![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/13778297.jpg\")
<\/a><\/td>\n- \n
- Now as their objective stood before them it became obvious that unlike the others towns and cities they had sacked, this one would not fall without a long and lengthy campaign.<\/span><\/li>\n
- “You ain’t gonna believe this,” he answered in a Georgia accent, “but the last dropwindsonde profiling system I released recorded horizontal wind speeds of up to two hundred and twenty miles an hour as it fell through the storm toward the sea.”<\/span><\/li>\n
- Exotically designed minibuses with luxurious interiors and painted lavender pulled up to the aircraft to accommodate the passengers.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Seemingly adhered to the marble slab, he could not move nor turn his head.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Talk about phoning in your work . . . sweet baby Jesus! Best-selling author\u2122 Clive Cussler has discovered he can insult readers and desecrate the English language with impunity, so long as he keeps making money for his publisher. Thank God I found this book in a hospital waiting room and didn’t actually pay for it.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/21251454.jpg\")
<\/a><\/td>\nSpy<\/a> by Ted Bell. A dear friend \u2014 a voracious reader who reviews books for Amazon \u2014 told me I should read Ted Bell. Perhaps I picked the wrong Ted Bell novel. Perhaps there is another author named Ted Bell. This Ted Bell is a second-rate Clive Cussler, and his hero Alex Hawke is even less dimensional than Cussler’s Dirk Pitt.<\/span><\/p>\n This Ted Bell likes imagery: when cars accelerate, they fishtail. Always. Motorcycles, boats, airplanes too. All vehicles must fishtail! Thank goodness he didn’t work the Orient Express into the story.<\/span><\/p>\n
Fans of Lou Dobbs<\/a> will love the plot: dirty brown latinos invade the USA to reconquer territory lost in the Mexican-American War, egged on by dirtier browner terrorist half-breed muslins<\/a>. Chickenhawks<\/a> will love the military techno-babble, especially since the author, like them, clearly knows nothing about weapons or warfare. This Ted Bell? You can have him.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/51hgmrcm3ul_sl500_aa240_1.jpg\" "\\"51hgmrcm3ul_sl500_aa240_1\\"")
<\/a><\/td>\nMamma Mia (2008)<\/a>. Donna loved Mamma Mia. I worship Meryl Streep but despise ABBA, so expected to have mixed reactions. My reactions weren’t mixed at all. <\/span>I hated it<\/span>. Every single thing about it: the acting, the story line, the music, the lip-synching, the dancing. It was frivolous, fakey, and unreal.<\/span><\/p>\n Yeah, so? All<\/em> musicals are frivolous, fakey, and unreal, yet there are many I love. Cabaret<\/a> was shockingly good. The 2005 version of The Producers<\/a> made me laugh so hard I nearly pissed myself. The Sound of Music<\/a>, as much fun as we all make of it, is a damn fine movie musical. What is it about Mamma Mia that riles me so?<\/span><\/p>\n
I think I hate Mamma Mia because it’s such a transparently cynical attempt to exploit and cash in on what TV and Hollywood producers call the “female demographic,” the same audience pandered to by morning news & entertainment shows, The View, Oprah & Doctor Phil, and Access Hollywood. If, somewhere in the middle of Mamma Mia, the producers had inserted a 20-minute Swiffer infomercial, probably no one would have noticed. Meryl, how could you? Where’s your pride?<\/span><\/p>\n
Mamma Mia isn’t just a chick flick, it’s the chicks’ revenge on the guys who drug them to the multiplex to see Transformers<\/a>.\u00a0 Okay, we’re even now.\u00a0 Can we for God’s sake quit forcing frivolous, fakey, and unreal movies on each other now?<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
- “You ain’t gonna believe this,” he answered in a Georgia accent, “but the last dropwindsonde profiling system I released recorded horizontal wind speeds of up to two hundred and twenty miles an hour as it fell through the storm toward the sea.”<\/span><\/li>\n