Home of John Blumenthal Books

  • Home
  • John Blumenthal’s Blog
  • About Me
  • Other Books and Movies
  • Get in Touch!

The Secret to a Long Life: Be an Asshole

May 4, 2019 By John Blumenthal

I don’t know if there are any empirical studies on this phenomenon but if you put these words into a search engine:, “Why do bad people outlive nice people?” you get some pretty convincing, albeit anecdotal, evidence. Even religions struggle with this question but they usually come up with the tired philosophy that God works in mysterious ways.

Everybody I know thinks of me as a nice person. I go out of my way to help people; I’m unfailingly kind and compassionate; I give money to charities without thinking about the tax deduction; I treat people with respect and patience, even customer service reps who require me to spell my last name 35 times.

But from now on, I’m going to be an asshole. How, you ask?

From this day forth, all my Facebook comments will consist of shit pile emojis.

Unfortunately, all this niceness will probably put me in an early grave. 

And then there’s the phrase, “The good die young,” not to mention the book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.

So I’ve decided to abandon niceness and become an asshole. 

The next time I’m at a strip club I’m putting coins in the strippers’ panties.

On my next wedding anniversary, I’m giving my wife a diet book.

If I see a slightly plump woman, I’m going to ask her when the baby’s due.

Want me to let you slide in ahead of me in merging traffic? Not going to happen. 

On rainy days, I will make a special effort to speed through puddles that are near pedestrians. 

I will eat copious amounts of broccoli before every trip and fart as often and as loudly on the plane as humanly possible. 

That elderly woman limping toward the only vacant seat on the bus? Forget it, lady. I’m getting there first if it kills me.

Allergic to cats? I’m bringing mine over the next time I go to your house. 

I will flush the toilet 15 times when people are in the shower at my health club. 

My best friend is late for a flight. Will I drive him to the airport? Not in this lifetime. 

That homeless guy who panhandles near Barnes & Noble will now get an out-of-date Bulgarian coin the next time I see him. 

I’m wearing an umbrella hat at theaters that feature subtitled foreign films. 

From now on, I’m eating garlic before every dental exam. 

Disposing of dog shit when my dog craps during a walk? Forget it. 

The next time I’m invited to a gourmet dinner party, I’m bringing the host a bottle of Thunderbird and placing a box of Pepto Bismol on my bread plate. 

From now on, I will never use the words “spoiler alert” when telling a friend about a movie. 

I’m going to wear a Grim Reaper costume the next time I visit a sick friend.

Who’s the asshole that put Krazy Glue on the barbells at the health club? That would be me. 

The next wedding present I give will be a fifty-dollar gift certificate for a divorce attorney. 

Instead of throwing a shovelful of dirt into an open grave at the next Jewish funeral I attend, I’m renting a bulldozer. 

Anyway, you get the picture. If you don’t, do me a favor — drop dead.





Filed Under: Writing

I Wrote an Amazon Bestseller in a Week

May 4, 2019 By John Blumenthal

I wrote a book last week. I’ve never written a book before but so what? They’re just words on a computer screen, right? I’ve written stuff before — emails and lists of things to get at the hardware store — so I have experience. Anybody can do it.

It all started when my friend Bert said, “You know Bud, you should write a book about your crazy family.” I thought about it for a minute. It was a totally unique idea. So I wrote it. The words just flowed out of me like diarrhea.

It took me a pretty long time — three hours — to think up a catchy title. I finally came up with, My Crazy Family. How could you not sell a million books with a grabber like that? 

I slapped together a cover — my niece Sarah Jane (she’s so cute) helped with the finger-painting — and uploaded it on Amazon as a Kindle and a paperback. Heck, the uploading was harder than writing the book!

The next thing I did was change my Facebook profile. It used to say, “Works at Plumber.” Now it says, “Works at Author.” 

Then I had to do some marketing. My first idea was total genius — I got all the members of my crazy family and a bunch of my friends to write customer reviews on Amazon. In a few hours, I had 20 reviews and a 5-star rating!

Next, I pasted the Amazon link on Facebook, which is also a really clever idea that’s probably never been done.

I heard that Amazon has a freebie program where you give the book away for free to create what they call “buzz.” I knew this would work. How often have I stood in line outside of Walmart to get a free set of beer coasters or an umbrella hat?

