Quotes

“- "Why don't you like to be touched?" - "Because I'm fifty shades of fucked-up, Anastasia” ― E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey

“Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with me. Perhaps I've spent too long in the company of my literary romantic heroes, and consequently my ideals and expectations are far too high.” ― E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey

Bret Easton Ellis Reduces Matt Bomer To… That Guy From Modern Family

SOURCE: PEREZ HILTON........ .. Say whaaaaaat? Jesse Tyler Ferguson is an HIGHlarious actor and an integral part of one of TV's best sitcoms, but comparing him to Matt Bomer is like comparing apples to oranges… you know, if the orange was way seksier and studlier than the apple. (No offense, JTF. We think you're handsome too!) Most agree Bomer is an ideal candidate to play Christian Grey in any forthcoming 50 Shades film adaptations. Bret Easton Ellis begs to differ.

Via Twitter he said: Fifty Shades of Grey: Casting Matt Bomer is the equivalent as casting Jesse Tyler Ferguson… — Bret Easton Ellis (@BretEastonEllis) August 5, 2012 That's ridiculous!! ........................................................................................................ We don't know whether Bret's remarks refer to the sexual orientation of the two actors or some other similarity but he missed the mark. As anyone who has seen Magic Mike can tell you, Bomer is one of the best looking dudes in the game. His charm and charisma would enable him to pull off a very convincing Christian. Ferguson, while great at what he does, is perhaps less suited to play that particular brand of alpha male. We're not sure what kind of cray juice Bret put in his sippy-cup but we hope casting decisions are left to someone else!!

Fifty Shades of Gin

Fifty Shades of Gin ...................................................................................... .............................. 1 oz. gin (recipe suggests Nolet's Gin) 3/4 oz. rhubarb puree* (Heathman restaurant pastry chef John Gayer creates his own) 3/4 oz. fresh squeezed lime juice 1/2 oz. simple syrup Cranberry bitters Cava/Orosecco Lime wheel garnish Directions: In a shaker, combine rhubarb puree, lime juice, simple syrup and gin. Add ice and shake well. Rinse a martini glass with cranberry bitters. Strain cocktail into glass and top with sparkling wine, either Cava or Prosecco. Garnish with lime wheel or twist. ...................................................................................... *If you can't find rhubarb puree, purchase fresh rhubarb at your local grocer or pick from your garden and add to the blender with 1/2 oz. simple syrup.

Fifty Shades of Grey Hotel Presents 'Inner Goddess' Package, Specialty Drink

Thirsty for more Fifty Shades of Grey? Take a sip of this gin-based cocktail created by the bartender at The Heathman Hotel's restaurant. While fans eagerly await the film adaptation of erotic book phenomenon, the real hotel featured in the steamy bestseller is offering readers a chance to indulge in their own Fifty fantasy. .

.................................................................................... At the Heathman Hotel in Portland, Ore. – where lovers Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele share many a sexy romp in the Shades series – hotel guests can select the "Inner Goddess" add-on ($40) for their stay. The deal includes a "beautiful white wine that Christian and Anastasia enjoy, complete with a little grey tie wrapped around the bottle neck," says general manager Chris Erickson. .................................................................................... Those looking to splurge on a romantic getaway or bachelorette party can opt for the "Charlie Tango" package ($2,750), which includes a helicopter ride and dinner for six at The Heathman's restaurant and bar. .................................................................................... And for the fans flocking daily to the boutique hotel for a quick tour of its now infamous elevator, Erickson suggests cooling off at the bar with a "Fifty Shades of Gin" cocktail created by The Heathman's bartender Brian Hilby. We think it's also good for sipping while reading the erotic trilogy ... or for sustaining your Christian Grey buzz once you've finished all three novels.

Fifty Shades Of Grey booted off Kindle top spot by romantic novel about dog walkers - written by ANOTHER west London woman!

SOURCE : dailymail ............................ Move over EL James, there's a new top dog in town. But she's only from down the road. The third installment of James' saucy 'mummy porn' trilogy Fifty Shades Of Grey has lost its vice-like grip on the Kindle best-selling ebook chart, having being ousted by a sweet literary romance about a group of dog walkers - and both writers are from west London.

