For those of you not in the throes of trying to get your brilliant tome in front of readers’ eyeballs, here’s the basic setup: Writers want to write, so they do. Writers also want to be published, but more often than not, when dealing with traditional publishing (getting an agent, getting a publisher), they aren’t. Most writers—like, 99.999 percent of them (don’t ask me to source that number—I’m going on feel, here) end up on the scrap heap and their queries and sample pages shoved from the e-slush pile into the digital trash can or recycling bin. “Empty trash?” “Yes.” Munch. End of writing career.

But lo! A light in the darkness! E-publishing has arisen, and self-e-pubbing (I’ll call it SEP from now on, to save pixels) was not far behind. Where once self-publishers had to tussle with how many copies of their magnum opus to print…and where to store the leftovers that didn’t sell…or wrangling with print-on-demand businesses like Lulu, now they could upload their masterpieces and readers could download them instantly. No muss, no fuss, no paper—just rake in the profits. It’s a miracle, I tell ya.

And, as with all miracles, there are true believers and there are skeptics. Among my writer friends, there have evolved two camps: those who are faithful to what some might see as the pipe dream of traditional publishing, and those who have turned their back on the old-fashioned process and are wholeheartedly embracing SEP. Hallelujah. Let the debates begin.

Arguments for traditional publishing:

1) I want to see my name on a paper book on a best-seller table at Barnes & Noble. I can’t help it; I’ve dreamed of that all my life.

2) An agent will navigate the treacherous waters of publishing deals for me.

3) An editor at my publisher will help me polish my book so it’s the best it can be; I value that professional guidance.

4) I can avail myself of my publisher’s PR department’s expertise and connections; in other words, they’ll set up the book signings and all I’ll have to do is show up.

5) With a big-name publisher’s logo on the spine of my book, the sky’s the limit, and I’ll be the next (fill in the blank with your favorite bazillion-seller author here), and my only dilemma will be whether to get a Bugatti Veyron in blue or red—or get one of each.

Arguments for SEP:

1) I won’t ever be rejected by an agent or publisher again.

2) I can write whatever I want and nobody will try to make me alter my story from my original vision.

3) I will have complete control of my book—the cover art, the formatting, the promotions, the sales.

4) I get to keep most of the profits; I don’t have to share them with greedy agents and publishers.

5) With complete control, the sky’s the limit, and I’ll be the next (fill in the blank with your favorite bazillion-seller author here), and my only dilemma will be whether to get a Bugatti Veyron in blue or red—or get one of each.

Which side is right? Both. And neither. Of course.

Each approach to publishing has its benefits and its pitfalls, and while both sides would likely admit that if you held a marshmallow gun to their heads, each side is usually pretty adamant that their side is the correct one.

Me, I’m going the traditional route, querying agents at the moment. It hasn’t gone too badly yet. (Then again, I’ve only been at it two months. Check back with me at the end of the year and see if I’ve pulled all my hair out then.)

When I announced to my friends that I was going to try to land an agent, several of them begged me to reconsider and to do SEP instead. They had vile stories about publishers to share. Snakes, every last one of them, they said. Don’t do it, they said. Keep control of your own stuff, they said. You’ll be sorry, they said.

I listened, but I quietly went about my business of querying agents. Yeah, I’m a stubborn Italian. I don’t have anything against SEP, but my heart was with traditional publishing. Still, while I was researching the querying process, the topic of SEP kept sneaking into my Google search results, so I took a peek.

Omigosh, SEPworld was filled with wonderful sugarplum-and-gumdrop tales of creative freedom, simplicity, and profits. Oh, and fans. These SEPers had fans! People who eagerly read their latest book and clamored for more!

Dang, who wouldn’t want fans, right?

So even though I remained firmly in the traditional publishing camp, I couldn’t help but check it out a bit more.

First I came across an article about an author of thrillers who became a millionaire SEPer. Some dude who was on Lost or something—I dunno. (Kidding. I know he’s really a 17th century philosopher.) Well heck. Ka-ching.

But I needed to know about stuff closer to home—more modest successes, and perhaps in my genre (women’s fiction, chick lit—that sort of thing). So I downloaded Kindle for Mac and poked around Amazon a bit. I came across an E-Book That Shall Remain Nameless by An Author Who Shall Remain Nameless. The blurb sounded all right, the e-book had been downloaded tens of thousands of times, and the reviews—more than a hundred of them!—were downright impressive, most of them four or five stars. Plus there was a special pricing deal. So what the hell—I downloaded it.

And it is at this point I was plunged into the Dark Side of SEP.

This book was…how shall I put it…um…

Abominable. Horrendous. Catastrophically AWFUL.

I am not kidding—this was one of the worst things I have ever attempted to read in my entire life. The plot (such that it was), the characterizations, the flow, the writing in general—unbelievably bad. The dialogue…oh dear gods above, below, and all around, the dialogue…I cannot describe the agony of reading those stilted, wretched words. My brain still hates me.

When I was able to focus again, I immediately had a thousand questions. First, did this author have no critiquers, no beta readers? Who let this abomination get so far and called it “good”? Speaking of that, who in the heck gave this book four stars or—heaven forfend—five stars? It didn’t even rate one star, as far as I was concerned. And there were more than a hundred of these glowing reviews! Finally, who were these tens of thousands of people who downloaded the book? How did they feel about it? Did they like it, or did they reel in shock and horror at the mangling of the English language and try to wash their Kindles, crying, “Out, out, damned e-book!”?

And what of those glowing reviews? Were they bought? Were they made up out of whole cloth and attached to suspect e-mail addresses? Or, a less sinister option, were they votes of support by well-meaning friends and family? The skeptic in me started tut-tutting, and now I’m going to suspect all the online reviews of e-books.

Now, of course this one e-book is not indicative of all e-books. I realize that. But my e-book-reading experience got me thinking. Although e-publishing is coming into its own, and quickly, SEP still carries the taint of the vanity press. “Those who can, get a publisher. Those who can’t, self-publish.” That sort of thing. Unfair, I grant you, and bound to change in the future, but it’s there nonetheless. And the glut of really, really bad e-books cluttering up the field only reinforces that assumption.

Let’s go back to the traditional publishing cha-cha for a moment, this time with a poorly written manuscript in hand.

First, the query process: If a writer queries a hundred and fifty agents and gets rejected a hundred and fifty times, there might be a slim chance that, oh, I don’t know, the book sucks? Perhaps it’s not the author’s hard luck, but the author’s lack of talent that’s keeping the book from being a barn-burning best seller. Agents weed out the dross. Sometimes they do so a little too enthusiastically, as any agent who rejected J.K. Rowling or Kathryn Stockett might admit if you ply him or her with enough martinis, but by and large, they are a wise bunch, and they do their jobs well.

