Tod Goldberg

Letters to Parade: The Mystery Of James Patterson's Popularity Solved!

I like to think of myself as an optimist. It's not specifically true, but I like to think of myself that way. So for the last several months I've sat idly by and let Parade magazine slide off of my back. Why be angered by the fucktards of the Earth who can't figure out why David Caruso's character on CSI:Miami still drives a Hummer when, clearly, the cost of gas would cripple him on his cop's salary? In my new optimistic view, the fucktard who asked that question is getting the help she needs via extensive shock therapy as well as in depth discussions with her therapist concerning her inability to tell the difference between reality and whatever that place is where David Caruso is allowed to reside.

My new bout of optimism also precluded me from walking up to Janice Kaplan, the editor of Parade, at the recent Tucson Festival of Books, where we were both guest authors, and asking her the question on everyone's mind (well, apart from, "Who do you think will be the #1 dictator next year, Jan?"): What the fuck is wrong with your magazine? I mean, seriously, what the fucking fuck is it that allows you to employ a fictional entity, who, nevertheless, is a lie spewing fucktard and general sexist in Walter Scott and That Smug Bitch Marilyn Vos Savant? How do you sleep at night? Have you no soul?  Well, truth be told, the other issue that kept me from the line of questioning above is that I didn't realize Ms. Kaplan was there until after I got home and by then it felt like a moot point. I didn't want to call on Superman to spin the earth backwards so that I could rectify the situation, feeling like I'd save that chit for something really important (like maybe if or when I accidentally kill a hooker or something).

In point of fact, my optimism has kept me fairly happy on a Sunday by Sunday basis of late. I find myself reading Parade and asking: What would Jesus have done if he'd, like I,  read this drivel every Sunday for the duration of his short life? And the prevailing answer that came to me, each week, is that he would have tried to get the fuck off this tilting rock in space ASAP. Alas, I don't want to come back as a Zombie and i certainly don't want my likeness worn around the necks of people, so unlike Jesus, I've held onto this mortal coil. Optimistically, I figured Parade would just get better or I'd stop reading the fucktardery printed therein each week, but, man, quitting Parade is like getting off the oxycontin. Or Afrin. Or self-googling. That shit takes determination I just don't own. So, today, my optimism crumbling, I turned to the Personality Parade and found the following question:  

Q Thriller novelist James Patterson has sold 150 million books. How does he do it?--C. Brodie, Knoxville, Tenn.

It's a great question, isn't it? Now, granted, my best selling book of all time is the one I wrote in three months, and which contains at least one scene of inexplicable shape shifting,  so I might be speaking out of my ass here, but I think the answer boils down to this: People are fucking stupid. I heard Patterson speak a few years ago on his writing process and it boiled down to this: He comes up with an idea and then has someone else write it. And then, apparently, he goes in and cuts out all of the good stuff and what's left is white space and some dialog and then Ashley Judd reads it and decides she'd like to be the woman who is raped and then get her revenge. Here I will also admit that I've not read a Patterson book in several years, not since I read one poolside a few years ago and nearly drowned myself in abject anger. Or maybe it was after he was awarded the International Thriller of the Year Award in 2005...by his publisher, in essence. I encourage you to look for the winners of the award in 2006. Or 2007. Or 2008.  I'll wait right here. 

Now, before I come off as someone with sour grapes, let me state for the record: I have sour grapes. But I also find that whenever I meet someone who claims to be a big James Patterson fan, the conversation is always the same:

Me: So, what about his books do you like?

Fan: Well, he has really compelling mysteries.

Me: Really? Like they are hard to figure out?

Fan: Oh, no, I can usually figure them out pretty quickly, but they have really interesting serial killers in them.

Me: Why do you like serial killer books?

Fan: I like to melt stuff.

