ABlog the Author

I think this other guy's been dead long enough....

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:05:56 -0500

….to tell this story. Around `1987-1988, I’m working Rascals, a wonderful club in West Orange, New Jersey. One of my favorite clubs. It was run by these smart Italian brothers with the unGinzo last name of Magnuson. They used to pay me headliner money to emcee, which I did gladly. You’d go out with two other strong city acts and do Thursday-Sunday. In 1989, just before he hit giant, I did two shows a night Monday-Wednesday, opening for Andrew Dice Clay, for the entire month of January. Dice made like $250,000 for the month just taking the door. I made $2400 and felt like I robbed a bank because I could still work elsewhere on the weekend. Beautiful.

Okay, so this is before that. The gig was Thursday-Sunday, but Wednesday, they would bring in a big name for one night once in a while who might draw enough to bring in a bigger dinner crowd (v-strong restaurant). As the emcee you had to go up at the end of the show and announce future shows. So, I’m working with, let’s say, Stu Trivax and Gary Delena. Strong show. 400 big-haired Jersey people pack the house and we all kill. I go up at the end and say, ”Next week at Rascals, fresh from a guest spot on Saturday Night Live, Frankie Pace will be here (applause). Wednesday, June 3, from Diner and Aliens, Paul Reiser is here (bigger applause). Wednesday the 10th, from HBO, one of your favorites, Bob Nelson (whistles and shrieks). And Wednesday, June 17, Soupy Sales….” To which some guy, a real Exit 12 lout, yells, “He fucking blows!!!!” And I say, “Nevertheless….he will be here.”

They can’t all be touching.

Here's a piece I just turned in....

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:55:34 -0500

….for, wait for it, the program people will be sitting on next February at the annual Writers Guild of America East Awards. The WGA wanted something along the theme of “iWrite,” which I gather is about being a writer in the digital age, an age I entered kicking and screaming. They could have shamed more eloquent people to do this piece, but they know ever since the strike two years ago, I never turn my union down. So, here it is. Since there was no fee and no hope for residuals, you get to see it. As always, I hope this is something. Mangia.

More than 18 years later, two memories survive from my first day at Late Night with David Letterman. One was Dave’s assistant, Laurie Diamond, telling me to leave my office door open at all times so Dave could smell the smoke from my rarely-extinguished cigars. The other was the look on the face of then production assistant, now supervising producer Kathy Michalcik (now Kathy Mavrikakis) after she asked if it would be okay for me to use a typewriter for a week until my computer was ready. “Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m a typewriter guy.” I know that look. It’s the look I still get when I ask the restaurant hostess where the john is.

I held on to my typewriter at Letterman for the last two years at NBC and the first four years at CBS. I can give you all the romantic, tactile, clackity-clack reasons, but the fact was I didn’t have to switch, so I didn’t. I was and still am predominantly a monologue writer, a hired gag gun far flung from the production loop. You turn in your page, it comes back with checkmarks, the checked jokes go on cue cards and later emerge from the mouth of the guy in the suit.

Back then, I was in charge of compiling and editing the monologue, and I kept track of all the jokes on a idiosyncratic archival system of handwritten notepads – NBC notepads. One day, an intern walked into my office with some mail, picked up a stack of pads and said, “Is it okay if I move Windows ’95?” I made the change to a computer a year later, because I am a man of action. I have not looked back, except to track down that intern on Facebook and tell him he hurt me deeply.

I never understood what all the 128-bit RAM fuss was about until I started writing books. I wrote the first draft of my first novel entirely in longhand because I wanted the process to be as deliberate as possible. But when I began loading the pages into my original IBM Thinkpad, I was slapped to consciousness immediately by the pristine quality of the computer screen. The prose may look clean going up, but we know better. It forced me to polish what I originally scratched out. It became much more of a staredown, and much more thoughtful from the start. I wanted what went onscreen to be worthy of its cleanliness. Writers write, but not nearly as much as writers rewrite. I have written four novels and a collection since, 90 percent of them directly into a flashing cursor, which as I reread this now, looks and sounds kind of dirty. I’m going to leave it in.

For all the talk of speed, the computer slowed everything down and relieved me of my deadline-driven, short cut-obsessed, punchline-ruled past. I became a more diligent re-reader, a humbler self-editor, and thanks to the Web, a more righteous checker of facts.

