Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Poodle Bitch wonders if the definition of "surprise" has changed since last she looked it up?

Poodle Bitch once attempted to watch "Jersey Shore," but she was unable to make it more than a few minutes into the episode. She understands the program's appeal (after all, she does on occasion watch VH1 reality shows -- or, she did, before they "evolved"); that appeal, however, is lost on her.

That said, Poodle Bitch is well aware of the exploits of many of the program's characters. How could she not be? She has internet access. She knows that one of the characters, Snooki, has written a novel.

Or, had one written for her. Or, collaborated on the writing of a novel. Apparently an author called Valerie Frankel had a hand in Snooki's debut novel, A Shore Thing:
She's Jersey-born, opinionated and not afraid to piss people off. But unlike Snooki, Valerie Frankel has read more than two books. She's also written almost a dozen, which is why she was hired to turn patented Jersey Shore-isms into a work of fiction. "A Shore Thing," released this week, follows a girl named Gia who spends the summer picking up Jucie-heads on the beaches of Jersey. Together, Frankel and Snickers have born lines like: "Yum. Johnny Hulk tasted like fresh gorilla" and "She could pour a shot of tequila down his belly and slurp it out of his navel without getting splashed in the face."

Poodle Bitch admits that the two lines quoted from the novel made her laugh out loud. Parody is not dead, and yet, look at what's being parodied.

Snooki.

Snooki was more than happy to appear on a program called the "Today Show," which alleges itself to be a news program, to promote the novel she either did not write, or collaborated upon, but which bears her name. She explained to the host of that show,
"I wanted to do a story about the Jersey Shore," she told Matt Lauer on Tuesday. "People probably expected my first book to be a biography or guidelines to be a guidette or something like that, and I wanted to surprise everyone with a novel."

The 23-year-old went on to say that she had collaborated with a co-writer on the project but had still written a substantial amount herself. "If you read it you know the first page that I wrote it," she explained. "It's all in my language."

The storyline revolves around two girls - based on Snooki and her MTV co-star JWoww - who spend summer on the Jersey Shore.

"It's pretty much like the show but you're reading it," she said. "So it's like 289 pages of Jersey Shore?" said Lauer. "Exactly!" replied Snooki.

So Snooki wanted to surprise everyone by not writing about herself. So she wrote about herself.

Poodle Bitch wonders if anyone is surprised by that?


Should Snooki's future Library of America volume include Valerie Frankel's name on the cover?

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