The Festering Blurb

• Alex Toda La Noche
• Enviame Un E-Mail (This one is different because it's about William and Maite as themselves)
• Amor Hostil
• El Vizconde Que Me Amo
• Calor En La Noche
• Jugando Al Amor

All of these are related to Cuban telenovela superstar superhunk <<Guapisimo Mangote>> William Levy.  If the heroine is Jacqueline Bracamontes who was his co-star in SORTILEGIO, then that's a "Levymontes" story. Geddit???  If the heroine is Maite Perroni who was his co-star in CUIDADO CON EL ANGEL, then it's a "Levyrroni" story.  Personally, I prefer Bracamontes, whom I call "Placamontes" because she has a truly spectacular set of teeth.  Even though her character in Sorti cried a lot and was a total doormat, I liked her character's development better.  Perroni's character on CCEA was a petulant, stubborn, annoying, self-absorbed bitch.  I could not stand the character, but there I was like an idiot every weeknight at 7 PM.  Levy's characters in both novelas were cut from the same cloth: naive and wishy-washy, a total crybaby.  And not dignified singular drops gracefully caressing down the cheek, I'm talking wet, snotty, puffy-eyed, mostly snotty...Oh My God! I never saw an actor let so much snot loose since Burton Cummings of The Guess Who in an obscure movie from, like, 1980, where he was having an emotional meltdown and snot and spit was flying everywhere...

And he would do it ON DEMAND! Or so it seemed. He was always ready with a tsunami of tears and snot.  "La Placa" was too.  Damn!

William Levy y Jacqueline Bracamontes

en los papeles de <<Alejandro Lombardo>> y <<MariaJose Samaniego Miranda>>

So...yeah...webnovelas.  They're basically fanfiction in Spanish. The first one I read was "Alex Toda La Noche" (Alex All Night).  Levy's Sorti character Alex Lombardo plays a guy who comes to Tuttle, Ohio to work as a DJ.  Placa's character Mari (pronounced MA-ree -- with a rolled R) is a radio show producer determined to make him a star.  But -- he has a hidden agenda.  It was a little disconcerting mentally to read about a Spanish story taking place in Ohio, but you get used to it.  It was a sweet little story. I really liked it. It had some good dialogue and a lot of humor.  Other characters from Sorti came out in it, too.

After I finished reading that one, I started "El Vizconde Que Me Amo" (The Viscount Who Loved Me). It has a Barbara Cartland veneer to it.  This one's pretty long as it has actual plot development. It's a really good story for being hobby writing.  This one, though, is a "Levyrroni" so I've run a mass find/change -- finding all the Maites and changing them to Jackies.  It's costing me a lot of ink to print it, but reading it online is not worth the potential damage to your eyes.

My ToBeRead list includes the other titles in the bullet list above.  Sure, I could be reading my all-but-forgotten copy of FREEDOM & DEATH, my languishing edition of Aristophanes's "Birds", my festering tome of THE MIRACLE OF CASTEL DI SANGRO...perhaps...even relishing my peripatetic professional publications.  But when you have an itch, you have to scratch it or you can't concentrate on anything else.

WebNovelas are fun. Period.  FanFiction is something I have a little experience with. I've written four, but only posted two.  Actually, if you count the one I wrote in 8th grade about a certain pop star who was on tv and making albums at the time, that makes five. Oooh, Oooh!  I just remembered the one I wrote in 1997!  Oh My God! And there was a WHOPPER of an absolutely horrible one I wrote when I came back from England.  Oh Lord! Then there was that utterly GHASTLY bit I wrote after I saw A Room With A View and The Princess Bride.  Wow! Oh Wow!  I didn't realize I had written so much. It was all coming back to me as I was typing!!!

I'm even working on one now.  er...when I say "working", I mean, I get around to adding to it every few months.  You see, that's the thing about me and fanfiction.  I have to be obsessed with the characters.  Obsessed!  It's the only way for me to do fanfic.  As I'm no longer obsessed with the characters, working on the story is not a priority.

But getting back to the Spanish ones.  I have a huge crush on the actor Levy, and Spanish is my second language anyway, so it's no hardship that webnovelas are in Spanish.  What I have a problem with is Spanish grammar.  The masculine/feminine thing I just take for granted at this point, having spoken it all my life.  Reading Spanish, though, is like scrambling over rocky terrain. It's the fact that Spanish uses so many articles!  And words for basic emotions have like 18 prefixes and suffixes you have to climb over to get to the root. Damn Latin!   Plus, where we say "a little bit" or "a little tiny bit", in Spanish would be poquito, poquitito, poquititisimo, and so on and so on depending on how emotional you're feeling.  Case in point:  William Levy is not just guapo, he's guapisisisisimo!  Geddit?

William Levy Forum at Univision Foros

William Levy Official Site

Sortilegio

"Un Amante A La Medida" (Either "A Custom-Built Lover" or "A Lover Made to Measure") @ YouTube

William Levy at IMDB

Check William out at YouTube -- just type "William Levy" into the search box.