I still ply the monologue trade, but the IBM Wheelwriter sits in a corner of my office, as if waiting patiently for a call from Christies. And the NBC pads are gone, replaced by a back-up cache of hard drive folders, CD- Roms and my stockroom of choice, the floppy disk. Yes, the floppy disk. Oh come on. Don’t look at me like that.…

I am reblogging this fourth generation from the serial...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:36:00 -0500

I am reblogging this fourth generation from the serial reblogger Lindsey Robertson because it is beyond compelling. And my publicist, Nettie Hartsock, keeps talking about something called “link love.” Which I guess is okay, as long as it does not involve Rachel Uchitel.

lindsayrobertson:

getthatlook:

thedailywhat:

TGIAF.

[via.]

Type type type, hard at work

This should win that short animated film Oscar that nobody usually cares about.

Okay, "Mr. Media" interview on Blogtalk is up....

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:22:00 -0500

Mangia….

Did an interview today on Blogtalk radio....

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:01:11 -0500

…with Mr. Media, Bob Andelman. Let me just say how different it is when the guy actually reads the book. I will post it when it’s available. As always, I talked about everything other than the book, but eventually I brought it back, I think. Bob and I have similar backgrounds. He started as a sportswriter and told a story about getting cursed at in the Yankee dugout by Yogi Berra, complete with the original curses from Mr. Ain’t Over Till It’s Over, you cocksucker. I forget you can curse of the web, otherwise I may have ended the Larry David-Ted Danson dessert bet story with me saying, “Have a piece of fucking cake.” The best I could do after the Yogi Berra piece was tell him about playing softball at ESPN Magazine with Lindsay Berra, Yogi’s grand-daughter turned hocker writer. In the middle of the game, sweet Lindsay Berra turned to me and said, “Jesus, I gotta take a fuckin’ piss.” It was not to offer Bill Maher’s great line, “I have never known a woman to suffer from penis envy…except on a camping trip. Because when you have to go in the woods, a penis is a pretty handy item. Nobody wants to squat on a tree….”

Let's celebrate the last day of November with a 23-year-old Larry David story....

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:11:41 -0500

(NOTE: I originally had this story loaded up and ready to go in conjunction with Larry’s appearance on the show October 2. But things got a little, uh, distracted, the day before, so I put it in my pocket….)

In the late 80s, if you were a comic living in Manhattan and you wanted to play golf, you needed a guy with a car to get out of the city. Larry was the guy. The foursome was Larry, me, John Mendoza (one of the great line comics who became a pretty good player) and I want to say Jimmy Charles, who was a regular at Catch and use to stand over his putts forever.

So we take off and we play either Split Rock or Rockland County or one of those public courses when that’s all you can afford. We come back on the West Side Highway. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon, when the West Side Highway turns into a giant mistake. But with Larry, you don’t get driven home. Everybody piles out at Manhattan Plaza on 43rd and 10th, where Larry lived in a $300/month apartment across the hall from Kenny Kramer.

We catch a break until we jump off at the 57th street exit, which is eight lanes tryiing to become three directions, and one cop. It takes us 5 minutes to get to the top of our lane. The cop starts methodically waving each lane through. Larry, who even back then was all about contempt prior to investigation, decides that our lane has been overlooked. “I think I need to say something,” he says. We beg him not to. He rolls down the window, and yells, “Hey, what about it?” The cop looks at him, smiles, puts a finger to his mouth as if to shush, and then starts the rotation again, waving through every other lane. Again, “hey, what about it?” Nothing. It costs us minimum another 10 minutes, then the cop turns back, smiles again, and waves Larry though. As he drives by, Larry screams, “I saw that smile! You think I didn’t see that? That’s it! I’m reporting you, Fuckface! I’m reporting you!”

I want to say “Of course, that was in the days when you could say things like that to a New York City cop,” but that day never existed, except for Larry.

Because you kind of asked for it....

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:47:24 -0500

….the podcast for “The Ethicist” that Adrianne and I did last week. Nice mention of EVERYTHING HURTS at the end.

Reblogged from my friend and fellow Tumblr, cyber-bard Will Leitch

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:32:08 -0500

leitch: This is your yearly reminder that everyone is supposed...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:29:00 -0500

leitch:

This is your yearly reminder that everyone is supposed to watch Hannah And Her Sisters on Thanksgiving. You won’t be sorry.

