"You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth" Review Extravaganza Bonanza-Palooza

It’s time for another PCPPP book review! As many will recall, a while back we did a review of the book “I Just Want to Pee Alone” which contained a plethora of essays written by women bloggers, about finding the humor in being a mother. Naturally they called on us to do a review.  This time around we’re reviewing “You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth” which is described as

“...39 (mostly) true tales by women, for women, about being women.”

Again, a perfect fit for us. Of course we are assuming that they are trying to break into the macho chainsaw-mechanic type demographic that we are so often associated with. Or more likely… due to our slightly androgynous names they think we are two women. Either way we are super stoked to review the book!*

To the Amazon!

Our friend Meredith over at Mom of the Year was nice enough to send us a copy for review and once we got it we immediately tore into it. Now we know what you are thinking: “You two macho guys with incredible fashion sense only review books that people ask you to review.” This is not true. We did recently do a review of The Bible and despite all the rumors that are out there, God did not ask us to review it**.

Anyways let’s get to the reviewing...

Christian: First off, I just assumed there would be a lot of pillow fighting ending in kissing in this book but unfortunately not only was there very little of that there was none.

However the very first chapter was about breasts and I was like SOLD!!! Five stars! Let’s wrap this review up!

Pat: Yeah...sorry Christian. No cute pillow fights in this one, but you’re spot on with the breast talk! And lots of vaginas too, just like in the last book. Which is funny. Because I thought it was just us guys who liked to talk about our junk. I didn’t know that women talked about their junk too. Wait. Not that I think it’s junk. I think it’s beautiful. Beautiful junk. Wait. Vaginas...not junk.  

Wait.

I liked the book. There. Can we be done? I’m doing that thing again where I’m saying things that I’m going to have to apologize for later.

Christian: The last book we reviewed? The Bible? I don’t remember there being a lot of vaginas in it. Wait are you talking about the parting of the Red Sea?

Pat:  No. But I think you’re onto something. Moses and the Red Sea, AND every Georgia O’Keefe painting I’ve ever seen do a LOT to remind me of vaginas.

I’m talking about a lot of the stories in the book. Consider the premise. “You have lipstick on your teeth” is apparently something women say to each other in the “powder” room. And, apparently, after they say that, they then talk about their breasts and vaginas.

Turns out there’s a WORLD of vaginal breast talk going on behind closed doors in powder rooms. How do we get into one of those?

Christian: I have no idea but I bet Moses knew how. That guy was a traveler.

Pat:  Speaking of travellers, I’d like to jump right into some of my favorite quotations from the book. Number one goes to Kim Bongiorno (from Let Me Start By Saying) for making me think of travelers--clowns in particular-- when she described her “honey pot” in the following manner:  

“We don’t have uteruses. We have really wet clown cars.”

Revolting, terrifying...and weirdly sexy all in one sentence. Well played, Kim.

True dat.

Christian: Is that in Revelations?

Pat: Dammit Christian we’re not talking about the Bible anymore. Duh! We’re talking about the lipstick book.

Christian: Oh. Okay gotcha. Another cool aspect of the book (the lipstick book, not the Bible) is that despite the fact that I am a very manly man-dude, I still found it relatable. For example who can’t relate to Allison Hart’s (from Motherhood, WTF?) story of having the CEO of your company walk in on you in the bathroom as you use a tampon to floss out a piece of your very own business card from your own teeth. I mean I can’t. But it makes for a great story.

Pat:  Oh. I can.

Christian:  That’s unfortunate.

Pat:  Yeah. Well, maybe not. Whatever.  

Know what else is unfortunate? Imagine having a conversation with your grandma about playing with yourself. If I understood her story correctly, that is EXACTLY what Angela Shelton (from Angela Shelton) experienced. Consider:

“Well get into the shower with a soapy washcloth and take care of it then.”

“It”, it turns out, is the need to feel satisfied. And the soapy washcloth? That’s the...thing doing the satisfying (penis? hand? handsome cucumber?).

