Love is more than Skins deep

After reading a Megan Daum column that promised I’d see what amounted to a documentary reenactment of life in Babylon, I set up my DVR to record the latest episode of the MTV series Skins.

What I saw was a ramped-up, warmed-over Degrassi, only with disappointingly cartoonish adults.

Some real-life parents are apparently up in arms about this show, calling it kiddie-porn. A scripted drama, it bills itself as being about “real American teens.” At least real American teens who suck down fistfuls of pills, fifths of vodka and one another’s naughty bits on a daily basis.

In the episode I saw, a hot lesbian named Tea whines about how all the girls she sleeps with are so uninteresting, compared to her, that she just cannot find a suitable match. That, at least, sounds real. No one cursed with that level of self-absorption should expect to find true love. And aren’t we all so cursed between the ages of twelve and twenty-one?

Anyway, Tea’s dad could be a top Mafioso, but his family disowned him when he found true love and married Tea’s Jewish mom. Being disconnected, though, doesn’t make it hard for him to round up thugs to threaten a loser who threatens Tea by calling her a dyke.

Except what Dad hears is “kike.” So he, unlike all the kids at school, remains clueless as to his daughter’s true romantic inclinations—a good thing, since he’s a hater. And, boy, is he clueless, since some of Tea’s conquests have come while he was asleep one room over. On school nights, no less!

On the other hand, all those other kids are just fine with Tea’s true sexual identity. As screwed up as they are, they apparently never got the text message about how the No. 1 way teens today insult other teens is by calling them homosexuals, only using more pejorative terminology.*

Things work out for Tea, though. Her Nana lives with them, which isn’t so great most of the time, since Nana inhabits a dream world where she holds nonstop conversations with people who aren’t there.

Nothing gets through to Nana, except Tea’s laments about the L words, by which I mean “love” and being a “lesbian.” And, guess what? Not only is Nana the latter, but she also suddenly develops the presence of mind to tell Tea about how she had found the former. Until her soul mate was forced by her family to marry a farmer in Wisconsin.

It’s presented in cheesy fashion, but I don’t doubt things like that happened sixty years ago. Hell, it happens now, with parents convinced there are TV programs like Skins trying to “convert” their kids to “the homosexual lifestyle.”

Then again, my own gramma once told me about two "spinsters" who lived down the street when she was growing up—in Wisconsin. “Everyone in the neighborhood knew what was really going on,” she said.

And then shrugged. No big deal.

True, it was a “don’t ask, don’t tell” world back then. But if people were willing to allow others to experience true love wherever they found it during the Jazz Age, why is it such a big deal for the parents of the MTV generation?


* According to the BBC, eight of the top eleven “terms of abuse” among teens are derogatory words for “homosexual,” with “gay” being far and away the most popular. OK, so they’re talking about British kids, and I can’t imagine an American kid calling someone a “batty boy” (No. 5). Still, I couldn’t find a similar list specific to the U.S., so this one will have to suffice.

Songs to put you in the mood

I was wondering what the Lady GaGa song, “Bad Romance,” is about, so I Googled it. Mostly what came up were links to blogs that claim to reveal some “occult meaning.” Not much help.

The first line of actual words, “I want your ugly, I want your disease” is a bit disturbing at first hearing. My guess, though, is that it’s just some Gen Y hipster way of saying, “I want you just the way you are,” which is how Billy Joel put it in Baby Boomer terms thirty-some years ago.

Romance is as romance does, I guess. But it’s not the first pop song to try to finesse the term “warts and all.” In “Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen follows his uber-romantic exhortation to “have a little faith, there’s magic in the night” with the uber-dorkorrific “you ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re all right—and that’s all right with me.”

Some guys just know how to relate to chicks.

Then you’ve got Marc Bolan telling his lady in T. Rex's “Bang a Gong (Get It On),” “You’re built like a car, you’ve got a hubcap diamond-star halo.” And Freddie Mercury noting that while there “ain’t no beauty queens in this locality,” “fat-bottom girls, you make the rockin’ world go ’round.”

“Plastic Fantastic Lover,” Jefferson Airplane’s ode to a TV set, compliments the object of affection with “sexy lady, chrome-colored clothes you wear ’cause you’ve got no other.” And in “Greasy Heart,” Grace Slick sings of a couple who are “made for each other, made in Japan.”

Then you have The Who going on in “Bargain” about how “I’d lose myself just to win you.” These days, we’d say that’s codependency, or something. At any rate, wouldn’t it be better to find someone who could help you find yourself?

