Of Conversation and Culture

This weekend, I sat at a bar next to a lovely lady from Pittsburgh. I know she was from Pittsburgh because when I ordered my steak Pittsburgh style she said, “What’s that? I ask because I’m from Pittsburgh.”

We talked for a while about the differences between the North and the South in general and Pittsburgh and Panama City in particular, which was nice—spontaneous conversation is one of the reasons I sit at the bar when I eat alone.

We talked about how nice and friendly most folk around here are, and, given that, how shocking the racism is, and then she said, “We don’t have culture here, but we have the beaches.”

And I was like whoa, now. Wait just a minute, Pittsburgh. We have culture.

I had just returned from a book signing at Seaside. My new novel, “Double Exposure,” like all my books, is about this area. That’s culture. Jason Heddon and the college’s wonderful theater department are performing a play of it in November. That’s culture. Seaside has the REP and Sundog Books and art galleries. That’s culture.

Wewahitchka has The Tupelo; Apalach, The Dixie. That’s culture.

Last weekend, we had the 10th Annual Gulf Coast Writers Conference with #1 New York Times Bestselling author, Michael Connelly—and many other talented authors, agents, and editors besides. That’s culture.

Panama City has the VAC—the wonderful and only-getting-better VAC thanks to Linda MacBeth and the invested staff and volunteers who are working so hard. That’s culture.

We have Heather Parker’s Art Coop and Bay Arts Aliance and the Marina Civic Center (and the highly diverse and entertaining shows of this summer’s Backstage Pass series) and The Martin and Shakes By the Bay. And that’s culture.

We have local writers and photographers and painters and filmmakers and poets and musicians. And all of that is culture.

We have “The News Herald” and “The Entertainer” to cover all this culture, writers and editors like Jan Waddy and Tony Simmons, who work hard to keep the community informed about all the cultural haps and local artists’ works. Speaking of which, have you noticed how amazing “The Entertainer” looks? And how it keeps getting better and better. Well done, Jan!

We have a lot of good radio stations, but my favorite, WKGC, 90.7, is a great place for culture—music, arts, literature, news, and jazz and blues as good as any being broadcast anywhere.

This past weekend, I was out and about for Thunder Beach, and saw many displays of culture—including very cool performances by Twice Daily at Pineapple Willy’s and Steve Wiggins and friends at Edge Water.

Beauty and art and culture, like love, are actually all around. Easy to miss, but there nonetheless.

And if all this weren’t enough, we have the enduring excellence of the Kaleidoscope Theatre. On Sunday afternoon, I sat in a nearly full house, and saw a powerful performance of “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday,” directed by Jason Blanks and featuring a talented cast of local actors, including Martin Hendrickson, Frankie Hudson, Tanya Ericson, and the warm, charming, funny Ray H. Stanley.

We have all this culture—and a whole lot more (I’m just recounting what I’ve seen recently, not attempting to be exhaustive).

We have all this, plus we have the world’s friendliest people and most beautiful beaches, the majestic Apalachicola River, the acres and acres of pine and oak and cypress of Florida’s Great Green Northwest and the splendid species—endangered and not—who call it home.

We have all, ALL this, AND we don’t ever have to shovel snow!

You might say we have it all.

But you’d be wrong. We could use more culture—more art, more literature, more concerts and plays and exhibits. And we could stand less thoughtless, tacky, greedy development, less racism (and sexism and homophobia and all other forms of xenophobia and ignorance so often on display), less pollution and more protection of the very land and animals and people that make this a place, for me, worth writing about and fighting for.

We may not have it all. But we do have a terrible, awful lot to be grateful for—culture and natural beauty.

Take a moment and thank those you see making art, beauty, and love. Thank them for the sacrifices, for their steadfastness to their vision, for working day jobs so they can, for creating and producing when they’re exhausted, for enriching our community, for doing all this—and constantly hearing there’s no culture in our area. And for this last, you may want to give them a big ol’ bear hug, too.