A week ago I bought a rifle, I went to the store … I bought a rifle! I was gonna, you know, if they told me I had a tumor, I was gonna kill myself. The only thing that might’ve stopped me — might have — is that my parents would be devastated. I would have to shoot them also, first. And then I have an aunt and uncle … you know, it would’ve been a blood bath.

******

(me) I love this movie for countless reasons, three in particular: 1) The mention in the first minute of Richard Yates’ “The Easter Parade;” 2) Woody Allen’s line near the end to Diane Wiest when she wants to come over to his apartment and read her play to him: “I’ve done all my own reading since I was six…” (a line I use at every reading, and unlike some people, give credit to the originator); 3) One of my favorite lines in all of cinemature, from Michael Caine to Mia Farrow: “HANNAH, MY HEAD IS THROBBING!”

To all my friends and all the strangers I’ve never met who make my life worth blogging, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.

Bill

Another award-winning Late Show action photo by John Filo....

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:12:23 -0500

Robin Williams and Dave had just spent two segments talking about great heckle lines from the audience. Robin took the place down recounting his lookalike, Bono, telling a crowd in Scotland to clap their hands, then saying, “Every time you clap your hands, an elephant in Africa dies….” and a guy in the back yelling, “So, stop clapping your fucking hands!”

Well, during the break, I had to tell him my favorite comedy club heckle of all time. A comic was bombing in one of the showcase clubs and a guy yelled out, “Hey, move out of the way. I can’t see the bricks….” As this shot will attest, it dropped him. (And if you know anything about Robin, it’ll be in the act tonight….)

Here's an email I needed to share, then yak about....

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:45:29 -0500

….from a guy named Mark Mobley, who may or may not be out of my past:

Mr. Scheft:

I’ve just read your blog for the first time — it’s great, as is The Ringer. Your reminiscences of mid-’80s comedy made me curious about whether you were the person I misintroduced late one night in Baltimore.

I was MCing at the Charm City Comedy Club (you will no doubt remember my killer material about Mayor William Donald Schaefer). Anyway, I got up after the middle act and did the “You’ve seen him on … ” thing, only to forget the (your?) name. So instead of admitting that I was an idiot, I did the worst thing I could do in that situation — I made up a name, along the lines of “Ladies and Gentlemen, Mike Stevens.” The comic (you?) walked right past me, and deathstaring at me in the back of the room, said, “Hi. I’m MIke Stevens,” and went on with his act.

Thanks for posting all those stories. I met a lot of great people in that club. All best, —M.

I wrote him back immediately and said it definitely was not me, because I would have thought it was funny. Every comic has stories about botched introductions. I was introduced at the Bitter End from the booth: “Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Heck….” My wife, Adrianne Tolsch, was introduced in Claremont, California as “Give it up for Diane Porch!” Glenn Hirsch had a entire bit in his act about being brought up as “Gleeb Hush.” Gleeb Friggin’ Hush!

Usually, it’s some neophyte emcee or a clueless guy in the sound booth. But even we seasoned pros falter. Adrianne once brought Pat Cooper up at Catch a Rising Star by calling him Pat Henry, Frank Sinatra’s long-dead opening act. Cooper was furious, and said, “How about a hand for Gilda Diller?” And I was emceeing in Vegas at the Riviera Improv in 1986 and the headliner was this ventriloquist act, JTO and Bobby Duck. I got all the credits right, but blanked out after I announced the vent. So, it came out like this: “Your headliner just finished six weeks in Jeff Kutash’s ‘Splash.’ We love them here at the Riviera. Please welcome JTO and…and…. Hey, what’s the fucking puppet’s name?”

(voice from the back of the house): “Bobby”

Me: “Bobby!!!!!!’

(voice from the back of the house): “Duck….”

Me: “Next time…”

Are you ready for this? The voice from the back of the house? Then Riviera Improv maitre ‘d and later better known as Bobby Bacalieri on “The Sopranos,” STEVE SCHIRRIPA!

Slow news day....

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:21:00 -0500

This afternoon, Adrianne and I taped Randy Cohen’s “The Ethicist” podcast for the New York Times website. He takes a picture of everyone who does the podcast wearing the same headset, frames it, and lines the walls of his bathroom with the photos. The podcast won’t be up until next Friday, but until then, enjoy me doing a guy waiting for his dentures to be repaired….

