Novel Review: The Thrill Club by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s hang out with The Thrill Club!

The who club?

The Thrill Club! They’re the group of high school students who are at the center of R.L. Stine’s 1994 novel, The Thrill Club. They get together at night and they read the scary stories that they’ve written. Perhaps the most macabre of all the writers is Talia, who always comes up with stories about people getting cornered by scary ghosts and ripped up into little pieces. The other members of The Thrill Club are a bit upset because Talia keeps using them as a characters in her gory horror stories. (Of course, what they don’t know is that Talia’s boyfriend, Seth, has secretly been writing Talia’s stories for her.) I’m not really sure why that would upset anyone, especially people who are supposed to be horror fans. Part of the fun of reading a scary story or watching a horror movie is imagining what you would do in that situation and why it would inevitably lead to your horrible death. Anyway, Shondel asks Talia not to use her name in any more scary stories. A few days later, Shondel is dead …. murdered …. and somebody’s responsible! (Yes, that is a line from Plan 9 From Outer Space.)

Who killed Shondel? Everyone in the Thrill Club suspects that it was Talia and isn’t that the way it always goes? You write a few stories about your friends being brutally murdered and then, once they are, who is automatically the number one suspect? Of course, it also doesn’t help that, on the night of Shondel’s murder, Talia comes to the Thrill Club meeting wearing a blood-stained sweatshirt. And then there’s the fact that someone claiming to be Talia called Shondel’s mother and confessed to the crime….

Oh my God! Could Talia be guilty!?

The mystery is eventually solved, of course, and it’s all pretty dumb. Anyone who remembers the episode of Saved By The Bell were Zach thought he had brainwashed the entire student body into wanting to take him to the school dance will automatically see The Thrill Club‘s twist coming from a mile away. That said, I enjoyed the book because I used to write short stories featuring my high school friends as well. Of course, in my case, everyone always ended up having fun at the mall or shoplifting makeup from Target. I enjoyed high school.

I was thrilled to also enjoy The Thrill Club.

Non-Fiction Review: Encyclopedia of the Strange by Daniel Cohen

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Many years ago, I found of a copy of this enjoyable little book at Recycled Books of Denton, Texas. I bought it, despite not being a believer in any of the things discussed in the book. I actually have a fairly large collection of books about the paranormal and it always amuses me when people assume that, just because I own them, that means that I believe in them as well. So, just to make clear, I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in vampires or werewolves. I don’t believe in UFOs. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. I believe in art, love, imagination, and dance.

Now, back to the book:

Just as the title suggests, The Encyclopedia of the Strange a collection of entries about things that most people would deem strange, like the occult and UFOs and secret societies and all of that good stuff. None of the analysis is particularly in-depth but the entries do provide a nice introduction and an overview to the topics that many would consider to be paranormal. Fortunately, the entries are written from a skeptical point of view. One gets the feeling that the author understood that the majority of this stuff was nonsense but he also understood that it’s always enjoyable to read about this stuff and let one’s imagination run loose.

The book is divided into sections, each dealing a with a different paranormal subject. My favorite section was the Strange People section, which featured entries on Pope Joan, The Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, Cagliostro, and Saint-Germain. For those who are not into “strange people,” there’s also entries on everything from the Great Pyramid to ancient astronauts to the curse of the Hope Diamond to Atlantis and the Kingdom of Prester John. It’s an enjoyable read and for the aspiring bauthor looking for inspiration, it’s potentially a valuable tool.

Despite the fact that the book was written in 1987, most of the information felt up-to-date. (It is obvious that Daniel Cohen wrote about the Illuminati long before the start of their current fame.) One good thing about ancient mysteries is that you don’t ever have to worry about them actually being solved. They serve as a Rorschach test of both one’s sense of humor and one’s gullibility. They can be whatever one wants them to be.

Book Review: The Sleepwalker by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 12, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the last R.L. Stine book that I read, I was really upset when a cat was killed in the service of the plot. In fact, I was so turned off that I pretty much just skimmed the book after the death of Mr. Jinx.

