My Family

My Brother Is Too Damn Funny

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My brother Tod’s Letters to Parade feature on his blog should be a book. But until that happens, you’ll just have to visit his blog every Monday for the latest hilarious installment. This week’s is one of my favorites. Here’s an excerpt:

In the case of G. Martinez of Jamaica, NY, the fetish is James Bond.
And G. has a very important question so that he or she can finally
complete their very special project:

As a James Bond fan, I’d like to know who was the tallest 007.

This
question has obviously been edited. What the crack editorial staff of
Parade snipped off when they created this stupid fucking question when
they realized they didn’t have anything on Bond in Personality Parade
on the weekend before the opening of the latest installment, was this:

It
is very important that I get the exact measurements of whichever Bond
this was  — I hope it was Lazenby! Oh, how I have longed for Lazenby!
— as I am building a cage in which the actor could live. Additionally,
I’m creating a suit made of skin I’ve stripped every day from my
thighs, the bottom of my feet and that space between my plumbing so
that Mr. Lazenby could wear me like a tuxedo, a very snug tuxedo,
covered with the aroma of my glands. Please, could you also tell me if
any of the actors who played Bond are claustrophobic? And it would be
very helpful if I could get the address and phone number of the
gentleman who played Jaws in the Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.

Walter Scott probably never even saw this part of the question because, well, he doesn’t exist.

Scrap Tales

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For some time now, Alan Barer has been sharing memories on his blog about our family and his life selling scrap metal with my grandfather Dave in Walla Walla, Washington. Although he’s talking about my family and not yours, I think you’ll enjoy the rememberances as much as I do…and agree that he’s a natural-born storyteller.

One thing Frank did do for me was to advise me never to eat
food at the home of one of our clients who lived at and operated the
city dump in a small eastern Oregon town.

I arrived there late
in the afternoon. The table was set with stew, milk, etc. My host
invited me to join for dinner. Hungry as I was I declined. The next
morning when I arrived to load, the same food was sitting on the table
at room temperature. I also declined the invitation to breakfast.

I Love It When Tod Gets Hate Mail

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My brother Tod gets the most amusing hate mail from the strangest people:

You’re perhaps the most unlikable, trivial, angry person I’ve ever read
online. You would be an incredibly successful female middle-school
student. Try inserting a few spurious capital letters and misspelling
(more) words, and you could fit right in at MySpace. Your photograph
looks very Arabic and not very Jewish, and it’s also extremely creepy.
Some people were born to write (not you) and some born to be
photographed (not you, either).

Naturally
my Arabic-looking brother, who clearly has too much time on his hands since my Mom moved from his neighborhood to mine, responded right away and asked the writer to be his mentor. He wrote, in part:

My mother and father, while both Jewish, were apparently quite ugly,
which lead to the unfortunate photo of me you saw that apparently makes
me me look Arabic. I guess looking Arabic would be a bad thing? I’m
sorry if my Fertile Crescent appearance in that photo doesn’t please
you, my mentor, but I assure you that there are other photos of me
online where I look Italian, which might please you. There are also
some where I look Persian, which probably wouldn’t please you too much.
Others still make me look like a Russian Jew, which I am, but that
might make you think I’m a Communist. I assure you, Neal, I love
America and am not a Commie. I do like Russian dressing, but only on a
certain chicken dish…

[…]I’m sad that you find me the most unlikable person online. That means
you’ve never visited my brother’s blog. He could use your help, too,
Neal, to see the way out of failure toward success. […]Will you be my life coach? Will you teach me how to write midnight
letters to novelists who you stumble upon while searching for the
lyrics to The Ballad Of Irving? That was you, wasn’t it Neal? Writing
me from the Lutheran Medical Center in Denver? Neal, I feel safe in
saying that I need you in my life now more than ever.

Neal immediately wrote back:

Now, the most important part of my advice. Masturbate one more time (it’s the closest you’ll come to  losing your virginity) and then kill yourself. Don’t stretch it out for twenty-odd more years of sucking dick to pay for your meth, getting turned down by crack whores, and constantly referring to your family as if anyone knows them. Just get it over with.

I am not kidding, the world will thank you. Your funeral will be a party, and we’ll enjoy dancing around your unmarked cardboard box.

Neal also cc’d his lawyer on his reply, which is the perfect punchline to the whole thing.  I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard at a blog post (though it was probably one of Tod’s famous Letters to Parade columns).

We Ho

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Goldbergs
"We Ho" is probably an apt way to describe what we Goldberg siblings do to sell our books but, in this case, Weho refers to the West Hollywood Book Fair, which we attended last Sunday. Mark Sarvas over at the Elegant Variation took the photo on the left and writes about his favorite panels of the day. That’s me, Karen, Stacy Bierlein (moderator), Tod, and Linda. You can click on the image to get a large image and see all of my chins.

The Writing Chromosome

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My brother Tod, while hyping our appearance this coming Sunday at the West Hollywood Book Festival, observes:

Other than Evel and Robbie Knievel, I have to believe the family with
the greatest genetic disposition toward one career must be mine.
Between just the four Goldberg siblings alone, we have something like
30 books. Now, granted, Lee has written about 25 of them, but he is
significantly older.

He’s only scratching the surface. My mother Jan Curran was a feature writer for the Palm Springs Desert Sun (among other newspapers), my father Alan Goldberg was a TV anchorman on KPIX   (which, back in the day, actually involved some newswriting), my Uncle Burl Barer is writes true crime books (as well as the Edgar Award winning ‘The Saint: A Complete History"), my cousin Sam Barer is an auto industry columnist, and my great-cousin (I’m not sure that’s what he is…what would the son of my grandmother’s brother-in-law be??) David Zarkin was a newspaper reporter. I know I’m leaving some writerly family members out (I think that my grandmother’s brother may have written for Look magazine and know I have a distant cousin who writes for the New York Times).  And most of them…at least the ones who are still living…have blogs, many of which you can find listed on the column to the left.

So, yeah, writing is definitely in our blood. Then again, so are the furniture, pelt, and scrap metal businesses…

East of Bizarro

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My brother Tod just returned from speaking at  the East of Eden writers conference in Salinas, California where he had some hilarious encounters with aspiring writers. He lists a few of them on his blog. Here’s a sampling:

3. Number of writers who attempted to present me with velobound manuscripts: 9

4. Number of writers who asked me to write their ideas: 4

5. A conversation with a very nice woman who wanted some advice on her short story:

Woman: I think my short story would make a great musical.

Me: Uh, okay.

Woman: I’ve already written all the lyrics and am adapting it for a movie musical.

Me: What was the last musical you saw?

Woman: Oh, I can’t remember the last time I saw a great musical. They don’t make great musicals anymore.

Me: Then why do you think a movie studio would want to make a musical out of your short story?

Woman: It’s a universal story, I write wonderful songs, it would be
just a great musical. My screenwriting teacher at the junior college
thinks so, too.

Me: What kind of movies does your screenwriting teacher make?

Woman: Documentaries and technical films for businesses.

I was a keynote speaker at the same conference a few years ago, shortly after one of the surgeries on my arm. Just before I went on stage, I spilled an entire slice of chocolate cake in my lap. I tried to wash it off and only made myself look like someone with both a severe bladder control problem and irritable bowels. Nothing earns you respect and admiration when you’re standing in front of hundreds of people like a pair of soiled pants.