Bookreporter, prizes, trips and flicks

And I’m completely blown away by the prize opp! I wonder if I’m allowed to enter? Someone over there really knows this book, because here’s what they have as a prize in their giveaway:

Our beach bag celebrates fun in the sun, college style, with six shot glasses, mini bottles of Absolut Vodka (both original and Mandarin Orange) gumdrops for your sugar buzz, an orange and blue striped beach towel, a one-pound bag of Starbucks coffee beans and a colorful coffee mug, and the ultimate college necessity — a $20 gift certificate to Pizza Hut, as well as a copy of the book, all in an orange-and-pink–colored beach tote.

Those of you who have read the book know what perfect choices those are! Orange vodka! Gumdrops! Whee! So head on over to the site and enter. (You have to answer a question. Posting here does not enter you into this particular contest, and yes, I’m mailing out the prizes for the contests that were on this blog.)

Right now, I’m packing for my trip to the RWA National Conference in Atlanta. I’m leaving tomorrow and won’t be home until next Tuesday, after which, it’s a quick turnaround and then off to Manhattan for the Secret Society Girl party on August 3rd. And then, down to Florida for my hometown signing and party on August 11th. And then, poof goes that coach and we all have pumpkin pie.

Seriously, though, I know my posts for the last few days have been all glamor and pomegranate martinis, but I promise you, my life is generally more like me on the couch typing into my computer, me on the floor in front of my plotting board, trying to decide where I dropped a certain storyline near page 105, me on the Metro, scribbling into a spiral notebook, or me stuck in summer Beltway traffic, deciding that all the dialogue in chapter twelve needs to be overhauled.

In other words: grind. Sequels do not write themselves, and judging from some of the mail I’ve been receiving, people actually do want the sequel, and they want it now, and since they have to wait for next summer can I just give them a little hint maybe please please please about the fate of:

1) Brandon
2) Malcolm
3) George

So I work, work I do. Um, excpet for sometimes I take a little time off. Like this weekend, I went to go see Labyrinth at midnight on the big screen, and wow, is it ever a different movie than it was when I was eight. And wow, David Bowie’s outfits are…not hiding much, to everyone’s enjoyment. Robin Brande is discussing The Princess Bride over at her blog, and of course, we all need to compare it to the other big fantasy movies we enjoyed as children. Like Labyrinth. No one has, yet, brought up The Neverending Story, but this may be because unlike the former examples, there isn’t as much overtly adult material in the latter. I don’t know though. I haven’t seen it of late. My favorite of the group is definitely PB, which I basically have memorized, and I love the book, too. I’ve been known to give copies to unsuspecting mortals who haven’t yet tasted its wonder (right, Julie?). I love every frame of that film. I think, in general, it has aged so much better than Labyrinth. (Sailor Boy, btw, warns me not to go out and rewatch NS, or it may “ruin my childhood memories.” However, I must say that seeing David Bowie has NOT ruined any of my memories about Labyrinth. I now have two very distinct memories, each which shall be cherished for their own purpose.)

I also started to watch Dirty Dancing, of which I own the Collector’s Edition. I was inspired by Colleen Gleason‘s post on the topic last week, and remembered I hadn’t seen it in quite some time. I turned it off to watch Wedding Crashers, which, as it turns out, was a mistake. Ugh. I love Vince Vaughn; I love Owen Wilson; I love Christopher Walken; I haven’t seen that Rachel McAdams chick in much but I really did love her in Mean Girls; and I loved the concept. What happened? Something didn’t quite gel in that film. Maybe there was too much humidity in the meringue. I did have a few laughs, especially in the beginning, but in general, it didn’t work for me at all.

(Caution: Spoilers ahead.)

I’m trying to figure out why that is, because I love a good comedy as much as the next gal. I can’t decide if it tried to get too serious or serious in the wrong way or where I got turned off. I think it was at the point where the seventeenth member of the family hit on the protagonist. Or maybe when they threw all the sense out of the building and made out like the random asshole villain could magically figure out from a couple of fake names not only who the guys really were, but their Wedding Crasher M.O. and also why they did it? Or when the protags, who were shown at the beginning of the film working for the same company, suddenly never ever saw each other again? Did Owen quit his job? Or how they completely forgot about all the issues that the family has with Vaughn’s character (the accusations that he’d molested the son, all the other people in the house they’d supposedly seduced…)

Or maybe it’s something far more simple than that. Because I think I’ve about had enough with the old Hollywood staple of:

1) the in-front-of-family dinner table engagement announcement without prior engagement. This always happens in movies when the man is a Gaston type so ingratiated with the family and oblivious to the girl’s needs that he seeks to flatter his own ego by announcing that they’re going to get married in front of the girl’s entire extended family without regard to her feelings or to the fact that he hasn’t even asked her.

2) the girls that let these idiots push them around, even though they’d previously been shown to be upstanding, free-thinking, sassy types. Double points for subsequent scenes of engagement celebrations where girl looks absolutely miserable but for some reason keeps on with the pretense she’s going to marry this clod. Triple word score if she realizes she doesn’t want to go through with it only after they’ve zipped her into that white dress.

No more runaway bride scenarios, please! Whole books are based on the premise that it’s tough to walk away from a wedding underway (Emily Giffin’s masterful Something Borrowed is one), and I need to see that level of commitment to the plot point before I’ll buy it. How many romantic comedies have used this idea? And, not to be sexist, it annoys me when men pull the same crap (cf. the Cameron Diaz flick with Christina Applegate and the one with Julia Stiles, neither of which have names I can recall, both of which have ridiculous night-before-the-wedding premises). It was silly when Carla Gugino succumbed to it in the Pauly Shore vehicle Son-in-Law, and it hasn’t gotten any better with age. I think that may be why I like movies like My Best Friend’s Wedding, where it was revealed how patently ridiculous the main character’s actions were. The couple in question were in love and going to get married. Too late to do anything about it, chica.

Ahem. End rant. I’m going to go watch While You Were Sleeping, which might be the only film since Philadelphia Story where I can stomach a mid-aisle change of heart. The former because no one, including Peter, really wants Lucy to marry him in that scene (plus, she gives incredibly cogent reasons for agreeing to the match, which are believable and ultimately sympathetic) and the latter because, well, everyone knows she was really in love with Cary Grant all along and they all, Jimmy Stewart and the other guy, were fooling themselves that she and Grant weren’t going to sail away together on the True Love at the end.