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

Hear ye, hear ye: Today’s Smart Bitch Sarah’s birthday, yayyyy!

Everyone: leave the most creative birthday greeting you can in the comments. Profanity welcome.

I’ll start, and hell, since I’ve offended the conservative Christians already, I’m-a gonna go for pissing off any and all PC police in the audience too:

Happy birthday, Sarah, you magnificent bitch. May the cake be plentiful and delicious, may the birthday presents kick ass, and may the birthday sex be so good that you wake up all your new neighbors and scare the wildlife for miles around. (Yeah, that’s right, show Angelina and Brad how it’s really done.) I’m so glad I found you back in 2002 when I was Googling for cat food recipes and found your blog entry about Fukui’s and Ohta’s foul kibble-fueled shits. You’re one of my favorite Hebes.

Love,

Uppity Godless Chink

For those of you who don’t know yet: HelenKay and Wendy Duren have teamed up for the ultimate in eeeeeville: Another honest romance novel review site. BWAHAHAHAHA. Anyway, go check out Paperback Reader. I know I’m doing a happy little pee-dance while waiting for them to complete their first review.

What makes a man?
Is it the woman in his arms?
Just ‘cause she has big titties
Or is the way
He fights everyday?
No, it’s probably the titties

- DVDA, “Now You’re a Man”

Ahhh, immortal words from Trey Parker and Co. Apparently, based on some e-books, big man-titties are indicative of manliness, too. Take a look, for example, at these:

Candy: Sha-zam! Behold, I unleash before you… MASSIVE TITTY! This is thanks to my totem animal, the lactating gorilla, to which I bear a disturbing resemblance. That is, if lactating gorillas had breast implants that drove their gazongas towards their collarbone.

Sarah: Berdache, my ass. Backache is more like it, from hauling those mountainous man-breasts around. And sure, they’re firm and perky while he’s young and nubile, but just wait until he’s nursed for a year and middle-aged sag hits him. Then he’ll be kicking around his own man-titties to get them out of his way. Talk to me then, Backache.

Candy: OK, this cover confuses me. Chest: Disturbingly feminine--check out how his left hooter looks disturbingly girly and perky. Abs: Appropriately ripped. Sword: Massive, phallic, yet ouchy and thorny. I can feel my impressionable mind warping already. Unfortunately, overdeveloped man-titty is not on the RWA list of Things That Are Narsty And That We Don’t Want To Associate With. The No More Terrifying Man-Titty Campaign: talk about a cause I’d be more sympathetic to.

Sarah: Word, Candy, it is a total shame that the RWA isn’t more willing to consider the true travesties of the cover-art world: man breasts that aren’t appropriately used to help shade the earth. I mean, if this dude were launched into space, his man-tits could cover up many of the depleted areas lacking ozone and save me from sunburn.

Candy: Poor Axl Rose. It’s not enough that his former bandmates are now making loads of dosh and quite a name for themselves with a new, skank-ass frontman. It’s not enough that he’s warped his face beyond recognition with bad plastic surgery. He’s now gotten pec implants and is posing for e-book covers with an inexplicable garter on his arm. His humiliation is complete.

Sarah: What the hell is THAT? I am totally missing my garter from my wedding - is this where it got to? And how did he end up with it? I bet some art director stole it as an example of an “arm band of manful manliness” for some struggling artist who’d never heard of such a thing, and instead of thinking that lace was too frilly for such a smooth-skinned man-tit-sporting mega-stud, he just put the garter on his arm like he’s a reject from a curious bachelorette party.

Either that, or he’s leaving the bachelorette party because all the bachelorettes kicked him out for having nicer titties than they do. 

Remember when RWA used to defend romance novels, saying positive portrayals of monogamous relationships and healthy, active sexual adventures were normal, acceptable, and even a beneficial influence on their readership?

When I say “monogamous relationship” and “romance novels,” most, like I do, automatically think of Thor and Bettina, Deputy Logan and his biscuit-making bride Felicity, Lord Hawsravensburgkestrel and his fair Lady Amaliana-Georgiana-Freidricheansda.

Well, smack this Bitch up because hello, gay romance. I got an email today from Scott & Scott, who write Romentica - gay romance novels portraying healthy, joyous, monogamous relationships between men that end in happily ever after. They were written up in the New York Times this weekend - quite a feat for a small, self-published operation mostly through their Romentics website and online store.

The full ramifications of gay romance novels is something I will have to ponder, since I’m already of the opinion that half of the ability that women presently have to dream beyond the boundaries they are born into is a credit to the career, relationship, self-development and life exploration they can do through romance and women’s fiction. What does it mean that gay couple would be portrayed not as villains or angsty next-door-neighbors but as protagonists in a commonly accepted fictional venue: boy meets girl boy, boys falls for boy, boy and boy live happily ever after?

Further points of interest - Scott Pomfret, half of the writing duo, analyzes the form and structure of romance as something as real and defined as the format for a legal brief. “It has rules,” he says - which makes this Smart Bitch happy because nothing bothers me than the accusation that romance is a fill-in-the-blanks formula. It has a structure, but it ain’t madlibs, for God’s sake.

You can’t fake the attraction and sexual and emotional tension that make up a romance, and the idea of portraying commonality between how two men in love feel and how a man and a woman in love feel goes a long way in battling social stereotypes of gay relationships, and also, according to their reviews, makes for good reading.

And y’all know, it’s the second part that is most important.

Teri Brown, editor of the Portland/Vancouver edition of Northwest Woman Magazine invited me to a Book Lover’s High Tea this afternoon, which was supposed to celebrate the launch of their book club. The first book they picked? The Frog Prince by Jane Porter, a chick lit novel. I wondered rather nervously if Jane Porter had read my rant on chick lit; Sarah and I discussed whether I should’ve invested in a bulletproof vest.

But no, everyone was completely civilized and super-duper nice, and nobody I talked to other than Teri had heard of Smart Bitches, which was fun because I got to pimp the Smart Bitches and attempt to describe the Smart Bitch aristocratic titles that we give out as prizes. Have I ever mentioned that I love using the term “o-face”? ‘Cause really, I do.

And wheee, all the swag I got: free chocolates! Free books! Plus I won a gift card to Starbucks, which is beyond ironic because I don’t like coffee, but I do like their scones. Mmmmm, scones. Mmmmm, FREE scones. Anyway, I thought I’d pimp the magazine a little bit in appreciation of the fun time I had, and express amazement that someone would invite a potty-mouthed barbarian like me to a high tea. I behaved myself, though. Like I said, if I’m alone and in a strange situation, I’m generally quiet and polite so I can suss things out before sticking my foot in my mouth.