But she tough, she‘s been out on the streets. She goes out and do her thing, getting the money every day. I mostly be sitting. That was basically it. She’d bring the food to me. Nancy‘s good at panhandling. She wasn’t ashamed of what she was doing.”

He looks at Nancy, looking at him. “She can get them people with that look, I guess they was feeling sorry for her.”

Nancy exhales a mirthless “heh heh” and shrinks in her chair.

Nancy and Mack go back to his room, where the TV is already on. An occupational therapist comes in and applies a hot pack to Mack‘s shoulder.

“That feel good, this here,” says Mack. “Since I been injured, I try to deal with it. I don’t even really think about it. I try to take care of my needs.” Mack closes his eyes as the O.T. manipulates his right arm across his chest. “Mmm, that‘s a good stretch when you come this way, all up in the socket. Feel them tingles. Oh, I passed some gas.”

Nancy and Mack sit in silence for 10 minutes, watching TV until it’s time for Mack to go lift weights. Nancy says goodbye to Mack; again, they do not touch.

Nancy is depressed during the drive back.

“He‘s never gonna walk. That would be a true miracle if he regained that ability, but I doubt it. And all this talk about his sisters, and wanting to be more where they live, which is more toward San Bernardino. I want to go back to Santa Monica.”

She stares out the window.

“What I want to avoid is being stuck in a board-and-care where you have people who are in la-la land. You’ve seen people who just rock back and forth from the Thorazine and other medications, or they sit there and they kind of have a dead, glazed look? I don‘t want to be in that kind of situation, or where people are talking to themselves, or where they get violent and act out, things like that, uh-uh. That’s one of my options, or maybe a sober-living situation, which would mean of course sobriety. It might mean not being able to go back to Santa Monica. I really just don‘t know. Ideally, I’d like to go back there, sure I would. And so does everybody else.”

Duane Bartsch, a lawyer, is suing the city of Santa Monica for $1 million on Nancy‘s behalf, claiming the parking lot should have been closed; the case has yet to be heard. Mack has been moved to a nursing facility in Claremont, where he recently underwent the amputation of his lower leg. Nancy is still a resident of Harbor Convalescent Hospital, and is trying to decide whether to be transferred to a board-and-care or wait for a Section 8 apartment or go back to the streets. She’s been taking Access Paratransit once a week to Santa Monica, to panhandle.

“It‘s good, though not nearly as good as when I was in the brace and wheelchair,“ she says, the fixator having been removed several months ago. ”I used to force myself to stay out and make $20 a day. Now, I’m getting about $10. It just depends on Lady Luck.”

Has she been drinking?

“Noooooo.”

Does she want to?

“Now and then, I want to.”

Does she think it will be hard to keep from drinking, should she wind up back on the streets?

“It‘ll probably be harder not to, yeah,” she says. “But I could live there, if I have to. I’d have to go to Sears and get a sleeping bag and everything. All I know is, I could live there. I know how to stay out of trouble.” She laughs the scorched laugh. “And I also know how to get into it.”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Nancy and Sarah talk about Kimberly Guilfoyle, media lightning rod and former ambassador to Greece (not Grease, because that’s Sarah’s gig). The journo babes talk plastic surgery, what is beauty, and Mar-A-Lago face. Then it's on to talking about AI, the future of writing—and civilization itself. Happy Thursday!

Also discussed:

* All 👏🏼 Amazon 👏🏼 Reviews 👏🏼 Matter 👏🏼 (except when they’re from bots, and maybe even then)

* Mike Darnell was the Bill Schulz of reality TV

* On re-hotting yourself

* Peptides: Pixie dust for the body

* Fake Emilia Hart, you get us! Also, WHO ARE YOU??

* Nancy is not on the vibrator train

* Hamish McKenzie, come on our pod. Let’s save media!

* When your best friend in high school is the hot girl

* Sarah’s book is the Plugra butter of the book world

* “That person’s too hot to be a publicist”

Plus, Sarah does her best Mr. Peanut impression, the 204th story in The Atlantic about AI scams, (EXCLUSIVE!) archival audio of Sarah telling Michael Moynihan her vibrator won’t turn off — and much more!

Don’t be a bot. Become a paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Nancy and Sarah are going to talk about L-O-V-E, and Nancy thinks she knows what it is, but Sarah (who just wrote a book on this topic) is pretty certain she can’t define what it is, nor can anyone, not in its many-tentacled forms.

First the ladies talk French protests, a hunger for rage and then a documentary about designer John Galliano, who soared in the fashion heavens like few others and crashed down just as hard. A blackout-induced tirade on the (what else?) the Jews in 2011 turned him into a proto cancellation story. Sarah has thoughts! For that matter, so does Nancy. And who doesn’t love Kate Moss after this doc?

