Candy: This incendiary novel portrays the incredibly obscure double-jointed-woman-in-flames fetish. And you guys thought you’d seen everything on the Internet.
Sarah: Did you know that most people cannot lick their own elbow? It says so in a mass email I got, and you know that the veracity of such forwards are indisputable. Pour coke in your gas tank, too, for extra milage.
Anyway, like I said, MOST people cannot lick their own elbows. I can, but I have a Gene Simmons-like tongue. And this woman, she can, but not because of the length of her lengua. She can kiss her own elbow because she’s the sister of that stretchy man from the X-files. Look how her eyes are spreading apart, how her behind is stretching away from her torso. Y’all, that’s not bad human proportions. That’s an elastic woman.
Candy: Not so much a flame vine as a flaming vine. My god, if this cover weren’t so old, I would’ve thought the artist had used Willem Dafoe in drag as his model.
Sarah: One, are you sure that’s a dancing girl? Or is it a dancing Queen?
Second, “Helen Topping Miller?” Is that in the kama sutra, and that’s why it sounds familiar? Or did she send me a spam email yesterday?
Candy: Hee hee. Is the killer…silent but deadly? Seriously. Look at the clouds of noxious fumes surrounding the shadowy figure, and look at the expressions on the two people.
“Damn, somebody had chili cheese fries for lunch.”
“Well, don’t look at me.”
They’re thisclose to blaming the dog.
Sarah: The killer is carrying some kind of face melting serum in that test tube (think that should have a lid?) because look at the angry melty faces on those two victims below!
Now THAT is some fine opportunity for kissing descriptions: “His lips met hers, and then his cheeks met hers, and suddenly, they weren’t just kissing, they were breathing through each other’s ears.”
Ah, the romance.
Candy: Dude, I’d be flipping out, too, if I had a HUGE FUCKING NEEDLE sticking out of my palm. That shit hurts! I would, however, remove it from my person before running around like an underaged Dominican whore being chased by Rush Limbaugh.
Sarah: When a giant syringe filled with menacing Kool-Aid chases you out of a house, you might want to run faster. Moreover, it’s ok if you lose that house in a bidding war. Might even be a good thing.
Candy: Everybody knows true love involves fucking your bitch up if she gives you any lip. How fortuitous that the artist caught this tender moment. Plus, drawing a woman clutching a bloody nose is much trickier.
Sarah: Married men are indeed dangerous, because you know he’s thinking of taking off that bow tie and wrapping it around her neck. That little necklace she’s got on does nothing for her in the asphyxiation department.
However, let’s talk about that dress. He might just choke her into unconsciousness first because that’s the first time I’ve seen artistically rendered camel toe in a dress.
What is up with the hair on the dude in The Portait of Love? It looks like a very strange combover. And the half face? That shadow is appearing from nowhere.
The hero looks a little like Cary Grant. Except can you imagine any Cary Grant character being anything other than suave and debonair?
Hilarious comments! From the looks of things, there are no air conditioners in sight. No wonder these people are losing facial integrity.
Hey did ya notice? At lease two of those old harlequin writers are MEN!
(Now the men have to hide behind nom de plumes!)
OR
It was a woman author doing the hiding!
Either way, we’ve come a long way baby. ;-P
That house isn’t lost!!! It’s where Norman Bates lives with his Mama.
***cue Psycho music***
Actually, that IS Norman’s Mama, all pissed off because Normie screwed up her eyebrows, then jabbed her with a syringe and threatened to haul her scary ass to the fruit cellar. Damn kids these days.
Well, I want that house. Badly. And it might be a bargain, cause it looks like it needs some renovation. That’s a Second Empire style Victorian, with a slate roof probably and the lacey iron crests & all that. And I’ll bet it’s got walnut woodwork like anything downstairs. The people on the cover would not appreciate it. They look like Art Deco & Art Moderne types. Yeah, like they’d have a really streamlined looking coffee table & cocktail shaker set. Get away from my house, people. Go look at the nice 50s ranch down the street.
I love all of the descriptive blurbs above the titles, like “Dope, Danger and Dolls.” That says it all! More effective than nameless, same-looking mantitty…
Classic snark. It’s comforting to know that even before Poser people had bad covers inflicted on them.
The other end of the bedframe on the Kiss Your Elbow cover? Clearly plugged into an electrical outlet. That elbow smells like barbecue right now.
Lost House plot synopsis:
OMG, where’s the house?
Where’s the house?!
