I think it’s safe to say I lost interest in James Franco’s run on General Hospital roughly a week after his Nov. 19 debut. The Jason worshipping lunatic just didn’t hold my attention. (Isn’t it bad enough that the show is in love with Jason’s career as a hit man, without introducing the meta element?) And the supposedly heightened tension of Franco grabbing Lulu and Sam this week has me yawning and studying my nails. (I need to repaint them and my cuticles are a wreck!) It’s just another mob story, just another tale of somebody after Sonny and Jason and using their loved ones to get to them. Lather, rinse, repeat. Nobody’s going to learn anything and we’ll see the same story again in the fall, just featuring a different villain.

However, the news that Snoop Dogg is returning to One Life to Live next month has me cackling with glee. Oh my God, I love it and I cannot wait. Just check him out behind the scenes, chilling with Robert S. Woods (Bo) and Hillary B. Smith (Nora).

Why the monumental difference in my reaction? Well, I think it’s pretty simple: Snoop feels like “one of us.” He’s a fan, who used to watch the show as a kid. He has an emotional connection to the genre that brought him to Llanview last year and led him to make a return visit. It’s not an experiment, an attempt to do performance art and shatter audience expectation. Snoop Dogg is doing it for fun, for love, and because he wants to be a part of the story. And who is he in scenes with? Who is he paying homage to? Bo freakin’ Buchanan. Not the Todds and Mitches of the world, but someone he identifies as a hero, as a character who’s really cool.

Cameos and guest appearances have to be done with a certain amount of camaraderie — not just with the show, but with the audience, because its their living rooms you’re being beamed into. And Franco effortlessly fit into the mobtacular world, cracking wise and winking at violence as art, but I think the connection with the viewer is what was missing. A lot of people watching soaps don’t even know who this young whippersnapper is. With Snoop, I feel like he’s a household name even if you don’t listen to rap and hip-hop. And, so, when you have a good looking guy pop up as yet another enemy of Sonny and Jason, with perhaps no real identification except for, “I think he was in the Spider-Man movies,” where’s the giddiness factor? I mean, beyond the fact that he’s, as Buffy Summers would say, “kind of a Baldwin.” (Sorry, showing my age there…remember when the Baldwin brothers were the standard for a family o’ hotness?) So, yes, Franco is charismatic and easy on the eyes…but so is almost every other guy on daytime!

Snoop being an OLTL fanboy gives him a kinship with soap viewers, because we’re that way, too. We may not be famous rap stars or actors, but sharing that passion makes inviting him into our living rooms in the afternoon an easy prospect! We know we’ll have something to talk about over coffee and snacks!

Upon finishing Carrie Lofty’s new release, Scoundrel’s Kiss, and its 2008 predecessor What a Scoundrel Wants, I have that sense of frustration I often get with romances: Why do such great books have doofus-y covers? Especially ones where the shirtless dude doesn’t look a thing like the hero? And being a lifelong reader, you’d think I’d have gotten used to how this genre is marketed — with clinches and cleavage and not much thought to the characters on the page. Sure, there are the generic pastoral covers. They’re equally non-representative of what’s inside. But, at least with those, you don’t get the idea that someone is reading this just to get their jollies. Because beyond the physical inaccuracies like Will Scarlet wearing belted 21st century pants, I feel like covers that imply Lofty’s books — and the books of other equally talented writers — are just salacious wank material diminishes them a little. They’re fabulously written stories about breathable, visible characters…not a hot pair of pecs and a bountiful bosom.

Will and Meg and Ada and Gavriel are so vibrant, and each so unique. I really enjoyed both novels because these were deeply flawed, relatable characters…all overcoming various obstacles and finding strength in love. Both books are set in the Middle Ages, at the dawn of the 13th century, and Lofty flawlessly combines a modern tone with a lot of historical research. After finishing WASW, there was no question in my mind that I was going to pick up Scoundrel’s Kiss to find out what happened to Meg’s troubled sister, Ada. And that Lofty tackles the subject of opium addiction in this book is really cool. This is not a delicate dewdrop heroine needing to be rescued from some brawny villain. Neither Ada nor Gavriel can fight their respective addictions and weaknesses with a fist. It’s about grit and tenacity and facing your internal demons head on. And in her book, Meg, too, is an enormously tenacious character. She’s constantly fighting for herself — it’s almost a relief when she accepts Will to fight with, fight for, and fight for her. God, they’re a passionate duo. 