Randy Cohen is a former Letterman writer, and may be the wittiest Communist I know. He has been doing The Ethicist column in the Sunday Times magazine for ten years now, which is beyond impressive, especially when you consider there have been no newspapers for the last five years.

One more thing from New Year's Eve, 1986 or 1987....

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:52:00 -0500

…I just remembered. The key with Larry David (who did not smoke pot), even back then, was to ask him questions about himself as if it was an interview. So, I say, “Larry, what would you say your best quality is?”

“My best quality? I would have to say it’s the ability to continue eating no matter how disgusting the conversation around me is.”

(It helps if you imagine Larry David’s voice for that line. If you need help, here’s me imitating him on Letterman last April….Cue it up to 3:50-5:03)

Oh yeah, and speaking of Trivial Pursuit, I neglected to mention Jon Hayman’s most enduring credit — the voice of the “Bubble Boy” on season two of “Seinfeld.”

I met Ken Ober around 1984....

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:48:00 -0500

…at a club in the Village called The Other End, which was The Bitter End and then was renamed The Bitter End. No, that’s wrong. I met him a couple of blocks over at a club called The Paper Moon, which became The Boston Comedy Club and was run by, of all people, Eddie Brill, a comic who has been doing the warm-up at the Late Show for the last dozen years. Ober was a nice guy, originally from Boston (The Paper Moon was started to give comics from Boston a place to work in New York.) and we bonded immediately over the Red Sox and Celtics and the fact that we were the same age. He was, like a lot of guys back then, an okay comic, but very winning onstage. A guy who clearly wanted to be something else, but for the time being, loved being a comic. This is not a judgment. And if it was, I would be making the same judgment about myself at the time. The other similarity between us is that we were involved with women who were better comics than us. I married mine. Kenny did not.

I might have done four shows with Kenny. Rarely saw him. He was mostly a Village guy. The Comedy Cellar, the Moon, the Other End, the Duplex. I worked primarily uptown, at Catch a Rising Star, where I was one of the house emcees (I replaced Bill Maher in 1982 when he killed on the Tonight Show, then moved to LA seemingly the next day), the Comic Strip and the Improv. I do remember one New Year’s Eve, maybe 1986, when there were at least eight of us crammed into Judy Orbach’s tiny apartment in the Village, playing Trivial Pursuit, smoking pot, drinking, and scream-laughing until 6 am. It was Judy (a wonderful singer), her boyfriend Chuck Montgomery (a guitar player at the Improv who later played the guy drinking at the bar when Madonna gets up and walks away in “Desperately Seeking Susan”), me, my eventual wife Adrianne Tolsch (the lead house emcee at Catch), Ober, Sue Kolinsky (the aforementioned better comic/girlfriend), Jon Hayman (one of the funniest offstage guys ever) and the then-broke Larry David.

Shortly after that, Larry and I go into a meeting at MTV to meet with some young haircut named Mike Dugan. He’s looking for writers for this game show he’s creating. And he talks about how they’re going to throw shit at contestants when they answer incorrectly and have comics heckle them and pull their chairs through a wall when they’re eliminated and there’s going to be a younger sluttier version of Vanna White. And Ken Ober is going to be the host.

Well, we walk out of this meeting and I turn to Larry and say, “Are you kidding me? What a piece of shit. I know I got nothing going on, and I know they’re not interested in me, but I don’t think I’d go near that. And Ober? Ober? Good luck, man. I hope they’re paying him a lot of money.”

And Larry David, broke Larry David, Larry David take-a-girl-out-to-dinner-and-try- to-pay-with-a-coupon, said, “I think it’s a great idea. And Ober is perfect. This is going to be a big hit.”

Sometimes I am wrong, and sometimes I am galactically wrong. “Remote Control” became what it was, and Ken Ober became the guy he wanted to become. But remained the guy he was. I remember one episode when they had some giant white frat boy on and he answered some question right that he didn’t expect to and he awkwardly high-fived Colin Quinn. And Ober said, “Jim, you looked like Brad Lohaus with that high-five.” Brad Lohaus was the big doofy back-up center for the Celtics back then. I’m going to guess that was the last time Brad Lohaus was mentioned on MTV….

This will have to pass for my eulogy.

What do you say we plug somebody else?

