Obviously, we heart funny women at Breakup Girl HQ, but what about the rest of the world?

Are funny women intimidating to the opposite sex?

Although Kevin Pang ends his Chicago Tribune article on the topic with a happy punch line, he explores the pitfalls of funny women in the Chicago improv scene trying to date “civilians.”

Although male improvisers date both within and outside the community, many female improvisers only date fellow performers…The argument, I realized, might not be that female performers can’t date noncomedians, but that they gravitate toward funnier men.

He goes on to quote sociologists and layfolk, and makes the astute observation:

Those who can make others laugh are the puppeteers of life. They pull strings, tugging and slacking people’s emotions. And that’s a powerful thing, perhaps too much for some men to accept.

So what’s the moral here? Should funny women stick to dating only funny guys? Should natural-born comediennes suppress their instincts in order to appeal to men? Or should men just grow a pair and face their fears? What do you think? Comments welcome.

[P.S. Welcome, Paula, to BG’s super-bloggers! You’re funny, and we’re not intimidated.]

It’s the twentieth anniversary of Say Anything (#iamold), and while some now confess to having replaced Dobler with Donaghy, his  In Your Eyes triumph will always be in our hearts. And now, thanks to a tipster, we’ve succumbed to the charms of Marit Larsen, who here comes pretty close to a boombox moment of her own:

David Brooks, writing in today’s Times, is right: the game has changed.

Once upon a time — in what we might think of as the “Happy Days” era — courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts — dating, going steady, delaying sex — was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.

Over the past few decades, these social scripts became obsolete. They didn’t fit the post-feminist era. So the search was on for more enlightened courtship rules. You would expect a dynamic society to come up with appropriate scripts. But technology has made this extremely difficult. Etiquette is all about obstacles and restraint. But technology, especially cellphone and texting technology, dissolves obstacles. Suitors now contact each other in an instantaneous, frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and commitments.

But then he goes on, as he is wont to do:

But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today’s world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act that the choice of an erotic partner.

This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other’s commitment.

Today there are fewer norms that guide in that way. Today’s technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust.

Yoiks! The dudgeon’s as high as an elephant’s eye. Who says everyone really followed those “scripts,” or that they were the best or most effective ones in the first place? Aren’t new scripts, if imperfect ones, evolving right now? And who says we — even typing with our thumbs — aren’t creating different kinds of poetry? Speaking of poetry, where’s the copy editor on that weird sentence about a “pattern of being?” Also, what about a Prius what?

This is very interesting territory. Territory already covered — very interestingly — in the New York magazine cover story that Brooks, in this column, puts through the Brooksinator, with predictably tut-tut results that add little to the conversation. Territory that might be better re-explored by someone, dare I say, less corrosive toward poetry and imagination.

Again with the dating advice that just won’t die.

Presenting Menage a Twang: BG’s new fav-o-rite local band!

P.S. Our spy, who saw them the other night, reports that they also sang (not from the album) “Your Love is Like Time Warner Cable.” (You know, as in, “I hate you but can’t live without you.”) Other titles included I’ll Only Support Your Art for So Long, Find Me on Facebook, I Don’t Want to Hold Your Baby, The Pantsuit, and Your Boyfriend Has a Boyfriend.
P.P.S. New Yorkers in inter-borough relationships, please do not miss Weekend Service Changes.
P.P.S.S. Attention concert bookers: Menage a Twang + Rob Paravonian = music comedy heaven.

Via Broadsheet:

During the most unwieldy parts of my pregnancies, the only way I could sleep was by spooning a huge plaid pregnancy pillow called something embarrassing like a Snoozle, or a Froogle, or a Foshizzle, or something or other. With me in my comfy flannel PJs, my pillow and I looked like a huge plaid G-clef, and my husband looked left out. Which is simply to say that yes, I know and embrace the wonder of a well-placed body pillow.

