Tod Goldberg

My Pick To Win Project Runway: Whoever Finds The Dark Crystal

I think it's pretty well known that I can spot people clearly seperated at birth. Who can forget my astonishing discovery concerning Amy Hempel and Emmylou Harris? Or Elizabeth Crane and Dave Pirner? Imagine my surpise, then, when I made the startling discovery last night that Blayne, one of the contestants on Project Runway (and say it with me, people: Blayne? Blayne? That's Not A Name. That's A Major Appliance!), was actually a puppet.

Here are two photos. Two of the beings pictured were in Dark Crystal. One of the beings is a Blayne. You be the judge.

The Worst Song Ever

Wendy and I were having a conversation the other day about how I couldn't quite fathom how KISS had sold so many records, nor why people thought they were so subversive back when we were kids, or why anyone with the correct number of chromosomes could possibly listen to their music now and think, Yeah, this shit rocks.

Now, that's not to say I haven't turned up Beth a time or two in the car. Or Christine 16. Or I Was Made For Loving You. But what invariably happens is about midway through I stop and say, "Christ, this song is fucking terrible. All they do is say 'I was made for you lovin you, baby, you were made for lovin me' 59 times over the course of 2:30!" And by the time I come to this realization, well, the song is over and I feel a little soiled. In fact, that's what just happened as I was sitting here writing. I was listening to Sirius on my computer and Christine 16 came on and at first I was like, yeah, great, let's get a Camaro and sniff some glue...and then I thought, You know, this song is making me quantifiably dumber every second it plays. There must be something else to listen to. Anything.

And then, well, then I remembered some of Ace Frehley's solo work, which reminded me of the worst song and video ever made. I bring it to you now for your enjoyment and edification.

And Then...

..depression set in.

That's a tremendous number of talented writers without jobs.

A Desk: Illustrated

I am endlessly surprised by the things that prompt people to send me emails. Well, that's not entirely true. I can easily predict emails concerning things in my books that people like/hate/blame for their inability to get their manifesto about the end of days dawning at the conclusion of the Mayan calendar into print. That's normal. But this week, I got a bunch of emails from people who saw a picture in this post and a comment I made in this interview about something I keep on my desk and wanted something specifically addressed: They wanted me to take some photos of my desk and explain what was on it and why. It seemed to me that I'd done something like that once before, but without accompanying art. Nevertheless, a man's desk changes over time. So, herewith, three photos of my desk -- a picture of the left side, a picture of the right, and a wide shot -- and a little bit about what you can see.

Okay, so what we have here is the following:

1. A copy of Dan Chaon's story collection Among The Missing stacked on top of David Sedaris' new essay collection When You're Engulfed in Flames. I'm teaching one of Dan's stories -- Big Me -- in an online course on the short story for UCLA right now, so I was just re-reading it again. The Sedaris book came in the mail the other day and I'm reviewing it for CityLife shortly.

2. A pen, just adjacent to the remote control for my stereo (not pictured) which is presently playing Jane's Addiction's Nothing's Shocking album ("Had a Dad" specifically).

3. A UCR Palm Desert note pad that says: To Do

-Course Description for 239 (a class at UCR PD)

-Bong Water (a story I'm working on -- working title, I assure you)

-UCLA (reminding me to post some stuff in my online class tomorrow)

3. A copy of The Little Book of Forensics on top of the Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction. I've been poking through the forensics book for some stuff I'm doing in my new Burn Notice book and the Scribner is my favorite anthology to teach out of.

4. A snow globe of the Hotel Del Coronado our friends HelenKay and James gave me.

5. The greatest coffee mug ever -- the one you get every year at the LA Times Festival of Books. The one on my desk is from 2004. It holds 4 full cups of coffee or, uh, about 30 pens and pencils.

6. A phone. We rock the Vtech 5.8 here in the Goldberg home.

7. A digital recorder for my deep thoughts...and for when I interview people for stuff.

8. A wicker thing I'm supposed to keep stuff organized in. I don't. Instead, it holds a very cool notebook Mark got me a few years ago after I guest blogged for him. I write lots of little notes in it. It's very cool.

