The Fanpires Aren't Going to Like This

January 21, 2009 | Comments (0) | by Governor X

Not long ago, in a fit on immeasurable boredom I made a decision I would regret: I borrowed my friend's copy of Twilight and decided to read it and report back to you, the Pomp Culture reader. How clever right? You see, being an adult male, I'm not the target audience. This would lead to an awesomely hilarious post. Right?

No. Instead, it lead to a week of torture as I labored through 500 pages of repetitive drivel about pretty vampires who glow in the sun (shit - spoiler alert!) and a klutz who constantly puts herself in danger (more spoilers - lolz!).

Not long ago, our own Daft Funk warned us about Twilight, but that was just the movie. The book had to be better right? Isn't the book always better?

Again, no. Reading Twilight was essentially waterboarding myself, asexual vampire style. That movie can't be more than 90 minutes. This book goes on and on and on.

Daft already went through the basic plot: mysterious girl moves from Phoenix to Forks, WA, meets attractive weirdo, finds out he's a vampire, falls in love, yada yada yada. Does she fall into any danger? Of course. Even this coma inducing author, Stephanie Meyer, can't fill up 500 pages with descriptions of how beautiful the vampires are, but there are three more books so you know she gets out OK.

Actually, as I look back now, the only two things I really took away from it is that Bella is a klutz and Edward is a good looking douche. That much is quite clear after a chapter or two, but the book keeps going. If Meyer cut out some of the unnecessary repetition of this information, the book could probably be cut down to about 400 pages. Even with 100 pages shaved off, descriptions of Edward's "cold skin" and minute by minute updates on his eye color would probably grow tiresome. Here's a test. Are you tired of me complaining about it yet? Yes? OK. There we go.

I finished this book a few days ago and hadn't given it another thought until now. My head hurts all over again. Why is this popular? What is wrong with kids nowadays? Back when I was a teenager, Anne Rice's hedonistic gay vampires were all the rage. Now we have asexual vampires who don't even drink human blood. George Carlin once complained about the pussification of American culture. He probably wasn't talking about irritatingly predictable vampire literature (literature is probably not the right word), but who knows...

The next book on the pile is The Road, by recluse and punctuation hater Cormac McCarthy. Some tell me its boring. Others say its terrible. Oprah raves about it. Why do I keep torturing myself for you people?

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