The point being, fans can never tell me just what it is they admire about the man's work. But at least they are reading, right? Even if they are reading books about serial killers.  But the reason I say people who read his books are fucking stupid is a bit more complex: I just wonder how many would read the books by his fiction vetting elves/co-authors if they ran across them in the bookstore? Probably very few as they are buying a brand vs. buying a book by an author and that just feels fucking stupid to me. Walter Scott, who knows something about co-authors, says:

        A.Patterson--who seems to be a permanent fixture on best-seller lists--creates 50-page outlines and then decides which novels he'll write and which he'll collaborate on. This year, there will be two books by Patterson alone and seven others that he'll co-write.

This in no way answers the question in the least, of course, because answering the question with any kind of factual data is beyond the purview of Parade, but it does offer an exciting glimpse into Patterson's process...which is roughly akin to throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

I've Seen A Million Faces And I've Rocked The All...

...but, heretofore, none of them were in Fresno, which is where I'm headed this week to do a reading at Fresno State on Thursday night at 7:30pm in the Alice Peters Auditorium. I don't know what I'm reading yet, apart from knowing it will be from my upcoming collection Other Resort Cities. I think I might read Mitzvah, which appeared in Las Vegas Noir and contains no less than 100 bad words. But I figure, you know, if I'm going to read in Fresno, it's okay to play blue, right? Isn't Fresno the kind of town that appreciates a foul mouthed Jew spouting obscenities? My feeling is that if Bakersfield can make a legend out of Buck Owens, I'm pretty much allowed to sacrifice a monkey on stage and eat its fecal matter in Fresno, right? I might also read Walls, which appeared in Barrelhouse last year and is a personal favorite, but contains references to the 1970s, which to undegraduate students and youngish grad students is like referencing your favorite silent movies. Alternately, I might read sections of the local newspaper in poet voice, with a little added poetical interpretation just for flavor:

"And the Lakers...upon...the court...we're like flowers in the hair of...a...prostitute...upon...the breast...of...the sport...the sport...the sport of life...upon the burning bush...George Bush...defeated, soiled, destroyed...the opponents...like my father...defiled...my...emotions...I hate...you...Jesus..."

Anyway, if you happen to live in the Central Valley and don't have cable television and need a diversion from the crumbling fortunes of the land, come by and say hello Thursday night.

Top 5 Terrible Songs I Know By Heart Because My Siblings Tortured Me With Their Terrible Musical Taste

A few days ago, a loyal reader named Sally emailed me and asked me to post a list containing "something funny" preferably about my family as her life was in the midst of a deep sucking period and she really wanted to laugh a bit. Ever the dutiful content provider, I am now happy to present  Top 5 Terrible Songs I Know By Heart Because My Siblings Tortured Me With Their Terrible Musical Taste:

1. Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I have a deep love for story songs -- Please Come to Boston, The Collected Works of Harry Chapin, The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia, etc -- but this song is beyond even my wide appreciation for story songs. My brother Lee used to play a lot of Gordon Lightfoot, the result being that I happen to love Sundown, as I think many people might, but I just can't imagine what possessed my brother to keep putting the needle onto this abortion:

Lightfoot is also a great example of what singers looked like before music videos.

2. Helen Reddy, You and Me Against The World. Good christ, Karen played this song like she was earning royalties from it. The odd thing is that it's actually one of two songs Karen played constantly that contained a lyric about going to the circus. There was a lot of Helen Reddy played in the Goldberg home back in the day, which might make one think that I'd be enlightened into the ways of women and not, you know, as I am. Alas. I'm not alone, though, as Kermit the Frog seems to be having some issues in the video below.

3. Melissa Manchester, Don't Cry Out Loud. Karen's second favorite song about circuses and, essentially, the same song as Helen Reddy's song above. I recall sitting on Karen's bed while she played this song over and over again, to the point that I began to wonder if maybe Karen was trying to get me to run off to the circus, like maybe it was all a subliminal message. Frighteningly, Manchester also appeared on the Muppet Show to sing this fucking depressing dirge to bad parenting. What the fuck was up with the dancing puppet people? And the gymnastics equiptment? Cry out loud, girl, cry out loud!

