Lee Goldberg

Jingle bells are in the air, which can mean only one thing: Adults around the world are still pissed off about the misspent Christmases of their youth. In the spirit of the season, I polled my friends and family about the presents they always wanted but never got and the presents they received that ruined their lives. These are their stories, in their words (*Note*: Last names have been omitted to save each of you from Google-happy parents. You’re welcome):

Kerry: In fourth grade, I wanted Crissy, the beautiful doll with the hair that grows and grows and grows. Instead I got old lady Mrs. Beasley from "Family Affair." I naturally pretended to be thrilled with the blazing light of the old movie camera shining in my eyes, but oh I wanted Crissy because she represented something unattainable: beauty. Frankly, I looked more like Mrs. Beasley as we had the same octagon glasses and pixie haircut… Karen (my sister): I totally wanted the talking Velvet doll, sister of Crissy, whose hair grew very long when you turned the knob on her back. I got her–and her voice was scarier than anything Rod Serling could’ve dreamt up. She croaked out friendly messages from her plastic smile, but that evil, deep, scratchy voice meant only one thing: She would come to life and kill me as I slept if she remained in my room. I still have her, in a box in the garage, where I presume she feeds on rodents. Don: When I was 10 I wanted a groovy Schwinn bike. It had a frame painted with red metal flake, chrome fenders, three-speed gearshift and big fat tires with thick whitewalls. It was cool and all the cool kids had one. I asked for it for Christmas, then my birthday, then Christmas again. Never got it. What I did get was this crummy cheap-ass bike from Sears, its house brand, J.C. Higgins. No gearshift, no whitewalls, no chrome fenders and worst of all, no adolescent boy cachet. It was a piece of junk; fell apart before the following summer was out. Which was all right with me, ’cause it was the dorkiest ride on the block. Wendy (my wife): For Christmas I always hoped my family would overlook my propensity to decapitate and mutilate every doll I’d ever received. I would beg my mother and Santa Claus for Barbie, Ken and the Dream House. My mother, who I secretly believe hated me, would dig through my toy chest, point to the headless bodies and say, "You wouldn’t have to ask for more Barbies if you appreciated the ones I already paid for." Instead, there’d be boxes of clothes that made me resemble Charlie’s fourth Angel, circa 1978. But I looked foxy on the way to the shrink… Mike: I was a Transformers nut as a kid and I remember begging for the damn things as soon as my birthday was over and done with in September. Three months of solid hinting, leaving comics lying around turned to the ads for Optimus Prime and pushing the volume through the roof every time a "robots in disguise" ad came on the TV. Dec. 25 arrives and I get the Transformers’ cheaper cousins, the Go-bots. This directly led to my one and only brush with the law: shoplifting Transformers with my friend and getting nabbed on the third store we hit. Stern talk from the manager, followed by a short ride in a police car where I got to explain what Transformers were to the bored cop, followed by a long wait for my parents. It was all their fault, of course. Anna: I was about 7 or 8 years old and all I wanted that year was this stupid, hollow plastic pink princess telephone. It was fake, which explains why it was hollow plastic, but when you turned the number dial, it made these adorable little "brrring, brrring" sounds. It probably cost less than five bucks. But my parents didn’t get me the plastic phone. No, they had to go out and get me this dark pink girlie bicycle, one with a flowered banana seat and fringed plastic strips coming out of the handlebars. I was devastated because, of course, they went and bought my little sister a pink plastic phone. My pink plastic phone! Angela: I asked and asked for the Atari game Pitfall. Instead, my dad went to the swap meet and bought 30 cartridges of Centipede. Kendra: The only thing I wanted that I never got was a little brother. My parents tried to make it up to me when my sister was born by buying me an anatomically correct baby doll. This resulted in me saying "penis" in the middle of Sunday school. I was only 3 and I still remember the spanking I got after church. Thom: I never wanted toy guns of any kind but got them nonetheless because my dad was into them and my silly little brother wanted nothing but. They learned after a few years when all I did with them was use them to prop up a little canopy during May when I made some kind of stupid shrine to the Blessed Mother. I was one screwed up Catholic kid.

