Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Fabulous reader Dr. Frantz, herself a professor of English and romance fan, brought this fabulous event series to my attention:

Conversations about Romance, an ongoing seminar at the Smithsonian.

Suzanne Brockman, Diana Gabaldon, Mary Jo Putney, Carly Phillips and Jennifer Crusie are each booked for a seminar to discuss their writing, and the host, Dr. Pamela Regis, interviews them with a book signing following each session. If the next session wasn’t 9 days after my due date, I’d be in the car driving to DC, no question.

What gets me is the description on the page itself:

Romance novels were created to celebrate women’s control over their own destiny, with the promise of enduring happiness at story’s end. The popular genre’s established pedigree includes such venerable writers as Jane Austen.

The form allows for tremendous latitude in expanding on the basic theme of the heroine and her man.... However, they all share an abiding sense of the heroine as the winning centerpiece.

“The heroine as the winning centerpiece?” “Celebrate a woman’s control over her destiny?” I am so on board with that.

Dr. Frantz also mentioned in her email to me, and on her LiveJournal that the session she attended with Suz Brockmann was fantastic.

I went to Suz Brockmann’s interview this week (drove all the way up from NC!), and it was just fabulous—although it was Suz, and she’s such a great person, it’s difficult to imagine it going any other way.  And while the whole evening was immeasurably improved by the dinner afterward with 20 fans, Suz, and her husband, I still think the interview itself was wonderful and worth attending.

What was truly great about it was that you’re in the Smithsonian, for heaven’s sake.  Surrounded by signs advertising classes about Opera and Native American Culture and Far Eastern China dildoes painted with flowers (not really), and all these “high culture” things, and then there’s conversations about romance novels in the same space, given the same attention and respect.

I thanked the woman in charge and she shrugged it off, but I thought it was important to recognize her for having the balls to put on a program like this.

I concur - it is so important to consider the development of the romance novel alongside all the high-academe topics such as the development of women’s rights in the 20th century. We certainly touched on this idea during the monster conversation about rape in romance.

But romance novels in the Smithsonian? I’ll have a grin on my grill the rest of the day - that is fantastic! 

I tried to entitle this post “The Best ‘Had a Novelty Hit in the Late 90s and Everyone Probably Thinks They’ve Gone the Way of Third Eye Blind But They’re Still Around and Really Hitting Their Musical Stride’ Band You’ve Never Heard Of” but ExpressionEngine got all mad at me and denied me like the peasant I am.

OK, EE didn’t get mad at me. I just ran out of space in the “Title” field.

I just came back from seeing Nada Surf at the Aladdin. Fun Portland Factlet: The Aladdin used to be a stroke movie theater. The beady-eyed hag who sits behind me in the office once informed me proudly that she saw Debbie Does Dallas there with her husband.  If you guys knew N., you’d pity me this piece of TMI, because she looks, acts and sounds like George Costanza’s mother’s slutty younger sister. The urge to throw myself out of the third-story window after imagining N. and her husband (equally hideous) watching an X-rated movie was strong, but I beat it back. Barely.

Ahem. Sorry for the slight de-rail. Back to pimping one of my favorite bands, Nada Surf.

You’ll just have to forgive them for “Popular,” which was a minor hit in… 97? 98? The album, High/Low, was really uneven overall, with a couple of good songs but the rest being drek.

I bought High/Low on a very foolish impulse, and it kind of kicked around in my CD collection, gathering dust. Two years ago, however, I was watching Conan O’Brien, and they came on. Frankly, I was shocked they were still around. I was positive they’d bitten the dust ages ago, together with bands like Tonic (remember them? Actually, please don’t, blech). And their song? It didn’t suck. In fact, I really liked it.

Turned out that they had a new-ish album out called Let Go, and lo, it was very, very good. Yes, the lyrics were sometimes awful, but when the boys got it right, they got it RIGHT. And the music? Tres, tres jolie. Plus there’s a song in there sung entirely in French. French with a heavy American high-school tang, but it’s still amazingly pretty, and as amusing as listening to somebody with a very heavy French accent sing in English.

Their latest album, The Weight is a Gift, doesn’t have quite as many perfect songs as Let Go, but it’s still verra good.

They are REALLY FUCKING FUN live. There are only three of them, and all three of them sing and harmonize. It’s amazing how huge, how textured they sound with only a guitar, a bass and a conventional drum set. I was also shocked at how good the lead singer, Matthew Caws, sounded live. He has a somewhat reedy voice, and if there’s one thing The Flaming Lips has taught me, it’s that these types of voices can go very, very, very badly flat during a live performance. Then James Mercer of The Shins restored my faith in reedy-voiced boys performing flawlessly while live. I wasn’t sure how Caws was going to do, but as it turned out, he performed beautifully, and it wasn’t until the very last song that he hit a couple of false notes. The show, overall, actually sounded better than their albums, and I haven’t seen too many bands who perform even better live than they do in a studio. PJ Harvey and Blur come immediately to mind, but not many others.