4. Patrick Hernandez, Born to be Alive. This song is my infinity. Lee played it every day, over and over again, and even at 7 I thought the lyric was nonsensical. "We were born to be alive." Yeah, no shit. I would sit outside in the hallway with my dog Sam listening to Lee play this song behind his closed bedroom door and I'd wonder: What is he doing in there? The answer is that he was probably losing his fucking mind. I mean, if you listened to this song, over and over again for what seems like an entire year, you'd lose your mind, too. Eventually he'd leave to go to the Pachinko Palace in downtown Walnut Creek, but the song would still be reverberating through the house, because, you see, it's not often one realizes they were born to be alive.

5. Various Artists, A Shit Load Of TV Theme Songs. Lee used to play TV theme songs constantly. Where your average teenage boy in the 1970s might have been listening to, say, The Ramones or AC/DC or KISS or ELO (though Lee listened to a shit load of ELO, too) or, hell, some Skynryd, Lee was bumping things like, say, Suicide Is Painless, the theme to MASH.

This Is What It Means To Say Tucson, Arizona

As noted below, I headed off to Tucson this weekend for the 1st Tucson Festival of Books. I went both as author and pimp. With my author hat on, I did a panel with my good friend Rob Roberge and also did a booksigning at Mysterious Galaxy's booth. The panel was great -- Rob and I discussed the ten things we wished we knew when we were just getting started as professional writers (1. Have sex with Madonna...6. Say yes when James Patterson offers you a co-writing gig...10. Aderall and adult diapers...) -- and was SRO, which was cool, particularly since many of those standing seemed intermittently offended and inspired by our banter. We managed to get through the entire panel without telling anyone that the one thing they should avoid above all else would be mysteries where a cat helps solve the crime, so that was a surprise. The booksigning I did at MG's booth was at the same time as J.A. Jance's, which was a little bit like doing a book signing with Jesus in Jerusalem, as apparently Jance is Big in Arizona. She even had pre-signed photos. At one point a man walked up to her and said, "I thank God every day for you and Dean Koontz," which made me think that organized religion was in desperate need of re-evaluation. Nothing against either Jance or Koontz (well, maybe against Koontz, let's be honest...), but were they really put here by God to help lead us into the light? Anyway, J.A. was very nice to all of her fans (and me, certainly; she is a very nice lady) and I managed not to,  you know, say offensive things to them when they thanked God for her. 

I, of course, had my share of fucktard interactions:

Man: You got any Mack Bolan?

Me: Uh, I don't know, I don't work here. I'm an author.

Man: You like Mack Bolan?

Me: I think I did when I was 12.

Man: Those are the best books. You should read them. Each one is new.

Me: Do they even still publish them?

Man: Mack Bolan? Yeah, he's been writing them for years.

Me: "He" is actually about 50 different authors, I think.

Man: No, it's all one guy. Don Pendleton

Me: Don Pendleton is dead. But even when he was alive, he wasn't writing them.

Man: How would you know? You said you haven't read one since you were 12.

Me: But even then, they'd been written by 50 different guys.

Man: Your facts are wrong.

Me: Don't you think if Don Pendleton were alive, he'd be here instead of me?

Man: You should be so lucky.

And then:

Woman: [holding a copy of The Fix] Oh, you wrote The Burn Notice?

Me: Just the book.

Woman: How's that?

Me: How's what?

Woman: How did you just write the book?

Me: [I give her an exhausting explanation.] And now you're holding it.

Woman: [looking at the cover] Where's the black fellow?

Me: Pardon me?

Woman: The African-American?

Me: Pardon me?

Woman: [she taps the picture of Jeffrey Donovan on the cover] The one who helps the psychic solve the crimes.

Me: Oh, you're thinking of Psych. 

Woman: No, I'm thinking of The Burn Notice.

Me: No, I'm sure you're not.

Woman: 

Me: 

Woman:

Me: There is a Psych book, too, if you're interested.

Woman: I've never even seen that show!