Also discussed:

* John Cusack, the right kind of sexy in Say Anything

* “Pneumonic plague” not on our bingo cards

* Nancy has a visceral reaction to wool spun from Wallace’s fur

* Katie Herzog! Fifth Column! Meghan Daum! Laura McKowen! Sarah’s on fire.

* “Nobody can sing that song because it’s meant to be thumped.”

* The “small sweetness”: A debate!

* Sarah on fashion: “You don’t get to play this game, Shorty.”

* Nancy is the Kate Moss of this podcast?

Plus, our best-ever Halloween costumes, Bridget Phetasy is Joe Rogan-ing, the first (only?) Meow-atarian candidate, and much more!

John Galliano just launched a line with Zara. Girls like pretty dresses!

Smoke ‘Em sends the biggest birthday wishes to the wondrous one, a.k.a., Nancy’s daughter. Tavie, we love you madly xx

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Nancy and Sarah talk about the Cornell case. Maybe you’ve heard about it? They talk about drinking and consent, college bacchanals, cultural rot, the weird dehumanization of technology and porn, and how we can point fingers in so many directions, but ultimately, your life is your responsibility.

Questions on the table: What should the legal definition of rape be? How involved should colleges become in the private sex lives of their students? Are those students children — or adults? This is complicated business. Camille Paglia comes in and knocks some shit over on the table, because well, Aunt Camille. We love her, but she goes a little harder than Nancy and Sarah. We’re softer touches on this one.

Also discussed:

* The ‘00s went off the fucking rails

* Sarah’s IQ drops plummets when she’s sprung for a guy … “Where is Mexico?”

* Not gonna put my tongue on THAT third rail today …

* “Dear colleague” → Title IX → kangaroo courts

* Is Nancy a vampire? (Answer: Yes)

* Sarah reads a letter from a former frat boy

* “What about Skims!??”

* Wallace’s first voluntary appearance on a video pod

* Use lotion, start slow

* Rick Muthaf*cking Rubin can narrate us into the apocalypse

Plus, shout-outs to Yale and Bret Easton Ellis, the cigarette alto of Sarah’s audio book, the joy of Alamo Drafthouse, and much more!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Nancy and Sarah talk about Sarah’s new legal name—“Pre-orders Matter”—and her memoir coming out September 29. But first! Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote an essay. Maybe you heard about it? The journo broads talk parenting, ideology, public confession and what it means to sacrifice for your child.

* Y/N: Is mentioning you think Weinstein might have gotten a raw deal a good idea during book launch?

* Katie Herzog is a smart cookie

* The hard landing of overestimating your powers as a reporter

* Stop asking what kind of skin care Nancy uses!

* Who put you in charge?

Plus, a photo of Sarah’s three loves, revealed! After the break.

But first!

But second! They really do…

“You get at most one cliche per book,” the writer Jonathan Franzen said in a recent interview. Cue: Literary Twitter exploding. Snob! Hypocrite! But as Nancy and Sarah point out: Franzen is also awesome! And the journo babes love The Corrections and Freedom, etc. A discussion ensues about writerly rules (made to be broken) and the role of snobbery in the arts.

The journo broads also debate Emmy fashion, including Emmy host Mariska Hargitay’s teen daughter in what Nancy sees as a cute dress and Sarah sees as … not that. Nancy shuts down a misery scammer taking advantage of the memory of our late friend Andrew Wimsatt. Please only refer to Nancy, from now on, as “Nancy Rommelmann, online avenger.”

Sarah gives Nancy a pop quiz about her upcoming memoir (9/29/26), The Only Thing There Is to Want, which Nancy hasn’t read yet. Nancy gives Sarah a hard time for not having finished Nancy’s 2018 book To the Bridge, despite the fact that Sarah has had roughly eight years to do so.

This is a FREE episode, so send it to TWO friends, who’ll send it to two friends …

Also discussed:

* The return of the goon cave

* Do not f___ with Nancy’s people

* Widow’s Bay FTW!!!

* Oscar Isaac, Sarah’s boyfriend who is not Robert De Niro

* Sex worker or sorority girl?

* Metaphor debate!

* Ellroy or Leonard: Who said it?

* Paglia or Steinem: Who made the cut for Sarah’s book?

* Sarah goes to a hen party, does not apologize for the stereotype

Plus, the shadow side of second-wave feminism, Joan Didion gets it right, did Infinite Jest predict our AI doomscape? And much more!

