I’m not a huge Superman fan (in general, I’m more of a Marvel Comics person than a DC Comics person), but Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” looks like it’s going to be pretty darn good…and I think it was a good idea to keep the feel of the 1978 film. Kevin Spacey looks and sounds like a kick-ass Lex Luthor. And I love the play on the whole “it’s a bird, it’s a plane” thing at the end of the trailer.
Wow! Are there any books out there from which this Kaavya Viswanathan DIDN’T outright steal material? I hate to pile on when the subject is a 19-year-old young woman from my home state of New Jersey, but the evidence is mounting that this was grand theft authoring.
Viswanathan’s “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life” has been basically given a literary death sentence by its publisher, Little, Brown and Company. And since it was “chick lit” and the only thing I read are newspapers and news Web sites, I wouldn’t have read it anyway. But if there are any fans of the genre who want to get a copy of “Opal Mehta” now that it has been pulled from existence, it sounds from all these articles I’m reading that you could eventually piece together the entire plot and even specific lines of narration and dialogue just by perusing most of the major “chick lit” books.
As The Harvard Crimson first reported, “Opal Mehta” is full of nearly verbatim passages from two earlier books authored by Megan F. McCafferty. (By the way, Viswanathan is an undergraduate student at Harvard.)
In response, Viswanathan said through her publisher April 24 that she had read both books by McCafferty and “wasn’t aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty’s words.” Viswanathan added that “any phrasing similarities between her works and mine were completely unintentional and unconscious.” Little, Brown and Company—which had signed Viswanathan a two-book deal worth $500,000 when she was just 17 years old and still in high school—said at the time it would publish a revised version of the book.
However, it turned out that was just the tip of the literary iceberg for Viswanathan.
As The Crimson demonstrated, it wasn’t just that whole paragraphs and scenes were “borrowed.” Even specific font styles were copied from the source material. For instance:
From page 6 of McCafferty’s first novel: “Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart. Guess which one I got. You’ll see where it’s gotten me.”
From page 39 of Viswanathan’s novel: “Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty. I had long resigned myself to category one, and as long as it got me to Harvard, I was happy. Except, it hadn’t gotten me to Harvard. Clearly, it was time to switch to category two.”
The italics were included in the text of both books.
Here are three more similarities pointed out by The Crimson that make the plagiarism going on here blatantly obvious…
‘SOMETHING SO RANDOM’
From page 217 of McCafferty’s first novel: “But then he tapped me on the shoulder, and said something so random that I was afraid he was back on the junk.”
From page 142 of Viswanathan’s novel: “…he tapped me on the shoulder and said something so random I worried that he needed more expert counseling than I could provide.”
‘170 SPECIALTY SHOPS LATER’
From page 237 of McCafferty’s first novel: “Finally, four major department stores and 170 specialty shops later, we were done.”
From page 51 of Viswanathan’s novel: “Five department stores, and 170 specialty shops later, I was sick of listening to her hum along to Alicia Keys….”
‘TO BUY DIET COKES FROM’
From page 67 of McCafferty’s second novel: “…but in a truly sadomasochistic dieting gesture, they chose to buy their Diet Cokes at Cinnabon.”
From page 46 of Viswanathan’s novel: “In a truly masochistic gesture, they had decided to buy Diet Cokes from Mrs. Fields…”
And if you think that’s bad, guess what? It appears she stole from other books by other authors. The New York Times reported today that at least three portions of “Opal Mehta” are strikingly similar to parts of Sophie Kinsella’s “Can You Keep a Secret?”
In one scene in Ms. Kinsella’s book, which was published by Dial Press, the main character, Emma, comes upon two of her friends “in a full-scale argument about animal rights,” and one says, “The mink like being made into coats.”
In Ms. Viswanathan’s book, Opal, the heroine, encounters two girls having “a full-fledged debate over animal rights.”
“The foxes want to be made into scarves,” one of them says.
