Bookfreak Review: Naomi Neale's "I went to Vassar for this?"

I'd like to preface this post by stating for my huge audience of...three? Four, maybe people that this book is not sci-fi or fantasy. I found it in the Romance section, but I'd really classify it more as Chick-Lit. There was precious little in the "bow-chicka wow wow" department, knowwhaddamsayinandIthinkyado. Wink, wink.

So I was drawn to it because it looks rather ingeniously like an Anne Taintor creation. If you don't know the "Taint"ed ladies, then you better check yo'seff and make with the Googlin'. So I read the blurbs on the inside and every single one was raving over her wit and humor, the back cover had me cracking up, so I gave it a go. Believe you me, I didn't regret. If you're a hip, snarky babe like me, you'll definitely get some chuckles, if not straight up guffaws. Through out the book she makes several lists of pros and cons regarding her predicament, which had me howling. They start off amusing, but digress into hilarious internal debates about the hotness of Hugh Jackman. For those who appreciate the idea of Bridget Jones' Diary and VH1's Best Week Ever put in a blender with the movie Pleasantville, then this maybe the book for you. One of the things I totally adored was that the main character, a healthy, curvy girl, when zapped to the fifties (don't ask me to explain, just go read the book), she's a goddess. That's right, ladies. We have to stop being ashamed and just accept that everyone else is Time-Body-Dysmorphic Amnesia. We are totally hot, luscious babes, but our culture has just forgotten over the course of time since the fifties.

I haven't read a book this smack-dab-perfect for the big screen in I don't know how long. Seriously. The dialogue is better than anything Reece Witherspoon or Sandra Bullock has cranked out in...ever? Actually, I just caught Hope Floats the other day on tv, and I had totally forgotten how heartbreakingly awesome that movie is...also Harry Connick Jr in tight jeans. I don't care if his face is kinda crooked. (It's like his mama squeezed him too hard pushing him out or something.)

BUT I DIGRESS.

The book is totally cute, don't listen to that haterade-chuggin wench who wrote the first customer review on the Amazon site. What was she expecting? Willa Cather? Virginia Woolf? It's a paperback with bright colors on the cover, honey. Odds are they're not going to be including it in any American Literature courses any time soon. Yes, the heroine does some stupid, mildly annoying stuff sometimes, but that's pretty much par for the course. It's FAR less annoying than the standard romantic heroine, and while I don't know what that means as a statement on current literature, the author's conversational writing tone and humor makes up for any stumbles.

On the Napoleon scale of flippin' sweetness, I give it a four. Totally fun and funny.

A hot cup of Hoffee

David Hasselhoff is making a musical about his life. No, I'm not kidding. And I know you're thinking it must be in Germany, right? Wrong. It's actually supposed to open over in Australia, first, anyway. He's hoping to eventually end up in Vegas with it. I confess, I have a certain horrified fascination with The Hoff. Kind of like a bird watching a snake. He's so wretchedly, yet unabashedly terrible. Part of me thinks he should just lay down and die, or at least gracefully step away from the spotlight by retiring to Hollywood Squares' center square. But he continues to make these music videos that are so campy that you are transfixed with one eye while you fight the desire to gouge out the other one.

So the musical? Would I go? Hell no. I'd rather have my fingernails torn off one by one, each individually decorated with tiny images of Carrot Top, dipped in hydrochloric acid, and then staple-gunned back on my finger tips. But, if someone forcibly kidnapped me and plopped me down in a seat at a show, I'd probably sit there and watch it, with a frozen grimace on my face and a breath caught in my throat, the way you'd watch a train full of World Trade Center orphans crash into a short bus full of special Ed kids.

While I don't actively hate The Hoff, ( I think he's painfully irrelevant and lame), this guy thinks he's bloody Anti-Christ. Interesting theory. I'll try to keep an open mind.

P.S. This is what happens when you don't check your favorite blogs enough. Someone else already did it waaaaaaaaaaay funnier. Snarkywood pwns. nsfw language

And who would have thought...it figures

This is not like rain on your wedding day, and it is not at all like a free ride when you've already paid. This is actual, live, tangible irony for your reading pleazshuh. Are you sitting down? Are you ready to get with this? Seriously, it'll blow the freaking top off of your head. Kevin Smith makes whole movies about crap like this, ok not really, more like maybe a scene, BUT IT'S BIZARRE FANTASTIC AND HORRIBLE STUFF. Prepare thyself accordingly, and consider yourself warned.