Lost and Found Light: An Appreciation of Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly writes about things lost—lost innocence, lost life, lost love, lost and missing persons, lost souls, Lost Angeles, and, most of all, lost light.

He can do this because nothing is lost on him.

He is a quiet, deliberate man—as much Pinkerton as reporter—continually taking everything in.

Harry Bosch, Connelly’s cop is a man intimately acquainted with loss. He lost his mother when he was only eleven years old. He’s lost partners and fellow foot soldiers, lost victims and predators, and, little by little, he’s losing his city and maybe even his own soul.

Harry Bosch inhabits a world so dark even the light is lost.

It’s a world he’s familiar with and at home in. In Vietnam, he was a tunnel rat with the 25th Infantry Division who specialized in making his way through the Vietcong’s underground maze of absolute blackness.

In honor of my friend and in homage to his complex character and concepts, I wrote the following passage in my new novel, “Double Exposure:”

“Glancing down at his camera, he pulls up the information for the last image. According to the time and date stamp encoded in the picture, it was taken less than two hours ago.

“The murderer had been finishing up about the time Remington was unloading the ATV and talking to Heather. And hearing what he thought were screams. He wonders if, like lost light, the horrific screams had been trapped in the swamp until someone had arrived to hear them.”

I have not mentioned this to anyone—including Michael—until this moment, and didn’t know that I ever would, but I felt it an apt example of the ubiquitous influence and impact of Michael Connelly and Harry Bosch on contemporary crime fiction.

It may well be that Harry Bosch is in the dark searching for light—the light at the end of the tunnel or some lost light trapped in the claustrophobic tube with him—but I think it more likely that Harry Bosch is that lost light. As if some of the lost light from his time in the tunnels in Vietnam clung to him, Harry is a faint, lost light in a city of oppressive, overwhelming darkness—a darkness more than night.

Down the dark, mean streets of LA, people grope around, night-blind, bumping into one another, doing damage, and the best that they can hope for is help from a tunnel rat from Vietnam, a lost light bearer.

Interviewing Michael this past weekend as part of the 10th Annual Gulf Coast Writers Conference, I was reminded just how gifted he really is.

Back when I was in college, we’d sit around in my lit class and discuss what we thought poems and stories meant. More often than not, when we’d concluded our analysis, I’d think there’s no way the author ever intended half of what we got out of his or her work, but occasionally, you could tell no matter what you took from a work, the author had intended it—and much beside that you didn’t get.

Years later, listening to filmmaker commentaries on DVD, I was struck by writer/directors who fully intended everything I got out of their films and far more that I completely missed.

The thing is, regardless of the art form—book or film or whatever—the author or artist who consistently produces emotionally resonant and thought-provoking work, isn’t doing so by accident.

Michael Connelly’s books are meaningful—mean so much to so many—because he takes every opportunity, uses every name or location or event or description to communicate something. Harry Bosch’s name is significant (he’s named after the 15th Century Dutch artist, Hierynomus Bosch)—more so as the series continues. His house, propped precariously on the side of a mountain, is a metaphor—as is the jazz he listens to, the relationships he’s involved in, the lone, lost coyote way he operates as an outsider within his own department, and every single space of what used to be Raymond Chandler’s, but is now Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles.

The Bosch books are about being in a dark tunnel journeying into light—an arduous, treacherous journey that is slow and painful and costly. Connelly knows what Milton knew, and what Harry and his many fans are learning—that “Long is the way, And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.” And this deep, this dark, lost light is all there is—all we can hope for—as we stumble around with Harry during his long day’s journey through the night.

A Very Fine Feast

One of the first and most important decisions a writer makes is point of view. We ask ourselves—Whose story is it? Who will make the best narrator? Does this story work best in the first person or third? Or as something else entirely? Determining who narrates a story determines the outcome of the story.