And The Crimson, through tips e-mailed to the newspaper, reported a similarity between Viswanathan’s book and Meg Cabot’s 2000 novel, “The Princess Diaries.”
Page 12 of Meg Cabot’s 2000 novel “The Princess Diaries” reads: “There isn’t a single inch of me that hasn’t been pinched, cut, filed, painted, sloughed, blown dry, or moisturized. […] Because I don’t look a thing like Mia Thermopolis. Mia Thermopolis never had fingernails. Mia Thermopolis never had blond highlights. Mia Thermopolis never wore makeup or Gucci shoes or Chanel skirts or Christian Dior bras, which by the way don’t even come in 32A, which is my size. I don’t even know who I am anymore. It certainly isn’t Mia Thermopolis. She’s turning me into someone else.”
The italics appear in the original.
And page 59 of Viswanathan’s novel reads: “Every inch of me had been cut, filed, steamed, exfoliated, polished, painted, or moisturized. I didn’t look a thing like Opal Mehta. Opal Mehta didn’t own five pairs of shoes so expensive they could have been traded in for a small sailboat. She didn’t wear makeup or Manolo Blahniks or Chanel sunglasses or Habitual jeans or Le Perla bras. She never owned enough cashmere to make her concerned for the future of the Kazakhstani mountain goat population. I was turning into someone else.”
Again…Wow! And now it turns out The Record of Bergen County (N.J.) is going to review news articles and features Viswanathan wrote for the newspaper as an intern in 2003 and 2004.
What really annoys me about this whole thing? None of this writing is any good! It’s like Viswanathan took crap and recycled it into diarrhea. And even sadder is that the source works have been literary hits with “The Princess Diaries” turned into a successful motion picture. Heck, Dreamworks already purchased the film rights to “Opal Mehta” (the studio has reportedly halted production).
Some of us just love to be entertained by crap…unoriginal crap.
Hmm, then again, I guess that’s a good thing. If that weren’t the case, nobody would be reading my blog.
Image produced by ChurchSignGenerator.com
Waiting in line to get gas aside, there is another reason why I feel like a kid again…and as you can see from the photo and embedded videos below, it has to do with my biggest geek trait—my fandom of “Doctor Who.”
One of the key ingredients to the sci-fi hodge podge that is “Doctor Who” is the role of the companion. While Billie Piper’s portrayal of companion Rose Tyler in the current version of the series has been, for the most part, excellent, the yardstick every companion is measured by is Sarah Jane Smith, the investigative reporter played by Elisabeth Sladen who tagged along with Doctors No. 3 and 4 from 1973-1976.
So this past Saturday in the UK, the episode “School Reunion” aired on BBC One featuring the return of Sarah Jane Smith and robot dog K-9 (Mark III) to “Doctor Who.” Aside from an appearance in the 1983 20th anniversary special “The Five Doctors,” the last viewers saw Sarah Jane Smith was in the pilot for a potential spin-off series called “K-9 and Company” that featured Sarah in post-companion life in 1981 (the year it aired) as an investigative reporter with K-9 Mark III appearing as a gift from The Doctor.
In “School Reunion,” set in the present day, Sarah Jane comes to a school to investigate strange happenings that have also come to the attention of the Doctor and Rose. Obviously, Sarah Jane doesn’t recognize the current Doctor (he has regenerated six times since he dropped her off for the final time in ’76), but the Doctor introduces himself as John Smith, an alias he often uses. When she discovers the TARDIS (the Doctor’s ship) tucked away in a remote corner of the school and sees the man who earlier identified himself as John Smith, she realizes it is the Doctor.
OK…I’m rapidly sinking into full-blown geek mode…anyway, it was just fun to see Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 in “Doctor Who” again. It reminded me of being about 11 years old and seeing her and Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor batting the title character in the episode called “Robot” on WOR (Channel 9) one Saturday afternoon. At first, I kept it on because it looked completely silly…and then I looked past the clunky sets and crappy special effects and found it to be delightfully and weirdly entertaining.
