SquawkRadio

I’ve got a blog below so you’re not allowed to try this until you read the blog (no cheating!), but this is funl! Just start typing your name.

http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

Then come back and tell us when your name was popular!

A hundred different fanboards have spoken and Gerard Butler is SQUAWK RADIO’S OFFICIAL 2006 SEXIEST MAN ALIVE!  Some of you may know him as the tortured phantom from PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Raoul who?), the incurable romantic in TIMELINE or the object of all of our fantasies in DEAR FRANKIE.  This handsome and talented Scot obviously strikes a tender chord in the hearts of his female audience.

A newcomer to the Top 3 but certainly not to our hearts is the guy in our #2 position--Hugh Jackman!  You just gotta love a gorgeous Aussie who can sing and tap dance on Broadway, yet make us growl and sweat with his portrayal of Wolverine in the X-MEN movies. 

In an astonishing feat for a veritable newcomer to the nominations, Daniel Craig, who re-energized the James Bond franchise in CASINO ROYALE, has snagged the #3 slot.  Whether wearing a tailored tuxedo or strolling out of the surf in a light blue Speedo, this dangerous and sexy Brit is always dressed to kill! 

We have to give a very Honorable Mention to Johnny Depp, who ran gorgeous neck and neck with Daniel Craig for the #3 slot for most of the competition.  As Captain Jack Sparrow, our favorite rapscallion of a pirate, he can steal our hearts any day! 

CONGRATS TO OUR WINNERS AND THANKS TO ALL WHO NOMINATED THEIR FAVORITES AND VOTED IN THE POLL! 

SINCE WE’LL BE ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS OF OUR 2006 SEXIEST MAN ALIVE POLL THIS AFTERNOON, I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FUN TO REPLAY A CLASSIC SQUAWK BLOG ABOUT THE ALPHA MALE: 

We do a lot of talking about Alpha vs. Beta males in the romance world. But how was I to know that the ultimate Alpha male was a short, mild-mannered, soft-spoken Mexican man named Cesar Milan?

I’d seen his dog-training book, CESAR’S WAY, on the bestseller lists but I truly got hooked on Cesar when I started TIVO’ing THE DOG WHISPERER on the National Geographic Channel. Little did I know that THE DOG WHISPERER came on like 75 times a day so before I knew it I had a healthy backlog of episodes and had seen Cesar cure nearly every dog lover’s nightmare from fear biting to separation anxiety to a bulldog with an uncontrollable passion for the garden hose.

His philosophy is simple. To learn how to train a dog, you have to learn how to think like a dog and behave like a dog. There is virtually no canine problem that can’t be solved with a “calm assertive” attitude. The minute he enters a room, he becomes the “pack leader” and there’s something oddly attractive about that, even in a short, mild-mannered, soft-spoken man. If you add his Beta love of dogs, you have a real hero in the making!

It also occurred to me that many of his lessons can be applied to life:

1) If you walk with your head up and your shoulders back, people will believe you’re a powerful woman
2) You can’t help someone by feeling sorry for them
3) What’s in the past doesn’t matter because it’s not what’s happening now
4) You have to stop agressive behavior at a lower level before it gets into the “Red Zone”
5) You can accomplish almost anything with calm assertive energy
6) Leadership has to come before love, but yet is also a form of love
7) The only way to be truly fulfilled is to know your natural order in life
8) Every home needs an Alpha dog, preferably a human

So have any of you seen Cesar in action on the DOG WHISPERER? Have you every found yourself attracted to an unlikely man simply because of one winning trait--a smile?  A self-deprecating sense of humor?  A quiet authority that was nearly irresistible? 

Dear Friends,
As Christmas day approaches, and we are frantically attending to the many tasks that will make our holiday complete, I feel the need to express myself in the succint and lovely art form of the freestyle Haiku.

As we know, there is an ancient structure to the Haiku, including the five-seven-five syllable rule, not to mention the no-rhyming-or-metaphor rule . . . OR you can freestyle it. The point is to convey your feeling or idea with the fewest words possible, stripping away all unnecessary adverbs or adjectives.

Here are my current thoughts about Christmas, in Haiku:

Xmas gifts aplenty
mall warrior has returned
VISA take my soul

Cookies from the oven
holiday in my mouth
farewell size 6

Please feel free to join Lisa’s XMAS HAIKU INVITATIONAL. Give us three pithy descriptive lines—let us all know how you’re feeling!

Gerard Butler is pulling ahead but Hugh Jackman is showing staying power!  And Daniel Craig and Johnny Depp are running neck and neck!  Cast your vote on the poll below this blog before midnight tonight to help choose SQUAWK RADIO’S 2006 SEXIEST MAN ALIVE! 

