How do you describe one of the best weeks of your life? I’ve been doing comedy for a while now—depending on how it will benefit me, I’ll admit to anywhere between one and 50 years. I’ve opened for Dennis Miller in front of 1500 people, successfully used my wits to defuse an angry prison parolee in the front row of a show in Corpus Christi, TX—the tequila we shared helped, thrown pitches off the mound at Yankee Stadium in full Yankees uniform for Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and I’ve used my charm and knowledge of manscaping to absolutely murder before an audience of swingers. That one was a tough feat. Comedy to me is storytelling about the times when you’re uncomfortable, and trying to tell those stories in front of a group that’s never uncomfortable in any situation was a challenge. But the week I just spent in Germany performing on U.S. Army Posts was clearly the highlight of my career.
Comic Gold Blog
November 01, 2010
The Gunslingers and Germany: the Best and the Wurst
October 01, 2010
I Married Two People
I married two people last weekend. It was a gorgeous ceremony in the Secret Garden in Central Park in New York City. Hold on. Let me explain this before my alternative lifestyle friends from New England start showering me with emails and naked pictures, and my parents start cowering in my old room wondering what went wrong with their little boy. “But he used to play baseball. How could he marry two people? Where’s the seltzer?”
September 01, 2010
The Summer of Sweat and the Russian Turkish Bath
The Summer of Sweat is almost over. Actually, maybe not for a while, but when I see September on my calendar I know my long humid nightmare is almost over. I can’t wait for someone to ask me if I’m cold.
January 02, 2010
2009 Dave Goldstein Family Update
For years, I’ve read the wonderful family recap letters that people send out with their holiday cards and I’ve always marveled at every family’s terrific sense of perspective and self-awareness. So, even though as a comic, I value the sense of mystery an audience feels when they don’t know their performer too well, I thought this year we’d pull the blanket off the Goldstein family and expose ourselves to you.
October 10, 2009
Berry’s Barbershop
I realize that I tend to procrastinate before I write these Comic Gold Blog essays - it’s part of my process, but I agree six weeks is a little ridiculous. So, if you’re one of the millions of people who look forward to my Blog every month (and, of course, by millions I mean dozens), I can tell you it won’t happen again. I’m on it. Today before sitting down to write I went to the gym, picked up lunch and most importantly, took care of a little manscaping (and, of course, by a little I mean a thicket’s worth of trimming and edging). I’ve got a big week ahead of me.
August 01, 2009
Down and Out
It’s 1927 in my apartment this week. The Internet is down and the TV is out. Down and out. If this keeps up, I’m going to have to read. And we all know where that leads.
July 02, 2009
Golf
I can’t believe how sedate I’ve become. I’m writing this Blog about golf. I’ve started playing again. The big man shot a masterful 45 yesterday. We only played nine holes so we had time for lunch’that’s half of a normal round’but I think that’s perfect for me, because my back usually seizes up after about five or six holes anyway.
June 03, 2009
Summer
Summer is here. You can feel the excitement. Kids are daydreaming. Soon school will be done and they’ll be able to ride bikes to the pool and help out on the family farm’just go with me. Hot dogs, crab cakes and corn on the cob. Summer is fun for everybody. The gals get to wear the little minky tops that show off all the January evenings schvitzing like a hazir on the yoga mat. The guys get to prove that we’ve lost none of the ballsy American pioneering spirit by expertly lighting pre-treated charcoal made by the ton somewhere else. Even the oil companies have fun. They get to manipulate the price of gas; coincidentally at the same time we all need extra gas, to get to all this fun and family this summer.
May 01, 2009
Suburban Dad
I apologize for the lateness of this Comic Gold Blog. I’ve come to realize that some of you, my nice readers, actually look forward to these new additions, and I’ve been very slack lately. I have to come clean. I’ve been living a double life and it’s really put a strain on me, physically and emotionally. For weeks now, unbeknownst to my single friends and comedy groupies, I’ve been acting as a suburban dad on the side. My decadent comedy life has been completely replaced by calm decision-making, chicken tenders, and little league practice.
April 01, 2009
Chickens lay, people lie, and I put in a hard wood floor.
I helped a couple of friends lay a hard wood floor this past weekend. Thirteen and a half straight hours on my hands and knees. That’s real work. If I weren’t a liberal before, I would be now. In New York you see swarms of immigrants doing construction grunt work. Serious hard work. You try building a building in a 2nd language.