So, when I started reading 1991’s The Sleepwalker, I was understandably concerned with a black cat named Hazel made an appearance and started hissing at the main character. “Oh no,” I said, “not again!” Fortunately, Hazel not only survived the entire book but turned out to be a total badass! Hazel is exactly the type of cat that you want on your side. Not only will Hazel hiss at anyone who tries to go through your stuff but Hazel is also willing to use her claws if anyone gets out of line. Go, Hazel, go!

As for the rest of the story, Mayra is a teenager who is totally in love with Walker, who is this weird kid who is into magic. Unfortunately, Marya has a creepy ex-boyfriend named Link, who is also totally into magic. (Link, I should mention, has a sister named Stephanie who is — get this — totally into magic!) With Walker on vacation and Link acting all whiny, Marya gets a job working as a homecare assistant to old Mrs. Cottler. Mayra’s mom once worked for Mrs. Cottler and apparently, it’s good to keep these jobs in the family.

Mayra, however, soon comes to suspect that Mrs. Cottler is a witch! Afterall, Mrs. Cottler has a lot of strange occult-themed books and she also owns a black cat. (Yay, Hazel!) After one of Mrs. Cottler’s neighbors complains about her peach tree encroaching on his property, he suffers a broken hip. Soon, Mayra is having dreams about walking into the middle of a lake and, when she wakes up, she discovers that she has been sleepwalking! Could it be because Mrs. Cottler put a spell on her and is now trying to destroy her for some weird reason?

(Actually, considering that Mayra has dated two guys who are both into magic tricks and also how quickly Mayra jumps to the conclusion that Mrs. Cottler must be a witch, I think it’s far more probable that Mayra herself is using her interest in the paranormal as a way to deal with past trauma. I mean, it’s kind of remarkable that it never seems to occur to her that there might be a non-magic answer to all of her problems. I get the feeling that her belief in magic is her way of avoiding having to confront anything. That’s just my theory. For the record, I don’t believe in magic but I do enjoy reading about it.)

Anyway, even by Stine standards, this is a silly story. No one turns out to be who we originally believed them to be and it all links up to a mysterious death that occurred years before. This is one of those things where almost every issue in the book could have been resolved by people just not being stupid. But, and this is the most important thing …. HAZEL SURVIVES!

YAY HAZEL!

Book Review: Strange Crimes and Criminals by Carl Sifakis

Posted on October 12, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Are you familiar with the Astor Palace Riots?

In 1849, an English actor was selected to play MacBeth at New York’s Astor Place Opera House. Capt. Isiah Rynders, a politician who had built up a following by denouncing the rich as being wannabe Englishmen, claimed that an American actor should have been given the role and he led a protest outside the theater. When the play started, his followers pelted the stage with eggs and insults and the show had to be stopped. When another attempt was made to perform MacBeth a few days later, Rynders and his people returned. This time, the protest led to one of New York City’s biggest riots. At least 23 people died and over 130 were injured. The crowd attempted to hang the actor who played MacBeth but, fortunately, he was able to catch a train to Boston and then sailed back to England. This, of course, was not the only time that Shakespeare would be linked to violence in America. Abraham Lincoln would be assassinated by one of the country’s most popular Shakespearean actors, with some contemporaries alleging that John Wilkes Booth was inspired by Julius Caesar.

How about the 1857 police riots, which occurred when two different groups claimed the right to police New York City and spent so much time fighting amongst themselves that criminals were often allowed to go free in the confusion?

How about Kitty Ging, who was murdered by a man who claimed that another man had hypnotized him and ordered him to commit the crime?

Or the Lady Gophers, an all-female gang who developed a reputation for being tougher and more deadly than any of their male counterparts?

Or Carter Harrison, the most corrupt mayor in the history of Chicago? Everyone knew that Harrison was crooked but, when he was assassinated, the entire city mourned.

Speaking of Chicago, Chicago’s first official riot was in 1855, when the city ordered that saloons close on Sunday. It was called the Lager Beer Riot and it nearly destroyed the city.

Did you know about the attempt to abduct a school bus full of children and hold them for ransom? Did you know about Boston Corbett, the man who was celebrated for killing John Wilkes Booth but who then turned out to be a crazed religious fanatic who mysteriously vanished after performing a self-castration and then firing his pistols while standing in the gallery of the Kansas Legislature? Speaking of disappearances, whatever happened to Judge Crater?

