Somewhere close to the end of my senior year at NYU, I went to the movies with my friends Molly, Avani, and Jillian, and we saw 13 Going on 30. Later that night, Molly and I went across the street to the Hollywood Video and forwent our usual game of “What Movie Would I Watch From This Wall?” to rent Win a Date With Tad Hamilton. I know, I know. Why? Well, we were in a romantic comedy mood, and kind of wanted to see it. Plus, we liked Topher Grace, so that was something. And, I get a kick out of seeing Leo from All My Children being all quasi-famous now.

It’s funny. Leo was actually one of the only characters on AMC that I always liked. When I didn’t totally hate Bianca and her increasingly shiny and exagerated face, he was friends with her. And he was involved with Greenlee when she was still just bratty and not totally despicable. And, okay, he was married to Laura when she needed a heart transplant, and she became obsessed with him, and Brooke did, too, in this sort of creepy attempt to give Laura something to live for which caused her to keep saying, “Love my daughter,” but I didn’t hate Leo for getting into this whole thing (even though, okay, money may have been involved) even though Greenlee still loved him, because it wasn’t really Leo’s fault that Brooke and Laura were so heinous and awful. He got into it for bad reasons, but he stuck by her because she was dying, and you’ve got to at least give him some credit for that. Plus, his mother was Vanessa! Vanessa was awesome! Well, except for that whole Proteus storyline, because that dragged for months and months and who really gave a crap about Mateo and what he had to do with it anyway? And Chris STAMP? Gag me. Oh, and Leo’s brother was David, who, despite his total obnoxiousness, was actually kind of a great character occassionally, like the time he “accidentally” drugged an entire boatload of people with Libidizone – a hyper-arousal drug of his own invention – and it created mayhem (he did this with the help of his trusty assistant/sidekick Gordon aka Gordo aka that guy that’s been in everything, including Ugly Betty, where his name was NOT Gordon but Sally and I called him that anyway)! Like, everyone on the boat getting all randy, and Greenlee pushing Laura overboard, and Bianca passing out! And then, of course, there was the fact that David slept with Dixie, which was NOT awesome, because despite the fact that Tad had NOT cheated on her that night, she still tried to make it seem like he had and she was just retaliating, and then, when that didn’t work, she just brought up his past mistakes which was so beat of her. I hated Dixie. And that really amped up David’s Dixie obsession, and then he wasn’t awesome anymore. Anyway, so Leo was great, but he died. I mean, it was suspicious, because he was fighting on this rickety bridge over the falls with his mother Vanessa and they both went crashing to their deaths. They found Vanessa’s body, and no one was too sad to see her go, because she was an evil drug dealer, selling to high school kids, and she goaded David’s father into killing himself, AND she had killed her niece and blamed it on Erica Kane. AND, I mean, she was trying to kill Leo! Bitch! But, Leo’s body was never found. All they found was this weird tan, like, member’s only jacket he had been wearing, which I thought was an odd costume choice, seeing as how he had never worn something that old-man-ish before. But, anyway, he’s dead, and I hope they never bring him back, because the new Greenelee played by not-Rebecca Budig is bad enough. A not-Josh Duhamel would be awful.

Oh, my God. What was I talking about?

Oh, right. Win a Date With Tad Hamilton. It was awful. I mean, not even the kind of movie I could justify watching again on a rainy Sunday afternoon when it just happens to come on HBO. I tried one day. I couldn’t get through ten minutes of it. However, the thing about that movie is that the premise seemed to have been lifted from this Richie Tankersley Cusick book called Starstruck.

This would be my second favorite RTC book ever. See, I even wrote “Win a Date With Richie Tankersley Cusick” on the cover, because it’s the same story (except with murder, and the movie star never goes to her hometown to make himself a better person, and the guy that she ends up with is not her best friend from the Piggly Wiggly, but a sleazy guy that the famous guy knows … well, the whole win a date with a movie star thing is the same anyway).

P.S. Why are the cover artists for her books so bad?? I mean, he went to all the trouble of trying to do something resembling collarbones, and the inner tube is actually pretty well-drawn, but look at her hairline.

Those sunglasses are pretty awesome, though. (Spoiler alert! That shadow in her glasses is a big statue that’s about to kill her! Don’t say I didn’t say spoiler alert!)

