The Great Hullabaloo: BOOKS.

[Abraham Smashington]

I'm not going to be the same for awhile guys.

[Ed Hocken]

Oh yeah!

But I wonder how Rob is handling the news. Man must be demoralized.

[Shit Dickface]

more like AC Raper am I right

[Ed Hocken]

A girl then.....okay.

[Abraham Smashington]

Yep I'm that guy, but I have got to read this...

Mario Lopez raped a girl, and NBC paid her hush money. Definitely the most damning accusation in the book... but one that Diamond doesn't hedge (like many of the upcoming points). He flat-out says that Mario Lopez "lured [a girl] back to his pad... and was forced to have sex against her will."

NBC's lawyers stepped in to maintain the image of its clean teen stars, though, and paid the girl to be quiet. "And my understanding," Diamond writes, "is that it wasn't a boatload of cash, either, somewhere around fifty grand."

I found this "Variety" article about Lopez being accused of date rape, so there is other corroboration on this. It's amazing -- back in 1993, before the Internet turned the American celebrity gossip press into the British celebrity gossip press, a huge "SBTB" fan like me never heard a word of this. If this date rape accusation had happened 15 years later, within moments of the story coming out a photo of A.C. Slater would've been on Perez Hilton, complete with a MS Paint mouth semen.

NOOOOOOO

[Howard]

Dune Messiah wasn't bad (the 2nd book). Children of Dune (3rd) is when the series started to really slide. I finished the 4th (God Emperor of Dune) but gave up on the 5th and 6th (Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune).

Those additional books you have sound like companion books. Not part of the series itself.

[BillyG]

Stop after the first book.

The edition I got has some "Families of Dune" and "Religions of Dune" or some such books included. I don't know how they could write about those subjects for whole books, since Dune itself seems to be about those two things.

[Howard]

So Martin. Grabbed a book from the shelf on the way to work and didn't pay attention to what I picked. DoD. Figured, what the hell, I'll read the opening at lunch. Goddamnit. Hooked already.

Didn't want this to get missed by the page turn.

I'm reading Dune for the first time ever. Never seen the film either. My brother was obsessed when I was growing up. So far it feels like the Simarillion.

Stop after the first book.

[BillyG]

I'm reading Dune for the first time ever. Never seen the film either. My brother was obsessed when I was growing up. So far it feels like the Simarillion.

[Howard]

So Martin. Grabbed a book from the shelf on the way to work and didn't pay attention to what I picked. DoD. Figured, what the hell, I'll read the opening at lunch. Goddamnit. Hooked already.

[Ed Hocken]

Currently reading Nudge by Cass Sunnestein and Richard Thaler.

[Shit Dickface]

Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" isn't grabbing me (hurr) so I'm gonna take that shit back. Grabbed Franzen's "The Corrections, a collection of short stories by Dorothy Parker, James Lee Burke's "Tin Roof Blowdown", and Anne Enright's "Yesterday's Weather".

[Captain Russ]

*

*irony in this post. I haz it.

[Shit Dickface]

Gonna finish Power of the Dog by Don Winslow this weekend before Cameron Hughes kills me - to be fair it's a fantastic book and I'll listen to Cameron's crime fiction recommendations all day long (and Rath, too, but he's a poopyhead who doesn't post here anymore because he's too busy living it up in NYC), but I haven't had much reading time this week at all.

Then I have Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" and Joe Lansdale's "A Fine Dark Line", which is another Cameron recommendation.

[Captain Russ]

Mencken's Chrestomathy.

I have found my misanthropic twin. And he is much more verbose than I could ever hope to be.