The Sunday Trumpet 3/28

One Ear woke up yesterday and thought it was next Sunday (don't worry, I'm confused too), and submitted his weekly Sporadic Gasbag Review.

Having lived through the [koff koff] joy of giving birth, I have to admit he has valid points.

Pregnancy books don't provide much entertainment for husbands.

Read his hilarious commentary (he's already got some indignant responses!) on the book WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING, by Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg and Sandee Hathaway.

Artificial Intelligence

Grab a bottle of bean-o and pull up a keyboard, it’s time for the first installment of . . .
Reviews are subjective things. I have a history of loathing movies that later become Oscar nominees, so I write this fully anticipating being the voice of dissent among my fellow gasbags.

The message (that artificial intelligence is – or perhaps one day will be – the spawn of natural stupidity) wasn’t lost on me. I can even appreciate the creators’ ability to make robots seem more human than humans. I just have a natural aversion to movies based upon disposable, replaceable children. I know what you’re thinking: C’mon, Rhonda, this isn’t a child – it’s a robot, lighten up, you issue-laden bastard.

But he isn’t a robot – he’s a roboy, a futuristic Pinocchio capable of human love and heartbreak. Procured by a grieving mother desperate to replace her comatose son, David joins the family. Plot logic blunder number one: if they could create almost real children from a pile of medical waste and a few computer chips could they not fix her kid? Cram a microchip into his brainmush or something? And frankly, they should’ve pulled the plug on the real kid. When he returns home following a miracle, we learn he’s a sociopathic little shit.

So what is a mother to do when her real kid doesn’t like his expensive store bought brother? Why, drop him off in the middle of a dark forest to be bot-napped and sold into the future’s equivalent of the tractor pull, a grizzly freak show where unwanted robots – even little boybots with human emotions – are sprayed with acid, impaled by machines and shot from cannons.

That BITCH!

Fortunately, boybot is rescued by Gigalo Joe, who leads him on a journey to find The Blue Fairy – a magical creature rumored to possess the ability to turn boybots into real boys. Gigalo is, as the name implies, a boytoybot for hire. Okay, this is a concept I can wrap my mind around – a handsome manbot programmed to please who will never leave the toilet seat up, fill the bathroom sink with shaving stubble, snore or launch deadly gasbombs under the covers. Ahem, I digress.

So robokid spends the next 237 years waiting to become a real boy in effort to win back his mother’s love. As the storyline drags on, you begin to wonder if AI doesn’t stand for Artificial Idiocy and start rethinking your initial repulsion with tossing boybot into an acid bath. When the movie finally ends (it’s almost three hours long), you’ll feel like you really sat through 237 years of tail-chasing frustration.

So, next weekend, if you think to yourself: I’m really in the mood for a movie that views like Brothers Grimm meet Robocop at Moulin Rouge where they steal ideas from Pinocchio, Wizard of Oz and Peterpan and write a sadistic screenplay with an ending so syrupy I’ll vomit, then Artificial Intelligence is your tub of popcorn.

Otherwise, skip the trip to the movie store and do something less painful and annoying – like running your fingernails across a chalkboard or standing beneath the hum of bad fluorescent lighting until your eardrums implode.

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Wander over to Atilla's place and sign up!

The Sunday Trumpet 3/19

It's time for the Sunday Trumpet!

The ever-fabulous Rhonda stepped up to the plate and agreed to write our very first Sporadic Gasbag Roundtable review!

If ever there was an expensive, high-tech, and craptastic waste of three hours, I think we could definitely put Artificial Intelligence in the top 10.

You can catch Rhonda's review on her blog: Rhonda's Ruminations .

If you're interested in joining our Sporadic Gasbag Roundtable review team, you can find the rules and sign up here!

Welcome to The Sunday Trumpet

A couple of weeks ago, I was poking around in Charlie Callahan's attic (where I must say, he stores a lot of really oddball stuff) and came across a book review he had written a month or so back.

Of course, being me, my first thought was "Why in the world is Charlie Callahan reading romance novels?"

The second thought was, "Oh my God, I think I wet myself!"

It was brilliant!