Anyway, so the premise of this one is pretty obvious. Miranda Peterson (mousy, unattractive, yet completely captivating teenager) wins a date through a magazine contest to meet Byron Slater, hunky movie star. Basically, she and two other girls will live in his house for a week and then he’ll pick one of them to have sex with.

Or, star in his movie. Something like that.

The first chapter of the book is her and her younger sister watching a Byron Slater movie, and then her getting the phone call that she won. What’s weird about it, though, is the fact that her sister is only described as “younger”, not “little”, and she’s got a pretty good vocabulary, so she can’t be much younger than, like, 14, yet she’s all, “You want to kiss a boy? Icky!” What’s that about?

Anyway, Miranda’s plane is late, or something, and her luggage is lost, and Lucille, the reporter from the magazine, and she end being totally late to the opening ceremonies of this contest, which I think was just meeting Byron and being shown rooms in the guest house. But, of course, it’s a tragedy.

The limo driver who’s come to meet them isn’t a limo driver at all! He’s Byron’s (the “GOOD GUY”) oldest friend, Nick (the “BAD GUY”). He looks like this:

“Baggy black pants had been cut off just below his knees, and he wore a rumpled white dress shirt, red socks, orange tennis shoes, and a chauffeur’s cap. … His hair looked soft and silky, sun-bleached nearly white. It swung loosely over his shoulder blades, a sharp contrast to the deep bronze of his tan.” Is it just me, or does he sound H.O.T. I think he must look like this:

RTC must have had a thing for guys with long hair, because her ultimate romantic interests almost always have “silky” long hair that “swishes” over their shoulder blades. It’s kind of gross, if you ask me, but whatever. I just pictured them with short hair, because it was a book, and that’s what you can do.

Anyway, they get to the house and she meets Byron Slater and gives him some bs about how she knows how to read palms (she’s totally lying), and then it turns out that there’s no room in the guest house (!!!) so they have to put her in a bedroom in the main house, not three doors down from Byron himself. I mean, shouldn’t they have checked how much room they were going to need for their THREE contest winners before they came there? When Nick shows her to her room, it’s as big as her entire house (of course), and she’s all flabbergasted, and she says that it’s beautiful. And then Nick does this creepy thing:

“‘Close your mouth,’ Nick reminded her, tapping her gently on the chin.”

I mean, dude just met her. A) What is his problem? She’s just excited about what’s going on. And B) Inappropriate!

She starts to unpack and then immediately overhears a conversation between Nick and Byron. Turns out Byron had no idea that this contest was even happening, and he doesn’t like that there are strangers in his house right after he’s come back from “a rest” in a “restful place” somewhere in Italy. (Read: rehab/mental hospital.) He also lets Nick on on a secret: there’s a crazed stalker fan after him, who wants him dead. Her name may or may not be Byron Slater. Spoiler alert! Anyway, Miranda immediately takes this information on as if it were a secret told to her, and starts to take everything having to do with Byron totally personally.

Later that evening, Miranda has a party to attend, and since her suitcase is gone, she’s gotta wear her dowdy plane clothes. The other two girls in the contest are Kelly, who looks like a model, and Jo, who’s fat and entered the contest as a joke. Miranda and Jo wander around the party, get lost, and encounter a tiger on the loose. I am not making this up.

Byron comes to their rescue and, like, wrestles the tiger, and then he and Miranda take a private walk, where he tells her that he thinks his crazed stalker let the tiger loose to kill him. TMI, man! She just met you! Byron also has a “tiny cellular flip phone,” which makes me think that it looks like the phone Derek has in Zoolander.

Okay, so anyway, Bryon tells her his whole life story or whatever, and she thinks he’s awesome, and then she drinks some lemonade and passes out. When she wakes up, he tells her that he thinks the lemonade was meant for him, and that SOMEONE’S TRYING TO KILL HIM! Then Byron’s manager, Robert, tells her all about his stint in rehab for a “rest” and leaves her alone and she finds a note written in a “curious reddish-brown stain, like blood!” (Richie loves messages written in blood, btw – there’s one in every single book she writes) that says:

“TO BYRON FROM YOUR STARSTRUCK FAN – IF I CAN’T HAVE YOU, NO ONE CAN.”

Blah blah blah crying and Byron tells her he wants to keep her safe, as well as survive Starstruck.

The next morning, Byron’s stylist has left Miranda some clothes, which just happen to be cheesier and sexier than her normal clothes. Because it’s a dream come true to wear a high-cut electric blue lace thong. Then Lucille shows up and they look out the window and see Nick, standing on the roof of the guesthouse, wearing a red cape, and flapping it up and down like wings, saying he can fly. Nick is retarded.

