Lee Goldberg

“t3h ebil fanficcers”

by

There was an interesting comment that somebody calling himself  Inside Fandom left in the "Masturbation" post. I didn’t write it, and I don’t know who did, but I didn’t want it  to get lost in the clutter:

"t3h ebil fanficcers"

Fanspeak. Sort of like jive, but with wurz speling. In fandom communities the
presumption is that anybody who isn’t really a fan – they actually refer to it
as ‘passing’ – can possibly get it, when they say ‘get it’ they mean ‘fandom in
general’.

In other words, youse either with us or you don’t get it. Sorta like what we
used to tell our parents when we were teenagers and they wanted to know the
names of the kids we were ‘hanging’ with, and what funny smell emanated from our
clothes, or how pretty the plant with five leaves growing on our windowsills was
and how nice we’d taken an interest in horticulture.

At some point, the childish stuff ends. That happens when we grow up. When we
just get older and we don’t grow up, we look for fanfic about TV characters
masturbating so that we can masturbate to it. We continue to have the hots for
David Cassidy in all his 15 year old glory on the Partridge Family. We have
intense and heated arguments with others over the characterizations of cartoon
characters.

We keep doing that even after we get degrees and jobs and look perfectly
normal to the outside world. Whenever somebody questions our proclivity to
invade the sexual privacy of real people, or why we like to write fanfiction
about children having sex, we trot out the degrees and the jobs and we call what
we do ‘scholarship’ and wonder what sort of pervert the person questioning the
action is. That’s called transference.

The most intense discussion of what happens here on Mr. Goldberg’s blog takes
place in LiveJournal land in threads that are largely protected.

Authors, scholars, whoever, do not make any statements here because who wants
their publisher or tenure committee to know that they used to write, and maybe
still do write, lies about real people’s sex lives. Heaven forfend they know we
get off on writing stories about underage people having sex. How about it coming
out that the author of that hot new fantasy series still gets off on Mutant
Ninja Turtles slashfic and spends her off hours making fun of people on Fandom
Wank under an assumed name then TALKS about it on the journal she keeps under
her real name?

There are academic papers to be had in all of this, but the only ones taking
it seriously are the ones with a vested interest in making it appear harmless.

This rings true to me. How about you? And I may be revealing my vast ignorance (which I do here daily) and the limitations of my well-thumbed edition of Websters Dictionary, but is there really such a word as "forfend?" Is there a reason why the "fen" don’t use the word forbid?

Masturbation!

by

"MarytheFan"  defends her search for masturbation fanfic and is applauded, in later comments on her blog, for being a classy gal ("Just wanted to say that I fangirl you madly at the class you’re showing").  Anyway, MarytheFan writes, in part:

I have zero interest in a discussion with someone who functions on the
middle-school level that equates masturbation with something stupid and pathetic
that only losers do because they can’t get anything better, rather than as one
perfectly valid, healthy and fun sexual option in a smorgasboard of sexual
options. Maybe if my actual masturbatory experiences had consisted solely of
sad, pathetic situations in which I was a loser who was only masturbating
because I couldn’t get anything better, rather than situations in which I was
enjoying my own body because holy good god, that felt good, I’d think it
was a pathetic and loser activity. Guess what? You also don’t go blind or have
hair grow on your palms, in case anyone out there was still functioning
furtively in the shadow of those old myths. Well, unless you poke yourself in
the eye, I suppose, in which case, wow. Bendy, aren’t you?

I have no problem with masturbation, Mary. It’s healthy, feels good, and
keeps Cinemax in business. What I find pathetic are people who
masturbate over fanfiction that portrays TV and movie
characters masturbating, and the people who write fanfiction about fictional characters masturbating, and people who would announce to the world that they are
searching for fanfiction about TV and movie characters  masturbating that they can
masturbate to.

This would also probably be a good time to, once again, mention Lindsay Lohan’s nipples.