I also loved that a significant character in both books is Jacob ben Asher, a young swordsman with a lot of ingenuity. And I really hope he gets his own novel sometime in the future. Not for nothin’, but we could use more badass Jewish heroes in romance!

As I pack up my things and get ready to head back to the city from my week-long hiatus in the Midwest, I feel like I got very little accomplished. Of course, I was out of commission due to illness for much of the time and that definitely sapped my creativity.

Nonetheless, I added about 1000 words to my novel, and decided that it will benefit from bits of the hero’s point-of-view (especially because of key scenes where my protagonist isn’t present). So that gives me a course of action for the future. The first draft is basically done except for those key additions.

I read Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol (it was terrible), and Carrie Lofty’s What a Scoundrel Wants, which suffered from both a completely ill-fitting title and cover. It was a great story that spun off from the story of Robin Hood, and the trite moniker and guy wearing 20th century pants didn’t do it justice. I also read Smash Cut, by Sandra Brown, which was basically one of her standard romantic thrillers. Nothing to see here, move it along. Grave Goods, by Ariana Franklin, was probably my best pick of the week. Adelia Aguilar is an awesome main character, smart and savvy and self-sufficient. I love that her books tackle forensic pathology in the Middle Ages.

The movie round-up was decent as well. I saw Sherlock Holmes, Inkheart, District 9, and Up. Television-wise, I feel like there wasn’t much of significance except for the groundbreaking Kyle and Oliver love scene on One Life to Live, and the end of David Tennant’s run as the Doctor on Doctor Who.

What does the coming week hold? I have no idea.

I finally got to the theater to see Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, touted for featuring the first black princess. I really had a lot of misgivings initially, because of the ad campaign that featured mostly Louis the alligator and Ray the firefly. Why not show the princess in the commercials, hmm? And then hearing that Tiana spent most of the film as a frog herself made me go, “Shields up! Battle stations!”

But seeing the film puts a lot of my issues to rest. For one thing, as many people have pointed out, Tiana and Naveen are both frogs for a large portion of the film, so it’s froggy equality! And it’s while they’re in this state, searching for transformation, that they both change and grow and even fall in love.

The plot is simple: hardworking Tiana has only one goal in life, to open a restaurant of her own, and she’s so focused on that dream that she doesn’t have time for anything else. Until she meets the frog prince, Naveen, who seems to have nothing but time to goof off, and they become embroiled in an adventure. I really loved the animation, it’s old school Disney with no frills, and really fits the period, and while the songs weren’t particularly memorable, the story more than makes up for that. Tiana is a great lead character. Like Mulan, she’s driven, focused and determined to make it in a world that doesn’t quite welcome her. And I loved watching her learn to loosen up a little. That’s the best kind of message to pass on to all the little princesses at home: That you make your own destiny, but believing in a little magic doesn’t hurt either.

Anika Noni Rose and Bruno Campos bring Tiana and Naveen to life beautifully, and I loved hearing Peter Bartlett (Nigel, One Life to Live) as the sniveling Lawrence, but I think Keith David steals the show as Dr. Facilier. I could listen to that man for hours. Jennifer Cody is absolutely effervescent as Lottie; she practically leaps off the screen, and Jim Cummings does a fantastic job as Ray.

The Princess and the Frog is definitely a great addition to Disney’s collection, and I’m glad that after taking a magic carpet to Agrabah, prowling the African plains with Simba, and saving China, we’re returning to America’s own rich cultural history. I just wish they had passed out some of Tiana’s famous “man-catching beignets” at the theater!

One Life to Live ushered in 2010 in a very special way today, when Kyle and Fish “rang in the new year together.” And by “rang in” I mean “hit the” and by “the new year” I mean “sheets.”

It’s such a fantastic moment for a couple whose love story viewers were introduced to in media res. For anybody else, I’d probably say it was a little too soon (hi, Gigi and Sky!) but considering just how long Kyle and Oliver took to “get it right,” spanning years we didn’t see on air, it was a perfect pay-off. But even more perfect than the story leading the characters to this place was the fact that it was soap opera business as usual. I really, really have to tip my hat to OLTL and to ABC for letting this pair just be like any other couple in love.