So “Bad Romance” isn’t out of place. It’s got to be better for dancing than the go-to tune at every eighth-grade basement party I ever attended: Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them.” So what if it’s about man’s inhumanity to man—it’s slow! And, hell, how many times can you dance to the opening of “Stairway to Heaven”?

Here are some more song’s that’ll put you in a romantic state of mind:

“Magnet and Steel” by Walter Egan: Kind of a guy’s love song. “There, I told you, so that you ought to know. It’ll take some time for our feelings to show.” To the point, you know?

“Romeo’s Tune” by Steve Forbert: He asks his girl to “bring me southern kisses from your room,” but I don’t think he’s making a literal reference to cocktails made with whiskey, peach liqueur and pineapple juice. Still, I can’t think of a better song at evoking the feeling of new young love. “Meet me in the middle of night, let me hear you say everything’s all right. Let me smell the moon in your perfume.”

“Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes:” Yeah, it’s silly. Putting this one on the list even freaked out my wife—and she’s used to my eccentricities.

“I Feel Love” by Donna Summer: Play it and try feeling anything else.

“Sharing the Night Together” by Dr. Hook: Oh yeah. All right. ’Nuff said.

How ’bout it ManWARriors? What are your favorite and/or funniest examples of romantic songs?

Which way to the locker room? (part 2)

Before I get into the promised discussion of Danica Patrick, here’s a photo of David Beckham because, hell, it’s only fair. This shot is from the New York Daily News slide show of the Hottest Male Athletes.

Oddly, while Bleacher Report.com had no problem finding a hundred hot female athletes for its list, the Daily News could only come up with thirty-nine males.

It’s also funny is that while all of the BR babes are wearing almost no clothes, most of the Daily News hunks are wearing sports gear. Is Tony Romo in full pads sexy?

I don't know. What I do know is that Danica Patrick looks pretty good in her racing suit (though I couldn't find any shots of her wearing just flame-retardant Nomex underwear).

No. 42 on BR’s list, Patrick has been a lightning rod for controversy. NASCAR driver Kyle Petty called her “a marketing machine,” and said that when she doesn’t do well on the track, no one can blame the car, the engine or the team.

Janet Guthrie, a prime-time driver thirty years ago, had reservations about Patrick’s move to NASCAR, and driver Juan Montoya said, “Danica, I think she's got the talent and everything but I don't think she knows what she's getting into."

BR’s take is that Patrick’s fame owes less to her success as a driver as it does to her “selling herself as a sex symbol.” Still, the website said Patrick’s critics are jealous—men because they can't make the money she pulls down, and women because “they wish they could look this good.”

Patrick talked about being a sex symbol when she appeared in Sport Illustrated’s 2009 swimsuit issue.

Of course, the magazine asked her questions it doesn’t ask all its subjects, like, “Do you think modeling is hard?” “What makes you feel sexy?” “People have said I look like…” and “If you had to play matchmaker for a day, what celebrities would you pair up?”

Do you think SI cares about what makes Michael Phelps feel sexy? Or who people think Kobe Bryant looks like? Or which celebrities Derek Jeter would match up?

For the record, Patrick’s answers were, respectively: Modeling lets her enjoy her feminine side, having her husband acknowledge how she looks in a “nice dress and a pair of sexy high heels,” and Demi Moore. She evaded the stupid matchmaker question.

She also said that happiness is love, “whether it's just having friends and family around or racing or a new car or pair of shoes or the man you're married to.”

So she’s a romantic.

BTW, she also said her choice for World's Hottest Athlete is a guy who's “pretty good-looking, confident and comfortable…not real cocky…and doesn't have to try that hard.”

I was glad to read that, because those are all qualities I’ve given my Fast Lane hero Clay.

Oh, yeah…the guy Patrick was talking about? No. 4 on the Daily News list, David Beckham.

Which way to the locker room? (Part 1)

I know: More pictures of hot women. But what do you expect? I am, after all, a man writing a romance.

These, however, are not just random shots of hot women. Alison Baver(top) and Anna Semenovich are, according to Bleacher Report.com, two of the 100 Hottest Athletes of All Time.

Not the 100 Hottest Female Athletes of All Time. The 100 Hottest Athletes of All Time, period. The number of men on list is zero.

Not that I disagree.

You could, I guess, throw in photos of, I don’t know, LeBron James? David Beckham? Ochocinco? I remember once being impressed with a picture of James Lofton making a long-jump leap in his underwear. Impressed, as in, “What are the odds of me ever looking like that while making a long-jump leap in my underwear?”

