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I love romantic comedies. I LOVE THEM. I love them so much that I have been known to try and make things that are not romantic comedies, such as Law and Order: SVU, into romantic comedies. “I’m watching for the love!” I tell Tom cheerily, as the medical examiner wheels broken and mutilated bodies on gurneys across the screen. “The love and the laughs!”

As a connoisseur of the genre, it is a particular bummer and personal affront to me that so many romantic comedies are a steaming pile of crap. Take, for example, He’s Just Not That Into You, which I had the misfortune to watch over the weekend. When I first saw the trailer a year ago, a small hard knot of dread formed in the pit of my stomach and I thought to myself, “In the future, there is going to be some lonely night at home when you are going to succumb to this film. And when you do, it is probably going to make you barf.”

What do you know, I was right.

I hated this movie. I hated everything about it. If it was my boyfriend I would dump it and if it was a guy at a bar I would slip it the number for the Rejection Hotline. I hated it so much the whole time I was watching it I was like, holy CRAP, I need to write a blog post about this RIGHT AWAY.

I hated the fake-looking, too-perfect sets and the no sense of geographic location and the obvious, forgettable soundtrack. I hated that none of the women had careers except maybe they worked at an advertising agency that only advertised cinnamon, or something?  I hated how pathetic and neurotic and awful the chicks were, and how all the men except Ben Affleck were such asses, and even Ben Affleck was kind of an ass, but I’m willing to forgive him because Ben Affleck spends his whole life not being Matt Damon and whatever, I bet that’s hard. But he’s the only one I’m letting slide.

I hated that there was one guy with dark skin in it, and he played the construction worker. I hated the whole “this is my coven of sassy gay friends” thing. I hated Jennifer Aniston walking that dog down the aisle and wanting a husband so desperately, dear Jennifer Aniston: when you make movies about stuff like that it makes me feel uncomfortable about your real life. I hated everything about the way Jennifer Connolly chose to deliver her uptight, stereotypical, lazily-written wife lines. I hated everything about the way Ginnifer Goodwin did everything, which is unfortunate because normally I really like Ginnifer Goodwin. I do not normally like Scarlett Johansson, and whatever I didn’t like her in this either, but that’s no loss. Scarlett Johansson is like that girl at college who read one book by Foucault and now she’s all thinkin’ she’s bad, and also I am almost positive she’s secretly having nasty May-December sex with Woody Allen. I always want to yank her by the hair as hard as I can.

Important questions raised by the viewing of this movie:

1. Why is Bradley Cooper SO COMPLETELY DISGUSTING IN EVERYTHING HE DOES? I don’t mind a little smarminess (I’m looking at you, Clive Owen), but Jesus it’s like this guy is going to infect you with herpes through the television.

2. Why don’t Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers write all the movies, ever?

3. Why doesn’t the Mac Guy do more things? He was pretty gross in this, too, but I was taken by his eyelashes and the way he delivered his boring, corny, inevitable you make me want to be a better man speech at the finale.

The biggest problem of all: Obviously now I have to watch Valentine’s Day so I can do a compare-and-contrast. MY LIFE IS SO HARD.

An old man on a bench outside the Trader Joe’s said that to me this morning. He also nodded at my sunflowers and said, “Pretty flowers for a pretty girl,” which is the kind of thing that makes me smile if and only if it is coming from an old man on a bench in the morning.

Needs for today:

1. A recommendation for a good multivitamin/calcium supplement/magical voodoo to make all my joints and muscles stop hurting all the time, especially good lower back stretches and something for behind my knees

2. 500 words of fiction, banked

3. A long walk to Castle Island, followed by some Two Buck Chuck

See? I am not difficult to please.

In New York at the Dunkin’ Donuts they put Joe Girardi’s face on the Box of Joe.

Am back. Am here. Am cleaning things up.

Am going to be taking a breather from this here blog for a few. Am busy. Am writing. Am leaving a trail so I can find my way back.

Taylor's hobbies include: making girls pregnant, having an Ellen DeGeneres haircut, not being self-aware, and Uninformed Republicanism. We continue to love him anyway. (Photo from Flickr, 2008)

When I was in high school, my mother worried that my Weird Thing For Taylor Hanson would keep me from finding a boyfriend.

(She’s reading this now all indignant, like, “I did not,” but she totally did. It’s okay, Mom. I had that worry, too.)

I mean, we’ve talked about my Weird Thing For Taylor Hanson here before. It’s, you know. Weird. It started when I was eleven and even more achingly spastic than I am now, at which point  TayHan lodged his ridiculous, non-threatening, flaxen-haired self in one of the many cracks of my fragile psyche, rearranging all the furniture in there to accommodate his Wurlitzer and many pairs of leather pants. I proceeded to carry the cassette single of “MMMBop” around in the sleeve of my uniform sweatshirt for the rest of sixth grade like a total creeper and chatter shrilly to anyone who would listen about how one of his songs actually mentioned me by name. As anyone who knows me at all can attest, when I love something, I love it VERY MUCH: still, the late nineties were a hysterical kind of dopamine bloodbath alarming even for me. No wonder my mother worried about my prospects.

My Weird Thing For Taylor Hanson did not, in the end, keep me from finding love in the real world. Another thing it didn’t do was go away. Which is why, at nearly twenty-five years of age, gainfully employed, happily attached, I’m going to New York on Thursday to spend a weekend doing Really Embarrassing Hanson Things the details of which, when she heard them, caused my fiftysomething coworker to look at me with something very much like pity and say, “God. You are such a nerd.”

Taylor says: "who is that mysterious woman?" ALSO, I swear my schnoz is not actually that big. (Photo from Sierra, Fall 2008).

