Kate applies herself.
Kate stands up.
Kate transcends.
Kate stars.
Kate eases.
Kate whispers.
Kate reminds.
Kate Kate Kate Kate Kate Kate Kate Kate Kate Kate Kate.
Kate.
Kate.
Eat, Pray, Love
I took meditation classes
and I’m still alone.
You’re Supposed to Be Engaged
The camera pans over a wedding ceremony. Two young lovers rush out into a burst of flowers and confetti.
The camera pans down a neon theatre sign. A young couple walks out onto a snowy Chicago street.
The camera pans over Florida. A man comes into focus.
He puts on his jeans while a woman sleeps in the bed.
The camera pans over San Francisco, cuts to Chinatown, firecrackers frighten a man. Two trolleys pass by. A man wanders the street in New Year’s garb. A couple talk excitedly about a party they are heading to.
The camera pans over a Halloween party in full swing.
A man in a Bill Clinton mask dances. Three women dressed as Monica Lewinsky dance in a circle. Another person in a Hillary Clinton mask arrives and Bill Clinton mask runs away. He lets himself into apartment 11b and begins to take off his clothes. He gets into bed with a woman who is asleep. She screams when he wakes her up.
The camera is out of focus. Pink. A woman pulls away a bra from the camera and her image becomes clear. Women shop for lingerie, the camera moves towards a man looking at tiny panties. He is offered help by a lady. He says no, awkwardly. Hands her the panties.
The camera pans over a hill. A woman is in a wedding dress, riding a horse along a large pasture. She is clearly frightened.
The camera pans over a children’s room. A young girl is playing with her dolls, which are set up as if they are at a wedding. The light shines through the window, and the room turns to the colour of nostalgia. A small pink vinyl player turns and turns as the girl organizes the dolls.
The camera zooms slowly towards a foggy city. Cut to a woman waking up in an apartment. A radio announcer is promoting a contest. The woman frantically grabs her phone.
The camera pans over the head of an officer showing a very large crowd of people behind a gate. The officer looks concerned. Cut to a magazine cover with a missing cover photo with the headline Wedding of the Century. Cut back to the officer opening giant doors, a woman in a wedding gown runs out, her face blurred by her veil.
Jokes
Set-ups, contrived
misinterpretations,
dog-park precursors, good
old-fashioned lies. No
pay off.
Men’s underpants, hair and hair
removal, jockstrap, sexualized
fruit.
Women’s oversized underpants, hairy
knuckles or faces, bras and bra-removal
techniques, sexualized fruit.
Can we please
get some decent potty humour?!
A beautiful woman walks into a bar,
drinks until blind, stumbles
onto a dick.
Break it down, make it
easier:
Did you hear that one about _____________________?
_______________________?
Punchline
That’s not funny.
It’s not
supposed to be, it’s a
romantic comedy. But
I’m still laughing.
The Funny Thing Is
The funny this is you can’t remember
how to tell a knock-knock joke.
What do you get when you cross
a kitten’s face with Jon Hamm’s face
and a grilled cheese sandwich?
Turned on. And probably disappointed.
Knock, knock?
Who’s there?
Your dusty vagina.
Your dusty vagina who?
Um, no one.
What do you call a woman
standing in front of a mirror
pretending she is talking
to a crush? You don’t call
her. Nobody does. Don’t
check your phone. It’s fine.
Don’t you get it?
The joke is you.
Matthew McConaughey’s Abs
Haven’t been alive for
over seven years. This is why he is always
falling over in movie covers, tilting due to
ab loss. So you fall in love with Matthew
McConaughey’s zombie abs. They are
flesh dripping and flapping from his stomach.
They awkwardly try to buy you a coffee
at the Starbucks. You decline because
you are late, but his dead abs manage to
sneak their phone number into your pocket.
Then his dead abs keep bumping into you.
At the abandoned Blockbuster Video, at
the abandoned Gap, and the abs
always say the wrong thing, so you don’t
forget them as you walk away. Now,
you can’t stop thinking about dead zombie
abs. The way dead zombie abs laughed
at your jokes and took you to abandoned
beaches that are too toxic to swim in.
You both sip coconut water from sterilized
plastic coconut containers. When you decided
that the earth was too much and you wanted
to leave, his dead abs stopped you, just
at the rocketport, to tell you they were
in love with you too, so deep in love
that it shook them to their dead core.
