The Mechanic’s Wife

She’ll have to marry him now!

Petra is betrothed — to rich, eligible Sheikh Rashid. But she plans to ruin her reputation so Rashid won’t want her. Blaize, a fellow guest at her hotel, agrees to be Petra’s pretend lover — though soon he’s taken her virginity!

Then Petra makes a shocking discovery. Blaize is actually none other than the man she’s supposed to be marrying — Sheikh Rashid!

So reads the back cover of a Harlequin romance novel called The Sheikh’s Wife or The Sheikh’s Lover or Mr. Sheikh Goes to Washington or something like that. I can’t remember the title, but I wrote down the back copy as soon as I read it because, well, isn’t it obvious?

A few Wednesdays ago was one of the roughest days I’ve had in awhile. But it was also a reminder that I have some extraordinarily awesome friends, one of whom is Miss Lindsay Gafford. Lindsay, as a matter of practice, rummages through Goodwill’s bin of 99 cent romance novels to find the most ridiculous, repulsive, and sad of a patently ridiculous, repulsive, and sad genre.  Then she sits around and reads them to friends. Really, I can’t think of another form of entertainment where you get so much bang for your buck. “Bang for your buck…” I shall add that to my list of probable by-lines.

The Sheike’s On-Again, Off-Again Girlfriend doesn’t even have an author listed. It’s that sort of book. Since I’m in the market for a life’s calling, I decide I could write one of these romance novel things and pretty much did, all whilst walking around Target with LDG. I call it The Mechanic’s Mistress, and it goes a little something like this:

Will he get a peek under her hood? Or will their romance stall out?

Celeste is the daughter of wealthy and savage luxury car dealer.  Ryder is the a third generation honest and hard-working mechanic.  These star-crossed greasers passion for fast cars, clean burning fuel, and each other!

Pretty much it goes on to involve overuse of the words and phrases “chassis,” “driving stick,” “body work,” “humming [motor],” “revved up,” “pistons”…Surely you get the idea.

I was enjoying my averagely clever, filty self when suddenly I recalled something from my dark days of tending the fiction section of Barnes & Noble. Something I had worked long and hard (heehee) to forget:

Harlequin NASCAR.

That’s right. Combining not one but two of the lowest forms of American entertainment, Harlequin Nascar follows the Full Throttle adventures of Nascar drivers and the women who love them. The line includes such titles as Old Flame, New Sparks, Peak Performance, Out of Line, Hitting the Brakes…Again. I feel the picture is in HD.

The funny thing is I was actually disappointed that the romance novel had beaten me to the punch. For a moment I thought, “Perhaps, as an industry, the romance noveliers are aware of how ridiculous they are, how they’ve lowered the bar, how they manipulate the lonely, isolated, and disenfranchised.” Then I read the product description for Overheated:

Things Crystal Hayes could do without: her looks, men obsessed with her looks, and guys who think they’re God’s gift to the ladies. She’d rather be behind the wheel of a truck than navigating cheesy pickup lines. But when Crystal makes a delivery to a NASCAR event, she meets the one guy who could blow all her preconceptions away.…

All his life Larry Grosso has lived in the shadow of his well-known racing family—but it’s now time for him to take what he wants. And on the top of that list is Crystal—breathtaking, sweet…and twenty-two years younger. Their age difference is creating animosity within their families, and suddenly their romance is the talk of the entire NASCAR circuit!

I think I can find something else to do.

 

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“oops,” says area Pride.

For the record, I try really hard not to be a pretentious ass. Assery is the dominate currency of our generation and, being the good lil Marxist that I am, I see it as prohibitive of our true potential.  That said, there’s only so much a girl can do avoid the conditioning of 6 years in the cloistered halls of L’Academie (that was for Meredith), investing herself in indie music and film, and reading — READING! of all things — the classics and their critics.  I’m just starting to watch Flight of the Concords because “I knew about them, like, forever ago” and people I don’t think are very funny think it’s hilarious. So, I put it off. But then someone I do think is funny had the DVDs from Netflix. And you know what? It is hilarious.

Even though I’m conscious of it, I put much too high a premium on being the first to be into something.  And once I’m into it, I’m only into it as long as not too many other people are.  Even typing that hurt, but it’s true. I’ve allowed myself little deviations (see the entry on the unironic awesomeness of the Ghostbusters franchise, for one), but even then, I wonder if I allow those for myself because it’s always cool to be a little uncool.

I became aware of this flaw sometime ago and I like to think I’ve made some considerable strides in repairing it, but it takes just as long to uncondition as it did to condition. I have noticed that when it comes to discussions on taste, I am more comfortable in my opinions — namely because they are my opinions.  Deciding to abandon a beloved subject just because it has become too popular is just as bad as becoming a fan for the same reason. In fact, it might be worse –  at least bandwagoneers have the excuse of recent exposure. 

So, all in all, I’ve been quite pleased with my de-elitizing. I’m chillaxin’ at work, listening to whatever I loaded onto my iTunes here a couple of years ago, and suddenly I hear this song I really, really like. And I begin to think, “Wait..is that? Is that THE SHINS?” And of course it’s The Shins, I just didn’t recognize it right away because it’s off Wincing the Night Away, which I hardly listened to because, I’d been “into The Shins for, like, ever” by that point. I was so over it. Consequently, I’d been missing out on a good spin for, what, a couple of years? Way to prove your point to…no one. Including yourself. Woooo!

However, I stand by my assertion that Zack Braff is not so great. And Garden State sucked. That’s not the hipster vitriol talking, that’s just aesthetic discernment.

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