When mocked (and there comes a moment in every significant relationship where I have to come out of the Hanson Closet, at which point a certain amount of humiliation inevitably follows) I used to say: “Hanson makes good music!” but you know what? That’s not even true. Hanson makes okay music punctuated by the occasional blazing fireball, the kind of swoony, electric pop miracle that most bands only ever approximate.

That’s a lot to explain, though, and most people don’t want to hear it anyway, so now I say: “Excuse me, there are way more embarrassing things than liking Hanson. For example: those people on Law and Order: SVU who like to get choked while they do the nasty. Those people have something to be embarrassed about.”

Haters to the left, is what I’m getting at.

This is the truth: sometimes I forget I feel things and they remind me.

Sometimes I need to shout and they say, please do.

Sometimes I am standing in a crowd at a concert and I can see but just barely and I have to keep moving and I think, yes, yes, yes. I know.

Stolen from the internet: Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don’t blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don’t blog about, but you’d like to hear about, and I’ll write a post about it.

Okay, go.

Jackie, in New York: “I saw the hot guy from Star Trek the other day.”

Katie: “The really hot guy?”

Jackie: “No, not the really hot guy. Please, I would be dead on the floor. The other guy. The vulcan.”

Katie: “You saw the vulcan from Star Trek? The vulcan’s not that hot.”

Jackie: “No, but he’s on Heroes, and he’s really hot on Heroes. I saw him in the Whole Foods. He was wearing a fedora–”

Katie: “Shut up.”

Jackie: “–and short shorts.”

Katie: “You saw the vulcan from Heroes in the Whole Foods wearing a fedora and short shorts.”

Jackie: “Yes!”

Katie: “This is going on my blog immediately.”

1. I wrote four hundred useless words yesterday. Today I hope to write two hundred useful ones.

2. We watched Public Enemies last night, which was unbearably glamorous, AND Tom let me stop it halfway through so I could watch Bones. (Tom: “So, Bones is your new show, huh?” Me: “I guess so…what makes you say that?” Tom: “Uh….you’ve been talking about it kind of a lot.”) (Also from Tom: “It’s good you’re a writer, Kate. There is…a lot happening in your brain.” ) (This was after I told him I thought I had developed Stigmata on the back of my knee.) (Also, to any other Catholic School girls out there: did any of you used to worry you’d randomly get pregnant like the Virgin Mary and no one would believe you? Was that just me?)

3. We’re going yard-sailing tomorrow. We need supplies to finish turning the deck into a tropical paradise so I can show it to you guys. And we need them cheap. Also on the agenda: baseball and an iCarly marathon with my ten-year-old buddy, and baked goods. And that’s pretty much it.

4.  My mom left me a voicemail last night to tell me how much she liked that Ukelele kid, which made me glad I posted that video and not the R-rated dub of the Shamwow commercial. Although I suspect she would have liked that one, too.

5. “Stories happen, like thunderstorms or murders. We should all take heart.” (T.C.Boyle)

Happy Weekend.

1. You don’t need to run for the bus if it is pulling away from the curb, because in five minutes another bus will come and you can get on that one.

2. Unless it is Sunday, in which case another bus will not come before  you die, so on Sundays you should run.

3. Life is too short to read a book that is boring 50 pages in. Or to watch television shows with no secret love. Or not to fling yourself at your friends when you see them and tell them how nifty they are.

4. If you carry a pen, a band-aid, and a tampon in your purse, people will always think you have your shit together. Even if those are literally the only three things in your purse.

5. Given enough time and exposure, there is no food I can’t teach myself to like.

6. This rule does not apply to people.

7. Whenever I lose my temper I inevitably feel shitty and regretful five minutes later, so it’s actually in my best interest to check myself before I wreck myself. This is a hard one to remember.  I have a terrible temper.

8. If you are quiet and listen, listen, 70% of the time people will think you are interesting and mysterious. The other 30% of the time they will think you are snotty and stuck-up, but that’s more on them than on you, I like to think.

9. It’s easier to be happy when there’s interesting stuff in your refrigerator.

10. Look at everything, and write it down so you don’t forget.

Somebody on my blogroll did this earlier in the week, and I thought it was so awesome, but I can’t remember which one of you it was!

So, if it was you…you are cool.

Everybody else: tell me your rules to live by.

In Philadelphia we went for cheesesteaks. It seemed like the right thing to do. We waited on a long line in the freezing cold and Rachel ordered for both of us because she was afraid I’d do it wrong and the guy behind the counter would shout at me. He shouted at her, once. The whole thing reminded me of waiting on the lunch line in high school but the cheesesteak was delicious, even if I totally got McDonald’s feeling afterwards. Did you know a proper cheesesteak has Cheez-Whiz on it? I did not.

I wonder if anybody from my high school lunch table is reading this thing. I sort of sincerely doubt it. HEY: if you sat at my high school lunch table, and you are here now, you should say hello. I like to think I’m marginally nicer than I used to be. At the very least my hair is less bad.

Jennie, you will like this: if you make a Hootie and the Blowfish Pandora station, they will play you music by Deep Blue Something and Collective Soul. Um, not that I made a Hootie and the Blowfish Pandora station. GOSH.

Things are growing my garden. My beets are poking their beety little leaves up, and my arugula is sprouting. There’s action in the herb pots, too, but I didn’t label anything so I will just have to wait and be surprised. I think it’s warm enough for tomatoes. Abbie: do you think it is warm enough for tomatoes here yet?

I watched Quills the other night. It was totally gnarly and hideous, but also sort of rad.  I’m afraid of Joaquin Phoenix. I think he is handsome but that he needs to calm down. Rather like a canine.

Also, for some reason I thought Johnny Depp was in it, which he is not.

We’re going to dinner. I have to change my clothes. Here, have this hilarious video of a little kid playing the ukelele.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErMWX–UJZ4&feature=related]