Thursday, March 22, 2012

Miss Manner's Guide to Not Acting the Fool: Lesson Two

The question to ask oneself before indulging in gossip is not so much "is it true?" or "is there any useful reason for repeating it?"... but "is this likely to come around again and hit me in the face?"

Were truer words ever written?

There is nary a subject that Miss Manners does not address. 

There is the issue of the family newspaper, about which Miss Manners directs, newspapers and magazines may not be mutilated until everyone in the house has had a reasonable chance to see them, which is a sentiment my father has been advocating for years (albeit often shortened to, "don't bend my book").

On the subject of house sitting, Miss Manners offers this advice: under no circumstances should a house sitter confront a house owner with information gleaned from the house owner's diary, which I love because it comes with the automatic assumption that you would read someone else's diary.

Regarding visiting the sick, Miss Manners warns that it is considered improper to bring anything that the doctor has declared likely to help kill the patient, which seems obvious but is often not heeded.  To be clear, Miss Manners includes the following examples of what not to bring: Champagne, oil for massages, and a liverwurst sandwich.

Miss Manners makes it clear that a lady never burps.  However, should one sneak out, you must treat the burp as if it were a socially acceptable cough.  My husband would tell you that there was no way in hell one of my burps could be confused for a cough, but there you go.

Probably the best letter so far was one in which a reader gave a lengthy and ornate description of a nice young lady who happen to spend the night with a nice young man she didn't really know, who left afterwards and with whom she had not conversed since.  Miss Manners replies with the following:

Dear Reader:
The social event to which you refer is, Miss Manners believes, known as a one-night stand... You are confusing it with a different social tradition called courtship.

I find this so amusing because Miss Manners doesn't condemn one-night stands.  (Not that she participates in them, mind you.  Miss Manners ain't no ho.)  She just insists that they be called what they are, instead of "extracurricular activities" or "a nice first date".

There are times when Miss Manners is startling, shockingly direct.  In response to a letter from a reader who could not understand why people kept asking her about the time she was mugged, Miss Manners offers this succinct response:

Dear Reader:

Because they are dying to know if you were raped.  Do not tell them.

To which the only dignified response is, "WHAAAAA?"  But Miss Manners is an expert on human nature, and she is most likely correct.

So next, we venture into the world of weddings and marriage.  By this time next week, I'll know more about wedding invitations that I ever thought possible!

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy

AUTHOR: E.L. James
PUBLISHED: 2012
GENRE: Smut.  Smutty smut smut.

Warning: The contents of this book are not appropriate for the young or the faint of heart.  Not that I’ll get into the details here, but still. 

I’ll admit it to you outright: I read this book because it gave me an opportunity to talk about fanfiction.

Ms. James is, from all accounts, an avid fanfiction writer, mainly of Twilight.  (More on that later.)  For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, fanfiction is when people take existing characters – from TV, movies, cartoons, anywhere – and write their own stories, usually to amend a disliked storyline or unite two characters that never got together.  Fanfiction is prolific across the web; in fact, your fair blogger has herself been known to partake on occasion*.  But there is a stigma involved with fanfiction, and those who write it often do it in secret, ashamed of their habits.  This is true for a variety of reasons: you’re using other people’s characters and constructs; it involves a sometimes unhealthy obsession with the subject matter. 

The main reason, however, is that a great deal of fanfiction is smut.  Dirty, dirty smut.**  Well-known characters having sex everywhere and all the time, until you have to wonder, don’t these people have to go to work eventually?  It’s a very strange phenomenon, made all the more strange by the fact that it is often the characters you least expect that get into the wackiest situations.  Which brings us back around, very circuitously, to Ms. James and Twilight.

