Goldmine Tales is my attempt to inject some humor into a series of what would otherwise be bland blog posts about the state of entertainment in the 21st Century. Goldmine Tales focuses on a transmedia comic book company called Goldmine Studios and features a main character called Stan Darcy and his day to day interactions with his boss, Scott Goldberg. The events, characters and firms depicted in the below are ficticious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual firms, is purely coincidental. Enjoy.
Apparently, people are finding my exploits at Goldmine at least slightly interesting. In fact, I’ve been approached by a number of people who have their own Goldmine Tales and want to be heard. I figured I would let their voices be heard, too. I am simply providing a platform to them and make no judgements, positive or negative, as to the validity of their writing, it’s just their own experiences. Some of these, I am hearing for the first time, like this week’s guest post from JD Coughlin. If you don’t know him, JD won Goldmine’s inaugural “Comic Book Survivor”, a contest for aspiring comic creators. His winning entry, “Night Hero”, was published by Goldmine for a while until the company hit one of its “economic bumps”. More on that situation at a later date. For now, I turn it over to JD. Enjoy, I’ll be waiting back in reality when you’re done. JD, tell us about your life in the Goldmine…
-Stan
P.S. And, JD, for the record, it was a brand new Mercedes S-Class. Scott got a new one every year but he never figured out how the windows worked.
My Dinner with the Millionaire – or – A Yinzer in Hollywood.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yinzer
A small dish of overflowing coleslaw was slapped down in front of Scott Goldberg along with a glass of water and some silverware. He was horrified but tried to mask it.
“I didn’t order this… did you guys order this?” He said with a look of disgust as he poked at it with the end of a fork.
“No, I think it just comes with every meal, Scott.” I replied as I watched him look at his fork and spoon as if he were from another planet and didn’t even know how to use these devices. He then pulled out a bottle of hand sanitizer and offered us some. It was a little weird.
It was a whirlwind nine months for me and I was being treated like the toast of the town by Goldmine Studios in 2007. They not only had flown me into Los Angeles for the big MWLA convention (Magician World Los Angeles), but also my trusty colorist Jay Embers. Jay and I were living large at the Holiday Inn in downtown L.A. At some point earlier in that day I was contacted by Stan Darcy from Goldmine telling me that the “big boss” wanted to have dinner with me sometime over the weekend to “discuss things.” This sounded pretty important. Maybe they’d struck a deal for Night Hero? Throughout the day I was having chats with strangers who I were told were pretty important people. Potential investors. Everyone told me they loved my upbeat “tell it like it is” Pittsburghian (Yinzer) attitude and positive energy. There wasn’t a lot of people who told the truth in Los Angeles it seemed, so I guess I was like a breathe of fresh air. Or at least so I was told by Goldberg a few times in previous conversations. I can’t lie, I felt pretty important. Goldmine rolled out the red carpet for me, and on Friday night I found myself in the super duper private party where only the BIG pros and legends gathered. Free mixed drinks were flowing… WHAT?! FREE RUM AND COKE?? Jay and I kept looking at each other thinking we had just hit the lottery or something. You gotta love us east coasters, we’re cheap like that!
I’ve never really felt starstruck like that before, even back to my days at hanging out at the old Image Comics offices when I was in high school. I was playing it pretty cool I thought. But it was only a few weeks prior to this show that I had discovered and fell in love with Darwyn Cooke’s work and there he was in front of me in the line for the free mixed drinks. It took everything I had not to turn into an idiot geek fanboy and shake his hand and tell him I admired him as a storyteller on the page. The interesting thing about this little party was that nobody saw us actually come in with Scott and Stan from Goldmine, so Jay and I were able to ease drop and hear a few of these big name guys whisper to one another when seeing Scott walk across the room.
“That’s Scott Goldberg, the guy behind those Alien Invader movies,” one well-known creator said.
This was peculiar to watch some big name comic creators seemingly walk up and kiss Goldberg’s ass, when I had been dealing with a lot of independent and web media people criticizing Goldmine and my deal with them. I totally bought into the explanation from Scott that the online crowd were just player haters because they couldn’t get into a room like that…. and yet there I was. And my trusty colorist Jay.
Back to the dinner from outer space…
So after that cocktail party, Scott invited Jay and I out to eat. I can’t recall the particulars but I believe Scott forgot where he parked his car and/or he had misplaced his keys. Stan Darcy, who I thought was the content development guy was suddenly playing the role of personal assistant as he scoured the parking garages near the Staples center looking for the car. They finally did find it… and it was a really nice ride. I can’t recall the make, I just know it was too fancy for my liking. (I prefer VW Buses) Scott had been fumbling around in the trunk and it was packed with stuff. You could tell that a family used this car, and it seemed like he had a bunch of clothes in the trunk to swap into. I remember Goldberg driving and not knowing how to work the windows and it seemed like he had barely driven this car. We drove two blocks up the street and decided to park at a $15 event parking lot for the Staples center. It was a little funny to see this super nice car parked next to beaten up Cavaliers and minivans. The plan was to park and simply walk to find a bite to eat. Seemed reasonable. I had seen a neat looking greasy spoon diner right smack across from the Holiday Inn that I thought would be convenient. At least for Jay and I!
