Meg's Diary

Made of Suck

Wow! Lots of requests for Being Nikki Advanced Reader Copies. Keep them coming! We’re still sorting through the requests and seeing how many copies we can get from the publisher. We (by we I mean myself or Nancy, my indefatigable assistant) will let you know if one is headed your way.

And, um, we (by we I mean see above) still haven’t shipped out the prizes to the Airhead song contest winners yet, so stand by: a copy of this may still be coming to your mailbox soon.

I had a busy weekend of writing (I am on the same deadline I have been on since January, writing Allie Finkle #5, BIRTHDAY BASH, so no weekends off for me) but I did take time off to go to the new Brazilian meat palace (also known as “churrascaria”) with our friends my Jim and Cynthia.

The Brazilian meat palace is across the street from the mansion Kenny Chesney famously (around here, anyway) bought, then sold a week later when he found out every single person in Key West knew where he lived.


(Kenny Chesney. Not like any of us were going to go up and ring the doorbell and ask for his autograph. People here aren’t like that. But I guess Kenny didn’t know that).

At the Brazilian meat palace, you are given a small disk that says No, Thanks on one side, and Yes, Please on the other. If your disk is turned to Yes, Please, waiters come by and pile your plate high with different kinds of meat, carved fresh off skewers. If your disk is turned to No, Thanks, they let you eat your meat without interruption.

After I got home from the Brazilian meat palace, which was a very satisfying dining experience (there is also an ENORMOUS salad bar), my lips swelled up and started itching, then broke out into a disfiguring rash that hasn’t gone away 48 hours later (I went to my doctor the last time this happened, and she was like, “I have no idea what that is.”)

I read on the Internet that lip swelling/chapping is a common reaction to gluten if you are sensitive to it, so there was probably wheat gluten in the meat at the Brazilian meat palace, maybe in a marinade (which was why it was so delicious).

So gluten-sensitive people, FYI, be careful about the marinated meats in American churrascarias.

But I will go back because it was totally worth it. Only next time I will only have meats that weren’t marinated, and I won’t wear Spanx, which kept me from eating as much as I would have normally.

On the book, TV, and movie front, I have been told that I have to keep reading “The Watchmen” and that it gets better.

Also I may have seen the second worst movie of the year (well, not THIS year, since it came out in 2008, but I SAW it this year) this weekend.

Now I know a lot of you probably liked it, and I’m not saying the acting was bad or anything, because it had Patrick Dempsey in it, and I have loved him with all my heart since he played Ronald Miller, the Lawn Boy, in Can’t Buy Me Love, one of the best teen movies ever.

But can I just say I saw MADE OF HONOR this weekend, and I felt personally let down by it, seeing how much money it made and how much hype it got last year? I really expected it to be 27 Dresses quality at LEAST, which did have that funny bar scene, so didn’t entirely suck.


I made this picture tiny to reflect how little admiration I had for it.

But Made of Honor might as well have been called Made of Suck. I wonder if Patrick Dempsey has nightmares about it (it’s okay, I have nightmares about some of my books. I won’t tell you which ones).

I mean, it was better than BENJAMIN BUTTHEAD, at least, because it wasn’t pretending to be anything it wasn’t, but I was expecting something more from Ronald Miller.

But to me, Made of Honor did not even come close to How I Met Your Mother, with Neil Patrick Harris’s “Barney’s” unrequited love for the gun-toting Robin, who would have kicked Hannah’s butt across the room (although Hannah wasn’t as un-awesome as a lot of movie heroines have been lately. I did like her despite the fact I did not believe for one second her character would fall for that Scottish lout, and how the screenwriters tried to humiliate her every chance they got).


Barney and Robin, shocked by what they have just done.

MOH was not even as funny as The Big Bang Theory, whose creators swear they have not based their characters on people with Asperger’s, even though they very clearly have, because half the people my dad worked with in the department of Quantitative Business Analysis acted just like Sheldon.