Complete with the slow love song, the clothing removal and the White Candles O’ Sex. In fact, I cracked up when Oliver asked Kyle about candles and he immediately pulled the ones from their interrupted date out of a drawer and lit them. (I have a sneaking suspicion Kyle is making his med school tuition money by moonlighting as daytime’s Candle Fairy. He flits from show to show setting up and lighting everyone’s sex candles.) We saw them making googly eyes at each other, we saw them actually fall to the bed, and we saw the afterglow. And much like many of the love scenes that air on soaps, I almost couldn’t watch. It just felt too intrusive, too intimate. I felt like I had accidentally stumbled into Kyle’s room. (Which begs the question: How the heck did Nick clear out of there so fast? And did he put down fresh sheets?) Scott Evans (Oliver) and Brett Claywell (Kyle) really deserve major kudos for bringing to life one of the most heartfelt, honest pairings of the year.

And I hate to put a Debby Downer-ish note on such a happy event, but if soaps are dying out, then this is how I want to see them go out: with beautiful, timely love stories that see no difference between gay and straight, no difference between black and white. That today’s episode not only had Kyle and Fish together, but also focused on Destiny putting her heart out there for Matthew to break or accept was really wonderful. I’ve said it before, but Shenell Edmonds has come a long way, and the scenes where Matthew tried to let her down easy were so bittersweet.

Love lost, love found, love tended to like the fires of a hearth… this is how every year on a soap should end, and also how one should begin. A good story provides all the celebratory fireworks you need.

Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes is the perfect cure for the holiday blues. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon than hanging out in pseudo steampunk 19th century London with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law.

Sherlock Holmes balances the explosions and fight scenes one would expect from a Ritchie film with a crisp, witty script. The plot is fairly straightforward: Holmes and Watson’s last case before Watson moves out of their rooms and strikes out on his own is that of Lord Blackwood, a supposed practitioner of dark arts. When Blackwood’s hanging has odd results, “the game is afoot.”

The film rests largely on the charm of Downey and Law, who carry off the Holmes/Watson dynamic with aplomb. I found myself sitting back and just letting the bromance work its magic. After Iron Man, it should come as no surprise that Downey can play the dissolute genius to the letter. And that this film, too, will kick off a franchise is a given. His Holmes is as adept with his brain as he is with his fists, and the defining characteristics of the sleuth — his pipe, his violin, his addiction — are all present. Law’s Watson is a great counterpoint: Perfectly pressed, tolerant of his friend’s vices, yet not without his own. Rachel McAdams as Irene and Kelly Reilly as Mary round out the principal cast and they both hold their own despite the fact that Holmes and Watson’s dynamic is a thousand times more couple-like than their relationships with the women.

The mystery in Sherlock Holmes is something that’s fairly easy to solve, but that doesn’t make the process any less entertaining.

Is the increasing use of bookstores as places not just to buy books but to sit around reading them contributing to the decline of the modern lending library? I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially since I tend to frequent both the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public library and two booksellers: the ubiquitous Barnes & Noble and Posman Books in Grand Central Terminal.

More and more, I see patrons spread out around the stores, reading. This is problematic. No. 1, it makes it incredibly difficult to browse for a purchase. Much to my combined annoyance and chagrin, the B&N romance section seems to be where people actually conduct their romances. Can’t you find some place else to canoodle or have a breakup fight? Stop looking at me like I’m encroaching on your private time, this is a bookstore, not your house. And recently, at a store, a friend and I were talking about the latest romance releases and cracking up over a few erotic romance cover blurbs and a guy who was sitting a few feet away seemed annoyed that we were daring to talk while he was trying to read. Dude, buy the book and leave.

Because the second problem here is that people are reading brand-new books cover to cover and putting them back on the shelves. The spines end up broken, pages bent… and a place like Barnes & Noble will go ahead and continue to sell the product at full price, even though someone has basically turned it into a secondhand book. 

It’s as though people don’t realize that there are places already in existence where you can read a book without paying for it. And, yes, you can sit on the floor and read in a library, too. I can’t remember if I saw this on Overheard in New York or somewhere else, but it was a bit of quoted text where a girl was asking if there was a Netflix for books. Yes, for the love of God, there is. And it’s free. It’s a venerable institution, thousands of years old, and you’re not going to be encouraged to buy a frappuccino and a Zagat guide while you’re there.

I love buying books. I really do. But I also know that checking them out from the library is a)cheaper and b)more efficient. And a book being a bit worse for the wear is not unexpected. 

