Posthip

I totally did something stupid Sunday night, whilst waiting for the evening to unfold. I watched Win A Date With Tad Hamilton! on HBO. And I didn’t hate it. I gave up seeing movies like this, even ones with cute blond actresses in them. I hate wasting time with bad, unfulfilling movies. Also, either because I’ve seen so many movies, or maybe just because I’m supremely brilliant, I see the plot wheels turning way up the road. Even in little ways– I recently noticed that whenever something funny happens in a movie, I generally laugh a second or two before everyone else. And even during unpredictable movies, I can’t help trying to figure out what comes next, which is why I don’t mind knowing how a movie ends before I see it and why I generally like movies better on a second viewing.

But I found myself watching this fluffy cotton candy movie Sunday night, and it was extremely predictable, cynically predictable actually, but reasonably well acted and mildly entertaining. But but but. This is one of those movies that ruined my life for a long time. It is one of those movies in which love is made totally unrealistic and bleeds into everyone’s brain, so that even when you find someone you really like you feel like you’re settling, because you really like them, but not like Topher Grace liked the blonde, and not how the blonde liked him in the end. And the preternaturally wise bartender who tells Topher what’s up is everything that is wrong with the Western idea of romantic love…

She tells him that there is love, good love, and Great Love. And if you find your Great Love, you have to do everything in your power to be with that person. And if they reject your love, then you have to pack it in, give up, and find the person who you love second best. Bullshit. This wrecks people’s lives, the idea that there is some transcendent love floating around out there. People who believe this spend their whole lives looking for it and never find it. Hello Dad! Hello Grandpa! Even when they think they’ve found it, life will eventually teach them differently and they’ll either be miserable, still thinking that it’s out there somewhere but they’re stuck, or they’ll fall in love with someone else, thinking that they’ve never felt like THIS before… THIS must be the One!

And God help those poor fools who are in the throes of their Great Love when said Great Loves breaks their little hearts in two. It’s all over for them. And the truth of the matter is, it’s always different, every damn time, because you can’t love two people the same way.

Relish each and every morsel of love you find, every crumb, from the kind that lasts for ten seconds until the other person opens their mouth, to the kind that lasts until your Grandfather widows your Grandmother. No love stands up to our perfect expectations for it, because people suck almost all the time and we are all inconsistent and are cursed with minds of our own and we are more likely than not to do stupid things to people we care about. People who don’t embrace this are doomed doomed doomed.

I think it’s funny that some people fall in love ten times a day and some people have never been in love. It’s language, people, that’s all. Sure, some people are more open and able to love, and some people are reckless and sick, but it’s really just a matter of how you define love. You say you’ve never been in love, but it’s because you hold such reverence for the word. Stop judging your life based on what you think everyone else is feeling. Which, ironically, is another sentiment expressed in the movie.

Originally posted March 16, 2006