ALSO! Sarah is teaching a special 90-minute memoir-writing workshop on Sat., Sept. 26, 1pm ET / 10am PT, for the under-$100 cost of 3 pre-ordered books. Just email your receipt(s) to 3lovesmemoir@gmail.com, and you’ll get a Zoom link.

More info on the memoir class here.

For the cost of a freaking matcha latte, you could get this 90-min intimate-funny-smart chitchat in your ear holes every time

Episode Notes:

Matt and others remember Andrew Wimsatt, a gentle giant of a man

“Anatomy of a Random, Unhinged Assault in Portland, City of Professed Benevolence,” by Nancy Rommelmann (RealClearInvestigations)

Big congratulations to Nancy’s longtime friend Larry Karaszewski, whose producer-daughter Carver—whom Nancy last saw when she was eight-years-old—was part of the Widow’s Bay Emmy sweep. Soak it up, Dad!

Nancy asked her daughter to weigh in on DressGate (picture below): “I was more attracted to Mariska, who is beautiful and sexy and amazing. Her daughter’s dress, I’m kind of neutral on. Plus they’re wearing matching dresses, which is sweet. We should all be so lucky. Just tell Hepola she’s a prude.”

Sarah responds: “I am rubber, you are glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” — The Management

Pre-order The Only Thing There Is to Want, because you have less than two weeks to listen to these plugs, so let’s celebrate.

What’s in your hot box?

Nancy: Murder in Paris ‘68: A True Story of Death and Glamour, by Edward Chisholm

Sarah: The White Album, by Joan Didion

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Nancy and Sarah discuss a Netflix documentary called The Unabomber in His Own Words, which came out years ago but has taken on new depth in our current mess. Ted Kaczynski’s random violence and mythologizing finds echoes in the Luigi Mangione case and the bizarre heroizing of Lindsay Clancy, who killed her three children.

The journo babes talk revolutionaries vs. terrorists, how humans are still evolving, why American can never find the middle ground, and whether AI is an extinction-level event. So: A lighthearted episode! Still there’s no end of laughs, or Sarah’s nicotine gum pouches.

Also discussed:

* Supergraphics!

* Fetterman at the RNC

* I mean, Trump could’ve just thrown Trump steaks at the audience

* Nancy is was a Netflix freeloader

* The Unabomber-Antifa connection

* Going no-phone is the new straight edge

* Big love (always) for Bryan Burroughs

* The New York Times calls Assata Shakur a “revolutionary” in obit, SMH

* Sarah talks about wearing a “baklava,” because she’s a Dallas girl

* Nancy devotes her entire future to writing the definitive book on MovieFone

* The Babe-vegetarian connection

* “We can just f*ck off climate change then”

* Sarah jinxes herself in a contest by declaring if she wins, she’ll wear a white suit

Plus, are geniuses sadists (paging Jon Ronson), we love Pam Colloff (again and always), another installment of “This Week in Kyle Chandler” (finally!) and much more!

The world is rough. Being a paid subscriber is easy

DON’T MISS: Sarah is teaching awriting workshop.

You can join! Details here.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Nancy explains the tragic case of Lindsay Clancy, a mother who strangled her three kids, to Sarah, who has only been barely paying attention. Nancy has written several stories about mothers who kill their children, including the nonfiction book, To the Bridge, a True Story of Motherhood and Murder. She and Sarah delve into the strong reactions people have to the case, the dangers of postpartum depression and the perils of over-medication, why being too invested in Clancy’s clemency might be a selfish pursuit, and how the criminal justice system might distinguish between the reason for a crime — and the responsibility for it.

Also discussed:

* Nancy likes a chunky guy

* Sarah has “the biggest memoir of the fall”??

* “Sly little kitten …”

* Steinem: The mixed bargain of being the face of a movement

* Betty Friedan was a feisty scrapper

* Gloria and her aviators

* “We gotta get rid of that lavender menace!”

* You can live your child at a firehouse?

* Lithium is a hell of a drug

* Married to the moon: We dig it!

Plus, were the Scientologists right about psychiatric drugs? Tarantino’s late-career genius, and no one asked the Smoke ‘Em girls to sing an early Rolling Stones jam but welp, they did anyway … and much more

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Nancy and Sarah welcome Ethan “crackerjack mouth” Strauss back to Smoke ‘Em for round three, this time inspired by his recent piece about a fake 49ers player who scammed scores of women out of more than a million dollars. Dark? Yes. Also hilarious, in terms of perpetrator Daejon Love’s come ons, e.g., telling women his family owned part of the Gucci store “on Saks Fifth Avenue.”

They also talk Ethan’s recent “get that nose to the grindstone, kids” piece about making money in sports media, how to help your aging parents not get scammed, and whether anyone on the panel cares what people think of them. (Spoiler: 1.5 yes/1.5 no.)