Monday To Friday Man is the fourth novel and seventh book from Hammersmith-based dog lover Alice Peterson, 38, a former professional tennis player who turned to writing after her promising athletic career was prematurely curtailed at the age of 18 when she was left wheelchair-bound by rheumatoid arthritis. Her new book was inspired by the close friends she has made on her daily walks with her Lucas Terrier Mr Darcy (named after Jane Austen's character in Pride And Prejudice) in Ravenscourt Park. .................................................................................. Having sold 500,000 copies since its release on July 21, the book has now been in the top 100 of the Amazon Kindle book list for 89 days. It has held pole position on the ebooks list for two weeks, relegating Ealing-based James' Fifty Shades Freed to second place.

‘Fifty Shades’ turned marketing phenom Clothing, CD all birthed from hit book series

SOURCE : JournalGazette.net NEW YORK – You’ve bought rope for that special someone, picked up a few sex toys and read those “Fifty Shades of Grey” books a time or three. You know who you are. Well, no need to skulk about at naughty shops or the hardware store as Fifty Shades of Consumption makes it further into the mainstream. Stuart Weitzman and Marc New York have Grey-struck campaigns in the fat September issues of fashion magazines, the former touting black stilettos and high, Anastasia Steele-worthy boots called “Fifty Fifty,” named not for the blockbuster bondage books but equal parts leather and stretch. “Stuart has always known that people just think shoes. They daydream shoes. They lust after shoes 24/7,” said Susan Duffy, Weitzman’s senior vice president of marketing. “It’s almost like ‘Fifty Shades of Grey.’ People want 50 pairs of shoes. It’s a love affair.” EMI Music is feeling the love. It’s putting out “Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classical Album” next month in partnership with E L James herself, ahead of the British writer’s first visit to the Pacific Northwest locales where her hunky gazillionaire Christian Grey and his new-to-kink love interest dwell. While James goes about remedying that geographical blip on her resume, she let loose last week with her first licensing agreements for a range of products in North America. Coming soon: official Fifty stockings and garters and printed tights. Undies and jammies and robes. T-shirts and knit tops and hoodies. Add those to a slew of parody books, many self-published, beauty giant Bobbi Brown’s new set of “Come-Hither Shades” for eyes in, yes, grays and marketing references and tie-ins for everything from iPad covers to bathroom fixtures. There’s even a critical reader’s guide, “Lighter Shades of Grey,” that counts the number of times Ana mutters “Oh my.” These days, we’re all Fifty Shades of somethin’.

“We don’t always get a chance to connect our clients’ brands to current day entertainment or news. But when we do, tie us down and hold us back!” said David R. Schlocker, founder and president of DRS and Associates, a luxury marketing and PR firm in Los Angeles for architectural, interior design and building clients. The company recently pitched “Shades of Gray” kitchen and bath decor, including a Laufen washbasin with seductive curves and edgy Graff faucets in a brushed nickel. Grey-sessed consumers have kept the books atop best-seller lists for more than 25 weeks, shot pre-orders for the EMI album to the top of classical picks on iTunes and Amazon – and breathlessly lobbied online for their choices to play Christian and Ana in the movie. Meanwhile, Town & Country magazine bares a teaser on its September cover, “50 Shades of Rockefeller,” for a story about a great-great-granddaughter of John D. and her new book, apropos of nothing more than the fresh-faced lexicon. Trojan, the condom guys, had hundreds lining up for free vibrators last week on the streets of Manhattan, using “pleasure carts” like the ones for selling hot dogs. The crowds were so big the city shut them down temporarily, until the company procured the proper permits. Trojan doled out 10,000 vibrators. While Trojan has been selling vibrators since 2009, first-quarter sales this year – around the time the Fifty books hit it big – were up about 14 percent from the same quarter a year before, according to Nielsen. “Thanks in part to the rise of pop culture hits such as ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and ‘Sex and the City,’ many consumers are looking for products to help add some spice and increase the pleasure within their relationships,” said Bruce Weiss, vice president of marketing at Trojan.

Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James: Audiobook review

Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James: Audiobook review The audio version of E L James’s bestselling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey pushes Tanya Gold to the edge. SOURCE: THE TELEGRAPG

Fifty Shades of Grey, the audio book, is read by Becca Battoe, an American actress who sounds like an anxious computer reading out pornography as punishment. The plot? Innocent Ana meets Troubled Christian, a wounded (guess what?) billionaire. But, as with all love stories – and this is a love story – there is an impediment, and it is not Christian’s pride nor Ana’s prejudice. It is that Christian only likes sex if he is beating Ana with a stick. The psychodrama can be paraphrased as follows – Can I spank you? (Christian) Ooh, I’m only a [college] senior! (Ana) I really need to spank you, Ana, because I am very damaged. (Christian) OK. But only because I really love you. Can we get married? (Ana) This is a nice girl’s nasty book; imagine a low-budget porn film involving a plumber – well, at the end the bog gets fixed and the plumber stops fiddling his tax. So despite the continual filth hum – “his long finger presses the button summoning the elevator…” – the effect is strangely innocent, like Bambi wandering into de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, begging for an engagement ring. If this all sounds preposterous, Battoe’s monotonous, whiny, joyless voice throws it down a hole. You feel she should be talking about unicorns, or maybe kittens with mittens, not dry humping; sometimes you wonder if she is even old enough to know about such terrible things. It is obviously a monologue, which is problematic because Battoe has to do all the voices. When she does Christian – “I am funding some research on crop rotation and soil science” – she simply lowers her voice and slows down, so she sounds like Christian Bale doing Batman, but doing things to Robin that Batman never would. The book and its two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, can be read in a day. The audio book is 20 hours long and the review copies come with free moisturiser which, if you get bored, you can rub into your toes, and yearn for a sex life of your own, rather than a sex life everyone is reading about in the Telegraph. You may not need this diversion, but I do. I am glad that people who are too scared to watch real porn can now listen to literary-phenomenon porn on the bus, but it doesn’t stop the experience being incredibly boring. This, I think, is implicit in the title. Fifty shades could easily mean fifty lampshades, and it probably does. The whole book stinks of John Lewis clawing his eyes out.

The prose style isn’t there; it ran out of bed seeking Horlicks, and even if Battoe didn’t sound like a Valley Girl wandering into the wrong sex scene, she has nothing to work with. E L James, who developed the story out of Twilight fan faction (vampire shagging), does terrible things to clichés, and can’t do dialogue; real people do not say “I see” and “very well”, even if they are about to bonk each other stupid on a copy of “Jane Eyre Made Easy” or “If I Stick Fifty Romance Clichés on a Word Document With Butt Plugs, Does That Make a Novel?” Christian is a cartoon character with a cartoon whip and Ana – “Damn my hair!” – is a phoney, never really admitting how much she loves the dirty sex. She is a female superhero with boobs and a soul, here to save Christian from the wreckage of himself: “it’s the whips that put me off!” (Really? Are you sure?) About six hours in, I suddenly wonder how it would sound in the hands of a truly gifted actress, such as Dame Judi Dench, and then I stop, because I have thought something wrong. The main plot device is the master/slave contract that Christian wants Ana to sign. He is that needy and they spend pages bickering over it: “Genital clamps? You have got to be kidding me! I’m sure this is in breach of clauses two to five!” If this is a control fantasy, they are both at it, even if Ana is so stupid she doesn’t know this contract is not legally enforceable, except perhaps in Saudi Arabia. The book is morally dodgy because although one-dimensional Ana apparently falls for one-dimensional Christian because of his grey eyes, or chunky sweaters, or whatever, she can’t stop describing his three-dimensional stuff. We have been here a thousand times: Christian is Robert Redford in Indecent Proposal, Mr Rochester with degenerative brain disease, even Mr Uppity from the Mr Men – it’s all houses, cars, lobsters, orgasms, lobsters, blah. When Christian tells Ana: “Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control things,” for some reason I think of Jeffrey Archer, and by then it’s over anyway.