Tod Goldberg

LL A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes To You

A Conversation I Had With A Fucktard

I'm beginning to sense that maybe the fucktard problem I have -- as in, I encounter a lot of fucktards -- might not be caused by a proliferance of fucktards in the world (though there certainly are quite a few of them) but that I somehow attract them to me. I don't know how this happens precisely. I am, I suppose, nominally a public figure and therefore have to deal with the nominal public at times, but there are times when I'm not even the main nominal public figure in the room and yet I still have interaction with fucktards.

This week provided a fine example. Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of Angels in America, came and spoke on campus this past Thursday evening as part of our Arts & Letters series -- and I must say, he was great; I had the opportunity to spend some time with him before and after the show and he was funny and interesting and then, in what was really cool, he spent a good five minutes talking to every single person who bought his book, which is about as classy as it comes -- and during the course of his conversation on stage with Chuck Evered noted that he thought getting an undergraduate degree in playwriting was a bad idea, that you should instead get a liberal arts degree and learn about all sorts of things, live a little, and don't waste time writing until you can really write. He made a compelling argument. Anyway, after the program, I was standing around chatting with different people (there were about 300 there for the conversation), when I found myself cornered by a man of about 70.

Man: I'll tell you one thing, I think creative writing programs are a travesty. The worst are those MFA programs.

Me: Why is that?

Man: Well, not for what Kushner said. I think it's just a way for universities to make money.

Me: As opposed to football?

Man: You don't like football?

Me: Oh, no, I love football. College football. Pro football. Arena. But if you want to look at money making operations, college football pulls in a lot more than say an MFA in Poetry program does.

Man: Different thing.

Me: How so?

Man: Football builds character. MFA programs, creative writing programs, what do they build?

Me: Uh, professional writers. Hopefully, anyway.

Man: That guy who got up before Kushner, you ever heard of him?

Me: [not noting that I was the guy who got up before Kushner] Yes.

Man: I haven't. And he runs the MFA program here. What does that tell you? You want to look at a great writer, take a look at Clive Cussler.

Me:  He doesn't even write his own books anymore. I think his son writes them.

Man: Dirk Pitt, right?

Me: No, that's his character.

Man: You take a look at Cussler or James Patterson and that's where you see how these programs are a travesty.

Me: I'm not sure I follow you.

Man: Have you ever read Clive Cussler?

Me: Not in years.

Man: His plots are so intricate. He thinks of stuff no one has ever thought of.

Me: Like finding the Titanic?

Man: RIght. James Patterson is the same way.

Me: Like the one with the serial killer?

Man: Yeah. Yeah. You think that Kushner comes up with those? Or any of these MFA students? [here he points to the students, or at least who he presumes are students...which are, well, the students] You know who I also like?

Me: John Grisham.

Man: That's right.

Me: I like the one about the guy who has to fight against the crooked lawyers.

Man [thnking] Yes, that is a good one.

Me: So, what are you doing here, if I may ask?

Man: My wife brought me here. She's a fan, I guess. And you?

Me: I direct the MFA program.

Man:

Me:

Man: Here?

Me: Yes.

Man:

Me:

Man: You were up on the stage.

Me: For a little bit, yes. I was the one who stood up and talked about the MFA program.

Man:

Me:

Man: I better find my wife.

My Annotated Trip To Las Vegas

Even though I write for Las Vegas City Life, a weekly paper in Las Vegas, I hadn't actually visited the city in two years, which is the equivalent of about 20 years in any other city. Things get torn down, rebuilt and torn down again so quickly that I hardly recognized the place when I returned last week for the Vegas Valley Book Festival -- plus, since the architectural aesthetic in most of suburban Las Vegas is sprawling stucco shopping centers, if you close your eyes for just a second, you don't know where the fuck you are when you open your eyes back up.

