33-year-old Writer Cops to “Occasional” Cash From Parents

Today, a 33-year-old Los Angeles man, the marginally known fiction writer Jonathan Grossbard, acknowledged that he and his wife — a 31-year-old philosophy doctoral student named Nina Jumarier-Grossbard — accepted periodic cash donations from the man’s Dix Hills, N.Y. parents. This news confirms rumors previously posted on Facebook 10 days ago, directly following Grossbard’s half-birthday celebration at trendy Los Feliz eatery Meow Mick’s.

Grossbard, a freelancer, said the cash was “only” used for “supplies and security” but refused to elaborate to neighbors after the second renovation of what the Huffpost LA Real Estate page calls a “Neutra-esque” house near the Hollywood sign. The man also offered no comment on his now-viral Flickr photostream of the couple’s visits to GreenBreathe Eco-Spa and Mario Batali’s “Mozza” restaurant, sans reservations, on a Friday.

Grossbard admitted that, despite public disapproval and “potentially seeming desperate to those who might fund my professional efforts,” he will continue to accept the payments, which amount to “no more than $110,000, three times a year.” He added that money flow is simply part of a healthy and adult relationship with one’s ‘ever-dying’ parents. “Gifts are not just for so-called ‘underage’ children, on ‘religious’ holidays,” he noted on the blog AnotherJonathanWrites.com, where his job history includes a short-lived ‘contributing relationship’ at “The Onion for Dummies.” “You aren’t ‘less of a man,’ if your father’s petty cash keeps your genetically inferior ankles in the $150 New Balance sneakers you ‘need,’ according to Cedars-Sinai’s top orthopedist.”

Grossbard continued: “All the ‘Senior Grossbards’ have requested in return for these investments are a lack of so-called ‘limbic’ responses to their hourly inquiries about my ‘career choice,’ as well as when my wife and I might conceive, or at the very least travel to an underdeveloped but non-African country to adopt, a child. In return, I have also promised to update them daily on fertility testing we pay for ourselves as well as the work that I have been able to publish in this currently harsh environment for people with unusual talents like mine. There may even be some reciprocal help requested on my family’s part later when my father eventually launches his planned web site about ‘tennis and disappointment,’ but we’ll cross that road when we come to it.”

“We have to be transparent now,” Grossbard continued. “Observers have long been aware of some ‘fiduciary injections,’ lest they believed we could afford a Lexus hybrid SUV and Malibu summer house rental in a world that doesn’t value truly groundbreaking thinking and strikingly original prose styles.”

Grossbard also said that his ailing paternal grandmother, Feiga, 93, had given him “well-deserved” amounts of cash and shares in the SPDR Gold ETF via a twice-yearly “birthday/Hanukkah card” slush fund transfer.

“Her only requirement has been that we ‘really live,’” Grossbard said. “I have always respected my elders, hence new iPads for both of our modest professional offices on Rodeo and a few ‘responsible’ purchases at The Center for 70′s Rockstar Guitars as well as at Design Within Reach.”

Grossbard’s parents say that while they plan to phase out the payments, they will keep the funds coming until “the world and, hopefully, Knopf and Dreamworks, for the movie rights” come to understand Jonathan’s “immeasurable talent, to say nothing of his inconceivably bad timing and fortune — for example, marrying a philosopher, albeit a lovely, studious one descended from immigrant parents who lack professional degrees and friends at Goldman.”

Whether or not Grossbard’s brother, Zack “DolphinSmack” Grossbard, a 38-year-old freelance “mashup sound-artist” living suspiciously in the Tribeca section of Manhattan, has received similar cash easing has yet to be determined.

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