Also discussed:

* Katie Herzog retools her addition to help others

* “Unnecessary cleavage”

* Ethan as Chuck Klosterman of the week

* Daejon Love is nowhere near as hot as Napoleon

* “I was a white girl on Tinder”

* “Necessity is the motherf**ker of invention.”

* Some love for The Gift of Fear

* The iPhone as elder abuse

* Cary Grant, anyone? Anyone?

Plus, football as an old-fashioned striptease, baseball as a good sport to do your taxes to, why Gen Alpha likes golf best, and much more!

Oh hello, Sarah’s upcoming book is AN OPRAH PICK! Buy it now xx

Memoirist Hepola returns after her acclaimed recovery memoir, Blackout, with a wickedly lovable account of three lost loves: a married man, a younger man, and a New Orleans cop she once believed was the man of her dreams. The title arrives when she phones the married guy for advice about dealing with his 29-year-old successor. “I’m scared I only want what I can’t have,” she tells the ex. “Oh baby,” he replies, “It’s the only thing there is to want.” This line feels to Hepola like a skeleton key to her existence, unlocking the surprising amount of pleasure (not to mention the very good stories) one can find on the path of an apparently hopeless quest. Hepola’s self-deprecating candor and perfectly paced storytelling make this book anything but the boohoo-fest you might imagine. Possibly the perfect gift for a friend going through a breakup.

About that unnecessary cleavage…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

For her birthday today, Sarah had one request: Please, Nancy, will you PLEASE watch the 1978 super-musical that launched a million imitations, the much-cherished film that Sarah calls “Star Wars for girls” and one of her all-time favorites? As the poet says: Grease is the word. So, how’d that go?

But first, the gals talk about the unrivaled beautiful soul of Dolly Parton, whose death at 80 arrived yesterday. The tributes poured in (Eminem?), and there can never be enough, but the passing feels culturally momentous. Is this the unofficial end of the America century — or the American dream?

Also discussed:

* “WTF did Jolene look like?!”

* “Swagoo”

* The Osmonds weren’t slutty, as far as we know

* Newsflash: the feminists didn’t like a woman

* “Bite the weenie, Rizzo.” / “With relish.”

* Sarah punts her mother to voicemail

* The awesomeness of telling men they are handsome

* “Smell my Calvins”?

* The wonder of John Travolta dancing.

* Sarah casts a Heterodox Grease: Moynihan as Kenicke, Rosenfield as Marty, Rommelmann as Frenchy. (Sarah as Sandy, obvs.)

* BUT WHO PLAYS DANNY? One hint: Three men — a sweetheart and genius of a podcaster, an Italian stallion, and a brainiac born to hand jive, babeeee

Plus, Nancy counteracts Grease with another ‘80s classic, what it’s like growing up in the eye of the (imaginary) camera, Dolly’s letter to Eminem, and more!

Do you love Dolly? Are you a human being? Become a paid subscriber.

Pre-order Sarah’s new book. Even Oprah loves it (or, someone adjacent to Oprah)

Oprah’s Daily Picks: The Best Books of Fall 2026

Good morning. Many times in the past few years, including the dark times of 2020, I have thought how easy it is to turn your face to the sun, if you remember it is there and if you choose to. I watched the sunrise just before I recorded this for you. My mother had died two days earlier, there is always a lot to do in the wake of someone’s death, and it was the first time I was alone and thinking of her, and also how much she would have liked the hot tub I was in at that moment and which we bought the year before, how she for sure would have been getting in and out of it and insisting on doing so naked and not caring who saw her. Mom, she had a thing for being naked, to wit:

Mom [around 1998]: Nancy, I am going to a nudist camp, why don’t you come with me?

Me: Oh my god mom, no…

Mom: It will be fun! You can write about it.

I declined, with prejudice. Mom of course went. She never flagged in her commitment to walking around without her clothes on.

Anyone following along here knows my mom has been leaving us for several years, what I have come to think of as the long linger. At least a half-dozen times I drove away from the property thinking, that is the last time I will see her… But it never was, she was the unsinkable Kathy Hayes until this past Monday. As my friend Deb later said, “She found her way home.” I am taking a lot of comfort from that.

As you will hear in the audio, I was given a sign the day before…

This one’s a freebie. Subscribe for weekly Pie Talks, Smoking Diaries, and all other Smoke ‘Em episodes and niceties

I started seeing hawks as messengers just after Tim’s dad died. We were with him when he passed, in a hospital in Houston, which I wrote about in a “Modern Love” essay. I would be running in, say, Griffith Park, thinking about something difficult, and there a hawk would be, circling above me. Since Tim’s death in 2019, he’s taken over the messengering. At least that’s what I think. Anyway, this hawk was going at it all day last Sunday. There are a gazillion birds upstate but a hawk’s cry is very distinct.

