#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
You saw it on THE VIEW…now you can own one, too. I’m talking about my sisters Linda Woods and Karen Dinino’s hot-selling I AM ART t-shirts. The shirts are doing so well that now my sisters have expanded the line to other kinds of clothes and accessories. Check it out at their store.
I got this email today from a reader of my MONK books. I’ve changed the names, but otherwise I haven’t edited it:
I can’t help but recognize your name. Of course Goldberg is rather common in L.A. Do you recognize the last name of Sandstrom? Howard or Betty or Steve? They lived on Sherbourne in B.H. Then, after Papa Bob died Grandma moved to a "blue" apartment at (I think Rodeo and Olympic), after that on Palm Drive near "little" Santa Monica and Doheny. Steve was my father. Grandma also mentioned a Joe Swanson and Mike Berger several times. I brought lox and bagels to Esther Berger (his mom) when she was in a nursing home in Reseda, but never had any reason to meet Mike. Grandma was just getting up in years and I lived in the Valley at the time. I am estranged from my used-to-be immediate family so when a name rings a bell I so try to connect. I know so little about my father. I have no idea how well Mike knew him.
I wrote back and said that I don’t know any Sandstroms…or any of the other people she’s talking about even though I, like them, am one of the millions who live in Southern California.
Some yahooer sent me this link to a Live Journal blog post that mentions yours truly. I don’t know about you, but I think it was my brother Tod who sent it to me:
Also, totally love Tod Goldberg. He’s the brother of Lee Goldberg,
known for throwing periodic hissy fits over the existence of fanfic.
But while Lee is an asshat, Tod is a brilliant writer. His blog
is wonderful, and his short-story collection "Simplify" is . . . umm,
lots of good things that I am not qualified to elaborate on. I am
usually not a fan of straight fiction, because I hate reading about
normal people doing normal things, but Tod Goldberg is 32 flavours of
awesome.
She’s right… I am an asshat and Tod is a brilliant writer. But I’m thinner and have a lot less body hair.
The second part of Chris Wells’ Q&A interview with me is now up at his site.
There’s a two-part Q&A interview with me up on Chris Well’s Learning Curve blog. Here’s one of the questions…
WHEN CREATING A MYSTERY, DO YOU START WITH THE PUZZLE AND THEN WRAP THE CHARACTERS AROUND IT, OR THE OTHER WAY AROUND?
I
always start with the characters and the obstacles they are facing. I
ask myself what situation can I put these characters in that will
really test who they are? The mystery almost always organically comes
out of that question. If the characters have nothing at stake in the
mystery, if it doesn’t put them in conflict with others and with
themselves, then who is going to care whodunit?
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.
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.
If you missed my sisters on THE VIEW, here’s your chance to see the clip:
I’m sorry you haven’t seen me much around here, but I am currently in Cologne, where I am writing, teaching, pitching and going on helicopter rides (my friends at Action Concept love their helicopters). Over the weekend, I was taken out by an experienced race car driver to Nurburgring, where we drove a BMW M5 on a winding track that’s considered one of the most demanding in the world. When I say "we drove," I mean I sat in the passenger seat while he sped at 240+ km around unbelievably tight turns. I loved it. I thought it was incredibly exhiliratiing. Unfortunately, before I got my turn at the wheel, the car completely crapped out. Somehow we managed to blow the transmission. We had to push the car into a parking spot, where we waited three hours for a tow truck to take us back to the nearest BMW dealership. It was great fun anyway and I got to see a lot of cool cars. Speaking of cars, I also visited the Daimler-Chrysler HQ in Stuttgart, which was fun, too.
But the best part of my trip so far has been all the conversations I’ve had with German writer/producers and network executives. I think I’ve learned as much from them as they have from me. The exchange of ideas, methods, and philosophies about writing, showrunning, and the television business has been every bit as exhilirating for me as my high-speed race around the track.
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).