It's also a notoriously strange book town. I wrote about it once before in Post Road, so I won't belabor the point, but the folks at the Vegas Valley Book Festival always bring in top notch talent and the people just don't turn out like they should. It's not just Las Vegas, of course. Palm Springs has a book festival that attracts scads of big names and is the worst book festival I've ever attended. (This year, the highlight of the Palm Springs book festival for me was when a dust devil swept through an open field and then into a row of booths featuring mostly self-published authors selling their Christian mysteries -- a woman sitting underneath a huge, framed-in-glass copy of her iUniverse book cover had the frame crash down on top of her her head and, somehow, didn't get cut. There was glass everywhere, huge shards, and not a scratch on her, even though it broke on her head. She said it was her faith in Jesus. It was more like that scene in Pulp Fiction, really, where Samuel L doesn't get shot...) It's too bad, really, because I'd like to think that a city like Las Vegas, with two alt. weeklies, two newspapers, a large university and lots of young people would be craving a really great festival. (They did get big crowds, I understand, for Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon, both who did evening readings/talks.)

Anyway, I still had a great time. And that means some weird shit:

1. At the Peppermill, where I ate on Friday with my friends and fellow Las Vegas Noir contributers Vu Tran, Lori Kozlowski and Todd James Pierce, we were served our food by an 18 year old girl who was 8 months pregnant and who filled all of us with guilt each time she walked by -- I mean, she was so pregnant, you could pretty much see the kid's beating heart through her low cut outfit and her service was pretty sketchy, which I suppose might be the case when you're carrying around cheeseburgers and a living entity in your womb. Our cocktail waitress, on the other hand, was not pregnant, but she had a black eye and bruises up and down her forearm, which made me want to give up drinking all together. In the bathroom, I had a conversation with a man who started talking to me while I pissed, which is always very, very comfortable:

Him: You ever eat here?

Me: I'm eating here now.

Him: They got one of these in Mesquite. It's amazing.

Me: The last time I ate here was about 7 years ago. It wasn't amazing then.

Him: What are you getting this time?

Me: Mushroom swiss burger.

Him: How is it?

Me: Well, I don't know. I feel guilty for making my server bring it to me.

Him: In Mesquite, you want to get the steak.

Me: (flushing)

Him: Where you seated?

Me: (zipping)

Him: (staring)

Me: In the back.

Him: All right. Have a good meal. It's awesome. Get the steak. I'll stop by and check on you later.

Me:

Him:

Me: Yeah, we're leaving pretty quick.

2. I stayed at the Artisan Hotel, which used to be a Travelodge underneath I-15, but which is now either a very cool or exceptionally tacky hotel underneath I-15. All the guest rooms are named for artists and are actually appointed really well...apart from the huge painting of a naked woman with her hairy bush on the wall just adjacent to my bed in the August Macke room (#523 if you'd like to sleep in the same bed as me at some point in your life).  But the real surprise came when I was flipping through the channels on the huge flat screen in the room and came across channel 69, which, when I landed on it, featured a woman covered in cum screaming for "more dick, more dick!" At first I thought I must have hit a button on the remote and was now being changed $49.95 for hot dp action. But no, the Artisan offers free hardcore porn on channel 69 to all visitors. I was stunned and watched for another 5 hours in order to study the screen writing.

3. Fuckards follow me to all booksignings. As I sat a signing table with Charles Bock and Christopher Coake, a man walked up and stared at me.

Man: Who are you people?

Me: Just your average carbon-based life forms.

Man: What are you doing sitting here?

Me: Taking questions.

Man: What's going on at this place?

Me: it's a book festival.

Man: I've got a couple books. None in print.

Me: That's great.

Man: Who is your publisher?

Me: Why?

Man: I'm really interested in publishers.

Me: Why?

Man: Tells me a lot about the writer.

Me: Why?

Man: Well, you know, you can't get published anymore. It's impossible.

Me: Clearly that's not the case.

Man: Who are your publishers?

Me (I rattle them off)

Man: Who is your agent?

Me: You realize you haven't asked me my name?