Scott played it pretty cool too, but I could tell he seemed really nervous. Actually, I’ve known drug addicts in the past and I was starting to think “Is this dude on something?” – But before we left the vehicle I saw him slugging something that looked like a 5 hour energy drink. He was good to go now.
As I was saying, the greasy spoon diner really didn’t sit well with Mr. Goldberg. He asked us what letter was in the window and if it was an “A.” We had no idea what he was talking about so he explained that there had been a lot of problems with sanitation in the city and so all restaurants were rated by letters and he only ate at the “A”s. Well, that sounded good to me. I double checked…. yep, there’s an “A” in the window. You could see his uncomfortableness growing. From looking at the table, to scanning the other customers food that was being brought out. At one point a big sloppy sandwich of some kind came to our neighbors… “What is that?!” Scott said and pointed, loud enough that others could hear. “I think it’s a barbecue sandwich of some kind.” Jay said, then shot me a look of “What the hell is up with this guy??” I shot a look back of “I have no clue what is happening.”
The questioning of the waiter was also another odd moment. Scott didn’t want water in a glass, he wanted it in a bottle. The waiter said there were no bottled waters there. Another horrified look crossed his face. “Does this water come out of the faucet?” he asked the waiter, who then shot a look at me that was saying “What the hell is up with this guy?” and I shot a look back that said “I have no idea what is happening at this very moment.”
“Hey, do you guys want to go somewhere else?” I asked, sensing that Scott was about to go into a coma. “But, we already sat down, can we still leave?” Goldberg replied.
“Yeah, screw this place man, it’s too slow. They didn’t take our order yet unless you want to eat that coleslaw?” I said while motioning to Jay and Scott to follow me.
We found another restaurant up in a shadowy area of a cool old hotel. (the place that feels haunted) This was more his style, Scott said. It was convenient because the big night time party would be held here. He did grill the waiter there too about the chicken salad and how it was prepared. Everything from what type of leaves to what type of chicken. At some point I think he caught Jay and I looking at each other with those “What the hell is happening” looks and he explained to us that he never orders from the menu ANYWHERE. Any place should cook you what you want and they often will. He further explained that he was used to going to restaurants where they knew exactly what he wanted and how he wanted it prepared. It had become quite clear to me that Scott Goldberg might be a bit of a germ-a-phobe.
It was an odd night to say the least. We ended up at yet another Magician’s world party, this one was the “public” one for the “other pros.” And again it was a lot of mingling and people kissing Scott’s ass. At this party you only got limited “tickets” for drinks, not like the big boy party a couple hours before this one. Scott once told me his favorite quote\was “Perception is reality” and he walked around like a zillionaire playboy, and people seemed to oblige while he was in front of them, but the moment he walked away everyone was shooting the “what the hell is happening” looks. I could see $$$ signs in a lot of the people’s eyes. Honestly it never crossed my mind that we were paling around with a millionaire that night. (Or at least people said he was rich and I didn’t doubt it)
I enjoyed Goldberg’s company and conversations and passion for comics. When people asked me what I thought of him, I always said I felt like he was a 10yrold in a 45 yr old’s body, like in BIG with Tom Hanks. There wasn’t an evil bone in his body. It was really hard to believe any of the rumors I had heard about him being some diabolical businessman. Surely anyone he had hurt in the past, it was a misunderstanding of some kind because he was so aloof? Maybe he didn’t know he had hurt people in the past? Who knows, I guess it was just in my blue collar Yinzer nature to try to see the best in people instead of the worst.
Our night ended around 1am. Jay pulled me aside and said “Man, we can’t let this dude walk back to his car alone at this hour, he’ll be murdered for sure.” This made sense, even though I was three sheets to the wind. We walked Mr. Goldberg back to his ride. The big event parking lot had been emptied and only his car remained out in the middle. There were indeed some shady fellows hanging around. Scott popped his trunk and was fumbling around again. We wanted to make sure he was okay to drive. He popped up suddenly after downing a little red bottle (5 hour energy?) and said he was good to go! This night seemed like it was a big adventure for him, and some comradery was born between us. This night could have easily turned into some scene from the Hangover. Jay and I felt like real Night Heroes looking out for the millionaire boss that night. Yep. Real heroes.
“What the hell just happened?” Jay said once the light was turned off in our luxurious suite at the Holiday Inn.
“I’m not exactly sure… but I think we just met a man from another planet.”
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