So many men...so little time…

All of the nominations are in and it’s time to cast your vote from the TOP TWELVE NOMINEES!  We were going to only do 10 but four yummy fellows tied for #10 so what’s a girl to do? (To jog your memories, our 2005 winner was Matthew McConaughay, followed by a 3-way tie for #2 between Gerard Butler, Clive Owen and Colin Firth.)

SQUAWK’S 2006 SEXIEST MAN ALIVE

Who would you pick as the Sexiest Man Alive? Gerard Butler Hugh Jackman Daniel Craig George Clooney Johnny Depp Christian Bale James Purefoy Clive Owen Sean Connery Russell Crowe Josh Holloway Orlando Bloom Current Results

JOIN US ON WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 20th WHEN THE WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED, ACCOMPANIED BY A YUMMY PHOTO!  THE MEN ARE RANKED ACCORDING TO THEIR NUMBER OF NOMINATIONS SO FEEL FREE TO DISCUSS THE RESULTS AND TELL US WHAT YOU THINK IS THE MOST IMPORTANT QUALITY THAT MAKES A MAN SEXY! 

AND TUNE IN LATER TODAY WHEN WE’LL BE SPREADING MORE HOLIDAY CHEER WITH SOME FABULOUS GIVEAWAYS!!!

As most of you know, PEOPLE magazine has just annointed George Clooney as their “2006 Sexiest Man Alive” which means it’s time for our own official Squawk Poll again!  As resident hot guy expert (it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it), I’ve been elected to get this year’s nominations rolling.  Last year we ended up agreeing with PEOPLE and voted Matthew McConaughay (whose last name I won’t ever be able to spell no matter how many books I write) as SQUAWK RADIO’s choice.

As devoted romance readers, I like to believe we’re all experts on what makes a man sexy.  (Picture me wailing to my husband--"Of course I have to have 340 pictures of Russell Crowe as my screensaver.  It’s my JOB!!!) But we also have vastly different tastes in both books and men, which is what makes the selection process so fascinating...and so much fun! 

So this is how it works.  Just go into the COMMENTS of this blog and nominate your favorite guy.  Feel free to discuss the delicious merits of all your favorite guys and Comment as often as you like but TRY to narrow down your selection to your absolute favorite.  You may nominate more than one person but don’t nominate the same person more than once.  (And no, it doesn’t count as multiple nominations if you write GERARDBUTLERGERARDBUTLERGERARDBUTLER 35 times in the body of your Comment although I will admire your ingenuity and your excellent taste in men.) Later this week, I’ll total the nominations and we’ll choose our TOP TEN SEXIEST GUYS. Then we’ll run an official poll on Wednesday morning and let YOU choose the winner.  (Sigh...so many men, so little time...)

I’m going to start things rolling by adding a brand new nominee this year--Daniel Craig, the new James Bond from CASINO ROYALE.  I highly recommend both this man and this movie.  We can all agree on Pierce Brosnan’s debonair yumminess as James Bond but I have to say that Daniel Craig brings a muscular, dangerous edge to the role that I haven’t really seen since Sean Connery.  We all heard the complaints when he was chosen for the role--he’s too blond, he’s not good-looking enough, blah blah blah.  But I have to say that his photos don’t really do him justice.  He has the kind of electric charisma you have to experience on-screen.  And what’s doubly amazing about the movie is that it gets almost all of the romance details right in scenes that could have come straight from the pen of Anne Stuart.  (But alas--I can’t promise you a happy ending since it is a James Bond movie, not a Teresa Medeiros novel!  Loving James Bond is dangerous business--a lot like loving Captain Kirk or one of the Cartwright boys.) What I can promise you is that Daniel Craig with his piercing blue eyes and amazing physique is a delightful addition to the Bond family!  (And I’m happy to report that he spends much more time with his shirt off than the heroine does )

So let the nominations for Squawk Radio’s “2006 Sexiest Man Alive” begin!  And if any of you have seen the new Bond movie, I’d love to know what YOU thought about it!

And don’t forget to sign up for our Membership List if you haven’t already and check back in late this afternoon when I’ll be giving away two ARC’s of Christie Ridgway’s NOT ANOTHER NEW YEAR’S, two ARC’s of Jenna Petersen’s DESIRE NEVER DIES and 2 ARC’s of Julianne MacLean’s SURRENDER TO A SCOUNDREL to kick off our SQUAWK RADIO HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY!!!  One of these will be going to a new member of the Squawk Family who has joined after December 10th! 

THIS JUST IN! 
Per request, here is the infamous Daniel Craig/James Bond in Speedo pic.  Wouldn’t you much rather see him come strolling out of the ocean dripping wet than Ursula Andress?