Man: What's your name.

Me: Tod Goldberg

Man: You write anything I've heard of?

Me: I don't know, you ever hear of Tod Goldberg?

Man: No. Is he popular?

4. I visited a great bookstore in Henderson called Cheesecake & Crime. Here's the deal. I don't actually like cheesecake. The only cheesecake I've ever liked I had in NY at about 3am and it might have been the result of dire hunger. But when in Rome and all that, I took a piece when offered. And it was fucking remarkable. It was the kind of cheesecake that made me think that maybe I really do like cheesecake but that for all of these years, I've told myself that I don't and have therefore missed out on some excellent desserts. It's also a great little mystery bookshop, the kind you really don't see much of anymore when you travel around on a book tour, where the people behind the counter actually know and love books and genre fiction in particular. If you get to Las Vegas and have some money left, you should at least go for the cheesecake.

5. On Friday night, I ended up at this street fair thing in Las Vegas called First Friday. It's mostly kids dressed like they robbed a Hot Topic attempting to look cool, but failing miserably because it's hard to look cool wearing girl's jeans and eating a funnel cake. (The funnel cakes were, incidentally, quite good.) This is true of girls and boys. There was a poetry stage being hosted by my friend Jarret Keene and I'm afraid I couldn't listen to much of what was being said because it was being said in poet voice. There are two voices that make me insane: Poet voice and Michael Silverblatt's voice. Silverblatt is far more tolerable because it's broken up with the occasional comment from the authors on Book Worm as well. For example, if I were ever on the show (something I, uh, tend to think won't happen as long as I do these sorts of things, but, really, I'm sure Michael has a good sense of humor...so: dude, my new story collection comes out in the fall of 09...I'd love to be on...):

Silverblatt: Tod, I am struck by the power in your prose, the way words tumble from the page like mercury, like Jupiter, like Pluto, once a planet, but no more a planet, now just a bit of stardust, like your words, floating, inexorably, through, time. And yet, I find that your words are also like play-dough, in that when I eat them I find them at first...salty...yet...plain...and I found myself yearning for...bite...verve...only found in the works of people like Rilke, like Rick Springfield, whose girl, while Jessie's, was, in fact, no longer, like Pluto. Yes?

Me: I'm just happy to be on the show, Mike.

Poet voice, however, is a freight train of fucktardism leaving the station at a terrifyingly slow pace. Where...every...word...gets...it's...own....pause...except whenwordsareputtogetherreallyquicklyforaddedemphasis...and...then...frozen...like...the...the Hoth...planet.  Anyway. One line of poetry did stick in my head. It was uttered by a woman who must be famous, because she was dressed very well and had a shaved head, which fairly screamed to me "Tenured Faculty". It was something like, "My mother discovered her uterus was missing." Then there was a poet who is also a cop and he got up and yelled at the "grazing cows" who wouldn't stop to listen to his poetry, which consisted of a lot of screaming about, uh, well, I couldn't really make that part out. But a lot of screaming, in poet voice. The cows just kept grazing.

Vegas, Baby

For those of you in lovely Southern Nevada, I'll be doing three different events in Las Vegas today and Saturday. Today, I'll be on a panel discussing Las Vegas Noir, both the book and the form, at the Vegas Valley Book Festival.  The panel begins at 3:45 at the Historic Fifth Street School. Also on the panel will be Lori Kozlowski, Jarret Keene and Todd James Pierce, moderated by Steve Grogan (I'm really hoping it's the same Steve Grogan who was the QB for the Patriots in the early 80s...). On Saturday at 11:15, also at the Fifth Street School, I'll be on a panel about Las Vegas literature with Charles Bock, Doug Unger and Chris Coake, followed by a reading and signing at Cheesecake & Crime in Henderson at 1:15.

And then I get back on a plane, fly home and hope that no one finds the trail of dead hookers I've left in my wake.

