Posts Tagged ‘Mr. Peanut’
Something so good, transmuted into something so bad…
Last November Rowan Somerville was awarded the Literary Review‘s 18th annual Bad Sex Award…
The prize was awarded for passages from his second novel, The Shape of Her. He was presented with the award by Michael Winner on Monday 29 November at a ceremony in St James’s Square. ‘There is nothing more English than bad sex,’ said Somerville, whose first novel, The End of Sleep, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. ‘So on behalf of the nation, I thank you.’ The judges’ minds were made up by sentences such as: ‘Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.’
The other nominees were:
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (4th Estate)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Atlantic Books)
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon (Atlantic Books)
Maya by Alastair Campbell (Hutchinson)
A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee (Constable & Robinson)
Heartbreak by Craig Raine (Atlantic Books)
Mr Peanut by Adam Ross (Jonathan Cape)
OK, so mainstream novelists sometimes reach embarrassingly as they try to bottle bliss… But what of those writers who pursue passion as a matter of course? Now, with the help of Bad Romance Novels (“Bad excerpts from bad Romance Novels”), one can harvest the purple pearls that lurk within bodice-rippers (and also, occasionally, the scribblings of more “traditional” writers like Paulo Coelho or Thomas Pynchon)… A couple of examples (chosen from those relatively more suitable for work):
He kissed her long and deep, and it was as if someone had just pressed a button marked “sizzle”…
The Billionaire Bodyguard – Sharon KendrickTheir lips fit together with a perfection he had never known with another woman and she tasted as sweet as a Christmas divinity.
The Greek’s Christmas Baby – Lucy Monroe
UPDATE: A watchful Twitterer (@jkmyrna, to whom, thanks) has alerted your correspondent to the fact that the “Bad Romance Novels” Tumbler linked above has been shuttered– for plagarizing its content, mostly from Uncle Walter’s Bad Romance Novel Quotes. Interested readers should hie themselves thither.
As we reaffirm the wisdom of keeping some things to ourselves, we might recall that it was on this date in 1927 that Mae West was sentenced to 10 days in a workhouse on Roosevelt Island (known then as “Welfare Island”) and fined $500 for obscenity for her play Sex… despite the fact that the play had run over a year before the police raided, and had been seen by 325,000 people– including members of the police department and their wives, judges of the criminal courts, and seven members of the district attorney’s staff. Still, the resulting publicity did great things for Ms. West’s notoriety nationwide.
Nuts!…
Our friends at Autopia report:
It’s been quite an adventurous few months for Mr. Peanut. First, he got a makeover that left him with a gray flannel vest and a shell tanner than Snooki. Shortly after that, he made the acquaintance of Benson, a legume who is now his sidekick. With all those changes in his life, it’s only fitting that he upgrade his ride.
To that end, Planters has fixed him up with — wait for it — the Nutmobile, a custom creation set to tour the country teaching Americans to follow the way of the virtuous peanut…
Underneath that dry, wrinkled shell, the humble peanut is quite helpful to farmers. Like nearly all legumes, the roots of the peanut plant contain bacteria that contribute to nitrogen fixation — the process by which atmospheric nitrogen is converted to ammonia, fertilizing the soil.
To promote the “peanut lifestyle” of giving back to the earth, the Nutmobile will appear at events to draw support for The Corps Network, a service and conservation agency that offers over 30,000 young people the chance to mobilize communities in projects that restore and maintain public and green spaces…
The whole thing is one part George Barris, two parts George Washington Carver, and will join the Oscar-Meyer Wienermobile and the Red Bull Mini in the annals of vehicular marketing. If the new Planters commercials are any indication, we can only imagine that Benson will be riding shotgun.
So, is Mr. Peanut nuts about his new ride? We may never know, as the voice that sounds strangely like Robert Downey Jr. fell silent on this one: A spokeswoman for Planters told us that Mr. Peanut has no comment on the Nutmobile.
As we roast ’em and salt ’em, we might wish a hearty Happy Birthday to Verne Gagne; he was born on this date in 1926. Verne was a champion athlete from an early age: he won NCAA titles while wrestling for the University of Minnesota. Then.in 1947, he was drafted by the Chicago Bears (though he never played for the team). But it was as a professional wrestler and promoter that Gagne made his name. He is recorded as a 10-time AWA World Heavyweight Champion, holds the record for the most combined days as a world champion, lags only Bruno Sammartino and Lou Thesz for the longest single world title reign. He is one of six men inducted into each of the WWE Hall of Fame, the WCW Hall of Fame, the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame. Through that same period– 1949 to 1981– Gagne became the owner/promoter of the American Wrestling Association (AWA), based in Minneapolis, the predominant professional wrestling operation throughout the Midwest and Manitoba.
Gagne was much beloved in Minnesota… which did after all elect one of his spiritual successors, Jesse Ventura, governor.
Verne Gagne in 1953 wearing his U.S. Heavyweight Championship belt (source: Minnesota Historical Society, via MinnPost)
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