Rodger Jacobs of Carver’s Dog is a prolific writer who, under the pseudonym Martin Brimmer is credited with writing hundreds of screenplays, not one of which you’d want to tell your mother you’d seen. (Unless you and your mother have a far different relationship than my mother and I have). His Brimmer days in the past, Rodger now writes about what Jack London didn’t write as well as super-short fiction about Paul Newman and breakfast (among other things).

1. Do you prefer cake or pie?
   

   Pie has connotations of home and comfort. It also holds together better than cake — not as many loose crumbs on the plate afterwards. Also, if one did a directory search I’m certain there would be hundreds of returns on the restaurant title House of Pies but how many House of Cake eateries are there? The defense rests its case. Next?

2. Why did you choose the pseudonym “Martin Brimmer”?
   

   Well, I haven’t used the pen name of Martin Brimmer in several years, but it’s a good question. When you’re a young writer living in L.A. with a family to feed and clothe, it’s pretty easy to get lured into some dark alleys in order to meet your obligations. My particular dark alley (and that of many other writers I know) for a few years was the vast, lucrative wasteland of adult entertainment. Under the name Martin Brimmer I wrote a couple hundred scripts for adult films and won the “coveted” AVN award three times — twice for writing, once for producing. I was also a magazine editor under that name for a couple of years.

   But you asked why I chose the name instead of a long apology for my former career in porn.

   Brimmer is the name of the writer’s union organizer, a Communist agitator, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished swan song, “The Last Tycoon.” No, I am not now nor have I ever been a Communist. Have you no sense of decency, Senator? (Had to throw a little joke in there for the HUAC historians and Joe McCarthy biographers)

3. Bob Wiley said, “There are only two kinds of people in this world: Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don’t.” Which kind of person are you?
   

   Having grown up in the ’60s and ’70s I was subjected to a lot of Neil Diamond music. Tijuana Brass, too. Wayne Newton. Johnny Cash. The only one who endures is the Man In Black.

4. If you could ask God one question, what would you ask?
   

   “Do you really exist or did we invent you? If the latter is the case, is that enough to wish you into being?”

   I hear God likes paradoxical questions.

5. What’s the story behind your blog’s title?
   

   From 2005-06 I wrote a series of stories for 8763 Wonderland starring a character named Trace, a struggling, down-on-his-luck writer in L.A. I gave up the stories after having written about 75 of them, despite their popularity. “Carver’s Dog,” a reference to the late, great Raymond Carver, is the title of one of the Trace tales.

6. If you knew that beginning tomorrow you would be blind for one year, what would you want to be sure to see today?
   

   Oh man. I’ll have to take a pass on that one. There’s no way to answer it without offending someone by exclusion.

7. If you had to gain 10 pounds, what would you eat?
   

   Wienerschnitzel and hot German potato salad. And I don’t want to hear any crap from the “Oh God, how can you eat baby cows?” crowd. Strangely, on that topic, I saw something on the news a few nights ago about an investigation into abuse of cows at a slaughterhouse. Hello?

8. You find a sack full of cash in the middle of the street. What do you do?
   

   Where’s the nearest book store?

9. Two of your recent “Fiction” posts have mentioned scrambled eggs. Please share your recipe for scrambled eggs.
   

   Pre-heat frying pan. Crack eggs into a bowl and whisk with a fork. Sit down and have a cigarette, watch CNN for a few minutes. Rise wearily and return to kitchen, pour whisked eggs into pan and watch as they attempt to form an omelette. Sabotage that effort with a spatula or wooden spoon. Don’t EVER let eggs get the best of you.

10. What TV show are you embarrassed to admit you watch?
    

    I watch very little TV, and You Tube was an exciting novelty to me only for a couple of weeks before I grew bored with it (though I did watch a pristine episode of “Adam-12” on You Tube once). There’s not much on TV that interests me, and the growth of reality and game shows that are aimed at denigration and humiliation just make me scratch my head and reach for a book. I do, however, greatly admire “House M.D.“

11. In your estimation, what’s the best blog post you’ve written?
    

    Tough one, asking me to crow about my own work. “Coming Through Slaughter” is the most popular posting to date, but it’s more of a rant with a literary theme. I would have to say Stephen Crane Visits The Doctor is my favorite at the present time.

12. Who would play you in the movie of your life?
    

    Hugh Laurie.

13. What was the last book you read? What was it about? Should I read it?
    

    I’m juggling so many books right now but I’m presently enamored with John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom novels that begin with “Rabbit, Run” in 1959 and end, I believe, with “Rabbit at Rest” in 1989. A fascinating study of one “ordinary” man’s life and his constant struggles with fidelity, honesty, bravery, and the feeling everyone sometimes has that somewhere out there is someone living the life that you should have had.

14. Tell me about the last time you danced.
    

    Ummmmm … no.

15. Who’s your favorite blogger? Why?
    

    Oops. Another landmine. See answer to Question #6.

16. Jill asked Shana this question, and I loved it: If you had to hide an elephant, where would you hide it?
    

    Hide it? I would cook it using my old family recipe for Elephant Stew:

    1 elephant
    2 rabbits (optional)
    Salt and pepper to taste

    Cut elephant in small bite-sized pieces. This will take about two months. Add enough brown gravy to cover. Simmer on kerosene stove for about four weeks. Yields approximately 3,800 servings. If more are expected, the two rabbits may be added. This should be done only if absolutely necessary because most people do not like to find hares in their stew.

17. If you had to live one day of your life over and over and over again, what day would you choose?
    

    Oh sweet Lord, will you stop with the booby traps, Nichole?

18. What’s Jack London’s greatest work?
    

    A toss of the coin between “John Barleycorn” and “White Fang.” The former is one of the best books on alcoholism ever written and, interestingly, London explores alcoholic denial (“I go on a binge for awhile and then I quit for several weeks so I’m not an alcoholic”) and enablers in the alcoholic’s life (London’s wife Charmian: “You go on a binge for awhile and then you quit for several weeks. Of course you’re not an alcoholic, dear.”) long before the clinicians had created such labels. “White Fang” is the best novel ever written on the theme of biological determinism, however.

19. Your accountant’s been murdered, and you’re being framed. Do you call Philip Marlowe or Travis McGee?
    

    “No feelings at all was exactly right. I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between the stars. When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty-four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.

    It all depends on where you sit an what your own private score is. I didn’t have one. I didn’t care.

    I finished the drink and went to bed. ”
    — From “The Long Goodbye”
    (1953) Raymond Chandler

    Does that answer your question?

Thanks, Rodger! That was good fun.

There are lots of other interviews to be read at Citizen of the Month. If you’d like to be interviewed, head that way and leave a comment. You’ll have to interview someone, too, but it’s all in the name of love and happiness and blogging unity. If you’d like me to interview you — and I would love to do that — send me an e-mail!