Here’s how the website itself justifies its picks:

Hot athletes are fascinating. With models, their talent is looking attractive and nothing else. With hot athletes, not only are they beautiful, but they can also kick your butt in whatever sport they play. That's awesome.

Twenty years ago we didn't really have hot athletes. Attractive women didn't gravitate towards sports. Now it's hard to name a famous female athlete that's not good looking. That’s probably a sad commentary on our culture.

Why? Do scantily clad babes win roster spots while serious athletes of considerable skill but scant sex appeal sit on the sidelines? Is the U.S. Olympic softball team studded with outfielders who have big breasts instead of big swings? Has the WNBA loaded up on point guards who have sweet asses instead of sweet jump shots?

The Bleacher Report list includes surfers, synchronized swimmers, poker players—poker players!—and participants of something called MMA, which I had to look up. And learning that MMA meant "mixed martial arts” didn’t enlighten me much.

At any rate, I asked a woman what she thought. Are female athletes who become models, pinups and sex kittens liberated or exploited—or something else?

“Maybe it’s because they don't get paid as much as men for playing their sports,” my source said. “If men got paid what women got paid, maybe we’d see more men posing in their underwear on websites for women.”

Makes sense to me.

In the meantime, I did have my Fast Lane heroine Lara hit the gym before embarking on her quest to destroy Clay. If you want a mental image of her, though, I’d say she’s more Baver (No. 42 on the list) than Semenovich (No. 8).

But, hey, while the latter is a figure skater, the former made her name in speed skating. And the novel is, after all, called Fast Lane.

(In Part 2: Insights from No. 41, Danica Patrick.)

Science vs. romance: Tears

You know the joke about how tears give a woman an unfair advantage in a fight? Turns out it’s no joke.

It’s evolution.

So say researchers who collected tears from women who were watching sad movies and then had men rate the sexual attractiveness of other women after sniffing the tears or vials of salt water.

The result: Being high on tears lowered men’s testosterone levels—as well as the hotness scores they dished out.

In other words, bawling and balling don’t mix.

Sadly, the researchers also concluded that “actual tears didn’t make the men empathetic.” I say “sadly” because it means that, if these people are right, the pangs of doubt and regret I felt every time I “made” a woman cry didn’t indicate I’m really an old softy at heart. Just a cold-blooded animal reacting to pheromones and eons of genetic mutation.

Bummer.

That just doesn’t seem right, though. For one thing, one researcher said he authored the study because he wondered if human tears contained pheromones similar to ones that were discovered in mouse tears. “After all,” said the Associated Press article I read, “we tend to hug a crying loved one.”

So when my mom was worried about an injury that could have cost her the use of her hands, I hugged her not because she’s my mom and I love her, but because I just couldn’t help myself? When a high school girlfriend broke down because her sister had been abused by her husband, what was going through my head was, “I don’t care, but due to reasons I'll never understand, here’s some freakin’ consolation”?

That’s not how I remember either situation.

On the other hand, the researchers also concluded this pheromone thing probably isn’t exclusive to women. That tends to confirm a point central to the movie Adam’s Rib, in which Katharine Hepburn breaks into tears to break down Spencer Tracy, then breaks down herself when Tracy turns on the waterworks.

What does this mean for Fast Lane? I’m not sure. There will be tears, but I guess it'll be up to the readers to decide if Lara’s being stereotypically manipulative and whether Clay’s reaction makes him a nice guy or a brute that’s just doing what nature compels.

On the other hand, if Clay were to do the crying, would he have the advantage? Or would that just be a big joke?

To-do list

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, a trend I suspect will continue in 2011.

For example, I was thinking this might be a good year to stop smoking, but that’s impossible. Unless I started smoking first.

On the other hand, I could just state a few goals.

Goal #1: I will finish Fast Lane and, one way or another, foist it upon the marketplace.

Goal #2: I will rewrite my script The Sky Below, because after it made it to the semifinals of the Slamdance and Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum’s contests and won an honorable mention from the Los Angeles Film Festival, two people who work in Hollywood said they’d help get it into some player’s hands if I made a few changes.

Fortunately, they also made good suggestions as to what those changes should be.

One of my stuff-blows-up scripts, The Sky Below has some cool futuristic tech, rockin’ action scenes and a killer premise built around a dystopia two hundred years hence. The hero needs a fatal flaw, though. And the story could use—duh!—a romantic subplot.

You may think I should have seen that second one coming. Fortunately, The Sky Below already has a kick-ass female character who’s a natural love interest. And I can apply what I’ve learned from Fast Lane about what makes a smokin' romance.

Two things to do in one-one. Here I go...