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:06:00 -0500

If you love topical jokes about sports and you have The Twitter installed, please sup on my friend and colleague, Late Show co-head writer Eric Stangel. He can be reached at www.twitter.com/ericstangel .

Okay, now back to shameless self-promotion....

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:41:00 -0500

The boys at Simon and Schuster are getting the paperback ready for this April. You need to turn in the inside blurb page six months ahead. Son of a gun, they found a nice review in Charleston, SC Post and Courier from last June I had not seen. Enjoy….

(By the way, the typos you found were fixed, Cathy….)

Right there, that is a gigantic difference between S&S and my old publisher, HarperCollins. There were three factual errors in the cloth edition of TIME WON’T LET ME. They went unchecked. Not thrilled, but it happens. The artist who did my cover found them. I made sure to make the changes and turn them in along with my blurb page way ahead of time. Well, the paperback comes out, no changes, no blurb page. Inexcusable. I got a lot of apologies, fine, and was assured everything would be fixed in the next printing. I wished they had stopped with the apologies. To infer my paperback would go back for a second printing was beyond disengenuous.

That happened in December, 2006. Glad I’ve let it go….

What began as a reply to HipTodd....

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

….took on a life of its own, so I will share it as a post:

When I couldn’t sell my first novel (which I still haven’t sold), I would think, “Don’t they know how great I’d be out there with my background and stories? I would be great at selling books.”
This is now my fifth rodeo (three novels, one collection, one paperback tour). The events have always gone well in terms of response to my performance, rarely well in terms of sales. But as I said, if it was about the love of performing, I would still be a performer. It is about reaching people with my work. I go out because if I don’t even try, then it is on me. It is about showing up. Sales don’t translate into any money for me because I don’t make royalities. But the numbers are the numbers. I sell as many books doing 20 minutes on the “Bob and Tom” radio show as I do in Detroit, and I do no reading and even answer a Dave question or two. So, why? Because Bob and Tom know I do right by them when I go on every month, and so they hump my books. No bookstore or festival does that. They have the author there. It’s up to him. So, my experience as a performer in front of a live audience takes over my obligation to my art as an author. That is on me. And that’s why I need to change. So, we’ll try ending with me reading. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t.

Todd, I hope you sell your first book. It is beyond thrilling and satisfying as nothing else. But the worst thing about publishing a book is that in that moment, art stops and commerce begins. What began as a solitary pursuit is repurposed as justifying an investment made by your publisher. If you’re pulling down a giant advance, the risk is theirs. But if you are like most of us, it is about reaching people one at a time and hoping that reach is long enough to justify lifting up the next solitary pursuit.

So, is it frustrating to have 30 people show up to bookstore reading and sell 20 books, then have 400 people show up to a Festival and sell 21? Sure. Does it suck? Yes. But, and please believe, that’s all it does. Nothing more. And it passes. Humility is the ability to be inconvenienced.

The Detroit post has sparked....

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:59:55 -0500

….some lovely comments and discussions. One guy who was there emailed me and said I would have sold more books if I had read an excerpt. While he is not wrong, I have pretty good data from previous events to back up my belief that it might have coaxed ten more people to cough up some dough. Maybe, at my most grandiose, we get 20 more. That’s still 40 sold, or one-tenth of the house.

Which raises the question: Well, why didn’t you read, putz? I didn’t read because the folks at the Jewish Book Network strongly suggest not reading, or keeping your reading to a minimum (This is NOT a bookstore event). So, I decided to play along and not read from the book, but rather, read a couple of Marty Fleck Huff-Po columns, which Cathy Armstrong will attest, got v-strong response in Wabash. (By the way, Wabash totals… same number of books sold, half the audience of Detroit. And they paid to come.)

Garry Shandling had a great line about working the road: “If you’re making $1000 for the week, you’re coming home with $700. If you’re making $1 million for the week, you’re coming home with $750….” Same thing with me and events. If I draw 30 people to a bookstore, I sell 20 books. If I draw 400 at a Festival, I sell 21….

But as I replied to Ed Markey after his “rise up and grab your teabags” comment, it is not about the attendees behavior, it’s about mine. I have to change. So maybe, from now on, instead of yakking, then reading, then 20 minutes of Dave Q+A to distract them from why they’re there, maybe we read last, then watch them line up. Or not.

Detroit Post-Game Report....

