Readers will recall that Brad’s original predicament vaulted into Of the Week status the moment he recounted that the girl who wanted to hang out, hold hands, snuggle — and just be friends — went so far as to bake him a cake. (Thus serving up, for Brad, immense confusion, and for Breakup Girl, a veritable dessert tray of metaphors.) This week, the frosting thickens.
Dear Breakup Girl,
Since I was your Predicament of the Week, I figured that just maybe you would like to know how everything has been going in my twisted little world lately. Where to start? It started when I made the huge mistake of deciding to bake chocolate chip cookie bars for Lynore. My feeling was this: she baked for me, then I can surely bake for her. Well, I took them to her after school one day. They were still warm. She ate five of them, I think, but only said “thank you” one time. In the meantime, her friends were eating them, and one of her friends (Kelli, who doesn’t come into play after this point, I swear) said that she wanted to marry me. Amber and Tina talked about how wonderful the food was, and how wonderful I was to have baked it. Not one more word from Lynore, though.
Then Stu dumps that new stupid girl and runs right back to Lynore. Lynore says sure, and leaps into his open arms. In fact, to escape her paranoid abusive mother, she moves in with Stu and his family! WHY NOT? Makes sense, RIGHT? I, of course, managed to mention to her that she was making a stupid mistake. Tina did the same thing, since Tina HAD DATED Stu, and she KNOWS what kind of person Stu is. Lynore just got this dreamy look in her eyes and said, “That’s debatable.” Well, I snapped. I said something about her intelligence being debatable, and I drove off very very fast. So now, let’s push Lynore aside for the moment. She’ll be back, though.
Filed under: blogs,Psychology — posted by Breakup Girl @ 6:43 am
We held off on this one, since we figured not that many first dates were happening on Valentine’s Day. But now here we go. OKCupid, always ready with the best questions for blog posts, asks, what are the best questions for first dates? Actually, they put it a much better way: “What questions are easy to bring up, yet correlate to the deeper, unspeakable, issues people actually care about?” Yes! Easy and deep-y. And did we mention easy? See, because what you don’t want — as with first “lines” — is something gimmicky, interviewy, or otherwise annoyingy. (“So, tell me, Sam. [Leans closer, significantly.] Would you rather be a cloud, or a grape?”) What you want, OKCupid determines, with the use of several handy bar graphs, is “the shallow stuff to ask when you want to know something deep.”
OK SO LIKE WHAT? Well, then we get into some frankly fascinating correlations (derived from their vast database and some fancy math). If you want to know if you two have long-term potential, ask if he/she likes horror movies, or would like to chuck it all and live on a sailboat. Couples who agreed on such Qs were correlated with couples who lasted. If you want to know if your date is religious, ask if she/he is annoyed by spelling and grammar mistakes; “If your date answers ‘no’—i.e. is okay with bad grammar and spelling—the odds of him or her being at least moderately religious is slightly better than 2:1.” Hooray for teh tolerance! Want to know if you have the same politics? Ask if your date prefers the people in his/her life to be simple or complex. The latter preference is correlated with liberal politics. JUST SAYING. (Also: clouds and grapes CAN get along!)
Read the whole piece for great fun and info, plus Kevin Costner in fingerless gloves. (The apocalypse kind, not the golf kind.)
Filed under: Holiday — posted by Breakup Girl @ 8:00 am
Breakup Girl isn’t exactly boycotting Valentine’s Day. No, she’s personcotting the holiday. Now, this has nothing to do with the fact that she’s alone this year. She just thinks: Why can’t couples treat every day like Valentine’s Day? Spread the love! To that end, here is some stuff from BreakupGirl.net to help celebrate this Monday — and the other 364 days:
Seinfeld, Schmeinfeld. Now there’s a comedy documentary featuring/involving no fewer than five beloved alums of Breakup Girl LIVE, including the magnificently talented and dare we say dashing Rob P. (alter ego of Defender Stratocaster), who wrote and performed all Breakup Girl music ever on stage and screen. (Oh, wait! Seinfeld, in fact, also performed at Breakup Girl LIVE. True story! And a really long one.) Anyway! Kristen Schaal!
Sadly, it’s not out until June, so we can’t say it’s the perfect Valentine’s Day escape into refreshingly funny alternative jokes about why you’re alone. But in the meantime, enjoy the new trailer, and watch this space for more!
Tagline: Alternative IS the mainstream. W00t! Tell that to your high school.
Filed under: Advice — posted by Breakup Girl @ 10:01 am
From Mesopotamia to Melrose, from Judah Maccabee to Judge Judy, the drive for revenge has been a primary force in human/Nielsen history. It is safe to say — though Breakup Girl’s college professors might have demanded some elaboration — that since the dawn of civilization, all wars (with the possible exception of the Cola Wars) have been fought on the basis of “No one does that to me and gets away with it!” or, put another way, “Nyah nyah!”
So, when you write to Breakup Girl and ask, “Hammurabi dumped me via tablet! How can I get revenge?” you are indeed participating in the grand course of earth-moving, life-changing, history-making human events.
Then again, you’ll notice that said course has not always been so grand. War is, like, bad. (When Breakup Girl wears her favorite Corcoran paratrooper boots, she is beingironic. Also see Double Standards.) And revenge is often, like, tacky. So BG is not going to Pentagon Paper any instructions for Oreo-ing cars or endorse any urban legends of vengeance like that one with the photos of the bride and the best man. This is not the Malcolm Ex (“by any means necessary”) school of revenge. If you want to do something truly dirty, hire Norm MacDonald, who, evidently, is not bitter. ) And that is why, when you ask the how-to-get Revenge question, my likely response is,”Well, actually, you can’t. Nyah nyah.”