Okay, now let’s say the story isn’t half bad, but it needs to be cleaned up before its debut in print: Editors will not allow “angry hands” or let the hero pick up the heroine, then put her down by “dropping her feet onto the pavement” (plop plop, mind the blood?). They make sure plot holes are filled. They move misplaced modifiers and insert semicolons and remove incorrectly used apostrophes. They help the author tighten up some flabby bits that might put a reader to sleep. If an SEP author does not use an editing service, s/he will never know that a well-read person on the other end of the e-book is weeping silently over the repeated misspellings “focussed” and “loosing”.

So the biggest issue here, I think, is quality. As a professional writer, I can’t help but wonder if the poor quality of so many self-published e-books is going to drag down the standards for all published works. I’m also a professional editor, so I’m a very harsh critic. I have no tolerance for poorly written books. I want to reach into the screen and fix them, not celebrate them as a declaration of publishing independence. But other people who don’t do this for a living…they might think, “Oh, this is really good.” And they would be wrong. So, so wrong. I fear the slippery slope of plummeting quality.

What, too Chicken Little-ish? Perhaps. But look at the success of horribly written print books—that’s been going on for years, and publishers are complicit in that crime. With e-books, the quality is far worse, the books are way cheaper, and they’re easier to obtain (a quick download instead of actually going out and buying them or ordering them online and waiting for them to arrive in the mail).

Personally, I see it as a sign of the literary apocalypse.

However, I know that these things that keep me up nights won’t last forever. It’s the Wild West right now, but things will settle down. They always do. Professional services for editing, formatting, cover design, and even marketing will become more prevalent than they are now. E-pubbers will become more professional and more savvy. Eventually all the traditional publishers will be players in the e-pubbing field. The game will change again, and e-pubbers will be forced to improve their quality. At least I hope so.

In the meantime, maybe I should start offering my editing services. Goodness knows some of them need it…

There I was, surfing the intertubes, reading the oh-so-essential entertainment news o’ the day, when I came across a shocking little tidbit. Seems some guy by the name of George Clooney broke up with his girlfriend.

Freak that I am, I sat back and uttered the profound observation, “Huh.” And moved on. Apparently I didn’t get the memo that I’m supposed to react with joy and rapture and renewed hope in my heart, along with millions of other women the world over (and, allegedly, on other planets as well), because now Mr. Clooney is “back on the market.” Rejoice!

As far as I can tell, this particular distinguished individual is supposed to be the pinnacle of manly perfection or something. But see, as a freak of nature, I lack the Clooney Lust gene. I will acknowledge that he is physically…proportionate and symmetrical (those are the secrets of attractiveness, right?)…and yet I look upon the man the way I view a fine antique, with appreciation but detachment.

Oh wait. I shouldn’t have said “antique”. I would never want to imply that the gentleman is old, as I’m pretty much of the same generation, albeit a few years younger. In fact, the grey hair and crow’s feet/laugh lines should be a turn-on for me. And yet they aren’t. I couldn’t even join in with the women posting all over the Webz today variations of “I’m free—can I be next?” and “George—call me!”

Quelle horreur! I’m a monster!

Instead, I started to analyze this Clooney phenomenon. I had to wonder…why? What is it that makes women go crazy for this guy?

After mulling it over for a while—truly, longer than I wanted to, but I was fascinated by the whole frenzy—I have come to a conclusion…and it ain’t necessarily pretty.

On Mr. Clooney’s side we have the fact that he apparently is the modern-day equivalent of the fabled Prince Charming: Good looking—check. Suave—check. Dignified—as far as we can tell from this great distance, seems to be. Famous—obvs. Rich—no duh. Plus he has a castle (okay, some nice house in Italy, if you want to split hairs). Probably got a horse in there somewhere too. So…wow. He is The Ideal Guy, according to what we’ve been taught since our parents read us fairy tales when we were children.

But…is he nice? Is he gentle and kind? Is he intelligent? thoughtful? caring? compassionate? In other words, does he deserve this kind of devotion from millions of women who have never met him? Is there a good heart inside that bod that looks good in a tux? Who knows? Who cares? He looks good in a tux, so shut up. I get it.

Now, an analysis of the enraptured women. Aside from the draw of his looks, wealth, and fame, there’s something else that’s tugging on the estrogen reserves—something else entirely. It’s this: Mr. Clooney has said time and again (and again, and again) that he was married once many years ago, but the experience apparently scarred him for life, and he will never marry again.

So can we guess what that does to the wimmins, kiddies? Sure enough—it sparks the thrill of the chase, kickstarts that ol’ innate competitiveness. This is how women’s brains work (brace yourself): “Oh sure, he’s dated all sorts of gorgeous women 20 years younger than him, but he hasn’t met me yet—!” Yep, out there in the hinterlands, a woman (or two or 2,000) indulges in the fantasy that, like the princesses in those old fairy tales, she is The Only One with whom he can fall madly in love.

Sure, he had the breathtakingly perfect Elisabetta Canalis (come on, have you seen her in a bikini, yet eating fries? cripes! she’s bulletproof!) on the hook for two years, and he tossed her back. Not even she could keep him interested. But our One Special Woman who has yet to meet Prince George…well! She might not look like Elisabetta, but that’s the cool part. It may be that George has a secret cankle fetish. Or he comes over all aflutter when he meets a woman who’s a right pro at decoupage. Or perhaps an older woman with a long grey ponytail reminds him of his third-grade teacher he crushed on for years. Whatever it is…maybe our pining woman in the hinterlands has “it,” the one thing that will turn him into a helpless, devoted, lovesick puppy.

And then, once she has him captivated, her challenge will be to “tame” him. Ah yes, the old romance novel trope: the wild playboy who will only come to heel for one special woman. An absolutely irresistible challenge, that. The Warren Beatty thing.

I saw a lot of this when I was researching women’s fiction and romances while I was writing my own novel. I read a lot of love stories, from standard Harlequins to more literary tales, and I’ve gotta admit, there were way too many books that had Clooney-esque heroes—those aloof, dashing men, seemingly unobtainable (until the last chapter of the book, of course), but who roll over and become mushy romantics for the right woman, our heroine.

But that always bothered me. So many of these romantic heroes were a) cads, b) playboys, c) commitmentphobes, d) antisocial loners, or e) outright arseholes. Or all of the above rolled into one. And yet for the length of a novel, I was forced to buy into the notion that these jerks were the ideal romantic partners.

However, I’ve been around the block a few times, so I can say with certainty that these “challenges” really aren’t worth it. Antisocial loners? They’re annoying and selfish. Playboys and cads? Not to be trusted—and they don’t change their stripes. And (sorry, Prince George) attempting to corral commitmentphobes is like trying to scoop up mercury with your bare hands—physically impossible and toxic to boot.

It’s made me wish that the men who are held up as romantic ideals would be more along the lines of really nice, smart, funny, fun guys instead of “challenges.” Women shouldn’t have to think they have to work so hard at changing a person to earn love.

