I don't do romantic comedies

I read a blog this afternoon that had reposted a BBC online article stating that watching romantic comedies leads to failed relationships as viewers will develop false notions about sex and love. The blogger reposting it offered the conclusion that romantic comedies are to women what porn is to men, which made me realize that when it comes time for me to plunk down my hard earned cash at the cineplex, it's pretty much never on the romantic comedy fare. The last three movies I saw have been Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Happy Go Lucky, and Role Models. None of them were chick flick rom com stuff. Rather, when it comes to comedies I tend to favor the more frat boy variety, the stuff marketed to men primarily. Crude jokes about sexuality I suppose are just more appealing to me than a comedy centering on a woman who is always a bridesmaid and never a bride (27 Dresses, awful movie.)
Maybe also it is the fact that unlike many other women in my age range, I do not have aspirations of finding a husband or falling in love. Perhaps to me sex is just all a big joke, and not the stuff of sentimentality.





With that said, I totally stood in line opening weekend for the Sex and the City movie.

(Role Models and Zach and Miri are extremely funny, if you're in a noncerebral mood they're good fun.)

a charming coincidence

yesterday while on the F train going to Broadway Lafayette I was sitting and listening to a Tegan and Sara song on my ipod. Then at Delancey I noticed a girl get on the train and stand in front of me, she had some plastic thing in the outer part of her ear so I did a double take, wondering if she was deaf. Then I looked at the girl's face and realized that it was Sara/Tegan standing in front of me (I can't tell them apart, but I think it was Sara.) I stared at her, she stared back so I just smiled and resisted the urge to ask her if she was in town for a show.
That's one of the weird things about New York, there really is a chance the person you're playing on your ipod will magically materialize. I think if it had been Cat Power that had magically appeared I would have let out an audible yelp of surprise.

gaitskill interview

This Thursday I am going to be interviewing Mary Gaitskill at her home in Red Hook. Because mail seems to mysteriously vanish before it gets to my hands (my Juliana Hatfield Cd and book also never made it to my door) I have not yet gotten her new collection of short stories so I am fretting that it might not get to me in time. I'm nervous, because not only is Gaitskill one of my favorite writers, she is also the subject of my MA thesis (which I finally finished last week.)

I was thinking today as I walked through cold, austere Prospect Park that perhaps what made me connect so much to her work during my late teens--early twenties is the fact that she has always written on the darkness and trauma that seems to be inherent in sexuality, something that I was always aware of growing up.