9. A weird back massager thing that I actually use to bang against my head periodically, or beg Wendy to use on me for it's stated purpose, but it doesn't really work regardless. I somtimes find mysef with the little nubs on the end in my mouth. It's gross, but it's true.

10. A black stapler. I don't tend to staple a lot of things. But whenever I need to, I invariably say to Wendy, "Hey, do we have a stapler?" And then she marches me back into my office and shows it to me.

11. A box of publishing publicts' business cards and then other cards of people i meet randomly and then never feel right tossing their cards. So, let's see what we find, shall we? Abby Figueroa. Oh! She was a student of mine. She moved to the desert. I guess I never called her. Sorry Abby!

Okay, here's the far less exciting right side:

1. My wireless mouse on top of Raymond Chandler's Lady in the Lake. This is actually an intentional misuse of Chandler's novel. I started using it as a mouse pad when I started writing The Fix, to remind myself what I was writing about, to keep linear (not my strong suit) and to be aware of the noir tradition. Now, I just sort of like using it as a mouse pad.

2. An empty glass on top of a coaster. It previously held a Mexican Coke, which is to say a Coke bottled in Mexico, which means it's made with real sugar. It tastes like how Coke used to taste. We bought a case of it at Costco and Wendy and I have been drinking it like Hitler is in Pomona.

3. The current edition of Poet's and Writers, with my iRiver atop it.

4. Above the P&W is a stack of mail I need to mail...or, which I was supposed to mail today, but didn't.

5. The big white binder is all of the scripts and storylines for this season of Burn Notice, which I have so that I don't do something and then realize that A) it's going to happen in episode 3 B) It's completely contrary to something that's about to happen and thus totally inappropriate C) Is some observation they've already made (there are only so many ways to say "When you're a spy..." but you get the idea). Plus, it's good reading! 

6. My cell phone. The Goldberg family recommends the Razer until said family gets a Blackberry later this month and renders the Razer moot.

And, lastly, the wide view.

1. I proudly got rid of my fucking Dell in favor of the Sony Vaio, augmented with an external hard drive (beneath the stand) and an ergonomic keyboard, because I'm all about ergonomics.

2. The chair is your standard issue black fake leather executive chair that's about as ergonomic as a cheese pizza, but is comfortable no less.

3. The desk is actually more like a picnic table -- it's 4 wood slats wide and rests on two metal stands. We bought it at the Pottery Barn about a decade ago. I pretty much love it.

Any other requests? Book shelves? Animal photos? A glimpse into my book bag? 

Using The Blog For Good: A Question About Miami

If any of my faithful readers out there happen to live in Miami and can answer this question, I would appreciate it: If you're driving toward Miami Beach on the MacArthur Causeway, can you see the parallel causeway -- the 195? And can you see it well enough to actually, say, see something explode near one of the girders? Like, say, a boat. You can respond here or email me...and then you'll get your name in the next Burn Notice book as a good guy or a bad guy, your choice.

Update: Not that I condone people blowing shit up in Biscayne Bay, but the answer universally seems to be yes.

On The Art Of The Short Story

My friend Rachel Resnick has been guest blogging over at the Book Fox all week and concludes her time with a long and spiraling interview with me and Lisa Teasley on short fiction. She's posted the first half just now...and there's still more to come. But here's a snippet:

BF: What does it take to write a short story?

TG: Tonight? A few better sentences than what I've conjured. But, generally, it takes a willingness to find that scary place. To examine what you've avoided. To write something so powerful that it carries the weight in 3 or 4 or 5K words what an entire novel does in 100K words. I think the best stories do that -- the best example for me in this case would be Amy Hempel. Her stories are these tiny things, but each is pared down to it's core, it's emotional raw point, so that every word means something. That's what great short fiction does: it's spares no space while it breaks your heart.

There's plenty more to come (not least of which would be Lisa's portion of the interview!) and I'll post more when it goes live.

