I was asking my sister what kind of people will watch Eat, Pray, Love this weekend and claim it changed their lives. (Probably the same people who read and saw The Notebook and wouldn’t shut up about it) I told her it was only for privileged, elitist liberals with entitlement issues and I couldn’t possibly relate, except for the “elitist liberal” part.

But Richard Lawson hits the nail right on the head. He is a GENIUS. Love him.

This movie about how some old lady decided to spend her boss’s money flitting about god knows where for a year did pretty good, I guess, but whatever. Probably a bunch of sad single women with like curly hair and glasses and stuff, all crying and eating ice cream in the theater and telling each other they’re not fat, even though they’re all fat and they all look like ninth grade English teachers. (Probably because they all are ninth grade English teachers.) And then they drive home in their shitty Toyotas and the whole house smells like cat and air freshener and it’s yogurt and some pita bread over the sink for dinner again tonight and then sitting on the couch watching taped (on VHS) episodes of Lois & Clark and the Jeremy Piven Cupid and Roswell, patting their laps wanting the cat to jump up and cuddle with them, but this cat is different, not the same as Daisy-Mins, who died last February, no this one is way more aloof and scratches sometimes, but they just wear longer sleeves at work so you don’t notice the marks. And after a while it’s maybe some tea and some cookies straight from the bag and then upstairs to sleep, the ceiling fan rattling quietly, the dim red of the alarm clock casting a strange glow on the doilied nightstand. And lying there in the quiet, they think about Julia Roberts in the movie and how she rode a bicycle clear across Bali, and they think about how faraway things feel, all the time now, more and more every day. YEAH, FUCK THEM. EXPENDABLES, AWW YEAHHHHH.

(I used to have taped episodes of Lois & Clark on VHS, I swear to God.)

And Scott Pilgrim only made 10.5 million this weekend. WHERE WERE YOU GEEKS AND HIPSTERS?!? Even my dude was like, “Um, to be honest, I’d rather watch that Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell movie.” YOU ARE KILLING MICHAEL CERA’S CAREER WITH YOUR AMBIVALENCE!! DON’T YOU CARE?!? (Some of you are Jesse Eisenberg fans, aren’t you?)

[via Gawker]

“Lake of Dreams”, a novella by Linda Howard in the anthology Everlasting Love, has always been one of my Howard favorites. It’s haunting, romantic, suspenseful, and very erotic. Lake of Dreams is about a young woman on vacation in her family lake house and encounters a man she has never met before, but something about him is naggingly familiar. She dreams about him night after night and the dreams are increasingly erotic, but each one somehow ends with her pleading for her life and him killing her. She is afraid of him, but also obsessively drawn to him and finds herself seeking him out when she should be running in the other direction. It’s not only my favorite “love never dies” story, it’s one of my favorites, period. I just love the idea of a love so strong, so passionate that not even death can tear the couple asunder. Basically, the two lovers come together twelve times and each one has ended in tragedy. On the thirteenth try, they get together and remember everything that had happened in the past because this is their last chance to be together and therefore the last time to get it right. This is the premise of Emma Petersen’s “Make Me Remember,” a novella about a doctor in a small reservation town who falls in love with a Native American sheriff because of the sexy dreams she’s been having about him, apparently stemming from a previous life they may have shared together. Whereas Ms. Howard’s “Lake of Dreams” was emotionally resonant, however, Ms. Petersen’s novella is not as effective because not only is the story too short for the narrative to work, it is also seemingly bogged down by the numerous sex scenes, which oddly enough, prevent the hero and heroine from getting to know each other in a way that rings true to the reader.

Hannah Bryant has always been different. Since she was a child, she’s had vivid dreams of death and loss. Years later, Hannah is a successful doctor who’s gotten past the terrors that used to plague her. In a flash, everything she has worked so hard for is in danger when the dreams return with a vengeance.

But the dreams haunting Hannah’s sleep now are nothing like the ones from her childhood. No longer does she dream of death and destruction—now her dreams are of a man who elicits a reaction from Hannah’s body that’s strangely familiar and startlingly brand new at the same time.

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Have you ever wondered what the Lion King would have been like if it had some sex in it? Have you ever thought to yourself, “Man, you know what the Lion King was missing? Hot sex. And lesbians. And dudes having sex with each other. How about some of that?” It took me a few pages to figure out that the story is set in Africa (honestly, I thought it was set in Canada at first—don’t ask me why) and once I had Africa on the brain, that song Circle of Life started playing in my head. My only frame of reference for Africa is what I’ve seen in movies: like the first part of Roots, that Matt Damon movie where he plays a rugby player and Morgan Freeman was the president of South Africa, the really awesome District 9 by Neill Blomkamp (which does not apply here at all), Leonardo Dicaprio’s awful accent in Blood Diamond, and most influentially, The Lion King, which is my favorite Disney movie of all time. Basically, while I was reading this book, I had the Lion King soundtrack playing in my head and I was imagining the characters walking around talking with an awful South African accent. That really says more about the state of America’s public school system than the author’s writing. Since 90% of what I know about life is derived from movies, I should probably watch Out of Africa with Meryl Streep, I Dreamed of Africa with Kim Basinger, the Ace Ventura movies, and The English Patient (scratch the last part: nothing in the world will ever get me to watch The English Patient. The title alone BORES me). Is there an Ernest movie where he goes to Africa? There is! YES!!!

I picked up this book because I was intrigued by the author’s nom de plume. Unless this is her real name— how awful would that have been? I bet she would have gotten in trouble at school and maybe while applying for a job, her resume would have gotten passed over even though it is awesome because the hiring managers thought her name was porny. And maybe on dates, the guy would have assumed she puts out on the 1st date and it would have been awkward every time she has to tell them she doesn’t have sex till the 10th date and then the guys would get mad and only pay for their half of the bill and yell at her for false advertising. Anyway, “Kama” is the Tagalog word for bed. It is also a Japanese word for sickle. But maybe the author was making a grammar joke “comma splice.” There’s also Kama Sutra, which I’ve heard is some kind of sex book with step-by-step instructions on how to do The Wheelbarrow (I’ve never read it— I’ve only seen excerpts on Glamour and Cosmo whenever they publish things like 25 Sexual Positions That Will Help You Keep a Man Excited and they tell you the positions are from the Kama Sutra). Or maybe Kama Spice is a spice like saffron that you add to paella and it has the same effect as Spanish Fly.

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