Twilight, I am told, has a ridiculous fanfiction following.  And, given that the Twilight walks this crazy line of intense sexual tension and absolute abstinence, most of that is smut.  I met a girl who had a whole alter ego thing where she was a happy housewife by day and famous Twilight smut writer by night, complete with groupies.  Our Ms. James started out in a remarkably similar way, and Fifty Shades of Grey is basically a dirtier, less supernatural Twilight.  Young, inexperienced girl falls under the thrall of a mysterious, controlling man.  She knows he’s bad for her, but she can’t turn away!  The main difference is, while Bella and Edward play supernatural baseball, Ana and Christian spend time in his S&M playroom. 

What?  I warned you.

The thing is, Fifty Shades of Grey is huge.  Barely-out-and-on-top-of-the-best-seller's-list huge.  Appropriately enough, Twilight huge.  All those women who stole their daughter's copies of Twilight are now reading Fifty Shades and loving it, precisely because it provides that one - ahem - element that the young adult version lacks.

Ana, a college student, is stumbling along in life when she meets Christian Grey, millionaire entrepreneur and all-around hottie.  The attraction is instantaneous, and soon the two cannot stay away from each other.  But Christian has a secret: he’s a dominatrix***, and only has relationships with women who agree to be his submissive partner.  The rest of the book is Ana going back and forth, trying to decide what if she should agree to this life.  It’s sounds frisky, right?  Sexy!  Except not. 

Setting aside the poor writing - "Ana finally succumb to wakefulness" and that ilk - the book has a whole host of problems. 

Problem no. 1: James makes the strangest choices when it comes to characterization.  Ana is, shall we say, unexperienced when all this starts, and a few chapters later, she's having non-stop sex in a love dungeon.  Christian is the huge businessman who has built a huge empire but he's only 27.  Elliot, Christian's brother - who conveniently starts dating Ana's roommate Kate - is totally normal.  None of it quite makes sense.

Problem no. 2: James doesn’t know whether she wants this thing to be sexy or funny.  Intense sexual descriptions are interrupted by the running gag of Ana’s “inner goddess” and conscience fighting with each other.  This is no time for cutesy, lady.

Problem no. 3: James focuses on the weirdest details.  She is obsessed with Ana having a hair tie at all times.  She frequently stops to make a point of referencing her hair ties.  Does she have a hair tie?  Did she put it in?  Gasp!  She did! Who cares?  On the other side, Christian is fanatically about Ana eating.  He is forever telling her to eat.  Commanding her to eat.  Practically shoving the food in her mouth himself.

Problems no. 4: James has Christian present Ana with a contract outlining all the rules of this whole S&M endeavor.  The problem is, she puts the entire thing in the book – literally pages of legalese referencing not only who can do what and when, but when she has to work out, how much she has to eat (see no. 2 above), and what she has to wear.  Then, a couple chapters later, she includes an amended contract.  We didn’t care the first time.  We’re certainly not going to check the right changes were made.

Problem no. 5: This story evidently takes place in the present, as there are no indicators otherwise.  But Ana doesn’t have a cell phone, or her own computer, or an email address.  What college student doesn’t have all of those things already?  Having Ana be visibly surprise and excited when Christian sets an email address up for her is ridiculously distracting.

So it really is a dirty version of Twilight - right down to how infuriated I get when I think about how such crap could be so huge.  I guess I should have known better from the start.

LENGTH: 528 pages (at least 15 of which is the contract)
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: It's totally the new Twilight.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Ugh.  If you like Twilight, you'll LOVE this.  (Adults, that is.  If you're a teenager, STAY AWAY.)  If not, you'll just end up with a bad case of angry deja vu.  Personally, I think you should just go find some good fanfiction.  You know you want to.

*It was nine seasons before they got Mulder and Scully together.  What were we supposed to do until then?

**Which your fair blogger does not write.  I would just spend the whole time giggling like a 10-year-old boy.

***What’s the male form of dominatrix?  These are things I never thought I’d have to worry about.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Mob Daughter: The Mafia, Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano, and Me!


