You are a most thoughtful and considerate man ;)
FWIW there is a play called Spank! (http://www.spankshow.com/) that makes fun of 50 Shades of Grey. I have never read the books so I was worried that I wouldn’t get the jokes but it was a great time and really funny. They spend a lot of time making fun of how poorly written and badly plotted the book is, so if you love the books you will have fun, and if you hate the books you will have fun (there is something for you and your wife). As a bonus I was one of like 5 men in a crowd of crazy, dressed up, drunk women who were having so much fun.
Wait, I thought this had already been made into a movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K1RcKJVbHA
Edit: NSFW.
The E L James adaptation has officially been rated R by the MPAA for, in their own words, “strong sexual content including dialogue, some unusual behavior and graphic nudity, and for language.”
I guess fans will have that at least.
“Some unusual behavior”? Judgmental much, MPAA?
-TomOMG I finally know who voiced the parrot in Aladdin! Gilbert Gottfried! At least SOME good comes out of this…
He doesn’t play the lead in the movie does he?
Oh no, Gilbert Gottfried just did a comic reading of 50 Shades linked by Rightbug. OTOH I would pay good money to see Gilbert Gottfried to be the male lead in 50 Shades…
The book is just awful, awful, amateurish, awful. My wife and I picked it up on a trip just to see what the hoopla was about. It reads like poor fan fiction of some kind, or like something someone who had never written anything and had no talent would write.
So - we couldn’t get through the entire book, it was that bad, so we had a free copy of the audio version (long story) and thought, maybe it would be more interesting/better that way? It was PAINFULLY bad. O-M-G stupid bad. Like, you couldn’t do a satire of something like this and be that bad bad.
My guess is if you wanted true BDSM erotic fiction you could find free stuff on the internet that would be better in every aspect.
You know it was fan faction, right? Twilight fan fiction that the author was later convinced could stand on its own. She changed the character names and a few details, but I’m told (having read neither) that you can still see the original influences shining through.
Its scandalous because it is a wild popular work of erotica that women actually enjoy, and most men can’t deal with that. So they try to pass it off as if their problem with it is that it is ‘poorly written’ - as if they apply the same critiques to whatever videos they are watching on youporn. Man, I was so close to busting my nut but the lighting was bad and the dialogue took me right out of it. Its fucking porn!
Many women don’t want you looking at their kindle in the same way you don’t want them going into your “\My Documents\Finances\Taxes 1998\Receipts” folder or checking your browser history (no, not the browser you are browsing QT3, that copy of Opera from 2009).
While that’s certainly part of it (and especially the fact that it seems to appeal to a pretty huge number of middle-aged women: Not only does it makes my girlfriend feel funny in her nether regions, but also my mom. D:), I’d imagine another factor is the way it has made it into the mainstream and is acceptable to be discussed in moderately polite company. I’ve had girls I didn’t know particularily well recomend it to me when talking about books at parties and have seen people read it openly in the subway. In contrast, Big Butt Bimbos V only rarely comes up in discussions among cineophiles.
While I don’t know whether it is a result of all the controversy or whether the books were popular enough before it, they have become a part of (pop)-culture, and while that is not unheard of for erotica, other examples generally are at least claimed to have a superior literary worth.
I (jokingly) asked my wife if she would reserve a date for me on Valentines’ Day to go see the premiere of this, and she replied “why don’t we stay home and work out the plot ourselves?” I like that kind of thinking!
Actually, I do apply standards to porn. Which is why I don’t watch porn. You think you’re joking when you say “the dialog took me right out of it,” but yes, that’s what happens. At best it leaves me cold, sometimes it’s seriously distasteful and manages to make sex unappealing.
I need a certain amount of dramatic foreplay to find cinematic sex scenes arousing. I need to know the characters and care about them. I need to believe that they’re enjoying it, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen in porn. It’s ironic that real actors pretending to have sex are usually more convincing in their enjoyment of something that isn’t happening than porn actors having real sex on camera and yet utterly failing to convincingly pretend that it’s pleasurable. It’s a job, and that comes through.
LOL You know the other day I was saying to myself, “I wonder what Gus’s feelings are vis-a-vis pornography?” And now I know! Awesome! :P
Edit: Not meant to be douche-y.
Just this morning, I was thinking “is Arrendek the sort of douche who chides someone for making a porn-related remark in a thread about porn refuting someone else’s assertion about whether writing matters in porn?” Now I know. What a coincidence!
Actually, I have a friend who works in the erotic romance novel industry. I’ve spoken to her at some length about 50 shades, but I don’t know that I’ve ever asked her WHY she thinks it became popular. She mostly talks about how it’s affected the submissions she receives (more inept bondage stuff, and more stuff that’s clearly based on fan fiction, basically).
I actually found the whole thing amusing. I thought the smiley was enough. I’m not very douchey. Turn the mean hose away, please!
It’s funny the things you learn about people.
The Lego trailer. I was hoping for some actual humor, but other than it being all Lego people, they didn’t really do anything special. Some pretty impressive Lego painting, though.
Well whatever else happens this being a mainstream thing means we’re one step closer to the Cohen brothers directing porn. No more apologies from Seth to Evan.
Tom M