March 02, 2009
The Pennsylvania Grand Canyon
New goal. I’m going to visit every state’s Grand Canyon. On my way to a show on Saturday I stopped at the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon. While not exactly grand, it was good enough. And even better, when you hit a marginal tourist attraction in the off-season’like February 28th’you’re the only one there! No lines. I could have filled in the canyon with dirt, making it The Pennsylvania Great Plains and nobody would have known until Memorial Day.
February 01, 2009
My Plan For The Comic Gold Blog
I’m tall and generally easy-going but not mild-mannered. I like to think I’m a rock but I have my weak moments like everybody else. I think I have too many interests. I love to read thrillers and obscure histories. I write and perform, see movies, walk the city, play basketball and golf, watch the Yankees, learn languages, and frighteningly I think I now have every Law & Order episode memorized. Not SVU yet, but I’m working on it.
December 01, 2003
Dave Goldstein: Professional Male Model.
You must have felt the ripple in the fashion world? No? There’s a new model in town and his name is Dave Goldstein. That’s right. I am now a Professional Male Model’hereafter to be abbreviated PMM. I don’t know if Professional Male Model (PMM) is supposed to be capitalized but I kind of like the way it feels. Have you seen the pictures? I know some of the girls get excited when their pictures run in Sports Illustrated or Vogue (hey it’s modeling, we’re all girls), but my big break came with the only gig that really counts in modeling’Post-it notes for Norvasc, Pfizer’s hyper-tension drug!
December 01, 2002
Law & Order: Obsessive Viewer’s Unit
So who do you like, George Dzunda or Paul Sorvino? Angie Harmon or Jill Hennessy? Or maybe Carey Lowell? She’s my choice but I know she’s a dark horse.
May 01, 2002
Let’s See a Little Peace
I know these essays are supposed to be funny. I’m sorry. I promise that I’ll try and get back to my happy-go-lucky self again. Right now, with the trouble in Israel, all I feel like doing is picking up a gun.
March 01, 2002
No Longer Fooled
C hinga tu madre, hijo de puta! If you speak Spanish you know how deeply I just insulted
you and you probably want to hit me. I’m hoping you don’t speak Spanish, so I can tell you
that not only would I never dream of insulting you, I just warmly wished you a wonderful
life of health, wealth, and happiness. It’s the duplicitous sort of thing that Yasser Arafat
does all the time, only the language he hopes you don’t understand is Arabic.
September 04, 2001
Labor Day Viewing
It’s labor Day 2000. A lot of you are probably outside enjoying the beach or grilling steaks with
good friends. The other lonesome shut-ins and I are in front of the TV, enjoying one of the most
educational days of the year. Law & Order and ER are running all day, and the History Channel is
showing their Big House series on prisons.
August 01, 2001
Viva La Francis
I got together at the beach, this past week, with a bunch of friends of mine whom I’d been
at the University of Delaware with about ten years ago. In the midst of eating a lot of crabs,
drinking copiously and repeating stories we’d all told and heard almost too many times, I
realized something. None of us had nicknames anymore. I wasn’t Kruger anymore. I was
just Dave.
June 01, 2001
Jury Duty
I was going to write this essay about my recent stint doing jury duty. I had it all set. You
know, all the pithy jokes about my fellow jurors-fine, babbling, third world people all of
them; the drone-like, Russian inefficiency of the jury selection process, and the couple of
protest beers I had during our lunch break. But then, on the same day, I had another more
depressing brush with the American legal system. The incestuous quagmire we call
Hoboken traffic court.
May 01, 2001
Tax Season
I know some of you are sitting there reading this thinking that the April 15th A Dog’s
Lunch is really late. Not at all! I got an extension. Yeah, I got the idea when I got the
extension for my taxes. Getting an extension on your taxes is easy. You just fill out a form.
Getting the extension on the A Dog’s Lunch was even easier. I just asked the guy in charge-
me-if I could write it a little late and he agreed. Try it sometime when you have something
important to do that you’d rather put off. I think you’ll find yourself surprisingly
agreeable.
April 01, 2001
My Library
I need to buy some books on jazz. People judge you by your books. I need some books on
jazz or Jung or the Dalai Lama maybe. He’s pretty hip these days. I need books that make
me seem sophisticated and mysterious when new people come to my apartment. Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s Encyclopedia Of Bodybuilding just doesn’t seem to cut it.
March 15, 2001
Stumped Already?
I’m embarrassed. I don’t know what to write. Is it possible to have writer’s block after only 13 columns? Steven King comes up with a bestseller while going out to get the paper in the morning and I’m stumped. George Will has written a column every week for years. And he actually has to check his facts!
