Archive Search Results

1. Books

   Surviving With Two Runaway Daughters

   Debra Gwertner's memoir, Live Through This

   By Nancy Rommelmann

   Published: June 25, 2009

   “For People magazine,” says Barry Lopez, watching as a photographer arranges a group of women before the Eugene, Oregon, condominiums in which Lopez lives with his...

2. Books

   The Lies and Follies of Laura Albert, a.k.a. JT LeRoy

   No exit plan

   By Nancy Rommelmann

   Published: February 21, 2008

   You're on the brink of adolescence, chubby, frizzy-haired, self-conscious to the point of social paralysis. What if you could be someone else? Maybe the cute blonde in your...

3. Books

   The Life and Death of JT LeRoy

   Lies and follies of Laura Albert

   By Nancy Rommelmann

   Published: February 21, 2008

   1980: He is born on Halloween, in West Virginia. His early life is marked by physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his lot-lizard (i.e., truck-stop hooker) mother,...

4. Books

   William Langewiesche on The Atomic Bazaar and Facing our Worst Fear

   The eventualist

   Nancy Rommelmann

   Published: July 26, 2007

   “Chevron apparently wrote an extremely pissed-off letter,” says William Langewiesche, thumbing through the June issue of Vanity Fair, where the month before he...

5. Features

   Lives of the Carnies

   On the road with the Cleanest Show in the West

   Nancy Rommelmann

   Published: March 17, 2005

   Photos by Virigina Lee HunterIt’s been raining for three days in Indio, a hard spring rain that’s turned the beige concrete houses on one side of Arabia Street the color of a...

6. Features

   Brown Dirt Cowboys

   Meet Esteban Hills and crew, your gardeners

   Nancy Rommelmann

   Published: October 21, 2004

   Photos by Slobodan Dimitrov Jorge carries a cow-size bundle of eucalyptus branches on his back. He is an anachronistic figure as he moves down a popular actor’s private...

7. Dining

   Satan’s Whiskers and Maiden’s Prayers

   Libations from a bygone era

   Nancy Rommelmann

   Published: September 25, 2003

   Photo by Anne Fishbein So a guy walks into a bar. He looks at the dame in the corner, the one giving him the big eye; he’ll deal with that later. Right now, he’s got business...

8. Dining

   Dog Day Afternoon

   Nancy Rommelmann

   Published: September 11, 2003

   Photo by Anne Fishbein When I moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn, the man I’d moved here for affixed a button to his cap that read, “We don’t care how they do it in New York.”...

9. Dining

   Good Grub

   Nancy Rommelmann

   Published: May 15, 2003

   Photo by Anne Fishbein The blocks between Cahuenga and Highland, Melrose and Santa Monica, are where much of moviemaking magic happens, if you consider the magic to be...

10. Books

    Sex, Death and Hard Beauty

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: April 3, 2003

    The book jacket of Kevin Patterson's first short-fiction collection, Country of Cold, Stories of Sex and Death, claims it's about "the lives of vibrant young men and women...

11. Features

    Why Not to Write About a Supreme Master of the Universe

    A day with the disciples of Ching Hai

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: July 4, 2002

    Illustration by Jason Holley I FIND THE LOCAL OFFICES OF THE INTERNAtional association of the Supreme Master of the Universe in a squat warehouse in a rather sad-looking...

12. Style

    Mother Lode

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: June 13, 2002

    Photos by Larry Hirshowitz ABOUT A DECADE AFTER A WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO A GIRL, SHE BEGINS TO know exponentially and unequivocally less about fashion than her daughter. I'm not...

13. Dining

    More Is More

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: January 24, 2002

    Before the opening of Hollywood and Highland, I did not think Los Angeles capable of erecting a structure as aesthetically confused as the Hotel Sofitel, a...

14. Dining

    Eat at L. Ron’s

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: November 15, 2001

    At least twice a day for the past eight years, I’ve driven past the Manor Hotel, which houses the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center International. But it was not until...

15. Features

    Who She Took With Her

    . . . The husband, the son, the boyfriend . . . a drunk's tale

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: November 1, 2001

    age 19, wedding day On December 12, 1948, Nancy Schorn was born into privilege. Her father was the chief financial officer of the plumbing conglomerate American Standard,...

16. Dining

    Call Waiting

    An actor caters

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: July 26, 2001

    In a quiet corner of a Studio City bar called Residuals, cater waiter and actor Richard Comeau, a self-professed “man of many faces,” hands me two head shots: a straight-ahead...

17. Dining

    He Sells Surfdogs by the Seashore

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: June 28, 2001

    One balmy day last summer, my boyfriend and I came up with what we thought was a good way to spend a relaxing day: bike riding on the beach path in Santa Monica. After...

18. Dining

    Beyond the Bar

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: June 7, 2001

    Quick, name a restaurant that’s good-looking, casual, and where most every reasonably priced dish is a triumph. Coming up blank? That‘s likely because L.A. is full of places...

19. Dining

    Eat Beef While Ye May

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: May 24, 2001

    I never gave much thought to the thousands of miles of ocean that cosset our country until the meat crisis afflicting much of the rest of the world hit; each horrific headline...

20. Dining

    All You Can’t Eat

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Published: May 3, 2001

    “These aren’t even as good as the ones you get at Ralphs,” says my friend, rolling an inari sushi across her plastic plate. We’re sitting in Todai, an all-you-can-eat sushi...