And the speaker? GRANDMA!!!!

THAT’S unfortunate.

Christian: Are you sure? Maybe you're just interpreting it sexually. It could have just been that there was a really tough spot of grime that was achingly hard in between some moist tiles, just begging to be cleansed?

Pat:  Hey man. I’m not one to judge what you and your wife consider “dirty talk”, so...yeah. It could have been that. Sure.

Christian: Our bathroom is very clean.

Pat: And speaking of masturbation, I kinda’ dug Dawn Weber’s (from Lighten Up) story about downloadable apps devoted to full utilization of the “vibrate” ring tone phones so intimately offer. Never knew a device could love you so much!

Christian: That poor phone. They should have added an 11th commandment that said “Thou shalt not seek pleasure from thy telephone devices.” Of course that would have made no sense back then since they hadn’t invented pleasure yet.

So did you only pay attention to the ones about sexual masturbation and vaginal breast talk?

Pat:  Yep. Pretty much. And...I think there were other stories--stories about sisterhood and friendship and commiseration and hardship and bonds and history--but they didn’t stand out to me as profoundly as the stories about boobs and vaginas. I don’t know...maybe they didn’t use enough adjectives.

Christian: And there was that one about how no part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without permission..

Pat:  Oh..no...that was just the copyright. They have those in every book. I don’t think they mean anything.

Christian: Well, I found it riveting.

Pat: So...BIG thanks go to Meredith at Mom of the Year for hooking us up with this fantastic piece of vaginal literature. If we convinced you to look into this book (psst!  clown-car vaginas! what more do you need?!), look for it in hardback, at the Library of Congress, and at places like Amazon...and it’s also available as an e-book.

(Christian, what’s an ‘e-book’?)

Christian: I think it involves electricity and stems from that story in The Bible where Ben Franklin brought light to the last supper with his magical kites. Which by the way is another example of a story from The Bible that makes no mention of vaginas.

If God is serious about making this writing thing a career he needs to take a lesson from these lipstick women and throw in a vagina here and there.

*’Cause it’s the second free thing we’ve ever gotten!!! How cool is that?! Pretty damn cool!

** Or DID he?

"The Bible" Review Extravaganza Bonanza-Palooza

A little while ago we did a review of the book “I Just Want to Pee Alone” which turned out to be one of our most popular posts to date. So we thought maybe we should ride this book review gravy train a bit more and do another book review.

My initial thought was to review another book that had several authors, which is probably one the biggest reasons why our review post was so popular, not to mention all those authors are also bloggers. Therefore, I suggested to Pat we review the Declaration of Independence. But he argued that the Declaration of Independence isn’t actually a book and that none of it’s authors have a blog. And they’re all dead.

New strategy.

Since “I Just Want to Pee Alone” is a popular book we decided to just pick another similar popular book so we went with “The Bible”.

Pat, I’m still trying to get through this thing so why don’t you go first.

Pat: This might be a bit controversial.  

Suggesting that the Bible has an author, or multiple authors, might be enough to send those who believe it to be the written word of God into fanatic mode.

Yes. God spoke English. (psst!  I’m just saying that to keep them at bay)

I mean, do you know of any other book with enough of a fan base to free it from the common grammatical rule of underlining titles? Man...this book has POWER. Do you really wanna’ go through with this?

Christian: Don’t worry I have the utmost respect for the Bible and I agree that we need to make sure we don’t offend anybody. I strongly believe, that as long as you aren’t harming anyone, everyone’s beliefs should be respected.

Now the first question I have about it is where in the Lord of the Rings storyline is the Bible supposed to have taken place? Is it before or after The Two Towers?

Pat: Well, it’s more like a parallel story, Christian. You know the Shire? Well, the Bible has a place called Eden. They’re very similar.