This Is Not Good

LA Observed reports on what those of us in Southern California have been aware of for a while now: That by the time the final cuts are done on the LA Times, it will more closely resemble a tablet of MadLibs than the newspaper we knew even last week, particularly since if you're a fan of the Highway 1 section, the Thursday Guide, the Magazine and, I fear, the Book Review (where, in full disclosure, I frequently review), you'll probably have to write those sections yourself:

With Sam Zell and Randy Michaels in town and making everybody antsy, and speculation raging in the newsroom about the future of Publisher David Hiller, the cutting out of printed sections in the Los Angeles Times has begun. Today's issue of the auto section Highway 1 was the last one, the paper confirmed in an editor's note. Pulitzer-winning columnist Dan Neil will move to the Business pages on July 18. No word yet on where, or whether, Susan Carpenter's Throttle Jockey column will go. (Her latest.) Also, the weekly listings section The Guide will stop being printed after July 24. The Los Angeles Times Magazine was killed last month. Still to come: the details on the future of Books, Sunday Opinion, Food, Real Estate and Home.

The upsetting thing here is more personal than professional -- I have plenty of friends who stand to lose their jobs in these cuts and those upcoming and it's not as if the job market for print journalists is teeming with openings, since the cuts swooping down across the Tribune Company are merely another example of what is happening industry wide. The newspaper industry is bleeding and what that means, simply, is that people will lose their jobs, your newspaper will become increasingly depersonalized -- I live in La Quinta, which is just outside Palm Springs, which has a perfect example of this very thing in the Desert Sun, a paper about as news-rich as a tattoo, and as in depth, too.  On a professional level, I of course hope divine intervention will keep the Book Review a solid concern, but if history is any clue, I expect to get word any time now that the Book Review will be folded into Parade.

The sad truth is that I wonder just how many people actually care about any of this. As a kid, I woke up every morning and read the Contra Costa Times and then, in the evening, read the San Francisco Examiner, back when it was the evening paper -- or, wait, maybe it was the Oakland Tribune? Maybe both? -- and every Sunday we got the Tribune and the Chronicle and the Examiner. It probably helped that my mother was a journalist. But the point is, I also remember everyone else getting all the papers, too. We were even taught how to read the paper in school -- proper folding techniques and such -- and I'd wager that that isn't core curriculum in most elementary schools now. The obvious point is that most of us are online and getting our news immediately, which makes me wonder about bottom lines at newspapers and whether or not online can sustain what print could not. Mark brought this up this morning regarding book reviews, but I imagine that if bottom line dollars and cents are leading to the cuts, employing writers to write is still going to be the issue  no matter the medium. Less words, less writers, more profit.

Cutting the Magazine was an obvious thing, of course -- people barely knew it was being published anymore. But losing Highway 1 says quite a bit -- there was essential feature writing going on in that section and for an area as car obsessed as Southern California to lose it's car section tells me that bad news, really bad news, is coming soon.

Update: Well, that was fast. 

No Barking From The Dog And No Smog

It doesn't matter how many book you've written, how many stories you've sold, how many times you've seen your name in print, how many reviews you've received, how much you've groused, complained, worried, pondered or simply thought it would be a whole lot easier to just do something else for a living than write...when you get a copy of your new book, your actual book, not the galley, not the ARC, but the actual book with the bar code and everything, it feels like you've achieved something really, really cool. So all day, as I've been working on a story for a new Akashic Noir anthology, some rewrites for my new story collection and Burn Notice #2 -- called The End Game -- I've been staring at this:

I gotta say, the cover wasn't all raised up when it arrived in the mail. That's from me constantly opening it up and reading it.

A few things I've discovered:

1. Uhm, yeah, ignore the error on the top of page 261. I am aware the Fiona is not a shape shifter. This will make sense when you read the book. Buy enough copies and your first editions will be collector's items!

2.  It's more than a little weird to get a copy of your own book only to find an advertisement for your brother's book in the back pages.

3. Gabrielle Anwar is pretty hot. I mean, I knew that. But...damn. I think I need to have her on the cover of all my books.

4. I've never had a mass market paperback before. It reminds me that when I was a kid, all I read were mass market paperbacks. It also makes me wonder where the 3 dozen Spenser novels I had in mass market have disappeared to, as well as my copy of Prince Ombra and The Second Coming of Lucas Brokaw, which, for a time, were my two favorite novels. That time was roughly 25 years ago. But I've got books from 25 years ago on my shelf, so now I wonder: Who did I loan Prince Ombra and The Second Coming Of Lucas Brokaw to and when I can expect them back? (Also: If someone has my copy of Seth Speaks! I'd like that back, too.)