Ok, so here's the sitch, the other night me and the hub are sitting at the kitch table having some dinner, (steak, baby squash and salad for you nosy nosersons), and the man shushes me. That's right he shushed...ME!. I did take a moment to ask what in the name of all that is holy he thought he was doing before I got all medieval on his ass, to which he cocked his head to the side and asked "Do you hear that?"

When dogs do that it's really cute, but when people do it they look kind of like broken puppets. Moving on! So sure enough we hear this tiny little "Screee scree screee" and right when we heard it pretty definitely the cats started going wacko jacko on us.


So I run and get the flashlight because we both know what we think it is, but we were afraid to say it out loud at first. The cats start pacing around the fridge and looking at it like it's made of tuna and they've just realized it. So he gets down on the floor and looks under the fridge with the flashlight while I sit on a chair holding my feet high in the air...and what does he see?



No, the other kind.

So yeah, there was a tiny little mouse under our fridge, and I know what you're thinking...big friggin' deal. What's so ironic about that?

The mouse was chewing on one of these...


That's right, the mouse was chewing on a toy mouse. A furry cat toy mouse, no less. Tah Daaaah!

P.S. The mouse has since passed away due to his unfortunate attraction to peanut butter-baited mouse traps. He never knew what hit him. RIP, homie.

I wanna be repulsive

Back in like '92, my older sister and I were in the car and the Wilson Phillips song "Impulsive" came on. Mishearing the lyrics, she looked over and me and asked "She wants to be repulsive?" We shared a good laugh over it, and Wilson Phillips, looking back, were a notable part of bad nineties music, see Right Said Fred, The Gin Blossoms, The Spin Doctors. Oh God, The Spin Doctors still haunt my nightmares. Also things we've thought better of: pinch-rolling pants, pastel-colored mascara, shoulder pads, puffy painted clothing

A lot of things we will look back on ten, fifteen years from now and all point and laugh at. I've made a list of things I find repulsive, so that it can be like a time capsule, and I can compare it to the state of the world at a later date. And here it goes:


Things that repulse me so violently as to cause a physical reaction including cringeing, eye-watering, shuddering and heaving enough taste vomit in the back of my throat:


Geraldo Riviera's mustache - I believe it is achieving consciousness; I can't understand why they still let him on TV

Ann Coulter - I have yet to find a reason NOT to believe she is a tool of the beast

The Cracker Barrel "gift shop"

Kid Rock - see Ann Coulter

"beach"-themed home decor - I personally find it the decorating equivalent of blue eyeshadow

Ornamental fruit trees - a cruel tease of a life form

Televangelists -so many reasons, but mostly for their fake tans, expensive suits and false piety

Tom Cruise - see Kid Rock

Rod Stewart/Michael Bolton (both of their voices make me want to rip off their legs and shove them in my ears)

Paris Hilton's music career - because it exists and what that bodes for our society

You know what really grinds my gears?

When somebody buys the $7 gallon of organic milk because they're planning on re-starting their health regimen of daily protein shakes and then...doesn't.

Pssst! Charlie Murphy!


Let a $3 gallon of milk go bad half-way through...fine, it happens. That's just nature's hint that we significantly over-estimated our bovine boobie-juice intake. But to purchase the $7 dollar organic milk and then proceed to drink NONE of it, leaving the other person trying to utilize the milk before it went bad by flooding their frosted mini-wheats...it's just...kinda rude. I mean, if I was the one to purchase said milk, I would be conscientously chugging that junk till it was good to the last drop, knowing that if it was wasted, that someone would totally bust me on it. However, when I attempted to enjoy the well-deserved "busting", I was told "It was fine yesterday."

Dude, it's milk. A day in the life of milk, especially organic milk which lacks all those artificial preservatives which we have come to know and rely upon, is like a week to a fruitfly. It's like an eternity. Whole civilizations of lacto-bacilli have risen and fallen, effusing their soured exhaust throughout their cool white world. Interestingly enough, some cultures actually use sour milk, unsurprisingly it's the Swedes and Finns, the people who also brought us the culinary terrorism that is lutefisk.

Proof!