Matthew McConaughey’s Arms
Are T. Rex-sized
and he can barely fit them around
any human body. Optical illusions
are used to make everyone believe
in his romance and sweet Southern
magnetism. Hot lights illuminate
his cheese-eating smile, a soda
in his folded knuckle, a woman photoshopped
into a Barbie husk. His hugs are weak,
like, have his arms been smoking weed too?
Who makes an arm so short?
I thought you had to go big in Texas
or go home sad and alone to some other place.
A place of stubby appendages.
Short arms deliver less love,
lack urgency and force. Every embrace
a pinch, a fresh lobstery cling.
He grasps at emotion
and it slips from his arms
like a satin sheet. Satin is also not that
romantic. This is why he started making
awards-baiting dramas.
There was no way
he could fool everyone forever,
his cover blown any time
he reaches for the top shelf.
Porn Parodies
Dick Edition
Under the Tuscan Dick
Dicks Actually
27 Dicks
(500) Dicks of Summer
Mystic Dick
Dick of Honor
50 First Dicks
Dick Wars
How to Lose a Dick in 10 Days
My Best Friend’s Dick
Dicks with Benefits
My Big Fat Greek Dick
When Dick Met Dick
Pretty Dick
Groundhog Dick
The 40-Year-Old Dick
You’ve Got Dick
10 Things I Hate about Dicks
Bridget Jones’s Dick
Dick Could Happen to You
Porn Parodies
Vagina Edition
The Vagina Singer
Vagina’s Day
The Vagina Planner
Music and Vaginas
Sweet Home Vagina
What Happens in Vagina
There’s Something about Vaginas
&nb
sp; Notting Vagina
Groundhog Vagina
Silver Linings Vagina
Four Weddings and a Vagina
The Philadelphia Vagina
Vagina In-Law
Forgetting Sarah’s Vagina
40 Days and 40 Vaginas
Pretty in Pink
Definitely, Vagina
The Back-Up Vagina
Just Vaginas
Vagina Crashers
He’s Just Not That into Vagina
Crazy, Stupid, Vagina
She’s All Vagina
Ever Wondered If You Might Be
the City as a Character
FIND OUT NOW!
Check all that apply:
You consider romance your roadwork.
The way you approach civic responsibility is through corner flower shops that sell only red roses by the dozen.
Your streetlights are perfect for illuminating the faces of lovers overcoming petty feuds.
Your landmarks are so universally known they can be identified from space.
You can’t see stars from where you are.
You are London.
You are Paris.
You are New York City.
Slow Motion
Coil your hair into a tight bun. Wind strands until you feel societal pressure claim your soul. When you see your potential lover, pull out whatever holds it in place. Shake your hair around like you have a horrible spider in it.
Walk down the street in high heels. Stare at something beautiful in the distance, like an imaginary ideal life-partner. Do not trip.
Look up from your first edition of Ulysses. Look directly into the sunlight. Take off your glasses and reveal crystal blue irises. Never blink.
Make meaningful eye contact with the person you love. Linger on the darkness of their pupils. Be drawn in. Raise a finger to your lips. Bite down until you draw blood.
Adam Sandler
A Love Story
He was the one. First crush. Big nose,
big head, big T-shirts, baggy shorts
slung carelessly. A sloppy fool.
To me he was perfect.
Charmed by his childish voice
I aspired to be more ridiculous,
to seek unpopular, bumbling love.
I imagined life with a man
who wouldn’t know how to wear a suit.
I never thought about the meaning of grown-ups,
never used the word “man-child.” I watched
him love and rage in movies and on television,
flickers of tenderness as he strummed silly songs,
glimmers of mischief as he mocked everyone.
I never questioned a man living his fantasy
of never needing to behave like a “grown man.”
I never thought it was wrong to think
with my heart, even when it acted like an idiot.
I never thought a heart could steer you into a mess.
When he sang, “PUT A BULLET IN MY HEAD!”
I wanted to cradle that big head
in my lap, whisper gibberish in his ear.
What’s not to love?
What’s Not to Love,
Adam Sandler?
1
The movie came at me with fists,
it closed around my neck. I saw
Chuck and Larry in the theatre
and the laughter behind my seat
sounded familiar. It left the same
iron taste in my mouth as the time seven
men followed me and my friends
into a 7-Eleven and taught us the way
mens’ fists can change a face
and what bloody shirts feel like.
2
When I hear the name Rob Schneider
it sounds like someone whispering transphobia.