5. Being a writer is pretty cool. People pay me to blow shit up. I can't get over that.

The Fix: Behind The Music and An Excerpt

A month from now my first Burn Notice book, The Fix, will be released into the wide world. I'm already well into writing the second book and thinking about the third one, too. It has been an odd process for me for several reasons, not the least of which being that I am typically a pretty slow writer, tend to agonize over every word and have a micro manager's attention to detail as it relates to marketing, art and advertising. I've been spoiled in a way because with Simplify, for instance, my great publishers at OV Books actually listened to my rants and things worked really, really well. (And it should be noted: I am hoping to have good news shortly about my new collection of stories.) With The Fix, it was an entirely different experience. I wrote the book in about 70 days. I have no micromanaging tendencies concerning anything with the art or marketing, particularly since its hard to complain about television ads running on USA, a huge web presence on USA's site and assurances that the book will be in every store in the known universe. Unlike my previous books where I've toured the nation, I'm doing a limited amount of touring this time around -- I'll post the schedule shortly, but it's primarily in the west -- focusing mostly on mystery and crime book stores, which have always shown me a tremendous amount of support for my previous books, and festivals. The reality is that this book will probably sell itself. The other reality is that my ego won't allow me to stay home and hope that happens.

I would be lying if I said writing this book wasn't a challenge. It absolutely was. I've never written a traditional crime novel. Anyone who has read my work in the past will tell you that linear storytelling isn't exactly my calling card. Nor is having a narrator who is reliable. Of course I've written linear work in the past. And of course I've written reliable narrators in the past. But one thing I don't think I've ever written is a hero, even an ironic hero like Michael Westen. My characters tend to be pretty fucked up and of course Michael is fucked up in his own way, too, but not in the "he may have killed his wife and daughter" sort of way. The challenge for me was to convey him on the page in a way that made me enjoy writing him and also was true to Matt Nix's creation.

Which brings up another challenge: I had to remember to be funny. My tendency in writing fiction is the opposite of what I do here on this blog. And of course this blog isn't even really me -- it is some blog version of myself, some stylized version of my life and opinions (I don't say the word fucktard all that often, really) -- so if you pick up a book of mine looking for whatever is you find here, you're going to be disappointed. One of the more common things I hear when I meet people at book signings and such is, "I bought your book thinking it would be really funny. But this is really different. It's serious!" Which I guess is the hazard of keeping a blog. At any rate, I gave myself the freedom with The Fix to let go of some of my literary pretension, leaving that for the short fiction I wrote this year, and hopefully found a voice that would give readers what they want in terms of the humor of Burn Notice.

After the book comes out, I'll post some other interesting stuff about the book -- including a little bit about the Easter Eggs I put in the book, which will be part of a contest I'll run here for people who happen to be fans of the entire family of Goldberg siblings and can spot all of the allusions I've made to previous works by all of us -- including some stories about the actual writing of scenes and such (there is one notable scene that occurred while I was literally freezing to death in Vermont).

Until then, Penguin has posted a pretty extensive excerpt -- the entire first chapter -- here. The spacing is a little funky in places -- some of the dialog gets shoved together in odd ways -- but it will give you a nice flavor for the book.   

Hate Mail Makes Me Feel Funny In My Pants: The Fucktards Strike Back!

I get a fair amount of hate mail. Usually, it's from someone like this fucktard who, inexplicably, landed on my blog and decided I was causing him curious offense. Most of the time I don't bother to post my hate mail here, opting instead to forward it to my siblings so we can all giggle about it. It's sort of a Goldberg sibling ritual -- we all send each other our hate mail, which is then followed up by a phone call where we reiterate how funny the hate mail is, and then we pause to wonder if the person sending us the hate mail will later threaten to kill us -- which happens more often than we appreciate, really -- and then, well, then we talk about what we just bought at Trader Joe's and the relative merits of Neil Diamond songs and such.