Video from YouTube collection of liayponcho

PMS: Perpetually Mucking about in a Strop

Cabal St. Laurents, Bengal breed, is, sadly, one of the most boring breeds. What? There's another?

Yeah, okay. Del-Rey.  But anyhoo, this is the story of Cabal in brief (no slouch there, btw.).

pp. 4-5:  snarling, murderous

p.8:  hissing

p.16   irritated

p.24  growling (and not in a good way)

p.25   displeased

p.42   snarling

p.46   threatening

p. 47   angry

p. 55  wants to snarl

p.64   fury

p.67   angry and horny

p. 70   frustrated, mad, horny

p.92   conflicted

p. 95   pissy, snapping at Jonas

p. 100  possessive and growling

p. 109   mocking

p. 117   horny and not happy about it

p. 122   suspicious, demanding

At this point, I'm tired of this book; I'm tired of Cabal's shitty attitude.  Not once has he been relaxed or happy or enjoying his mate. There hasn't been any ROMANCE at all.  It's all been duress, duress, duress.  GAH!

p. 141   bossy, predatory, still being an asshole with Cassa

p. 150   latent violence

p. 156  tormented.  He doesn't even act like he likes Cassa. All he does is make her mad and defensive.  This is so 1970s Harlequin Presents.

p. 161   using mating heat to control her

p. 167   fear of losing his mate; tense

p. 173   AT LAST, A CHUCKLE! but it's for Jonas, not his woman.  He even made a joke about caffeine.

Wow, Cabal's emotions run the entire gamut from A to B!

p. 180-183   angry.  Quelle shoque! Quelle surprise!

By the 190s, he's finally calming the f*ck down and having actual conversations with Cassa. He even cracks another joke. Cassa's even thrown by it.

p. 200   HALLE-FREAKIN'-LUJAH!! They are finally relaxing with each other and having fun -- albeit breed/mating heat style fun. But at least it's fun and not strop-sex. (that's my expression, btw. I made it up.)  But look at the page number!!!  Jeez!

p. 205   affectionate and post-coitus lassitude. Now it sounds like a romance.

p. 222   all business, but at least he's not angry or "tormented"

Whew...I'm a little bit beyond that, but it's been slow going.  The first 200 pages were frustrating and even dead boring. The plot has picked up momentum now that all the pieces of the mystery are starting to come together.   The plot isn't even that interesting until you get into the 200s.  The sex scenes (I'm not about to call them "love" scenes.) were spiritless.  After p. 200, Cabal and Cassa start acting more like feisty lovers instead of enemies, which is kind of nice. There's not much more left once you reach the 200s.  But, I have high hopes for the last couple of the chapters of the story. 

I'd like to see an end to this saga soon.  Or at least, see it morph into something else.

guardian.co.uk's tea-time take on the world of football

Just like Harold Bloom turns authors' names into adjectives, THE FIVER turns an alarming variety of bodily noises into verbs -- some I didn't even know were possible by humans. These snippets have been harvested from 2009 columns of THE FIVER. I think their humor writing is absolutely top writing!

"[We] confirm they have made the offer to Manchester United for the acquisition of the rights of the player [Him]," ole-ole-ole-ed a piece of paper delivered from the Bernabéu by a winged fez-wearing monkey earlier today.

"At [His] request - who has again expressed [His] desire to leave - and after discussion with [His] representatives, United have agreed to give [Them] permission to talk to [Him]," harrumphed a magnanimous Manchester United club statement this morning.

"Consultations with Utrecht, the town and the club, have proved fruitless and I want no risk," sniffed Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen.

"We're an attractive proposition to other companies," honked an SFA spokesman.

"If you're at the club you always wanted to be at, then that goes beyond any money," Beckham wiffled from the fly-speckled porch of his luxury aluminium trailer.

"He'll be the last person we sign," puces Ferguson.  [Author's note: How the F*&$ do you make a color a verb???]

**This counts towards my "Blog Countdown to South Africa 2010!" 

A publication of the National Middle School Association (www.mnsa.org)

This journal is magazine-style. It’s well-designed and easy to read – but not without its inconveniences. The artwork is strategically placed for good effect and doesn’t overpower the text. Even the pages with full color are wisely designed so that the text stands out. Good examples of well-balanced page design are pages 20-21 in the August 2009 issue and pages 10-13 in the August 2008 issue.

The covers feature a single child, usually in a classroom setting. I appreciate the nod to tolerance and equanimity wherein children on the cover represent various cultures. Articles have section headings, which I really like. I’m not a fan of using sans serif type for vast amounts of text, but the size of the text makes it fairly easy to read. Content is kept pretty tight. Not a wasted word nor a superfluous phrase. This leads me to why I enjoy reading this journal – the articles are informative, concise, descriptive, and they have useful side elements like lists, charts, pictures – cleverly integrated into the page design.

They also have one of the cleanest tables of contents that I’ve ever seen. Again – sans serif type, but small and bold, which works just fine. There’s a lot to describe, but I’d rather show you.

Nice!