The Gang on Big Bang Theory

MOH was nowhere near as good as Life (I cannot stress how desperately in love I am with Charlie Crews, wrongly convicted of a murder he did not commit, and now reinstated to his position as a homicide detective, determined to find the real killers, using the millions he was awarded by the city after successfully suing them for his wrongful incarceration):


I love you, Charlie. My husband knows and he says it’s OK. Call me.

And I’m not even going to mention again my love for Coach Taylor and his wife Tami on Friday Night Lights.


Principal and Coach T, at odds over conflicting goals for their students.

I’m just saying, TV is rocking, and movies need to catch up. It costs a lot of money for a movie ticket, and what’s the point if you can just stay home and see something better on your TV in your snug house where no one is coughing or otherwise being annoying?

I thought this episode of Bones (“Salt in the Wounds”)
on teen pregnancy (the famous teen pregnancy “pact” from last year, remember?) was SO MUCH BETTER than Made of Honor. It was really nicely done (and I’d sort of run out of patience with this show with all the serial killers last year. But this episode sucked me back in. He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog is a diehard fan).

I didn’t think it was preachy and there were some really funny parts (and the mystery kept me guessing, too). Bones’ theory on why teen girls would opt to get pregnant instead of going to college—and what David Boreanaz does after Bones explains her theory to him—was really, really excellent. There was even a Muslim character and some funny riffs on prejudice about religion and sexual orientation!

Seriously, so much of TV is better written than most movies these days. The finale of Big Love? OH MY GOD. I started out swearing I would NEVER watch a show about polygamy. So sexist! Seriously, never! Not me!


Bill and Barb, Wife #1, who almost died of cancer and so allowed there to be Wives #2 and #3…less work for her!

Then I saw a marathon of Season 1. And now I can’t stop watching!

(It helps, of course, that there are tons of murders and FBI investigations and weird incestual relationships and creepy things like letter bombs and snakes left in people’s beds and glimpses into actual Mormon temple ceremonies and characters who actually need one another and fight for one another and love one another even though they are deeply, deeply troubled and flawed. Who could resist this?)*

All my good intentions, down the drain. Now THAT is some good writing (and acting).

*Okay, I’m already getting inundated with angry emails from Mormons who are upset with my description of this show, all saying “It’s not about Mormons!” Actually, though, that’s not what I wrote, did I? I said it depicted “actual Mormon temple ceremonies.” This past season Barb (pictured above), a Mormon, was excommunicated by the Mormon church for polygamy. She did go through a Mormon endowment ceremony in a temple with her Mormon mother and sister before she was exiled from the church for polygamy. The show received some flack for showing this sacred ceremony. While most of the characters practice their own bizarre fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon church, the entire theme of this past season was exile, from the church, from one’s own family, and even from knowing one’s own true self. It was dishy.

Anyway, I just read in my daily blog hopping that Carlie, aka Librarily Blonde
lost her job! This is especially upsetting because she was just named a Mover and Shaker of 2009
by LibraryJournal.com. Surely there is someone out there with a job for her! You know, we really need more Movers and Shakers out there on the front lines!

On the good news front, I’m super excited that there’s actually a BOOK of Tammy Pierce cartoons (okay, it’s weird that this character has the same name as Tamora Pierce, the amazing YA author, but I’m pretty sure the name similarity is just a fluke) by Esther Pearl Watson, out now.

I ordered mine and I can’t wait for it to come!!! Some of you may be familiar with this comic about a painfully awkward and slightly ditzy teenage girl from the back of BUST magazine.

It’s based on an ACTUAL REAL LIFE TEENAGE GIRL’s diary Esther found in a gas station in the 90s (how jealous am I of Esther for finding this, and how much do I wish I had been the one to find it????). The comic is both excruciating and fabulous at the same time (like…I recognize the things Tammy goes through. But I wish I didn’t. You know what I mean?).

Okay. Well, I guess that’s all for now. I better get back to work on BIRTHDAY BASH! I just got an email saying I scored a few more Being Nikki ARCs, so remember, if you are a librarian, teacher, or book reviewer with a blog who hasn’t written in to request one yet, now’s your chance to email 
me a request for a free review copy. Remember to include your snail mail address and a link to your blog. Thanks!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

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