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Posted by Joshua Braff on July 8, 2010. No Comments »
They say write what you know. My first novel is about a yeshiva boy who leaves his religious education to attend a public school in suburban New Jersey. I drew from my memories of a building in Perth Amboy called Hillel Academy, a place that was so ill-prepared to teach that it was torn down a few years after I left. In fairness, it was the seventies and information on children and how to raise and teach them was not as ubiquitous as it is today. The “How To” book world would need another decade to even begin to school us on the craft of respecting children, our spouses our neighbors. But alas, it is important to recall the positive aspects of all periods of life, be they hard to come by or not. I used to love this teacher from Hillel named Rabbi Laloosh. The guy was probably 6 foot 11, wore orthopedic shoes and only said about six words in English. But he knew just what we yeshiva kids needed. He would position himself in the center of the entire student body just before we were dismissed for the weekend and during a song I forget the name of, let all three hundred of us scream OO-FARR-ATZ-TA!!! into his ears. I never learned what the word meant but it had to be the most cathartic primal scream any of us had ever had. Even as a second grader I had the feeling Rabbi Laloosh knew our school life sort of bit the big one. He was letting us vent as the Sabbath approached and I always admired him for it.
It took thirty plus years for me to understand why my early education left with me such skewed memories of religion. Aside from the much taught melancholy associated with Jewish history like the Holocaust, the slavery in Egypt and some of the human calamities in the Old Testament, I always had an innate disinterest in the “push” to adhere to the suggestion that I was merely a soldier amongst many in the plight that is Zionism. To me this meant I was merely one, under God, a thistle in a forest of survivors who were forced to overcome more adversity and human loss than any culture on earth. I was thusly obliged to be a part of a larger sum as opposed to an entity unto myself in which life is dictated by both the unfolding of our individual days here, and the way ones predisposed brain takes flight in a world fraught with possibility.
But I’ll tell you some of my most positive yeshiva memories.
My first thought of kissing a girl was in the back of Hillel Academy. At the time it held a small blacktop that offered a kick ball sized space surrounded by a chain link fence. I think of this square as the place I learned to lust for the smell of Wendy Friedberg. She was the older, 5th grade girl who preferred kissing ones lips to slapping ones back in “You’re it” the yeshiva version of “tag.” I would chase her cloud of pheromones around this tiny area with the ferocity of a Wild Kingdom clip, until my fingertips brushed against her ruffled shoulder.
“You’re it!” I yelled, and our eyes met amidst the haze of baking tarmac. “You’re it, Wendy Friedberg.”
You’re it and I’m the one who made you so. I remember the pressure to kiss her. All the kids watching, egging me on, kiss her, kiss Wendy, and I knew that the only thing before me, before Talmud class, Abraham and Isaac and the Hebrew alphabet, I‘d need to place my lips against Wendy Friedberg’s cheek. But I was hesitant. Scared? Embarrassed? My teacher Mora Mirium would call us, times up, recess is over. I chickened out. She was older, okay? A fifth grader. She was just too sensual and sweaty, running around that blacktop like a gazelle and all. Her family would later visit our new house in South Orange for Shabbat because Wendy’s brother was my brother’s buddy. There was a song we sang at the end of our ceremony that required we all hold hands. I was next to Wendy and I remember pretending that I had to reach for the person to my left so hard that I couldn’t very well also take her grip. My dad called me out, “take her hand, Joshua.” I felt Wendy’s fingers against mine but didn’t face her for the entire song. She truly was a confusing and complicated woman. And I never would have known her without Hillel Academy.
In the 3rd grade I fell in love with the aforementioned Mora Mirium. She wasn’t my teacher at the time and I remember working so hard for her to notice me the way I noticed her. If you kicked a homerun at Hillel Academy the ball would go into the parking lot of a church so although there was glory in the trot, you then had to bend the fence back and crawl underneath to get to the neighboring lot. I kicked so many homeruns to show off for Mora Mirium that I started to get to know two of the boys that went to the school at the church. One of them named Jose Rios asked me if I made bread crackers out of blood, and how I felt about hell and Jesus.