Still, I won’t damn Mr. Clooney. After all, I don’t know him, and, just like 99.9 percent of the rest of the women on this planet and elsewhere, I likely never will. Perhaps he really is a wonderful guy in addition to being good looking and rich. And maybe someday he will fall in love with a veterinarian from Montana or something. After all, he already dated a commoner, a waitress, once, and props to him for that one.

So, in the spirit of “hope springs eternal” and “every girl is a princess”…line forms outside the Lake Como mansion at dawn, ladies. Best of luck, have a good time, and no hair pulling.

There’s no other word for it, so I’m not even going to be coy. This is a rant, plain and simple.

This is a rant about fifteen of my hard-earned dollars blown all to hell, immolated on the altar of alleged “popular entertainment.” And this is a rant about the kind of crap that gets passed off as said “popular entertainment.”

More specifically, this is a rant about a horribly written book, a novel that has just been made into a movie. I can’t speak for the movie, which I haven’t seen yet, but I am going to rant about the book. Because it sucks.

Perhaps you’ve heard of it: Limitless, by Alan Glynn. The new movie stars Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, and Abbie Cornish. But as I said, my quibble isn’t about the movie. It’s about the book.

I picked up Limitless at my local Barnes and Noble last week. I went there with my son to get more books to read to him before bed. That meant perusing and purchasing some nice fat novels that he can’t quite read for himself yet. While I knew just what to get for him in the kids’ section, I had a harder time picking a novel for myself. I’ve been rereading old favorites instead of hunting down fresh meat because I’m just not sure what’s good.

But I had read a couple of reviews of Limitless (the movie, that is), and I liked the premise: an essentially lazy person, a writer, runs into his ex-wife’s brother, who offers him a drug so new it doesn’t have a name. He takes the pill and finds out that instead of giving him a destructive high, it opens up the previously closed-off pathways of his brain and he becomes efficient and creative.

That’s all I know so far, because I’m not even a quarter of the way through the book yet. But you can tell This Can’t End Well. Or, if it does, not before some serious chaos and panicked running about, as the main character has already encountered one dead body, and you can tell he’s going on that hit list sooner rather than later.

Sounds good, right? I thought so. But it’s not.

The writing is dry as dust, for one thing. But perhaps I should overlook that, as this is essentially a thriller, semi-sci-fi elements notwithstanding, and thrillers are not my thang. But that’s not what’s pissing me off. No, it’s something else entirely, and it’s so irritating that the writer/editor part of me started screaming in agony before I got to Chapter 3.

Maybe I could have avoided all this by not reading the author’s bio on the very first page, but I did. It told me very little (in its entirety, it says “Alan Glynn is a graduate of Trinity College, where he studied English literature. He is married with two children and lives in Dublin”), but that was all I needed to know.

Mr. Glynn is Irish. The main character in the story, Eddie Spinola, is an American who lives in New York City. Can anybody guess what kind of cultural whoopsie-whoppers can trip up an American reader? Here’s one:

When Eddie runs into his ex-brother-in-law, Vernon, on the street, in February, he and Veron chat for quite a while. On the street. In New York. In February.

Insanity.

New York City is weenie-shrinking sub-zero freezing in February, with icy winds barreling down those canyon-like streets so powerfully they suck the breath right out of your lungs. You don’t stand on the sidewalk and chat. Not in New York in February. If you do, your conversation would sound more or less like “whargarble mmff mmff,” because you’d have the lower two-thirds of your face jammed down into your scarf and turned-up coat collar the entire time.

But okay, maybe there was a brief thaw. It can happen. Even though that wasn’t mentioned, I’ll allow it. Except for one thing:

In the scene, Vernon is wearing a linen suit. Linen. In New York. In February. Is he committing suicide-by-hypothermia? Allegedly not, as he seems to be very interested in not dying, and yet there he is, acting all sorts of comfortable, in an open-weave outfit that shouldn’t see the light of day in the Northeast till July at the earliest.

Nitpicking, you say? Perhaps. But it’s these kinds of details that make or break a story’s believability, and I’m sorry, but I can’t get past things like that. Not to mention other jarring bits, like the fact that Eddie and Vernon smoke freely in a bar. Okay, maybe this story was set before the law banning smoking in public buildings in New York State.

But then there’s the scene where Eddie goes to the corner store to get Vernon some aspirin. I quote: “Vernon hadn’t said what brand he wanted, so I asked for a box of my own favorites, Extra-Strength Excedrin.” What’s wrong with this picture? Think about it a second. There’s no mention of the clerk’s reaction; Eddie just buys the painkillers and a newspaper and leaves. It’s easy to correct; let’s add what’s missing. How about turning this into dialogue? A little improv, if you will.

Eddie (in the corner store, to the clerk): Can I get some Extra-Strength Excedrin, please?

Clerk: Go fuck yourself.

[Scene.]

There you go. This is New York. Where, if you have eyes that work, you can see all the painkiller varieties on the shelf in front of you, not behind the counter. And, if you have hands that work, you have to get it your damned self.

Still too picky? Perhaps. But add in the British/Irish-isms, such as saying someone “had gone” instead of “left” or “walked away”, ending several sentences with “yeah?” instead of “you know?”, and trashed idioms—”in the shithouse” instead of “in the shit” and “chew over old times” instead of “chew the fat” or “reminisce about old times” (all this before page 63), and the editor in me blows a gasket.

And really, that’s my main complaint. Where was this guy’s editor? The book is published by Picador (Picador USA, based in New York City, no less!), an imprint of Macmillan. As part of the mega-publisher Macmillan, I’d assume they have good editors. However, no good editor worth his/her weight in commas should let this stuff fly. Heck, it’s an easy fix. This is an Irish author; place the story in Dublin. Or, if it absolutely has to take place in the U.S., make Eddie an Irish person living in Manhattan. But never, ever should an author try to get away with sounding like a native of another country if he doesn’t know his stuff well. (For the record, I have read that Mr. Glynn lived in New York for four years. That’s not long enough, apparently.)

But if the author insists, then it’s the editor’s responsibility to fix the errors. That’s what an editor does, fer cryin’ out loud! That’s the lion’s share of his/her job! And Picador can’t say that this book was rushed to print in the publisher’s excitement over discovering the next Wasteland or Crime and Punishment, either, because it was previously published under the name The Dark Fields, in 2001. In ten years, they couldn’t find time to clean this crap up?

I admit, this is the editor in me freaking out. Readers who don’t fix others’ writing for a living would never notice this stuff. All the same, I think it’s a sad commentary on the publishing industry, that a poorly written book can get printed (twice!) and be turned into a movie just because there’s lots of breathless running around and juicy bloody murders. (Well, at least the stilted narrative and error-filled dialogue might be corrected in the movie version. I hope, anyway.)

Alas, ’twas always thus, I realize. The publishing industry is as flawed as any other, I suppose.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I blew $15 on this garbage.