On Monday afternoon, I was just coming back from a visit with Jon Ronson—whose latest book, The Castle: Adventures in the World of Unraveling Me, drops next week so go get that—when I pulled into the driveway and saw the hawk sitting there. It was a red-tailed hawk, in no hurry to move. It eventually did, keening as it flew north, then came back in the early evening, while I was sitting on the front steps soon after learning about my mom’s death.

Cooking for me is comfort and a solace. I don’t think it was that way for Mom, she was too hyper, a get-’er-done cook as opposed to a lingerer, read all about it, and her.

I gave you all the recipe for her red sauce on Pie Talk #4, in March 2023. Many changes since, including the featured image of the Melania painting now hanging in the studio where The Fifth Column guys record, and the Chinatown apartment being no more, or no more for me, though it has passed on to someone in the extended chosen family, which makes us all happy, it’s a rad pad with very, very good juju.

For now, I leave you with Mom’s Red Sauce. Please do make it, her gift to you. Let me know how it turns out xx

“Your Mom’s Red Sauce”

I’m calling it this because that’s how people always ask me for it. You are making a lot of sauce here, enough for several meals and several quarts for the freezer. This is also enough for one honkin’ big lasagna, and about that: When making lasagna, go for full-fat ricotta and mozzarella. How you make lasagna, you say? Like this: In a very large baking pan, layer sauce, al dente cooked lasagna noodles, egg-size globs of ricotta, slices of mozzarella, repeat and repeat. The finished product will weigh about 8 pounds. Bake it at 350, loosely covered with foil, for about an hour, then remove foil and bake another 30 minutes, until top layer of cheese is all melty and browning. This will feed at least 10 - 12 people, who as the years go by will ask you please to make it again x

* Olive oil, 4 - 6 T.

* 2 large yellow onions, chopped

* 2 cloves garlic, chopped

* 2 pounds hamburger meat, 80/20% fat

* 5 cans (29-ounce) Hunt’s Tomato Sauce. Yes, I know some of you want to use an Italian brand, or something organic. You do you but that’s not the sauce, and if I had a nickel for every person I’ve given this recipe to who later said,”It didn’t taste like yours...” and then admitted they did not, as specifically instructed, use the Hunt’s, I’d have about 65-cents. Try it this way first and then go fancify!

* 2 T. dried oregano, 1 T. dried basil if you have some, 2 bay leaves

In a large heavy-bottom sauce pot (not “sauce pan” as I repeatedly said in the audio), heat the olive oil over medium-heat. Add the onion and cook until translucent and with some brown bits, stirring occasionally. Add garlic and cook about a minute, stirring. Try not to burn the garlic (... she writes, often doing so herself.)

Break up hamburger with your fingers and drop into the cooking onions. Don’t break it up too much; you want some hunks the size of whole walnuts, and don’t stir too much. Cook until the meat loses its pink and there are some brown bits.

Pour in the sauce, crunch in the oregano and basil between your fingers, and add bay leaves. Stir the meat up from the bottom and bring the sauce to a simmer. Once it simmers, turn the flame as low as it will go, cover the pot but leave a tiny crack for steam to escape, and simmer, at least two hours, stirring from the bottom every 20 minutes or so, to avoid meat sticking to the bottom and scorching. Depending on your burner, a flame-tamer may be in order. The sauce originally called for three hours of simmering and by all means, go for it, but two hours is also fine.

Remove from heat, eat some right away on hot pasta, let the rest cool and freeze or otherwise save for another day.

Things people have added to good effect: Italian sausages for last hour of cooking (my mom), a splash of red wine and red pepper flakes (my former husband).

Things people have put this sauce on other than pasta: bread in a bowl (everyone), salad (my late stepfather).

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com/subscribe

Nancy and Sarah talk about the death of Hayden Panatierre at the age of 36, which just so happens to be the age that Marilyn Monroe died. Sarah wants to know why child actors get an exception against laws preventing kids from working. Nancy spills the secrets on how they get babies to cry in the commercials — and it’s sad! The discuss addiction, postpartum depression, domestic abuse, and more.

The ladies also discuss Nancy’s mom, who passed Monday (yesterday as of this writing). Kathy, we miss you already, and we thank you. Now, about that leather jumpsuit …

Free episode: Invite your friends!