And all of those dark and evil things, like Mordor and Sauron and Saruman and Orcs and Morgoth and Azog? Well, the Bible has lots of those things too, and I think they’re all called Satan.

And Hobbits, with their hairy little feet? Well, I don’t think anything like that is in the Bible, but it DOES say that God (he...she...It...is one of the main characters) created everything, which kinda’ includes me, and I’m a pretty hairy fella, so...it fits.

I feel very uncomfortable being the authority on this one, just so you know.

Christian: Don’t worry. I don’t mind.

I’m going to go ahead and be honest here and admit that I’ve switched over to reading the cliff notes of The Bible. Okay, to be even more honest it’s more of a skimming than a reading but I think I’m getting the gist.

Under the character description for God it says:  

“God appears in many different forms, including an angel, a wrestler, a burst of fire, and a quiet whisper.”

A wrestler? I did some more skimming and learned that God and Jacob wrestle at some point.

God must be the one on the bottom.

(source)

So not only is it historical but it’s also action-packed! It explains Christmas at some point too right?

Pat:  I’m not sure I want to be part of this conversation anymore. I don’t really believe in hell, but I’m a little worried about radical members of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Taliban right now. But since we’ve already gone there, I suppose I should go ahead and say that I always pictured God as more of a Lucha Libre style wrestler.

Yep...pretty much sums it up!

Umm...where, exactly, did you get this Cliff’s Notes version of the Bible? I’m curious about Cliff’s authority to abbreviate the text.

Christian: Why? Was God not a wrestler? Dammit. I’ve been going around telling everyone that God is a wrestler. If that’s not true, all my neighbors are going to think I’m crazy now.

I found Cliff’s notes online here. But don’t worry I sent him an angry e-mail about his God wrestling lies.

Pat:   Wow. Sparknotes™ really does have everything covered. Impressive!

Umm...I suppose viewing God as a wrestler has a certain holiness and reverence to it. Kind of like the SUPREME wrestler. Like, there’s no way that Hulk Hogan, André the Giant, Superfly Jimmy Snooka, or, hell, even the Undertaker could take him down.  

Come to think of it...know what would make the greatest show ever? “Wrestlemania Second Coming”, where all of the world’s greatest wrestlers, past and present, get into a cage with God-the-Wrestler to see if they can wrangle the title away from him. I’d definitely pay to see that.

Sorry...did you ask a question back there somewhere?

Christian: So he was a wrestler? I’m confused.

Anyways, what did you think of the stuff where it’s just so-and-so begat so-and-so who begat so-and-so etc. To be honest I felt like that stuff really slowed down the story momentum and brought the whole plot to a snail’s crawl.

Begatting is boring.

(source)

Also, maybe it’s just me but there seems to be a lot of religious overtones in this thing. Did you notice that?

Pat:  Yes...VERY religious! I suppose they should put in a disclaimer at the beginning alerting you to the fact that the book will ring of Christian values. Values from the organized faith, that is. Not from you.

And honestly...I just kinda’ skimmed the begat section (I think they call it Genesis, but it was from before Phil Collins or Peter Gabriel were involved). Once I heard that there wasn’t going to be a test on it -- in THIS life, at least -- and that all it did was connect every single one of us back to Adam and Eve, I was like, “No thanks, Gideon!”

Hey! If I understand the term correctly though, I just realized that I begat my kids! That sounds so cool!

Christian: Yes. Congratulations on the begatting.

So in conclusion, while I will admit I did skip a lot of sections of The Bible, it did seem rather informative. Therefore if you are looking for a long read and can get past the heavy religious overtones, I would recommend it. How about you Pat?

Pat:  Yeah, sure. Go ahead and read it, I say. Might help you understand some things that are going on in the world (hint:  humanitarian efforts, necklaces with crosses on them, war, wine, comedy, Satanists, etc.). I’d probably wait for the paperback version, or even ‘til it appears at the library, but it should DEFINITELY have made your summer reading list. Or you might burn in hell.