I should point out that I don’t wish any ill on Mr. Glynn. In fact, I congratulate him on his success and hope his agent negotiated him a fantastic deal for the movie rights. However, as a starving artist myself, I really wish I had my $15 back, because I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make it through the rest of this book.

I might have some recourse, though. When I went to the Picador Web site to get the link for this blog, I happened to notice that they have an e-mail address you can write to, specifically to report a defective book. Hmm…

Addendum: Behind-the-scenes video at the TG site includes the lads discussing Fusker’s passing in their usual ham-fisted way. Enjoy(?)

My last blog post (from last September—sorry about my negligence regarding keeping this blog timely) was about my ongoing struggle with my weight, and my last-ditch attempt to drop pounds using the HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) weight-loss program, Releana*. But I never reported back to let my devoted blog readers (all two of you) know whether it worked or not.

So…whaddya think, no news is bad news? Did she do it? Did she survive? Did she go bankrupt trying to pay for the thing? Did she lose weight only to gain it all back “and then some” and is now hiding in an ice cave in an undisclosed location somewhere in the Arctic Circle?

Okay, I won’t keep you in suspense. Ready? I…

LOST TWENTY POUNDS! Twenty friggin’ pounds!

Okay, confession time. That’s not exactly true.

I lost TWENTY-ONE.

Snerk.

Yep, HCG works. No question, no arguments, no “buts” of any kind…including my own, thank God. Not only did I indeed lose 21 lbs., I have kept it off, even three and a half months later, even with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the holiday visit from my brother and his family, which, as always, featured the consumption of lots of donuts and hamburgers.

Miracle? Um, that’s a loaded word, but I’d have to say…hell yes. Would I recommend it? In a heartbeat. In fact, I already have, to a number of friends.

Now…was it easy? Oh hell no. I won’t lie. It was absolute torture. Of course, the first two days were fantastic. Those are the “loading” days, when you are required to chow down on as many high-fat, high-sugar foods as you can force down your gullet in 48 hours, so there’s enough fat in your system to absorb the HCG.

You’d think that part would be fun, but that was painful in a different way; I had been doing a low-carb diet for so long that my body plain ol’ didn’t like eating as much food as I was supposed to. Let’s just say my hinky gall bladder wasn’t a fan. Still, over the course of one weekend I ate donuts, giant cookies with a pound of buttercream frosting, pizza, and Indian food. I especially intended to really enjoy my “last meal” on Sunday night—pasta, which I haven’t had in, like, forever. It was going to be fettucini alfredo, even. But I couldn’t manage it. I had comparatively lighter lobster ravioli instead, and even that caused me pain. And I couldn’t even think about eating dessert.

And then it was time to bid a fond farewell to…well, most food, really. No carbs, no oils, no starchy vegetables, no sugar, no… Wait. Let me talk about what I was allowed to eat; it’ll be far more brief.

Starting Monday morning, I put the drops of HCG under my tongue and held them there for the required several minutes. (This turned out to be a fun adventure every day, as my son always tried to converse with me right then. Coincidence? I think not.) I waited 10 minutes, then had breakfast. Er, “breakfast.” This was to consist of half a grapefruit (nixed—I’m not fond of grapefruit) OR one orange (also nixed—not fond of oranges either) OR one apple OR six strawberries.

Yes, you read that right. A whopping six strawberries. Know how long it takes to eat six strawberries? A nanosecond. Before I even knew I had hoovered them up, I was staring at six green stems and was thinking about eating them as well.

Oh yeah, and I could also have coffee (or tea). But no milk. And no sugar. Bleah. (My mantra: If it doesn’t taste like candy, it ain’t coffee.) I always use no-calorie Stevia instead of sugar, so at least it was sweet, but…bleah. I choked it down anyway, especially after I found out that it was a great appetite suppressant—or at least it helped me pretend there was something in my stomach.

Lunch and dinner (dinner started with more HCG drops) consisted of 3 1/2 oz. of protein with no fat—I rotated among chicken (3 1/2 oz. comes out to half a breast), shrimp (about six), and steak—plus 3 1/2 oz. of certain vegetables, like zucchini, cauliflower, salad greens, tomato, or cucumber. And no mixing allowed—one meat and one vegetable type at a time. So my “big” meals would consist of half a chicken breast and a smallish tomato, or a few slices of steak and a couple of cauliflower florets.

Because oil was forbidden (I couldn’t even use regular lotion—had to find the oil-free kind), food was cooked with a spritz of Pam and loaded up with salt and pepper or garam masala dry seasoning mix. I soon found out that 3 1/2 oz. of salad greens was a huge pile, so I looked forward to meals where I had scheduled that as my vegetable. But no salad dressing. Ugh. That made me feel like a cow grazing in a field, but then again, I pretty much was about the same size as a cow, so it was only fitting.

I also was allowed one snack of one of the types of fruit, precisely six hours after the first serving of fruit. It had to be a different type from what I had at breakfast, so I’d usually have the strawberries in the morning and an apple at 3 p.m. I counted the minutes till I could chow down on that apple.

So yeah, I won’t lie: It was agony. Especially the first week. Even though I had subsisted on a somewhat limited diet on a regular basis, the minute the calories were severely restricted, my body rebelled. I was lightheaded often, and freezing cold even in warm weather. I found out that I could increase the amount of protein I was eating (to a whopping 4 or 5 oz.) to offset the negative reaction, but I didn’t. I wanted to get the most out of this dietary boot camp.

And I certainly was motivated by what I saw happening on the scale. I started the diet carrying water from my “monthly,” but even so I dropped 2 lbs. And then, when I flushed the excess water, suddenly I was down even more. And then more. Before the first week was out, I had lost more than 10 lbs. As I was supposed to weigh myself first thing every day, I even found myself looking forward to getting up in the morning—and for me, that’s major.

You know that hackneyed old saying “the weight just fell off?” Well, it did. For a little longer than three weeks, I watched the scale like a hawk and my diet even closer. I didn’t cheat, and I was rewarded. By the second week, I was no longer lightheaded or cold. My body had adjusted, and my gall bladder also approved—for the first time in years, it wasn’t nattering at me that it couldn’t process what I was putting into my body.

I stopped the second phase of the diet a few pounds shy of my goal because I was plateauing. I was starting to retain water again for my next “monthly,” which was messing with my results. Plus my son’s birthday was coming up, and I wanted to have a cupcake at his party. I was okay with quitting four pounds early. Twenty-one pounds brought me down to 160 lbs. I hadn’t seen that number on my scale in a decade—in fact, not since I was watching the scale go up when my thyroid started running rampant.

I started the third phase of the diet—three weeks of no carbs (yeah, I cheated with that birthday cupcake), but I could have as much other food as I wanted, and I could even use oil and butter and salad dressing! It was glorious.