Also discussed:

* Nancy in the Morning™️

* Italians are Sarah’s favorite ethnic stereotype

* Dax / Dak, whatever

* Heroes = pre-Mad Men TV programming

* Can a mother come back from losing custody of her children?

* The mysteries of Marilyn Monroe’s death

* Blackout drinking is “suicide for a night”

* Everybody loves Xanax

Plus, that time Nancy slept like a gunshot victim, our favorite Miranda Lambert jams, and much more.

You know Smoke ‘Em has a YouTube channel, right? Where we post things like…

Don’t be a dope. Become a paid subscriber.

Has Sarah mentioned she has a book coming out Sept 29, and that pre-orders matter? Well, as Alanis says, you oughta know …

PRE-ORDER THAT BAD BOY.

Episode Notes:

“Hayden Panetierre is Dead: Star of Nashville and Heroes Dies at 36,” New York Times obituary

This is Me: A Reckoning, by Hayden Panittiere

To the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder, by Nancy Rommelmann

What’s in your hot box?

Sarah:

Nancy:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com/subscribe

Nancy and Sarah discuss the Hulu/FX series The Shards, the new Bret Easton Ellis and Ryan Murphy jam. The 1981 LA vibes are right in Sarah’s sweet spot (Bonne Bell! Xanadu! The Go-Gos!). For Nancy, not so much, maybe because she lived it. They talk ennui and heroin overdoses and young people trying to prove nothing matters. Then it’s onto the recent shocking Perez Hilton livestream. Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face, in this case (all cases?), tragically.

Also discussed:

* Nightie Day!

* “My mom’s poochie.”

* Studio 54 days

* Rich Angeleno kids = meh

* Smoke ‘Em: Banned in Belarus!

* Sarah doesn’t read Nancy’s existing books but asks her to write others

* Wes Bentley’s eyebrows

* Rich kid names (Homer, Igby, Kaia)

* “Touch it!”

* Who IS Perez Hilton?

* Attention monsters of the Internet

* Women with long and thick silver hair, swoon

Plus, This Week in Kyle Chandler, a dystopic LA short story from Nancy (NB: which was just too gd long to post; it’s “X-Girl” in the collection), and much more!

Attention please: Send us your letters! Subscribe to the YouTube. Buy Sarah’s book! Sign up for Sarah’s Substack LOVE ANYWAY. Do something.

This one’s a freebie - go ahead and subscribe!

Nancy tells the story of a destroyed Jamie Slovak showing up in her yard at 6am on a June morning in 1988. His brother Hillel, guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, had just overdosed, and Jamie, who spent a lot of time at Nancy’s West Hollywood house those days, needed comfort. Nancy has not seen Jamie in decades and was glad to learn just now that he is involved in this doc, which came out earlier this year.

Episode Notes:

“‘The Shards’ Soundtrack Is Incredible – Here’s Every Song From The First Two Episodes” (Elle/Yahoo)

“Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis Team Up for FX’s Predictably Excess-Soaked Tale of Prep-School Sex, Drugs and Murder” (Hollywood Reporter)

The Bad Mother: A Novel, by Nancy Rommelmann

“Perez Hilton ‘Will Require Surgery’ After Live Stream Incident, Family Demands Media ‘Cease Photographing Perez’s Children’” (Variety)

Official Family Statement on PerezHilton.com

This Week in Kyle Chandler:

What’s in your hot box?

Nancy: Nike Training Club app

Sarah:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com/subscribe

There’s this movie everyone is talking about, have you heard of it? The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan, he of the sweeping historical sagas. Sarah’s theory is that it’s the male Barbie, with something for everyone. Whether the ultimate hero’s journey is still relevant in the age of TikTok might/might not be answered by the movie taking in $727+ million in its first 12 days. Nancy and Sarah debate whether the three-hour film is too long (no/yes), whether it needed the Eliot Page character (yes/no), and did Nolan drop the ball on the Sirens (YES!!!!). Sarah delivers some light and loving pushback on the recent episode about Fauci. Then, what do people say behind your back? Sarah and Nancy ponder. Also, we introduce a new segment, "This Week in Kyle Chandler” because … Kyle Chandler.

Also discussed:

* Grease is the word.

* Kaboodles are still a thing

* Mary Katharine Ham is a star

* “It’s gross how cute you are.”

* “Fauci was rubbing it …”

* Cat Damon!!

* You’re welcome back any time, Scott Greenfield

* Sarah refuses to pronounce Ross Douthat’s name properly until he comes on the pod

* No sex for Circe

* Samantha Morton is not Emily Watson …

* “Sarah with the tits, Nancy with the eyes”

Plus, why Nancy and Sarah are taking a road trip to a ranch near Austin, Nancy on that weird Stockard Channing movie, a hot box where every relationship is transactional, and much more!

