Lost MacLean: Golden Rendezvous

Golden Rendezvous was the first Alistair MacLean novel I actually wanted to read. I’d spent a year flipping idly through the pages of The Guns of Navarone on the recommendation of a friend and had never been able to really get into it with all the other stuff lying around my room waiting to be read. But one rainy day during the summer vacation when I couldn’t think of a single other thing to do, I noticed a copy of this book lying around my grandma’s house and picked it up.

I loved it. It’s not the best of MacLean’s novels, but it’s crisp and stacked full of his trademark touches: ironic wit, manly heroes carrying the weight of the world on their broad shoulders, beautiful blondes with rich daddies and an attitude problem, villainously villainful villains who need to be taught a lesson, and lots of action. As an introduction to his work, it has a little bit of everything that MacLean has to offer and you honestly couldn’t do better.

For years, I’d heard that there was a movie version of Golden Rendezvous and I wanted to watch it. I’d seen the famous three: Where Eagles Dare, Guns of Navarone, and Ice Station Zebra, and I wanted to see all the other versions too. I should have realized that the reason those three are so famous is because they’re the only good ones.

Oh well. It’s not like I’m getting particular in my old age. So this week is all about The Lost MacLeans. Little known movies based on the novels of Alistair MacLean. Perhaps you all wished to know what I thought of Khatta Meetha (it’s crap and shame on you for even asking!), Salt (very fun – kick some more ass, girl!), or Inception (instant obsession), but this is what I’ve got instead.

***

1977’s Golden Rendezvous promises “The action of The Guns of Navarone. The suspense of Ice Station Zebra. The drama of Where Eagles Dare.”

In that spirit, we start at the cruise ship where all the action takes place: an odd-looking man with long, 70s-style, thinning blond hair is directing sailors and being busy. I’m immediately confused because in the book, these are the actions of Johnny, our hero – a solid block of handsome manliness who I’m pretty sure had all his hair.

Suddenly, a taxi comes flying across the docks and screeches to a halt so a pretty, 70s-style, young woman built like a gazelle (that is to say, kind of elongated everywhere – there is a disconcerting shot of her in profile later on, where her neck looks disturbingly like that of a turkey’s except she doesn’t have flaps of skin hanging off it) can leap out.

Johnny Unlikely (Richard Harris) calls her Mrs. Beresford (Ann Turkel). In the book, she’s most definitely a Miss and traveling with her sweetheart, millionaire parents.

I decide to stop using the book as a reference point.

So… a bunch of things happen: An old man is gambling on board the ship and winning heavily by using some complicated system he’s invented that is apparently foolproof and legal. A crew members shows up late for duty. Mrs. Beresford is very cozy with some guy called Conway whom she “loves very much” but also spends her evenings flirting with some Latin type called Tony while Conway drinks in his cabin. A cancer patient and some coffins are transferred on board right before the ship leaves. A waiter delivers meals. A woman with big peroxided hair evidently doesn’t want to be on the ship but is there anyway while her husband is kidnapped from some top-secret facility by men with accents. A terrible waiter steals a drink and goes outside to sneak a cigarette, and is promptly paid for his sins by getting his head bashed in. Johnny Unlikely sees his body getting dumped and is only saved from the same fate thanks to his colleagues.

If you’ve never read the book, then I have no idea what you will make of it all except Very Bad Things take place and Johnny fakes a leg injury after the ship is hijacked so he can wander around in the rain inflicting, we later find out, absolutely no damage whatsoever other than killing the Big Meanie’s son in a severely anti-climactic fight as well as a couple of other random baddies in assorted skirmishes. In fact, his greatest battle takes place with Mother Nature as he struggles against rain and sea to snoop on people and look thoughtful.

Somewhere along the way Harris pulls out his inner magic (jokes!) and manages to convince you he’s Johnny rather than Johnny Unlikely. And he mainly does it by randomly planting a big wet one on the attractive Mrs. Harris Beresford – although even that bit of charm doesn’t get her to give up her unnecessarily secret subplot.