I ended up selling 8000 books for free. Now I had a following! I thought about trying to get reviews from hoity-toity newspapers like the New York Times — (it’s pretty simple — you just send them a copy of your book with a nice letter) — but the Post Office was going to charge me $9.95 for Priority Mail, so I didn’t bother.

The book sold pretty well (getting my friends and relatives to buy it was another brilliant marketing scheme — has anybody tried that before?)

About a week after publishing the book, my son caught our dog Bowzer tearing out the pages and eating them (everybody’s a critic, right?). It was the cutest thing! My son got the whole thing on video and made a YouTube and pasted it on Facebook. The damn thing went — what do you call it? — virile in two days.

The next day, I sold 150,000 copies but poor old Bowzer was constipated for a week.

A few days later, I got a call from a guy named Marty from Hollywood. Said he loved my book and wanted to make a TV sitcom out of it. He asked me if I have an agent and I told him I did. (Mickey Bergan has been my insurance agent for 20 years.)

But I told Marty I didn’t want to sell. I figured I could shoot a TV series myself. How hard could it be? Most TV sucks. All I had to do is shoot an episode and send it to a network and they’d pay me a ton of money and run it on TV. My family is pretty excited about starring in a TV series.

plan to use the video on my son’s smartphone. We start shooting next week.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: amazon., bestseller, books

A Few Questions For My British Friends

March 20, 2019 By John Blumenthal

First off blokes, what exactly is the name of your country? Is it England, Great Britain or the United Kingdom? 

Why can’t you make up your bloody minds? England is okay, but Great Britain? Do you really need the pompous adjective? Other countries think

they’re great too, but they don’t all advertise it in the title name. And let’s face it, maybe you were great once (if your idea of greatness was a king who beheaded his wives because it was somehow easier than just fooling around) but now it’s really just nostalgia for the good old days when you had a really swell navy and owned half the world.

We have as checkered a past as you do, but we don’t call ourselves “The Really Terrific United States of America.”

The same goes for United Kingdom. I mean, seriously? Kingdom? Newsflash: You don’t actually havea kingdom anymore, chaps. It’s gone. You’ve been kicked out of everywhere. You have an island with crappy weather and a few commonwealths, whatever that means. (Why do you Australians still pay homage to a Queen whose predecessors thought it would be a good idea to populate your country with convicts? Doesn’t that piss you off just a little?) 

Do the Italians call themselves the Roman Empire? I rest my case.

How come your actors can mimic American dialects so well but ours struggle with yours? You’re constantly showing up in our movies (we couldn’t find an American to play Lincoln?) I can see Derek Jacobi as a toothless, banjo-picking, moonshine-brewing Alabama half-wit but I cannot imagine Robert De Niro playing the Earl of Grantham. This is annoying. 

Yes, you gave us your language (and we managed to make it bland) but why can’t we get away with saying the really cool words like “wanker” and “bollocks”?

Why is everything “brilliant”? Sure, we Americans overuse the word “awesome” which reduces an appraisal of the Pyramids to the level of a description of some teenager’s new tattoo. But you’re supposed to be smarter than we are (do you ever call an actual smart person “brilliant”?) Find another adjective. Please. Even the scullery maid from Downton Abbey has a more imaginative vocabulary.

Speaking of Downton Abbey, why was it necessary for your upper class twits to change into over-starched shirts and black-tie monkey suits for dinner every single night? Sure, if you’ve been in a coal mine all day, I can see changing into a clean shirt and some decent slacks, but you haven’t been in a coal mine all day or otherwise soiled your day clothes. And why did you need six guys to take away the soup plates?

Fox hunting. Why is that fun? I don’t get it. The hounds do all the work. Why do they need you? 

What is this fixation with tea? You show up at somebody’s house and right away your host asks, “cuppa tea?” Nobody ever declines or says, “Do you have any tomato juice?” We Yanks (why do you keep calling us that? Some of us like the Dodgers better) just say, “May I get you something to drink?” This opens up a wide variety of possibilities, many of them toxic.

And what’s with the word “bloody”? Why is everything bloody good or bloody awful? Why the gory connotation? If you cut your hand and it bleeds, are you “bloody bloody”?

