Doggy Fizzle Publishizzle

According to an article published last month on The Book Standard, Snoop Dogg will be making his literary debut this October with his first novel, titled Love Don't Live Here No More. Not to be confused with the 1978 Rose Royce hit, "Love Don't Live Here Anymore," Snoop's novel will tell the story of "a young man living the hard life in Southern California while struggling to make it in the world of hip-hop."

The article goes on to note that the novel will be the first in a "street-lit" series headed by Snoop for Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. Kathleen Schmidt, v.p. and director of publicity for Atria told The Book Standard that “Snoop, by nature of what he does, is a storyteller." Furthermore, Ms. Schmidt explains, “Books speak more to a female audience than does [Snoop's] music, so these novels give him an opportunity to show, particularly his female fans, another side.”

Rrrrriiiigghht. I assume she means the side of Snoop other than the one responsible for rapping such tunes as "Bitches Ain't Shit But Hoes and Tricks," "Break a Bitch 'Til I Die," and "Can You Control Yo Hoe?" (featuring the memorable lyric, "You've got to put that bitch in her place/Even if it's slapping her in the face"). We've apparently now entered a new era of Barnes & Noble-friendly Snoop (personally, I think changing the book's title to Love Don't Live Here No More, Bitch would help ensure a smoother trans-media crossover).

I wish Snoop the best of luck with his new endeavour. If nothing else, it's gonna make Book-TV a hell of a lot more exciting this fall. As far as winning over the female audience goes, I guess I should keep an open mind. Even old Doggz learn new tricks.

Analyze This

The other day, I was thinking about movie costumes. From a rather young age, two movie costumes in particular have been my very favourites:

1. The skin-tight, black leather (or is it pleather?) outfit that Sandy wears to impress Danny at the end of Grease, for the "You're the One That I Want" number. I'm still looking for a pair of black Candies sandals like the ones she has on in that scene (the shoes responsible for the sexiest cigarette stomp-out in cinema history).

2. The crazy one-piece halter top/mini-skirt outfit and (most importantly) thigh-high, spiked heel boots that Julia Roberts walks her Hollywood strip in at the beginning of Pretty Woman. I've had a weakness for stiletto-heel boots ever since (and now own two pairs--neither, regrettably, are thigh-high, however). Oddly, her outfit is different colours on the movie's poster (hot pink and black) than it is in the film (white and turquoise). But it's all about the boots, really.

What should we make of this? One might conjecture that repeated exposure to such vampy star costumes in my pre-teen years permanently corrupted my fashion sense. But these outfits are so...great. Like, doesn't everyone wish they could wear stuff like this every day? No? Oh. Never mind, then. I guess it's just me.

Shoe Decorated My Life

In recent "Where are they now?" news:

My favourite Madison television personality, former WKOW meteorologist Alan Shoemaker (affectionately known on air and among fans as "Shoe"), is apparently now thriving in his post as the weekend weatherman on Newschannel 5 in Weslaco, Texas.

Shoe--we miss you, big guy. You lit up my life on Wake Up Wisconsin for three unforgettable years. But you've got bigger storms to chase now. That's just the way life goes in the rough-and-tumble weatherman trade, I guess. Well, best of luck to you, Shoe--and thanks for the memories.

Summer Reading Adventure Vol. 1

While summer won't officially arrive for another month or so, it's never too early to start thinking about what guilty yet exquisite reading pleasures you will include on your summer reading list. For bibliophiles, summer reading is kind of like a trip to Las Vegas: cheap, flashy, sex-filled and easily hidden from bosses and spouses. Best of all, there are no consequences. What happens during the summer reading season stays in the summer reading season. It is perfectly acceptable to burn through 15 Danielle Steel novels over a two-week period in August, then turn back to Thomas Pynchon after Labour Day. You will never be held intellectually responsible for your summer reading choices. It's one of the cardinal rules of bibliophile culture.