Everyone knows about the Hatfield-McCoy feud but what about Texas’s far bloodier Horrell-Higgins Feud?

All of these crimes and many more are discussed in Strange Crimes and Criminals, which is an encyclopedia of the odd, the bizarre, and the illegal. Some of the entries are humorous. Some of them are disturbing. Some of them document man’s inhumanity to man. Some of them celebrate the spirit of people who refuse to let something like the law get in their way. It makes for interesting reading and, for the aspiring writer, it’s a treasure trove of inspiration.

It’s a strange world, isn’t it?

Novel Review: One Evil Summer by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 10, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s summer! That means that it’s time for the Conklin Family to take a vacation to the lovely resort town of Seahvaen. Unfortunately, Mr. Conklin and Mrs. Conklin are both bringing their work with them and oldest daughter Amanda is having to take summer school classes because she failed Algebra. (How do you go on a vacation and so summer school at the same time?) Despite the fact that I never had to do a day of summer school, I could still relate to Amanda because Algebra was always my worse subject. Fortunately, my sister kept all of her tests from the previous year so I was able to cheat my way to a passing grade. I still suck at Algebra and, as Case can tell you, I still throw a fit whenever I have to discuss anything that has to do with math but the important thing is that my summers were mine.

(To be honest, I probably could have done just fine if not for the “show your work” requirement, which always struck me as being fairly nonsensical. If I got the right answer, why did it matter how I got it? Usually, I do most of my work in my head and the notes that I jot down are usually written in such a way that only I can understand what they actually mean. That works just fine for me.)

Anyway, someone has to look after the youngest two Conklin kids during the day so Mrs. Conklin hires Chrissy, despite the fact that Chrissy has absolutely no references and is obviously batshit insane. Amanda keeps trying to get her parents to understand that Chrissy is crazy and planning on killing everyone but her parents are just like, “That’s what you get for failing Algebra.” Bleh!

The book has an intriguing premise and the first few chapters were so silly that I thought I was going to really enjoy One Evil Summer. But then all three of the Conklin family pets died, including a cat named Mr. Jinx and two parakeets that got their throats slit and ended up bleeding all over the place. That pretty much turned me off of the book, as it all just felt gratuitous and cheap. I pretty much lost all interest in the story when Mr. Jinx died and the death of the two parakeets pretty much guaranteed that I wouldn’t get that interest back any time soon. I did skim the rest of the book, just so I could be honest when I wrote this review. Chrissy turns out to be a witch with a secret! I figured out the secret pretty quickly.

To be honest, things get pretty silly towards the end of the book. It would actually have been enjoyably over-the-top if not for all the dead animals. But the death of Jinx and the birds just kind of made the rest of the book too depressing to really enjoy. To Stine’s credit, Amanda to get a new kitten and the kitten got a bit of revenge for its predecessor but still, the whole book just left a sour aftertaste.

Book Review: Encyclopedia of Urban Legends by Jan Harold Bruvard

Posted on October 10, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Don’t you just love that cover?

The cover is based on the urban legend about the driver who stops at a gas station. Usually, the driver is already nervous due to having heard a report about an escaped murderer or a missing mental patient. When a frantic stranger approaches the car, the driver panics and drives off. What the driver didn’t realize was that the stranger was trying to warn her that the killer was in the back seat of her car.

How about the one about the girl and the boy making out in the car when they hear a report that a killer with a hook for a hand is in the area? I’ve heard several variations of that one but the thing they all have in common is that they never end well for the couple. The underlying message, of course, is that the couple was punished for giving into temptation but, in all honesty, most people who hear the story are going to care more about the hook than the subtext.

It’s kind of like the story of the girl who thinks that a killer is trying to enter her dorm room so she locks the door, just to discover, in the safety of the morning hours, that the person pounding on the door was actually her now dead roommate. Aren’t you glad you didn’t answer the door? is written in blood on the outside of the door. That story gave me nightmares the first time that I heard it, even if memories of it didn’t exactly keep me from going out at night. Actually, being scared made me even more determined to go out. I wasn’t going to let an imaginary killer tell me what to do!