Why do some of you still have titles? If you’re a Duke, what exactly are you Duke of? Nothing, that’s what. Back in the day, you had absurdly lavish estates with enough bedrooms to house half of Manchester, and way too many servants (please tell me why you couldn’t even figure out how to dress yourselves? It’s not rocket science) but now all you have is a pile of bricks that you can’t afford to maintain (boo hoo) so you’re selling your titles (mostly to Americans, I suspect.) That’s a really worthwhile investment. Now some random guy from Hoboken, New Jersey with a lot of money can spend a few hundred grand and be Joe Schmo, Duke of Whatever, but nobody will call him “Duke” unless that’s his first name.


Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: Brits, England, United Kingdom, fox hunting,

Today’s Literary Cartoon

November 16, 2018 By John Blumenthal

Filed Under: Writing

From “Three and a Half Virgins”—- Samantha

October 2, 2018 By John Blumenthal

EXCERPT:

“One aspect of Samantha’s personality that drove me nuts was her tendency to reveal herself via literary allusions. She called it a quirk, but it was more of a compulsion. Her mother was Lady Macbeth; her father, Big Daddy. An uncle she liked was Mr. Micawber, a favorite governess, Jane Eyre; a doting professor, Mr. Chips.

This curious habit of hers quickly made the voyage from eccentric to bizarre when she began to invoke the names of literary characters to describe moments in our relationship. When she thought I was treating her rudely, she called me Wolf Larsen; if I was standoffish, I was Mr. Darcy; when I dressed too shabbily, I was Tom Joad.

Once, in bed, she yelled out the name Victor as she approached orgasm. I assumed she was referring to Victor Hugo because she’d been reading ‘Les Miserables.’. It didn’t really bother me that much though it was a little odd being with a woman who thought she was having sex with a dead French author.”

 

Purchase The Book

 

Filed Under: Writing

One Reader’s Opinion of “Dorfman.”

September 22, 2018 By John Blumenthal

Last Friday I began reading John Blumenthal‘s newest novel, ” What’s Wrong With Dorfman?“, and since then I have barely put it down. This book could not have arrived at a better time, and I’ve looked forward to every spare second I could cleave from the day so I could dive back in, join up with Martin Dorfman and his wicked sense of humour, and drift along as he wrestles with nagging hypochondria, Screenwriter burnout, and a slew of friends, agents, and family members so profoundly disparate each encounter is a story in itself.

The problem is… I’m about to finish the book. I don’t want this book to end, so I’ve put it on the table to look at. I hate having to part with characters I’ve grown to love. Generally I delay the inevitable until I’m driven mad with curiosity and finally can’t stop myself from gobbling up the remaining few pages. I expect to be plunged into Post-Dorfman depression before the day is ou

“What’s Wrong With Dorfman? ” is such an excellent book. Just excellent. Thank you for the tremendously enjoyable escapism I’ve become dependant upon over the last few days, John. It’s safe to say my imminent funk is all your fault.

Karin Rego

Buy the Book

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: amazon., books, family saga, films, Hollywood, hypochondriac, John blumenthal books, movies, neurotic, novels, romance, screenwriting, script

The History of Hollywood High

September 17, 2018 By John Blumenthal

From: Publishers Weekly:

Built in 1905, six years before the area’s first film studio began operations, Hollywood High was nicknamed “The Star Hatchery” in 1936the year Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Lana Turner, Marge Champion, Nanette Fabray and Alexis Smith were all on campus at the same time. A student publication, The Hollywood High School News , was launched in 1918, and the author taps into its rich mine of forgotten filmland trivia. In 1950-51 the News was edited by Carol Burnett who also contributed a sophomoric humor column: “ETIKUT: Its sorta considered good taste when you sorta bump sumone in the hall

to go back and pick ’em up.” Burnett introduced a series of interviews with alumni-turned-movie stars, which was discontinued when it was discovered she was writing the pieces on class time. Along with numerous appealing anecdotes,Blumenthal ( The Tinseltown Murders ) gathers recent reminiscences from celebrities who look back on their high school days with nostalgia and embarrassment. “I just wanted to blend in with the wall,” recalls a once-shy Linda Evans. “I didn’t want anyone to notice me too much because I was very shy.” Yvette Mimieux: “I hated it. Classrooms are prisons.” Blumenthal’s profile of the late Rick Nelson suggests he is unaware that Nelson was famous as a child radio actor prior to his TV debut, but this is a minor oversight. This carefully researched, amusing chronicle also has value as an historical record of the 20th century as viewed through the eyes of American teenagers. Illustrated with yearbook photos.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: carol burnett, celebrities, Hollywood, hollywood high, judy garland, lana turner, los angeles, mickey rooney, rick elision