AUTHOR: Karen Gravano
PUBLISHED: 2012
GENRE: Non-Fiction

Before we start: I am of the belief that one’s use of punctuation can be a good indicator of personality.The “And Me!”at the end of the title - highlighted in red, to boot - is an excellent foreshadowing of the self-centered attention seeking and desperate pleas of “I’m my own person, damn it!” that are to come.

 
We’ve moved on from America’s Next Top Model to a newer reality show: Mob Wives.1  VH1’s show about a bunch of mafia women is only two seasons old but has already established itself as a guilty pleasure extraordinaire The biggest name on Mob Wives is Karen Gravano, who has just returned to Staten Island to promote her book and stir the pot.  Her fame - and the reason she has a book deal – rests with her lineage: she is the daughter of Sammy the Bull, the infamous mafia hit man turned informant. 


Sammy had long been a loyal soldier to the family, and is arrested with the Teflon Don himself, John Gotti, for murder.  But when it becomes clear that Gotti intended to hoist all the blame on Gravano, the Bull turns state’s evidence.  When Gravano turns, his daughter is heartbroken.  Her father has betrayed everything he taught her to hold dear, and she shuns him as badly as the mobsters he helps put behind bars.  She rebels, getting into drug running and partying.  Eventually, after her entire family is indicted in a drug ring, she decides to rebuild her life and her relationship with her father.2  

Try as she might to say otherwise, Karen is not the heart of this book.  It’s Sammy’s story all the way.  All the notable moments of her childhood play out against the backdrop of her father: how Uncle Paul3 came to her communion, how their new house was renovated to make it impossible to break into, how she is shunned from her tony private school because of her father.  She may insist that she’s her own woman, but it’s obvious that her choices stem from one very clear source, right up to the decision to make her fame and fortune off her father’s name.  She’s a bit player in her own life story.

To make it worse, for a book about the mafia, it’s all intensely uninteresting.  The entire book has this tone of whininess, like Karen can’t believe they’re all being so mean to her!  This impression might be somewhat colored by the fact that I find her to be incredibly annoying  on Mob Wives, but even without the show, the book would irritate.  The writing is stunted: "at the top of the stairs, if you went to the left it was Gerald's room and to the right was my room".  It's not wrong per se, but it's awkward and immature. Worse yet, the writing is often repetitive, with a thought appearing at the beginning of a sentence and then again at the end.
It’s only 256 pages but they could have easily trimmed it down to 200.  To plump up the story we get such insights as, "Gerald and I loved our eggs sunny-side up, which we called "dunky" eggs because of the nice puddle of yolk to dunk our toast in".  Someone really should have told her that anybody reading a book about the mafia doesn't care about her cutesy names for her eggs.  Hell, nobody cares about that.  It seems like a little thing, but those little things are all this book has. 

A side note: many have denounced the book for its seemingly callous treatment of the fact that her father is, in fact, a murderer.  In her defense, Karen lived a life where crime and killing were an expected part of doing business.  The mafia lifestyle was her normal.  To suddenly act like she was horrified by it all would be disingenuous.  She admits that he was a killer but he was also her father, and she never saw the cold, calculating side of him.  She recounts the facts as she saw them, and so in this case is truthful to herself.
Under all the hoopla, it's just a badly-written story.  She doesn't do herself favors by acting the fool on Mob Wives.  She would have been far better off if she had left the notoriety to her father and focused on living her own life.

LENGTH: 256 Pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Nothing like using a reality TV show to publicize your book.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: No.  Watch some Mob Wives instead.  At least then you’ll get some Big Ang.

