Disgustingly Delicious, with no calories!

The following are the entertianment equivalents of Cheetos:

1. E! It's basically televised Star! Magazine. Sure, I'm an avid reader, but sometimes, I just find the 100 Greatest Celebrity Freak-outs completely riveting.

2. VH1 Celebreality. Like E!, with the added delciousness of B-list celebrities doing stuff like trying to lose weight, or my favorite...co-habitating.

3. Kelly Clarkson. I've never even watched American Idol. I don't really like pop. But if I'm tired on my wallk, all I have to do is steer my ipod to Since U Been Gone.

4. One Tree Hill. It makes Dawson's Creek look Emmy-worthy. In a cast of 10 regulars, I count 3 who have not been directly involved in a teen pregnancy and/or pregnancy scare at some point during the run or history of the show. It features a teen vixen who looks like she's at least 29, and an awesomly eeeevil, mustache twirling villian. Oh! And one of the characters is a singer, whose performances are featured on the show and on the soundtrack. How very Kids from Fame. Thank goodness it wasn't cancelled in the WB/UPN merger!

5. Movies with dancing. Oh, I'm not talking about Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers classics. No. (Those are good, too.) No, the kind that are delicously disgusting are the ones made after 1980, involving teens, usually one from a strict family and one from the wrong side of the tracks. Excellent examples of this genre include Center Stage, and Footloose. An awesome variation resulted in the awesome The Cutting Edge. I haven't seen Step Up yet, because I'm too embarassed to go to the theater, but you can bet it's in my Netflix queue.

30th and final SRP Book Review

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell

186 pages

Do you remember in Elementary School, how the teacher would read a chapter book aloud to the class, after lunch, or after recess? I don't even remember which teacher read this to us, but I think it was third grade. I was totally wrapped up in the world of Island of the Blue Dolphins.

I bought a copy a few years ago, but I decided I didn't really want to keep it, and am going to pass it on to my cousin's daughters, who are getting to be the right age. But I wanted to read it first.

It was as good as I remembered. Left behind after her tribe leaves the small island they live on, Karana survives for years. It's really striking how brave and resourceful she is, not only learning to survive, but also taming some of the animals who live on the island for companionship.

I had no idea that it was a true story, but according to the author's note, the book is based on a woman who lived alone on the island for 18 years.

This book brought my total books from June-August to 30, and my total pages to 9416.

SRP Book Review #29

Full House by Janet Evanovich

334 pages

Written before the Stephanie Plum series started, this is really a typical romance novel that shows a few hints of the humor and mystery that make the Plum books so good.

I really don't have anything else to say. Oh, except three of the main characters are named Billie, Joel, and Christie, and I'm sure it was written when Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley were still married. It took me most of the book to notice this.

That's disgusting! Yum!

There are some things that are so bad for you, and so very gross. They're over-processed, and cheap, and trailer park-y. And delicous! You can't eat them often, nor would you want to, but every once in awhile, I MUST HAVE THEM. I've never been a fan of Twinkies (actually, I don't remember ever having one), but if I liked Twinkies, they would fall into this category. Here are a few things that are disgusting...yum!

1. Chicken in a Biskit. It's a chicken flavored cracker. How wrong is that? In addition to being on crack conceptually speaking, they are loaded with sodium and trans fats. And scrumptiousness.

2. Cheetos. Because I was shocked that my vegan friend wouldn't eat them, because they actually do contain real cheese. Fortunately, the Baked Cheetos are actually really good.

3. McDonald's Cheeseburgers. Hey, I read Fast Food Nation. It scared the hell out of me and really grossed me out, too. But it's been a couple of years and there's something about the perfect combination of fake cheese, warm pickles, and onion bits.

4. Bacon. I'm not that attached to eating meat in the first place, and I especially don't like the gross fatty parts of meat. Then why do I love bacon so much?

5. Cheez Whiz. Actually, I don't really like it, except in my favorite so-gross-it's-delicious recipe, Trailer Park dip. (Combine 1 can chili, 8 oz cream cheese, and 8 oz Cheez Whiz.)

