TresSugar

Flashback: '70s TV Show Predicts Future Fashion Trends

GiggleSugar — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:27:29 -0800

Tomorrow Today was a UK television program of the '70s that claimed to predict trends and lifestyle habits of the future. And where did the experts foresee fashion going? They had a space-age getup in mind, complete with metallic miniskirts and "specially adapted cosmetics belts" to free us ladies of our bulky purses. How novel! Thirty years later, we can thank our lucky stars that these predictions were all wrong. Really now, what girl would give up her freedom to tote a Birkin?

What Would You Do If Your Sex Tape Surfaced?

TresSugar — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:27:30 -0700

I was pretty shocked today to learn that Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart have a "naked tape," which could soon be known as a sex tape if the X-rated version surfaces tomorrow as rumored.

The video shows the Grey's Anatomy star and his wife bathing nude in a tub with former beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche and talking about how high they are. Oops, to say the least.

It's hard to believe that celebrities still allow tapes like this to get out. For noncelebs, we don't have to worry about leaked sex tapes getting posted to celebrity websites, but that doesn't mean they can't fall into the wrong hands. If you have ever made a sex tape, or even if you haven't, tell me: what would you do if your private video surfaced for public viewing? Has this ever happened to you? You can log out of your account if you want to comment anonymously!

Front Page: Obama Heads to Russia With Love

TresSugar — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:00:42 -0700

President Obama arrived in Moscow today with hopes of reaching a deal to cut stockpiles of nuclear weapons. - New York Times
After her surprise resignation as Alaska's governor on Friday, Sarah Palin continued to twitter against rumors this weekend. - Sarah Palin's Twitter
Riots in China's western province have left 140 dead and at least 828 people injured. - AP
Robert McNamara, the former US defense secretary and architect of the Vietnam War, has died. - Washington Post
After 1.6 million people registered for the chance to go to Michael Jackson's Staples Center memorial tomorrow, 8,550 fans have been chosen at random to attend. - LA Times

Talking Trash: Smart B*tches Tell Us How to Buy Romances

TresSugar — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:00:00 -0700

Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan have helped romance readers discern the good smut from the bad for years with their blog Smart B*tches, Trashy Books. And now with their book Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart B*tches' Guide to Romance Novels, they offer a guide through the heady world of the $6.99 novel and defend it with wit and intelligence.

What's up today? Candy and Sarah tell use how they assign grades (they're harsh) to novels on Smart B*tches, Trashy Books and how to navigate book shelves packed with romance novels.

You grade books on Smart B*tches, Trashy Books, A-F; what makes an A? What loses points?

Sarah: A grade-A book for me is one that has a strong plot that takes familiar concepts and reinvents them into something new and different, with memorable and realistic characters, dialogue that is authentic and human, and a story that stays with you long after you've finished. I also find that books that reach A level with me are impossible not to read, so if I pick up the book to look at a page I end up rereading the whole thing.

Candy: An A book generally means that a) I loved it, and b) it's at the very least competently written. There's a certain floor to the craft for an A book. That's not to say I don't love schlock, because I do, but a schlocky book probably won't get an A, no matter how much I love it.

Generally speaking, books lose points if they don't engage me - if I'm able to step back from my immersion in the fictional world and I'm taking a hard look at the gears and bits that drive the machine, so to speak. When my internal editor has slowed my reading pace to a crawl, that's usually the kiss of death. Good books shut my internal editor up, and that's hard to do, honestly - hell, it's hard to get me to shut up, period, much less the pedant who lives in my head and gripes about how people just don't use the subjunctive properly nowadays.

Beyond Throbbing Bosoms was originally titled The Top Ten Signs You’re Reading a Very Bad Romance Novel. Is there a way to know to recognize a bad romance before wasting $6.99?

To see their answers, read more.

Sarah: If a book, any book, doesn't grab you after the first 30 pages or so, it's probably not to your tastes. That rule has served me well in any genre.

But the original title of the book wasn't Signs You're Reading a Bad Romance Novel, though that was part of the book that didn't make it into the final edition. My favorite was the poor copyediting that made a horse change color three times in two pages. Magic chameleon horse in historical England? Not good.

Candy: I call it the 10-page test. It's kind of analogous to bad visitors. The really bad ones generally announce themselves early on and proceed to eat all the hors d'oeuvres you've set out, then belch in your face. Many others, however, survive the 10-page test and prove to be awful visitors when it's too late to get them out of your house. So flip through the first pages, see if there are egregious plot or grammar flaws, figure out if the characters and storyline are your cuppa. It won't catch the more sneakily awful romance novels, but you should be able to root out most of the worst ones.

Check out previous posts from Candy and Sarah, and stay tuned tomorrow for recommendations for romance-novel virgins.

Smart B*tches, Trashy Books Unravel Romance Novels

TresSugar — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:00:00 -0700

Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan have helped romance readers discern the good smut from the bad for years with their blog Smart B*tches, Trashy Books. And now with their book Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, they offer a guide through the heady world of the $5.99 novel and defend it with wit and intelligence.

So we asked these two smart readers about romance novels, and oh how they talked. So much, that we're breaking all their thoughtful answers into a five-part series. What's up first? Who reads these glossy books?

One out of five people read romance novels - who are these people?