The second half of my appearance, as noted above, was pimping. Namely, I was there pimping the UCR-Palm Desert MFA in a lovely booth sandwiched between the Southerwestern Association of PublishAmerica authors (that wasn't their actual name, but you get the gist) and business that handmakes books. Behind our booth was the food court, so for two days our booth was filled with the luscious scent of BBQ, Kettle Korn and corn on the cobb, which was great. In front of our booth was a cavalcade of humanity -- there were about 30K people at the festival. Weirdly, the same thing kept happening: People would walk up to our booth, look at who we were and then tell us some mundane fact about either Riverside or Palm Desert. For instance:

Man with approximately 50 pens stuffed into his breast pocket: Riverside!

Me:

Rob:

Man: Let me tell you what I know about Riverside. In 1956, a company in Riverside developed a cartography program that was used to help map a portion of Arizona. It was used extensively throughout the lower portion of the state and then also up near Flagstaff, as I recall. And then, in 1978...[goes on for about 15 minutes discussing cartography and then just stares at us.]

Me: Interesting.

Rob: You have a lot of pens there in your pocket.

Man: And that's all I know about Riverside! [slaps the table and walks away]

Or:

Old Woman: Palm Desert. I know Palm Desert. I used to live in Hemet. 57 years.

Me: What made you move to Tucson?

Old Woman: I got out of there when California began to...change.

Rob: Change to what?

Old Woman: You know. It changed.

Me: All the hippies, you mean?

Old Woman: It just changed.

Rob: How? How did it change?

Old Woman: It was...different. It had changed.

Rob: In what way?

Old Woman: [stomps off]

Rob: What do you think she was going to say -- the Mexicans or the Jews?

Me: I'm going to say the Mexicans, the Jews and a group she might have called "colored."

Rob: You think she'll apply to the MFA?

Or:

Man & Woman With Sweaters Tied Over Their Shoulders And Speaking In Perfect Unison: Riverside Poly Class of '57!

Me: What?

M&W: We graduated from Riverside Poly.

Rob: What's that?

M&W: You don't know Riverside Poly?

Me: Know? No.

Rob: I don't keep up with high schools.

M&W: We know UCR.

Me: That's great.

M&W: We're big supporters of Riverside.

Me: From your outpost in Tucson.

M&W: [walking away] We love Riverside!

Rob: Am I awake? Why does this keep happening?

Or:

Man In Safari Hat: Palm Desert. That means date shakes to me.

Me: That's more Indio than Palm Desert.

Man: I've had many date shakes in Palm Desert.

Me: I'm sure you have.

Man [staring at our fliers]: Where are you?

Me: I'm sitting right in front of you?

Man: No, I mean in Arizona, where are you?

Me: I'm not. Well, I mean, I'm here now, but our campus is in Palm Desert.

Man: Why are you here?

Me: To steal your graduate students and poison the water supply.

There were plenty of other weird occurrences -- notably people who would stand in front of us and just stare, so I'd say "hello" and they'd stare some more and so I'd say, "hi" and they'd stare some more and then I'd say, "You do speak, right?" and then they'd walk away. It was very strange. People did that all weekend long. We also saw a lot of people who vaguely like 1998 and 2002, several people who had hundreds of buttons on their hats, many people with just too many damn pens, a very large man who Rob predicted we would one day read about getting cut out of his house, and, particularly in our panel, people who didn't find our jokes about Jesus all that funny. Maybe that's why that lady left California. Too many hippy liberals mocking the Zombie King.

The highlight of the weekend was a show I went to Saturday night. Rob, who is also a guitarist in the seminal punk band The Urinals, was backed up by the excellent Four Killer Flats, at Che's Lounge in downtown Tucson. At the show -- which featured Rob and the boys doing great covers of "Here Comes a Regular" by the 'Mats, "Sammy Hagar Weekend" by Thelonious, "Ain't No End" by the Jayhawks, a Dream Syndicate song I can't recall, "Drank So Much" by the Gear Daddies and two other songs that have slipped my mind -- I got to have the honor of saying "I'm with the band" every time I went up to the bar for a drink, which meant I got all the cans of Pabst I could drink, which it turns out is about five these days. I'd like to think that if it was all the Amstel I could drink, I would have comported myself better, but, alas. The really cool thing, though, happened before the show, when I went with Rob to rehearse with the band and got my own private concert. I sorta almost cried during "Here Comes A Regular," I will admit.  