That said, I'd like to suggest some summer reading that will give you a powerful hit of nostalgic pleasure faster than a Kool Aid Jammer on a July afternoon. Remember Choose Your Own Adventure books? You know, those fantastically easy-to-read, participatory paperbacks that zipped off your school library shelves faster than the latest installation in the Babysitters' Club series? Teachers never used to allow Choose Your Own Adventure books to count for "official" assignments like novel studies or even silent reading time. But we loved them just the same, especially since they only took about twenty minutes to read. They took longer if you didn't catch on to what page number the "page of instant and horrible death" was in the particular book you were reading. You remember what I'm talking about: you'd proceed through three or four choices, your character's situation gradually becoming more dire, when suddenly you'd come to a page that said something like: "Turn to page 72 if you choose to run away from the lion. Turn to page 36 if you choose to confront the lion." If you chose to turn to page 36 you would read that you had suffered a terrible demise. After reading that, if you were a smart cookie, you knew that any time the book offered you the choice of turning to page 36, it would be wisest not to do so. Then it was never much longer before you successfully completed your character's mission.

If you have fond memories of Choose Your Own Adventure books like I do, you'll be happy to find out that the series' publisher (the creatively titled Chooseco corporation) rereleased many of the series classic titles this spring, including Abominable Snowman, Secret of the Ninja, Lost Jewels of the Nabooti and many more.

If you are one of the few and the proud who can say that you've read all 184 Choose Your Own Adventure books published between 1979 and 1998, then you can check out the new A Date with Destiny Adventure series, which are Choose Your Own Adventure-inspired books written for adults and include such titles as Night of a Thousand Boyfriends and Escape from Fire Island!

I'll have more summer reading suggestions in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, try pulling out one of these books on the bus on your next commute to work. It's not summer yet, but who cares? Have fun. Just beware of page 36.

Pour Some Sugar on Me

It recently came to my attention that my most favourite 1980s hair-metal band, Def Leppard, has formed an unholy alliance with Journey for their upcoming tour this summer. No way! Way! Pretty friggin' sweet, if you ask me. I can't imagine a concert tour more jam-packed with power chords, guitar kicks, and earnest, bare-chested, bandanna-ed balladeering than this one. Sadly, they will not be making a stop in Toronto--for once, Buffalo has one-upped us on something. Talk about bringin' on the heartbreak.

Anyway...I'm not too devastated about it because I've been to see Def Leppard in concert in Toronto twice. Go ahead, mock me. I'm cool with it. I earned my serious concert cred as a teenager, delirious from sunstroke or caught up in a bone-crushing mosh pit at Molson Park, taking in then-unheard of Canadian bands like the Tea Party, Our Lady Peace, I Mother Earth and Big Sugar. I've since dropped all pretense of being a hip concertgoer. Now, it's all about listening to my inner cheeseball. Life's too short to deny my retro-pop instincts. Besides, to their credit, Def Leppard puts on a truly kick-ass show. And it's kind of nice to be among the youngest members of a concert audience for a change.

I'll finish off this post with a link to the band's offical site (where, under Vivian's Diary, you can read his latest entry titled "My Pet Monkey") as well as a sampling of some of Def Leppard's more surreal lyrics. These guys know how to wail.

"Love is like a bomb, baby, c'mon get it on/Livin' like a lover with a radar phone..."

"I'm runnin' with the wind, a shadow in the dust/And like the drivin' rain, yeah/Like the restless rust/I never sleep..."

"It's such a magical mysteria when you get that feelin'/Better start believin'..."

"I'll be your satellite of love"

"Take it, take it, take it from me/I got an itchy finger following me..."

"C'mon Steve..."

W.W.T.Y.D.? (What Would Tina Yothers Do?)

The latest addition to my Amazon wishlist: Being Your Best: Tina Yothers' Guide for Girls.
I can only speculate on the valuable knowledge contained in this volume, but one would hope that there would at least be chapters devoted to eye-rolling, bang-curling and how to cope with your crush on Michael J. Fox (I'm still working on that one). Now that I know this book exists, I'll always wonder how my life would have been different had I possessed the wisdom of Tina Yothers in convenient paperback form during my adolescent years. Back to the future, indeed.

Why Does PE Suck?

On a brief surf through the blogosphere this evening, I came across this post, authored by one britbrat, that succinctly summarises the reasons why PE (or phys. ed., as Canadians are more likely to call it) sucks. All I've got to say is, I hear that, sister. Nice to know some things never change.