“Blood crackers?”
Mora Mirium would always see me over there, walk toward the fence and yell my Hebrew name, “Yahashua, Yahashua come back here now.” The boys would ask me something in Spanish and laugh, pointing at her.
“She is your girlfriend?” they’d ask.
We’d all face her. Wavy brunette hair, those dark pantyhose, a slit in her jet black skirt.
Yes. In my head she was indeed my girlfriend. Before I left Hillel I attempted to get this yeshiva Goddesses’ attention by saying “amen” faster than other students after prayers, by securing my tan velvet yarmulke on the right side of my head the way Barry Meyerson did with his, and when Rabbi Tworsky let me lead the minion in morning prayers I told the other teachers to tell her, to make sure she knows who lead the thing. It was me. Yahashua. Let her know.
Posted by Joshua Braff on . No Comments »
What a ride. Some wind at the writer’s back. What else could I ask for? Back from a solid two weeks of touring Peep Show–my second novel that received favorable praise from all the important folks including People Magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus/Booklist/Publisher’s Weekly. A writer’s livelihood is based on reviews and of course sales. If both are good, you stand to make a respectable royalty advance on your next project. So I’m feeling upbeat about it all. Was in New York for BEA (Book Expo America) where I signed books at the Algonquin booth and threw a party at my brother Zach’s place for anyone in publishing who happened to be in town. When my brother asked how many would be coming to get a sense of the rowdiness I told him that book people weren’t the same as movie people. No one has fake boobs and most of them wear shawls. He bet me there wouldn’t be one shawl. He was right. No tally on fake boobs. My favorite part of the evening was being able to acknowledge all the people at Algonquin Books who put out such quality reads each year. Oh we had a rousing old time. New York is a fun place to launch a book.
Read from Peep Show about 20 times lately and during Q&A time I’ve heard a lot of questions about research for Peep Show, which is partly a novel about the smutty landscape of Times Square in the 1970’s but also about Hassidic life at that time in New York.
While on tour for my first book, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green, I met a man who came from one of the first Baal Teshuvah (convert from non-observant Jew to Hassidic Jew) families in Queens who wanted to share his story with me. I knew I was going to be writing about a heavily religious sect of Judaism but I didn’t know details at that point. So, we talked and he offered to send me his story, which involved his mother suddenly switching to a non-secular lifestyle and wearing black to her ankles in August. In his mother’s new way of life there would be no talking or even looking at girls and the TV would be removed and rock music was evil and God was watching and on and on. No secular books. No movies. No non-Kosher food. As I read my friend’s e-mails about his life I began to get a sense of how this story might unfold. There would be a division in the family over which parent was more morally in check and therefore worthy of their children’s love. In the end, if the book worked, each would be wrong about the other. We’d find nobility under the wig of the woman behind the screen in the peep house. And we’d find drive under the wig of the Hassid behind the screen of the Mechitza. Over the years of building the story I’d visit him in Brooklyn and we ate at the famously kosher 2nd Street Deli just before it closed. He took me on tours of neighborhoods and explained the various sects of the men who walked by. Some had high black knee socks, others had closely cropped hair save for their curly Peyis. Another man’s hat was circular with soft brown fur. I was told most adult women wore wigs. There were stores around me that sold kosher toothpaste and had the words Smurfs in Hebrew in the window. Like visiting another country, so far from home but actually just ten minutes on the L train from Union Square. We entered 770, Menachem M. Schneerson’s sanctuary in Crown Heights. The person I saw first didn’t know the name “Joshua.” He didn’t speak English. He was able to evoke that he prays in Hebrew and only speaks Yiddish. The tall guy behind him spoke some and told me many, many things I didn’t understand but he told me each with a passion that lit his blue eyes to moisture. His skin was indoor pale and his beard was all over, keeping his face hidden, like at the bottom of a bag. As he spoke I nodded, not wanting to him to feel I wasn’t listening. I heard the words “Rebbe” and then he pointed to a spot, a lectern area where the Rebbe would conduct his sermons known as Farbrengen. As the Rebbe would get going in Yiddish, he would at times talk of the Talmud, of life, of God and suddenly turn his words into song and start to rock his body in a particular rhythmic motion that all the yeshiva boys would emulate as they sat together against the wall, a sea of boys in black, imitating their Rebbe. It was clear that these events were nothing short of rock concerts for those who prayed and lived around here. Our tour guide now had many friends around him and they were all staring at me, the guy with long, blond hair and a tiny white yarmulke bobby-pinned to his head.