My favorite part of the show was when they sang this random song about a kitten. In flawless three-part harmony. The chorus, literally, was “Meow meow meow meow meow meow meow.” Partway through one of the last choruses, and for no particular reason, Caws broke off and did a Milton impression ("Uh, excuse me, I believe you have my stapler").

AWESOME.

And Caws has totally made my “Men I want to lick” list. Short, skinny, funny, sweet-faced, AND he likes Office Space. I’m in love, baby.

Anyway, if you like The Shins, Built to Spill, Arcade Fire, Grandaddy, The Flaming Lips and/or Death Cab for Cutie (random tangent: I don’t know what it is about DCFC that makes me want to go Joe Pesci on the lead singer every time I hear his voice, but DEAR GOD I HATE THIS BAND and I don’t even know how I’m allowed to like indie music without lurrrrving DCFC but seriously? I want to stick sharp ballpoint pens into the lead singer’s throat, that’s how much I can’t stand his voice, which is weird because other singers with similar voices don’t give me pause AT ALL) and anyway, end of DCFC hateration, back to pimping Nada Surf. Give them a chance. They are excellent and underrated. If you want some samples, check out their videos.

Sorry this has nothing to do with romance novels or trashy fiction. Does the fact that i’m picturing myself doing unspeakable, dirty things to Matthew Caws count as being somewhat peripherally related to romances? Or the fact that I’m kind of depressed that you won’t find somebody similar to him (short, dorky, funny, not afraid to act silly for the sake of comedy) in a mainstream romance novel because many romance readers seem to prefer their heroes tall, dark, muscularly be-titted, and not averse to smacking the heroine around?

Yeah, didn’t think so. But if I introduce one other person to the joy of Nada Surf, I’ll consider this space well wasted.

Update: Oh my God. I just found out that Third Eye Blind are still around. There is no God.

Update to Update: Oh fuck me, so is Tonic. AND THEY HAVE A MYSPACE PAGE. There is a God. A cruel, merciless one who revels in the suffering of His creations.

Oh my God. Never has a book sagged so much in the middle. I mean, seriously, it droops more than the bits ‘n pieces you’ll see in Bust a Nut in Grandma’s Butt.

Pity, because it started out with so much promise. The Historian, I mean, not Bust a Nut in Grandma’s Butt.

Warning: You know how annoying I am when I write reviews, what with talking in detail about the plot and all? Well, it’s going to be EVEN WORSE with this one, because dear Lord, so many bits I want to make fun of that I can’t do without giving away details. So be warned: check out the hidden text only if you don’t care about spoilers, or if you’ve read this book already.

OK, I have to know this, because it’s been driving me CRAZY:

Isn’t the past tense of lead, led? More and more, I see people using lead as the past tense for lead. I understand that the past tense of read is read, but in English, this don’t mean shit, since I’m firmly convinced there are more exceptions than rules in this wacky-ass language. I learned in school that led was the correct form, and to see it being changed makes me apeshit. But if enough people tell me I’m full of shit, I will swallow my bile and bite my tongue the next time I see this assault to my tender sensibilities being perpetrated.

Another pondering, this one inspired by a romance novel getting a huuuuge amount of buzz that I was putting through the 15-page test at the grocery store last night:

Would a crazy-ass, tough-guy, murderizin’ thug say something that smacks so much of precious Valley Girl-ism as “I’m outie” for “I’m out of here”?

Because seriously? I put that romance down after reading that phrase. The men in my life are hardly tough-guy psychotic nutjobs who’d as soon stomp on your nose as look at you, and I’m pretty sure all of them would regard somebody saying “I’m outie” as being irreparably, unconscionably effete. I can imagine that a crazy-ass thug would rip his tongue out, chop it into little bitty pieces, set it on fire then stomp on the ashes before saying it.

Now, I’m not saying I couldn’t fall in love with an effete hero who says “I’m outie.” I’m just saying that given the set-up we’re presented and the character of the guy who says this, that one little phrase made him completely unbelievable to me.

But that’s just me. What do you guys think?

That wasn’t the only reason I put the book down. The people in question are in a big, noisy nightclub full of what sounds like flashy, beautiful people--lots of pseudo-bondage gear, lots of leather and vinyl, and a chick walks by in thigh-high boots and a bustier made of chains, if I remember correctly.

The music being played? Hardcore rap.

Huh? What in the hell is hardcore rap? See, I’m not a rap afficionado. And, well, rap is a lot of things, but I get the feeling that this club is supposed to feel menacing, and rap just doesn’t feel all that menacing to me. Some of the more raw songs have pretty intense lyrics, but I dunno, it just isn’t scary. For a club like the one this author was describing, I was picturing KMFDM, Rammstein, Ministry and other industrial-type bands. Certain types of techno, like jungle. Maybe White Zombie.