1 It also features what is the greatest advancement in reality TV – nay, perhaps all TV – in recent history: Big Ang.  Big Ang is amazing.  She sounds like Harvey Fierstein if he was suffering from smoke inhalation.  She has giant boobs and giant lips and the speech pattern of someone just waking up from surgery.  If you haven’t seen the show, go Google “Big Ang” and watch a couple videos.  You’ll thank me later.  Big Ang’s co-stars are:
-          Karen (see above);
-          Drita, whose two settings are vaguely funny and “I’M GONNA CUT YOU, BITCH!”;
-          Ramona, whose two settings are smarmy and “I’M GONNA CUT YOU, BITCH!”;
-          Renee, who is always this close to a complete and utter psychological meltdown; and,
-          Carla, who… well, Carla doesn’t really do anything except protest she does whatever she wants. 
But seriously.  Big Ang. Amazing.
2If the book is to believed, only Gravano’s brother, Gerald, is involved in the ring, but Karen and her parents are charged along with him as they had in the past loaned him money.  Ironically, Sammy gets 20 years for this charge, far longer than the 6 years he got for 19 murders.  Yea, American justice system!
3"Uncle Paul” being Paul Castellano, the head of the Gambino crime family.  Castellano would eventually be murdered on orders from John Gotti.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Miss Manners' Guide to Not Acting the Fool: Interlude

Dear Miss Manners:
How does one address another who has shrunk their literary responsibilities?  I dedicated myself to your tome but am horrified to say I was seduced by the glamour of reality TV and big-headed supermodels into reading a different book.  Can I ever be forgiven?
Gentle Reader:
While upholding one's responsibilities, especially those taken on voluntarily, is of the utmost importance, it would be ungracious to shun those who might slip momentarily from their duties.  Rather, it is better to accept them back with grace and understanding, but also with a quiet reminder that if it happens again you beat them with a wooden spoon until they run home crying to their mother.
Politely, of course.

Okay, so maybe that's not the exact answer she would give.  But it sounded good for a minute, didn't it?

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Modelland

AUTHOR: Ms. America’s Next Top Model herself, Tyra Banks
PUBLISHED: 2011
GENRE: Young Adult/Fantasy
Oh. My. God, y’all.

What. The. (BEEEEP).

Modelland is the brain child of Tyra Banks, who for the last 15 years has hosted America’s Next Top Model, which, despite its title, has yet to produce a model of any note. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love me some ANTM, largely in part to it being a visible record of Tyra Banks’ descent into megalomania. The nice, normal supermodel from Season 1 has been slowly replaced by a jumpsuit-wearing dictator with a penchant for random accents and made-up words. It’s damn fine TV.1

But now… now we have Modelland, and suddenly it’s not so fun anymore. It’s like being inside the head of a mad woman, people. A mad women. It’s not so much she’s living in a fantasy world – lots of authors have created detailed fantasy worlds: Tolkin, Rowling, Martin. It’s the particulars of this one that make it so harrowing.

First things first. Our protagonist, who we first meet as she lays in the middle of a school hallway, spraying whipped cream into her mouth.2 May I introduce to you… Tookie de la Crème.

Tookie de la Crème.

Tookie – or as she refers to herself in her secret journal, “Forgetta Girl” – is, as her self-appointed nickname would indicate, utterly forgettable, so unremarkable that no one even notices her laying in the middle of the hallway, even as classes are let out. Tookie leads us to our first problem: the utter ridiculousness of the names in this thing. Tookie is joined in her family by her sister, Myrracle, and her mother – wait for it – Creamy de la Crème. (Her given name, mind you, is Creamaletta. Obviously.) They live in Metopia, which borders on such other towns as Bou-Big-Tique Nation3, SansColor4, and Striptown5. Later on, we’ll met Zarpessa Zarionneaux and Ci˜L6, and on and on. The names are so bad it's laughable. Except not funny.

Tookie, and the rest of this world, are waiting for the Day of Discovery. On this day, scouts come down from the heavens - or rather, Modelland - to pick the prettiest of girls to become bellas, or students of Modelland's school. To get picked, girls cat-walk for their lives. Their chances increase exponentially if they managed to find the special medallion known as a SMIZE.7 Tookie has no hope, because her eyes are two different colors and she had a really big forehead. But Tookie's beautiful sister Myrracle has a SMIZE, and is ready to be chosen when a scout - GASP - chooses Tookie instead!

