The OLD Nancy Imperiale Blog

I like this domain name, nancyimperiale.com, because it is mine, after all. But after several futile and cockamamie attempts to figure out how to update my WordPress blog machinery so I can put cute stuff up in here, like throw pillows and a scarf on the lamps, I am giving up on that. You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to get the hell outta town and not leave a forwarding address.

Ah, but that is what I am NOT doing. My new address is nancyimperiale.wordpress.com and you are welcome to visit me there. It’s a little crowded, bloggers to the left of me, jokers to the right, and yeah, it doesn’t roll off the tongue like nancyimperiale.com (who am i kidding? i’m lucky anybody could even spell my name well enough to even find this blog)  but it has so many themes you can download and widgets you can add, I feel like I’ve landed in the mall!

I want a pretty blog, like all the other girls.

I just read a disturbing story on the 24/7 Orlando Sentinel news portal (geez, that just doesn’t flow off the tongue) about a convicted rapist being released after serving 9 years, and how his mom collapsed and died outside the courtroom while the judge was reviewing his case.

I remember the name of the family. They’ve lived in that area for a long time. I remember doing my own reporting on them, on a daughter who was involved in a cult and may have offered her children up for sex with the cult leader. I wonder if this guy was one of those kids. His age seems right. I wonder if the mom who collapsed was that woman I wanted to do a story on, so long ago.

I never did the story, because another family member intervened and got very ugly with me and threatened all sorts of things, and the editors didn’t care enough to pursue it after that.

Now I wonder. If that story had been told, if the truth had come out then, I wonder if that kid would have gone on to become a rapist himself, or if maybe he could have gotten the help he so desperately needed back then.

The family was worried about embarassment at the time. Now they’ve gone far beyond being merely embarrassed.

See, the truth is not a bad thing. People want to act like that. People are afraid of it. But there are a lot worse things than the truth.

I’m not going to link to the story, btw, because I would be alleging things about this family that may or may not be true. I remember the names, but I don’t have my notes or corroborating documents or any of that important factual material that reporters gather before they write their stories. The difference between a story by a journalist and some irresponsible blogger.

Of course, the possibility exists that I’m being irresponsible for even mentioning this, and that people can “read between the lines” and perhaps figure out who I’m talking about. So I guess a lawyer would add that I frequently make things up in this blog, so who’s to know if I’m just doing that again.

And hell, with my memory the way it is, I very well could be.

And y’know, even if the facts of this had come out in a prepared, lawyered-up, Orlando Sentinel news story, does that mean they’d all be true?

Truth. So elusive. So dangerous. It’s like a sexy Argentinian.

They say the world will end in 2012, because that’s when the Mayan Calendar gets its period, or something like that. Seriously, you can read stuff about 2012 across the Internetz or you can just watch Woody Harrelson explain it all.

I personally don’t plan to worry about 2012, and I suspect that’s where my fellow Americans stand on the subject. At least until 2011 gets here….

But honestly, I’ve watched people “prepare” for doomsday before. Remember Y2K? They made the entire staff of the Orlando Sentinel work an overnight shift just in case the world came crashing in. I’ll never forget being Internet Reporter, having to write about what was happening online at the stroke of midnight, when all the power in the building was turned off. Sigh.

And then there was New Orleans. I packed an SUV full of every known hurricane-combating supply, and then FEMA wouldn’t let me and the 100 Florida airboaters I was following into New Orleans to rescue people. Then the Sentinel cancelled my trip because I told them I had cancer. And that, except for a minor blip I’m just trying to blot out entirely, was basically the end of my reporting career.

So that experience taught me, prepare all you want, you’ll never be prepared.

After 2012, either way, it will just be on to the next thing, whatever that is. Not something I will ever get worked up about. Hopefully.

Just finished reading Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. Not his real name. In fact the whole book wavers in and out of reality and fantasy so much that I think it stretches the bounds of believability in a narrator. But he’s likable and that trumps all.

It’s the telling details that ground the narrative in a setting. Helene’s Cholesterol. The dog fluff in the dirty house. Mom’s More cigarettes.

I had read the Vanity Fair story from the family “fictionalized” in Burroughs’ memoir, all bitching to the point of illness at the book. Later they settled in a closed case.

Who wants to write about real people, for that very reason. The details and setting and dialogue and a million other elements might be easier to remember than to make up, but walking the minefield of the depicted is a sentence best left to professional journalists or the superrich.

