Readability Index: Highly readable (thanks to most of it being written by someone else)
I don’t know how much is legal to quote from a book, so if I’m doing something illegal let me know. Shit I’m not making any money of this so…should be fine. As long as there’s no money involved people don’t usually care.
But I read a blog post about Soul Mates last night on The Sensitive Storm and it made me think of this essay from Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.
Here is a key passage. It’s worth reading the whole book, for sure. I read the whole thing on a bus to NYC. I didn’t plan on it, but couldn’t stop myself.
“It appears that countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn’t the number-one box-office star in America, because every straight girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker. For upwardly mobile women in their twenties and thirties, John Cusack is the neo-Elvis. But here’s what none of these upwardly mobile women seem to realize: They don’t love John Cusack. They love Lloyd Dobler. When they see Mr. Cusack, they are still seeing the optimistic, charmingly loquacious teenager he played in Say Anything, a movie that came out more than a decade ago.”
…
“And these upwardly mobile women are not alone. We all convince ourselves of things like this–not necessarily about Say Anything, but about any fictionalized portrayals of romance that happen to hit us in the right place, at the right time. This is why I will never be completely satisfied by a woman, and this is why the kind of woman I tend to find attractive will never be satisfied by me. We will both measure our relationship against the prospect of fake love.”
Yeah that’s some true shit. I had to restrain myself from quoting the whole essay as it’s pretty bad ass the whole way through.
Ah but I can’t leave this out. He starts talking about Coldplay and how they, like Cusack’s movies, promote ‘fake love’:
“What matters is that Coldplay manufactures fake love as frenetically as the Ford fucking Motor Company manufactures Mustangs, and that’s all this woman heard. “For you I bleed myself dry,” sang their blockhead vocalist, brilliantly informing us that the stars in the sky are, in fact, yellow. How am I going to compete with that shit?”
Anyone's Ghost 
You’re really making me think here. Just talking about this topic with a friend earlier today. I once read a book about successful relationships. The dude said to forget about the Disney version of the knight and shining armor. He said that successful relationships are the ones that aren’t based on the concept of romantic love but the relationships that grow gradually are more stable and much better. They aren’t fleeting like the idea of romance we have now…500 Days of Summer, etc. I haven’t tried that gradual love thing and I’m not sure if I can handle it. But perhaps it is the answer after all?
Oh, and for the record, I was born in 1975 and I don’t have any kind of crush on Cusack. My “Say Anything” prompt was just my way of wanting people to know I want to hear whatever they have to say. It has a feeling of vulnerability to it, intimacy. I’m drawing people out. Much better than “Leave A Comment” don’t you think?
Say Anything is way better than Leave a Comment. But yeah that’s the difference between knowing something and feeling something. Like I know I should go for a run today because I’ll feel better afterwards…but I’m not going to because I don’t feel like it. I know I should have a relationship based on mutual trust, understanding, and the fact that we are both going to be flawed human beings who won’t feel like being super romantic 99 percent of the time…but I’d rather keep hoping for something more dramatic.
^ what you said.