And, interestingly enough, even when the third phase was over and I could eat pretty much whatever I wanted, I wasn’t inclined to eat much at all. My doctor told me that the HCG program resets your hypothalamus, which controls your appetite. I guess it did, because I haven’t eaten this little, and still been satisfied, since I was a teenager.

I celebrated the completion of my diet with a trip to the mall, mainly because I had to get new clothing before I had a wardrobe malfunction. My XL shirts gapped and fell off my shoulders; my size 16 jeans ended up around my ankles if I moved a millimeter, my size 14 jeans drooped to my thighs, my pulled-out-of-the-mothballs size 12s bagged and I spent most of my time yanking them back up to their correct location.

I bought large tops (even a medium here and there) and size 10 jeans. Size 10! I hadn’t seen that number on the tag of my pants since…well, I can’t remember. Wait, yes I can: 1996. Again, before my thyroid went wackadoodle. This was friggin’ epic.

So. It’s done, 21 lbs. are history, and I survived. Now the big question I had to ask myself was if it was worth it. Did losing weight truly make me feel better about myself? Or was I still the same old schlubby me that I hated? Come on now, let’s be honest, was I still dissatisfied with my appearance, now focusing on my remaining flab (diets don’t tone you up, after all), or perhaps my slight facial wrinkles that are an inevitable part of middle age, or maybe my insanely curly hair (the ugly curl/fuzz, not the good stuff), which has never behaved once in my entire life (that’s a whole nuther blog post right there)?

I thought long and hard and tried to come up with an honest answer to this age-old question: Does weighing less really make you happier? Is it superficial, to enjoy fitting into smaller clothes, to have people compliment you, to catch the eye of a member of the opposite sex for the first time in a decade? Bitch, please. Yes it’s superficial, but I didn’t care; I felt damned good for the first time in years.

I’m not going to try to delve into the inner workings of the human psyche, to postulate why physical appearance is so all-fire important. All I know is that, for me, losing weight made a huge difference overall. I stand straighter, carry myself better, look people in the eye because I know they’re now less likely to curl their lip at my appearance. If losing weight was what it took to get me there, to affect the rest of my behavior, so be it. I’m fine with that.

So much so that I’m going to do another round of HCG in a couple of months, to get rid of the last 15 lbs. that are niggling at me. Too much? Not according to the National Institutes of Health Body-Mass Index. Even at 160 lbs., I’m still classified as overweight. But even if I weren’t, I know I liked myself even more when I was a wee bit smaller, so I’m going for it. By spring I hope to fit into single-digit-size pants. (I tried on a pair of 8s last week and even managed to zip ‘em up. Couldn’t breathe, but I zipped ‘em up!) And I hope to finally, finally be at peace with my appearance.

Six shrimp and a tomato? Looking forward to it. Okay, not really, but I am looking forward to the results. And the challenge. So bring it.

* Not a paid endorsement. Shows you how good it is, dunnit?

Just yesterday I went to the doctor for my periodic check on my thyroid, that little gland that has been known to misbehave on occasion (or, okay, my entire life). I wasn’t apprehensive or anything. My thyroid has become accustomed to walking sedately on its Armour-controlling leash, so I wasn’t expecting any health-related surprises. Plus I actually enjoy going to my doctor. She’s smart, she’s nice, she’s mellow. And she saved my life by knowing how to recognize hypothyroidism when she sees it and, you know, actually treating my illness. (The whole sordid, thyroid-run-amok story is here.) Bonus happy-inducing goodies: her office is painted in wonderfully soothing shades of pale green and lavender, she sells great high-quality supplements, and her staff members are all friendly and caring.

Best of all, being weighed is optional. Seriously. My doctor likes to check patients’ weight every once in a while, but not every time we set foot in her office. Bless her.

But I had been on a low-carb diet to control my body’s unpleasant relationship with gluten, lower my blood sugar, and lose some pounds, and I was curious as to how I was doing. So I said sure, I’ll be weighed.

Big mistake. Big. Like my ass, apparently.

I had been tracking my weight-loss progress for several months using my scale at home. It wasn’t the best scale, but it was accurate enough…I thought. According to that home scale, which shall now be known officially as The Liar, I had lost 12 lbs. and then gained back a couple. Then my weight loss stalled. Not great, but not awful. Every little bit counts, of course. It was something. I thought.

And then my doctor’s assistant announced brightly, “181!” (YES that’s me sharing my official weight. If you didn’t think we were friends before now, that little admission right there proves you are my BFF.)

When I came to, crawled to a chair, and reset my ankle, a casualty of my having fallen off the scale platform, I started wailing. “But that’s impossible! My home scale said I was 175!” (Yes, I’ve been so desperate to lose weight that even 175 looked good to me.) Ah, the five stages of grief. I believe that marks the first one—denial. Oh look, and here comes the second—anger. “That is so not fair! I’ve been sticking to my diet!” And now number three—bargaining: “Wait. What’s the date? Maybe I’m retaining water. It’s coming up on my time of the month. Can I come back after Aunt Flo’s gone?”

The fourth stage, depression, stayed with me as I moved to the exam room. Not even the pretty wallpaper border or the amusing novel I’d brought along could shake that. The fifth stage, acceptance, eluded me. In fact, I was having a hell of a time accepting how fat I really am. Even with the calibrated medical scale’s slider weights staring me in the face.

So when my doctor came in and cheerfully pointed out the great thyroid and vitamin D levels on my blood work, all I could do was complain about my weight. I told her how I had followed my usual low-carb diet to the letter (well, mostly—I will cop to having had ice cream a few times during the summer; I can’t lie to my blog-readers who most likely have read my entry about Friendly’s, after all). Goddess love my doctor, she never interrupts and accuses me of obscuring incriminating evidence like a twice-daily Snickers bar habit or anything (oh yes, other doctors have), and she didn’t now. She just looked at me serenely as I rambled on about how, okay, I don’t belong to a gym or anything, but I do do all of the housework and the yardwork—including mowing a ridiculously large lawn with a push mower, weeding incessantly as I seem to grow more weeds than plants, etc., and it’s just not fair…

When I paused for breath, she didn’t miss a beat, just said, “Well, there’s always HCG,” and handed me a pamphlet.

I grabbed it faster than Kate Winslet grabbed that piece of wood in the ice-laden waters of the Atlantic. My eyes bugging out as I stared hungrily at the name of the product, Releana, I muttered like a crazy woman, “Wait…I’ve heard of this. I’ve heard of this! Someone I know was talking about this a few months ago online. She lost a ton of weight. Does this really work? Does it?”

Ah who’m I kidding, asking if it worked. Billy Mays could have risen from the dead like a hyperactive zombie and lied to me through his large, infomercial-ready teeth that it would take 100 lbs. off my frame in a week, litter-train my cat, and paint the new steps on my house, and I’d believe it. I already believed it (except the litter-training part—nothing in this world will ever convince my cat to use a litter box).

My doctor said, “This will work, but the procedure and the eating plan are strict. And, well, it’s kind of expensive.”

