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Big mistake. Big. Huge!
–Pretty Woman
Contents
SHE WALKED OFF THE STREET INTO HIS LIFE AND STOLE HIS HEART
Meet Cute
It Happened One Night
Provincial Gym Monkeys and/or All the Places to Meet the Love of Your Life
Your Apartment
Gender Equation
Bobs and Weaves
You Need Abs to Be in Love
Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lawrence
Easy A
50 First Kates
Eat, Pray, Love
You’re Supposed to Be Engaged
Jokes
Punchline
The Funny Thing Is
Matthew McConaughey’s Abs
Matthew McConaughey’s Arms
Porn Parodies: Dick Edition
Porn Parodies: Vagina Edition
QUIZ: Ever Wondered If You Might Be the City as a Character in a Romantic Comedy?
Slow Motion
Adam Sandler: A Love Story
What’s Not to Love, Adam Sandler?
(500) Dicks of Summer
Dicks Actually
A Series of Romantic Comedies That Could Never Be Made
Valentine’s Day
What’s Your Number?
She’s All That
50 First Dates
Line, Please
IT'S FUNNY WHAT LOVE CAN MAKE YOU DO
Unrequited Love
Unrequited Love 2: Even More Unrequited
Morning Wood: The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Some Like It Hot
Romantic Opposites-Attract Comedies: Your preferences created this row.
QUIZ: Screwball Mix ’N’ Match
Sex Scene
Sex Scene (revision)
Your Boobs
Asshole
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, or “Asshole”
People Are Assholes!
You Did That on Your Own
Definitely, Maybe
In a Movie about Weddings No One Wants to Attend
In a Movie about Weddings No One Wants to Attend 2: Even Less Interested
So I Married a Poet
Funny Face
But Hocus Pocus Isn’t Even a Rom Com?
You Are the Devil, I (Should) Have Said
Montage
Romantic Comedies for Young Girls:
Hollow Ship to Hell
The Rose
YOU CAN’T ALWAYS RUN FROM YOUR PAST
Emotionally Broken
Because You Watched 27 Dresses
Overboard
He’s Just Not That into You
I Am So Lonely, I Am So Fucking Lonely, lol, SEND, Obvious Child
He Grasps at Emotion, or The Proposal
You’re Supposed to Be Engaged
Puff Puff, Give. Puff Puff, Give
Acting
The Acting Was Fantastic
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
You Fell for the Wrong Girl
But Maybe He Wasn’t Really a Person
On Every Television Channel
This Is Considered Adorable
Titanic
The Stories You Build
Nora Ephron
QUIZ: Ever Wondered If You Might Be the Best Friend of a Romantic Lead?
Sonnets for Supporting Roles:
Rita, Bridesmaids
Dionne, Clueless
Muriel, It Could Happen to You
George, My Best Friend's Wedding
Kit, Pretty Woman
Christmas
Love Actually
When Harry Met Sally
Five-Star Rating
The Movie Will Be a Disappointment
What’s Happening Onscreen Isn’t Relatable
Harold and Maude
New Year’s Eve
Soundtrack
Everything Is Bad Choices that Make Me Feel Good
Credits
Blooper Reel
About the Authors
Meet Cute
Spill sticky fruit juice on someone’s important papers.
Wear a torn tracksuit, jog at the corner where luxury cars drive daily.
Let your dog run into the street and hope for a beautiful hero instead of blood.
Open your big, loud mouth and offend.
Order an egg cream at a diner; hide your disgust as you taste the creamy soda.
Pretend to be a golf enthusiast and pitch a nine iron into the rough.
Reach for the Fig Newtons at your local, organic, free-range grocery.
Get trapped in the subway station train for several hours and talk loudly on your phone to important people about how important you are.
Trip and fall near someone’s butt.
Meet quickly.
It Happened One Night
It was a hate-until-you-love,
opposites-attract, sexual-tension thing.
It was a nice touch: banter
fresh as bobs and finger waves in 1934.
It sent a shiver. She was set up
by men who claimed to love her.
It happened to pave a small piece of road
for other women to click-clack down.
It’s not so different now, expectations,
how love should blossom into white gowns.
It won all top five Oscars that year,
the first to claim that fame.
It wouldn’t happen like that now,
get serious.
Provincial Gym Monkeys and/or
All the Places to Meet the Love of Your Life
The gym.
A coffee shop.
A Hawaiian vacation.
Through work.
In the red-light district.
While being arrested.
The Internet.
The Late-Summer Celestial Honey’s Love Union Farmers’ Market.
Your apartment.
An acquaintance’s wedding to which you’re not sure why you were even invited.
Elementary school.
High school.
College.
Your best friend’s dorm.