6. Fritos. Especially Chili Cheese. Or the Scoops, dipped in #6.

7. Oreos. Let's face it, the middle is basically Crisco and sugar.

SRP Book Review #28

The King of Torts by John Grisham

376 pages

So, most of the other John Grisham books I've read have a plucky, ethical hero(/ine), usually a young attorney, who uses his or her legal expertise to bring down some sort of bad guy. Here, Clay Carter, a young attorney, has a couple of lucrative class action lawsuits sort of handed to him. Clay is introduced to us as someone with a code of ethics, he's a public defender and is particularly interested in saving historic Virginia battlefields from his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend's developer father. With his newly made millions, Clay buys a jet and a home in the Caribbean, takes up with a model he doesn't particularly like (and crashes the aforementioned ex-girlfriend's wedding), and takes on several other class action suits of dubious legal merit. He seems to feel bad about settling his trusting clients' bad drug lawsuits for a low number, and refusing a reasonable settlement with a small-ish company, causing them to go bankrupt. But not bad enough to do anything especially heroic about it.

I guess I just didn't really get the point of this book. It could have been an interesting take on the other side of a typical Grisham story, but Clay was too bland and wishy washy to make a particularly good villain. He continues to pine for his ex-girlfriend, but there really was no indication to me that they even loved each other all that much. I did learn some things about tort litigation, but I could have learned the same stuff in a much more entertaining book if Grisham had cast it with more interesting and/or sympathetic characters.

Fall is coming!

Fall is in the air. I love Fall, and I'm so excited! I have every right to be, since I haven't gotten to experience a real Autumn since 2002. Sure, the leaves are pretty, but here are some other things I love about Fall:

1. No more hot weather. Sure, Summer's nice, but you can't tell me you didn't get tired of those nights when it was so hot nobody could sleep. Cold, crisp weather is my favorite, and we get the most of that in the Fall here.

2. TV. New shows to watch, and old favorites coming back. I've been waiting all summer to see what will happen next on Gilmore girls, House and Lost. I think I'll have more to say about TV later.

3. Sweaters. I'm tired of t-shirts and shorts. I want to wear cozy sweaters.

4. Back-to-school. As someone who grocery shops and does other errands during the day, I am really looking forward to classes being in session again.

5. It's a change. I think the change from Summer to Fall is the most dramatic season change. Fall kind of deteriorates gradually into Winter, Winter mellows out into Spring, and Spring just sort of blends into Summer (usually sometime around July 1), but it seems like the air all of a sudden gets a crispness to it around Labor Day, and there's Fall.

6. Soup. It's fun to make soup, and pot roast, and other things that simmer on the stove.

Two of my favorite things, combined!

Foofie bath products and breakfast food. Yay!

Recently sniffed at Sephora The latest Philosophy set is breakfast! There's Belgian Waffle, Blackberry Sauce, and Fresh Cream. Surprisingly, I like the Fresh Cream the best...it smells just like whipped cream would smell, if it had a smell.

I was very good, and remembered how full my extras closet is, so I didn't get it.


(Clearly, I don't need any more bath supplies.)

SRP Book Review #27

Violets are Blue by James Patterson

393 pages

James Patterson is a great plotter, but not such a great writer. This book took me less than 24 hours to finish, which is typical of his books, and if they took any longer, I wouldn't bother.

This was one of his Alex Cross books. The mystery Alex is trying to solve this time is a string of murders all across the country that appear to be committed by vampires. Everything unfolds about how you'd expect, especially if you've watched enough episodes of CSI and The X-Files.

The vampire murders are wrapped up about 80 pages before the end of the book, and then there's some business with a subplot involving someone who's been stalking Alex, which really wasn't very interesting, nor was the identity of the stalker particularly surprising, considering the "subtle" hints throughout the rest of the book.

SRP Book Review #26

City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende

405 pages

Did you know that Isabel Allende writes YA literature? This book is a pick for my book club. I was expecting it to be like Alice Hoffman's young adult literature, which is like Alice Hoffman's other books, but without the sex and other adult themes. Instead, seemed more to me like more of a conventional young adult adventure story.

I thought it was a great YA book, though--if I worked with teens, I would definitely recommend it, because it seems like it would appeal to a wide variety of ages, and to boys as well as girls--most of it is told from the viewpoint of a 15 year old boy. It's an adventure story, but there are also a lot of more complex themes to think about, like environmentalism and spirituality.

SRP Book Review #25

Cracks by Sheila Kohler

165 pages

Cracks is the story of a murder at a South African girls' boarding school. One of the 13 girls on the swim team disappears, and the rest of them come back for a reunion several years later. The story switches back and forth between present day and when they were students. The book is written in the first person, but there isn't a singular pronoun in the entire narration, so we never know which of the girls is telling the story, if it is even one of them in particular.