The choice Charles Baxter made for his novel, “The Feast of Love” is an ingenious one. There are nearly as many narrators as there are characters in the book—each one given the opportunity to tell his or her story like only he or she can. Instead of scenes utilizing multiple third person points of view, each character recounts his or her feasts and famines.

Late one night, a man wakes from a bad dream and decides to take a walk through his neighborhood. After catching sight of two lovers entangled on the football field, he comes upon Bradley Smith, friend and fellow insomniac, and Bradley begins to tell a series of tales--a luminous narrative of love in all its complexity.

We meet Kathryn, Bradleys’ first wife, who leaves him for another woman, and Diana, Bradley’s second wife, more suitable as a mistress than a spouse. We meet Chloe and Oscar, who dream of a life together far different from the sadness they have known. We meet Esther and Harry, whose love for their lost son persists despite his contempt for them. And we follow Bradley on his nearly magical journey to conjugal happiness.

Charles Baxter is both the author of the novel and a character in it. Once Bradley suggest that Baxter write a book titled, “The Feast of Love,” he begins to interview the various people Bradley suggests, allowing them each to tell him (and us) their stories—stories that intersect and intertwine and reveal the complexities of life and relationships. Baxter being the author of the book and a character in it is only one of many doublets. “The Fest of Love” is not only the title of the book Baxter is working on, but a painting Bradley created. Bradley is not only a man and a main character, but a dog—his dog, named after him by his wife. Sound complicated? It is a bit, but only a bit.

Charles Baxter is a wonderful writer. “The Feast of Love” is a well written, insightful, generous book. The characters who people it are interesting and real and engaging and complex. I highly recommend this book. Get it. Read it. Enjoy. But . . .

“The Feast of Love” should be called “The Feast of Relationships.” Sure, I know why it wasn’t. It doesn’t have the same ring. I get it.

If you’re a regular reader of this column, then you know how much I believe in love, how there is nothing higher humanity can aspire to, how it is what God is. Love is absolute and unconditional. It’s a choice, a lifestyle, a philosophy, a way of being in the world.

“The Feast of Love” is a feast of passion, of romance, of sex, of entanglement, of friendship, of need, of divorce and remarriage, of like (and of falling in and out of it)—something not possible with love. Sure, love can be present in passion, with feelings, with like, with infatuation, with sex, but we shouldn’t confuse these things for love. Often the most loving, most altruistic acts we take involve the least in the way of warm fuzzy feelings. Love is action, not feeling.

Is love present in “The Feast of Love?” Sure. But as is always the case, it is contaminated by desire and passion and selfishness and like and sex and infatuation and the rest. Nothing for it. It’s the human condition—which is what this book is about, the fascinating, fragile, phenomenal feast of the human condition, and our absolute need for connection.

Baxter’s book has also been adapted into a warm, charming film by director Robert Benton (“Kramer vs. Kramer” and “The Human Stain”) starring Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear.

Here’s how the movie is billed by the studio:

Bradley (Greg Kinnear) believes in the power and beauty of true love. He’s good at falling in love—just with the wrong women. He’s hoping that his relationship with sophisticated Diana (Radha Mitchell) will have a happier ending than his first marriage to Kathryn (Selma Blair). Bradley’s friend Harry (Morgan Freeman) is happily married to Esther (Jane Alexander), but they are dealing with the loss of a different kind of love. At the same time, Oscar (Toby Hemingway) and Chloe (Alexa Davalos) are busy falling in love at first sight and starting their life together even though the odds are against them.

Good stuff. Enjoyable. Fairly faithful adaptation. But again, love isn’t something you fall into or out of. It’s not something you lose. And though it may seem so, it’s not a simple matter of semantics.
Feast on this fine book. It makes for a truly great meal. Then, if you still want more, have the film for dessert.

A Maddening Silence

Increasingly, we’re living in a world where nobody listens.

There’s so much noise, such a continuous assault on our senses, that we have to create filters just to survive, but sometimes we filter out too much. Sometimes, we’re not really listening to the important things being said and not being said to us.