Not every issue is as good as August 2009. February 2008 had an article titled “Transitions: Smoothing the Way for Students and Parents”. The overall layout was good. Pale artwork on a white background. Standard sans serif font, useful section headings. But the text was too pale – more dark gray than black. In fact, the whole issue was like that. It got frustrating fast. Plus, it was crazy with ads, and in some places, it was difficult to tell the article from the ad copy.

On top of all that, the paper is excellent quality, so excellent, so slick, so glossy…too glossy, too slick, don’t read it under direct light or you’ll get cataracts – if you can hold on to it to begin with.

Some of my fav articles:

§ “Teaching Vocabulary: Work Smarter, Not Harder.” Wormeli, Rick. February 2008.

§ “Getting to Know You: Mixing It Up at Lunch”. Patersin, Jim. February 2008.

§ “Lifelong Study Strategies for Middle Grades Learners”. Misulis, Katherine. August 2009.

§ “Emotional Intelligence and Effective Leaders”. Beavers, Michelle. August 2009.

§ “Thinking Skills: The Board Game”. Bower, David. October 2007.

§ “Don’t Listen: Advice That May Kill Your Classroom”. October 2007.

§ “Taming The Tardies: Every Minute Counts”. October 2007. Sprick, Randy and Daniels, K.

§ “What’s in Your iPod? Mixing Music and Meaning”. Marcus, Jaime. August 2008.

§ “The ‘Absolutes’ of Vocabulary Instruction”. Wood, Karen and Harmon, Janis.

§ “Essential Questions: Mining for Understanding”. Dunbar, Folwell

§ February 2009: Incorporation art and music across the curriculum.

§ “News to Use” section in every issue.

I almost never read the editor’s note. The same with the executive director’s note. Just a personal choice. I haven’t analyzed why I flip through those pages with nary a glance. Although, now that I think about it, that type of audience-specific/location-specific writing might be a useful writing lesson.

You get your money’s worth out of this journal. One of its strengths is that is covers practices and techniques for all subjects. Philosophically, its content is strongly cross-curricular. Also, not only does it cover pedagogy, but offers helpful articles on professionalism, first-year survival and teacher retention, and not just administrative practices, but leadership by administration, teachers AND students. The ads aren’t too overwhelming, but they are loud and frequent.

Late August 2009

I'm cheating a little bit because I put the blog stuff in my BooksRead column. But it's logical, don't you think?  I've read them before and I thought it might seem a bit poncey to do an extra column BOOKS READ AND BLOGGED.  Sounds a bit overkill-ish, if you ask me.

Whatever is in my purse (SW4M) takes me a long time to finish.  I carried my pocket Loeb for a year -- like a baby that refused to be born.  I probably need to stop carrying books that make me laugh out loud.  I'm already enough of an oddball for reading in public as it is.  80 million people around the world do it, yet I'M THE WEIRDO!  I feel like the socialist peasant in Monty Python and The Holy Grail.  Maybe if some watery tart handed me a sword, I could slash my way though the unwashed masses. "The peasants are revolting!"  But I digress...

Satyricon, as I found out in the plump introduction, is a play on words about four levels deep.  That's my kinda word!  Something you can really sink your teeth into.  What it was doing in my parent's closet I'll never know, but it's mine now.  There's a movie out called YEAR ONE.  From the commercials, I get the impression it's a re-telling of Satyricon, but with way worse dialogue. Or maybe it's the same dialogue, but it sounds more interesting in vulgar Latin.  Foreign languages are fun like that.  For example, in this Spanish-language  soap opera Sortilegio, the hero often refers to his wife as "mi mujer".  If you translate that directly, it means "my woman".  Kinda sexy, that.  However, the proper translation is "my woman-wife".  Sounds like a Waylon Jennings song.  Or... it sounds like he traded some goats for her.

Outlaw I have read about a dozen times since 1993.  It's a last-gasp of the old-school where a woman's first sexual experience is a rape.  I never understood why what was such a popular theme, especially since women were writing the books.  Then they fell in love with the men who assaulted them???  WTF!! It's the 1990s, not the 1790s.  Anyway, I didn't keep it because of the love scenes, I kept it because I liked all the characters and Lowell's special touch with Old and New West/ranching themes.  Think about it -- ranch life is hard and dreary and unglamorous.  And if the author can STILL make you like it, that's amazing.  And if you're tempted to scoff at that, go right ahead.  Loser.

This book was part 2 of a 4-part series.  The McKenzie-Blackthorn series by Elizabeth Lowell.  (There will never be a story for Utah. EL has moved way on!)  Click here for the post on this series or click on the Books in Exile category.

The only thing missing from my BooksBought list is a humor book -- unless you count Articles of Faith.  That's a soccer book which just happens to be funny.  I'm saving that for my soccer book series.  Picked up some professional books.  They're very stimulating, intellectually.  I have my favorites and tend to get books whose pedagogy and practices run along the same lines.  That being the case, it's important not to get stuck in a groove.

I've done more blogging these last two weeks than I did in all of June.  I do a lot of writing for escapism, and this is where a lot of it ends up.  Lucky you!