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ABOUTBlack Lamb was created to offer the discerning reader a stimulating selection of excellent original writing. Published monthly. (more) FREE SAMPLE COPYClick here to receive a free sample issue via U.S. mail. There is absolutely no obligation. SUBSCRIBESupport this independently published journal of fine essays. Annual subscriptions are $15 in the USA, $25 in Canada, $30 in the UK, or $35 elsewhere (all prices in US $). Click here to subscribe online via paypal or send a check to Black Lamb, 1759 View Drive, San Leandro CA 94577. QUESTIONSIf you have questions or comments regarding Black Lamb, please email us. |
Archive for the 'Goldberg' CategoryThe anniversary schmalzJanuary 1st, 2012 BY ED GOLDBERG Number 9, Number 9, Number 9…. This is the ninth anniversary of the Black Lamb monthly, and congratulations to Terry Ross for his perseverance, and for reading and enjoying my brain droppings for these years. I have relished the soapbox for my views on everything from the moribund condition of the literary novel, to the state of pop music in twenty-first-century America, to why George Romero’s zombie movies transcend their own genre. I have received mostly positive comments, even from people who may disagree with me. Recently, Terry printed a dyspeptic rant from someone who found my politics to be, oh, bullshit, I guess. It was a great piece of verbal psychodrama and talking-point bile, and did nothing but reinforce everything I wrote. (Just to set the record straight, I do not own a bumper-sticker festooned Volvo, but a Ford hybrid with no stickers. Unlike, say, Sarah Palin, everything I believe can’t be reduced to a slogan. And, does he still deny that Rick Perry is a preening ass and moral leper? I am not a red, although there’s nothing wrong with that, but I am deeply pink. I also take pleasure in the fact that the writer lives in Berkeley, and every day for him must be a vista of hell. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.) Nine is a fraught number. In its printed form, it is not unlike a spermatozoa, or a stylized embryo. Human gestation lasts nine months. One is high on Cloud 9, or in the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Inferno. The pop geniuses Lieber and Stoller knew that the real-deal love potion was Number 9, and the literary lion Kurt Vonnegut made the apocalyptic substance that destroyed the earth Ice-nine. There used to be nine planets. (Sorry, Pluto.)
Posted by: The Editors Third time a charm?April 1st, 2007 BY ED GOLDBERG Today’s the day we’ll say “I do,” and we’ll never be lonely anymore…. No one jerks off more than married men. One woman told me that if we got married we’d always have a date for New Year’s Eve. So we did, and it was true. I have always had a date that night, just not with her. We had a big (200-plus people) wedding, rabbis, flower girls, my best man smoking weed in the crapper before the ceremony. I’ve been married three times really, but only twice legally. You see, back in the dark ages of the 1960s, divorce was illegal in New York, owing to the gigantic influence of the cardinal who perched in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Yes, in wicked, sinful New York divorce was not an option. So, the usual sham substitute was an annulment based on breach of contract: Yes, your honor, she/he told me we would have children, but now she/he doesn’t want any.
Posted by: The Editors Monkey see, monkey doMarch 1st, 2007 BY ED GOLDBERG I recently saw a news photo in The New York Times of a miserably poor town in what was once a fairly prosperous Latin American country: tumble-down shanties, garbage and sewage in the streets, pretty grim. There are many explanations available, none of which makes much sense, except that it is a manifestation of bullying. (Not a gang sign or a marker for drug activity. The phenomenon existed long before the current gang/drug culture.) The weakest, dorkiest or fattest kid got his US Keds tied together and launched over the wires. With the price of sneakers what it is now, this can be a financial hardship. (One small bit of civic pride. Here in Portland, home of high-quality eccentricity and creative nonsense, one may see conjoined spike heels or dog booties or baby shoes dangling from wires. No received wisdom here in Little Beirut. One town’s bullying is another’s artistic statement.)
Posted by: The Editors You don’t have to S&D to have fun (ha-ha)November 1st, 2006 BY ED GOLDBERG I started smoking when I was twelve but waited another year to begin drinking.
Posted by: The Editors Grab the antenna and stand over thereMarch 1st, 2006
The Boob Tube. The Idiot Box. The Vast Wasteland. The Plug-in Drug. All of these terms and more have been leveled at television and with justification. I’ll be surprised if one or more do not appear elsewhere in these pages. To say that ninety percent of everything on the tube is crap is to say nothing; ninety percent of everything is crap, except for poetry, where the number is more like ninety-six percent.
Posted by: The Editors ‘Tis the seasonDecember 1st, 2004 BY ED GOLDBERG I have always liked Christmas, but as an outsider I’ve had a peculiar relationship to it. Being a Jew in America, or a Zoroastrian for that matter, means being marinated in the larger Christian culture, like it or not. Christians are oblivious to the phenomenon, as in the old conundrum: does a fish know it’s in water? These days, what with political correctness and the brother/sisterhood of all people, a perfunctory nod is given to ecumenicism, so we will see the odd Hanukkah menorah, Kwanzaa candelabra, or hear the mention of Ramadan. Don’t mean nothin’, Clyde. Christmas is what’s happening.
Posted by: The Editors Hope and despairSeptember 1st, 2003 BY ED GOLDBERG
So I’ll cheat a bit. In 1951 King Kong was re-released, and my mother took me to see it. It was the first movie that knocked me out, and it put me on the movie-slut road. The Marx Brothers laid the foundation for my view of the universe as essentially unknowable, but funny. The Wild One warped my social sensibilities; La Strada and The Seventh Seal introduced me to, ahem, film. And John Waters’ Pink Flamingoes became not just one of my favorite movies, but a test of friendship: if you sat through this movie with me and were still my friend, it was true love. But, there are two movies — and they work as “films” as well — that informed my world view and politics more than any others: Casablanca and The Third Man.
Posted by: The Editors Books aren’t life, but then what is?June 1st, 2003 BY ED GOLDBERG What books changed my life? The Three Little Kittens, which is the first book I learned to read by myself. I’ve never been the same.
Posted by: The Editors Author profileDecember 1st, 2002 Ed Goldberg was born in The Bronx in 1943. After dropping out of college in 1962, he attempted to do stand-up comedy, unsuccessfully. He wrote for a few of the underground papers in New York. After moving to Washington, D.C. in 1973, he became a technical writer and wrote features and reviews for a monthly arts and entertainment paper. In 1991, he moved to Portland, Ore. and finished Served Cold, winner of the 1995 Shamus Award for best original paperback fiction. His third novel, True Crime, (as “Alan Gold”) was published in February 2005. True Faith was published in January 2007. He is currently working on a new book. His Black Lamb column is called The Bronx Zoo.
Posted by: The Editors
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