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

The Bitchery’s favorite endangered North American mammal displays a distinctly larcenous streak in this video:

That giant schnozzle fisheye effect? Love it.

Thanks to all the readers who wrote to us telling us about this video.

Friday videos this week are my attempts to cheer everyone up with some evil: both of them are horrible earworms of the first degree. You’ll be humming one or both for hours.

First, from Barb Ferrer, we have Petula Clark, an entirely catchy song, and some of the most incredible prancing dancers I’ve ever seen. They have legs like Gumby.

And second, from Rebecca, we have this incredibly treacly tribute to girl ballads, one that will move into your brain and refuse to leave, like an antibiotic-resistant ear infection (God forbid).

In other news, while cruising YouTube (that sounds naughty - whee!) I found out that in 2006 Emma Bunton aka Baby Spice covered Edie Brickell & New Bohemian’s “What I Am.” For the love of salad cream, why did she do that?

I have a note in my calendar to check in ‘09 for opening notices for Nora Roberts’ hotel in Boonsboro, MD. However, as Bitchery member Jennifer alerted me, the hotel building is on fire and three states’ worth of firefighters are battling the blaze. Recent reports indicate the blaze is under control at this time, but the building may be a total loss.

That is a serious shame. I’m sorry, Nora. And to the firefighters holding wet hoses in the freezing cold - well done, y’all. Coffee’s on me. With Brandy. 

Football players may huddle up, but members of the Smart Bitch Peerage gather gracefully when it’s coronation time. And since we have three Smart Bitch Titles™ to give away today, the festivities may run long. Worry not, the bar is well stocked.

First, for Gemma, who correctly guessed in the first comment that the HaBO we were looking for was An Unexpected Passion by Paula Marshall. Kneel Gemma, and arise a member of the peerage.

Next, for Peyton, who correctly guessed a Peace-Corps-bound HaBO and identified Fast Courting by Barbara Delinsky, we dub thee:

And finally, Brandy, who identified my HaBO, Heaven Sent by Regan Forest, kneel and arise to join the peerage.

Have I mentioned how much I love Australia, and New Zealand? An entire country filled with happy, gregarious, merry people? I’ve worked with many an Australian and a Kiwi at summer camps in the past 10 years, and without a fault they are some awesome people. I love Ozzies and Kiwis like damn. I can’t wait to haul my poor children across the earth to go see both countries first hand.

And now, even more reason to love Australia (And NZ, though I don’t think NZ is participating in this show):

Eggs has alerted me to something So Unspeakably Awesome, I might have to hop a plane to Australia RIGHT NOW. That’s totally doable for a weekend, right? Right. Sure. Other side of the planet and all.

In Sydney, Eggs tells me, they have the Royal Easter Show, “which is basically a massive fun-fair/agricultural competition extravaganza.  The highlight of the show for the kiddies are the Showbags, which are filled with all kinds of themed crap and candy.”

WORD. Sounds like a state fair only 34% more awesome (except for the Minnesota State Fair which, with butter head girls, is the best damn state fair ever in the history of the world and I’m not exaggerating).  I don’t even celebrate Easter and I’m down with themed crap and candy in Showbags.

Especially THIS Showbag: Don’t Hassel The Hoff - containing not one, not two, but ELEVEN items of Hoff swag. Henceforth let it be known that the Hoff, he goes all the way up to eleven.

And would you check out the list of items?! Headband and Wristband set? Bling Necklace? LOVE DICE?! Eggs is particularly enamoured of the Hoff Air Freshener: “Can you go to the grave not knowing what Hoff Air smells like??”

I don’t think I can. Next stop: Continental Airlines website to see how much it costs to fly to Australia in time for the Hofftastic Easter Show. Advance Australia Fair, indeed. They just advanced to the top of my list of Awesome. 

Back when I reviewed Julie Cohen’s His For the Taking, also known as Driving Him Wild if you’re in the UK, I mentioned how mildly disappointed I was with the decision to re-title the US issue. Except instead of “mildly disappointed” substitute, “Pissed off and dumbfounded to the degree that there’s a head-shaped dent in my desk.”

A headstrong, tomboy character who drives a freakin’ CAB from the BRONX for Chrissakes gets it on till the break of dawn with a hot Maine park ranger and the US title is… His for the Taking?!

And don’t even get me started on the cover art. Red hot man hands with extra bonus thumb the size of a Yugo? What the almighty crap?

Can you tell it pains me that this book might get skipped over by the average buyer looking for a good category romance because the watered down submissive vanilla flavoring that is the title and cover art have so little to do with the flavorful Mexican vanilla that is the actual book? I’m a little het up, is all I’m saying.

So! Spontaneous contest! I have here a copy of the UK issue of Cohen’s book, with the much hotter and more sexy and genuine cover art.

Ya wannit? Here’s what ya gotta do: come up with a better title than His for the Taking, and post it in the comments. I’m judging because, well, I’ve been crowned Empress for the Day. Feel free to try to sway my judgment by commenting on your favorite. I’m leaving this one open until Friday at 12 noon Eastern, so bring it on. You can use common Harlequin title hook words, or you can go buck wild and pay homage to that freakish red thumb on the US cover. 

