Friday, May 30, 2008

Colds, Rock Concerts & Books

So I have another one of those weird little almost colds mystery viruses (virii?) - this must be the three hundredth this year or so. I'm tired of this. I think there's some kind of evil germ spirit in the house. Maybe it lives with the groundhogs or possibly they placed a curse on us. Naturally, this thing came on on Wednesday, which was, of course, the day I had X tickets. So I slumped around all day at work feeling miserable and then, damn it, went to the show anyway. I felt fine at the show - you can treat colds with beer and loud music successfully sometimes anyway - and then yesterday and today I've been all slumped over again. Bah.

X was amazing; they rocked the house; Exene looks fantastic; seeing women my age and older up on stage totally getting into it and (wow, I hate to use this expression but nothing else fits) rocking out makes me feel so much better about my own rapidly aging self. And it is rapidly aging, whoa: just sort of half assedly dancing wipes me out in half an hour. I am lame (literally. The Orange Peel is hell on my knees.) and aged. Yet I still rock, because, hah, I went to see X and you - unless you're one of the people who were there, yeah - didn't. Oh and check it out - my friend A was there; he wrote about it on his blog and Billy Zoom responded!

Then I ended up staying home yesterday and doing fuck all but read terrible romance novels. I stocked up at the Goodwill last Saturday and I'm happy to report that I actually read FOUR complete paperback novels yesterday. They've gotten a little blurred together, but, as I recall, the first one was a Robert B. Parker epic starring some new female detective and it turns out that, IMHO, Robert B. Parker cannot actually write in the female voice. Yo, Bob! Girls don't talk, act or think like that! Go back to Spenser, even if he is 134 years old now. The second one was - oh shit, what was the second one? Ah yes, the second one was the one about the girl who's selling shoes in Atlanta and then gets hooked up with these weird ass party crashing other girls: they crash High museum benefits, which is something I actually know about and no, it is not as easy as they are making it out to be although, of course, totally possible but, take it from me, if you are crashing museum benefits hoping to score super rich bachelors who also happen to be awesome, uh, good luck there. Anyway, her boyfriend had disappeared before the book started and it turned out that actually it was her neighbor who did it. Also there was a ring of rich guys going around killing their wives but they all got caught and off she went to Costa Rica with the rich and perfect guy. The third one was weirdly similar to the second one except it took place in a small town in Indiana instead of in Atlanta, the girl didn't have a boyfriend, bad or otherwise, but she did land a job with a witch and then discovered that she could see spirits and then nearly got killed in a very unconvincing final denouement scene which is also how she finally landed the cute, divorced cop. Note to author: you're my age or older, aren't you? I can tell because you're attempting to make your 28 year old heroine fun and hip by giving her characteristics of our generation, not hers. Give it up or go talk to some actual 28 year olds, please. Your book was published in 2006, not 1986. No one in 2006 rides around in a 72 VW bug to be cool and she wouldn't say "yuppies" or a zillion other things either and yes, she would have a cel phone - not only would she have one, she'd use it to send text messages and, also, her mother couldn't actually be a devoted Catholic tupperware saleslady because women like that don't exist anymore either and haven't for generations.

The fourth book was the best in that it had the most actual sex in it (let's be honest about "romance" novels here, shall we?) and also it was the best written even if not in a manner designed to win the author a Pulitzer any time soon. So in my best bookreportese, let me tell you that the setting is that there is this entire other race of human appearing people, right, and they live in, like, Scotland, right, and it's, like, 1753 or thereabouts, but, you know, let's not get all historically anal or anything, and these people who are extremely good looking can turn into a) smoke and b) dragons and also they all came from Transylvania originally but they're not vampires, see, because vampires are SO OVER. They're drakon which is to say, totally not vampires. Like most nonhuman Earth dwelling races they have a very strict code of secrecy (I have never understood this, myself, but hey, it would appear to be universal) and so when one of them escapes they all, but most particularly the extremely sexy good looking Lord one, must go after her. And then when he finds her, they squabble and stuff and naturally have mad passionate sexy sex all over the place and they get the diamond back (yeah, whatever, also they're really into precious gems because they are DRAGONS not vampires, remember, even if they are immortal and can make humans do their bidding and are totally sexy and gorgeous and can turn into smoke and all) and then they get married. Actually, it was pretty good and I might even search out the rest of the books, since I feel almost certain that the Drakon have more than one book devoted to their sexy, sexy doings. At least I hope they do, because I still have the sniffles and S is leaving for Australia tomorrow, oh woe, oh woe is me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dang, I should have gone to see X. How were the Detroit Cobras?

mygothlaundry said...

Not as good as I was hoping. Nat really likes them so I made sure to get there early enough to hear their whole set and they were kind of, um, meh. Either not hard or not soft enough. So. But X was fantastic and I had a great time.