Then I realized I was basically picturing that nightclub from the first Blade movie.

Anyway, since I’m such an ignoramus about rap, when the author mentioned “hardcore rap,” I immediately thought of the Lil Jon rap song: “To the window, to the wall, till the sweat drips from my balls.” Which isn’t menacing. It just plain made me giggle, because then I pictured Chris Rock going “Smack her with a dick, smack her with a dick… Put a dick in the ear, a dick in the ear… Blind the bitch! Blind the bitch!”

Moving on to another item, and this is REALLY up for debate: wack, whack or whacked? Personally, I’m for “wack” all the way, mostly because I thought it was an abbreviation of “wacky.” Whack is a borderline acceptable substitute, but whacked? Is what happens to mobsters who squeal to the cops.

Aren’t you guys so glad to have a glimpse into what runs through my teeny little ADD mind all day?

I loved the Sin City novels. Loved ‘em. But when I sat down and tried to write individual reviews for them, I realized I couldn’t. I just wanted to boil everything down into pithy, snarky vignettes, with “Dwight is hot” and “I heart Marv” making up about 50% of those comments. Then I realized: well, DUH, Lightning Review time, mothafuckas!

The Hard Goodbye: You can read a more detailed review here, but basically, it boils down to: I heart Marv, the artwork blew me away, I heart Marv, the story rocks, and I heart Marv. A

A Dame To Kill For: Detailed review here (and you can totally tell I was already grasping for enough words in that review). Dwight is hot, Marv gets a decent supporting bit, and the story ruled; however, Clive Owen, while a boootiful man, was completely inadequate for his role in the movie. A

The Big Fat Kill: What is it about the idea of kick-ass prostitutes being in complete control of their turf that I find so appealing? Ah, who am I kidding? It’s all about the sex and violence. And Miho. Deadly little Miho. Dwight is hot, too. Anyway: hot hookers, decapitations, bombs, guns, car chases, bastard-ass motherfuckers getting their due and Miho and Dwight fucking the bad guys’ shit up. What’s not to love? A

That Yellow Bastard: I love the story. LOVE IT. Creepy as all hell, and the use of color is very effective. The love story at the core is pretty fucked up, but even as I threw up a little in my mouth, I went “Awww, that’s so sweeet!”. But: Frank Miller can’t draw kids worth a good goddamn. Because little Nancy? Looks as slutty as grown-up stripper Nancy. Which seriously, seriously skeezed me out. He also isn’t all that great at drawing wrinkly old people, because Hartigan ended up looking a lot like Marv. Both of these combined were pretty distracting to me, plus I expected better of Miller. So, docking a couple of points for the sloppy artwork: B+

Family Values: Short and pretty sweet. The story was entertaining, if a bit incoherent, and it starts off with a really awesome funny bit, where we get to see Dwight trying to fend off a horny female cop. (Ah, to have Dwight in the same room with me and some handcuffs… sigh.) Deadly little Miho is back, and she’s on rollerblades, which I find hilarious for some reason. She’s also drawn with a much lighter touch than the other characters, which lends a rather ghost-like quality to her. Unfortunately, she becomes something of a one-note character in this book; she’s invincible and as much of a cipher as she was when she was first introduced. Every book reveals something more about the inhabitants of Sin City, even the mafia and the corrupt police system, so keeping Miho mysterious makes her rather flat in comparison. Nonetheless, a thoroughly enjoyable read. B+

Booze, Broads and Bullets: A collection of short stories set in Sin City, you get all sorts of vignettes, most of them good, a few of them kinda meh. The story involving Marv chasing some thugs into the bad part of Sin City is worth the price of admission alone, but you know how much I love me some Marv. B+

Hell and Back: This story is the longest of the Sin City series, and also the weakest. The hero? Total Mary Sue. (Or would that be Gary Sue? Marty Sue? Marv Sue?) He’s honorable, he’s hot, he’s an OMG GREAT ARTIST with loads of integrity, he’s a veteran, he kicks le ass avec beaucoup de dispatch, etc. Miller is at his best when writing about psychos and lowlifes; this guy is conventionally heroic, and ultimately, I found him boring. Besides the tiresome perfections of the hero, the story isn’t as tightly-constructed as the others, and I’m not as fond of the art style Miller employs. Plus: WHAT’s with his fetish with bangs? All the supah-hot women in Sin City have bangs (Nancy, f’rexample), and the heroine, who’s black in this book, has bangs too--and unfortunately, she ends up looking like Rick fucking James (bitch!) in a lot of the panels.

I’m not kidding. Look:

Somebody stab my eyes out, please.

However, the sequence in which the hero hallucinates his way through a killing spree? Awesome. Overall, a B-.