Paid subscribers get a picture of a cat that looks like Matt Damon, what more can we say?

“I wonder if I can get people to click over and subscribe to the Smoke ‘Em YouTube?”

Episode Notes:

Cast your female podcasters (L to R): Frenchie, Rizzo, Marty

Totally appropriate after-school movie in 1973 …

“It Is Banal, Bland, Thin and Didactic. We Can’t Stop Talking About It,” Ross Douthat on The Odyssey (New York Times)

ICYMI the indomitable Mary Katharine Ham (full epi here):

“Fauci and the Fifth,” by Scott Greenfield (Simple Justice blog)

“What's the bad thing people say about you?,” by Esther (The Spike Substack)

Never sleep on Helen Lewis …

“First Look Inside Men’s Journal’s Summer Entertainment Special With Kyle Chandler” (Men’s Journal)

What’s in your hot box?

Nancy:

There’s a Bear in the House! by Walter Kirn (audio)

Regarding the bear that showed up at Nancy’s Mom’s…

Sarah:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

There are a lot of things Dr. Anthony Fauci might have said during his Senate hearing yesterday, about what he thought and did and did not do and might have done differently during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and lead member of the White House COVID-19 Response Team invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent more than 90 times. Is this shocking? Predictable? Irresponsible? Dangerous? Yes and yes and yes and yes.

With Sarah busy recording the audiobook for her upcoming memoir, The Only Thing There Is To Want, Nancy asked perennial straight-shooter Mary Katharine Ham to come talk about Fauci, his “cartoonish self-absorption,” the political marketplace that has us tilt toward hero worship, and the one official who maybe kinda sorta admitted she was wrong about lockdowns.

Also discussed:

* Must be nice to have never heard of the Tate brothers

* The “personality disorder economy” that gives us a Dr. Fauci (and a Candace Owens)

* Did Mary Katharine and Nancy adhere to the government-mandated COVID protocols? No, no they did not

* John Fetterman’s statement seemed pretty close to the mark for many of us

* What sort of hubris has you writing your diary on a government computer?

* A small nod of respect for Deborah Birx

* Women watch true crime on TV. Men watch…

* Mary Katharine and Nancy come up with a new hustle

Plus, what is lost when you catastrophize, love and props for Liz Wolfe, Mary Katharine re-reads a book she hates, and much more!

Did you watch Young Washington in anticipation of talking about it on First Sunday Zoom is this Sunday, August 2, 8pm ET/5pm PT? There’s still time! Paid subscribers get link day-of.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Nancy and Sarah discuss a two-part HBO docuseries called “What Happened, Brittany Murphy?” Did it just come out? No. But it’s compelling and relevant to many Smoke ‘Em hot topics (celebrity, sociopathy, addiction, true-crime). As Sarah texted Nancy, “It = our lane.”

The movie tackles the mysterious 2009 death of actress Brittany Murphy, who hit the scene with Clueless and went on to 8 Mile and rom-coms like Just Married (when she was dating Ashton Kutcher) before plunging into a career spiral. That involved a boyfriend, Simon Monjack, who proves more sinister than the man he pretends to be.

The conversation includes tangents on child actors, Marilyn Monroe, and what kind of role Murphy played in a relationship with a walking red flag who would end up sucking her money, her self-esteem, and eventually her soul.

Also discussed:

* “Sienna” is a color?

* Sarah has adorable feet, Nancy has great up-tops [NSFW]

* 8 Mile is a banger

* Props to Perez Hilton for admitting his despicable behavior

* Nancy says the “f” word (no, not that one); Sarah nevertheless objects

* Howard Stern is terrified of women

* Nancy and Sarah both weigh 130 pounds

* The undeniable hotness of peak Ashton Kutcher

* Six Degrees of Nancy Rommelmann strikes again: Demi Moore edition

* Frozen orange juice concentrate, remembered

* Sweetened condensed milk, remembered

* The power of Matt Drudge

* Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott = good dude

* Don’t sleep on the latest Andy Mills joint

Plus, the iconic Marilyn dresses we’d like to wear, Denzel’s masculine energy directed at the right targets, and much more!

NOTE: Nancy is scheduled to appear on FOX’s “America’s Newsroom” Monday, 7/19, 10:15am ET.

OTHER NOTE: Sarah’s new Substack, Love Anyway, launches soon and is FREE.

We’ll be any Marilyn Monroe you like if you become a paid subscriber.

