Make More Pie

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How are you feeling on this fine Saturday morning? I’m apparently so turned around by how liberated I’ve been this week that I forgot, in the audio, that the markets are not open today. Be thankful for small favors.

But man, what a week: the biggest two-day market drop ever, an estimated loss of $9.6 trillion since Trump took office, including yesterday Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk seeing $15.9 billion and $11 billion of their fortunes wiped out, respectively. How about you and me? I haven’t had the guts to check on my investments, though I was a bit fixated on this yesterday:

Nothing comes out of the blue, and I don’t want to spend undue time charting how we got to a place where Donald Trump can unilaterally decree a state of emergency in order to place “reciprocal tariffs” — via rules he came up with himself — on 100+ countries. That the formulation makes no sense terrifies people who understand this stuff:

I’m not one of these people, but as you can hear in the audio, I’ve been around the stock market my entire life (when my brother, age four, was asked what his dad did for a living, he said, “He breaks stocks”). I’ve also spent my working life interviewing and writing about sociopaths/psychopaths (the terms are, to me, a distinction without a difference).

The actions of Donald Trump - his unwillingness to look at history, to understand economics, to distort the facts to fit his theory - might be seen as childlike, seen as stubborn, seen as sociopathic. Does he care that his policies might give rise to the next iteration of Hoovervilles? Might he even take some pride in the new Trump Towns, the rest of us begging for relief? I don’t know. But based on the work I have done, starting with interviewing the serial killer John Wayne Gacy in 1994, I am sure of one thing: there are people in this world who absolutely delight in having you fall for their lies, and who base their promotion on your demotion. These people do not experience remorse, or (alas) have the ability to feel love, but there is one thing that gives them wood, and that is getting one over on you.

I am sickened by the commotion Trump is foisting on America, and the world; how he is unmaking —with the collusion of the sycophantic legislators he’s inspired, though I suspect some of them are running for the exits, chased by constituents frantic with insecurity — a century of American hope and hegemony. I am not going to get sentimental about that - the earth will continue to turn — but to go down in such a stupid stupid fashion, at the whim of a man whose source of power is keeping others off-balance; who’s best friend is a hound named Chaos… which is sad if you think about it. I’ve always thought of Trump an insecure man. And what can an insecure person offer but that of which he knows?

Strap in for Monday.

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Episode notes:

Serpent Mound

Bob Dylan Center

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

“No Exit Plan, the Lies and Follies of Laura Albert, aka, JT Leroy,” by Nancy Rommelmann (LA Weekly)

Destination Gacy: A Cross-Country Journey to Shake the Devil’s Hand, by Nancy Rommelmann

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Donald McNeil Jr., a 45-year New York Times veteran, comes on the pod to talk with Nancy and Sarah about … so much. The prompt was the recent NYT story, “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives.” As the paper of record tries to come correct on Covid, we wanted to hear from the science journalist, one of the first to tell Americans about this strange thing called the coronavirus. A self-declared “cranky old-school” reporter, McNeil landed the story of his career in 2020 and became part of a team that won the Pulitzer. But by 2021, he was gone, amid scandal and speculation. He talks about the bizarre kerfuffle that led to his resignation, mean girl dynamics at the paper, being misled by scientists, and what we do and don’t know about Covid-19’s origins.

As McNeil wrote in Wisdom of Plagues, "Covid coarsened us as a nation... The coarsening cracks our national skin. It makes us more vulnerable to infection.

Also discussed:

* Nancy tries not to fangirl. She fangirls anyway.

* “It’s a great newspaper but it’s a second-rate corporation, and its personnel stuff is particularly bad.”

* The walk McNeil took with James Bennet, a year after both getting booted from the Times, is a play we’d like to see

* “Looks like Don nailed it. Let’s not tell him.” (!!!!!!)

* NYT brass on their writing staff: “Widgets made here.”

* Young turks vs. cranky old-timers in union leadership

* The Daily Beast and Gawker do not cover themselves in glory

* "The Western focus on personal liberty above all can kill."

* The Mike Pesca of it all

* The hope that Covid might “unite us with a common enemy” like WWII. Awww, what happened instead? We turned on each other.

* “Ecstasy is a very good drug to get you talking”

* McNeil = not a fan of Jay Battacharya

* Thoughts on RFK!