Happy Holidays!

–Tod

If there is one question I am constantly asked this time of year, it is, "What do Jews do on Christmas?" We mostly open presents under the Christmas tree and sing songs from the Neil Diamond Christmas album, I generally respond. This year, however, because the yuletide spirit has me in a death grip, I’m also happy to provide a little last minute shopping advice. Below are my ten favorite books of 2004 (with one slight fudging for a book that came out in late 2003 but which is exceedingly long).

1. You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon. One of America’s finest short story writers is now also one of our most cherished novelists. A powerful, challenging book.

2. Cottonwood by Scott Phillips. A western. A mystery. A gothic horror story. A tour de force by not just the finest crime writer around, but one of the most diverse chroniclers of the human condition I’ve ever read.

3. Mr. Paradise by Elmore Leonard. Leonard is as nimble and energetic as he has ever been and Mr. Paradise is one of his finest books, period.

4. And the Dead Shall Rise by Steve Oney. It actually came out in October 2003, but anyone who says they finished this exhaustive 750-page account of the murder of Mary Phagan and the lynching of Leo Frank before the dawn of 2004 lied. Quite simply the best true-crime account ever. Ever.

5. Every Night Is Ladies’ Night by Michael Jaime-Becerra. This excellent debut collection of short stories heralds a fantastic new voice capable of making even the most mundane landscape, in this case El Monte, Calif., as vibrant and alive as Paris.

6. Don’t Try This At Home by Dave Navarro & Neil Strauss. Not great literature necessarily, but a fascinating insight into what makes Navarro tick, or, perhaps, twitch. (A nice companion is Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis.)

7. Born to Rock by Todd Taylor. This collection of essays and interviews about punk rock serves as a definitive account of what it means to be an outsider while craving to know what the inside looks like, if only to fuck the place up once you get there.

8. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir by Nick Flynn. The title says it all.

9. War Trash by Ha Jin. A hard look at what it means to survive.

10. Covenants by Lorna Freeman. A rich and energetic debut by a fantasy author who looks to have a bright and prolific future.

— Tod

Tod Goldberg

I once had a real job. Actually, I once had two real
jobs. My first real job went something like this:

7:30am. Arrive at office. Drink coffee. Add non-dairy
creamer. Turn on phones. Listen to voice mail messages
from temps calling out sick from the only job they
will ever get from me. Listen to voice mail messages
from people who are newly temps and want that one job
they will invariably fuck up beyond comprehension,
causing them to forever wander the earth unemployed
and embittered ˆ first at themselves, later at me,
later still at the whole damn patriarchal society. Add
sugar. Contemplate Krispy Kreme.

7pm. Leave office. Loosen tie. Bang head against
steering wheel. Sit in traffic. Contemplate ritual
suicide. Contemplate going back to school and making
something of myself. Contemplate what, exactly, that
degree in English has gotten me besides a crappy job
getting people temp jobs. Go home. Eat Rice-A-Roni.
Beg girlfriend to kill me.

Total time at job: Two years.

My second real job was a little better. It went like
this:

9:00am or 9:30am or 10am (depending on whether or not
I thought we’d be filing Chapter 11 that specific day
or if my boss was going to be hung-over or if my main
client was likely to call me). Arrive at office of
a "direct response advertising agency ˆ which is code for
Joint Where Infomercials Are Made, which is code for
Company That Subsequently Was Discovered To Be In
Cahoots With Its Main Client Over Some Exercise
Machines That Didn’t Work and Possibly Could Kill
Small Children, Pets, and Haitian Immigrants and,
Additionally, Was Funneling Money To Some Cult In
Texas. Listen to voice mail messages from my main client. I’m now an
Account Executive with a very fine cubicle and at least one client who
is quite angry that his infomercial "The Magic Scrub That Will Make
Your Face Break Out in Welts The Size of Cocker Spaniels Whilst Making
You Look Twenty Years Younger" is not performing as well as he’d like
in a few specific markets. Specifically,
he says, "Spo-KANE is ‘sucking ass’" and "who the fuck
wanted it in Spo-KANE in the first fucking place?" Go
to men’s room with LA Times sports section in tow.
Wait until my cubicle partner Dan finishes his twenty
five minute bowel exercise before I can check the
scores. Eat a bagel. Yell at some underling because an
infomercial I hate and am somewhat responsible for is
performing poorly in Spokane. I pronounce Spokane that
way it’s actually pronounced, unlike my client,
because I’m detail oriented, think outside the box,
and am ready to throw myself on the mercy of the cult
in Texas. Do some office-y stuff, like prepare for
Secret Santa week, think about how to tell my boss
that when he says "perfect-o" I want to reach my hand
down his throat until I can feel his spleen. Make some
calls to Ronco. Ask about getting one of those
rotisserie cookers for my mother-in-law. Eat a bagel
(they’re free and provided by the company that is
about to be shuttered).