But now there is the Funktiontide — or at least there might be, says its designer Stefan Ulrich — and now, remarkably, we may behold something perhaps even more unsettling than the Real Doll. Ulrich says his pillow prototype, which would use advanced robotics and artificial muscle technology to move and change shape depending on how you hold it, is but a polymer harbinger of the day when bleak, alienated humans will turn to “robots” for emotional satisfaction. (Yeah, like I didn’t already do that with my second husband. Folks!) That, or as we see in this technically G-rated, but somehow NSFW video, maybe the Funktiontide is nothing more than a Shmoo with benefits.

While the video’s human co-star appears rather satisfied with his lot, Ulrich is not unaware that his Pillbury Dough-bot raises some juicy issues. “…[T]he the work’s intention is to create a provocative picture for discussion, which enables us to question how much we want technological products to satisfy our emotional needs,” goes his commentary. “The ambiguity of this scenario is, that it could be understood as a solution to a wide range of different kinds of loneliness. But it might as well be understood as a scenario which should be avoided by all means possible.” Speaking as someone who practically sleeps with her iPhone, I’m sure I have no idea what he’s talking about.

Via BoingBoing.

Struggling with the ultimate romantic choice? The one you’ve got vs. the one that got away? Familiar and stable vs. fizzy and exciting? Veronica vs. Betty?

Well, envy Archie.* Looks like our man in Riverdale may get to have it both ways.

As today’s Times reports: “That perennially teenage redhead…made headlines around the world when word leaked, back in May, that he would propose to his longtime love interest, Veronica Lodge, in issue No. 600 of the comic that bears his name. But that issue, published in August, was only Part 1 of a six-part story. Although Archie did marry Veronica, things will take a turn in November, when Archie proposes to the lady in waiting, Betty Cooper. That’s just the latest twist in the romantic triangle that has thrust this nearly 70-year-old character, and his parent company, into the media spotlight.”

How’s he gonna pull that off? Easy: alternate universe! “The wedding story was written by Michael E. Uslan and illustrated by Stan Goldberg, a longtime ‘Archie’ artist. The first half was called ‘Archie Marries Veronica,’ but issue No. 603, on sale next month, is called ‘Archie Marries Betty.’ The end of bachelorhood began in issue No. 600, in which Archie found himself on a road named Memory Lane, which he has often traveled. This time he walked a different direction and encountered a fork in the road. He chose the left path, which allowed him to see his future with Veronica and their twins, and himself working for her tycoon father. At the end of the October issue, No. 602, Archie goes for an evening stroll and encounters the fork again. In the November issue Archie will find himself back in Riverdale High, this time envisioning a future with Betty as his wife. (A set of twins factors into this destiny as well.)”

(Doctor Who fans will recall when this totally happened to Donna Noble, only instead of twins there was a giant bug. And — Halloween preview — let’s not forget Breakup Girl Friday in Ghost Ex!)

But the question remains: who do you think he should wind up with? (“Jughead” would of course be a revolutionary twist, but I don’t think we’re there yet.)

* And talk to The Guy At The End of the Bar.

Not very long ago I sent out a request to my friends for breakup songs. While mine was for a relationship breakup, Aunt Becky over at Mommy Wants Vodka (one of my favorite names for a blog, EVER! mostly because I feel that!) has put together her list of Songs To Break Up To for her breakup with Diet Coke. (I feel you there too, sista!)

Her songs include: “Always On My Mind” by Elvis Presley; “Good Year For The Roses” by Elvis Costello; “Pictures of You” by The Cure (of course); “November Rain” by Guns ‘n’ Roses and “Delicate” by Damien Rice.

None of these songs was on the lists my friends suggested. Over in my world (my roughly post-1990 world) we had: “How to fight Loneliness” by Wilco; “Harder Now that It’s Over” by Ryan Adams; “February” by Dar Williams; “Done Wrong” by Ani DiFranco — actually, there was a lot of Ryan Adams and Ani DiFranco, now that I think about it. And the Magnetic Fields — though a few of my friends thought that might drive me to suicide at the time and prudently left them off their lists.

I’m not in a breakup right stage right now — though I am seriously considering breaking up with network TV this season. But I’d still like your suggestions. What are your favorite breakup songs?