Plus, McNeil explains what “hot-box” once meant, where he thinks H5-N1 is going, how cancel culture is like the French Revolution, and much more!

Does McNeil think Covid-19 was engineered in a virology lab or evolved in the wet market? Paid subscribers find out!

Cross-posted at Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

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Mike Cummings spent much of the pandemic drinking beer with his friends on church steps in the East Village. It’s not that he didn’t like bars, he loved them, including St. Dymphna’s, where he’d bartended and which he once dreamed of owning. But New York City real estate is a shark tank, and for years, spots he planned on taking over fell through.

“Then commercial rent prices went down,” says Cummings, of the bleak if opportune COVID era, and in 2022, he and his partners opened the Lower East Side bar Victoria!

Which, to this born-to-it barfly - dad was a bartender in his youth; husband was tending bar when we met; once wrote a bar guide - is everything a bar should be: a little punk, a little Rat Pack, with lighting that makes everyone look 25. Oh, and the Black Manhattans don’t hurt.

Cummings, also songwriter/singer for the band Skaters and other projects (his beautiful “Hooray for None” - which I accidentally called “Hooray for No One” - is the outro here) first landed on my radar in 2008, when he was working at a Portland coffee shop owned by my husband.

“Back then, I felt like being a barista was a rock star job, like, you really made it,” says Cummings, who now knows the joys and stresses - applying for a votive candle permit, anyone? - of owning his own business.

Also discussed:

* How Cummings was halfway tricked into buying Victoria!

* The ruthlessness of the record industry

* Getting sued before you’re even open

* The most popular drink in New York City right now is…

* Do people still flirt in bars? Depends on the bar

* When Portland was weird in a good way

* That STRFKR song you’ve heard a million times

* Trivia night!

After the break, Cummings’ (other) favorite NYC bars, where to go for late-night grub, a recipe for the perfect 50/50, and much more!

Victoria! is located at 235 Eldridge St. NYC. Trivia night is Wednesday at 6:30. See you there?

Tip your server!

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Anthony Falco is an international pizza consultant, which to me sounds more like teen boy’s fantasy than an actual gig...

“I mean, I made the job up, but it is very real,” says Falco. “I've worked in 22 different countries around the world. And staying very busy.”

In addition to fast-tracking the skills of people on a quest to make great pizza, Falco last year wrote (and illustrated!) Pizza Czar - which may convince you, as it did me, to start making a starter. Since nearly all of us eat pizza, most of it mediocre, I consider what Falco does to be a true public service. Plus he’s just an awesome guy to talk to.

In this second episode of CHEFS TALK, Falco describes how the “soul-crushing” tasks of working in a drugstore at age 14 led to restaurant work by 15 (“I thought the cooks were the coolest dudes. They just came in and just kicked ass and then drank beer”); how a family tragedy when he was 19 put him back in touch with a father who’d been on the run for 15 years for smuggling hash, and how together they went to Sicily and discovered… pizza, an odyssey that for Falco has never stopped.

“This summer I was in Mongolia doing pizza consulting,” he says. “I think I can really say I'm an international pizza consultant at that point, you know?”

Also discussed:

* Four basic starters doughs

* Why there could be no pizza before 1492

* “The trick to baking is the baking.”

* Falco makes a case for front of the house; Nancy is duly chastened

* There is zero reason to be using bleached flour

* Coffee coffee coffee

* Fight us: Portland, Oregon is the country’s best pizza city

* There are other great pizza cities, and Chicago ain’t one of them

* What supermarket frozen pizza Falco would go for

* That place you think is raking it in? It ain’t

Also, Falco’s favorite kitchen tool (and if you find one let him know!), what he makes himself on his day off, an absolutely banging Burmese restaurant in San Francisco (can confirm), and more.

Behind the paywall: more Falco faves, including three New York City pizza restaurants and five (!) in Portland, three flours for pizza (and beyond!); two food podcasts (we like to share!) and much more

For the whole pie, subscribe!

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Kicking off CHEFS TALK with Jeff Miller, owner of the sushi bar Rosella, and Bar Miller, an eight-seat omakase restaurant that received a Michelin star in December. How does that change one’s fortunes?