6:00pm. Leave office. Loosen my baseball hat (casual
office – you know how ad agencies are). Bang head
against steering wheel. Sit in traffic. Contemplate
ritual suicide. Contemplate going back to school and
making something of myself. Contemplate what, exactly,
that degree in English has gotten me besides a crappy
job working for an advertising agency that peddles
Infomercials. Go home. Eat Rice-A-Roni. Beg wife to
kill me.

Total time at job: one year.

That why I write. That’s why I’m a writer.

Tod Goldberg is the author
of two novels, Fake Liar Cheat (Pocket Books), which sold to Hollywood for big bucks, and Living Dead Girl
(Soho Press), which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. His book of  collected of short stories will be out in Fall 2005.

Tod’s post originally appeared on Bob Sassone’s Professor Barnhardt’s Journal. Thanks to Sarah Weinman for reminding me of it. – Lee

When I was a kid, I used to spend two or three weeks each summer in Walla Walla, Washington… a dreary farming community in middle of nowhere where my Mom was raised. As much as I loved visiting my grandparents, as I got older, the visits became more and more boring. There was nothing to do in Walla Walla.

Now, twenty-five years later, the LA times says that  Walla Walla is trendy… more than that, it’s a vacation spot.

A $53-million revitalization of its once-dying downtown core helped Walla Walla
to win a 2001 Great American Main Street award from the National Trust for
Historic Preservation. A year later, the trust chose the city as one of
America’s Dozen Distinctive Destinations, or "pockets of serenity amid the
sprawling clutter and homogenization that have overwhelmed so many American
vacation spots."

Last December I decided to have a look for myself. I
found a bit of Americana with a lively arts scene and three colleges, a
community that wears its pride on its sleeve, calling itself "the town so nice
they named it twice." And nice it is, with first-rate restaurants and
accommodations, art galleries and wineries.

It almost makes me want to go back and visit… though only a few members of my family still live there… and it’s still in middle of nowhere.

Walla Walla, just north of the Oregon border in southeastern Washington, isn’t
the easiest place to get to, but locals say that’s part of its charm and helps
to ensure that it won’t become an overtrodden Napa Valley. Horizon Air (a
subsidiary of Alaska Airlines) has three daily flights to and from Seattle, a
50-minute hop, or it’s 260 miles away by car on U.S. Highway 12.

When I was a kid, we used to fly into Portland… a good four-plus hour drive from Walla Walla… or, in later years, we’d arrive  in Pendleton.  I don’t remember how we got to Pendleton, but it was still an hour or two from Walla Walla, if my memory is correct.

My grandparents lived in Walla Walla for fifty years, most of the time in an unusual looking house on Division Street, near a park and a hamburger stand.  Later, they moved to the country club, and another unusual looking house (though more contemporary), which meant we could tool around in their golf cart and pretend we were driving a car.  I did a lot of reading in Walla Walla,  and bike-riding, and a lot of writing, too, on my grandmother’s portable typewriter that printed  in cursif.  I still have all the "novels" I wrote as a kid in Walla Walla in a box in the garage. One of these days, I’ll have to open the box up and take a look at them…