March 01, 2001
King of the On-Line Auction
I’m the king of the on-line auction. I don’t know how it happened or when I became
obsessed but I must admit that I am an online auction junkie. It’s like a whole new world
has opened up to me. I don’t just see objects or possessions anymore. I see INVENTORY.
February 15, 2001
Computer Virus
I’ll tell you now, you may read some rougher language than usual in this A Dog’s Lunch.
The clever and insightful writer of these columns has been a bit jaundiced of late. You see,
I’ve been battling a virus for over a week now and I’m pissed. In fact, I’m getting pissed off
all over again right now just writing this.
February 01, 2001
Heavy Bag, a short short story
Some men; you can read their lives by the scars on their knuckles. Gabriel Cooper’s hands were
like a language and they told his story. All the fights were right there. You just needed to be able
to read it. The zipper across the 1st and 2nd knuckles on his right hand finally read the end.
Riffing on Writing
Let’s talk about the writing process. I’ve now written 11 of these A Dog’s Lunch columns
so certainly I’m qualified to pontificate on the art of writing. I am now a man of letters.
January 15, 2001
MLK Day: A Great Day for Hoops
The Knicks just beat the Spurs 104-82. Big game. Big, big game. No, it wasn’t the
championship game or anything like that, and I’m not even a Knicks fan. It was the Martin
Luther King Day game! That’s how the NBA celebrates Martin Luther King Day. Doesn’t
anyone at the NBA understand irony? What, couldn’t they get the T-shirts for the dance
contest and watermelon seed spit-off printed in time?
January 01, 2001
New Year’s Suckin’ Eve
Happy New Year. This is either my first column of 2001 or my last column of 2000. The same dorks
who are debating if the Millenium actually starts this year or started last year can have a little fun
with this new puzzle.
December 15, 2000
Holidays
It’s the holiday season and boy am I glad that I live in a society that isn’t obsessed with money. If I
did, all the ads for Christmas and other gift giving would be about good prices and not about good
people. Fortunately for me, I don’t have any money, but I have a vault full of artistic integrity.
That’s more valuable right?
December 01, 2000
The Writer’s Second Chance
It happened again last night. I was tardy by 30 seconds. I thought of a snappy smart ass comeback
just half a minute too late. I was out for a couple of beers when a yuppie woman, surrounded by her
self-important boring friends, said to me, “you’re so loud, I can hear your whole conversation.” You
know what my answer was? My lame, can you believe this guy is a comedian, answer. I said,
“yeah?”
November 15, 2000
Fish Stinks From The Head
Fish stinks from the head! I love that expression. I first heard it from a guy who went to the same
gym as I did, to describe the owner of the gym, after I mentioned how nice the owner was and what
pricks all his employees were. I think about that expression every time I see a boss trying to play the
nice guy while forcing an underling to play the ogre.
November 01, 2000
My J-O-B
Fried chicken cook, dishwasher, pamphlet collator, camp counselor, bus boy, waiter, roofer, deli
delivery boy, bike taxi rider, seafood cook, office furniture mover, apple orchard clearer, special
events coordinator, administrative assistant, advertising sales executive, sports radio producer,
bartender, clothing salesman, environmentalist, video transcriber, indoor plant care technician,
telemarketer, actor and comedian.
October 15, 2000
I’m An Autumn
It’s Fall, my time of year. Time to layer! Like Superman changing into his cape and tights, I slip
that first ribbed turtleneck over my head and I’m transformed. I’m not anymore just a guy who
works out but eats like crap. I’m “The Big Guy.” Your gut looks like a muscle and the illusion is
safe until the spring thaw. It’s my annual autumnal right of passage. I put on the turtleneck and
promise that by April, my gut will be gone.
September 20, 2000
The Olympics Explained
I love watching the Olympics. I think it’s seeing people fulfill their goals. It makes me believe that if
I work hard enough, and take performance-enhancing drugs, that I can fulfill mine.
August 18, 2000
Vermin And The Movies
My apartment has mice. I think it has mice. I actually hope it has mice. It might just have
mouse! And that would be frightening. One incredibly prolific mouse. If it is just one
mouse, he’s toured my apartment like the Grateful Dead. He’s left his little calling cards in
about four places in my studio. And what production! I’ve gone on long steak-eating beer-
bingeing weekends and not evacuated on Sunday what this little guy has left behind. If he
were my friend and not some vermin invading my spot, I’d shake his hand. By the way, it
seems mice love corn bread mix.