“It’ll work?”

“It’ll work.”

“I’m in.”

In? Hell, I was practically licking the pamphlet. Expensive? That’s what charge cards are for. I was ready to enter the magic world of HCG treatments.

HCG stands for human chorionic gonadotrophin, a hormone that affects metabolism (something my body has no recollection of). A little bit of the liquid under the tongue twice a day (along with aherence to a no-fat, no-sugar diet) allegedly melts off the pounds, and for the most part they stay off when the diet is over with.

Sounds too good to be true? I’ll let you know. Because within minutes of my doctor mentioning the stuff, I was back in the foyer, burning a hole in that credit card in order to take home one of the tiniest bottles I’d ever seen.

Silly? I’ll be the judge of that. But you know, I have to say I didn’t really have a choice. No, nobody was holding a gun to my head and forcing me to take out that second mortgage on my house to pay for the stuff, except…except for my own judgmental self.

I have struggled with my weight all my life. I was normal as a small child, then my thyroid went wackadoodle when I was in elementary school and I became obese. As a teenager I swung the other way and went hyperthyroid and was underweight. Once again my weight was normal when I was a young adult, and then that damned thyroid went insane again when I was in my 30s, culminating in my current vomit-inducing weight of 181 pounds that The Liar had so effectively hidden from me.

Put a tent over it, and my abdomen can be used as a bounce house. My chin is a mere memory. I have collected my inheritance of swinging batwing arms from my dear departed grandmother. (Thanks loads, Grandma. You know, some grandparents leave their grandchildren money, precious jewelry…but noooo…)

Am I the largest of the large? Of course not. Is my health in danger? Not according to my blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol numbers. Am I so hideous I must cower in an underground lair and play tunes in a minor key on a massive pipe organ? Not even close. I don’t even make babies cry when I smile at them. And yet…and yet.

I remember when I could fit into clothes that were sized in the single digits. I remember when my thighs didn’t have their own zip code. I remember when I could look in the mirror and like what I see.

But I don’t now. I hate the way I look.

I hate myself.

Yes, I know. Health, family, beautiful son, personality, talent, blessings, blah blah blah. I know.

Doesn’t matter. Because as we have all been so very carefully taught, no woman is worth anything unless she weighs less than a bag of flour. After all, even “plus-size” models are only a size 10.

And I am weak. I admit that. I succumb to the peer pressure in modern media, all the while knowing it’s ridiculous. I should enjoy the fact that my hip circumference is like Christina Hendricks’ (Mad Men), but instead I wish I looked like the stick insects that haunt the Paris runways.

So yeah, I’m pissed as all get-out. And it is something up with which I will not put. And I am even willing to add to my family’s debt load to take care of it.

Now the question is, will I be satisfied once I lose the 25 lbs. my doctor and I set as my goal (a modest one, as, according to the BMI chart, I should lose twice that amount)? Do I truly believe I will finally find happiness in the numbers on a scale, in my promised leaner reflection?

You bet I do. How sad is that?

No, not for any particular reason…well, more like lots of reasons. All through my life, it was always…there…and never in a good way.

It started when I was little. Back then, there were a lot of good ice cream places around, from soft-serve custard at Don & Bob’s down at the lake (mmm…fishy smell from the lake, greasy smell from the grill—what amibence) to Carvel (mmm Fudgie the Whale) to Skippy the ice cream truck with the bell going ding-ding-ding—or, if the college kid slaving away behind the wheel of the non-air-conditioned, worn-out pickup truck with a giant silver refrigerator unit weighing down the back bed felt chipper, ding-a-ding-a-ding-ding-ding.

Friendly’s, however, had ice cream sundaes with gobs of hot fudge. Black raspberry ice cream—purrrrrrple!—and black cherry, with giant cherry halves jutting out of the pink stuff. And it was just up the road from me. But it might as well have been as far away as Iceland for the frequency of our visits—or lack thereof. My family just didn’t do dessert. Ever. (Yes, I was a sorely neglected child, but my parents thought they were doing me a favor. Or something.)

So one of my strongest memories of my childhood—I’d estimate it at my sixth year, I think—was when the parents of my bestest friend across the street, Jennifer, asked my parents if I could go with them to Friendly’s for an ice cream cone. I was over the moon. Ice cream! And the invitation was bordering on exotic, because it was so late on a summer evening—the sun was actually starting to go down! I should’ve already been in bed!

In my kid-brain it felt like we were going on a six-week safari, but it was only about a three-minute drive. I piled into the back seat with Jennifer and her little sister Kathy and was bashful in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall. That wasn’t hard, because Mr. Marshall always scared me silent. He had these Michael Keaton crazy-eyes, but without the mischief—just the crazy.

But I could cope with that, because we were going for ice cream! Come on, ‘struth—nothing can scare a kid away from the promise of ice cream, not even crazy-eyed neighbors!

Sure enough, the drive was uneventful, and we eagerly crowded into the small side room where they handed cones out the window. I asked for black raspberry. I remember Jennifer got vanilla and I thought she was unadventurous, although I never said anything out loud.

Not me—I had black raspberry! My favorite! It was so nummy and purrrrple and I stopped in the middle of the parking lot, halfway to the car, to take my first lick. I tentatively reached out my tongue and…

Plop. The entire kid-size scoop landed on the pavement.

I froze. I was stunned. I was left holding an empty wafer cone. Not one tiny bit of ice cream was left on it. I was even too shocked to cry.

Mrs. Marshall came running back to where I was and cooed about my bad luck. She comforted me, and I started to turn back to the window to get another cone. But instead she hustled me over to the car, where she pushed her half-finished ice-cream cone onto mine. With a twist of her wrist, she got half of what was left of her ice cream onto my cone.

I looked at it. Not only was it pre-licked, it was mint chocolate chip.

I hated mint chocolate chip. I still hate mint chocolate chip.

(Actually I’ve always hated mint anything. All my life I’ve had a hell of a time finding non-mint toothpaste and floss. The up side is that my aversion to the stuff has prevented me from falling into the abyss of a Girl Scout Cookie Thin Mint addiction. The lure of the wafer never affects me.)

And then I thought day-um (or the 6-year-old equivalent, whatever that was in 1972), how cheap can you get? A kiddie cone back then cost, what, 45 cents or something? They weren’t poor, but they couldn’t be bothered to get me another one? Heck, I’m sure my parents would have reimbursed them when we got home, if it came to that. Or they could have gone back to the window to complain that the server didn’t push the ice cream down onto the cone and now look—a melting puddle in the middle of the parking lot. That would’ve gotten me a free replacement.

But no. I had leftover, licked mint chocolate chip on my cone. I was a respectful child and would never dream of demanding more ice cream from my friend’s parents. So I choked it down and tried to smile at Mrs. Marshall. She was always nice, after all. Wasn’t her fault her crazy-eyed husband was a cheapskate.

And that was when I started to hate Friendly’s.