Directed by Ashley Lazarus, who appears to be someone with a knack for assembling a talented cast so he can direct them into oblivion, Golden Rendezvous chooses to zig where the novel zagged and falls right into the ravine of mistakes in the middle.

The novel wasn’t merely about “Nuclear Terror”, the title chosen for Rendezvous‘s TV debut. In fact, it was about a lot of things but nuclear terror was absolutely not it. Golden Rendezvous was a fantastic conjob as well as an action-packed thriller in which superman John Carter doesn’t merely get bloody revenge for the shipmates the crooks killed, he outsmarts them out of their money and then blows them up to kingdom come – coz if that’s the way they wanted to play it, he was more than game.

The movie John Carter smashes through a few things to a potentially great Jeff Wayne soundtrack that was apparently just slapped on, bumbles the one big switcheroo and stumbles upon the way out by pure luck. Phooey.

The best part of the movie was undoubtedly the luckless Preston (Keith Baxter) whose is introduced – in one of the three scenes he is allowed to speak – by the back of his head. I forgot to mention the camera work on this movie is insane and not in a good way. Things don’t get much better for the poor fellow.

He gets shot in the stomach, is medicated with a glass of brandy, then is knocked out and locked up in isolation at the infirmary because Johnny is suspicious of him, and subsequently spends the rest of the movie saving Johnny’s and everyone else’s ass without so much as a word – all liberally interspersed with scenes in which he is randomly tossing and turning in bed or crawling about the deck on his wounded tummy. It’s like something out of Monty Python.

Too bad the rest of the movie doesn’t match up.

 

No Joke Here, No Sirree!

Opponents of gay marriage in Hawaii celebrate the Governor’s decision to veto a bill legalizing same sex unions by getting on their knees, opening their mouths and emitting a “roar”.

True story.

 

Trippin’ on Sheesha

Friends, wimminz, people of the world – I have seen a thing of great delight and now I bring you word. About five years too late but still. It is Sheesha, brimming with passion and insight; an artistic venture in which actors regularly stare over each other’s shoulders instead of looking at each other, their side profiles a searing indictment of the missed connections of modern life.

Okay, so no – it’s terrible. And not in a “Maybe the French will like it!” way. More of a “oooh, Amrita’s gonna laugh herself sick” kind of way. Greatness comes in many forms, after all. Sample its delights:

We R Family: Twinsies must rhyme! So meet Ria and Sia (Neha Dhupia), sisters who’re absolutely identical except for one thing – Ria is not only deaf but can’t speak either thanks to some mysterious fetal disorder that vanishes with some kind of magic Bollywood “operashun” once she finds some motivation to hear and speak. The motivation part comes from the ever sensitive hottie Raj (Sonu Sood) who thinks they’re both groovy and tells Ria he’d have totally fallen for her, if only her equally hot but communication-enabled sister wasn’t around. Hmmm. I wonder where this story goes.

Nymphomania: Wow, that was quick. Once Ria gets a burning eyeful of Raj and Sia’s adventurous wedding night, no doubt faightfully cribbed from some Cosmopolitan-inspired “Top Ten Things to Dislocate Your Back on Your Wedding Night in Foreplay Alone”, she knows how to play this game. All she needs is a bikini top and some liquid – any liquid – and she’s all set!

Nahiiiiiin: Now Sia didn’t marry Raj for his looks! She married him because she needed a manny for her poor sister while she was out making piles of money. Raj was all down with that coz Sia’s really hot but he didn’t know her sister was the devil incarnate! Not only did she sabotage their wedding night but she’s now molesting his car – and probably leaving giant boob-shaped wet spots on it! God, don’t you just hate when that happens? A man’s car is sacred!

Mistaken Identities: Once poor, dumb, horny Raj figures out that his evil sister-in-law wants to do all sorts of creepy sexy times with his hot bod, he tells her what’s what – he’ll never mistake her for Sia! He knows what Sia is like on the inside! Of course, by the time he tells her all this, he also pretty much knows what Ria is like on the inside. (Yes, I went there.) But hey! at least he knows the important stuff like the impossibility of Sia putting in a call for a helicopter to beat traffic.