Finally, the really odd thing was that I ended up in one gypsy cab -- it didn't even have a meter, so basically I just got in some guy's yellow car and he drove me to my hotel and charged me 30 bucks -- and another cab driven by a guy who kept screaming "Motherfuck!" at me because his credit card machine was broken and I didn't have any cash, so he had to drive me around Tucson looking for an ATM. He'd pull up to a nightclub and would say, "There's an ATM in that club." And I'd say, "I'm not paying a cover so I can go into a club to use the ATM. Don't you have fucking banks in Tucson?" And he'dscream, "Motherfuck!" and keep driving. This went on for at least fifteen minutes. And yet I still tipped him. Motherfuck!   

By The Time I Get To Arizona

The last time I was in Tucson was 1993. I was 22, I was the President of Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity at lovely Cal State Northridge, had absolutely no money to speak of and yet still managed, along with Dave, Tommy, Todd, Ari and something like 9 other guys, to afford to fly to Tucson to go to a football game and then spend the weekend getting drunk at the UofA Sig Ep house. I imagine this is why I still get collection calls on a credit card I conveniently "lost" at some point later that year. (When Wendy and I first got together and she was invested in fixing my credit -- I didn't even have a bank account when we moved in together -- that credit card was on my report and I said something like, "Oh, yeah, that was the card that, uh, yeah, some shit, like, uh, you know, some shit, uh, happened to it and, uh, what happened, uh, was that, in that spirit, I, uh, stopped, uh, paying it." And she said, "You're an idiot." No pause. Just: "You're an idiot." The pausing would come later.) Nevertheless, I am returing to Tucson this weekend to replicate that experience, but instead of going to a football game, I'm going to a book festival. And instead of going with 12 frat guys, I'm going with Rob Roberge. And instead of getting drunk at the Sig Ep house, I think I've got plans on Friday night to, uh, well, probably write some of my new Burn Notice book and get to bed. Saturday  night I'm going to see Rob's band play...somewhere...and Sunday, uh, well, Sunday I intend to, uh, well, go to the book festival and then, uh, you know, see some of what Tucson really has to offer, which I suspect means I'll be heading back to the Embassy Suites to do a bit more writing on my new Burn Notice book.

Does Tucson have anything to offer?  If so, let me know.

If you're in Tucson and you love you some Tod Goldberg, you'll be able to find me in several places:

On Saturday, I'll be signing books at the Mysterious Galaxy booth at 12:30pm and then on a panel with Rob at 2:30. All points in between will be spent in the UCR-Palm Desert MFA Pimpage Booth. Come by, get a free pen, bring me a churro. On Sunday, I'll still be sitting in that booth. Bring me a funnel cake, please.

For more information, visit the Tucson Book Festival website, where you'll see there are a ton of very interesting authors apart from me, too. But they aren't asking for you to bring them a churro. Only I am. In fact, the first person to bring me a churro/funnel cake/frozen lemonade/chocolate covered banana/other fair-like food item, will receive a handsome galley for Burn Notice: The End Game, replete with all 200 typos. Come one, come all.

And then later this month, I'm visiting Fresno, which this time of year is like Paris.

Shelf Porn

Whenever I post photos of either my desk or my bookshelves, people tend to get very excited. As a people pleaser, then, I present my brand new office bookshelves -- so new, the linseed oil I spilled all over the backyard patio is still gloppy and smelly:

 

A few items of interest:

That a signed Raider helmet from 1999. The last time they were good.

Those are all signed baseballs. One ball is signed by both Frank Robinson and Ernie Banks. One ball, sadly, is signed by Ben Grieve.