All of those stories and many more are included in Jan Harold Brunvand’s Encyclopedia of Urban Legends. Many of the urban legends included in here are frightening. A few of them are a little bit ridiculous, especially the ones that were obviously dreamt up as a way to scare kids straight in the 60s. (We’ve all heard about the stoned babysitter and the microwave, right?) Some of them are funny. Some of them are embarrassing. Some, I’ve actually heard repeated as fact by many different people. The book not only details various urban legends but it also has entries about the cultural and historical roots of those legends. (Satanic Panic, for instance, gets an entry all of its own.) It also takes a look at the urban legends of various nations, examining how several different cultures can adopt the same story and make it uniquely their own. Jan Harold Brunvand is one of the world’s leading authorities on folklore and urban legends. His encyclopedia is both entertaining to read and rather thought-provoking as it examines the roots of some of the oldest urban legends around. As well, in the introduction, he takes some time to write about how much he disliked the film Urban Legend. You have to respect that.

Encyclopedia of Urban Legends is a great reference book. It’s one of my favorites. For the aspiring horror writer, it’s treasure trove of research and inspiration. And did I mention how much I love the cover?

Horror Novel Review: The Secret Bedroom by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 5, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh my God, y’all, this one is so good.

First published in 1991, The Secret Bedroom tells the story of Lea. Lea’s family has just bought an abandoned house on — can you guess it? — FEAR STREET! And Lea has just started school at — again, you know what’s coming — SHADYSIDE HIGH! Not surprisingly, Lea is having a hard time fitting in at her new school. (To be honest, if I was a student at Shadyside, I would automatically be suspicious of any transfer students because, as far as Fear Street and Shadyside are concerned, they always seem to bring a lot of drama and murder with them. Seriously, hasn’t that school been through enough tragedy?) Lea’s problem is that she has a crush on Don but Don is dating the school’s most popular megabitch, Marci. Lea is already in trouble for accidentally spilling chili on Marci’s sweater. When Marci sees Don talking to Lea, she decides to make Lea’s life miserable. I swear, why is it the girls always end up fighting over the same boy rather than considering why the boy was flirting with another girl to begin with? Lea directs all of her anger at Marci and Marci directs her ire toward Lea but really they should just be mad at Don. Unfortunately, this book was written years before Spice Girls taught everyone the meaning of girl power so Marci just spends her time making trouble for Lea.

However, there might be a solution to Lea’s problems. In Lea’s new house, there’s a mysterious, boarded up bedroom. The room was boarded up because, long ago, someone was murdered in that very room! However, even though no one has been in the room for years, Lea keeps thinking that she hears strange sounds coming from behind the boarded up door. Despite having been told to say out of the room, Lea enters it anyway and she discovers that there is someone in the room!

That person is Catherine, who says that she’s the ghost of the girl who died in the room. She says she wants to be Lea’s friend. She also says that if Lea allows Catherine to enter her body for just a few moments, they can totally play a prank on Marci! Lea agrees. Needless to say, the prank goes terribly wrong and it turns out that Catherine wasn’t being totally honest either….

After being slightly disappointed with the previous two Stine books that I read, I really enjoyed The Secret Bedroom. This is Stine at his most demented (and, perhaps not surprisingly, it’s also one of the earlier book in the Fear Street series). Stine crafts a tale that includes ghosts, murder, mind control, false memories, peer pressure, jerky boyfriends, and gentrification. The twists are nonstop and they’re so entertainingly weird that it doesn’t matter that they don’t always make sense. In fact, the book plays out almost like a fever dream. Anyone who has even been accused of stealing someone’s boyfriend will appreciate Lea’s growing paranoia about Marci. Anyone who has ever heard a strange sound in the middle of the night will relate to Lea’s fascination with the boarded up room. And, for those of you who love continuity, Wrong Number‘s Deena shows up at Lea’s best friend! This book is an enjoyable trip to Fear Street.

Horror Novel Review: Bad Dreams by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1994, Bad Dreams is yet another R.L. Stine YA novel about life on Fear Street.

This time, it’s Maggie and her younger sister Andrea who have moved into a new house on Fear Street. Maggie and Andrea are rivals about almost everything. They’re both super competitive swimmers who are fighting for the right to represent their high school at the State Championship. They both like Justin, who is typical boring R.L. Stine boyfriend. They ever argue over who should get the ornate bed in Maggie’s new bedroom. Because Maggie agreed to let Andrea have the bigger room, Maggie gets to keep the bed.