Shrinkology: Did you know disabled people build up vast shores of mysterious energy within themselves? Unlike the exalted “normal” folk, their lifeforce is all blocked. Denied a timely release, when that stuff comes tumbling out, you want to watch out. Sometimes, it’s all love and happiness. Sometimes, though, all that blocked up energy is stone cold nuts. Guess which category Ria falls into? That’s right, she’s a disabled psychopath. Me? I think that particular movie shrink has been thinking hard (heh) about virginity and masturbation.

Logic: Or Why I Love Psychos
SIA – Why didn’t you just tell me you wanted Raj? I love you so much, I’d have given him to you if only you asked.
RIA – Fine, I’m asking now.
SIA – *blink* *blink* Um, really?
RIA – Bullshit walks, sis.
SIA – How dare you, you cheap ho? He’s my husband! I can’t hand him over like a ripe plum even though that’s exactly what I offered to do two seconds ago.
RIA – And this is why you must die, bitch!
And whack goes the cricket bat! Sigh. So great.

Ka Boom – Is it really a catfight if one woman has a habit of walking up to the other woman and slamming her repeatedly in the face until she passes out? Where is the hair-pulling, the mud-rolling, the screaming, the good stuff? FAIL. And then suddenly Raj remembers he’s an Bollywood hero and he hasn’t hit anybody yet. That purse snatcher he Jackie Chan-ed to impress Sia was hardly a proper villain and all his other superhero lifesaver moments basically involved rolling around on the ground with a cushy armful of Neha Dhupia. (Note: in case your brakes fail, please do not try to escape the fast-moving vehicle by jumping onto a busy highway and rolling under an 18-wheeler. Your mother – and the driver of the 18-wheeler – thanks you.)  So he lets Ria have it to the face. Pow to the left, pow to the right. And then he and Sia bash her right off a helipad and cry about it.

The Sex: For a grand finale, Sheesha winds up with an item number. Why? Who knows! Because it’s just as good a way to end things as any? It begins explosively with a duck-billed platypus in a jumpsuit culled from Kalpana Iyer’s donations to the Salvation Army. Roofied out of its mind, it starts to bounce around with a lot of unhappy backup dancers, periodically stretching open its maw to emit godless yowls of mad desire for flesh, sweet flesh. On closer inspection, my eyes told me this was none other than the star of this wretched enterprise: Neha Dhupia. My brain refused to believe it because it’s seen Neha Dhupia and she’s very pretty. She doesn’t have a maw and isn’t as wide as she is tall. I don’t know what that creature was, but it needs to be slain before it starts impregnating the menfolk. Youtube agrees with me that this abomination did not exist, so I’m going to say this was some kind of cruel hallucination brought on by indigestion (damn you, cheese pakoras!).

Congratulations: To the cast and crew of Sheesha and us as a culture for getting past this watershed.

 

Kirkit Kirkit Kirkit

What’s up with all this kirkit business? Everyone seems to have lost their mind.

The way everybody and their father’s newspaper is weeping and wailing, you’d think they thought the IPL stood for the Indian Prayer League and it was a charitable institution built to eradicate India’s poverty problem by harnessing the power of cricket. How can you have sat through three years of the cheese-laden spectacle of the IPL and not known there was massive amounts of money at play? And that eventually it was going to go down in flames of Biblical proportions? I have a rule: the moment an entity’s success becomes evident enough for the mainstream media to take note, scandal must be right around the corner. Like night follows day.

And really, what exactly is the scandal here? That a cabinet minister has a social-climbing girlfriend and the new czar of mega-bucks cricket is a crookish brat? Good Golly, Miss Molly, say I, clutching my pearls.

Let’s talk Shashi Tharoor for a second: a man less suited to be a politician in India, especially of the Congress kind, I’ve seldom seen. I’m too young to remember when Amitabh Bachchan flamed out of Parliament, but I suspect even he was a more competent Congressman than Tharoor, who’s apparently never heard the Congress motto – “Lie low and prosper long.”

