Archived comment by Arlene:
to boB: thanks, that's it exactly.

Archived comment by boB:
Arlene, are you thinking of _Dragnet_? That had Dan Aykroyd in it. I remember "pagans" and possibly a sacrifice involved. Perhaps someone who's seen it more recently than I can fill in my foggy memories...

Archived comment by seleta:
Joe and the Volcano

Archived comment by Arlene:
re: Harlequin romances
2 items
1) they finally got a clue & opened a couple lines of books that aren't so formulaic. Still goes by formula but not as blindingly obvious ones.
2) A friend of mine was trying to get published as a fantasy writer & got a baaaad case of writer's block. Tried reading every good author she could lay her hands on (Tolkien, McCaffrey, et al). That didn't help. So she read a couple Harlequins, said, "That's schlock, I could write better than that" & it broke her writer's block. She sold them a couple stories actually. Made some decent money that way.

Archived comment by Arlene:
Montygirl, wasn't that (deleting the volcano) a movie with 2 of the guys from GhostBusters? The one where they kept calling her "The virgin Janet Doe". (I can't remember their names & I can't remember the names of the roles, *sigh*)

Archived comment by umrguy:
"Every time we kiss, Hot Lava!" -- Chef

Don't forget to "duck and cover"! ;o)

(just for all those South Park fanatics out there)

Archived comment by umrguy:
Hey, seleta, can I pose for the cover? Fabio, move over!

Archived comment by seleta:
cover art: guy with pasty white chest, gleaming from reflection of sun off huge gold chain...only holding onto the girl with one hand because he has to hold his pants up with the other...the edge of her dress is in flames and they are being overtaken by hot flowing lava, but, being resourceful, she is spraying the keg at the fire...oh, and her bodice is ripped :-)

Archived comment by CAM2:
So if we feed pasty white virgin American guys who climb in windows and pretend to be Irish, sorority girls in gowns at a frat party, a subplot of an exploding volcano and a rap music score into Admin's pulp-romance program, the resulting story would be . . .

Archived comment by Billybob (re Mat):
The only thing worse than a bunch of pasty
white Irish guys singing rap is a bunch of
pasty white American guys ,passing
themselves off as Irish guys ,singing rap.

Archived comment by IP Admin:
Montygirl, for a few years now I've toyed with writing a computer program and seeing if IT could get a job at Harlequin. (For those of you who are confused as to why we're talking about clowns, Harlequin is a publisher of cheesy pink paperback romance novels in the US. Apparently the UK equivalent is Mills and Boon.)
Anyway, the stories seem so formulaic to me that I suspect they could be computer generated. Input a few variables like whether it's an evil duke or an evil baron who wants our heroine's hand in marriage, whether our hero is a prince or a pirate in disguise, where the castle is, what color her dress is during the bodice ripping scene, and presto, a story.
Someone has beaten me to it, at
http://www.familygames.com/features/humor/romance.html
But I still say that a more sophisticated version could write something that would actually make it to the shelves.

Archived comment by Mike:
And Matt: a party's just not a party without a live rendition of "Jump Around." This guy's frat is STYLIN'!

Archived comment by Mike:
I don't know... your idea sounds a little too labor-intensive for me. Wait for a sacrifice and then fight off hordes of pagans? Why not just get her drunk? Much easier, I would think.

Archived comment by Montygirl:
Mike, you really believe they're still virgins?

Here's an idea for the guy to get the girl: Rescue her from the pagans about to offer her a s a sacrafice. Then, its almost a lock she'll *give* her virginity to you for saving her from the cauldron of lava-like goop in that volcano on the roof!

;) Just one girl's opinion. Think I could get a job at Harlequin?

Archived comment by Mike:
Volcano on the roof? Fraternities at my school prefer to sacrifice virgins the traditional way.

Archived comment by Matt:
Alpha Omicron Pi (alternately, "Animals On Parade" [I didn't make it up]) is a sorority, and isn't allowed to have parties. Unless she's talking about date parties which, by their very nature, are invitation only. No date, no go. The two kinds of parties aren't even close. You'll never see a sorority chick in a cocktail dress at a frat party; there's just too much chance she'll get beer spilled on it.
And since when are a bunch of pasty-white Irish guys considered rap?

Archived comment by Noel:
Hey, it isn't a party unless you have natural disasters on the roof and rap groups crawling out of the woodwork.