On the other hand: It's about clothes. Specifically, Anita complaining about the multi-inch stiletto heels with the open toes and the straps.
It's time to come clean about something, folks: I love shoes. I LOVE shoes. Specifically decently high heels with a specific curve in the heel structure, straps around the ankles, and toes that are the perfect balance between blunt and pointed. My go-to work shoes right now are a pair of insanely comfortable half boots with inch-and-a-quarter heels. I can run in those babies. They rock. But those heels aren't just an inch and a quarter high. That's also their width. They are incredibly stable and most of my shoes...erm...aren't. I wear certain heels on special dinners (or to church) when I know that I won't be walking much while wearing them, or for the day or so after so the blisters will heal. And they're not exactly walking friendly. My favorite pair of heels? I've torqued my ankle in them doing nothing more than walking from the porch to the car on a gravel driveway.
Anita shout not be wearing massively high heels into a tense situation. Not if there's any chance at all that she'll be kicking, running, or doing athletics. Even if she can keep her balance, they'll sink into the ground and she can hurt herself that way. Even my awesome inch-highs stab into the ground like they're going Lady Macbeth on its ass. SHE SHOULD NOT BE WEARING HIGH HEELS INTO POTENTIAL COMBAT.
Also: Jean Claude raided Jareth's closet. AGAIN. Except...oh my god. OH MY GOD.
His vest fit him like a glove because it was laced up the back; a corset vest.
No. No no no no no no no I am sorry CLOTHING DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT.
Apparently we also went straight from "Maybe we need to dress for the party" to the party itself, because we're talking about running the press gauntlet like it's old news. Okay. Anita is *sigh* more famous than Elvis. Please continue.
Normally, I enjoyed the Fox Theatre. It had been built in the 1920s as a movie theatre, but no movie theatre I knew had Chinese Foo dogs with glowing eyes at the bottom of a sweep of marble staircase. The interior was lush and gilt, full of carved Hindu gods, and animals from anywhere that qualified as exotic. Normally, I loved gazing at it all. Tonight, it was shelter from the storm.
This is the first chunk of description LKH has given that I find believable. I think she's probably actually been there. Given that all we found out about Philly in Micah was a graveyard and what the inside of a hotel room looked like, I'm kind of happy with this.
The Master of Hollywood is here, and is apparently the darling of the media. And yet LKH still expects us to believe that an ER nurse had never seen a vampire bite before.
There were too many vampires in the VIP section to have dinner beforehand. It raised too many questions about what everyone would eat. Jean-Claude had avoided the problem by simply saying the restaurant was closed for that night. The management of the Fox was happy with that. Yeah, vamps were legal, but St. Louis is still part of the Bible Belt. No one was sure how people would take it if someone got pictures of vampires feasting on humans in the Fox club theatre.Yeah. It's the Bible belt's fault we don't want to see vampires eating people. Thanks again. Hey, has it been established why the blood has to be "on the hoof" so to speak? 'Cause bringing in a bunch of bagged blood and dressing it up all pretty could have avoided that...wouldn't have been as much fun for the Masters but it would have been a real good publicity photo...
I knew for a fact that some of the “naughty” impromptu scenes at Danse Macabre were very planned. The trick was to give the customers a thrill, not scare them to death, or make them run for a cop.
Why do I get the feeling that LKH is the kind of person who thinks people like Edwards and Silvia Browne really do contact the dead? If you're running a vampire club it doesn't matter how sanitized it gets. SOMEBODY is going to buy it and call the cops. If you're purposefully trying to give them an edgy, bloody show, you'll have let the cops in on the dress rehearsal so they can feild the panicked calls from the audience.
The main difference was that the police were watching for hatemongers trying to kill the monsters, and our guards knew that the other job was to make sure none of the visiting monsters got out of hand.
I like this. I like every part of this, because it's a commonality. Both sides are actively working to keep their monsters at bay. Humanity has an awful, awful lot of ugliness work through. But I just can't buy it because every single leader we've seen so far has the self control and ethics of a drunk flea on a baby possum. I don't buy that any of these people can stay in hand.