So you’re smart, funny and like the ladies? Throw discreet little dinner parties and show off in front of your friends. Word will eventually trickle down to the hoi polloi that you’re awesome and they’ll never know it’s because you and your girlfriend do an amazingly caliente mambo when the booze is at full flow. Does that suck? Is it a terrible system designed to hide the real face of our beloved leaders from the public? Not to mention their twinkle toes and mad moves? You betcha. But if you want to be a cabinet minister, then them’s the breaks.

Remember how you and your friends at the UN used to bitch about the member countries being such pains-in-the-ass? Well, guess what? Now you’re part and parcel of the circus that runs the memberiest of those member countries. I bet it sounded like a sweet career move on paper, but you just signed on to a pit of vipers.

And then there’s Lalit Modi. Is he a crook? Probably. I can’t think of even a handful of business people anywhere in the world who got to be successes at Modi’s level without getting their hands dirty at some point. And that saintly handful who float above the rest probably hire people who’ll roll in the dirt on their behalf for the right amount.

The problem with Modi is either hubris or idiocy. Did he really think he wouldn’t get audited at some point? With the kind of cash he was presiding over? Or that he could pick a fight with a cabinet minister and not get raided? If I’d been him, I’d have kept my nose cleaner than surgical tools just in case. My accounts would have been a thing of beauty, worthy of preservation in the Museum of Chartered Accountancy. What’s that you say? There’s no such thing? Well, they’d have built one to house my records once they got a look at them.

[Digression: why is that, do you think, that crooks don’t think of a CA as their primary investment? I’m assuming the motive to be a crook would be A) Money, which leads to B) Power, which leads to even more money. The kind of vicious cycle every crookster dreams of. But it’s the dough that brings you down, fool. I’d think a fantastic CA is worth even more than an amazing enforcer because you need the former to safeguard the moolah to pay off your gang of bad guys. Sigh. Crime would have totally been my game if only it wasn’t such a lot of hard work. I’ve never understood why they call it Easy Street. As if.]

But apart from possible financial improprieties, the whole notion of which are a joke given nobody really knows what the hell is going on in BCCI proper (let me guess, politicians are keen on cricket because they’re great sportspeople as the stellar state of our national sport, hockey, proves), what exactly is the song and dance about? Some serious looking people say this is all very sad because it brings “the game’s name into disrepute”. If match-fixing and lame-ass cheerleaders shaking their ass to Bollywood numbers didn’t do it, sweetheart, I don’t think you have anything to worry. And yet, everybody from the paati cheering Dhoni to the munna egging on Sachin is having hysterics – but why?

Going by the similar Modi bios in sources as diverse as Outlook and The Mumbai Mirror, which also arrive at pretty much the same conclusion, it appears Modi’s greatest crime is that he’s a rich brat who got even richer and didn’t even have the grace to be humble about it. Well, that’s never happened before. Cry me a river.

Perhaps more than any other country, India is quite well-acquainted with the Girl Scout model of business. You know what I mean: when the scouts have (delicious) cookies to sell, the first stop is always friends and family and then the neighborhood. Obviously, there is a difference between the Girl Scout economy and the IPL one. A vast one. But the point is, in a country where family-owned business are still the norm, where politics is a dynastic exercise, it is beyond hypocritical to act as though Modi invented the whole sell to your family system. The richest .01% of India who own every stone on every pavement from Leh to Kanyakumari are an incredibly incestuous lot.

Read the various Modi bios, and you’d come away thinking he was the only rich brat to enter the hallowed halls of cricket in India. Hooey. Take a look at the BCCI: it’s where industrialists go to practice their power moves. From AC Muthiah (currently suing Modi’s reported bete noir and his own arch rival N. Srinivasan of India Cements for his allegedly unethical ownership of Chennai Super Kings. His cousin and Home Minister P. Chidambaram has reportedly been tasked with untangling the IPL mess) to Jagmohan Dalmiya to Sharad Pawar, each of them is “connected” up the wazoo.

