"Fifty Shames of Earl Grey" by Fanny Merkin

BOOK TITLE: Fifty Shames of Earl Grey

AUTHOR: Andrew Shaffer (writing as Fanny Merkin)

YEAR: 2012

GENRE: Fiction

SUBGENRE: Erotica Parody

GRADE: Pass

In a blatant satire of EL James’s Fifty Shades trilogy, clueless college student and Wal-Mart employee Anna Steal takes on her roommate’s journalism assignment and interviews Earl Grey, a seductive billionaire with odd sexual appetites. The two of them get romantically involved when Earl stalks Anna everywhere she goes and convinces her to join in on his shameful endeavors. He is particularly fond of BDSM (Bards, Dragons, Sorcery, and Magick), a role-playing game for the bedroom. Can Anna accept Earl for who he is and…okay, that’s enough. This is some ridiculous stuff right here.

Anybody who had the misfortune of reading the Fifty Shades books can appreciate how accurate of a parody this is. Instead of biting her lips, Anna Steal picks her nose. Instead of just ropes and duct tape, Earl Grey also buys a hacksaw from Wal-Mart, which makes Anna believe he’s the second coming of Dexter. The awful descriptions from the original are exaggerated to the extreme in this parody. Hell, instead of an “inner goddess”, Anna has an “inner guidette”, which was no doubt taken from her roommate’s binge watching of corny reality shows like The Jersey Shore. Everything, and I do mean everything, about this book is so out of whack that it’ll make you laugh from page to page. If Weird Al Yankovich wrote erotica, it would be in the form of Fifty Shames of Earl Grey.

Speaking of ridiculousness, it’s common knowledge by now that Fifty Shades of Grey is Twilight fan fiction. The author hammed up those Twilight references all throughout the book. Earl Grey is the perfect caricature of Edward Cullen with how “wicked” his smile is, how “beautiful and sparkly” he is, and how he’s perfect in every way both physically and financially, which is why he buys businesses left and right just for the sake of stalking Anna. Earl even has a fierce rival in Anna’s friend Jin, a Brony who could be a stand-in for Jacob Black due to how muscle-bound he looks in his tight clothing. Anna Steal is also a stand-in for Bella Swan due to how ditzy and plain she really is. I haven’t read the Twilight books, but I know enough about them to see the references from a mile away. I laughed my head off at them just the same.

As someone who lost a cat to lung cancer around the time I read this, I needed the laughs. It’s a reminder not to take life too seriously and that it’s good to unplug every now and then. Sure, I’ll always have books that became my favorites because of how they ripped my heart to shreds. If that’s the case, then Fifty Shames of Earl Grey was the glue that pieced it together again. Thank you, Fanny Merkin, for all the laughs you gave me. You deserve a passing grade!

Character Names

If you’re a writer and you need to pick a name for your character, what kind of impression do you want to leave? Do you want to go for ethnic flavor? How about unbridled badassery? Or maybe you’ll choose the silly-willy route. Either way, tread carefully when choosing a name. I honestly believe there aren’t very many Chinese people named Sean McDonald and not many Irish people named Ryo Zhang. There also isn’t a huge line of barbarians named Sam Winkle or Floyd Phillips. What about accountants named Scorn Flesheater or Markus Bullhammer? If you’re going to choose a name for your character, make sure it sends the right message. That’s all I’m asking. Take the book “Fifty Shades of Grey” for instance. The lead characters are named Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. The author, EL James, took a lot of flak for choosing these stereotypically sexy names. What else was she supposed to do? Would you rather their names be Arthur Klutz and Blanche Toodles? I don’t care how many blowjob scenes there are in the book, nobody will jerk off to them if those are the names of the characters. Same thing goes with the names Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, and Jacob Black. As much as I hate to admit it, those are actually reasonably good names for characters of that genre. If their respective names were Vivian Sinkhole, Lloyd Walters, and Daniel the Daffodil, Stephanie Meyer wouldn’t be worth a food stamp card, let alone millions of dollars. And what about Conan the Barbarian? Suppose his name was Wally the Barbarian. He would have gotten his ass kicked long before he had the chance to become a hero. In fact, he might have been aborted with a jagged dagger covered in snake poison. Names tell you a lot about the character, so choose wisely. I made this mistake back in 2009 when I had my second run at Lulu.com, this time under the name Ryu Bashir. I am neither Japanese nor Arab, so like Superman with kryptonite up his ass, that’s not going to fly. Though if I was that serious about maintaining my privacy, it would have thrown a lot of people off my trail. If you want to save yourself some heartache and belittlement from your critics, pick a name for your character that’s actually relevant to the time period he’s in, his ethnicity, his age, and his general likeability. Got it? Good. Thanks for listening.

　

***MIXED-MARTIAL ARTS JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What’s it called when a UFC bantamweight does a solid for another fighter?
A: Urijah Favor.