The lights go down and all the vamps around Anita start quietly freaking out.
I glanced at Damian, and his eyes were wide, a little panicked almost, then his face went peaceful, as well. I looked at Jean-Claude. He whispered, “He will try to make humans of us all.”YOU PUT VAMPIRES IN CHARGE OF ENTERTAINMENT. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU THINK THEY WERE GOING TO DO?
So the humans and the guards get rolled, and then the vampires start dropping, and Anita realizes that Micah is about to go and she drops something totally precious in our laps:
“Power up our cats,” I whispered.
 |
| Come on. You know I had to. |
Wait. Is that...
No. It can't be. Not Eighty-five percent of the way through the book.
But...you know what? I think it just might be. WE HAVE A PLOT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. THE PLOT HAS BEEN FOUND! I REPEAT! THE PLOT HAS BEEN FOUND!
Random Dance-pire jumps up to Anita's balcony. He's...uh, cute. And dressed in a ballet leotard. Kids, I took ballet for years, I've been to several, I camp on this image search frequently, so TRUST ME: That dude has left NOTHING to the imagination. There's a leotard. That doesn't matter. You can count the wrinkles around his nipples.
That's why I find this:
His upper body was beautiful even by my standards.Fucking hilarious. I don't even know why.
Pretty Dance-pire tries to roll Anita and fails, so he kisses her and touches her and she makes googly eyes at him while wondering just what they've let into their city, and there's something even bigger and nastier waiting in the wings and THAT IS HOW YOU INTRODUCE A BIG BAD POWER PEOPLE LKH HAS DONE SOMETHING RIGHT GIVE HER COOKIES and that is the end of the chapter.
So now we've got overpowered dance-pires in an auditorium full of possible (and probable) food, most of Anita's bodyguards out of commission, and Anita eyeing a hunk of hot blond in skin-tight spandex.
AREN'T YOU GLAD WE WASTED EIGHTY FIVE PERCENT OF THIS BOOK ON RAPE PORN?
"t had been built in the 1920s as a movie theatre, but no movie theatre I knew had Chinese Foo dogs with glowing eyes at the bottom of a sweep of marble staircase. The interior was lush and gilt, full of carved Hindu gods, and animals from anywhere that qualified as exotic"
ReplyDeleteI think this was taken from an earlier book. I have a vague memory of Richard and Anita going there to see a show, and we got this description. Possibly exactly. The Foo lions with light-up eyes stick in my mind, probably because that is exactly the sort of thing I want in a future house :)
"His upper body was beautiful even by my standards."
So his shoulders are at least four feet wide. Noted.
I probably ought to refresh my memory on what the early books were like, just for comparison purposes...You're probably right.
DeleteSo it's been a while since I read this book, but I remember the dancing vamp bit. Mainly because the dance scene that will follow is pretty much LKH ripping off Anne Rice's ballet vampires from Interview with a Vampire....and ripping it off poorly. With Anne Rice's dance scene you got the sense of how beautiful, seductive and overwhelmingly dangerous her vampires were. You weren't watching a performance so much as you watching vampires hide in plain sight by revealing their true natures under the guise of 'performance.' With LKH, it seems like she is just screaming in our faces "LOOK AT HOW AWESOME MY VAMPIRE BALLERINAS ARE. THEY CAN TOTES FLY AND SHIT AND NORMAL DUMB HUMANS CAN'T DO THAT."
ReplyDelete
DeleteThis is going to be painful, isn't it?
SHOOOOOES!
ReplyDeleteYes, Yes indeed. SHOES.
Delete"t had been built in the 1920s as a movie theatre, but no movie theatre I knew had Chinese Foo dogs with glowing eyes at the bottom of a sweep of marble staircase. The interior was lush and gilt, full of carved Hindu gods, and animals from anywhere that qualified as exotic"
ReplyDeleteYes there's a movie theater you know like that, THIS ONE