Consider, for instance, Modi’s interim replacement: Chiriyu Amin. From their super-rich industrialist fathers to their privileged upbringing, there’s little to choose between the two. The only son of Ramanbhai Amin of Alembic pharmaceuticals is not exactly an inoffensive wonk who plodded his way up the ladder.

The only real difference between them is that Modi, younger and infinitely more flamboyant, is the perfect product of the brash 80s, combining cocaine, assault, an Ivy League education, and general uselessness with elan and doing it right in the open. Meanwhile Amin is the kid from the 60s who sneaks off to deserted balconies of posh hotels in the middle of parties to discreetly down tumblers of Scotch and mutton kebabs so that his vegetarian teetotaller parents don’t catch him.

This is why Modi is an enfant terrible, while Amin is a gentleman. India might make noises about young blood and change and blah blah, but there is a System and you’d have to pry it out of the cold dead hands of aged uncle-jis before they let you mess with it. And then beware the wrath of their minions, racing to take up where their mentors left off.

The funny thing about this whole brouhaha is that Modi and Tharoor are really two sides of the same coin (here’re their statements after getting kicked in the nuts: Tharoor, Modi. Boil it down and what do you see? They’re just two misunderstood patriots, y’all!). Both of them were brought down by their hubris; their conviction that they were unique enough and valuable enough that they could skate on consequences. That’s the problem with both: the Golden Kid and the Kid with Gold. Neither of them has any real understanding of their place.

The plus factor, of course, is that nothing bad ever happens to them. Tharoor will be back and he’ll have learned enough to mind his girlfriends. Modi will be back too and he’ll have learned enough to mind his tweets.

Meanwhile, there is this whole country full of pressing problems and all sorts of crookery emanating from the highest levels of government and nobody cares because the biggest problem facing India today is apparently Lalit Modi’s outrageous spa habit.

Cricketainment. Needs a fucking rest.

 

Agony Aunt for a Day

Well, this shouldn’t get me blocked or relentlessly spammed or anything.

If any of you are reading this on a public computer or in front of eagle-eyed colleagues or nosy children and are sensitive about written words, you might want to come back to it at a later date. Fair warning.

You see… I have found a previously unexplored, terrific corner of my favoritest rag ever: The Mumbai Mirror. A tabloid so awful, they give Ekta Mata a run for her money (so fabulous, I actually cared about the IPL for the quick minute it took me to read that!). Home to journalism so scurrilously yellow, they provoked a Bachchan blackout (never mind, ToI, you can read his blog instead). Joy!

So what is this new section of the newspaper? The Sexpert, of course! They say every publication finds the readers it deserves (note: I don’t think they say that, whoever ‘they’ might be), and going by the letters The Sexpert has the, um, honor to answer, The Mumbai Mirror is certainly a strong case in point.

Now The Sexpert probably knows what he’s doing – it certainly sounds like it. But that doesn’t mean, I can’t butt in and offer some plain speaking, does it? Welcome to the internet. Here’s The Sexpert Alternative at work for you:

I am a 20-year-old man. I want to know the importance of pubic hair. I have lots of pubic hair all over my body and I want to remove them temporarily. How will it affect my body if I remove all the pubic hair?

Awww, I’m sure the girlfriend didn’t mean it when she said you were a giant dick. As for the importance of it – well, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this but if you take it off, you’ll fall apart. Pubic hair acts like duct tape for your skin. Truth.

I am 37 years old. For one-and-a-half months, I have noticed that my foreskin does not pull back due to dryness. I have also noticed a white-ish-cream layer below the foreskin, which is dry. When I pull back the foreskin, I feel extreme pain and cracks appear on the ring. They hurt when I bathe. I find it difficult to have sex. What medicine should I apply?

Dude! Your peepee has been broken for a month and a half and your solution is to write letters to the paper? When you go to the hospital, ask them for a psych consult.

I am 50 years old and my partner is 58. We are on the foreplay level, but recently, by accident I inserted my penis briefly into her vagina. I experienced a mild burning sensation for one day, all over the penis. Could this be because she is diabetic?

