Romance in Hi Def

I watched Must Love Dogs starring Diane Lane last evening. I first saw her in Lonesome Dove in the role of a hooker with a heart of gold. That was 1989, twenty-one years ago when she was a youthful twenty-three. In Must Love Dogs, she was thirty-nine and still retained her basic beauty.

Only last night, on my 46-inch high definition television, a few lines and tiny sags were visible. And that set me to wondering if the advent of hi def will have an effect on romance on the tube. I mean, here we have these aging but still beautiful women and handsome men filling the room with every pore magnified. How will that play with an American audience that demands perfection, either natural or artificial?

The future is unpredictable, but one thought popped into my mind. Hollywood's make-up artists may have to develop new ways of hiding blemishes from those umpteen million pixels that record with accurate detail everything withing range. That may be a tall order.

But, then again, if we begin to see these icons of physical perfection as ordinary mortals like us, perhaps our standards of beauty will become more realistic. Is that possible? Can we accept two average-looking people engaged in hot romantic scenes?

I look for digital enhancement rather than makeup as a solution. Romance demands illusion, and I am sure Hollywood stands ready to honor our desires.

What are your thoughts?

Western Romance Novels

If there's anything I like to read it's a good Western romance story. I used to like them set in the old West, but now, stories about the modern West are my preference. And no one is better at the latter than my favorite author, Jeannie Watt.

Jeannie has a new modern West novel slated for release in February 2009. It's titled A Cowboy's Redemption and already I like it. In the first place, the cover has a cowboy and a girl nuzzling and the two fit my imagined perfect partners to a tee. In my mind, the cowboy is me and the girl is the spitting image of the girl I have dreamed about for years.

And they're leaning on what looks like a beat-up old pickup truck. Men like pickups, so they'll be drawn to this book right away. And women like men who drive pickups. How's that for capturing an audience?

But that's the marketing department at Harlequin Superromance. What about the good stuff, like the plot and the characters? Secrecy is the name of the game in the publishing business. The plot of this book hasn't been revealed yet, but if Jeannie writes true to form, it's going to be filled with twists and turns with a surprise ending. She's good at keeping her readers' eyes glued to the page.

However, despite the secrecy, I've managed to dig up a hint of what's to come. The front cover of the book includes a single descriptive sentence: "He won't let her family ruin him... again." Already I'm interested and in my demented imagination, I'm trying to fill-in the blanks. But on reflection, I'll wait for the book to hit the book stores. Jeannie is very talented at surprusing her readers.

The book is available for pre-order from Amazon.com, as well as from a British outlet that I ran across by accident called Fantastic Fiction. I know that the Brits have always liked to read about the American West and they've been enthralled with the cowboy image of America in general. I'll bet Jeannie has a nice number of readers over there.

By the way, the main difference between Old West romances and Modern West romances is simple to figure out. If you've read some Old West romances, you'll notice right away that they didn't have sex in the old days. The cowboy kissed his horse and rode off into the sunset.

Doesn't work that way in 21st Century America. Men don't run around kissing pickup trucks and then burning rubber across a rolling prairie.

Okay, I've Read Cop on Loan

And also reviewed it on Amazon.com

This is a nice light mystery-romance and it would fit well on film or television, with the right actors, of course. As usual, Jeannie has just the right dialogue, and in Cop on Loan, she spiced up the story with a couple of pets with original names. I liked Ghengis Khat who belonged to Jasmine, the main female character. Originality at play here, and in her selection of a moniker to describe the Great Dane belonging to Tony, the male lead, she crafted Muttzilla.

In her choice of characters, Jeannie used the “opposites attract” equation. Jasmine Storm is an attractive librarian in small town in Washington state. Tony DeMonte is a jaded big-city cop from Seattle on loan to the local police department. Jasmine is the nice, neat personification of the stereotypical Miriam the Librarian whereas Tony is a scruffy Italian guy with curly black hair.

The two protagonists meet in a back alley behind the library as Jasmine and her boss sit in a car at night in an attempt to find out who has been breaking into the library. Tony and his partner are in the same alley on a stake-out to nab some drug dealers. The detectives mistake Jasmine and her boss for the dealers and confront them with guns drawn. The two are off to a rocky start.

Things don’t improve much when we learn that Jasmine has her own mystery to contend with. Someone has been entering her home for mysterious reasons and in the process, somehow letting out Genghis Khat. Jasmine becomes frightened and speaks to Tony about it. He’s your classic disbelieving cop, however, and doubts her story. But since he is about to be ejected from his own lodgings, he sees an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, rent Jasmine’s basement and alleviate her fears over her mysterious visitor.

Okay, no more from me. You’ll need to buy the book and read it for the unexpected resolution of both mysteries. You’ll be surprised at Jeannie’s original ending, not only her revelation of the identity(ies) of the culprit(s), but perhaps of more importance to readers of romances, the equally novel surprise ending to Jasmine’s and Tony’s love story.