Small note: Could maybe use a bra.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Nancy and Sarah discuss the latest Atlantic cover story, “The End of Reading Is Here” by Rose Horowitch, who is too young to be writing a story this good (not that that’s relevant). The essay, which provides a historical and statistical overview of the written word, is something of a cold shower: “The literary era will prove to be a brief interlude between the oral and the digital ages.”

We talk deep reading, AI, the joys of intellectual discovery, the rise of audiobooks, how to turn a kid off reading (Ivanhoe), and more.

Also discussed:

* Nancy vs. Sarah: Who wins in a cage match? VOTE NOW

* Emergency self-tanner recommendations

* Smoking Diaries and Pie Talk are back. What is this, 2024?

* Mike Pesca, we salute you.

* AI: Nancy wants to know, does it bleed?

* We have a YouTube channel. Obviously, you subscribe …

* Nancy adorably mispronounces “papyrus” (19-20 min)

* A Clockwork Orange is NOT written in Olde English

* “Screw the canon.”

* The beauty of math

* High school: boys like The Odyssey, girls like To Kill a Mockingbird

* Reading Updike for the first time, swoon

* Sarah apologizes to the ghost of David Wallace

* Lindsey Graham, RIP

* Lindsay Graham, aka Sarah’s ex, once insulted Sarah’s self-tanning, and she never forgot it.

Plus, thoughts on AI character Tilly Norwood, Erica Jong’s mothering fails, Sarah wants a shirt that reads I BLAME MOYNIHAN and much more!

REMINDER: Sarah is launching a FREE Substack, LOVE ANYWAY. Don’t miss out.

The end of podcasting is nowhere near, especially when you become a paid subscriber.

You know what would make our YouTube channel better? Yeah you do

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Nancy and Sarah discuss Graham Platner and an explosive Politico story accusing him of sexual assault. Do you think social media has opinions on this? Do you think people will show consistency, calm and rationality in their discussion of this sensitive topic? Of course not! But then, what would we talk about on this pod?

Also discussed:

* Nancy’s Flock of Seagulls hair

* Partisanship is undeniably part of this story

* Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the first blackout book

* The IG messages we wish Jenny Racicot had not deleted

* We are all unreliable narrators

* When therapists don’t go on record …

* New York Times vs. Politico

* The return of mom jeans

* The indoctrination camp of BlueSky

* Man up, Graham Platner!

* The award for “running your head into a brick wall” on Twitter goes to …

* AIPAC, the new dog whistle

* Kyle Chander: TEXT US.

Plus, we need a “men yell at us” supercut, Stephen King’s woke daughter, a breezy summer beach read, and more!

ANNOUNCEMENT! Sarah is starting a Substack, called Love Anyway, and it’s free. It’s launching mid-July. Sign up here, or you’re gonna get left behind, and you’ll be sad.

Also sad is when you aren’t a paid subscriber to this pod.

Plus, Sarah says goodbye to one of the people who built her. RIP, Dave Barranco.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit https://www.smokeempodcast.com

Are you proud of America? It can be a complicated question. Sarah and Nancy tackle the topic of patriotism and whether American is an unfinished experiment or a beautiful place unlike any other country. (But wait: Why can’t it be both?) We talk about a Tom Hanks-produced Netflix series on the nation’s founding, The American Experiment, which shows how much in-fighting and compromise were part of the country’s creation. The series also introduces us to a peg-legged lady killer who wrote much of the Constitution (Gouverneur Morris) and confirms that Alexander Hamilton was, indeed, a hottie.

Nancy just moved into her new pad, so you’ll have to excuse a) the slight echo and b) the three (?) different times she had to leave to attend to a mover.

Also discussed:

* True or False: Sarah is a flower girl at Taylor Swift’s wedding

* True or False: Semiquincentennial is a real word

* Happy graduation, Megan!

* The downward mobility of college grads

* That time Sarah doubled-down on becoming un-hireable

* American Dream: Beautiful or unfinished? Let’s debate!

* “They tried to take away football”

* JD Vance, Ben Rhodes, Zohran Mamdani, Al Gore

* “What’s a buggy whip?”

* The Scots love Boston

* Croats > Brits

* James Madison isn’t black???

* George Washington: Amazing man, maybe not the most fun at the kegger

* Writers who get our love: Emily Yoffe, Pamela Colloff, William Finnegan

* How to make Nancy swoon? Tell her you know her byline

Plus, Avocado toast and doomsday, Sarah at the World Cup, Nancy only does the “F” in Marry, Fuck, Kill, and much more!

REMINDER: First Sunday Zoom, July 5, 8pm ET/5pm PT.

Also two questions: Are you in college? And do you cover your heart during the National Anthem? Let know in the comments or — even better — tell us yourself on Sunday.

Do you hate America, or are you willing to become a paid subscriber?