Potter Pedophilia

by

Fanficcers think authors should be flattered by their work. Using their inane logic, JK Rowling should be overjoyed by "We Are the Women Who  Love The Boys of Harry Potter," a LiveJournal community "created for the sole purpose of discussing the beauty of the Harry Potter boys."

If
you are of legal age (18 years old or more) and feel more than just a
little attraction to the lovely boys of the Wizarding World, then
WELCOME! 😀 You will find your kind here.

We do conceed that
this community does show that we are, to some small extent, pedophiles.
Well you would be too, if you just looked at the boys! 🙂 We just
enjoy beautiful things. We can’t help that! 😀

Between Real Person Slash, DUE SOUTH Masturbation stories, and Harry Potter Pedophilia, what isn’t there to love about fanfic?

(Thanks to "Maggie Thatcher," who provided the link in her comments on my Wank Fic post)

Greetings from the Cell Block

by

Now I’m getting mail from convicts and I don’t even have hooters. This particular convict is looking for an agent for his autobiography. I’m a writer, not an agent, so I’m not sure why he picked me for his two, lengthy email. Here’s an excerpt:

The Last Hardrock is an insightful
chronicle of one man’s journeys from the streets of East New
York, Brooklyn to behind the walls of New
York State Correctional Facilities with a candid and compelling look at prison
life in the form of letters from one convict to another. It takes you on a trip into the minds of our
street warriors while simplifying the brutal truths about prison life with
stories filled with personal struggles, gossip, love and rage…

I have for the past 10 years served
a sentence for a felony conviction…my experiences include a tour in Germany, with the US Army where I served as a combat medic, New York City Golden Gloves Boxer,
connoisseur of the Hip-Hop culture and student of life…

My manuscript will only be available
to one agent at a time, so if you are interested, please contact me
immediately.

If you’re interested, the line forms to the left.

 

Jet City Journal, the sequel

by

My brother Tod and I started our day yesterday visiting bookstores — at one of them, I found a signed first edition copy of a Ross Thomas novel ("Missionary Stew") for $25. I felt like I’d stolen it.

We then went to the Seattle Mystery Bookshop, where we had a great time signing our books, chatting with Bill Farley about Rex Stout & Nero Wolfe, browsing their fantastic selection, and talking mysteries with Vince Keenan and David Thayer. I could have stayed all day…and given our next signing experience, I probably should have.

Our next stop was the Barnes & Noble University Village… where they had lots of copies of my books, several posters announcing my presense…and no copies of Tod’s books and no mention of him on the posters. He was thrilled. It got even better when the announcement on the loudspeaker invited people to come meet "Lee and TOAD Goldberg." I’m sure Tod will go to into far more humiliating and humorous detail on his blog, so I’ll leave it at that. But it made us appreciate independant mystery bookstores like the Seattle Mystery Bookshop even more.

Our family showed up in force, so that part was great, and afterwards we went back to our Uncle Stan Barer’s beautiful home on the lake for dinner, where our cousin Aaron Barer showed up with his friend KUBE 93 DJ Tiffany Warner…a bright, funny, and attractive young woman (it’s no wonder she’s also a successful model) who put up with our strange family and bizarre conversation with patience and good humor.

All in all, it was a great trip but I am eager to return home, see my wife and daughter, catch up on all my mail, and get to back to work. Most of all, I’m looking forward to being warm again!

You Can’t Escape Hollywood

by

I spoke to about 900 Jackson High School students on Friday —  doing my schtick during six different assemblies throughout the day (special thanks again to librarian Barbara Stoltzenburg and her fantastic staff).

Each one of the assemblies/classes was different. Although I gave the same talk, half my time each period was devoted to fielding questions from the students. The questions really shaped how the talk went and, from my perspective, gave a personality to each session. During one period, there was a young girl, perhaps 16 or 17, who asked some really perceptive questions about the business, how television shows are developed, and the details of production schedules.