See here's proof that we totally shared the same air and stuff. I hope I sucessfully tread that fine line of conveying my compliments to her without also suggesting I carried on my person a copy of Catcher in the Rye and a handgun.

Chicago!

So last Thursday I flew out at the buttcrack of dawn for Chicago. My brother in law and his wife, also my very bestest friend, live there and I just couldn't wait. I ended up sitting on the plane next to people I knew, which was so crazy wild. The trip was a birthday gift from my inlaws, as they were also due to fly up the next day. But why was I going a day early?? Good question! The reason was that my very favorite author of all time was doing a book signing there.

And how excited was I? I was like a teenybopper in Ed Sullivan's audience the night the Beatles played.

Yeah. Like that.

I even wrote her a "thank you" note, saying how her books entered my life during a very formative time when I was becoming the person I would be for the rest of my life. She inspires me and entertains me at the same time. She kicks unfathomable amounts of ass. I even made t-shirts for us to wear to the signing. That's how big of a freaky fangirl I am.

So the book-signing was awesome, and if I wasn't me, I'd hate me. My girl, B, got off work at like three or three-thirty, but the signing started at 5 and was across town way out in the suburbs. Laurell K. Hamilton is a NY Times Bestseller, hundreds of fans expected, wristbands would be handed out in stages, so that the first to show up would be the first in line. We were so screwed.

But No!! We were not so screwed!

B went to a book signing a few weeks ago and made a friend! A friend who was supposed to come early in the day; she found out that yes, you could get more than one wristband. We showed up at the Barnes & Noble at 4:55PM. Like two hundred people were there, but Yes! The girl with the wristbands! Michelle was her name!! (Possibly now the name of my future first born). She was there and she gave us the green bands. Like I said, if I wasn't us, I'd have hated us. We were such bitches and we know it.

Everything was awesome. People came up and demanded I tell them where we got our shirts. I triumphantly told them I made them. Ha! They are originals!! (It was really strange trying to explain them to our family members who asked to see them, I told them they wouldn't get it, but they wanted to see anyway.) Needless to say, if you don't read the books, you wouldn't understand. It's like trying to explain "Chewie is my Co-Pilot" to someone who's never seen Star Wars. It means nothing to you if you are unfamiliar with the material.

So I've explained that we were such bitches, but really, how big of bitches are we? We managed to be like fifth in line. We were even ahead of the nice girl who got us wristbands. We are galactic-sized bitches. (Sidenote: Galactic-sized Bitches would be an awesome band name.) Laurell K was awesome, she did about a half-hour or so of Q and A, told us some interesting stuff about how her series has taken her in directions she never originally planned, and her characters keep surprising her. B got a pic of her signing my book, I was supposed to do the same, but I totally flaked. In my defense I was busy trying not to bawl and ruin my mascara, plus the only coherent thought I had was "OMGOMGOMGSHEACTUALLYTALKEDTOME". Surprisingly, when I handed her the thank-you note she asked if she should read it immediately. I was totally shocked that with two hundred people in line she would even offer. I told her it wasn't necessary.

We had totally expected to be at the back of the line and be there until like midnight. We ended up totally done by six thirty. We ate dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and went home, elated and victorious. Bitches, indeed.

The rest of the trip was awesome, we ate at awesome restaurants (I'm totally ruined now that I've had real authentic Mexican), real Chicago-style pizza, the third-best hamburger in Chicago, drinks at the top of the Hancock Building. I saw my mother in law, (only drinks Margaritas when she eats Mexican) take her first shot of Tequila and she hoofed it like a sailor on leave. She didn't even FLINCH. It might as well have been water. She winced more at the lemon slice than the shot. I was...floored, to say the least. We went shopping in this cool neighborhood, Lincoln Square? I think? Where we found some awesome and funky gifts for people. I got my first giant purse, this huge light green square satchel with gold and silver embroidery and studs. It's pretty cool. I feel like a Hollywood starlet. I just need a tiny dog to put in it.

The whole trip was great, plus I got some quality time in with my girl, B, who I adore more than words can say. If I didn't have her in my life, I think I'd be crazy. If not for her and Laurell K, I for sure wouldn't be the anomaly she calls me, I'd have caved in and let myself become assimilated by now and become a total fundie Stepford wife. I would have been an Anne Taintor lady but without the subversive text.