Sarah: The truth is, behind the stereotypes, smart, savvy women read romance. It's a 60+-year-old industry of women operating independent businesses writing books consumed by an audience of women who spend $1.7 billion dollars a year. Two romance readers may have absolutely nothing in common except for the books they read, because romance readers are an incredibly diverse audience - no group of readers that supports a billion-dollar industry can be homogeneous. We're found across all ages, education levels, income levels, geographic locations and reading habits - and we all love romance novels.

Candy: The demographics for romance novel readers are all over the place, though there are strong trends. They overwhelmingly tend to be women, for example. They also tend to be voracious readers, period, and to be more highly-educated than the population at large. Other than that, it's hard to generalize.

You say, actually five out of five people read romance novels, what are some romances in disguise we've probably read? To see their answers, read more.

Sarah: Every fictional narrative contains a romance element. Where would Bond be without the sexual tension? What horror thriller in general doesn't contain the romantic suspense to support the plot? Romance is one of the oldest narrative traditions, so it's everywhere.

There are few readers more diverse in their tastes than the women and men who read my site, so I asked them. From the readers of Smart B*tches, here are romances you might not have recognized:

Lois McMaster Bujold's books, like the Miles Vorkosigan series, especially A Civil Campaign; Patricia Gaffney's Mad Dash; Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series; William Brinkley's The Last Ship; Jean Auel's Earth's Children series; many of Philippa Gregory's historical novels; Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series; and many of the novels you read in English class, including, and especially, Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice is one of the best romances ever written.

Candy: Sarah's right about romance being an element to a lot of fiction and storytelling, but the modern romance genre is its own beast with a long, tangled past. If you've read Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, you've read books that would qualify as romances if published today. A lot of the sturm und drang (storm and stress) of certain romance subgenres owe a debt to books like Wuthering Heights, for example.

Here's the thing: the plot set-up and conflict dictates the genre the book's most likely to be slapped with. Speculation involving science and technology? Sci-fi. Mystery or conundrum that needs to be solved? Mystery. Mystical other worlds involving magic? Fantasy., etc. And there's considerable bleed-through among the different genres: it's perfectly possible for a book to be both a science-fiction novel and a murder mystery. But what drives the emotional conflict? If it's romantic love, odds are high you're reading a romance novel. Sharon Shinn and Catherine Asaro have written plenty of novels in which the central driving emotional conflict was a romantic entanglement, even though the plot setting was science fiction.

Stay tuned tomorrow to read about what romance novels tell us about women, relationships, society.

Front Page: Holocaust Museum Closed After Deadly Shooting

TresSugar — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:00:18 -0700

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum will be closed today to honor the security guard gunned down by a white supremacist yesterday. - CNN
The World Health Organization has declared swine flu a pandemic. - AP
US retail sales were up for the first time in three months. - Bloomberg
Reformists in Iran hope that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be defeated in the country's elections tomorrow. - Reuters
David Letterman sort of apologized to the Palin family last night. - AP

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Farrah Fawcett Shares Her Cancer Struggle

TresSugar — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:00:00 -0700

Farrah Fawcett's hair is iconic, but tomorrow night she will shave it off in front of the world. In Farrah's Story, the former angel chronicles her three-year battle with cancer, and it's sure to be extremely honest, emotional, and at times hard to watch. The video diary airs tomorrow on NBC.

Farrah is determined to show her beautiful strength, along with the ugly side of cancer, in the documentary. The story is sometimes gut-wrenching, and to be honest, I had to turn away during some of the preview clips that aired on the Today Show this morning.

Do you think the film will enlighten the public, or do you find the idea exploitative?

To see the segment from this morning, read more.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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White House Unveils Exclusive Photos on Today Show

TresSugar — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:30:00 -0700

To honor Obama's 100-day mark as president tomorrow, White House photographer Pete Souza showed off some his favorite pics this morning on Today. A gallery will be put on the White House site later today, but until then check out the never-before-seen photos. To see the clip, read more.

Walgreens to Offer Free Healthcare Clinics

CitizenSugar — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:00:21 -0700

Walgreens. The Pharmacy (Unemployed) America Trusts. If you lose your job and health insurance tomorrow, you can now turn to the drugstore for routine treatment and testing for minor ailments.

Today Walgreens announced plans to offer walk-in clinics free of charge. The in-store Take Care clinics can address problems like respiratory illnesses, infections like pink eye, allergies, and skin conditions. Patients will probably cross their fingers that they won't be prescribed a pricey drug, since they'll still have to pay for prescriptions.

The idea is to keep people out of urgent-care and emergency rooms. Customers will have to prove that they're unemployed, and once they get health insurance back, they'll have to pay for future screenings, which typically cost $59.

This sounds like a good plan for both the uninsured and Walgreens. The company can increase awareness about its service, and those facing tough times can buffer the consequences of unemployment.

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Josef Fritzl Pleads Guilty After Seeing His Daughter's Testimony

CitizenSugar — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:37:12 -0700

Josef Fritzl changed his mind and decided to plead guilty to all charges today after watching his daughter's video testimony in court. The powerful interview was played yesterday, and the verdict and sentencing will happen tomorrow.

While pleading guilty to the death of his newborn son, Fritzl said:

I was hoping the little one would survive, but I should have done something. I don't know why I didn't help. I just lost sight . . . sorry.

The court doctor has recommended that Fritzl be sent to a secure psychiatric facility, even though he's not insane in the legal sense of the word. Fritzl faces life in jail for the murder conviction.

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