It’s as if we have an inverse form of ADHD—instead of letting everything in equally, we’ve stopped letting in much of anything at all. Of course, this is due in part to the rampant narcissism and self-involvement of our time, but I really do believe the deafening levels of noise, the sheer volume of stimuli have overwhelmed us to the point of living defensively—like little monkeys with our hands over our eyes and ears and minds.

Not so in the era of AMC’s “Mad Men,” when television was still novel (on only for a few hours a day), people read, and the assault known as advertising and entertainment wasn’t nearly so ubiquitous.

There is much to recommend about “Mad Men”—the characters, the sets, the sleek sexiness, but perhaps what is best about it is not what’s in it, but what’s left out.

The makers of “Mad Men” have mastered the art of silences.

Like the white space on a page of text, and the way it shapes the reading experience, the well-placed silences in “Mad Men” are exquisite and excruciating.

And it’s not just the silences, but the overall quietness of the sophisticated drama. There’s very little music, very little noise, just people talking—and not—so much so that commercial breaks are even more jarring in their intrusion than usual.

Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized drama follows the lives of the men and women of Madison Avenue advertising. The series revolves around the conflicted Don Draper, the biggest ad man (and ladies’ man) in the business, and his colleagues at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. As Don makes the plays in the boardroom and the bedroom, he struggles to stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing times and the young executives nipping at his heels. The series also depicts authentically the roles of men and women in this era while exploring the true human nature beneath the guise of 1960s traditional family values.

“Mad Men” is one of the most existential dramas to ever air on TV. All the characters are vaguely aware something is missing, something isn’t right, but for Don the feeling is anxiety-causing acute. We are given a front row seat to the lives of men and women trudging around the abyss, the quietness of their lives, the many silences around them, an outward manifestation of the noiseless void inside of them.

Relish the quiet and silence of “Mad Men,” get caught up in the spectacular set pieces and the turbulent times, and, most of all, the complex characters. As you do, remember, if it appears nothing is happening, look again. It’s all there—only it’s in the subtext. If you only hear the text you’ll miss it. If you only see what’s on the surface, you won’t perceive most of what’s happening—the bulk of the berg moving these people is below the surface. Way below—where the current actually runs in a different direction.

If you haven’t tried “Mad Men” or tried it and weren’t immediately smitten, try it again. Still yourself from the frenzy of Twenty-first Century America’s frantic pace, shut out the din and noise and sound and fury that is modern, manic, shallow culture, and embrace the essential silence at the heart of “Mad Men.” Listen. It is the center of Job’s whirlwind, and out of its utter emptiness, truly transformational truths can be heard—but only if we are still and quiet and linger to listen.

A “Summer” Kind of Love

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't.

Happens all the time—to me more times than I care to recall.

Nothing to be done for it. Nearly all of us have fancied someone who doesn’t fancy us.

But . . .

What if . . .

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl acts like she’s fallen in love, too.

Aye, there’s the rub.

Rejection I can take, but deception? Games?

In words best heard in the quavering voice of Aaron Neville—

If you want something to play with
Go and find yourself a toy
Baby my time is too expensive
And I'm not a little boy

Tell it like it is.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel star in director Mark Weber's wry, non-linear romantic comedy about a man who falls hard for a woman who doesn't believe in love and says she doesn’t want a boyfriend.

Tom Hansen (Gordon-Levitt) is an aspiring architect who currently earns his living as a greeting card writer (“You make me proud every day. Today, you get a card.”). Upon encountering his boss' fetching new secretary, Summer Finn (Deschanel), Tom discovers that the pair have much in common, (and not just that they both love The Smiths and the surrealist artist Magritte). From the very first moment, Tom is smitten. All he can think about is Summer.

Tom believes in the concepts of soul mates and one true love, and he thinks he’s finally found his.