Bitchery reader Melissa writes:

When you announced your mission to read as many category romances as possible in January it made me think of a really good category romance I read about ten years ago, but I can’t remember what it is called or who wrote it and it is driving me nuts, plus I would really like to get my hands on a copy.

Here is what I remember:

The heroine was an older woman (forties) and she worked at a radio station. She had just recently moved into town to take the job. The hero was a younger man, (I’m guessing thirties) who always refused to tell her exactly how old he really was and he was her boss I think.

She also had a stalker who tried to kill her when she and the hero got together. Her stalker also worked at the radio station. I keep thinking the name of the book was the Falcon and the Fox but I have had no luck with internet searches. The book was definitely a category romance, most likely a Loveswept from the mid-nineties when Loveswept was doing those floral borders on their books.

Now, I’m currently reading a category that features a radio disk jockey hero - but he’s a really giddy vampire who is so happy to be undead I think he drinks only from people on Zoloft. So that isn’t it. Can anyone in the wise Oracle of the Bitchery identify this book?

And note to those who guessed previous HaBOs in one - I’m working on your titles. I didn’t forget. *cue evil laughter*

I watched the whole damn movie, despite many, many distractions in my world. My review in six points:

1. Why must the head villain be a mumbling British guy who has two expressions: sneer and not sneer?

The other villains were MUCH more interesting. Jack Yang should have received a LOT more screen time, to say nothing of the blonde geeky bad guy who totally bit it in the end. Yang and the small blonde geek (was that Jonathan Chase?) would make a GREAT bad guy duo. Hell, give them their own show. Forget the murmuring British sneer-not-sneer guy. He tried for creepy and come out with annoying. The backup bad guys shot the Roomba, which made them exponentially more awesome.

2. The heroine was played by Deanna Russo. If Jorja Fox, Kim Delaney and the Noxema chick had a love child, it would be her. She also has this incredibly distracting birthmark on her neck right over her trachea and I kept wondering if that would be the target for the sniper when the writers decide to off her.

3. Sydney Tamiia Poitier played what had to be the dumbest law enforcement officer in the world. I shall share the secret location of my target ... using speakerphone! Brilliant idea! Her big moment was nodding at the death of the sheriff who betrayed her trust. It was stupid.

But it could have been SO cool. Hot surfing lesbian FBI agent who gets down with hot women in the opening scene? WORD. Actual execution of said character? Tapwater.

4. Val Kilmer as KITT: Bonus, Honus. Well done.

5. And oh, the Hoff. Wooden dialogue? Check. Exceptionally wooden face to match dialogue? Check. Utterly inane dialogue that didn’t make any sense? Check. At one point in his big scene at the end, I turned to Hubby and said, “Is this really happening?”

Hoff: I speak words.
Justin Bruening: I speak other words.
Hoff: MY words make no sense.
Justin Bruening: I attempt to make sense with your words.
Hoff: Give it up, son.

6. Speaking of Justin Bruening, not since Moonlight have such talented actors been given such craptastic dialogue. Bruening worked miracles with the crap he was given, and even cracked me up with his delivery and timing. Seriously, he’ll be huge in another year, I bet.

So the short answer: to quote Hubby’s review of Don’t Hassel the Hoff: “It was terrible. I enjoyed it immensely.”

In fact, that’s what Hubby said when we finished the movie: “That was awful. If it was a show I’d totally watch it.”

If we add that to the queue, our DVR is going to unplug itself and march off the job. But I can’t resist the lure of bad entertainment with so much promise. 

An oldie but a goodie:

Credit to Victoria Dahl for reminding me of its existence on an especially appropriate occasion.

I’ve watched 28 minutes of the Knight Rider movie off the DVR. I’m 28% more stupider and the only cool parts have been the credits, because the Knight Rider Theme is awesome, and the part in the beginning where the bad guys shoot up the Roomba.

Val Kilmer as K.I.T.T. is not bad, though I keep wanting to hear William Daniels.

Am I the only one watching this movie?

We’ve talked about when bad covers happen to good books, and when good covers happen to books that fail the 30, the 5, and the 1-page test.

Now, it’s a whole new chapter in cover snark: when the same cover happens to multiple books. Thanks to Jane and Barb Ferrer for this faaaabulous samples.

Sarah: She doesn’t look sexy. She looks mean crazy scary. Not insane scary, like she’s going to take off her stiletto heel and drive it into your eyeball, or funny scary when you’re laughing on the out-breath and gasping in fear on the in-breath. Mean crazy scary, where you don’t take your eyes off her while she’s in the same room with you. Regardless of whether she’s representing fictional sex or actual sex, I wouldn’t hit that with a ten foot pole. She looks like she wants to murder dalmation puppies for a full-length coat.

