#1 New York Times Bestselling Author & TV Producer
"In most cases of seppuku, the cause of death is cardiac arrest due
to sudden cardiac collapse due to a sudden drop in intra-abdominal pressure due
to sudden evisceration."
That’s a line from Kay Scarpetta in Cornwell’s latest novel PREDATOR, as quoted by Marilyn Stasio in the NY Times.
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?
Lillo Brancato Jr., an actor who played a wanna-be mobster on THE SORPANOS, has been arrested for the murder of an off-duty New York cop. It seems Brancato was as doomed in real-life as he was on the show — the moron and a buddy broke into a vacant house that was right next door to a cop’s home. The cop caught them, sparking a shoot-out. The officer was killed and both Brancato and his cohort were shot multiple times but survived, albeit in critical condition:
Officer Daniel Enchautegui, 28, collapsed in the driveway of his Bronx home
and died shortly afterward.The wounded suspects were quickly captured. Investigators identified one as
Lillo Brancato Jr., an actor who got his break in the Robert De Niro-directed
film "A Bronx Tale" in 1993, and played doomed mob wannabe Matt Bevilacqua
during the 1999-2000 season of "The Sopranos."
There are only a few living authors of western literature who can truly be called legends in the field — Richard Wheeler is one of them. He started a fascinating blog some time ago, then abandoned it, offering his views on writing and publishing on Ed Gorman’s blog and in comments here. But now he’s back with a blog of his own. Whether you read westerns of not, I highly recommend you put him on your blogroll for his valuable insights, candid opinions, and informed take on the biz (he was an editor before he became a novelist, so he knows both sides of the biz)
Today, in a discussion of Gary Svee’s book SANCTUARY, he blames publishers with a deeply-held, anachronistic view of westerns for the demise of the genre in print:
In the last several decades, western fiction has been forced into a procrustean
bed by New York’s mass-market publishers. And now almost all the western lines
are defunct as a result.The idea, apparently, was to have a "line" of
books with similar classical covers and contents, and this would surely reach
the vast market of western readers pining for stories with 1940s titles that
employ words like "vengeance" and "showdown." This notion had the power of
religious conviction in New York, and still does even though most western lines
have gone to heaven, or hell as the case may be.
Wheeler’s new book FIRE IN THE HOLE is saddled with one of those traditional western covers…which bares no relation to the actual story. The hero isn’t a U.S. Marshal, he’s a detective posing as a vermin exterminator in a filthy, Montana mining camp. Not exactly your typical western hero or setting. All you have to do is read the opening chapter and you’ll be hooked.
A reader sent me a link to a great site called Think Geek, which is filled with all kinds of useful and ridiculous gadgets, from a CD/DVD shredder to a Zippo Lighter Spy Camera. Other goodies include USB Lava Lamps, a Swiss Army Knife with a USB flash drive, a USB Microscope, and a wristwatch with a built-in universal remote. Truly a site for the Maxwell Smart in all of us.
…they just have nicer places to sit than you do.
"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.
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! š 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! š We just
enjoy beautiful things. We can’t help that! š
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)
Writer/Producer Ken Levine has a very funny post on his blog about show jackets — the typical Christmas gift from a production company to the staff of a series. My closet is full of show-wear. I’ve got jackets, hats, fleeces, visors, vests, sweatshirts and t-shirts representing just about every show I’ve ever worked on.
I used to wear my show clothes a lot when I was first starting out — it was pride and it made me feel like a member of a special club. I could dress from head to toe in stuff that had a show logo on it. I don’t wear any of it very often now (except my MISSING, MARTIAL LAW, DIAGNOSIS MURDER and COBRA fleeces, which are all super-warm on chily days).
I never wear the BAYWATCH jacket because I’m afraid someone will ask me to give them mouth-to-mouth. I don’t wear my SEAQUEST jacket because it makes me look like the ultimate sf fanboy geek. If I wear the other stuff, I run the very real risk of my waiter or waitress handing me their headshot or the guy at 7-11 slipping me his spec script along with my Big Gulp.
But you don’t always get show clothing. You also get binders, book-bags, paperweights, belt buckles, pens, flashlights, key-chains, even candles. Ken has received some weird stuff, too:
One year on CHEERS we received lovely dart boards. At the time everyone
had young children. I donāt think anyone even took them out of the box.
(Iām sure thereās still one or two floating around ebay). On MASH one
year the cast gave us all engraved watches. It was a beautiful gift,
one I still have. The next season the new writer on the staff was
counting the days until the big gift. It turned out to be a custom 33
rpm album of all the scenes in which the cast sang on the show. He was
livid. āYou guys get watches and I get a fucking album of Loretta Swit
singing?!ā (I donāt even think ebay has that one).A few years ago an actor on a show I was producing gave me a large
heavy rock with the word ārememberā carved into it. I put it on the
front porch and am still looking for a companion rock that says āPearl
Harborā or āthe Alamoā or āto wipe your feetā. Iād tell you who the
actor was but canāt seem to recall……Oh well, I still have my memories. And my ITāS ALL RELATIVE fleece, BIG
WAVE DAVEāS cap, ALMOST PERFECT sweatshirt, LATELINE jacket, KIRSTIN
fleece, CONRAD BLOOM bowling shirt, ASK HARRIETT t-shirt, and GEORGE
& LEO beltbuckleā¦which I would all gladly trade for one FAMILY GUY
handkerchief.
When you’re a producer on a series, the studio and network also send you gifts. From wine and wallets to alarm clocks and dishwear. I got a bathrobe from Les Moonves once. I have it hermetically sealed in case he calls me to a meeting in a sauna some day.
The folks over at InnerTube noted the uncanny similarity between the real-life conflict between attorney-turned-pseudonovelist Robert Tanenbaum and his ghostwriter cousin Michael Gruber and a classic episode of COLUMBO.
Had this been a plot for a Television show, Tanenbaum would have shot and killed
Gruber before he had the chance to reveal the secret to a reporter from The
Romantic Times. (Okay, so maybe it wouldn’t have been much fun for the
victim….)Sound
familiar? It’s the plotline for the first episode of ‘Columbo’ as a series
(third ‘Columbo’ outing overall if you count the two pilots). "Murder By The
Book" starred Jack Cassidy, who would have been the Tanenbaum-type character,
and Martin Milner as the Gruber stand-in.Not that he ever had murder in
his heart, but Tanenbaum sounds like he would have made for the perfect
antagonist to Lt. Columbo. He was not only a lawyer and (alleged) author, but
also a teacher and a mayor! It sounds as if his social standing would have been
quite a formidable challenge to the attempts by the shabby, fumbling little
detective trying to investigate him.