Roger Ebert On “Blue Streak”

September 17, 2018 By John Blumenthal

“Blue Streak” ranks in the upper reaches of the cop buddy genre, up there in “Lethal Weapon” territory. It has the usual ingredients for a cop comedy, including the obligatory Dunkin’ Donuts product placement, but it’s assembled with style–and it’s built around a Martin Lawrence performance that deserves comparison with Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, with a touch of Mel Gibson’s zaniness in the midst of action.

Martin Lawrence is a comic actor with real talent, not always shown to best advantage. “Bad Boys” (1995) his cop buddy movie with Will Smith, was not a career high point, and it took a certain nerve to make another one. But “Blue Streak” works.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: amazon., bad boys, blue streak, copy film, eddie murphy, martin lawrence, movie reviews, richard pryor, roger ebert

SYNOPSIS: The Tinseltown Murders

September 15, 2018 By John Blumenthal

In The Tinseltown Murders, Detective Mac Slade is being hounded by a pair of Mob goons with the combined IQ of a ficus tree. In the nick of time, he gets a frantic call from the wife of Hollywood private eye Jack Mushnik. Arriving on the Coast after eluding the goons, Slade goes to a glitzy Hollywood bash in search of Jack and finds him — curled up in a refrigerator, dead as can be.

A lady private eye, a runaway farm girl, a movie star, a hostile homicide detective named Lieutenant Lou Tennant, a Chinese houseboy, a Nazi cleaning lady, a Hollywood agent, a gay hairdresser, a celebrity psychic and behemoth named Moose Lebowitz all do their utmost to impede Slade’s sleuthing — but to no avail. He not only solves the numerous murders but answers the burning question, “Who is Peaches Moskowitz?”

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: comedy, detectives, humor, mac slade, mysteries, mystery, mystery novels, novel, the tinseltown murders, tinseltown

Synopsis: Three and a Half Virgins

September 14, 2018 By John Blumenthal

If you’re a woman, how would you react if the man who broke your heart twenty years ago suddenly showed up on your doorstep to apologize? And if you happen to be that man, what would motivate you to do something that bold and unpredictable, and what would you expect to happen? And will sexual sparks be re-ignited after twenty years? 

It all begins when our hapless hero’s wife leaves him for the guy up the block. After a mostly unsuccessful foray into the world of Internet dating, he finds himself revisiting his past. Engulfed by nostalgia,a nd sexual fantasies, he’s suddenly gripped by pleasant memories of three old flames — Laura, Samantha and Molly — all of whom happened to have been virgins when he met them twenty years before. 

But the warm refuge of the past soon gives way to icy reality when he confronts the sobering details of how maliciously he tricked, seduced and broke each of their hearts. Overcome by remorse and tantalized by curiosity, he finds a way to reshape his past.

Which, if any of the virgins will our hero end up with after his quest? The answer will surprise you.

Purchase The Book

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: broken heart, divorce, girlfriends, love story, nostalgia, novel, old flames, road trip, romance, Three and a Half Virgins, virginity, virgins

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

I’d love to hear your questions, comments and feedback! Book club discussions, book events and appearance inquiries welcome.

Get in Touch!

Recent Posts

  • Why Does Everybody Want to Be an Author?
  • Rave Reviews for The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird
  • Excerpt: “The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird.”
  • How “The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird” Came to Be
  • Noah Tells The Real Story

Archives

  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • March 2019
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018

My Work

Learn about upcoming projects.

Get In Touch

I’d love to hear your questions, comments and feedback! Book club discussions, book events and appearance inquiries welcome.

Get in Touch!

Connect with Me

Connect with John Blumenthal across a variety of social media platforms.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram

Visit me on GoodReads

© 2018–2023 · Lafayette & Greene