On the way, the scout picks up 3 more off-beat girls, who immediately find themselves completely out of place in Modelland, where everyone is perfect. Classes in walking, facial expressions, and eating replace history, math, and science. Instead of a graduation ceremony, fourth year bellas then compete to become one of the 7 Intoxibellas. These girls each have a special power - flight, multiplication (the power to clone oneself, not do basic math), seduction. They use these powers to get people to buy stuff and to set fashion trends. The greatest of these Intoxibellas is the aforementioned Ci˜L, who possesses all 7 powers but has gone AWOL. 

Does this seem like a lot of information? This leads us to the next problem: there is so much crap in this novel. So much. Everything - clothes, food, architecture - gets a lengthy description. There's the Man Attack, where the boys of Bestosterone raid Modelland and challenge them to battle.8 There's the Pilgrim Plague, where those who are not chosen try to climb to Modelland, always dying in the process.9 There's the kaleidoscopic clock, because in Modelland, time is told by colors, not numbers.10 There's the Catwalk Corridor, where naughty bellas are turned into felines, and the Fashion Emergency Department, where the nurses are called purses and the doctors have roller skates for feet, and the Diabolical Divide, where bad, bad bellas go to burn. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, people. There is so much more, and 99% of it is completely unnecessary.

Problem #3 dove tales into #2: the plot lines weave in and out and around in circles and into dead ends that are dropped as soon as they're raised. Rules are set and then cast aside as soon as they become inconvenient. The few plot points that get solved are dragged out so far that by the time they're solved, no one cares. Tookie's father may not be her father! (But he is.) Tookie wants to escape with her best friend Lizzie, who is a self-mutilating paranoid who lives in a tree11 but ends up in Modelland instead, so too bad for poor crazy Lizzie. Tookie overhears Ci˜L plotting evil death and decides Ci˜L is evil! But now she's good! Now's she's evil! Now she's the daughter of the crazy homeless man who lives in Tookie's town?12 

This is just a little taste of it all, people. I didn't talk about the ZapZips or the near executions or the many languages spoken by the various peoples (including Gowdee'an, Tres Jolie, and, strangest of all, Oktooberfestian). I didn't talk about Class President Theophilus Lovelaces or Bellissima the doll or Nurse Dresstookill. It's storytelling the way a child does it: include all and anything, and cover up any inconsistencies with something else (or just ignore them and keep moving forward). This is a young adult novel, but still. That's no excuse for word vomit.

It's like Banks opened up the top of her head and dumped it everything in there all over the table. But that's why she has an editor. Unfortunately, he or she was either too star-struck or too overwhelmed to cut this thing down. So instead we got this glimpse into the mind of a supermodel. All I can say is, I'll never look at ANTM the same way again.

LENGTH: 576 pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Yeah, kind of.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: It's way too bizarre to be subject to any sort of normal criteria.  You'll have to judge for yourself on this one.  If you do... just gird your loins, people.  It's a crazy ride.

1But that's a matter for another day and another blog post. Or a dissertation.
2What? The girl likes whipped cream.
3Where the black people live. I don’t mean to get all racial here, but Banks forced my hand, what with all the “ooooh, girl!” and “oh, no, she didn’t!” and finger snapping and big booties that don’t show up elsewhere.
4Where the albinos live. She says that flat out.
5Where the strippers live, I’m assuming. She’s a little vaguer about that one.
6So named, according to her mother, because it sounds like "see love". Um, no. It sounds like si-waveything-el.
7For those who don't watch ANTM, "smize" is a verb invented by Tyra meaning "to smile with one's eyes". Tyra claims she made her career by smizing in photos. That, and strutting around with her ta-tas out.
8An event that involves balancing on diving boards and exploding make-up balls.
9Until Banks needs them to live, in which case they make it up the mountain just fine.
10For examples, Tookie's runway class ("Run-a-way Intensive") is at Kelly green, sharp.
11No, really. She lives in a tree like a squirrel.
12Did I mention that she's also a beat poet who randomly spits mad rhymes?