Wait, come back. I’m going to explain. And I promise that the reward — if not the revenge — will be sweet.
Filed under: News,pop culture — posted by Breakup Girl @ 6:12 am
On stands today: Riverdale’s “hot new guy,” who’s gay. Yes, that Riverdale, home of Archie, Jughead, Betty, and now Kevin, who is really, really, not interested in Veronica. As comics fans first heard in the spring, “the most mainstream, Middle-American comic book” — which last made headlines with a good old-fashioned traditional marriage — has now officially gone the way of, well, actual communities with gay people in them. Win.
What’s extra-cool here, as Barbara Spindel reports in the Daily Beast, is how — how mellowly — the gayness is presented and framed. “After Kevin and Jughead enjoy some homosocial bonding at a hamburger-eating contest, Jughead warns the new kid that Veronica isn’t likely to stop pursuing him until he returns her flirtations. ‘It’s nothing against her. I’m gay,’ Kevin explains nonchalantly, showing how much more casual coming out has become since the X-Men superhero Northstar made headlines in 1992 with this clunky announcement: ‘For while I am not inclined to discuss my sexuality with people for whom it is none of their business — I am gay!'”
Also, Spindel notes, the fact that he’s gay does not become the plot. Instead, it gets absorbed right in as the basis of some true-to-Archie-world hijinks: “Far from being labored, Kevin’s coming out feels entirely relevant to a comic book about how teens relate. What’s more, Parent uses Kevin’s sexuality as an ingenious plot device that fits seamlessly within the well-worn Archie narrative. ‘Kevin is going to tell her that he’s gay, but Jughead tells him not to because he enjoys seeing Veronica making a fool of herself,’ [veteran Archie artist Dan Parent] explains. ‘Everyone knows he’s gay except Veronica. Betty doesn’t push it because she realizes if Veronica is chasing Kevin then she’s got the time for Archie.'”
Setting aside my only concern — Veronica’s gaydar clearly needs to go into the shop — what I also like here is the reminder of connection made between gayness and wholesomeness (if, indeed, wholesomeness is to be considered a worthy goal). Gay here (and in real life) does not (necessarily) equal subversive, alterna-, Adam Lambert, or “worse.” Why, the gays fit right in, see? That’s what always puzzled me, in a certain way, about the whole gay marriage thing. It’s like, “People. We scared you when we were flamboyant and counter culture. Now we’re trying to settle down, just like you, and you’re really freaked out?!”
Speaking of marriage — and perhaps the best news of all — Archie Comic Publications editor in chief Victor Gorelick noted to the Daily Beast that protest was much more vociferous when the news broke that Archie would marry Veronica. Perhaps we can look forward to seeing Riverdale celebrate the wedding of Kevin and, I don’t know, Steve?
In an astute piece for the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Austin Grossman poses the question Wonder Woman’s New Costume: Superhero Fail? He’s all in favor of a makeover, and even cheers the ditching of the stars and stripes on Independence Day, but gets to the heart of the matter here:
More importantly it’s not even a costume, just kind of an outfit. There’s a reason why superhero costumes aren’t regular clothes – they’re trying to stand for some kind of symbol or invented identity. … It’s as if the people designing her new look didn’t want to make a decision about who she is as a hero.
Agreed!
Now, what DC should have done is called Alex Ross. Ross designed future versions of the Marvel characters in Universe X and the DC characters in Kingdom Come (highly influential); he redesigned the Better Publications characters for Dynamite’s smashing Project Superpowers; and to top it off, he was the go-to guy after The Death of Captain America when Bucky Barnes took up the mantle with a new uniform (which was beautifully retro AND modern). I just got my first look at Ross’ take on The Phantom (for Dynamite’s The Last Phantom) and I was blown away. How do you bring something new to the oldest costumed hero in comics, while making sense of a purple-tights-wearing hero in the jungle? SyFy couldn’t do it. Billy Zane didn’t even try. Check this out.
Where was Ross when Diana Prince needed him? He’s such a fan, I bet he didn’t want to change a thing.
And he would be right. As a cartoonist and comics reader, people ask me what I would have done. I would have kept everything from the old costume and just replaced the starred shorts with black tights. Maybe added shoulder straps to the bustier. If they forced me to do a complete overhaul, I would have played off the Amazon roots (duh) and given her more coverage with some ancient battle armor, which has been done very successfully in many different story arcs since the Eighties.
Meanwhile… Flavorwire has put together a quick rundown of 10 superhero makeovers. This is worth a read because the failure of Spider-Man’s black costume always springs to mind first, and we tend to forget that Iron Man and Daredevil’s current costumes are actually replacements.
Eeek! I hope this new contempo-casual Wonder Woman doesn’t catch on!
UPDATE: Sonia Harris piles on DC’s epic misfire with “Jim Lee’s lack of Wonder” at Comic Book Resources. Great, detailed critique from a female pro.
As an art director, the idea of simply throwing away 70 years of strong brand recognition of this first lady of super powers is an absolute horror story.
Breakup Girl
is the superhero whose domain is LOVE or the lack thereof!
Her blog combines new comics, observations and dating news with
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Not just desserts from June 8, 1998…
and some 
. Until she’s back to her regular schedule, please enjoy these holiday features!