I don’t know, Maggie. You might want to rethink that.

It turns out that the last owner of the bed was actually stabbed to death while laying on top of it. Soon, Maggie is having disturbing dreams where she sees the murder happening. Is Maggie being contacted from beyond the grave or are her dreams warning her that she’s about to become the next victim? And what about all the strange noises coming from the attic?

Soon, Maggie is struggling when it comes to school and swimming because she’s just not getting enough sleep! (This book made me happy that I’ve never needed more than 3 hours of sleep to function.) However, the other two girls who are competing against Maggie and Andrea for a chance to go to State each falls victim to a bizarre accident! Someone is taking out the competition! Is it the ghost? Is it Andrea? Could it even be Maggie herself!?

Will Maggie be able to solve the mystery? Will she eventually get a good night’s sleep and fulfil the promise of having sweet dreams? Will she and Andrea ever be able to put aside their sibling rivalry? And who will go to State!?

And, perhaps most importantly, does anyone really care?

As far as the plot is concerned, Bad Dreams is an example of R.L. Stine on autopilot. All of the questions are eventually answered but the answers seem to come out of nowhere and it’s hard to escape the feeling that Stine pretty much just kept writing until he reached the minimum word requirement and then he decided to quickly wrap things up without really worrying about whether or not he had provided enough clues to keep the reader from feeling as if she had been denied a fair chance to solve the mystery on her own. That said, the first of Maggie’s dreams was nicely creepy and the constant arguing between Maggie and Andrea was kind of entertaining. I’ve got three older sisters so I imagine that every single one of them could probably have related to Maggie at some point while we were all growing up. (It also helped that Andrea and Maggie had red hair, just like me!) Plus, all of the drama around the swim team reminded me of the later episodes of Saved By The Bell: The New Class, in which it suddenly turned out that everyone at Bayside was obsessed with the swim team. Today, books like this are best used for nostalgia and that’s what I definitely felt while reading Bad Dreams.

Book Review: The I-5 Killer by Ann Rule

Posted on October 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, I reviewed The Serial Killer Letters, a book that is largely made up of letters written by serial killers. As I mentioned in my review, I was particularly disturbed by the many letters that were written by Randall Woodfield, a former football player who is currently serving a life sentence for one murder but who has been linked to 44 others.

What was it that so disturbed me about Woodfield’s letters, beyond the fact that they were the words of a man who targeted women who physically resembled me? Some of it was the fact that Woodfield took a flirtatious tone in his letters, presenting himself as being just a charming but hapless guy who ended up suffering from a bit of bad luck. The fact that he included shirtless pictures of himself with his letters was undeniably icky. There was also the fact that, despite having been linked to several murders by DNA and a lot of other evidence, Woodfield continued to adamantly claim that he had been set up and railroaded and basically misrepresented by everyone who had ever written or spoken about his case. In fact, Woodfield was so adamant that, when first reading his words, it was tempting to question why someone who has been serving a life sentence since 1981 and who has no hope of ever getting out would not just go ahead and confess. Even the author of The Serial Killer Letters admitted to initially feeling conflicted about Woodfield and his claims of innocence. However, in order to believe Woodfield’s story, you would have to believe that cops in several different jurisdictions all decided to independently conspire against one person. Considering that his DNA has been linked to several cold cases, you’d have to accept that the DNA evidence was planted at a time when most people weren’t even sure what DNA was. You would have to ignore all of the other evidence against Woodfield. You would also have to explain away the fact that three of Woodfield’s suspect victims were acquaintances of his and that all three of them died around the same time and in similarly violent circumstances. One could accept that a gigantic conspiracy was formed to put Randy Woodfield in prison. Or one can accept that Randy Woodfield is guilty.