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:41:00 -0500

Three months ago, I showed up at NYU along with 150 other authors to audition for something called the Jewish Book Network, which is a well-establish, quite lucrative circuit of book festivals across the country that specialize in works by or about the Jewish experience. So basically, it was 10 women with cook books, 139 guys writing about the Holocaust and me. You do two minutes in front of the 200 or so people who book the various festivals. I did my time, killed, and the woman running the thing said to me, “You won’t be going home for a year. You’ll get at least 100 invitations.” So I figured, dynamite, 100 gigs, $1000-$1500 a gig, sweet. At the dinner afterward, old ladies keep shuffling up to me and saying, “Do you think you’d like to come to Palm Beach?” Uh, sure. “Do you think you’d like to come to Minneapolis?” Uh, okay. But very plaintive. Finally, I go up to one of the organizers and say,

“How much do the festivals pay as an honorarium when the author shows up?”

“Honorarium???”

“Oh, so there’s no honorarium. So, what happens is you buy the books at a 60 percent publisher’s discount and split the proceeds with the author….”

“Split????”

So, now you understand when I say the circuit is lucrative. For them. Basically, they fly you in and put you up, and if you’re interested in eating with strangers, they’ll set up a meal or two.

I ended up getting about 20 invitations but I had made my mind up I was only going to do one, just for the experience. So, I chose Detroit for two reasons: 1) The Detroit Jewish Book Fair is considered the Rose Bowl of Jewish Book Fairs; and 2) I wanted to see Mark Ridley at the Comedy Castle.

As gigs go, other than not selling one t-shirt (And looking at the crowd afterward, I had to ask myself what was I thinking? T-shirts? Maybe a nice sweater in case there was a draft…) it couldn’t have gone any better. Both flights got in early (although if there was any less leg room on Northwest, they could use the planes to get information out of detainees), good hotel (Westin Southfield), a minimum of out-of-towner chat (the guy who drove me to the gig spent a solid 15 minutes railing about how the were building roundabouts — rotaries — all over the city) and a wonderfully responsive house of 400+. Never underestimate me as a draw…when tickets are free.

The Detroit JCC is more community college than community center. V-impressive. With the Q+A. I did an hour, 20, and that was only because they shut it down so we could move to the book signing and the audience could get home in time to TiVO “Matlock.” (That was gratuitous. They weren’t that old.) By 10:00, I was at the Comedy Castle, hugging Mark Ridley and reminding him of my favorite inside comedy club joke of all time: Had a busy day. I went to the mall and watched the headliner buy stuff….

So, two road trips in two weeks, and nobody got hurt. But that said, I think my book festival days are done. I don’t sell enough books to justify flying out for nothing. Besides, if I was so energized by getting up and entertaining people, I would still be a performer. I would still be buying stuff in the mall.

All that, and the fact that if the Q+A is 20 questions, 18 will be about Dave Letterman. I accept that and I understand people’s curiosity, and believe me, I am beyond grateful every day for my gig. It is a singular element of my story and who I am. But just an element. When I go out to talk about my books, I’d like to, you know, talk about my books. I’m funny that way.

Enough. I understand my part in this. You see me for an hour plus for free, you have some big laughs, you get some questions answered about Dave, you’re done. Really, what do you need with a book? It’s three exits past an afterthought.

Thanks for listening. And thank you for flying Northwest. We’ll now begin our descent into LaGuardia. Or Minneapolis….

POSTSCRIPT AFTER READING TWO COMMENTS WHICH VERY DIPLOMATICALLY CITED ME FOR, UH, BITCHING:

Okay, let me try this again. Every author has a million stories of doing readings or events where only five people show up and you sell, maybe, two books. That is frustrating and embarassing, sure. But what’s even more embarrassing is when you tell yourself, “You know, if only I could do a gig where a lot of people showed up and I read and told stories and kicked ass. I’d sell a couple hundred books. That’s the problem. I just need a crowd…” And then, bingo, you’re in Detroit and there’s 400 people and at the end of the night, it’s 15 books. That’s when you think, What’s the point? I could be home TiVOing “Matlock….”

Detroit Report to come....

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:46:08 -0500

…but until then, know that I am not a good merchandiser.

So…my loyal followers/commenters, email me your size and address and get your very own “Scheft Happens” t-shirt. My gift to you.