Okay, I realize that incident technically wasn’t Friendly’s fault (but I do place some blame with the lazy employee who didn’t secure the ice cream to the cone), and it shouldn’t make me hate them. But I can’t help it—that crisis happened at Friendly’s; they’re indelibly linked.

And that was just the start.

In coming years I was ambushed by their abomination of hamburgers served on toasted bread (what the hell? where’s the juice going to go, I ask you!), HoJo-copying clam strips (what the hell multiplied by a zillion), etc. Kids should not be subjected to such ugly menu surprises. That’ll get ya a lot of uneaten meals (“but nobody told me the hamburger was going to be on bread!”) and negotiations over whether said child “deserved” dessert—the only reason you’re there in the first place—after not eating substantial food first to absorb the sweet stuff and lessen the inevitable sugar-spazz.

In high school, Friendly’s was a place to go on a Friday night with my friends because the food was cheap, we had Nothing Else To Do, and none of us had boyfriends. Hence more resentment tied to the eatery (that had nothing to do with the eatery)—it just reminded us that we were, in essence, Catholic girls’ school losers. While other kids were whooping it up, sneaking into bars or whatever, we were trying to decide between a hot fudge sundae and a Fribble. Ugh.

By the time I grew up, Friendly’s was in serious decline. The one up the street from my childhood home descended to a level of questionable quality—the counters were always dirty and the waitstaff surly and shifty-eyed. I don’t think I set foot in a Friendly’s after 1983, and I’m sure that saved my life. Oh, I missed their black raspberry ice cream, but not enough to get nostalgic about it.

Then, a couple of decades ago, they started to close down, one by one, and nobody much seemed to mind—or even to notice. The last bastion of Friendly-ness in the area retreated to a spot in one of our local malls. Tucked away down the JCPenney wing, it never sees much business; the food court snags all the food-related traffic, as the shoppers actually forget there’s a sit-down restaurant anywhere in the mall. Strangely enough, many other sit-down restaurants have come and gone there, but Friendly’s still lurks in its little corner. I hardly ever see anybody in there. Makes me wonder if the mall owners have forgotten to collect their rent.

Anyway, that brings me to today. My son and I were at the mall, ostensibly to purchase a new backpack for the coming school year, but really just to suck up the air conditioning. It was approximately 572 degrees outside, with 4,000 percent humidity, for the 392nd day in a row, and I just couldn’t take it any longer. Kidlet didn’t want to leave his video games, so I bribed him with the promise of ice cream. That always works, of course. I know my kid.

But by the time we walked through the mall (strikeout at Sears for a Transformers backpack—had to schlep the entire length of the south-north corridor to get to JCPenney for another shot at it), kidlet was drooping, sorely in need of a sugar fix. So I bit the bullet. I sat him down on the bench outside of Friendly’s (empty, I noticed, but it was 3 p.m. on a weekday, after all) and made him an offer: hard ice cream right here, with whipped cream (his favorite), or back to the food court for soft-serve. He chose Friendly’s. I knew he would. I know how to sacrifice for my kid.

So we were seated in a recently redecorated vinyl booth (which was, I’ll admit, clean, albeit with a color scheme that would have been more at home back in the late ’80s or early ’90s) and looked at the ice cream menu, which was far more complicated than I remembered. One scoop, two scoops, the rudely named Happy Ending Sundae, the gargantuan one served in a metal cone that looked like it was wrenched off Madonna’s boob with “add your own” toppings…and the damned Fribble was still in existence.

I knew what my son would choose, and he did: the gargantuan sundae served in a Madonna boob. I patiently explained that that was three large scoops of ice cream and three toppings (he planned on crushed up Kit-Kats, chocolate chips, and sprinkles), and he wouldn’t make it past the second scoop before dropping into a neo-diabetic coma.

Always accommodating, he went for the smaller one—no Madonna boob, with two scoops, whipped cream, and two toppings (he chose Kit-Kats and sprinkles). And then, at the last minute, I asked for some back raspberry.

I don’t know what possessed me. I’m on a diet, first of all. Second, I was at Friendly’s—I hated Friendly’s. Had I forgotten? But I seemed to have been hypnotized by the familiar red and white logo on the menu. It was a Pavlovian response—when in Friendly’s, order black raspberry ice cream.

Kidlet fell on the gloppy sundae without ceremony and, with whipped cream at the corner of his mouth, announced quite definitively that it was the Best Ice Cream He’d Ever Had. Oh, he meant it. It was most likely the novelty of having a candy bar and ice cream—or, rather, a candy bar on ice cream—but he loved it all the same. He gobbled, he shoveled…and then he stopped abruptly. He didn’t get very far, but he was happy. Best Ever. Kidlet had spoken.

In the meantime, I tentatively took a spoonful of my black raspberry ice cream (in a dish—no way I was going to chance a Friendly’s cone after last time…38 years ago…but still!) And, I admit, I had to agree with my son. It really was good. Just as good as I’d remembered. Maybe better.

I was only going to have a little bit, but I ended up eating the whole thing. And I’m not sorry. And I’m glad that I could give Friendly’s a second chance, thanks to the kidlet. He embraced it eagerly, with no past resentment, no bad memories associated with it, no chip on his shoulder.

I’m sure he’d have accepted chips in his ice cream, though. Well, perhaps next time. I have a sneaking suspicion he’s going to want to go back. And I won’t mind.

1. Sleep deprivation can make parents insane. Count to 10 to avoid going postal on parents who brag about their all-night-sleepers.

2. Sift through grandparents’ advice for the good stuff. Nod and smile and ignore the rest.

3. It’s okay to let kids watch more than one hour of TV on rainy days.

4. If you can, walk your kids to their classrooms on their first day of school every year. It means a lot to them. But when they get old enough to beg you not to, comply.

5. An occasional donut is not poison (for kids or for you).

6. Feed small children before you go to a restaurant and/or bring snacks and small toys. Your server, and the other diners, will love you for it.

7. Introduce your kids to the books and movies you loved as a child. More often than not, they’ll love them too.

8. Answer kids’ questions as honestly as you can…even the ones about body parts. But don’t go overboard into “information overload” territory; adjust your answers to be age appropriate.

9. Ten bucks and ten minutes at Supercuts beats four hours in a chair (and lopsided bangs) at home.

10. Let kids cry sometimes; just hug them while they do. And don’t worry about the snot on your shoulder. It’ll wash out.

11. Teach kids to swim and ride a two-wheeler as soon as you think they’re ready. They’ll thank you later.

12. Let kids join organizations and clubs and take lessons in things that they’re interested in, but don’t force them to continue if they really don’t like it. Just ask them to tough it out for a set period of time first, to make sure.