I shudder to think that a Barnes & Noble may someday be all people think of when it comes to finding books. Or is that day already here?

Courtney Milan, whose “This Wicked Gift” was the highlight of the recent holiday anthology The Heart of Christmas, delivers the full package with her debut novel Proof By Seduction. Milan’s writing is crisp, original and full of surprises, and her protagonists are anything but your run-of-the-mill historical romance hero and heroine. The emotionally stunted, science-minded Marquess of Blakely and the fortune-teller “Madame Esmerelda” set the bar high for romance in 2010 — Gareth and Jenny are each richly drawn and multi-faceted, and Milan imbues them with sharp humor and even sharper edges.

Interspersed with the whimsy of elephants, oranges and soothsaying for shillings are scenes of genuine human emotion, awkwardness and those gut-punch moments where you just ache for a character and the hit they’ve taken. Milan wields words incredibly well, and she evokes winces just as effortlessly as she evokes laughs. 

And a treat for readers is that Proof By Seduction is a sequel to This Wicked Gift. But you don’t have to read the short story to read the novel. (One of my biggest pet peeves about anthologies is when they force a reader to run around reading everything an author wrote just to understand what the heck is going on.) Here, instead of the tale of William White and the lord he comes to work for, the reader sees Gareth and how he relates to this man who works for him.

And I love it because Milan continues to work mostly outside the confines of the ton. With Proof By Seduction’s Jenny, just as she did with This Wicked Gift’s William and Lavinia, she explores the world of those who have to work for a living and cannot simply flit from ball to musicale to club and go driving a phaeton through Hyde Park. And that’s a fresh take. That’s compelling. It’s the kind of storytelling that continues to revive and re-imagine the historical. I mean, with Meredith Duran, Tessa Dare, and now Milan… it’s a wonderful time to be a romance reader!

Gareth and Jenny may be searching for proof by seduction, but Courtney Milan has nothing to prove!

…sort of! LOL.

I teamed back up with my pals, the awesome Roger Newcomb and Damon Jacobs of We Love Soaps, for their year-end Best and Worst round-up episode of We Love Soaps TV. We discuss our favorite and not-so favorite things about the year in daytime.

There is much joy over OLTL’s Kish, some DAYS’ Maggie Horton love, praise for two of Crystal Chappell’s characters, and me going on about Mr. Kitty, babies and jewel thieves. (What? I’m predictable. We know this!)

As readers and viewers we all bring our own experience, our own interpretation, to any given text. When I watch something and subsequently talk about it, I think it’s fairly clear that I have a major gender/race/sexuality filter. It is almost impossible for me to divorce myself from analyzing those elements in a book or a movie.

So even before seeing Avatar, my perimeter alarms about a Great White Hope saving a native people have gone off. (This article explains it better than I ever could.) Someone who’s not predisposed to seeing hinky race issues at every turn is probably happy to just go in and enjoy James Cameron’s stunning achievements with CGI and marvel at the hotness of Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana. But I have a serious hair-trigger when it comes to these things, to the point where things that may pass the average Joe by will set me off. Like today’s episode of B&B.

It’s my favorite show. At this point, anyone who listens to me talk about soaps knows it’s my favorite show. But even with Aaron D. Spears, Texas Battle and Dan Martin in the cast, B&B’s sensibility is very old school and privileged. I spoke in a WEEKLY blog entry about a stereotypical desi cabbie. Well, in today’s episode, we had a stereotypical East Asian nail tech doing Bill’s manicure…followed by an accented, Latin Forrester underling praising Eric for being back at the helm. I face-palmed so hard I think I left a mark. I mean, yay for adding some diversity, but including it in such a clueless manner was painful.

And let’s not get into the casual misogyny on soaps across the board. I twitch so much over the portrayal of women as stupid, submissive-to-a-man, pieces of cardboard that I could probably be on seizure control medication.

I can’t help it. It’s how I view things. Nothing will make me throw a book across the room faster than casual racefail or homophobia…and they’re often instances that the author probably didn’t even realize were epic fails. Ditto for showrunners. I don’t think most people think about it that hard, but I think about this stuff all the time.

Of course, interpreting text with one’s particular goggles on can also be fun. Let’s not forget that. I mean, they don’t call GH’s Jason and Sonny the Brokeback Mobsters for nothin’ (and with the introduction of James Franco as Jason’s biggest fan, Franco, subtext has become text. He might as well have an “I heart Jason” tattoo.).