“By accident”? Are you 15 or 50? And what do you mean, is it because she’s diabetic? Like a sugar burn? Look up STD, definition of. And invest in condoms.

I am 34 years old and have been married for nine years. Even though I am slim and attractive, my husband does not prioritise our sex life. Right from the beginning of the marriage, we’ve been doing it only once every two or three months. Then too, it’s very routine. He has never performed oral sex on me or masturbated me with his fingers, etc. Do we need to see a marriage counsellor or a sex therapist I don’t want to cause him discomfort.

Darling. He’s gay.

 

I’d Do Anything For The Blog

… but I won’t do this.

It’s not like I don’t get the impulse. I do. I’ll chance upon something that is totally doable like these tips for homemade skin care products, etc and I think, “Hey! Maybe I should try that. And then I can write about it because it promises to be at least mildly soul-destroying in an unspecified sort of way.”

And that’s always interesting, isn’t it? Those guys at Jackass made an entire career for themselves by destroying their bodies – I could maybe burn the skin off my face so I could write about it. And since I’m not making a penny off the experience, I could even call it Art. With a capital A and everything.

But not even for snob value would I agree to live on a mix of cayenne pepper, maple syrup and lemon a.k.a. The Master Cleanse for a week much less her Coconut Cleanse which apparently involves “fresh-squeezed carrot, apple and ginger juice blended with heaping tablespoons of forest-green Enerfood powder, coconut milk powder and Meta Cleanse colon declogger” with a little side of lettuce if you feel peckish.

There are just so many things wrong with description. First off: carrot juice. I have really bad eyesight and ever since I turned eight my health-nut uncle has been trying to hypnotize me into thinking I’m part bunny rabbit (for my own good, of course). Now I don’t mind chowing down on a carrot or two once in a while (especially when it tastes like this) but I once made the mistake of thinking that carrots might be easier on the palate if they were consumed in juice form rather than whole. Oooo nooooo! Big mistake. You could use that to punish children.

The apple juice isn’t so bad, although I must say I prefer apple cider or, at a pinch, apple brandy. What? An apple is an apple is an apple, the way I look at it. Keeps the doctor away. And it doesn’t need to be all sloshed up with carrots and ginger. My stomach is not a pork roast.

Then there is the ginger juice. Really? Ginger “juice”? That’s what you’re going to drink? Let me remind you all of the original ginger juice that’s super yummy to drink, especially when it’s cold and raining outside – adrak ki chai. Make it whole milk, double on the cream. I mean, milk and ginger with a dash of tea? That has to be a cleanse in somebody’s language.

And I don’t even know what an “Enerfood powder” is, forest green or mountain blue or field yell0w or whatever its color might be. All I know is that it sounds like one of those futuristic food-like substances that humanoids eat in science fiction movies once the earth has been reduced to a barren wasteland on which nothing grows but giant radio-active sunflowers that like to snack on people and employ an army of gigantic attack bumblebees to herd the human food source its way. I suppose I could start eating it and think of it as being “in training” for that inevitable day, but merely considering it makes me want to eat a nine course meal at my favorite Italian restaurant, drowning in meat and butter and cream and chockfull of carbohydrates and fat.

Mmm, fat.

Which brings me to the “colon de-clogger”. Do you know what happens to people with a clogged colon? Their bodies fucking de-clog! So if you think I’m going to swallow lemon water mixed with chilli powder or stick a hose up my bum-bum so I can have a clean colon, you’re out of your mind. And I don’t care which freak in Hollywood thinks this is a great idea.

 

A Desi Has Your Money

I like homely girls

For all I know – or, for that matter, anyone else knows – Neel Kashkari is a very nice man who genuinely has an idea of what to do with $700 billion of US taxpayer money.

But it’s so much more fun to examine this anonymous commenter’s take:

This person and I have a mutual friend. We were at an event last year. A few of us sat outside that evening, to chat. My Significant Other and I joined him, his wife, and another couple. Oddly, they were at 2 tables, segregated by gender. The women talked weather. The guys talked politics.