“Do you wear tefillin?” the man wanted to know.
“Once,” I said.
The friend who brought me there was not interested in reliving the tefillin experience so he told the guys we were leaving. They didn’t like the news of this. They wanted something but I didn’t know what so I found myself shuffling out of the building behind my friend with the tour-guide’s grip on my arm. It seemed if we didn’t end up wrapped in tefillin straps, these guys were gonna miss out on a layup in the mitzvah world. They wrap us – mitzvah for them. I end up wrapped – mitzvah for me. Who loses?!
“Sorry, we really gotta go,” my friend said in Yiddish.
“What are you doing here?” the guide said to me with a more stern voice than before.
I said nothing. Suddenly my research seemed immoral. I was as good as a tourist in Amish country, snapping pictures of a horse and buggy.
“I just wanted to see where the Rebbe stood,” I said.
And after a long pause, he let go of my arm.
When I finished a first draft of the book I sent it to my research friend. He told me he liked it a lot but wanted me to take out certain details so that no one in the community would assume it was him that helped me. That was the last time we spoke.
Back now in the SF Bay Area. Summer has arrived and it feels so good to be home for the moment. My mom just turned seventy and my ten year-old son stood up to make a speech at her party. He spoke so tenderly and with so much expression and love for her. It was amazing for me to watch. I’m so proud of my little man. I may have to write about it.
Posted by Joshua Braff on May 11, 2010. 10 Comments »
The task was to put together a compilation of music that represented my novel, Peep Show. The man at my publisher would mail the music to his associates, along with a copy of my book. For texture, I assumed. So I did it and then another person at my publisher said you’ve been invited to write about the compilation for a music blog so would you mind writing about your decisions to choose these songs. So I wrote this:
Why these songs, you ask? The novel, my second, is called Peep Show. It’s about a family from the suburbs of northern New Jersey in the 1970’s and a place called Times Square that no longer exists the way it once did. A concentrated circus of sin, smut, sex and stench that all heated up in the sweaty-humid New York summers into a cocktail of everything your parents ever warned you about. I lived in Hell’s Kitchen for a year, 43rd and 10th Ave, while I attended NYU in 1989. Times Square would soon be Disney-fide but while I was there it was still breathing smut-fire. I brought a lot of my memories of my time there into Peep Show. So, let’s go through it.
The E Street Shuffle: Bruce Springsteen
How do you start a compilation of songs about a family from New Jersey without Bruce? He’s featured three times on this list, partly because he’s New Jersey’s Allen Ginsburg and partly because of his ability to write short stories in the time it takes to sing a song. The poetry and pathos and grit of a Springsteen song is all you need for a successful tale of love and loss and all that ends up under your fingernails when you’re firing up your Chevy and heading out on that lonesome highway, under that Jersey sunrise, thinkin’ of a girl, while runnin’ from mistakes. Character plus story plus texture plus the ever-present “teenage tramps in skin-tight pants do the E Street dance…” Gotta love the Boss.
Life on Mars: David Bowie.
My book begins with a splash of Bowie who was also known in the 70’s as Ziggy Stardust. There’s a poster of him in full Ziggy lipstick above my protag’s bed. I have always loved this song and all that Bowie represents in the history of rock. In my mind he flew his freak-flag with amazing dignity and always kept his shoulders back, knowing that everything he was saying was true and right and just – even though he was a walking nightmare for any conservative parent, teacher or lawmaker. I will never tire of that sweeping chorus – “Sail-ors fighting in the dance hall – Oh man! Look at those cavemen go – It’s the freakiest show – Take a look at the Lawman, beating up the wrong guy – Oh Man! Wonder if he’ll ever know – He’s in the best selling show – Is there life on Mars?” God bless Bowie.