You do this voice when you’re trying to be funny
but it is the punctuation to a racist joke.
When the First Nations people walked off
your movie set, did you wonder why
you didn’t just clone Rob Schneider so that
he can play all of your ethnic roles?
When the two male friends kissed
in Big Daddy, I had to suppress my desire.
I guess that’s one thing I will love
about you, dumbass.
(500) Dicks of Summer
You spent the summer at weddings, making
invitations for friends, holding babies on
the dance floor. Lacing speeches with memories.
Your ex followed you wherever you went
to remind you that ghosts are real, shadows
miss you, anxiety is your real boyfriend.
At the last wedding, you are the emcee
and make jokes that fall flat for the audience.
You are Katherine Heigl as a punchline.
Your ex finds you again, one last time,
his new boyfriend next to him, smiling,
saying how touching your speech is.
He has that glazed look in his eyes:
familiar, it transports you to the
first night he kissed you behind elevator doors.
The next day you have drinks with the
wedding party, and they recount last
night, joke by joke.
They look at you and ask if everything
was okay with your ex, especially
Dicks Actually
a found poem
A philanderer faces a major life
crisis when his penis detaches itself
and takes human shape, forcing
him to try to control his wayward genitalia.
A Series of Romantic Comedies
That Could Never Be Made
for Jonathan Ball
A woman dates every man on earth until she is too old to date. On her deathbed, she meets the man of her dreams: the doctor who pulls her off life support. “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette plays during the credits.
* * *
A man must relive his entire life over and over again until he meets a woman who can alter space and time.
* * *
A man does not feel human emotions. In his quest for empathy and feeling, he finds a woman without human emotions. They decide to spend their life together due to similarities. They are neither happy or sad about this outcome.
* * *
A woman must murder every single other woman on earth in order to marry the man she loves.
* * *
A man falls in love with a corpse. He reanimates her using technology.
* * *
Steve is one of the last men on earth. Adam is one of the last men on earth. Adam changes his sexuality in order to avoid the loneliness. With no females, the earth collapses. They walk back into the ocean and let the salt water consume them.
* * *
A man falls for an inanimate object that becomes an alternate life force only the man can feel or see. Parker Posey plays the best friend.
* * *
Kyle has a rage addiction. Sally has low self-esteem. They meet at a group counselling session and fall in love with the cycle of their rage and low self-esteem until they no longer exist.
* * *
Darryl is perpetually trapped in Friday. He can never escape Friday, it just repeats itself over and over again. Larry is the soulmate he would meet on Saturday.
* * *
Kate and Steven never meet. They spend their entire lives just missing each other. One leaves a coffee shop just as another enters, one works the day shift, one works the night shift. They would fall in love if their paths ever crossed, but they never do. Love inhabits the spaces they never meet. It fills the blank spots.
Valentine’s Day
for Dina Del Bucchia
Otters are about love,
or about the other, about the way
we change the world
in each moment;
a YouTube video that forgets depression
or, you are the otter,
holding my small otter hand, or
they placed a fuck-load of celebrities
in a movie that confuses the idea of love
that gets it wrong every time.
And I spend $13.50 on that notion.
We send the one we love an animated GIF
instead of asking, “How are you?”
Valentine’s Day had a budget of $52 million.
I told you I loved you in a Facebook message,
but I wrote it between a joke,
did you notice? When you see Ashton Kutcher
walk into the scene, you know the movie
will be a disappointment.
They met for an “I Hate Valentine’s” dinner.
They should have stayed home and finished their laundry.
Sometimes, life feels like
Ashton Kutcher just walked into the scene,
When you leave, when
the plane floats off, and I am still here,
we blister. Or,
we flood.
I’ll still be here, when the water damage
crusts, or when we callus.
They confuse the notion of love.
They get it wrong every time.
They spend $52 million getting it
wrong in under two hours.
I am $13.50 divided by $52 million,
or,
what if my dislike of Ashton Kutcher
is just another way to avoid loneliness?
Or, maybe we both relate too much to Anne Hathaway,
because poetry can’t pay the bills but the phone sex can.
All the celebrities in the world
can’t fix a broken heart,
or, Kathy Bates
just reminds me of Misery,
or,
that,
love
is the all-consuming moment
before Ashton Kutcher
walks into the scene.
What’s Your Number?
[Opening credits]
Scan over magazines,
headlines about how to fall in love.
Those love-life instructions induce
anxiety and confuse so many heroines.
[Intro to leading lady]