Melanie Lynne Hauser is on the Girlfriends Cyber Circuit with me, and she sent in one of my favorite boyfriend lists so far. As you'll see when Fly on the Wall comes out, I love superheroes, and Melanie's book, Confessions of a Super Mom, should entertain the teenage and the parental among you, both.

The gist: a mom becomes a superhero due to inhaling the fumes of many household cleaning agents mixed together -- and aided by her teenage son, she attempts to save her daughter from heartbreak and her neighborhood from destruction.

"Forget the laundry, forget the dishes. Escape into the world of Super Mom for a few hours...you'll be glad you did. Melanie Lynne Hauser's quirky characters sparkle brightly as a newly Swiffered floor, and her writing shines like freshly polished glass."
—Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries and Every Boy's Got One

Anyway, though I do think Melanie overlooks the superlative hotness of Wolverine and the super-sensitivity of The Thing, her superhero boyfriend list made me laugh.

"Why You Should Never Date a Superhero" Boyfriend list....
by Melanie Lynne Hauser

Since in CONFESSIONS OF SUPER MOM, my heroine, Birdie Lee, becomes a superhero, she is naturally curious about her fellow superheroes. She is also, currently, single. (Although she has a perfectly wonderful nerdy scientist boyfriend.) But still, you can't blame a girl for wondering what it would be like to date an actual superhero...and I feel, as her spiritual guide, that it's my duty to try to prevent this from happening.

First rule of dating a superhero is, never date a superhero. There is a huge potential for loss of limb, not to mention life, due to the very annoying habit of the superhero's archnemesis to continually try to put the superhero's loved ones in dangerous situations. (Remember poor old Mary Jane dangling off that bridge in the Spiderman movie?) But if you are a thrill seeker and don't mind risking life and limb, I ask you to further consider the neuroses and general emotional train wrecks that come with the following:

1) Batman. OK, get over it. He may be dark and brooding, and yes, we all like dark and brooding, but please. The man lives in a cave. He likes bats. Now, I admit the wealth and the butler are both highly attractive, but there's simply no way a woman can penetrate that man's gloominess. Besides which, there's the whole relationship with Robin which we might want to question, if we are thinking with half a brain.

2) Superman. Granite jaw? Check. Perfect little curl on the forehead? Check. Ridiculous obsession with one particularly lame, whiny girl reporter who can't prevent herself from being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, over and over? Check.

3) Spiderman. He's a little juvenile, if you ask me. He's prone to whininess, and all that self-doubt about not being a normal teen, and then there's his clingy Aunt May. I think there's a mess of baggage that comes along with that whole package, don't you think? Plus, well, spiders. Yuck.

4) Aquaman. He talks to fish. I really don't think I need to say anything further about that.

5) The Flash. OK, there's some potential here. I think that he's actually one of the more well-adjusted superheroes. He could also be very handy when it comes to running errands. His costume isn't bad, either - not really tights, more like an aerodynamically engineered skintight suit, which with those pecs ain't a bad thing. I really can't find anything to dislike here. Let's mark him as a "maybe."

6) The Green Lantern. Anyone who claims he was visited by aliens and given a decoder ring is...well...how can I say this? - nuts! And while a man who's that interested in jewelry can't be all bad - I mean, it's an awesome ring, and so a girl might be forgiven for thinking that she could get some really nice Christmas gifts from a man like this - the alien thing really gives me pause. Sure, I know there are some women who swooned over Fox Mulder from The X-Files, but there's a difference between a man who's convinced aliens abducted his little sister, and a man who's convinced aliens have tapped him to become a Guardian of the Universe. And that little thing is called ego. Run, girls, run!

7) The Hulk. Temper, temper! That's all I need to say.

8) The X-Men. I refer to them collectively. They're mutants, and they have tempers, and most importantly, there seems to be a bit of a superiority complex among that group. It probably comes from being shunned by society for so long. Plus think of the competition, girls - they already have several luscious female mutants among them. I'd be worried if I sent my boyfriend off to work every day beside that Storm, you know? Girlfriend has moves. Snap!

9) Captain America. Just a bit of a Dudley-Do-Right, you know? Kind of a square. And probably a little too much into NASCAR for my tastes.

10) Robin, the Boy Wonder. Well, right there, I'm not so sure. Boy? Wonder? Seems like someone's really trying to assert his manliness, if you know what I mean. (See entry #1, Batman.)

P.S. Melanie's blog offers both unsolicited parenting advice and interviews with indie bookstore owners! What could be better? /E