Sing A Simple Song: Sly & the Family Stone
You cannot crank this song on any stereo and not move some section of your body in a repeated, gyrating motion. It’s one of those tunes that captures the era and the religion of funk and soul in its first few notes and never, ever lets go. All that with lyrics that encompass the words Talkin’ and Walkin’ about a hundred and eight times. When you play it, play it loud! And remember, always dance as if no one is watching. Especially to this funky arse tune.
Blondie: One Way Or Another
I get the sense that true Blondie fans would disagree that “One Way Or Another” was her best tune. I admit I remember it most from the radio and it was overplayed like all classic hits of their time. I have found that it’s one of those songs that’s held up beautifully and the guitar riff is just awesome and has traces of raw punk-rock in it. When really sitting down with the lyrics, I see it’s about a girl who is oh so disappointed with her man. I think she wants to feed him rat poison and just get him off her mind. She’s gonna find ya, win ya, get ya, meet ya, lose ya, and then, “Lead you to the supermarket checkout, some specials and rat food, get lost in the crowd.” Yikes. Sexy, pissed-off and super dangerous. My kind of girl.
Hot Stuff: Donna Summer
Donna never had any trepidation telling the radio listening world that she was as horny as a jackrabbit in late May. “Gotta have some hot love baby this evenin’.” And we knew she meant THIS evening, like time’s a wastin’, I need some hot (not chilled, not vanilla) but some hot hot hot lovin’ this damn evening, like within the half-hour would be ideal. “Hot, hot, hot, hot stuff.” In truth, the girl scared and enthralled me. There was a sense that if you were the luckiest pizza delivery boy on this God’s earth, you’d end up at Donna Summer’s house and she’d be ready. Oh, trust, me she’d be ready. But would you?
Boogie Shoes: KC & the Sunshine Band
If you’re talking the 70’s and music, you have to include KC and his bellbottom-wearin’ Sunshine Band. Plus, I mention this song in Peep Show. It’s on the radio while my characters are on their way into “the city.” In the same way that Martin Scorsese uses great late 70’s and early 80’s tunes in Good Fellas and other films to evoke the texture of the time, this song is one of those that everyone seems to know and can sing immediately when prodded. While men were getting their hair blown back with hairdryers in an attempt to get their wings just perfect, KC was always pouring from the radio, still years away from getting bloated on fame and trying to outlive the death of disco. I hear he still tours and does so with authority.
Tiny Dancer: Elton John
Oh my God I love this song. Who doesn’t love this song? Somehow tragic, somehow life affirming. “Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band. Pretty eyes, pirate smile, you’ll marry a music man.” This girl he builds in this epic song is a person I’ve written about often in my career. She is sometimes a girl, sometimes a teenager and she’s always got way more going on for herself than anyone gives her credit for. But it’s also important to note that she is also a classic example of the unreliable narrator which means she’s capable of bullshitting even you, the reader. I grew up with lots of “tiny dancers” it seems, and as a young teenager some of them flashed their pirate smiles at me, even with their boyfriend’s right around the corner. I attribute a great deal of my “oat sewing” to this wonderful breed of Jersey girl. The girl named “Beth” in my first novel, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green, is my quintessential “seamstress for the band.”
Walk On The Wild Side: Lou Reed
There was a time during writing Peep Show that I had the opportunity to talk to Lou Reed about his life in Times Square during the 70’s. It never happened, I can’t remember why, but he is the ultimate person to discuss such matters with and all that he writes about in this song is exactly drawn from the textures I was attempting. His character’s names are, Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Jackie and the Sugar Plum Fairy. They give head, take Valium, hustle, hitch-hike and pluck their eyebrows, all while “taking a walk on the wild side.” What else is there to say. Lou Reed really got it. And still gets it. Did you see him rocking out with Metallica on that Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame show? He’s a great icon.