But anyhow, it was a marvelous book. Well done, whatever your name is. Thumbs up. Glad I finally read it.

I cannot get enough of this high-stakes catfight. I have my favorites but will keep them private. This is one of those epic battles, like in The Stand, where you just have to choose your side and nobody should choose for you. tee hee.

(I took the player down because it messes up my blog. A girl can’t walk around with her blog pulled up.)

This is a line from an actual memo written by Lee Abrams, the new “Idea Guy” for Tribune Corporation, mothership of The Orlando Sentinel, where I used to work. I don’t work there anymore. And even though that also means I no longer have a career as a feature writer, when I read a line like this, in a memo, from an alleged executive who’s allegedly supposed to be working feverishly for the survival of the gangrenous newspaper industry and still has power over the people left at my old workplace….well I just have to laugh.

Here’s the line. It’s part of a directive to staff about what they should be covering.

POKER: The new Bridge. Maybe ride this wave a little more aggressively. I fear Poker coverage gets lost.

Oh tee hee hee fooking hee. You can read the whole thing right here in this juicy, delicious blog.

Charlie Crist, what will you do now?

And after you went to all that trouble to get married, and in Europe! Like it was some coronation!

I speak, of course, of your little issue of gayness. It’s not just being whispered anymore. Apparently there’s this new movie called Outrage and it just out and out outs you. Don’t take it from me. I saw it on Salon and Digg and now even people on my Facebook page are commenting on how interesting it is that you’re now running for Senate.

Whatever will you do, Charlie?

I’m just giggling. It’s nothing personal about you, Chaz. You’ve got a great tan and I hear you’re really friendly and just kinda vacant.

But I know somebody who has a bad mancrush on you, and he styles himself as oh-so-hetero.

Tee hee.

Just imagine what the Republicans will do with you, Charles, if I may call you that, like your mother, because I might as well be, since I’m about to give you a big old public boxing of the ears.

You don’t vote one way and live another. Only douches do that.

Face the consequences right now, or let’s see if you can spray on enough tan to avoid them….

Headline, dateline (in bold type) and date (ditto on the bold type), hooker, identifier, closer, quote, info graph, bullet points if you must, closing thought, no ending because this is a press release who cares about subtleties like abrupt endings?, ABOUT whoever’s paying the bills, somebody’s name and phone number who’ll take the calls if things get hinky, the end. That’s how you write a press release.

This is an interesting piece on 1984 author George Orwell and the life events that unfurled while he wrote the book. He died at 46. I didn’t know that. I do agree with the piece, that 1984 is one of the most terrifying things you will ever read.

And I also agree with Orwell, that writing a novel is a horrid and beastly process and you just don’t want to talk to anyone about it, ever. You’d rather discuss disections or global warming. And you will hoard it like Gollum with the ring, and never want to give it up until the absolute end, when you’re all shriveled and even the dogs don’t want to smell you….Oh, how is The Novel coming? Oh great, thanks! How are you?

Orwell did have an excellent publicity campaign, I have to say. And dying at the end was a coup de grace.

OK, I can’t help it. I have loved reading the comments log in this blog entry from a visual journalist who decries the modly outlook at the Tribune Company.

The comments include names and faces from the present and past of the Orlando Sentinel. I could almost see the Star Trek-like command center (complete with wraparound party lights) in the newsroom and taste the bile in words like “Oxycontin.” (Oxycontin ain’t just a drug, it’s code word for a Sentinel project story that went bust and ended careers and crippled others and is one of those royal fuckups that occur in organizations and spread a lot of bad blood and ill will and painful shit like that all over the place.)

So much pain, all around, from people fired or betrayed or lied to or scared or worried or fed up. Copy editors, content editors, page designers, bosses, worker bees, employed people, laidoff people — everybody’s got a full kettle of steam cooking.

The Tribune Company and/or its agents and appartchik-editors, was so mean to people. I could devote a blog to just remembering incidents and I’d never run out of material. I could tweet on unto the dark night.

But what’s the point.

The only lesson little old me takes from it all is to be nice to people. Treat people with respect and, yeah, love. Just try as hard as you can. There’s not anything better you could do with your time. Not landing on A-1 or selling 60 jillion newspapers or even winning a Pulitzer.

As a friend of mine once said, it’s really sad that they didn’t treat everyone better and appreciate them and nurture them.