Unfortunately, Summer doesn’t feel the same way—or so she says. Her actions seem to indicate she’s changing her tune. She says she sees true love as the stuff of fairy tales, and isn't looking for romance, that she wants to keep things casual. Undeterred, Tom pursues Summer, and for a while she seems to respond in kind, but ultimately, it is short lived.

The smart, interesting, funny film is told out of sequence in scenes that serve as kind of forensic flashbacks in Tom and Summer’s love autopsy.

It brings to mind the lyrics Drew Barrymore’s character batted around in “Music and Lyrics.” “Figuring out you and me is like a love autopsy. They can search all day long and never find out what went wrong.”

After it looks as if she's left his life for good, Tom reflects back on his yearlong relationship with Summer—and the audience gets to comb through the wreckage along with him.

It’s clear that although Summer said she didn’t believe in relationships or boyfriends or true love or anything serious, it’s obvious to everyone except Summer, she and Tom became far more than just friends.

Through his heartbroken investigation of his relationship catastrophe, Tom gets advice from his two best friends, McKenzie and Paul. However, the best, wisest counsel comes from Tom's adolescent sister, Rachel.

“(500) Days of Summer” is a well made film, worthy of your movie going time. The script is clever, the directing good, and the performances of Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel are outstanding. Still, it’s hard not to leave the theater frustrated. The writers and director so perfectly capture the pain and emotional devastation that occurs when someone in a relationship is dishonest or whose actions don’t match his or her words, that it’s difficult not to be angry at Summer (even as charming as Zooey Deschanel is).

Mixed signals.

Poor communication.

How much heartache could be spared if we would all just tell the truth—and make sure our actions match the truth we’re telling.

Actions. Not words.

No matter how much someone says she doesn’t believe in love or doesn’t want a boyfriend, if she acts like she does, if she exhibits all the signs of being “in love,” guess what the guy in love with her is going to believe?

And who can blame him?

Sure, there were little signs, clues to indicate her ambivalence that can be seen when looking back, but they were mostly hidden by the many other actions that contradicted them. And that they could have been spotted by a trained detective or relationship guru doesn’t mean an infatuated young man had even the remotest chance of perceiving them.

The entire film, I sat there thinking, Summer’s character is not so much aloof or ambivalent or free-spirited as wounded. Like so many walking wounded among us, her actions are defensive. She’s in self-preservation mode, guarding her heart from additional hurt, which only insures that’s what she’ll both inflict and receive.
Tom is open and kind and gentle and loving and honest. Summer is closed and defensive and dishonest.

Summer lied to Tom—with her actions if not with her words. Of course, Tom lied to himself, too—but I don’t think he could or would have if not for Summer’s deception.

In addition to a fresh, unique way of telling an age-old story, the writers do a sexual role reversal with the characters. Unlike, “He’s Just Not that Into You” and what is far more common in life, it’s not the guy saying one thing with his mouth and something different with his actions. It’s the girl. And who knows? Maybe male audience members will identify with Tom and not treat the women in their lives so casually and inconsiderately in future seasons of their lives.

With all that “(500) Days of Summer” has going for it, I can forgive its unearned ending and appreciate the writers and director’s mercy in giving both Tom and the audience a glimmer of hope as summer turns to autumn, and we prepare for the cold, cruel days of winter ahead.

If You Have a Good Appetite for Great Food and Film . . .

On the drive to the theater to see “Julie and Julia,” I was thinking about a report I’d read earlier in the day about the rise of obesity in America—how two-thirds of us are either overweight or obese, and how on average we’re 23 pounds overweight.

That was on the drive over. During and following the film, all I wanted to do was eat.

Of course, what I longed for was not what is making us fat—not poorly produced, corn-fed, high fructose corn syrup calorie and fat-injected food, but a fine meal—the kind that feeds the soul while nourishing the body.

What I settled on was three-quarters of an exquisite piece of key lime pie at Gracie Rae’s, which did feed my soul, but not as much as the late evening ambience, the sun-streaked bay, and the gentle kiss of evening on the soft, brine-tinged breeze.