My MTV: Tiara Girls

As should be evident from previous posts dedicated to MADE and 8th and Ocean, when it comes to MTV, I'm an easy customer to please. I'll lap up pretty much any reality show they toss my way. So this week I gave the new MTV series, Tiara Girls a test run. Sadly, I think my favourite network has let the rhinestone-encrusted crown slip a little on this one. This show falls so much short of MTV's usual sassy standards that I doubt I'll be able to eke out a two paragraph blog about it. But, this being a slow night, I'll give it a try.

I think Tiara Girls was doomed from the start for the reason that beauty pageants make too easy targets for the kind of pseudo-satirical/pseudo-documentary teen reality shows we've come to expect from MTV with shows like MADE and Super Sweet Sixteen. We know that pageants are weird. We can conjecture that the surreal sub-cultures in which they flourish are disturbingly bizarre. We expect that teenage girls competing in pageants are going be spouting off the kind of anti-feminist remarks that would earn them a lot of furrowed brows and angry headshakes if they were appearing on Oprah. So when we see all these easily-anticipated elements come together on an episode of Tiara Girls, the result is just...yawn.

Maybe it's just that I personally find pageants unexciting. Growing up in Canada, it seemed pretty clear that pageants were a foreign phenomenon, and they didn't really hold all that much fascination for me (I was too busy idolizing Elizabeth Manley). These days, I find them to be one of the most tired feminist bad objects out there. Whether the world keeps turning with or without pageants doesn't really matter--either way, 99.9% of its problems are still going to go on unsolved.

Despite my negative review, I'm not really saddened by the lack-lustre appeal of Tiara Girls. This just means I'll have more time to keep up with my other MTV favourites. Really, my TV viewing schedule was getting packed as it was, especially having to fit various play-off games in. If you get a chance to check the show out, give it a try and tell me what I'm missing. Or not. It's really not as fun as MTV should be.

The DL on the DQ

You'd think that living in the greatest dairy state in the U.S.A. for almost five years would have made me something of an ice cream connoisseur. I have indeed sampled some impressive ice creams and frozen custards in Wisconsin, including Michael's, Culver's, Schoep's, Chocolate Shoppe and, the pride of UW-Madison, Babcock Hall Dairy. The shocking truth is, however, that despite living in this land of plenty, my very favourite ice cream is still Dairy Queen soft serve. It's just such a classic, from its dependable vanilla flavour to its easy-to-eat consistency. You can dress it up with hot fudge sauce or dip it in a candy shell (with respect to dipped cones, I always went for the butterscotch, until I discovered the glorious new horizon of cherry--the shell is red and fantastically tasty, however there is nothing remotely cherry-like about it). Or you can go the purist route and just eat it plain. No matter how you order it, the DQ soft serve never fails to please.

I'm not sure how DQ soft serve ice cream is made, but I will hypothesize that involves vast quantities of prepackaged mixes of one kind or another. Then, of course, there's the machine that produces it, a marvel of mid-twentieth century mechanics if ever there was one. There is always a bit of excitement involved with the "pouring" of the ice cream onto the cone. Sometimes an inexperienced soft serve artisan will pour the cone at a dangerous angle, or panic the moment they have to perform that virtuouso twist of the wrist that finishes it off. It probably takes a little practice to get that wrist twist right. But it's worth doing well, and of course it's so much more sophisticated than just scooping ice cream out of a tub.

Despite my research efforts, I was unable to find out who the original Dairy Queen was or where she hailed from. I did learn that DQ has been around since 1940, that there are now DQs in 21 countries on 6 continents, that DQ and Orange Julius belong to the same parent company, and that ordering a large chocolate chip cookie dough Blizzard will run you about 1320 calories.

I can't be the only person out there who is staunchly devoted to DQ soft serve. It's not just a cool treat, but the coolest treat around. Actually, I just like using the word "treat." Anyway, for another testament to the greatness of this ice cream institution, check out Parker Posey's brilliant performance as Libby Mae Brown in Waiting for Guffman: "I'll always have a place at the DQ."