Peter Mehlman - Mandela Was Late: Odd things & essays from the Seinfeld writer who coined yada, yada and made spongeworthy a compliment

MANDELA WAS LATE:

Odd things & essays from the Seinfeld writer who coined yada, yada , and made spongeworthy a compliment.

By Peter Mehlman

Published at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 by Peter Mehlman

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published in the United States of America.

Cover designed by: Siori Kitajima, SF AppWorks LLC.

Formatted by: Siori Kitajima and Ovidiu Vlad for SF AppWorks LLC.

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Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is

available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-10: 1481250779 ISBN-13: 978-1481250771

E-book published by The Sager Group at Smashwords.

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Acknowledgements

The major thanks go James and Rose Mehlman for passing on a sense of humor and a love of words. Their support for an unlikely career path was above and beyond anything imaginable, especially for two people raised in the Great Depression. James, gone five years now, used to ask, Where did all this creativity come from? Id say, From you, and hed say, Good answer. But it wasnt a good answer, just the truth.

More major thanks go to my brother, Jeff Mehlman, without whom Id know little about thinking visually, dramatic structure, sneaking into Madison Square Garden, the greatness of Martin Scorsese, the Allman Brothers, Walt Frazier, Orson Welles andespeciallybasketball, the coolest game on Earth.

Some very honorable mentions to endlessly funny, fascinating and inspiring friends: Bill Masters and Gail Berman, Mike Sager, Barry and Melanie Landsberg, Barry Wendroff, Robert Gibbs, Jaci Judelson, Karen Hermelin, David Mandel, A. J. Langer, Jennifer Grey, Stephen Glass, Deirdre Dolan, Chi and Landon Bui, Jared and Julia Drake, Diane Farr, Arthur Ashe, Jill Franklyn, Albhy and Melanie Galuten, Daryn Eller and Andy Alper, Terra Harper, Joeanna Sayler, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Bruce and Amy Karpas, Faith Kates, David Hume Kennerly, Suzanne Lanza, Jeff Ross, Michael Shedler, Jon Hayman, Stephanie Kennedy and Samson, Sharon Waxman, Katherine Blackmon, Tony Kornheiser, Pete Bonventre, Pete Vecsey, Morris Dees, Shannon Ensley and some others wholl come to mind when its way too late, but hopefully they know who they are.

And finally, thanks to those who dont know who they are: John Updike, Philip Roth and Woody Allen.

Permissions

The following pieces were published in the same or slightly different form in the Los Angeles Times , So Then They Gave Out the Emmy for Sitcom Writing and, Well, Yada, Yada, Yada... (September 27, 1997); Six Hundred Words For The Chatterers (May 24, 2005); L.A.: The Hedge-A-Dream Factory (April 24, 2011); An L.A. Story(October 27, 2006); Get Out in Front of That Epitaph (August 28, 2005); DeBakeys Heart (July 16, 2008); Okay, Im Guilty; I Dodged Jury Duty (November 28, 2009).