Fifty Ways to Hide the Cover: A Song for Readers of Fifty Shades of Grey

You may be among the many, many people who are reading E.L. James's bestselling work of erotica Fifty Shades of Grey.If you are, I'm guessing that you may not necessarily want people to know you're reading it. I mean, what would your mother think if she knew you were reading that smut? And there's a good chance that your mother, who is probably also reading the book on the sly, is having the same worrying thoughts about you.

To that end, I offer a musical guide to disguising the book so that you can enjoy your visits to the Red Room of Pain discretely. It's called "Fifty Ways to Hide the Cover" and it owes an obvious (if non-financial) debt to Paul Simon's 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.You'll find it on The Huffington Post. I hope you'll add it to your rotation.

The Hungry Hungry Hippos Games

The Hungry Hungry Hippos Games is up on The Huffington Post--it's a satirical take on The Hunger Games. I know, spoofs of The Hunger Games abound, and a couple of them mash up the movie with the children's game Hungry Hungry Hippos. So I can't claim originality, but at least mine is distinguished by the fact that it spoofs the original novel instead of the movie. That counts for something.

I hope you'll check it out. As you'll see, for me it's all about the games.

Stamp of Approval

I'm flattered that Undead Letter Office is featured on the Bram Stoker Estate's web site.

A Classics Rock! Exposé

Over on my other blog, Classics Rock!, we have our very first foray into investigative journalism with a piece called Highway 61 Revisited Revisited, which uncovers a disturbing trend in the music industry: Veteran rock stars who are rethinking, rewriting, or renouncing their classic songs.

The implications for the music industry are potentially devastating. I hope you'll check it out.

Undead Letter Office

Which experience is scarier: Reading "Dracula" or going to the post office?

No need to choose--these two exquisite horrors are now combined in a new piece on The Huffington Post called "Undead Letter Office." This mashup explores the pressing question: What if the characters in a classic epistolary novel had to use the modern Postal Service?

Hope you'll check it out. And don't worry--it contains nothing liquid, fragile, perishable, or hazardous.

Spring Ahead

Daylight Savings Time begins today--remember to set your clocks ahead one hour.

• This means you lose an hour, so your 5 hour energy drink will only last 4 hours
• 24 hour diners are only open 23 hours today, so plan accordingly.
• Psychiatrists must remember to set their clocks ahead 50 minutes.
• If you happen to be reading Michael Cunningham's The Hours, skip ahead one chapter in observance of Daylight Savings Time.
• Daylight Savings Time music trivia: All the time shout-outs in Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" get moved ahead one hour. This throws the rhyme scheme off and tends to bring the rocking to a complete standstill.

Tonight, a Very Special "Hannibal Lecter". . . .

News of a forthcoming Hannibal Lecter TV series got me thinking about what an amazing coincidence it is that Lecter was christened Hannibal at birth so that when he grew up and became a serial killer who eats his victims, his nickname, Hannibal the Cannibal, would be obvious and inevitable. I suppose if he'd been named Peter Lecter, he'd be Peter the Purple People Eater.

Also, let me add that a Hannibal Lecter TV series is the worst idea since "My Mother the Car." Let me make a few predictions:

• The references to fava beans and Chianti will be overworked.
• There will be excessive use of that modified hockey mask Lecter wears.
• An actor who played Jack Crawford in the movies will also play him in the series (but will it be Scott Glenn? Harvey Keitel? Dennis Farina?). Jack Crawford is to the Hannibal Lecter franchise as Felix Leiter is to the Bond movies--a different actor plays him almost every time.
• Anthony Hopkins will be asked repeatedly if he watches the series and will insist he's never seen it. No one will ask Brian Cox that question.
• At least one actor or actress who starred in one of the movies will stoop to doing a guest appearance during sweeps.
• There will be the inevitable Christmas episode featuring a dream or fantasy sequence in which the characters from the show become characters from A Christmas Carol (I see Lecter as Old Fezziwig.)
• Footage used in flashbacks to Lecter's earlier life will come from the movie Hannibal Rising. It will seem brand new to viewers of the TV series because nobody saw Hannibal Rising.
• There will be a crossover episode with "Dexter."
• At least one episode will be promoted with an announcer intoning "Tonight, a very special 'Hannibal Lecter'..." while weepy piano music plays in the background.
• The show will be cancelled after five episodes, tops.