Top 5 Things I'll Miss About The Election Season

1. Seeing my oldest and dearest friend Todd Harris every night in my living room doing his pundit thing on Hardball. Now, granted, we don't agree on things like, you know, politics, but it was great to see him every day.

2. Putting off actual work in order to read fivethirtyeight.com in a futile attempt to quell my anxiety.

3. Downloading photoshopped pictures of Sarah Palin having sex on top of a dead bear.

4. Pondering when, exactly, John McCain decided he would sell his soul for the presidency. It would have been helpful if the people at fivethirtyeight.com could have just worked out a metric to measure this confounding turn.

5. Having this conversation with Wendy:

Me: These fucktards who support Palin couldn't accurately name 35 states on the map.

Wendy: Neither could you.

Me: Sure I could.

Wendy: One moment please. [Scurries off to the office, comes back a few minutes later with an empty map for each of us.] Okay. Have at it, smart guy.

Me: [I hit the west coast without a problem, but the stumbling begins just to the right of Utah. I move to Florida and handle the gulf states without a problem, but when I try to move above Texas, things get a little murky. I begin placing names on northern states based mostly on where I've seen a lot of snow-bound football games on television, but can't say with any accuracy if Green Bay actually sits on a bay and if there is anything north of North Dakota. I move to the eastern seaboard and realize that I pretty much have no idea what those little states up there on the right are -- well, I know what they are, I just don't know where they are. I realize that though I've been to North Carolina, I have no idea where South Carolina might be. Same with Nebraska, though I know it's next to Iowa because when you land in Omaha, you have to briefly drive into Iowa for a moment to go towards Nebraska City. I ponder Wyoming. I ponder how many state capitals I know, knowing that once, as a child, I knew them all by heart, like some kind of idiot savant. I start scribbling abbreviations and name several states MN.] Okay. I've completed the map of America and it is good.

Wendy: [Looking at my map and hers and comparing it to a map with all the correct names.]

Me: How did I do?

Wendy: What is COH?

Me: Oh. Uh. It's either Colorado or it's Ohio.

Wendy: You did it twice.

Me: Right.

Wendy: [Marking the maps and shaking her head.] Did you go to school?

Me: My map skills are tight.

Wendy: Ever heard of West Virginia?

Me: That's commie country.

Wendy:

Me: Who needs West Virginia, really?

Wendy:

Me: Anyway, they fuck you up by calling states "west" when they are in the east.

Wendy: You got 30 right. By luck.

Me: How many did you get?

Wendy: 47

Me:  That's because you lived in the South and the West.

Wendy: No, it's because I'm smart and paid attention in school.

Me: You give me a RISK board, I'll name all those fucking territories.

Wendy:

Me: Could you find Kamchatka?

Wendy:

Me: Irkutsk? Ural? I think not.

Wendy:

Me: Anyway, what I'm saying, really, is that there are no red states, there are no blue states, just the United States.

Wendy:

Me: I am all about the hope. So. Yeah.

Wendy: You're an idiot.

Please

That Makes Me 1%

One of the unique joys of my life is that I got to see Jane's Addiction play about 100 times in tiny little clubs in Hollywood back in the 80s. It's one of those things that, when looking back, seems amazing -- there would be shows where Jane's would play and then the Peppers would pop out, or Thelonious, or Fishbone and it was pretty much something we all took for granted ("we all" encompassed a lot of drunk high school boys who then became drunk frat boys). I remember seeing them at the Palladium and thinking, well, I guess this is it, no more shows at small clubs. Later, I saw them at the smallest club ever -- on top of Mt. Baldy next to a pool -- and then I was sure that was the last time I'd see them that up close and personal. All of which is to say, I wish I'd been at their reunion show last week. From the video below, it looks just like how it used to be: a bar with a low ceiling, Christmas lights, a sound system that makes a guitar, a bass, a set of drums and one shrieking Perry into the loudest band on earth.

