Yeah, and that one’s starting to grate. I wonder how long they’ll be able to continue in this vein — the boys want to get laid, the boys go to Vegas, etc.

And since when are men so squeamish about having sex during a woman’s period? It’s like the ’50s again.

Are you doing Entourage?

I remember one bad guy was described as “a Negro with freckles,” and much is made by the characters of how incredibly unusual that is — a Negro with freckles, can you imagine such a strange thing?

Of course, living in a place like the D, where even in the suburbs you see every imaginable shade of non-white skin most days of the week, I wonder how anyone could write that. But then, it was a different time. In my earliest N.D. books, which yes, I bought at garage sales, Nancy wears cloche hats in the illustrations. When were the first ones written? 1929?

Back when I was in school, we read a color-coded series of short pieces and excerpts from books, from someplace called Scientific Research Associates (SRA), which was followed by a quizz about the story (it was a reading comprehension tool). I recall that orange stories were OK, but the really cool ones were up in the blue and silver series. I would pay some money to get a collection of those stories again.

Our 9 year old reads anything Star Wars related he can get, and he was less than completely impressed with the newest, biggest, most whizz-bang Star Wars movie…!! Triggered an interesting discussion between he and I about books and movies, and how one’s imagination is able to convert a book into something more compelling than a big screen movie.

Folks with no imagination just don’t successfully ‘receive the signal’ that an interesting book transmits, or they cannot see the picture or the colors through the snow

Nance, I’ll strongly second your nomination of Kudrow in the talent department. Why she hasn’t done more, or been more successful is a mystery. Only she and David Schwimmer made “Friends” remotely watchable, for me, at least.

And most librarians today would rather see kids read anything, junk or not. Today’s is it junk issue series seems to be Captain – I think this is the word that is blocking my post, just think undies.

And the Nancy Drew’s weren’t so much written in half an hour as they were factory produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, also producers of the Hardy Boys, the Rover Boys, Honey Bunch, the Dana Girls, and many other classic series. Hired writers were provided with outlines, the company owned all rights. Lots on the web. Wish it had been there when I did my research paper on stratemeyer back in grad school.