What’s so “odd” about that? Hasn’t this person ever been to a desi party? She should be glad the women stuck to the weather instead of exchanging recipes and the men were young enough to stick to politics instead of their ailments.

Kashkari starts dogging Hillary Clinton. He said “I’d never vote for her because I don’t think women should be president.” Verbatim. My SO told me this, and I heard part of it, as I was sitting nearby. The other women were oblivious.

Well, he’s just lucky he lives in the United States then. Indians never voted for Pratibha Patil to be President and yet there she is on Raisina Hill. And of course the other women were oblivious. They were probably too busy dissing Hillary Clinton for acting like a man.

My SO defended women, but Kashkari wouldn’t have it. He insisted women should never be leaders. Kashkari’s own SO said earlier, that although she had a career, “I basically follow Neel around wherever he goes.” Verbatim.

She’s probably making sure he doesn’t cheat on her with some gori mem who wants to be President some day. That’s why she said women shouldn’t be leaders too – it’s a lot more satisfying to follow your husband around and personally make sure he’s where he said he would be at all times.

Kaskhari then said global warming doesnt’ exist. He said wind energy is stupid. And he would look up things on his Blackberry whenever my SO said something, to prove him wrong.

Tsk. He probably meant tilting at windmills is stupid. See, I’ll put it in a sentence: “Women who want to run for President are tilting at windmills.” Makes sense now, doesn’t it? And obviously he checked up on his Blackberry. What the hell else would you check things up on? Books at the library? Hello! Welcome to the 21st century.

Because he didn’t like non GOPs, he later went to our mutual friend and said my SO had talked about being abducted by aliens. Yes, Neel Kashkari said this, in an attempt to attack someone he disagreed with.

Well, yeah. That’s how you win an argument. You basically make shit up about other people. You didn’t know this? The correct response would have been to tell your friend that your SO only said that to make him feel better about getting anally probed aboard the Starship Enterprise.

Silly billy.

[via Gawker]

 

WRONG!

Ahem. American Wife is Curtis Sittenfeld’s forthcoming novel about a quiet librarian who marries the wild son of a prominent Republican family and ends up in the White House. Does that remind you of anybody? Radar thinks it should, what with the whole librarian-who-runs-people-over thing. They may be on to something.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the imaginary world of George and Laura because, really, why should I be the only one to suffer?

***

Falling in Love!

“His butt was small in the way that I always forgot a lot of men’s were; how could he possibly be an unscrupulous politician with such a cute little butt? Back in bed, he knelt on the mattress—I was lying flat, and he was above me—and perhaps it sounds crude to say that this is the moment I knew I could love him, when I saw his penis. With men in my past, the penis had seemed to me an odd creature, both comic and forlorn. But I felt a great devotion to Charlie when I first got a look at his, the ruddy-hued, upward-pointing shaft, its swollen veins and cap-like tip. All of it was so completely of him, and I felt how there was no part of his body I wouldn’t want to touch, no way I wouldn’t allow him to touch me.”

Passion!

“He bent his head to kiss my sternum, my navel and belly … to open me up, and he brought his face in and was licking me, he was licking me firmly and repeatedly, and it seemed both difficult to believe (Charlie Blackwell’s face burrowed between my legs?) and also entirely inevitable: beyond logic and language and decorum…. His cheeks between my thighs, his bobbing head, and his earnest assiduous lapping—very quickly, it was too much to bear, and I gasped and cried out. It was like tremors, and I felt my thighs clenching around his head, and when he came up a few seconds later and kissed my forehead, I said, ‘I hope I didn’t suffocate you,’ and he said, ‘I can’t think of a better way to go.’

***

I really hope that was an advance copy that still needs major work because otherwise, it won’t be the White House that will be outraged when this book comes out – it will be every single romance writer in America whose work gets sneered at as “silly bodice rippers” while this manual for bad sex is billed as “a masterful highbrow-lowbrow mash-up that satisfies as ass-kicking literary fiction and juicy gossip simultaneously”. Somebody should send Radar a book to read.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go pour bleach in my eyes to get rid of the bad, bad images.

[Via Wonkette]