Candy’s Room: Bruce Springsteen
“There’s a sadness hidden in that pretty face, a sadness all her own from which no man can keep Candy safe.” Yeah, that’s all I’ve ever tried to evoke in fiction. An established character’s hidden emotions, the things she cannot and will not let herself or anyone else see, touch, kiss, assuage. Springsteen’s gift lies in the intricacies of the human condition. Capturing it and then fitting it into a four minute song is a whole other animal. He’s special and the world never has to stop hearing his work, his voice.
I Want To Be Sedated: The Ramones
On the topic of more diluted pathos, we have the Ramones who true-blue punk and rock lovers swear by and will tell you so with their fist in your face. Yes, it’s very true in rock that derives from punk – less is often so much more. I wholeheartedly agree that bare bones simple riffs and steady-eddie drumbeats can make for some very important music. The Ramones are New York. The Ramones are punk rock. The Ramones are important and should not be forgotten when discussing the growth of the tree that is rock n’ roll. “Ba-ba-baba, baba-ba-baba, I wanna be sedated.” God do I know how that feels. I wish I was sedated this second. Back to work.
Tangled Up In Blue: Bob Dylan
Wow. These lyrics could melt steel. Dylan. The story is so rich, the music somehow as tender and familiar as a prayer you’ve been singing since birth. Again, a girl who once wore her hair this way and then time passes with high, tumultuous winds so she ends up in that place, you know, that place that you ended up too, and then. “She was standing there in back of my chair, said to me, ‘don’t I know your name?’ She studied the lines on my face. I must admit I felt a little uneasy, when she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe. Tangled up in Blue.” A side note, the working title of my first novel, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green, was Tangled Up In Jew. It was meant to remind me to keep the book light, funny, to be careful of the murky murk.
Mother’s Little Helper: The Rolling Stones
I have a music-freak-friend who swears that all things rock n’ roll start with The Rolling Stones. There are so many good songs, so many epic riffs and in every tune a blatant understanding of what rock is and was and should be. They are so true to their amazing work. Peep Show, to some extent, is about figuring out how you’re going to live your life and how those that raised you will assist you in this effort. This song is about a little pill that makes things easier for a time. And we all use this pill, in its many varied forms. And then…”Doctor please, some more of these, outside the door, she took four more. What a drag it is getting old.”
The Sounds of Silence: Simon and Garfunkel
Can’t leave these boys out, no way, not in a novel about New York. They are so important in the scheme of things. Important for song writers, poets, those that construct music, and story tellers. Lonely, lonely New York City, so huge and crowded and still my thoughts and fears are unheard. I see I’ve written the word “important” twice already and writers are supposed to avoid repeating words. But Simon and Garfunkel have always, I mean from very early on, been important to me. Just having their albums in vinyl in my house makes me feel…right. No story writer should go without. “And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people, maybe more. People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening, People writing songs that voices never share, and no one dare, disturb the sound of silence.”
New York City Serenade: Bruce Springsteen
Some randomly plucked words from the lyrics:
“Railroad tracks, Cadillac, boogaloo, Broadway, Manhattan, midnight, promenade, cornerboys, money, mama, baby, vibes man, jazz man, junk man, trash can, serenade, deeper blue, in your grave, save your notes, hook it up, Singin’, singin, singin’, singin’.” Nuff said.