The SIMPLIFY you see in the upper right corner was a gift from a student of mine.

All the books, save for the last shelf, are either nonfiction or research (there's one shelf devoted to stuff just about spying). The last shelf has literary journals, books I've written and recent anthologies I've been in. All the fiction is in the massive network of shelves in our living room.

Another One Bites The Dust

A person could make a living writing about the mournful last days of independent bookstores in various cities large and small (or they could for a little while longer, anyway), so I've tried not to post too many notices of long time favorites closing up shop in favor of...well...in favor of nothing, I imagine, since who can afford to move into huge storefronts like those once occupied by the likes of Kepler's, Cody's, Duttons (though, actually, Duttons is now occupied, at least partially, by a bookstore, Diesel), Midnight Special etc. etc. etc. But I just read this note from Ingrid Nystrom, who managed the events at Stacy's in San Francisco for over a decade, and which is closing up shop this month after 70+ years, and thought I'd repost a bit of it:

I’d like to again say thanks for all of your support over the years. When I first started working for Stacey’s, I was excited at the opportunities open to me but a bit disappointed that I wasn’t in a neighborhood bookstore. What I have realized in my eleven years here is that I am in a neighborhood bookstore. It may be a slightly strange neighborhood that arrives at 8 in the morning and goes home by 8 in the evening, but it has its regular rhythms, its regular characters, and a sense of community for anyone wishing to extend themselves. After talking with so many customers disappointed by Stacey’s closure, I’ve been reminded that Stacey’s has served as a decompression zone between work and home, a welcoming island of culture, a Christmas treat, a literary community, an escape from corporate-land, an interesting talk with lunch, and, of course, a bookstore. Whatever Stacey’s did or didn’t mean to you, I would like to remind you to look around you at your physical community and think about what matters. And if it matters, remember to step outside of your virtual world, unplug your iPods, look up from your Blackberrys and shop it, talk it, engage it.

Stacy's was a hallmark on any author's book tour -- I did their lunch time reading series twice and also signed at another store (Palo Alto, I think) -- and one of the coolest things was that after your event, you got to pick a book to take home for free. The location in the financial district was fun to read at during lunch because you never knew who would be sitting there or if anyone would pay attention to what you were reading. (I recall that when I signed there the first time for Fake Liar Cheat, I arrived a few minutes before my event and saw all those people sitting in the chairs and thought, Oh, man, I've made it! People in suits! I've totally transcended my audience!) It's sad that it's closing, but the really sad thing is that it's not even that big of a deal since so many other stores of its ilk have disappeared, too. It's like when the Washington Post announced it was getting rid of Book World -- it was upsetting, but so much the norm now that it wasn't even worth noting here.

A Fascinating New Interview With Me

I tell you, I never cease to amaze myself with just how fascinating I am. For instance, in this new interview on TalkingWithTim, I assert the following:

O’Shea: I don’t see many novelists reference Mannix very often–of those type of TV series in the 1970s and 1980s, which was your favorite?

Goldberg: Rockford Files, bar none.

You don't see John Updike revealing information that vital, now do you? Of course, Updike is dead, but you get the idea. To read the rest, click here.

PSIH8U Redux

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might remember the bizarre experience I had two years ago reading Antoine Wilson's book The Interloper and finding myself, or at least my car, in the pages. Now, an old acquaintance of mine has experienced it, too:

I know it's been 20 years since we last saw each other, but I just read this crazy book and saw your old PSIH8U plate in it and had to google you. You need to pick up a book called The Interloper by Antoine Wilson and just start reading. You're in for a surprise.

Which makes me think perhaps it's time to reprint the post here from the archives:

The other day, I was reading Antoine Wilson's excellent debut, The Interloper, when I ran across something that literally made me sit up in bed and go, "What the fuck?" It happened on page 21:

Her name was Patricia Stocking. Patty. P.S. Like the Palm Springs bumper sticker: P.S. I Love You, and the license plate I saw once on Palm Canyon Drive: PSIH8U.