Sometimes it seemed a little overstylized and pretentious to me. It reminded me a little bit of Picnic at Hanging Rock, a movie that I hated, although I did ultimately like the book in the end.

Most importantly, and not a given in an arty, literary story about a murder, is that we actually get to find out what happened. I wasn't too worried, because the book came highly recommended from someone who hates artsily ambiguous mystery resolutions, but still.

My kitty is a little scary


He's always been a bit of a biter, but I thought that it was because he hadn't learned healthy ways of expressing his affection. Now I'm afraid he might plotting to strangle me in my sleep with his fleece ribbon.

He looks like he could play The Joker in an all-animal version of Batman. Note the evil glint in the eyes and the crazed grin.

SRP Book Review #24:

Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor

972 pages

Written in 1944, Forever Amber seemed to me a kind of cross between Gone with the Wind and Moll Flanders . In her characterization of Amber, Kathleen Winsor is seems like she might have been trying to capitalize on some of the success Margaret Mitchell had creating a scandalous, strong-willed heroine to drive her historical epic.

I did learn a lot about the Restoration, a time period I wasn't very familiar with before. According to the forward, Winsor became interested in the Restoration while her husband was researching the time period for his thesis. She read the same book she was reading, and her research shows in her descriptions of manners, fashion, and events such as the plague outbreak and The London Fire.

Usually, I don't enjoy books if I don't like the main character, but in spite of really disliking Amber (she's intensely unsympathetic), I found myself wanting to keep reading to see what she would do next. In fact, there was really only one character I liked in the whole book, but everyone was so outrageous that I was always entertained by what they were doing.

SRP Book Review #23

Twelve Times Blessed by Jacquelyn Mitchard

532 pages

This is not about a May/December romance, really, but I'd call it June/October, with our protagonist, a woman named True, as the older party. True is a successful businesswoman in Cape Cod who meets and marries Hank, a southern restauranteur in his early 30's, on her 43rd birthday. They get married within a matter of weeks.

I don't mean to be a party pooper, but I really thought getting married so fast was a stupid move on both of their parts, and jerky, considering that they didn't even tell True's 10 year old son until after the fact. I think if you want to be dumb and get married on a whim if you don't have a kid, fine, but you should be a lot more careful if you do.

But, I guess if they weren't so impetuous, there wouldn't be a story to take up the rest of the book. Because True and Hank really get to know each other after their wedding, all kinds of difficulties develop which might have ended the relationship if they had been dating rather than married. Hank and Guy, True's son, really develop a bond that turns out to be stronger than Hank's bond with True.

Mitchard seems to specialize in and is very good at writing about unconventional families. She does that here, not only with Hank, True, and Guy, but with True's circle of friends and coworkers, as well.

Just got a new camera, so I thought I'd post some pictures of the cutest things I could find.

Omigod! Celebrity sighting!

Shut UP! I just saw a Tony Award Winner (tm) commit a minor misdemeanor!

We just saw Norbert Leo Butz (aka, the voice of Fiyero on your Wicked CD) in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, (the part he won the Tony for). He was really funny and good.

And then we walked past the stage door because that is how we needed to go to get to the car! And he totally walked past us while we were waiting to cross the street! (But I didn't say anything 'cause I'm shy and also don't like to bother people.) And then my sister was looking for him back towards the stage door! And I'm all, dude, he just passed us!

And then one girl stopped him to get an autograph! But we didn't bug him! And then he jaywalked! And we saw him go into his hotel!

I like to think he saw me notice him not say anything, and appreciated it.

SRP Book Review #22

The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst

261 pages

This book is about a man named Paul whose wife, Lexy, dies after a fall from a backyard tree, witnessed only by their Rhodesian Ridgeback, Lorelei. Paul's grief drives him to call upon his knowledge as a linguist to try to teach Lorelei to speak so that she can tell him what happened. Frustrated with his research, he becomes involved with a group of men who also are trying to teach dogs to speech, often resorting to mutilating the dogs to make speech more possible.

Let me just say that at one point, I was so worried about Lorelei that it was interfering with my enjoyment of the book, so I had to look to the end to see how she ended up. One thing I enjoyed about the book was the way Paul addresses the reader--I wish he could've taken a minute to tell me how worried I should be about what's going to happen to Lorelei.

What the book is really about is Paul's grief. He becomes absorbed in his project with Lorelei as a way of simultaneously escaping what has happened to Lexy and staying close to her.