Paul Newman, 1925-2008

Paul Newman is one of those actors we instinctively like. I use the present tense "is" because he made so many movies, one of them is bound to run on television in perpetuity.

I'm working from memory here, but I believe The Silver Chalice was his first big hit. Since then, his output has continued at a steady pace year after year.

We all have our personal favorite, but mine is Cool Hand Luke, followed closely by Hombre and then Hud. He filmed others with a one-word title beginning with "H" but I don't remember any of them. Maybe Harper was one. Hmmm,

I also liked Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Out of that one came the romantic Burt Bachrach song Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head, one of my favorites.

Paul is also well known for his variety of salad dressings, Newman's Own. My favorite is vinegar and olive oil. Just thinking about it makes me want a nice fresh salad.

Oh, and I think I'll dig through some old stuff. Somewhere around here, I have that "Raindrops" song.

Okay, keep on working in Heaven, Paul. The place could use sense of humor,

The Tender Years

Isn't that a line from a song in the movie Eddie and the Cruisers? Hmmm. I don't remember exactly. But it seems like a title that fits this post.

Do you remember your favorite songs and artists from your teen years?

Boy, I'm moving back in time here, and with the state of my memory these days, my "teens" will probably include more years than just the six between ages 12 and 20. But here goes anyway.

I think my first favorite romantic ballad was That's My Desire by Frankie Laine. I don't remember many of the lyrics anymore, but if push comes to shove, I have a vinyl with the song on it stashed somewhere in a dusty storeroom.

Then the Mills Brothers caught my attention with Till Then. Those guys were smooth, and listening to them on the radio as we drove around was about as good as it gets.

Somehow, things seemed to move rapidly after that and my head is filled with artists and songs that I haven't thought about in a long time, people like Johnny Ray, Buddy Clark, Don Cornell, Georgia Gibbs, and a host of others.

Those were romantic times, but they weren't the end of romantic music. In the fifties, we listened to songs like Love is a Many Splendored Thing, The Great Pretender, Only You, Kiss of Fire, My Special Angel, Band of Gold, holy smoke, I'm running out of brain power.

To be honest, I also found a good deal of romance in the music of the Beatles, even though they came along when I was a little older (not much, though, and not too old). I still love Yesterday, not to mention I Give You All My Love.

And who could forget Patsy Cline's Crazy and Walking After Midnight. Or Roy Orbison's classics, Pretty Woman and Lonely?

I could go on and on about my own "tender years," which as you can easily tell, have extended across a couple of decades and are still going strong.

But, hey, how about yawl? You have your own memories, right? Feel free to share them with everyone. We all love romantic music.

Okay, where's my Eddie and the Cruisers soundtrack?

Cop on Loan

That's an enigmatic title for a book, isn't it? But all will come clear when you read Jeannie Watt's latest superromance novel by that title.

You've heard me say this before, but Jeannie is one of my favorite writers and I eagerly look forward to her latest effort. I fully anticipate a top-flight read when the book is released in October 2008. I'm definitely getting my advance order in ASAP.

In the meantime, you can learn a little bit about the story from Jeannie's website and from an excerpt from the novel at eHarlequin.

Men (especially me) aren't good at summarizing the words of others. We tend to re-state in the male jargon, which sometimes alters an author's meaning. Suffice to say, then, that Cop On Loan is about a big city cop on loan to a small town police force for 30 days, where he meets a library technician under mysterious circumstances.

He rents her basement, another oddity that Jeannie makes clear later, and matters proceed from there. This is a Superromance novel which holds out the lure of a mystery, a slant sure to appeal to men. That's all I'm gonna say until I read the book.

Okey, dokey. Have a good read.

The Elements of Attraction

What are the characteristics of a male that females find attractive?

I'm a man but I have no idea. Occasionally, I'll get a hint when reading a novel. Authors seem very coy on the subject, probably because they don't want to reveal everything at one time. That's the way good authors work.

A few of the characteristics authors mention seem to me to be mere accidents of genetic chance, a green eye here, narrow hips there, long and muscular legs. And on more than one occasion, I've seen references to a man's "rippling muscles as he opened a jar of stubborn olives."

And then there are the sparkling white teeth against a light tan and a face of planes and angles.

All of this puzzles me because I've seen beautiful women hanging on the arms of men who deviate quite drastically from the standard. Henry Kissinger, Nixon's rather pudgy Secretary of State, is a prime example. He was often potographed with beautiful Hollywood stars hanging on his arm. He observed that power is an aphrodisiac.

My point is that women seem to be drawn to male characteristics other than physical appearance. Men are "hot" for different reasons.

That's about as far as I've gone in my research into attractiveness. I'll try to cover the characteristics of females that men find attractive. I have a hunch that physical appearance will overshadow intangible factors like kindness and consideration.

Okey, dokey. Feed me your ideas.