Oh, there it is.
The End.
I don’t know about kissing her elbow, but she seems to be stroking the phallic bed post.
The guy in Portrait seems to be losing his piece, it seems to be creeping to the right of his head. Or perhaps their sex games include snatching out chunks of his hairline.
thank you for making that tiny allusion to Rush. (I’m trying. . .so difficult. . .to shut up about…the poor man’s . . .shut up [gurgle].)
Rush got busted today (at least I read about it today) for carrying viagra that wasn’t prescribed to him. Heh heh heh. I guess you were probably alluding to that, but if not there it is.
It wasn’t that he got busted that gave me the major heebie jeebies. . .it was that he was returning from a quick trip to the Dominican Republic.
I mean okay, there *COULD* be other older reasons to visit.
That first book is like some sort of Japanese translation of an American romance. Murder in Grease Paint? Kiss Your Elbow, for God’s sake? What the hell?
I love all of the descriptive blurbs above the titles, like “Dope, Danger and Dolls.†That says it all! More effective than nameless, same-looking mantitty…
You’re right. What better way to entice readers than a description like “The Man, the Husband and the Pretty Wife.” *snort*
I want a 16×20 print of the Lost House cover framed and on my wall RIGHT NOW.
And I really have to stop reading these entries on covers at work, because the desk was actually shaking with my laughter today.
I couldn’t figure out the significance of Kiss Your Elbow as a title on its own merits, so I googled it. Apparently there’s some folklore that suggests you’ll change your sex if you kiss your own elbow.
What were they writing about?
Great covers. I want to read them all. More so, now that I have the inside scoop on elbow kissing.
Worth having a straw poll on whether married men really are dangerous? Cos I’ve met my husband, so I have my doubts.
The shemale on the cover of Kiss Your Elbow is she glowing? That would explain the fish eyes. And yeah, totally did’n get the kiss the elbow thing… Maybe I should ask my Granny? Of course I might get a slap if it turns out to be dirty.
“Apparently there’s some folklore that suggests you’ll change your sex if you kiss your own elbow.”
ROTFLMAO!!! Oh, my. Were these old-fashioned slash/gay romances? I mean, the covers look sort of appropriate, but…wow…. *giggle* Maybe she’s trying to kiss her elbow to get a promotion from fag hag to actual partner?
:cheese:
As to married men being dangerous—depends on how domesticated they are. If they’ve been trained properly and are fed regularly, they’re no more dangerous than your typical house dog! 😉
These story titles and blurbs stike me more like something I would have seen in my grandma’s True Confession magazines that were stashed away up in her attic. They always had those lurid photo’s that had you thinking you were going to get a real juicy dirty story. Yay! But then they wound up being pretty tame.
Speaking of tame, in the early days of my marraige, my M-I-L gave me the following three rules to turn any dangerous husband into a tamed pussy cat:
1. Keep the house clean.
2. Cook all the foods he likes and make them often.
3. Give him plenty of sex.
She also said that the rules shouldn’t neccesarily be in that order, either.
Most of the time my hubby is content. I’ve been able to keep up with two outta three. Guess which two, LOL. 😛
Yeah, kissing your elbow is supposed to change your gender. And that person does looked rather shocked. I guess it’s a man-in-a-woman’s-body story.
That’s definitely Sondra Locke on the Flame Vine cover.
http://www.viavenue.com/pics/sondra-locke-1661.jpg
If that chickee didn’t have a big ol’ syringe stabbed into her palm, I’d say that she ran away screaming from Herman when she tried to come for a study session with Marilyn. The Lost House just gotta be the Munster Home. Is that 1313 Mockingbird Lane?
These are supposed to be ROMANCE novels? They look way more like lurid “ripped from the headlines” crime novels. Eeek. Give me back the Man Titty.
This is the best shit I’ve read in a while. Thank you for the laugh.
Well, you have to remember that back when these books were published, they didn’t have the luxury of having man-titty on the covers because of how uptight society was about sex. If a John DeSalvo or Fabio-like model was on the covers sans shirt, people wouldn’t be titillated; they’d scream “Obscenity!”.
Besides, sometimes a man is sexier with his clothes on (that’s just my personal opinion, not a fact).
Damn, sherryfair,
I LOVE that house! It would go a long way toward my lifelong dream of being the old woman that everyone thinks is a witch. You know, the one who has 50 cats and grows only black flowers in her garden.
*sigh* 1313 Mockingbird indeed!