In Woodfield’s letters, he spent a good deal of time ranting about the true crime writer Ann Rule. In 1984, Rule wrote a book about Woodfield’s crimes, The I-5 Killer. In fact, Woodfield devoted so much space to accusing Rule of being a part of a conspiracy against him that I felt the need to read The I-5 Killer to see what Rule had to say. It’s pretty much a standard true crime book, one that gives the sordid details of Woodfield’s crimes while also detailing the investigation that led to Woodfield’s arrest. The book delves into Woodfield’s background, revealing him to have been a popular high school athlete who, even at the age of 14, had a disturbing compulsion to expose himself to complete strangers. Woodfield drifted after high school but he was a good enough football player to be drafted by the Packers. Unfortunately, even while at training camp, Woodfield couldn’t stop exposing himself to strangers. The Packers decided they didn’t need him on their team and Woodfield instead became a thief, a rapist, and a murderer. At the same time, he also worked as a bartender and always had a new girlfriend who was willing to help finance his lifestyle. The book is full of quotes about how charismatic Woodfield could be while tending bar. However, there’s also a lot of quotes concerning the fact that even Woodfield’s friends and defenders thought he was an idiot.

The book details Woodfield’s crimes and the efforts of one of the survivors of his rampage to not only recover from being shot but also to find the courage to come face-to-face with Woodfield in court. It makes for disturbing reading but the book should also be praised for revealing that Randy Woodfield was not a Hannibal Lector or a Dexter Morgan or any of the other charming, fictional murderers who tend to turn up in the movies or on television. Randy Woodfield was a loser, through and through. His motives were not complex and his methods were not clever. He was an idiot. One can understand why Woodfield hates Rule’s book but the book itself provides an invaluable service. After you read enough true crime books, you come to realize that most murderers are, for the most part, very dull people.

The edition that I read included an update on Woodfield in prison. It mentioned that Woodfield had become a prolific letter writing and that he always made sure to send everyone a shirtless picture of himself before asking them for money.

Horror Book Review: Wrong Number 2 by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The cover of Wrong Number 2 features two teenage girls huddled around a telephone and a blurb that reads, “Call waiting …. to kill!”

What does that even mean? “Call waiting …. to kill.” That would seem to suggest that there’s a person named Call in this book who is waiting to kill someone. I’ve read the book. There’s no one named Call. Alternatively, it could mean that we’ve got a Ring situation on our hands and actually answering the phone will lead to some sort of supernatural death curse. In that case, the call itself would be waiting to kill. But again, I’ve read the book. There’s nothing supernatural about it.

“Call waiting …. to kill?” It means nothing but let’s just be honest here. It’s kind of charming in its meaninglessness. It’s an R.L. Stine book, so it seems appropriate. You can’t expect these thing to make any sort of logical sense.

Wrong Number 2 is a sequel to Stine’s The Wrong Number. One year has passed since Deena and her friend Jade were nearly killed by the chainsaw-wielding Mr. Faberson. They’ve both managed to recover nicely from almost being killed. Deena is now dating an Australian exchange student. Jade is dating the star of the school’s basketball team. Deena’s half-brother Chuck (who is also Jade’s ex-boyfriend) is off at college but, unknown to the rest of his family, he’s planning on abandoning school so that he can move to Los Angeles and become a big time movie star. Everything seems to be just fine …. until Deena and Jade start getting mysterious phone calls from a man who says that he’s going to get revenge on them.

Could it be Mr. Faberson? He’s still in prison but apparently, he’s due to soon be released. Could it be Mr. Faberson’s former mistress, a real estate agent who is trying to fiind a buyer willing to overlook the fact that a murder that occurred there and buy Mr. Faberson’s old house? Or could it even be Chuck, who shows up in town and appears to be desperate to convince Jade to dump boring old Teddy and run away to California with him?

Reading the book, it was hard to avoid the feeling that Stine himself wasn’t really sure who he wanted the villain to be. Towards the end of the book, there are three different scenes that, taken on their own, could have served as an ending for Wrong Number 2. It’s as if Stine just kept tacking on possible endings and solutions until he finally found one that he felt worked. The end result is a book that feels somewhat slapdash, even by the lenient standards of R.L. Stine. If I had survived being attacked by chainsaw-wielding maniac and was now getting calls from someone claiming they were going to do the same thing to me again, I would perhaps be a bit more upset than either Deena or Jade seems to get. At the very least, I would consider changing my number or maybe moving to a different town. Not Deena and Jade, though. And hey, good for them. If nothing else, this incredibly silly book suggests that there’s not a single trauma that can’t be conquered by dating a basketball player. The cast of Hang Time would agree, I’m sure.