Lee Goldberg

Vital Knowledge

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Before you write to Walter Scott of Parade Magazie to find out if someone is dead or not, use this handy checklist from my brother Tod.

a few ways to tell if the person you’re inquiring about is dead:

1. You are really, really old and unable to access the internet.

2. The person you are interested in starred in a "talkie."

3. Sometimes, you wet yourself a little and just say, "Ah, to hell with it."

4. There are nights when you honestly believe that signing a petition to get Diagnosis Murder back on TV might actually help.

5. Lately, you’ve felt very guilty for admiring the bronzed flesh of
Lindsay Lohan and wondering what it might be like to see her in a
Lucille Ball bio-pic where you get to play little Ricky.

6. The last show you remember watching was The Big Valley and after that went off the air you decided that from now on, you were just going to write The Big Valley fan fiction.

Want to know more? Check out "Letters to Parade: On The Nature of Dying."

Hypocrisy 101

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Fanficcers have no problem routinely infringing on the copyrights of books, movies and TV shows…but don’t you dare copy their work.   

Someone emailed me this  excerpt from the fanfiction.net user agreement (the bold-facing and italicizing of the most blatantly hypocritical/outrageous statements are mine):

9. COPYRIGHTS and COPYRIGHT AGENTS

FanFiction.Net respects the intellectual property of others, and we ask our users to do the same. If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, there are two methods of recourse depending on the nature of the infraction. If you have a copyright abuse complaint based on theft of your piece by other fan authors, please see Section Ten: Domestic Copyrights. Else, please provide FanFiction.Net with the following information:

(1) an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest;

(2) a description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed;

(3) a description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the site;

(4) your address, telephone number, and email address;

(5) a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;

(6) a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your Notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner’s behalf.

After this has been received, FanFiction.Net administrators will seek to determine if the piece in question is in violation of your copyright and then respond accordingly.

10. DOMESTIC COPYRIGHTS

FanFiction.Net respects the intellectual property of others, and we ask our users to do the same. If you feel that your writing was copied with out permission and in violation of your copyright by another writer on FanFiction.Net, please provide FanFiction.Net administrators with the following information via e-mail:

(1) Pen name and e-mail address.

(2) Contact information for the author you feel is violating your copyright. This information should include the author�s pen name, e-mail address, and author profile url.

(3) The url of the piece that you have the copyright for, the date that the story was posted, and the title of the piece.

(4) The url of the piece that you feel is in violation of your copyright, the date the alleged infringed piece was written and the title the alleged infringed piece.

(5) Supporting and collaborative evidence that demonstrates copyright infringement.

(6) A short message detailing the nature of the copyright infringement.

After this has been received, FanFiction.Net administrators will seek to determine if the piece in question is in violation of your copyright and then respond accordingly.

Unbelievable. 

Book Vending Machines

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Captpar10108191435 The French have developed a new twist on bookselling:  Book Vending Machines.  They are installed in busy metro stations and on some street corners.

"We have customers who know exactly what they want and come at all hours to get it," said Xavier Chambon, president of Maxi-Livres, a low-cost publisher and book store chain that debuted the vending machines in June. "It’s as if our stores were open 24 hours a day."

Stocked with 25 of Maxi-Livres best-selling titles, the machines cover the gamut of literary genres and tastes. Classics like "The Odyssey" by Homer and Carroll’s "Alice in Wonderland" share the limited shelf space with such practical must-haves as "100 Delicious Couscous" and "Verb Conjugations."

"Our biggest vending machine sellers are ‘The Wok Cookbook’ and a French-English dictionary," said Chambon, who added that poet Charles Baudelaire’s "Les Fleurs du Mal" — "The Flowers of Evil" — also is "very popular."

Regardless of whether they fall into the category of high culture or low, all books cost a modest $2.45.

(Thanks to Bill Rabkin for the tip)

Start Your Day With A Belly Laugh

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GaywyckHere are two very funny posts to start off your day.  Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels gleefully skewer another batch of horrendous book covers. This week, it’s some gay erotica:

Dear God. It’s like a checklist: open shirt? Check! Tucked into pants? Check!
Ruffle? CHECK! But what’s up with Ichabod Crane’s low-hanging saggy scrotum, there? I mean,
is shirt-dude kneeling out of pity? The man is half-dead, and the half that’s
dead is down his pants.

And my brother Tod ridicules perhaps the dumbest person to ever write to that beacon of knowledge, Walter Scott.

M. Beatryce Shaw of Conway, SC asks, amazingly, really:

Are the corpses used in the various CSI shows actual dead people or are they
mannequins?

(Click on the book cover for a larger image…if you dare)

Scientific Breakthroughs Nobody Can Live Without

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Now you can take what’s on your home TV anywhere you go and not get bitten by a single mosquito while you do it.

"Slingbox, which costs about $250, is from Sling Media Inc. of San Mateo, Calif.
Using a box connected to your home TV setup, it sends the signal out onto the
Internet, allowing you to watch a video stream of your home channels from any
Windows computer with broadband access and the Sling software installed…In addition to the signal, Slingbox sends along the TiVo controls I have at
home. "

"This summer, I tried something new: killer threads — clothing that supposedly
zaps bugs before they can zap you. It’s called Buzz Off Insect Repellent
Apparel. You wear it instead of insecticide, although it may be more accurate to
say you become a walking tower of insecticide.

My Evil Doubles

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I was procrastinating this morning, so I decided to see what folks were saying about me in the blogosphere (via Blogpulse). And I found this:

My friends at WJBQ made mention
of the blog again yesterday…and let the cat out of the bag that I love
Lee Goldberg.

Surely she’s not talking about me. So who is this Lee Goldberg who fills her heart with passionate yearning? Who torments her nights with unquenchable lust? I had to find out. So I searched the web for my evil, sexy double…

0523154918_goldberg2

LeeLee_goldberg  Goldberg1Grne0712_smPierce7

5421158Here are few of the "Lee Goldbergs" out there.   I’m surprised by how many of them are writers or TV Goldbergsdnewscasters. I wonder if they get hate mail from fanficcers, too?

Playing in Someone Else’s Sandbox

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I received this lengthy email the other day. It read, in part:

I can understand intellectual property concerns about currently or recently
active creative concepts, but when a creative concept has been tried and
presented by the producers and craftsmen, has run its course and been
cancelled, has stopped being shown in reruns, has no active tie-ins, and
appears to have been completely mothballed by the original creators and
stakeholders of the concept – AT THAT POINT, would you still consider it
wrong for a fanfiction author to attempt to step in and write creatively in
that sandbox?

I ask this because I had been considering a fanfiction based on a series
you produced 10 years ago that has disappeared from the face of the earth.
I admit, as a potential fan-fiction writer, that the lure of
already established character study materials, settings, etc., is enticing –
like the idea of taking down and playing with a set of dolls – er, I mean,
ACTION FIGURES.

As for my own writing career, I’ve never had the courage
to try creating something truly original…

Here is how I replied: My personal feeling is that you are better off, in every possible
way, writing something original. I would never consider writing in "someone
else’s sandbox" unless they invited me to.  I never contemplated writing DIAGNOSIS MURDER or MONK novels. I am only writing those books now because
the rights-holders and/or  creators asked me to.  So my answer to you is this…the
show you’re thinking about, whatever it is, doesn’t belong to you. Or me. Write something that is your
own. The creative and personal benefits far outweigh the convenience of writing
with someone else’s creations. Good luck!