“It overnight switched it from a business that, you kind of don't know what to expect from one day to the next to, every day you're on,” says Miller.

Bar Miller’s rise was somewhat faster than Rosella’s protractedly long soft-opening, when pandemic-era regulations and officials devised onerous and seemingly arbitrary ways to keep restaurants closed. (Remember being required to buy sandbags, but only from one place out on Staten Island? Miller does!) But rise it did, with the New York Times and New York Magazine raving from the jump.

“After that, it was a different universe for us,” says Miller, whose dedication to using local and sustainable East Coast fish is an ever-going odyssey that began when he hit the New York sushi scene in 2016.

“There are countless guides for Japanese fish, but I was kind of on my own [here],” he says. “I kept track two and a half, three years, and I used 91 unique species. Not all of them were good, but yeah, it was a crash course in local seafood.”

Also discussed:

* The positives of launching a restaurant during the time of COVID

* Panning for gold in Grass Valley, California

* Great tuna and scallops from New Jersey? Yes!

* The rise of omakase in New York City

* The “sugar crust” of fame

* How the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration may impact restaurant staffing

* An outstanding seafood restaurant in Mexico City

Plus, Miller’s favorite kitchen tools, what he eats on his day off, and a preview of next week’s episode with international pizza consultant (an actual thing!) Anthony Falco.

CHEFS TALK will be coming to you Thursdays. For full episodes, video, links to where the chefs eat and all the food talk, become a paid subscriber.

With thanks to Eli Lake for the bangin’ theme music and Jenn Sen for the anchor pic

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Reading Noah Rothman’s new piece in Commentary, “A Clockwork Blue: How the Left Has Come to Excuse Away and Embrace Political Violence,” I felt as though he had written it just for me; this, because he called to account institutions and individuals who proclaim violence from the left justified, a trend I found maddening when I covered 150+ nights of violent street protests in Portland in 2020.

And about that: How long did Rothman think that violence would have been explained away had it been committed by the right?

"Hours," he said.

In a discussion that calls out violence on all sides, Rothman addresses the roots of political barbarism, how the power of crowds can lead well-adjusted people to commit orgies of violence, the juvenile cop-out of making avatars of people in order to justify brutality against them, and some especial opprobrium for the intellectual and spiritual poverty that makes a hero of Luigi Mangione, who, weeks after murdering UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, was given a round of applause by an SNL audience.

“The point of this piece is a call for political consistency,” said Rothman. “Only when we have consistency will we see a decline in political violence.”

Noah Rothman is a senior writer for National Review. He is the author of Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America (Regnery, 2019) and The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun (HarperCollins, 2022). His work has been published in USA Today, the Washington Examiner, the New York Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. Follow on Twitter/X at NoahCRothman

On Tuesday morning, essayist and Unspeakable pod host Meghan Daum snapped a photo of her “Yeti-doodle” outside her home in Altadena, California. “Someone is loving the Santa Ana winds today,” she tweeted.

Were the winds a reason to evacuate? Not according to Meghan’s neighbor.

“She said, ‘Oh, this has happened before, let’s just keep an eye on it, there’s nothing to worry about,” Meghan recalls. Nevertheless, she and Hugo evacuated later that day. The next morning, she learned her house had burned to the ground, along with nearly everything she owned.

Meghan joins Nancy and Sarah to talk about the worst fires ever recorded in Southern California — what it was like, the blame game that both sides are playing, the surreal celebrity angle, and why you don’t actually have to tweet.

This is a free episode, cross-posted at Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em. Feel free to…

Meghan Daum records a special episode of her podcast:

Fire fire everywhere, including one that took down Meghan’s house …

Another in Malibu …

And in Pacific Palisades …

Do Los Angeles writers make mythos of what happens when the Santa Anas blow? They do. If you, like Meghan have heard the Chandler quote, “On nights like that, every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks,” enough times in the past 48 hours (also, Didion…)

… you might try John McPhee’s “Los Angeles Against the Mountains,” and the story of what happened to the Genofile family. A generous clip, to let you know what people are up against also, in the land of milk and honey:

The Genofiles had two teen-age children, whose rooms were on the uphill side of the one-story house. The window in Scott’s room looked straight up Pine Cone Road, a cul-de-sac, which, with hundreds like it, defined the northern limit of the city, the confrontation of the urban and the wild. Los Angeles is overmatched on one side by the Pacific Ocean and on the other by very high mountains. With respect to these principal boundaries, Los Angeles is done sprawling. The San Gabriels, in their state of tectonic youth, are rising as rapidly as any range on earth. Their loose inimical slopes flout the tolerance of the angle of repose. Rising straight up out of the megalopolis, they stand ten thousand feet above the nearby sea, and they are not kidding with this city. Shedding, spalling, self-destructing, they are disintegrating at a rate that is also among the fastest in the world. The phalanxed communities of Los Angeles have pushed themselves hard against these mountains, an aggression that requires a deep defense budget to contend with the results. Kimberlee Genofile called to her mother, who joined her in Scott’s room as they looked up the street. From its high turnaround, Pine Cone Road plunges downhill like a ski run, bending left and then right and then left and then right in steep christiania turns for half a mile above a three-hundred-foot straightaway that aims directly at the Genofiles’ house. Not far below the turnaround, Shields Creek passes under the street, and there a kink in its concrete profile had been plugged by mud and a six-foot boulder. Hence the silence of the creek. The water was now spreading over the street. It descended in heavy sheets. As the young Genofiles and their mother glimpsed it in the all but total darkness, the scene was suddenly illuminated by a blue electrical flash. In the blue light they saw a massive blackness, moving. It was not a landslide, not a mudslide, not a rock avalanche; nor by any means was it the front of a conventional flood. In Jackie’s words, “It was just one big black thing coming at us, rolling, rolling with a lot of water in front of it, pushing the water, this big black thing. It was just one big black hill coming toward us.”

In geology, it would be known as a debris flow. Debris flows amass in stream valleys and more or less resemble fresh concrete. They consist of water mixed with a good deal of solid material, most of which is above sand size. Some of it is Chevrolet size. Boulders bigger than cars ride long distances in debris flows. Boulders grouped like fish eggs pour downhill in debris flows. The dark material coming toward the Genofiles was not only full of boulders; it was so full of automobiles it was like bread dough mixed with raisins. On its way down Pine Cone Road, it plucked up cars from driveways and the street. When it crashed into the Genofiles’ house, the shattering of safety glass made terrific explosive sounds. A door burst open. Mud and boulders poured into the hall. We’re going to go, Jackie thought. Oh, my God, what a hell of a way for the four of us to die together.

The parents’ bedroom was on the far side of the house. Bob Genofile was in there kicking through white satin draperies at the panelled glass, smashing it to provide an outlet for water, when the three others ran in to join him. The walls of the house neither moved nor shook. As a general contractor, Bob had built dams, department stores, hospitals, six schools, seven churches, and this house. It was made of concrete block with steel reinforcement, sixteen inches on center. His wife had said it was stronger than any dam in California. His crew had called it “the fort.” In those days, twenty years before, the Genofiles’ acre was close by the edge of the mountain brush, but a developer had come along since then and knocked down thousands of trees and put Pine Cone Road up the slope. Now Bob Genofile was thinking, I hope the roof holds. I hope the roof is strong enough to hold. Debris was flowing over it. He told Scott to shut the bedroom door. No sooner was the door closed than it was battered down and fell into the room. Mud, rock, water poured in. It pushed everybody against the far wall. “Jump on the bed,” Bob said. The bed began to rise. Kneeling on it—on a gold velvet spread—they could soon press their palms against the ceiling. The bed also moved toward the glass wall. The two teen-agers got off, to try to control the motion, and were pinned between the bed’s brass railing and the wall. Boulders went up against the railing, pressed it into their legs, and held them fast. Bob dived into the muck to try to move the boulders, but he failed. The debris flow, entering through windows as well as doors, continued to rise. Escape was still possible for the parents but not for the children. The parents looked at each other and did not stir. Each reached for and held one of the children. Their mother felt suddenly resigned, sure that her son and daughter would die and she and her husband would quickly follow. The house became buried to the eaves. Boulders sat on the roof. Thirteen automobiles were packed around the building, including five in the pool. A din of rocks kept banging against them. The stuck horn of a buried car was blaring. The family in the darkness in their fixed tableau watched one another by the light of a directional signal, endlessly blinking. The house had filled up in six minutes, and the mud stopped rising near the children’s chins.