A chocolate shop.
The middle of the street with your stiletto trapped in a manhole cover.
Their apartment.
A sporting event.
The basement of a deli.
Your mom’s house.
Your workplace cafeteria.
Nazi Germany.
Your boss’s office.
The future.
Post-Apocalyptic Zombie World without Twinkies.
An English cottage you rented on a whim because you are so fucking sad and never learned how to cry.
A strip club.
The Prime Minister’s Office.
Your Apartment
Is stocked with plastic guardians of youth that watch over your comic-book collection.
Makes your worried parents send cheques.
Smells too much like roses, or bleach, or gin and tonic.
Doesn’t have enough throw pillows.
Wasn’t on a list of achievements you wrote to your future self.
Creeps out your cat sitter.
Will end up devouring your life, Poltergeist-style.
Isn’t a place for inviting attractive men in suits who drive cars that don’t have duct tape on them.
Has too many throw pillows.
Has a roommate.
Looks better in the dark.
Gender Equation
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds new girl, boy finds another girl, boy loses second girl, boy sees
first girl, boy gets third girl.
Boy meets girl, boy disregards girl, boy goes through a series of zany adventures that ends up with girl.
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy uncomfortably forces girl into his life.
Boy meets girl, boy pretends to like girl, boy meets boy.
Boy meets girl, boy is left by girl, boy obsesses over girl, boy meets girl.
Boy meets girl, boy misunderstands girl, boy watches girl from outside her perfectly framed apartment window, boy performs grand gesture, boy gets girl for the time being.
Boy meets girl, girl “loses” boy’s phone number.
Boy meets girl, boy walks in the other direction.
Boy meets girl, boy makes a huge mistake, boy admits mistake, boy makes out with girl in the rain.
Boy meets girl, boy leaves his wife for girl.
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy travels through time to manipulate girl, boy gets girl in the future.
Bobs and Weaves
You can learn a lot about love by analyzing hair. Length, thickness, colour. Cropped hair is trouble, lacks the tactility of true love.1 Redheads burn with crushes, not real desire. Ginger romance fades into a muddy, pink puddle.2 Brunettes with bobs have moderate success, long-haired brunettes try harder than anyone. These efforts are not rewarded.3 Blondes often believe in forever and ever, even if they pluck strays from their scalps. Some blondes can cause spontaneous naps, even during sex.4 Bleach drains libido. Flaxen hair indicates unhealthy codependence.5 Surprisingly, fake hair has no bearing on love realness.6 Hard truths await those with curly hair.7 Cold dinners are a result of overusing a flatiron.8 Men’s hair is most often inconsequential.
There are exceptions. Hugh Grant9 always has a lot of hair and a lot of trouble getting the girl, but when he does, something seems off. His natural wave prevents him from attachment. We hope for Colin Firth’s10 natural perm to envelop us at the end of a chase. But we mostly end up stranded in our underpants, watch Hugh Grant’s floppy locks swirl as he walks away, both of us looking for new waves of love.
1 See Pixie-cut drama, i.e., Winona Ryder, Demi Moore.
2 See Tepid conditions and conditioners, i.e., Lindsay Lohan,
Emma Stone, Amy Adams.
3 See Chocolate loneliness, i.e., Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Garner.
4 See Bleach blandness, i.e., Kate Hudson, Katherine Heigl.
5 See “The Rachel” syndrome, i.e., Jennifer Aniston.
6 See Weave miscommunication, i.e., Jennifer Lopez, Queen Latifah.
7 See Corkscrew neuroses, i.e., Andie MacDowell, Sarah Jessica Parker.
8 See Early aughts time management converges with beauty management.
9 See Rakish indifference to hair maintenance, to women.
10 See A romantic ideal, groomed by a woman off-screen.
You Need Abs to Be in Love
for Mila Kunis
I talk about you a lot. Like, a lot, actually.
Sometimes it is just in passing, but sometimes
it is to talk about your voice, or the way you
fall in love, or your small fists, or your tight abs.
When he left me, I said I needed
my Mila Kunis, the one who would be
at hotel lobbies, bringing me to dangerous bars,
running off cliffs, clapping her tight
abs against my tight abs. Or my Mila would find me a job
at GQ in Manhattan and show me the tops
of mountains in urban forests before abs
would slap to abs.
I talk about you a lot. Maybe I’ve given into
fantasy, and maybe I can’t afford a physical trainer
to tighten my core. But you casually
crunch mens’ hearts with smokey eyes. Because
I was never good at this. Because
I tried to get abs once, but mostly I felt
hungry and complained about bread.
Because you lured Justin Timberlake to bed, abs slammed
against abs. Because I don’t need men to have abs for
them to lead me off cliffs.