Candy: She doesn’t just look like Cruella De Vil’s hipster daughter. The way she’s holding the underwear like they’re exotic artifacts from an unfamiliar culture or a choice of weapon ("Death by snu snu? Or death by ploot ploot?") gives me the impression she’s some sort of alien from a planet where the sentient life forms look like praying mantises masquerading as a human. She does seem to be a biting-heads-off-while-engaged-in-the-rumpy-pumpy sort.

Sarah: Suspense! Erotica! Nothing says both or either like Jennifer Love Hewitt in magenta. Magenta automatically makes anything, even the Ghost Whimperer, erotically suspenseful. Or suspensefully erotic. Or neither.

Candy: She’s thinking: Is he using Altoids? Or good-old fashioned Lifesavers? I CAN’T TELL.

He’s thinking: Boobs. BOOBS. HOLY SHIT BOOBS.

Sarah: And then there are the cover images and titles that don’t get used nearly enough. A weed-whacked treasure trail and the words “seasonal wind.” There’s so much comedy I can barely breathe.

Candy: Chili season is the unkindest season of all.

I’ve been pondering makeover stories (and its Mirror Universe Twin, the reverse-makeover), the way make-up is treated in fiction, and the different things make-up signifies in our culture ever since I saw the Avon Cover Deathmatch.

I don’t wear make-up, personally. Part of it is laziness and general incompetence. Holy shit, I have a hard enough time getting up in the morning and making sure my hair doesn’t attempt to confound mathematicians and physicists by demonstrating in the concrete that there are at least 88,000 dimensions in the universe, each inhabited by an individual strand of my hair. I don’t need to be jabbing pencils at my eye or attempting to make sure the red stuff doesn’t go anywhere but my lips when I have things like “make hair obey fundamental laws of physics” to worry about.

But part of my aversion to make-up is also an attempt to reject what I think of as arbitrary cultural standards of beauty that requires us to mask minor blemishes, and that make big deals out of inconsequentialities--eerily smooth skin, for example, seems to be a The Thing Everyone Needs to Aim For. It’s one of those things that I get on a visceral level (ooooo lookit so soft), but at the same time, I am, to put it mildly, intellectually ambivalent about the idea that a certain sort of impossible youthful ideal is what we should aspire to.

But make-up can be art, usually in one of two contexts: when it’s used subtly to enhance your natural features--so subtly that you don’t even notice it’s there--and when it’s used in a deliberately overt fashion to make a statement. The awkward space in-between I don’t generally find attractive. My friend Chris crystallized it for me when he pointed out that there’s a difference between well-applied artifice and self-consciousness through foundation. It’s why I find dark, smudgy eyeliner incredibly hot on both boys and girls, but especially boys, and for entirely different reasons. For girls, it’s mostly aesthetic appreciation. For boys, there’s the aesthetic appreciation and an indication that they’re willing to transgress certain gender norms.

One thing I’ve noted is that as people are used as visual commodities, we tend to remove traces of our animality. This happened with women first: for example, as parts of their body were exposed to the public gaze, body hair is systematically removed, either shaved off by the person, omitted by the painter or airbrushed away in post-production. Part of it’s practical too, I suppose: it’s difficult to depict body hair; it often comes across as grime. Men were largely exempt from this for a long time, but shaving and waxing off body hair has become much more common in recent times, and I think a large part of it’s due to the greater visibility of male models and gay porn. The use of make-up is, I think, part of the drive to mask certain parts of our animal nature (zits, hair anywhere other than the head) and to artificially emphasize the parts deemed sexually desirable (lips, eyes).

(I think, by the way, that my explanation accounts for the rise of anal bleaching. Visibility and acceptance of buttsex = increased need to make buttholes appear pristine and a work of abstract art.)

However, enough about my conflicted attitudes and thoughts about make-up! (I could write a 50-page paper on the issue. Oh, to be a woman’s studies major instead of a law student.) On to the conflicted attitudes towards make-up in romance novels!

Say hello, Kitty, to our winner of the Name that Texas Vibrator contest: Michelle, for her entry Prairie Home Companion.

I snorted diet Coke up my nose at that one, too. No question.

Second place went to “Top Drive Drillin’ Rig - Buck Up and Strike Yourself a Wildcat Gusher!” posted by Brandi, and “Texas Long Horn,” posted by Tina and by Moondancer Drake.

Congratulations, Michelle, and thanks to all of you for hi-larious entries. I hope some sex shop in Texas is getting some great ideas for a new product line. 

This video sort of defies description. All I’ll say is that you’ll get to see Adam West as Batman doing the Batusi with a buncha white people in Egyptian drag.

We have hardcore, emocore, nerdcore, queercore--behold, we now have tardcore! (Props to Katie [of Nebula Haiku fame] for that word.)

I started reading Charlotte Lamb’s last novel, The Boss’s Virgin, at about 9:00 pm last night. At 10:30 I was 75% finished with it, and could barely make myself put it down. The words are like the crazy glue with my fingers.

And my unstoppable yen to keep reading grows despite the following list of absurdities:

1. Not only are there an abundance of punishing kisses (ow) but there’s a great deal of insistence on the part of the Insane Hero that she likes it: “You little liar! You love it when I kiss you!” That pretty much sums up the hero, that sentence right there.