No Word Yet From Pinky Tuscadero

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Spies & Swayze

The good people at the literary journal Barrelhouse recently interviewed me about a host of topics, including writing The Fix, my writing in general and, because it's Barrelhouse, my thoughts on Patrick Swayze:

Barrelhouse: Do you know why Michael Weston got burned?

Tod Goldberg: No, but then I’ve never bothered to ask. The other side is: I really love the show and don’t want to know. Because then Michael just becomes a PI. It’s better to have him looking into this conspiracy since it adds a real palpable dimension to the character. Just like you didn’t really want the Fugitive to find the one armed man or Mulder to figure out what really happened to his sister or Shaggy to enter into intense therapy to get over his very bizarre bestiality issues with Scooby, because then that narrative engine runs out and it’s just disposable episodes each week, like you’re watching Matt Houston or something. I do know some things, of course, because I’ve read all of the scripts for Season 2 already, and I think when the Battlestar Galactica lands in Miami to pick up Six, things are going to get really tense.

Barrelhouse: Okay, our last question is the Barrelhouse Standard: what’s your favorite Patrick Swayze movie?

Tod Goldberg: I really vacillate on this one. But for sheer 80s greatness, I think I have to go with Red Dawn. I mean, he and C. Thomas Howell beat the Commies using nothing but patriotism, which I don’t think kids today can really appreciate. It’s the basic equivalent of Justin Timberlake and the Jonas Brothers taking out Al Qaeda which I think would be awesome, if unlikely.

Reason #214 Why I Don't Have My Own Signature Fragrance

People are always asking me, "Tod, when are you going to come out with your own signature fragrance?" And I always say the thing, just prior to running off to Chess King to pick up my new Chams outfit: "As soon as Drakkar Noir stops being so awesome."

Apparently, Danielle Steel doesn't have the same monastic patience I do and thus thought it was important to develop her own scent. Unfortunately, the people who review perfumes, namely Chandler Burr at the New York Times, found her perfume to be roughly equivalent to getting kicked in the nuts repeatedly until death offers sweet relief:

Danielle Steel stepped from the late-model cherry-red Bentley, the spike heel of her Louboutins skipping over a pile of trash in the gutter and planting itself firmly on the Manhattan sidewalk.

Steel had sold 450 million books. She wore a stunning Oscar de la Renta top that cost lots and lots of money and a big, amazing, tasteless fur coat that cost even more money. Her perfectly tanned face, immaculately made up with Chanel makeup that reflected her Swarovski earrings that cost lots of money, was turned upward to the offices of her perfume licensee, Elizabeth Arden, the company that would be making Danielle by Danielle Steel, the Danielle Steel Perfume.

In the Arden meeting room, Danielle Steel shared her vision with Elizabeth Arden Internal Creative Team. Elizabeth Arden Internal Creative Team listened to Danielle Steel describe the perfume she envisioned. It would be a stunning, amazing perfume! It would be exquisite but avant-garde. It would be timeless but also trendy, classic but also contemporary. (Elizabeth Arden Internal Creative Team nodded its collective head vigorously. Yes, yes! it said.) Young women would wear it, but middle-age women would wear it, too, and everyone would want it and everyone would love it because in the time it had taken to conduct the creative meeting with the Elizabeth Arden Internal Creative Team, Danielle Steel had sold 500 million books.

It only gets better from there. Or worse, depending upon your particular affinity for Danielle Steel.

On a side note, I just spent about 30 minutes looking for a photo of a Chams shirt from the early 80s and it's as if Chams De Baron has scrubbed the internet clean of said abomination except for an old disco-era commercial. Which means now I'm going to have to go poking through a bunch of old pictures in hopes of finding a shot of myself wearing a black sleeveless polyester blend shirt with yellow piping in order to prove, once and for all, that growing up in the 80s was like growing up on the fucking moon. Half of my shirts from that period of time snapped on a diagonal over my collarbone and the other half inexplicably had red mesh in a lot of odd places.

Now it's a quest.