Jennifer Aniston
she is his favourite daughter anyway, because she has always done things her own way, and the same goes for meeting someone, she is a young woman seeking her Prince Charming somewhere among her unsuccessful dates, she is “not stable enough,” she is a woman who learns that her family was the inspiration for the book, she is married, she is clearly not very interested in him, she is a divorced mother of two, she is a free-spirited wanderer, she is a bail-jumping ex-wife, she is a paranoid neat freak, she is the exception, she is the rule, she is working on a story, she is surprised he knows so much about her, she is the body that she makes
Jennifer Lopez
Turned dancer, make bride, she meets.
Falls for handsome, separating inseminated,
not to say, organized. Mistaken
she proves impulsive and a mother as
shortly expression worse, a love life
blind pushing Miss every way icily
when distance finally destroys her.
The throws happen. Meets identity.
When she’s together still
afraid of gaze, the steps: job,
family, baby, decides, procedures relationship.
Her worlds continue having it away, even love
but Manhattan (literally)
has her nevertheless missing.
She makes life.
Charming to commute yet
finds a career! Does anyone study herself?
Plan wedding, his turns will sign a mother to you, because
His hard-working, John sees
life in love, artificially handsome,
revealed on loving just as clueless.
He is endless,
reduced to political clumsy
lessons, and knows wants.
Teacher or man,
she falls.
Haunted her
woman window
letting not evening
fate, single, his is one with woman,
lost something he is, but
even they get fate.
Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence is your best friend, she makes you smile when the comical anvil slams down on your heart, and she told you once that you were all she needed. She taught you to dance when schizophrenia ghosted your body and garbage bag running suits tailored you in anger. Jennifer Lawrence saved a baby from a well once, took care of you while you had a fever, fixed a building after Hurricane Sandy. Jennifer Lawrence once saved you from a crumbling civilization. Jennifer Lawrence wrote a tell-all about your friendship, and told the world that you were the one who saved her. Jennifer Lawrence called to tell you she was thinking about you, late at night when you were certain the winter outside was leaking into your body, crystallizing your skin, turning your body into a plastic version of itself. Jennifer Lawrence taught you what love is, from a laptop glaring in the darkness, filtering through your eyes. The truth is, Jennifer Lawrence isn’t your best friend. You don’t have a best friend, just the rage sweating from your forehead.
Easy A
for Emma Stone
Virginity is usually lost in a messy
bed, crushed covers flopped to the side
with shame condomed, shrink-wrapped
over body. I lost my virginity in
his sister’s bed while Family Guy
played in the background.
“I don’t want anything more than
this,” holding his body
as pain slits me, until we
Jenga-drop over the bed.
Warmth Etcha a Sketches through my
body to be shaken out and forgotten.
Now I watch you, scarlet A’d over
easy, pushing men off of body.
If there was anything to be learned
as a girl in high school
is that no one will ever believe you
even with proof.
50 First Kates
Someone plays a character named Kate.
Someone plays Kate as a lonely heart.
Someone plays Kate as a shrew.
Someone plays Kate as the boring protagonist with funny friends.
Someone plays Kate badly.
Someone plays Kate as a person deserving or undeserving of love.
Someone plays Kate as a player.
Someone plays Kate because Mila dropped out.
Someone plays Kate because Kate dropped out.
Sometimes a Kate replaces a Kate.
There are actors named Kate.
Actors named Kate are American.
Actors named Kate are British.
Actors named Kate are not defined by geography, only their ability to turn words on paper into love.
Actors named Kate appear.
Actors named Kate disappear.
Actors named Kate gain visibility through the use of newborns, divorces, Vanity Fair.
Actors named Kate hide their feelings.
Actors named Kate are varied in their Kateness.
Actors named Kate should not be compared.
Actors named Kate are all we have, it seems.
Sometimes a Kate plays a team player.
Sometimes a Kate eats kale.
Sometimes a Kate tries slapstick.
Sometimes a Kate is just a Kate.
Sometimes a Kate plays a Kate and the world lurches into a
new existence.
Sometimes a Kate plays a Catherine in period costume, and there is heightened drama for only a few seconds during an entire movie.
Sometimes Kate fights with Anne in a movie about weddings no one wants to attend.
Sometimes Kate dates old men.
Sometimes Kate grates.
Sometimes Kate is greater than the sum of letters in her name.
Kate is plain.
Kate is bold.
Kate is tradition.
Kate is a metaphor for all women.
Kate rhymes with many words.
Kate can’t skate.
Kate breaks up with husbands and never looks back.
Kate breaks down on the way to the grocery store because she’s afraid of being compared to thin stalks of asparagus.
Kate applies make up.