And since Miranda is an idiot, this doesn’t phase her. Nor does the fact that she changes into the skimpy bikini (and sheer matching jacket – CLASSY) that was left for her, looks in the mirror, and turns around to realize that Nick has “flown” to her balcony. Stalker! Maybe he’s Starstruck. Hello, Miranda! He watched you change into a bathing suit! That’s so creepy and wrong and inappropriate!

Then she goes to the pool, where everyone else has already gone onto their makeover consultations (she’s always late for everything – what a fool). She floats around in an inner tube for a while, ala the cover of the book, and then she hears this scraping sound, and a giant human-sized statue falls into the pool, landing on her inner tube, and trapping her under water for a few seconds (oh, my God, maybe this story is true, and it’s about Coral!). Still, nobody’s around, but when Bryon, a few minutes later, calls to take her for a drive through the mountains, she tells him about the statue and instead of being freaked out by the fact that this thing almost drowned her, and also, almost LANDED on HER, she’s just indignant about the fact that she thinks someone pushed it into the water. That Starstruck is not only after Byron, but is now after her, because how could life go on if it weren’t completely and totally about her?

Anyway, they drive around maniacally for a while, and then they make out, and then they drive fast through the treacherous mountains some more, and then this ridiculous thing happens. The car suddenly just starts violently lurching back and forth on the road, and then lands halfway through the guardrail, where Byron has to rescue Miranda from plunging, with the car, to her death over the mountain. But, there’s no talk of a car actually hitting them, and it’s daytime, so it’s not like Miranda wouldn’t have been able to see another car. I mean, doesn’t she wonder why the car was just careening all over the road for no reason? And how was he making it seem like the car was being hit? It doesn’t make sense!

Anyway, he rescues her, tells her again that SOMEONE’S TRYING TO KILL HIM, and then she says that now they’re TRYING TO KILL HER, TOO! And then they make out some more. Suddenly. Nick shows up. And, of course, Miranda suspects him.

Later that afternoon (because in RTC’s head, days last long enough for four years’ worth of adventures), they get makeovers, and then she has time to take a nap, and then she puts on a short, strapless black cocktail dress (right), and opens up the corsage box that Byron was supposed to have sent her. Except it’s not a corsage. It’s a heart.

But, surprise, surprise, it’s gone when she tries to show people! Because she couldn’t possibly have carried the thing downstairs with her! It’s not like it’s in a box or anything.

Anyway, when they go to dinner, Byron’s security guard is stabbed and killed, and Byron and Miranda assume that he was killed by Starstruck, who they’ll never find because they were being herded through a million people outside of the restaurant. So, obviously, they go back home, and everyone’s stunned and upset, and then there’s this awesome exchange where Kelly, Jo, and Miranda are saying that they don’t want to be alone, and Miranda goes, “I thought I was gonna die,” and the other two look at her all, “Bitch crazy,” because it has NOTHING TO DO WITH HER and someone SERIOUSLY DIED, like, an hour ago! And then they make the three of them watch a Byron Slater movie, like, what?

And then Miranda wanders around some more (this is still the SAME DAY) and Peg, Byron’s bitchy agent, is in a hot tub and Robert is talking to her and there’s some dumb dialogue that makes it sound like Peg is Startstruck. Finally, the day is over, and Miranda has an entire chapter’s worth of dreams that basically recap the entire book for you.

The next day, they’re taken on a shopping spree, and Miranda and Nick wander off to have a serious discussion about what the two of them know about what’s really going on with Byron and then they make out. No lie. And he tells her that Byron was also stabbed. Uh oh!

Then Peg dies in the hot tub.

And then Byron finds Miranda and tells her that he knows who Starstruck is. It’s Nick! And he has to save her! From Nick! So they go to his creepy deserted cabin in the woods, where he, of course, reveals that HE’S Starstruck, and he’s going to kill her.

Well, I mean, any convoluded story works when you just say that the person doing the killing is crazy, right? Blah blah blah, Nick saves Miranda, Byron and Nick struggle on the cliff, Byron throws himself over the cliff to save Nick, Byron dies, Miranda heads back home with Nick in tow. What. Ever.

If they ever make this into a movie, Josh Duhamel can still play Tad Hamilton aka Byron, because he knows all about fatal falls off cliffs.