Afterwards, she came up to me and told me, very quietly, that she’s just signed to be one of the stars of a SciFi Channel pilot. She told me about it, who the producers were, when production was starting, etc. She asked me some more questions, shared with me some things her "Hollywood" agent and her "Seattle" agent were telling her to expect, and the whole time I was thinking…here I am, in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, and I might as well be in Los Angeles.

At my daughter’s school, you can talk to any 10-year-old, and they know all about pilots, the difference between above-the-line and below-the-line etc… because this is an industry town, and if their own parents don’t work in some aspect of "the business," their friends’ parents do.

The last thing I expected this weekend was to encounter a teenager in Mill Creek, Washington who was as well-versed and as immersed in Hollywood as a Calabasas, Studio City, or West L.A. kid. The remarkable thing was how low-key she was about her upcoming pilot gig. She didn’t mention it in her questions, and waited to tell me about it privately. When I mentioned my conversation with her to a couple of other English teachers they had no idea which student I was talking about (I forgot to get her name). So, clearly, she hasn’t been going around the campus bragging to everyone that she’s going to be in a pilot.

So I guess she hasn’t gone entirely Hollywood after all…

Jet City Journal

by

I’ve been scarce around here the last few days because I am up in Seattle for some booksignings. I kicked off the trip speaking to the students at Jackson High School in Mill Creek, where I was bombarded with questions about writing books and TV shows (special thanks to school librarian Barbara Stoltzenberg and her terrific staff. I’ve never seen a nicer high school library). I have to admit there were a few quaestions that caught me by surprise, like "What kind of car do you drive?" and "does your wife look like Jessica Alba." It was a lot of fun, but after talking to hundreds of students over an entire school day, I had almost no voice left. (Did I mention it’s freezing up here? They are experiencing this thing called Winter. I’ve encountered winter a couple of times in my life before. I am so glad we don’t have it in L.A.)

Afterwards, my Uncle Stan Barer took my brother Tod and I to the Sonics game, where we had floor seats so close to the action we got to see the beads of sweat on every player.  It was also fun watching the  millionaires fight over the inadequate supply of free chocolate chip cookies in the VIP room at half-time. I’ll post some pictures from my Jack Nicholson-esque perch when I return to L.A.

This morning it’s off to the Seattle Mystery Bookstore and Barnes & Noble University Village to sign books, meet some friendly readers, and do the humanitarian work that allows me to write this trip off my taxes. The Seattle newspaper listings about the signings have amused me and irritated Tod — one read something like "Lee Goldberg will be signing his books MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE and DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE PAST TENSE with his brother" and didn’t even mention his name. I had nothing to do with it. Honest.

Wank Fic

by

DuesouthThe new, living definition of  "pathetic":  someone who searches the Internet for masturbation fanfic:

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to search for wanking fic? I mean, are
there any useful search terms to use? Googling "masturbation" and
"fanfic" turns up things from Lee Goldberg and his ilk, with the yadda yadda
about how it’s all some poor, unimaginative substitute for … no, I’m not going
to go there.  At any rate, OMG, rec me some fanfic with masturbation in
it. Any fandom. It just needs to be hot and to involve someone touching themself
in sexy ways.

After "MarytheFan" posted her fervent plea on LiveJournal, someone enthusiastically recommended DUE SOUTH masturbation fanfic.

I haven’t read them in a while, but I recall there being a few damn hot ones in
there.

I wonder if they include the dog.

(Thanks to Tig for the link)

Post-Partum Depression

by

I just completed my 7th DIAGNOSIS MURDER novel, "The Double Life," which will be published in Sept. 2006, and delivered it to my agent. While it’s a great feeling to finish a book, it also leaves this big void. The book has been such a big part of my days, and my thoughts, for the last few months that it’s strange not to have it there any more. But I’m not taking much time to  rest. I delivered this DM early — 30 days ahead of my deadline — so that means I’ll have a little more time to plot and write the 3rd MONK novel, "Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu," and can enjoy the holidays without having to worry about scrambling to finish a book.