Weirdly, sometimes I hear about hate mail from a third party. For instance, a couple of months ago a man emailed me to say that the makers of C'mere Deer and their "celebrity" spokesman were really pissed off about a blog post I made a couple of years ago regarding their product, which made me positively gleeful. It's not often I can piss off the Michael Jordan of bass fishermen, after all.

This month, however, it was as if the fucktards had a convention and determined that enough was enough: They were going to let me know exactly how they felt about being fucktards. Most notable of these was a letter I received from a contestant on the Amazing Race who wanted to let me know that despite my insistence on calling her entire family fucktards who tried to use Jesus to their competitive advantage, I'd seen things incorrectly. "I never tried to exploit Jesus and hope that it never made you feel badly toward God," the contestant wrote. "God does love you...and me....despite all of our sinful ways."

It's always nice to know God loves me, despite, you know, my people ratting his son out. But I object to being called a sinner, since, you know, I'm not a "sinner" owing to my lack of belief in any organized religion. (Culturally Jewish, to answer your next question, which means I rock the kugel and but also had Canadian bacon on my pizza this evening and believe when I die I go to an enormous petri dish in the sky.) I might be a "criminal" in a given situation, but I don't think I'm a sinner.

People whose names have appeared in my Parade rants typically react poorly to finding their names here. What usually happens is they'll send me an email saying, "How dare you!" followed by a series of complaints about being called such a cruel name as fucktard and then a demand to have their name removed or else face a lawsuit. Of course there's nothing actionable in my putting people's names in this blog, particularly since I'm quoting them, and people tend to think mentioning lawsuits is a good way to get people to act, but I come from a family of lawyers, so I'm not terribly afraid of people's internet lawyers. I think the main thing is that people tend to be mortified by discovering that they are, in fact, fucktards. It can be a daunting realization. This month, though, I learned that outing people as fucktards is actually bad for the kids. Here's an email in full from a person who didn't like me calling her a fucktard, though, I assure you, her question was one of those that makes me literally fear that Communism might have been the way to go:

Sometime ago you called me horrible names.  As an ex-police officer I allowed it to just run of my back, having heard much the same in the streets from those I had arrested.

However, a few moments ago my 16 yr old son came me to saying one of his friends showed him what you wrote about his Mother.  I just wanted to know why your column needed to be so vindictive.

As a student I believed in debate and discussion... not personal attack.  I  would ask in the future on behalf of some other 16 yr old out there that you consider what you place on the Internet for something which lasts for eternity.

I think everyone knows that first and foremost, I do this for the kids. I mean, what's the use of outing fucktards if not to help the kids? Hurt the kids? Never. Now, what I liked best about this particular piece of hate mail is really not about the kids at all. It's the implied "I know how to use a nightstick, motherfucker" bit found in the second sentence. I have to admit that I love the idea of gangsters on the street using fucktard now -- it would show that my reach is truly national, though I have to say I find it somewhat unlikely, since fucktard doesn't exactly roll off the tongue while you're throwing your set up and such.

At any rate, I wrote this particular person back, since she asked me a specific question:

The reason my column was so vindictive is that whenever I write about Parade magazine, I say vindictive things. Particularly about Personality Parade, which I find intensely frightening. The question you asked -- REDACTED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY -- struck me as particularly infuriating because, well, it's just plain silly. I can't imagine the process by which someone would ponder this and then send in a question to Parade about it, so perhaps you can illuminate that process for me as well. But the name I called you I call everyone who writes into Personality Parade -- it wasn't specific to you. Shoot, I even have t-shirts. At any rate, when you put something into the public sphere, as you do when you write a letter to the editor, or a letter to Parade, and it is published you have to expect that people will react to your opinions or questions, positively or negatively, and often in print. Mockery and satire are part of our culture and society and what I do with Parade, and with your question, is just that.

I haven't heard back from this person, perhaps because they are still trying to figure out my question to them -- ie, Why the fuck would you write a letter to Parade? I mean, what kind of fucktard does that? -- but I think the two of us reached a simple accord that all fucktards can take to heart: Don't act like a fucktard and I won't call you a fucktard. It's just that simple.