Anyway, here are a few clips from “School Reunion,” courtesy of YouTube:
Classic Doctor Who: Sarah Jane Smith gets dropped off in 1976
The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith meet again
K-9 to the rescue! Sort of
“You bad dog…AFFIRMATIVE!”
Note: Yes, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fans, that is Anthony Stewart Head (aka Giles) as the school’s evil headmaster and lead Krillitane.
…waiting in a line for gas. Just like in my mom’s Gremlin X in the 70s.
John LeMasney told me about this video. Although I use Safari as my primary Web browser, I have no problems with Firefox (at least the creators made Safari the least annoying of the other three browsers)…
Well, Katie and I were supposed to wait on line among the “Rentheads” on Monday for a lottery to win one of 17 pairs of $20 tickets to a special 10th anniversary concert of “Rent.” But due to scheduling conflicts, we didn’t go.
As it turns out, that was a good choice. Why? Well, judging by the size of the crowd, we would have had a better chance of winning the MegaMillions or Powerball.
The other reason?
The world’s biggest rodent, Constantine Maroulis from last season’s “American Idol,” was in attendance…and I wouldn’t have reacted well to that.
Worse was that he was still giving that stupid “look” of his to the cameras. Dude, it’s over…you didn’t win…STOP THE POUTING!
I’m also wondering why there were even cameras taking pictures of him. He’s a has been that never was…and never will be. And if this is what women consider sexy these days, well, I guess I’m destined to remain single. What a freakin’ tool.
I apologize for turning my blog into Gawker.
NOTE: The previous post regarding my latest musical creation wasn’t functioning properly so I reposted it with a comment from Christian included (because it wasn’t showing up in the original post…at least it wasn’t for me). Since I updated this post about the same time Christian posted his comment, I’m almost inclined to believe that the simultaneous actions of my editing the post and his commenting on it somehow caused a glitch in the publishing process…but that’s just a theory.
Well, I guess the song-in-progress below is somewhat inspired by seeing the Tony Levin band perform earlier this week…I started playing around with a bass line and turned it into something a little heavier than my more recent attempts at songwriting.
Yes, it still needs a lot of work and, obviously, there are no lyrics yet. But considering I only worked on it for a few hours this weekend, I think it has come together rather nicely up to this point.
The working title, “Carpe Diem,” was borrowed from something I wrote around 1992 or so. There were some similarities between the two songs so I just slapped that title on this new demo. However, I am pretty sure “Carpe Diem” won’t be the actual title of this song once it is finished. But enjoy this in-progress version of “Carpe Diem” for now…
Nice song Brian! Can’t wait to hear the finished version. Is that piano a Yamaha CP70 sample? Me like.
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Posted by Christian to Tandem with the Random at 4/23/2006 08:02:53 PM
Last night, Christian Beach and I saw the Tony Levin Band play at The Saint in Asbury Park, NJ. Wow! What a great freakin’ show! Never thought I would hear Genesis’ “Back in NYC” from “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” performed live, but Tony & Co. made it happen.
For the uninitiated, Tony Levin is best known as bass player extraordinaire for Peter Gabriel and King Crimson. The band consists of New Jersey’s own Larry Fast, a pioneer in synthesizer-based music known for his work under the name Synergy and his collaborations with Peter Gabriel; drummer Jerry Marotta, also known for his work with Peter Gabriel as well as with Hall & Oates and Indigo Girls; guitarist Jesse Gress, who regulary tours and records with Todd Rundgren; and keyboardist Pete Levin, Tony’s brother.
Anyway, Tony and Larry were kind enough to take pics with me and Christian (who, by the way, played on the same stage the night before with Transfusion M)…
Me and Tony Levin
Larry Fast and Christian
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Brian Kelley 