It was the kind of review I'd love to read every day. Not one of those sycophantic slobbering types--the ones where after you read the book/see the movie/watch the TV show--you're left scratching your head--wondering "What the hell was so great about that?"

It was catty. It was rude. It was enormously hysterical.

I started thinking about all the really wonderful and humorous writers I've been fortunate to meet in the last couple of months (and even those I haven't met yet) in blogland. Why not invite them to vent and write stinker reviews of their own?

After talking it over with Charlie and a couple of other people, we figured that a team blog wouldn't work, simply because it wouldn't be inclusive if only some people had passwords.

So we put our silly little noggins together and came up with (thank you Rhonda for the fabulous graphic!):

Anyone can join, as long as they follow the rules (or else it would be anarchy, I tell you! Anarchy!)

The Rules:

1. Sign up in the comments section on this entry.

2. Everyone who signs up will be given a date (a Sunday) to supply a review. First come first served.

3. It has to be a review of a movie, a book or a television show you hated.

4. It has to be popular media---nothing really obscure, preferably within the last 5 years, exceptional exceptions accepted. ;-)

5. On Sundays, when the new review comes out, everyone on the list MUST write an entry on their own blogs with the logo (you can copy it from here) and a link to the reviewer's blog. You can write comments about what you thought of it, etc, on your entry if you choose.

Don't be shy! We'd love to have you join us!

So without further delay, I introduce our first official Sporadic Gasbag Roundtable review, courtesy of Mr. Charlie "I'm-not-too-macho-to-read-romance-novels" Callahan.

Roll Me Over, Royce, In My Rolls Royce, review of The MacGregor Brides by Nora Roberts.

Roll Me Over, Royce, in My Rolls Royce

As you all know by now, I approach every subject I write about with objectivity, integrity, and a sense of fair play—three characteristics that are, er, characteristic of me. Characteristically, then, and with no thought aforethought of being judgmental, I dove open-mindedly yesterday into the pages of Nora Roberts’ The MacGregor Brides.

Jesus, what a piece of shit.

Okay, I confess that I didn’t read all 370 pages, but I did read 50 of ’em. Hell, if I’d finished the whole book I’d be back in the hospital, this time getting my brain pumped.

A brief summary of the first 50 pages: Laura MacGregor, fabulously rich and fabulously beautiful, is fabulously adept at protecting the sanctity of her fabulous knickers. Royce Cameron, a fabulous pussy hound who thinks with his fabulously small schlong, is nearly into Laura's fabulous knickers by the end of Chapter 3. Laura is a fabulous attorney and Royce a fabulous security systems designer, but in the course of human affairs they are both as vapid, as vacuous, and as dumb as a box filled with fabulously dead spiders.

Publishers Weekly said about the book, “[Roberts] delivers the goods with panache and wit.” And the always-well-regarded-and-reliable Los Angeles Daily News said, “Roberts is indeed a word artist, painting her story and her characters with vitality and verve.”

Liars, liars, pants on fire.

Here is a sample of Roberts’ “panache and wit” (page 33):

Royce: “If you change your mind about the meal, you’ve got my number.”
Laura: “Oh yeah, I’ve certainly got your number.”

Here’s a sample of her “word artistry” (page23):

“Her hair was black as midnight, straight as rain, and tumbled to a waist that just begged to be spanned by a man’s two hands.
“And she was wearing some of the sexiest underwear it had ever been his pleasure to observe. If the face lived up to the body, it was really going to brighten his morning.”

And here’s some “vitality and verve” (page 47):

“He lowered his mouth toward hers, stopping an inch before contact. He saw her eyes darken, heard the long intake of breath, knew she held it. He waited, while his blood surged, waited until they were both suffering.”

Make that three, pal; I was suffering right along with the two of you.

But as shitty as this book is, both writing- and story-wise, here are a couple of reader comments from Amazon.com:

“This is a sheer delight from start to finish, Nora Roberts at her very best.”

“I loved every part of this book!! I couldn't put it down. Anyone who loves romance will love this book. It won't [let] you down!”

So what the hell is wrong with these people?

Or is it me?