–Joshua Braff, 5/10/2010
Posted by Joshua Braff on May 5, 2010. 1 Comment »
There’s a texture here in New Orleans. What is it? The porch of an old southern home with three generations of family members including great-granddad whose cheeks are sallow as he lifts his harmonica to his lips and begins to tap his foot. And look at all those little ones swinging themselves around the pillars that were built around the time of this country’s Civil War. Today they sell their patch of lawn for parking because it seems the whole world has arrived for another Jazzfest, a holiday rooted in a spiritual swirl of history where the birth of rock & roll and a language called Jazz can be celebrated in great earnest without ever mentioning the name Jesus Christ, unless you want to. The fairgrounds is a horseracing track but I’ve only ever seen it used for the festival. So much music on every corner of every space and I can hear a big choir from the Gospel tent as I make my way past the Blues tent on my way to the main stage where Van Morrison, Pearl Jam, Jeff Beck, Galactic, George Porter, The Meters, The Radiators and the Neville Brothers will sooner or later fill the air with American funk, rock and soul. Irma Thomas, the Queen they say of New Orleans, is singing about Katrina but she tells us she no longer cries during the song. It’s been enough time now, she offers, so she just closes her eyes as the intro starts and contemplates, I can see, the words she’s written, the tune, the safer place she’s conjured, so as to sing it with dry eyes. My friends are people I‘ve known for twenty years, there are five of us and we’ve been here before together. Our closeness is unconditional, our memories rooted in childhood. We are a clique, all of us father’s, all of us centered enough to express how much we need each other in an unpredictable world. When I remove myself briefly from the musical zone I spin in, I see them, each of them, and I know that the precious ingredients at work here are as much about them as any of it. Surrounded, we are, by thousands more, we cannot stop grinning as we sway or hop or dance in small circles in a far-off state of mind that is somehow and strangely private as well, a personal soundtrack. The music is loud at times, pushing your blood along as you move so there’s not a lot to discuss with the person next to you, unless you find it crucial to lean into him and say, “My God, how did I get here?” How did I extract myself from the routine that is my life and place my body on this plot of land in Louisiana while this amazing musician hands me his words, his rhythms, his instrument. The friend will smile and it’s not just any smile. It’s the kind that says, I know exactly what you’re feeling because I’m feeling it too. Our hands might grip, a warm pat on the back. We’re here and we’re listening and we know where we’re heading after this show and after the next and after our soft-shell-crab Po boy and that cold light beer and bucket o’ craw fish. We’re heading just around the bend. You can see it. We’re heading for more music.
Posted by Joshua Braff on April 27, 2010. No Comments »
Just got back from a Vampire Weekend show at the Fox Theatre in
Oakland. The venue is a gorgeous 1920’s built, 2,800 seater that must
have been renovated in recent years but kept righteously close to its
original form. The band is made up of five Columbia University grads
who are meshing Ska with punk with Surfer-movie-guitar with minor-
league-hockey-game-organ with the intelligence of five musicians who
were smart enough to go to Columbia and driven enough to play a lot
together while spewing “can’t stop my leg” beats that end really
abruptly and make you want to clap really hard. As I stood there,
trying but failing to stop my leg, I thought about the current state
of rock and how interesting it is that a group of handsome yet very un-
rocker-looking gentleman are owning the stage so well and gyrating
perfectly to the music that comes straight from their, well, 20-
something histories on this planet. Lives that is, which began while I
was a freshman, maybe a sophomore at NYU, hearing about something
called e-mail that allowed you to communicate in written bursts if you
could find a computer. I got lost in the band’s reggae influenced
songs that reminded me of the kind of music that works in perfect tune
with Wes Anderson montage previews, where the cast is announced by
that guy with the God-like voice while the hope and hop of life-
affirming-music plays us through sublime glimpses of the film. “Bill
Murray…Jason Schwartzman…Lilly Tomlin….And Owen Wilson, as the kid who
comes from wealth but went nuts in his New Hampshire boarding school
while wearing white turtlenecks and pursing his lips. Behind the
band, just under five, large crystal chandeliers was their album
cover, a close-up of a blond girl with the words Vampire Weekend over
her head. Her face did not leave us for the entire show and at times
her eyes lit like Satan’s and I became positive that every word I was
hearing was rooted in one horrific weekend. There was no doubt that
this hot blond chick whose cheekbones and wide-set eyes made her ideal
for any casting-call in search of the rich, mean girl who puts out,
was representative of a near-death relationship with our singer. She
was there, I decided, to tell everyone who might not know, that yes,
due to her appearance and innately vicious sensuality, that she was
once very successful in utterly destroying this heterosexual suburban-
American dude up there, to the extent that he would need to write and
sing and try to blood-let all she left him with…one weekend….a long
time ago. Probably in the early 00’s. Take that, he’s saying, holding
his guitar high to the screaming audience, the strings nearly touching
his ear. “How do you like me now?”