Of the 46,000 California-themed songs from which to choose, we went with The Decemberists

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From Sarah Hepola and me, a little Smoke ‘Em to get you through Christmas Eve xx

“The period of left-wing illiberalism that began about a decade ago seems to have drawn to a close. The final cause of death was the reelection of Donald Trump.” That’s the claim of a new article in The Atlantic by Jonathan Chait, which may or may not be true, but the article is a handy run-down of the past decade’s greatest (worst) hits. Meanwhile, David Samuels in Tablet dissects the past decade and points a finger at “Obama’s omnipotent thought machine.” Innnnteresting. Nancy and Sarah are still trying to understand the online appetite for the destruction of others.

Speaking of appetite: Sarah wants gingerbread. Nancy wants pecan pie. And nobody likes fruitcake.

Also discussed:

* Nancy’s first annual “holiday dessert quiz”

* Jamaican Black Cake? Two slices, please!

* Sarah speaks German (poorly)

* County Highway, America’s Only Newspaper

* “Rapid-onset political enlightenment” is a great phrase

* Did Elon Musk save Twitter, or break it?

* Where were you when Justine Sacco was canceled?

* A horrific death on the New York subway

* Nancy has problems with BlueSky

* Sarah tries to fill in the holes of her literary education

* The origins of “yacht rock”

Plus, the magic of a New York City Christmas, two thumbs up for delicious duck, Sarah gets a pearl necklace (no, not that kind) — and much more!

Episode Notes:

Sarah’s favorite true-crime story about fruitcake: “Just Desserts,” by Katy Vine (Texas Monthly)

“Rapid Onset Political Enlightenment,” by David Samuels (Tablet)

“How Liberal America Came to Its Senses,” by Jonathan Chait (The Atlantic)

“How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life,” by Jon Ronson (NYT)

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson

“Suspect Held After Woman Set on Fire in Subway Car Dies, Police Say,” by Johnny Diaz and Sara Ruberg (New York Times)

“How the White House Functioned with a Diminished Biden in Charge,” by Annie Linsky, Rebecca Bauhaus, Emily Glazer and Siobhan Hughes (Wall Street Journal)

What’s in your hot box?

Sarah: The Group, by Mary McCarthy

Nancy:

Outro suggests itself

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Get two writers who grew up in New York City in the 1970s talking and they don’t stop, or at least Peter Blauner and I don’t stop, in a conversation that ranges from seeing The Cramps at CBGB’s, a crusading young prosecutor named Rudolph Giuliani, and a borough president plunging a kitchen knife into his chest. As Blauner says, New York City “was a Wild West of a place and continues to be.”

Then it’s onto the current charges against Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last week on five federal charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, solicit foreign contributions, and bribery.

“There’s an argument to be made that, to have an impact in New York City, you have to be an out of control egomaniac in City Hall,” says Blauner. “But part of what's fascinating about some of the Adams scandals is that they're not that sophisticated, the ones that we know about. It's a pretty blunt instrument.”

Blunt and yet effective, with Adams’ aides and confidantes, commissioners and department heads resigning or being fired by the day, so many that a friend compared the (insofar as we know bloodless!) carnage to the penultimate scene in Goodfellas.

How far will this story go? According to Blauner, “We're barely through the prologue, Nancy. We are barely to chapter one.”

Also discussed:

* The three essential reporter tips given to Blauner by Pete Hamill at their first lunch, “before the sandwiches even hit the table.”

* The favorite Good Humor ice cream of 1970s NYC transvestite hookers

* The gangs of Five Points

* The greatness of both novelist Richard Price and actress Mariska Hargitay

* “The population [of New York City] is so diverse that you're always going to have 47% of the population hating your guts and pissed off at you and dying to confront you in some way.”

* I mean, what’s the Turkish population of Brooklyn anyway?

* Nancy is to pandemic Chinatown as Charlton Heston is to Omega Man

Plus, why you should never stop when someone bangs their shoe against a wall, how research can be “a sophisticated form of procrastination,” why fiction writing requires you let the car go over the side of the cliff, and much more!

Links and transcript after the break.

Intro/outro: “Kid Dynamite” by Matt Welch