The article I had read about how we’re eating ourselves to death, argued that obesity, like tobacco and alcohol abuse, isn’t just dangerous, but expensive. New research shows medical spending averages $1,400 more a year for an obese person and the overall obesity-related health spending is around $147 billion, double what it was nearly a decade ago (according to the journal Health Affairs).

We’ve got a problem. Our approach to food. Our approach to life. The hole in the secret depths of who we are can’t be filled with food alone.

Our great national sins, the ones so deeply a part of who we are they don’t get very many sermons, don’t get marches or signs or bumper stickers, and don’t decide elections, are greed and gluttony. But the film is the antithesis of our self-destructive behavior—a celebration of good food and of women and marriage and life.

The film is about the appreciation, not the aberration and exploitation of food. The way alcohol is not an issue for people who drink moderately, food is not an issue for non gluttons.

Food, like sex or work or religion or family or alcohol, can be both cause for an used in celebration—something that leads us into transcendence—or it can be merely something we do, mundane, thoughtless, animalistic.

For both Julia and Julie, food is far, far more than just fuel.

Julia Child (Meryl Streep) and Julie Powell (Amy Adams) are featured in writer-director Nora Ephron’s adaptation of two bestselling memoirs: Powell's “Julie & Julia” and “My Life in France,” by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme. Based on two true stories, “Julie & Julia” intertwines the lives of two women who, though separated by time and space, are both at loose ends . . . until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter, anything is possible.

We live in a time and a place of plenty, which won’t last—it can’t—but what do we do while it does? Can we have the discipline to deny ourselves, the compassion to share our undeserved abundance, the wisdom and humility to be grateful, the spiritual insight to perceive what is beyond nutritional necessity? The answers are all too obvious, but we’re a young species. Maybe we’ll survive our adolescence to become who we’re meant to be.

We all have a relationship with food, and we all have to figure it out.
But food isn’t the only relationship that is explored in the film. There’s also Julie and Julia’s relationships with friends and family and society, and especially, their relationships with their husbands.

Both Julie and Julia became who they did thanks in part to the encouraging, supportive spouses in their lives. Rarely has marriage been so positively portrayed on screen. Not only does Ms. Ephron love good food, but, after a very public unhappy marriage and acrimonious divorce, she now loves being married. Both her relationship to food and her husband shine through her script and her camera and onto the screen.

“Julie and Julia” teaches ever so gently that the keys to a good life and relationship are genuine love, respect, and support given to and received from our significant others, authenticity, real purpose, fidelity to self and calling, hard work, good food, good sex—and a good appetite for all of these.

Like a consummate chef preparing a special meal for treasured friends and family, Ms. Ephron has taken the recipes found in both Julie and Julia’s books, added her own ingredients, and cooked up a near flawless film. All that’s left to say is bon appétit. Come with a good appetite to this good film about good people and good times and the good food that makes everything even better.

The Truth is Uglier than You Think

“Treat a hot girl like dirt and she’ll stick to you like mud.”

This bit of misogynistic venom spit out by Sam from “Slackers” seems less an explanation for his doin’ dirt to girls than the philosophy of a generation.

Recent romantic comedies—even those that purport to reveal how guys really think—too often justify, even romanticize sexism and misogyny.

It’s alarming how prevalent—check that—how celebrated bad behavior is (and not just in rap songs and man-child movies). It’s even more alarming how many women allow, even expect it.

Listen to how the studio is promoting the romantic comedy “The Ugly Truth.”

The battle of the sexes heats up in Columbia Pictures comedy “The Ugly Truth.” Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) is a romantically challenged morning show producer whose search for Mr. Perfect has left her hopelessly single. She's in for a rude awakening when her bosses team her with Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), a hardcore TV personality who promises to spill the ugly truth on what makes men and women tick.