13. Don’t expect the school to do everything for you. Tolerance and good manners are taught at home.

14. Help them with their homework.

15. When you’re wrong, admit it.

16. Get down on the floor and play.

17. Laugh with your kids, but never at them.

18. Take a day off from work to chaperone a field trip. You’ll be glad you did…and your child will be glad too.

19. Missing some social events to be home in time to put your children to bed is no great loss.

20. Don’t pass your fears on to your children. Smile bravely and let them “go for it,” whatever “it” may be.

21. If you overreact, especially if you lose your temper inappropriately, apologize.

22. That thing about little pitchers having big ears is true. Watch what you say around your kids, because they’re always listening, even when it looks like they’re not.

23. You don’t have to have a pool; sometimes a sprinkler is even more fun.

24. When your children are tiny, an outing to Target is the equivalent of going to Disney World…for them and for you. And in the coming years you will spend more time there than at any other store.

25. Have actual conversations with your kids. You know, like they’re real people. Because they are.

It’s not like I wanted to be; I didn’t have a choice. Thyroid problems run in the family (I found out way late in my life, after contracting the disease myself) and also runs rampant in my part of the country, although no one knows quite why.

See, that’s the problem: Nobody knows much about thyroid disease, not even endocrinologists, who are supposed to specialize in fighting this particular form of evil. Why is it so hard to understand the workings of the thyroid? Theories abound. Mainly it’s because the thyroid is pretty complex. Plus (getting cynical now), because thyroid disease affects mostly women, for decades—hell, racking up centuries now—it’s been dismissed as a “woman’s problem”…that is, when it’s recognized at all. Too frequently doctors see an overweight, miserable, distraught woman in their exam room and figure she’s looking for a “diet pill” so she can continue to eat 12 boxes of Ring-Dings every night. They tell her to get lost, clamp her mouth shut, and go get her fat ass to the gym.

I know. It happened to me.

You can read more about it at a fantastic Web site called DearThyroid.com. My article was published today, only one in a long line of personal accounts of thyroid disease (and thyroid cancer) that the Wonder Women at DearThyroid publish every day. They also post tons of articles that help thyroid sufferers cope with the myriad ways this terrible disease manifests.

The word needs to get out; there are too many women (and men) out there who might very well have thyroid problems and not even know it. So check it out. DearThyroid could help you or someone you love…before it’s too late.

Update 5/2/10: FYI, the DearThyroid site has been having some technical difficulties, and my link may not work. They hope to have everything restored by later in the week, fingers crossed, so please try to get to my piece later. Thanks!

Update 5/6/10: The DearThyroid site is back up and running and safe to visit. My letter has been reposted, so the links above are working fine. Go check it out!

As all three of my regular blog readers know (hi mom!—oh wait, my mom doesn’t have a computer)…as all two of my regular blog readers know, I have written about Top Gear fairly frequently, here and here. This is not a Top Gear blog—although, judging by all those entries, it sure looks like it—but if the TG wonks keep up this nonsense, it might turn into one.

What am I on about? Why, the recent news that the ill-fated American version of Top Gear, the concept of which has been kicked around for…what is it, years now?…has reared its ugly head again. Just yesterday it was announced all over the intertubes that the History Channel (what?) is going to pick up the show and air at least 10 episodes this fall.

All I have to say is…is TG staffed by raving lunatics? Is the BBC office filled with lead paint fumes? Who in the world needs an American version of Top Gear?

Damn, this thing is worse than a horror movie villain—you just can’t kill it. Not that we haven’t tried. We don’t want it to live, and we keep smacking it down, only to see it return again and again, as unwelcome as the unbathed, greasy-haired, sweaty guy launching himself into the middle of a crowded dance floor, rubbing up against all the normal people trying to enjoy themselves.

You’d think the Top Gear head honchos would have learned, what with their debacle known as Top Gear Australia. I’ve never seen it, but judging by the comments in TG fan forums, it’s the awkward shirt-tail relative with bad manners that nobody wants to acknowledge is part of the family. In fact, just recently, to give the show more cache, they crammed one of the TG Australia hosts onstage with Jeremy Clarkson and James May when the pair went Down Under with the Top Gear Live show. “Look!” they seemed to say. “This guy is a Top Gear host too!”

Riiiight. Nice try, thanks for playing, here’s your Rice-a-Roni. Now get out of the way and let the proper TG guys do their thing.

See, that’s the problem. And it’s something that the money-grubbers at the top of the franchise don’t understand. The Top Gear concept is not the star. An hour about cars and weird stunts is not the reason millions of people worldwide are crazy about the original TG, and merely recreating it with country-specific accents will not capture the lightning in the bottle that is the original TG. What they don’t understand is that millions of people worldwide don’t tune in to watch a show about cars; millions of people worldwide tune in to watch the three original eedjits do weird things with cars.

Got that? It’s not the cars. It’s not the accents. It’s the three eedjits.

Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond are Top Gear. It’s their chemistry, their dynamic, their intelligence severely compromised by their eccentricities, the illusion of their sheer…Britishness, for lack of a better word, smashed all to bits as they bicker with one another, crash their cars, and get all petulant about the oddest things. Yes, that “British propriety” thing is a stereotype—we all know that—but we still enjoy it when the mask of dignity is whisked off to reveal the massive amount of crazy behind it. In essence, just as we never tire of John Cleese’s silly walks, we never tire of Clarkson, May, and Hammond hitting things with hammers inappropriately, inexpertly “fixing up” their vehicles, and screaming with the perfect mix of euphoria, adrenalin, and terror as they roar around a track or down a winding road in a supercar that, let’s face it, they’d never be allowed to look at, let alone touch, if they hadn’t fallen into their jobs by some strange twists of fate.

Americans doing the same thing? Feh! Big deal. There’s no cleverness in that. There’s no hidden wackiness to be revealed, no mask of propriety to be stripped away. With Americans, what you see is what you get, so only doing more of that, except behind a wheel, is anticlimactic.

Oh—and stupid. Let’s not forget that.

Let us also not forget that for every All in the Family (Till Death Do Us Part), for every The Office, there has been a Coupling (ironically based on the British version of Friends). There has been a Payne (Fawlty Towers). There has been a Life on Mars, a Men Behaving Badly, a (shudder) Doctor Who, a Red Dwarf. Of course, I also hear they’re planning American travesties of Torchwood and Skins, so apparently the idiocy persists.

So let’s review: Recreating TV shows with the native accent of the target country does not guarantee success. Obviously. So how come the BBC suits, allegedly intelligent creatures, don’t get what we in the trenches know all too well?

Here’s an idea—maybe those allegedly intelligent BBC suits should spend more time giving us the original Top Gear in its proper format—uncut (eliminating the Cool Wall and the News segment in order to fit countless American commercials? bastards!) and closer to the original air date, not a year afterward, on a network besides BBC America, which most Americans don’t even get in their cable or satellite package?

Try that, TG wonks, and then get back to us. Just stop pandering to us with cut-rate versions of decent TV and expect us to lap it up. We’re not that desperate.

We have bittorrents, and we know how to use them.