The first car I ever owned was a 1982 Nissan Sentra that had been my sister Linda's 1982 Nissan Sentra before that, and, before that, had been Lee's 1982 Nissan Sentra, too. When Linda inherited the car, she went down to the DMV and got a personalized plate to voice her displeasure with living in Palm Springs, a situation rectified a few months later when she left Palm Springs under the cloak of darkness. Two years later, when I was of proper driving age, the Sentra became mine, where I then spent the next two years rollin' down Palm Canyon not picking up women, probably because my license plate indicated a boiling hatred because, of course, my license plate said PSIH8U. This was from 1987-1989. Which means Antoine saw me driving around in that car, with my bad keyboard-player from the Cure hair and, 20 years later, give or take, remembered it and put it in his book. Now that, my friends, is fucking weird. Fortunately, my sister Linda has long had a lawless streak in her and thus, through the magic of time and space (and a box in her garage) here's the plate: 

It gets weirder. It turns out that not only did Antoine routinely see me, I saw him. Antoine drove an old BMW with a license plate that said THSPIAN which, for years, I used to see wherever I went. At the time, I didn't know what a thespian was and so Linda and I presumed it was a lot like a lesbian, to the point that we ended up using Antoine's plate as our code word for women we suspected were lesbians throughout our teenage years: Oh, she must be a thespian! [uproarious laughter, WHAM! on the soundtrack, the ironies thick in the air]. I even remember seeing Antoine at a Ralph's in Palm Springs (Antoine has confirmed my description of the teenage him, right down to his car) and then, later, in LA somewhere in the Valley. Come to think of it, I think I remember seeing him -- or his car -- at a Jane's Addiction concert at the Palladium, too.

Considering that both Antoine and I have written novels about people who pretend to be other people -- though his is much, much better than mine -- makes this no less freaky.

The other day, I was reading Antoine Wilson's excellent debut, The Interloper, when I ran across something that literally made me sit up in bed and go, "What the fuck?" It happened on page 21:

Her name was Patricia Stocking. Patty. P.S. Like the Palm Springs bumper sticker: P.S. I Love You, and the license plate I saw once on Palm Canyon Drive: PSIH8U.

The first car I ever owned was a 1982 Nissan Sentra that had been my sister Linda's 1982 Nissan Sentra before that, and, before that, had been Lee's 1982 Nissan Sentra, too. When Linda inherited the car, she went down to the DMV and got a personalized plate to voice her displeasure with living in Palm Springs, a situation rectified a few months later when she left Palm Springs under the cloak of darkness. Two years later, when I was of proper driving age, the Sentra became mine, where I then spent the next two years rollin' down Palm Canyon not picking up women, probably because my license plate indicated a boiling hatred because, of course, my license plate said PSIH8U. This was from 1987-1989. Which means Antoine saw me driving around in that car, with my bad keyboard-player from the Cure hair and, 20 years later, give or take, remembered it and put it in his book. Now that, my friends, is fucking weird. Fortunately, my sister Linda has long had a lawless streak in her and thus, through the magic of time and space (and a box in her garage) here's the plate: 

It gets weirder. It turns out that not only did Antoine routinely see me, I saw him. Antoine drove an old BMW with a license plate that said THSPIAN which, for years, I used to see wherever I went. At the time, I didn't know what a thespian was and so Linda and I presumed it was a lot like a lesbian, to the point that we ended up using Antoine's plate as our code word for women we suspected were lesbians throughout our teenage years: Oh, she must be a thespian! [uproarious laughter, WHAM! on the soundtrack, the ironies thick in the air]. I even remember seeing Antoine at a Ralph's in Palm Springs (Antoine has confirmed my description of the teenage him, right down to his car) and then, later, in LA somewhere in the Valley. Come to think of it, I think I remember seeing him -- or his car -- at a Jane's Addiction concert at the Palladium, too.

Considering that both Antoine and I have written novels about people who pretend to be other people -- though his is much, much better than mine -- makes this no less freaky.