My closing thoughts on the state of rock music in 2010. The live show
is crucial when attempting to appreciate a band. If you hear something
interesting when listening to the studio/radio version of the song,
try to go and see the band. (The money isn’t always so bad) I was
blown away by Vampire Weekend on stage, but before going, hardly cared
when hearing their radio friendly hits. I felt the same for My Morning
Jacket, The Kings of Leon and Cory Chisel. Very pleasantly surprised.
I don’t think songs are meant to be recorded in pieces and then put
together by a producer. They’re meant to be done right there, right
then, right now. And how well you play should matter way more than it
used to in the MTV years. Not that Bananarama didn’t rock.
My new novel Peep Show is receiving some amazing praise from
reviewers. Good reviews equals a very happy author. Come see me out
there on tour this summer and fall. All my reading dates are on my
website. Hope you have a great day.
Posted by Joshua Braff on March 1, 2010. 4 Comments »
About to really start writing again. Taking a break from the fine art painting I’ve been doing for months and turning the painting studio into a writing office/studio/nook. It will be a place of great positivity and hope…I hope. Flowers are there now. A plant I’ll name Roger. A fish, maybe. I am 50 pages into a new book I’m calling The Flying McGreevys about a family that travels in a Winnebago and performs stunts on motorcycles and various other contraptions to wow the audiences of Americans in the 70’s. It was a time in which a person could jump a motorcycle over a whole bunch of stuff and if he lived, anything was possible. All you had to do was take that risk over and over again. Our protag, Ty McGreevy has a lot going on in his head as he watches his brother become a star and his father a legend. The family “Winny” he gets to jump each night is small and embarrassing and he’s fifteen now for crying out loud, such a small inconsequential jump, but it leaves him a lot of time at night to roam these various fairgrounds and carnivals and freak tents and soon he learns and understands where his brother, and family, are really headed. Read more…
Posted by Joshua Braff on October 8, 2009. 1 Comment »
Everytime I think about blogging, I
tell myself there’s more productive things to do. Like work. When I blog, I’m
sitting in the same position I am when I’m working so it always seems crazy to
blow an opportunity to work since I’m in the chair and all. I’m currently well
into another novel, believe it or not. Peep
Show my second is done and coming out June 1st 2010. So because
I’m a writer, I need to keep, ya know, writing and I find myself in a coffee
shop in Oakland-ish Berkeley and I got to tell you, I should be working but I’m
not. The untitled novel I’m working on may end up being my best. But of course,
I said that about my last and the one before that, remember, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green. Read more…
Posted by Joshua Braff on November 13, 2008. 2 Comments »
November arrives and it’s already the 12th and people are talking of Thanksgiving and even Christmas and I’m trying to figure out what happened to October. Maybe it was the anticipation of the election that made the entire month disappear. I aged during October, yes, I recall that, the candles and the love from my kids and a new turntable from my loving sibling, Dr. John Dorian. Yes, on the 11th I became older than almost every professional athlete that ever played any game ever. Thank you, Jamie Moyer. Thank you for staying older than me. And congrats on a well deserved ring in Philly. It helps that people say Obama is young at 47. Young for the presidency , sure, but can he still do ten pushups? I’ve never once wrote about politics in this blog because I truly hate politics. Yes, I understand the importance of government. It’s one of the perks of procreating – a sudden, and innate need for global peace. But the WWF aspect of what’s required to win an election in America is as petty as a hair-pulling montage on The Best of Jerry Springer. Turns out, if you have nothing to run on, you’re left to attack the other opponent and the reason for this is that until election day, anything remains possible. So many media outlets, so much room for the spin, a Muslim, a swift boat, a toke of weed, plagiarism, Marla Maples on your lap. “Smile!” But, man, is it good to see W. go away or what? Not hell. Just some ranch somewhere, where he can design the Bush library in silence. “I want a dartboard with Obama’s face on it. I mean Osama. I did again, damn!” A lot of people forget that Bush was “the man” when the planes first fell. New Jersey born, I knew three people that perished in 9/11. I remember seeing George when it all went down and thinking, go man, go use all that testosterone