So proud of the success of friends that it hurts

Whooee, what a last few days it’s been. What have I done to deserve this much happiness? I am truly humbled.

Truly.

No, really.

The first bit of good news -- make that great news -- came last week when I saw a TV blurb for “Resurrecting the Champ,” a movie opening this week and starring Samuel L. Jackson. It’s based on a story written in 1997 for the Times magazine by J.R. Moehringer, a good friend of mine back then. I can’t wait to see it, and when imagining how thrilled Moehringer will be when he sees his name in big letters on a movie screen, I get a feeling that I can’t quite describe.

Just a day or so later, last Friday night, I stopped after work at a book-signing in Irvine for Scott Martelle, another Times friend and colleague. He’s written about a 1913-14 Colorado labor dispute that turned bloody. The early reviews have been positive. Martelle autographed a copy of his book for me, and I left walking on a cloud and wondering where the nearest McDonald’s was.

That same day, the Times reported that DreamWorks SKG (Steven Spielberg’s outfit) wants to make a movie out of Times columnist Steve Lopez’s friendship with a skid row musician, to be played by Jamie Foxx. The friendship spawned a number of Lopez columns and a book that’s scheduled for publication next spring. It’s been a few weeks since Lopez won his last writing award, so he was due for some good news. I couldn’t be happier.

Are you like me, that you can’t get enough of your friends’ successes? Well, those precious moments would have been plenty for one week, but apparently my cup overflows.

Before I’d even had my morning doughnut Monday, colleague Chris Goffard greeted me with the news that a darkly comic crime story he’d written had been reviewed in Publishers Weekly. He showed me the review, and I noted that of the several books reviewed, his was the only one that had a star attached to it.

Chris was thrilled, and his happiness made my breakfast so much more enjoyable.

Some people find it hard to know how to react to friends’ achievements, especially when they have none to match them. I could see how it could be especially tricky when you happen to be in the same line of work.

My technique is to not be showy with my emotions. Sometimes, less is more.

That is not to suggest that, as the stories of my friends’ good fortune mounted in the past week, I wasn’t beset with feelings of exuberance. And that was the case even during those periods when I wondered how it is I’ve written 2,200 columns and not a single one has turned into a movie or book.

When I mentioned to Martelle last week that I’d like to write a book, a funny sound escaped from him that he said was just something stuck in his throat. I lamented not being interesting enough to write a memoir, and Martelle, mindful of recent successes on the bestseller lists, said, “Get a pet.”

Lopez and Moehringer scored with homeless guys. I checked my “homeless guy” file and saw that I once wrote about a guy in Santa Ana named George who wore a T-shirt adorned with Bible verses.

Curious, isn’t it, that nobody from Hollywood or the publishing industry contacted me about him? Or how about the column years ago that an office mate dubbed “Squawk the Dead Cat,” a wrenching tale about a local guy arrested by police, who then let his cat run up a tree, only to fall out and injure itself and later die of cardiac arrest?

Are you telling me that wouldn’t sell? Or the young boy named Jimmy who, wanting to ask God to spare his ailing pet bunny, wrote a note and attached it to a kite and sent it skyward? And the rabbit survived?

That’s not a movie? A book?

In a weird way, comparing myself with my colleagues almost leads to a feeling of professional inadequacy. Almost like I’m some kind of loser.

Like I said, weird.

Having just about rejoiced at all the good news a person could take in a few days, I went over midmorning Monday to welcome back one of the editors who’d taken last week off. I asked what he’d done on vacation, where he’d gone.

“Actually,” he said, “I was working on a book proposal.”

I hope he could tell from my silence how utterly elated I was.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.