Everything about the world is a whole dumb nightmare. We've got ten years before everything melts and maybe twenty before we're full-on Mad Max and I will be squarely middle-aged at that point and that's just not a good moment to be learning how to do stunt driving and improvise weapons and everything. Even if I start now I won't be ready! So what I'm saying is, we were already at one of the most dire moments in human history, and then EL James had to go and write another book.
Years ago, when I was writing about those other EL James classics, a friend told me I should stop doing this because it seemed like it was making me miserable.
But that's my secret, Captain: I am always miserable.
Well not always. Or at least, not always-always. But I just want you to know this from the get-go: when it seems like this book is making me unhappy, please understand that it is not. The books is merely a vessel! A conduit! The means through which I reveal my true self. Those who do not move do not notice their chains. Those who do not look at my terrible blog don't have to hear me whine. The choice is entirely yours!
Hey so what've you been doing these past many years? I wish I had more to report on this end! Truly I do!
I play in this band. I take little credit, but I do take some credit! That video rules, right? Just agree with me. I really need this. Thank you in advance.
I had a podcast going for a while, and may again in the future. We'll see.
The podcast is called Beyond the Beaded Curtain and if you are interested, you can basically hear me doing exactly what I do hear, only you listen to it instead of reading it, and I have friends doing it too, and also we're talking about weird porn flicks rather than EL James. See??? I'm not exclusively about EL James. I sometimes branch out into other kinds of erotic fare. [Editor's note: change this part. It makes you look just bad and weird. You can keep the depression part, or the porn part, but you've got to cut one of them. The combination is really a bad look.]
I'm optimistic that there will be more episodes later, but the show is on hiatus and has been since like, Thanksgiving 2018 or so.
Anyway! EL James wrote a new book.
Oh! I also know that the hero is, I think, named Maxim Trevelyan. This is probably the whole reason I'm going to read this fucking book. The astute reader will recall that Tevelyan is Christian Grey's middle name. It is his adopted mother's maiden name. Is there a better way to say that? Hit me up in the comments, and be sure to smash that subscribe button. [Editor's note: try that annoying shit they do on youtube. People seem into that.]
Right so is our new, right dirtbag connected to our old, rich dirtbag? I mean he has to be, right? You don't just use a nonsense name like Tevelyan a second time. And it's not like ELJ has so many books that she's recycling characters. Like if James Patterson reuses an unusual last name, NBD. Dude publishes a book literally every month, and also his books are constructed by a very dumb super computer so of course some of his names are going to come up again.
But ELJ has no such excuse, and Tevelyan is not exactly Jones. I don't know what will make me more angry--learning the connection, or learning that there's no connection! I'm like laughing about this now. This is actually funny to me. Which is it going to be--that I'm angry about the weird connection between the books, or that I'm angry that ELJ couldn't be bothered to come up with a plausible name for her new hero?
Speaking of names! Geez. I missed this. Ok so I know I already talked about how I'm miserable all the time and that's correct. I am not going to walk that one back at this time. However, thinking about these books and their absolute laziness gives me a different varietal of misery. It's a more energetic misery than my more normal, everyday awfulness. So reading ELJ adds a certain zing to a bad day.
Anyway what I was getting at--names. The poor Albanian housekeeper is named, of all things, Alessia Demachi.
The astute reader will first note that "Alessia" is just not fucking different enough from "Anastasia." Like, cmon ELJ. I'm already insulted! And you know what's funny? This book is so new that I paid money for it. I paid like eleven of my own dollars to be insulted! I mean, it's fine. I obviously make tons of money on this blog so eleven dollars is fine and I can also write it off as a business expense because this is all owned by a shell corporation and that's a whole other thing. But still! I have to pay with actual, real dollars, but ELJ can't even bother to make up a new name for her leading lady?
But wait! There's more!
Ok so the blurbage says that Alessia is a musician. Let's just do the fucking minimum of effort here and type "demachi" into the ol google box!
Sorry--I only use the free, "lite" version of google so I have to wait a few minutes for results. Hold on.
There! Demachi! God. This is getting so bad so fast and I'm not even reading the book yet! The most famous figure with this name was an Italian violinist named Giuseppe Demachi who hailed from the city of Alessandria.
Can we start connecting the dots, friends? Can we start linking things with red yarn yet, please?
I'm going to go out on a few limbs right now, and I feel safe doing so. And you should too! Go ahead and climb a tree, or a rock, or a water tower, or whatever you want to do because nothing matters anymore anyway so we all might as well enjoy a nice climb, right?
Anyway--Alessandria and Alessia are just way too similar to each other. I mean, cmon. And also, what're the chances that Alessia is going to be a violinist, like ol' Giuseppe? The chances are very fucking good because again--the blurbage tells us she's a musician of some sort, so why not?
So basically, instead of Christian Grey being the rich guy who lost his parents at a young age, who ends up a billionaire and uses his wealth to fund this secret, second life--
Ah hell I did that thing where I accidentally start talking about Batman instead. Sorry. So in 50 Shades CG suffers various traumas as a child and then later mopes around and plays piano. So for this book, it's looking like we're going to put all that on poor ol' Alessia Demachi because The Piano is the only movie ELJ has seen and she's obsessed with the idea of an emotionally stunted character expressing themself through music. [Editor's note: Alden has never seen The Piano so who knows if this joke even works.]
And also Alessia Demachi is such an Assassin's Creed-ass name, right?
Hey style question: I really want to link the name Alessia Demachi with the video game Assassin's Creed, and I also want to underscore this as an insult by throwing in the modifier "ass" and also I love the assonance that we get with "assassin" and "ass" and also with "assonance."
But how do I punctuate this? "Assassin's Creed-ass" risks suggesting that the reader separate the words "Assassin's" and "Creed-ass" from each other in an odd fashion. Maybe "'Assassin's Creed'-ass"? That looks awful! I don't know. Hit me up in the comments, and be sure to smash that subscribe button! [Editor's note: find out if there's a way to subscribe to this. Or if anyone is reading it.]
So I guess that's kind of all I have to say without actually reading any of the book. Next week I guess I'll try to read some of the book, right? Sure why not.
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