and pent up rage you used when you executed nearly all the people in Texas as governor. Go gas up all those jet fighters and tanks and aircraft carriers because the only way to make sense of terrorism is to terrorize right the hell back. Do it for the boy I played little league with in the early eighties who died in the trade center and do it for the woman that told me she had a great book idea just a month before her plane went down in a field in Pennsylvania. And he did, he fired up all the military toys and, well, you’ve seen how it all went down. Frank Rich of the New York Times said that Obama’s win, and I’m paraphrasing, has created the exact optimism and hope that Dick Cheney hoped for in Iraq when the war began. In eight long years, I don’t recall Dick ever promoting anything even close to hope or optimism. Fear was the mantra, and it was sprayed at us relentlessly, for so many years. In fact, when W. had an opportunity to speak after Obama won, his first thoughts were about the vulnerability we as Americans will be prone to as this transition in the white house occurs. Read more…
Posted by Joshua Braff on September 9, 2008. 5 Comments »
Thought I’d write for either me or
you or anyone that will have me. A Thursday in Oakland, hot out but gorgeous,
just about 11AM, the beginning of September, 2008. Sorry for those of you
waiting for novel two. It will be out there, I promise, and it may be the best
thing I’ve ever written. How couldn’t it be, it’s taking me three lifetimes to
finish. Today I’d like to free-write, for the hell of it, just write about
anything that comes to mind. Tough week for sick kids in my house, blowing
booger shnots all over the place. If I don’t get sick it will be a miracle. The
way my life is set up right now, I’m the go-to parent when one of my two kids
is down for the count. Child two’s
symptoms are a very stuffed nose, half-closed eyelids like Garfield, a fever
that spikes at night and a marked irritability around dinner time. This
culminates in her barking at me and whining and sounding like the kind of lady
that leads men to drink warm whiskey from dirty shot glasses. My wife this week
is in Bejing on business. She is in the mobile gaming industry. Glu Mobile. So I
am solo which means I’ve blown my daughter’s nose 8, 456 times. Our process: I
hold the tissue over her nose and coach her, “Harder, again, nice, again.” I
pinch off the mashed green boogers, hand her another piece of tissue and she wipes the excess because the first
few times I killed her nostrils which are sore from all the blowing. She gave me
the dirtiest look I’ve ever received and we tried again. Now that she’s in
charge we are quite well rehearsed. Read more…
Posted by Joshua Braff on September 5, 2008. 3 Comments »
We’re having a heat wave in the SF Bay Area. Yeah, it’s muy caliente for F-ing sure. How much sweat can pour from one man’s forehead? A gallon? I must have the most fit forehead in all the land. My forehead could walk the red carpet in Hollywood right now and have no issue being judged negatively by celebrity fashion experts like my former high school classmate, Robert Verdi, who we used to call Bobby. I saw him at my high school reunion in ‘06 and he was tall and handsome with no hair and really nice sunglasses perched on his browridge. After we embraced he said I looked like a “heaping lump of dog crap.” No, he didn’t but it would have made for a better story. So it’s been a while since I wrote and I want to say thank you very much to all of you who wrote me or had comments about my novel, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green. A screen adaptation was written recently and I think it’s very, very good, so the next step is to have more readers weigh in and add notes and all that fun and perhaps one day soon those characters will come to life on screen. Yikes! The nutshell on my current book is that I’m handing it in to my editor at the end of June. The gang will read it and poke at it and my prayers are that I’ll be damn close to finished after that. I love this book I’m writing, I do, I love her/him with all my heart. Books are like babies at first that grow with you and shape themselves over long and sometimes really long periods of your life. This baby was due last year so I’m really ready to push her out. The labor has been a doozy, let me tell you, and I can only see the crown at this point, a blotch of cranium. But don’t worry, the heartbeat is steady, I’ve got plenty of fluids, my support system is intact, mostly because they’ve learned to stop asking me, “how it’s going.” I could probably use a life coach, we all could, unless you are life coach. I need a person who stands behind me in my office and screams, WRITE! in my ear when my mind contemplates going to Youtube to watch dogs fall in bathtubs with infants. WRITE! Read more…