The female character is “romantically challenged” and “hopelessly single,” the male character is “hardcore” and “truth-telling.” Relationships are framed as a battle—or at best a game. The problem with this paradigm is someone has to win and someone has to lose, someone has to dominate and someone has to submit. With the poster picturing the two would-be lovers as the kind of blocky black figures you find on restroom doors with red hearts—the woman’s on her head, the man’s on his crotch, the battle is framed in the ancient way of men only wanting sex and women having to withhold it until the man surrenders to her terms of marriage—or at least until it’s certain he wants more than just her body. In this oppressive and flat out wrong paradigm, men give “love” to get sex and women give sex to get “love”—men are only hounds and women are only virgins or sluts.

Chadway’s ugly truth is that men only want sex—lots and lots of sex. And while I only speak for one man, the problem with the caricatured formulation is that it’s only partially true. Truth is usually far more nuanced, subtle, complex. Many men, maybe most (even us good guy feminist types) want as much sex as we can get, but that’s not the only thing we want. And yet, that is the only thing some guys want from some girls, and the only thing other guys want from all girls.

The real ugly truth is that our culture is so sexist Sam’s and Mike Chadway’s mentalities (and that of the girls they’re involved with) shouldn’t surprise us. And it’s not just them. We have systemic sexism—justified by the powerful, sanctified by the religious, tolerated by all who thoughtlessly accept culture as not only the way things are, but the way things are supposed to be.

The uglier truth is the reason misogynists like Mike Chadway and Sam get so much play is far more a failure of parenting than culture. Succumbing to culture, they’re parents failed them as did the parents of all the girls allowing them to treat them badly. By what they said or didn’t say, by what they did or didn’t do, by what they modeled or by their absence, parents are raising entitled boys to use and abuse, to manipulate and take, and move on, and girls who keep kissing frogs and believing fairytales because they aren’t given the tools to imagine anything else.

Obviously, I found “The Ugly Truth” thought-provoking—but more because of its assumptions than what was on the screen. And though it provided a few laughs and a couple of “moments,” it’s dangerous propaganda.

“Yo, Lister, lighten up. It’s a comedy,” I can hear some readers saying.

And they’d have a point, but sexism, like racism or classism or homophobia or xenophobia, is only funny when being laughed at, not with.

Here are a few of my truths:

—He’s not strong and silent, he’s barbaric and emotionally stunted.

—Drama and sick dynamics don’t equal desire or passion, just dysfunction.

—It’s not just that he’s not that into you, he’s not into anyone but himself.

—There are far far far worse things than being single.

—If a person’s not growing and evolving on his or her own, he or she is not going to do it for you (for very long).

—Character is reality, charm is an illusion.

—If you find self-centeredness sexy, you need counseling.

—There’s a reason it takes several drinks to do what you’re about to do.

—It’s not that women don’t like sex as much as men, it’s that far too many sexual encounters are mostly (if not exclusively) about male satisfaction. (Just because those three minutes were heaven for you doesn’t mean it did anything for her.)

—If being treated badly feels good and being treated good feels bad, your operating system has a virus and needs deprogramming and reprogramming.

Like, “He’s Just Not that Into You,” “The Ugly Truth” claims to be telling truths about men, about how we are really sex-obsessed users (I for one am no user), but then end by reaffirming the sexists suppositions they claim to be exposing. Both films undermine everything they were saying with unearned, incredible happy Hollywood endings.

The guy who’s just not that into you, who keeps giving you all the signs that he only wants sex and not a relationship, realizes by the end of the movie that you’re his soul mate and Mike Chadway is only misogynistic because he has a woman-wounded heart. See, men really do have hearts hidden somewhere behind their enormous erections—all you have to do is persist, keep kissing frogs, keep hoping for the best, keep ignoring the signs and the guy who says he doesn’t want to marry you, eventually will, the guy who says he doesn’t want a relationship will realize he really does. All you have to do is keep playing his game—or the next guy’s game, or the next, or the next and eventually you’ll win. Am I the only one who thinks these are tragedies not comedies?