Rom Com Read online

  To print your own copies of the Dina and Daniel paper dolls, visit our website!

  Big mistake. Big. Huge!

  –Pretty Woman

  Contents

  SHE WALKED OFF THE STREET INTO HIS LIFE AND STOLE HIS HEART

  Meet Cute

  It Happened One Night

  Provincial Gym Monkeys and/or All the Places to Meet the Love of Your Life

  Your Apartment

  Gender Equation

  Bobs and Weaves

  You Need Abs to Be in Love

  Jennifer Aniston

  Jennifer Lopez

  Jennifer Lawrence

  Easy A

  50 First Kates

  Eat, Pray, Love

  You’re Supposed to Be Engaged

  Jokes

  Punchline

  The Funny Thing Is

  Matthew McConaughey’s Abs

  Matthew McConaughey’s Arms

  Porn Parodies: Dick Edition

  Porn Parodies: Vagina Edition

  QUIZ: Ever Wondered If You Might Be the City as a Character in a Romantic Comedy?

  Slow Motion

  Adam Sandler: A Love Story

  What’s Not to Love, Adam Sandler?

  (500) Dicks of Summer

  Dicks Actually

  A Series of Romantic Comedies That Could Never Be Made

  Valentine’s Day

  What’s Your Number?

  She’s All That

  50 First Dates

  Line, Please

  IT'S FUNNY WHAT LOVE CAN MAKE YOU DO

  Unrequited Love

  Unrequited Love 2: Even More Unrequited

  Morning Wood: The 40-Year-Old Virgin

  Some Like It Hot

  Romantic Opposites-Attract Comedies: Your preferences created this row.

  QUIZ: Screwball Mix ’N’ Match

  Sex Scene

  Sex Scene (revision)

  Your Boobs

  Asshole

  How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, or “Asshole”

  People Are Assholes!

  You Did That on Your Own

  Definitely, Maybe

  In a Movie about Weddings No One Wants to Attend

  In a Movie about Weddings No One Wants to Attend 2: Even Less Interested

  So I Married a Poet

  Funny Face

  But Hocus Pocus Isn’t Even a Rom Com?

  You Are the Devil, I (Should) Have Said

  Montage

  Romantic Comedies for Young Girls:

  Hollow Ship to Hell

  The Rose

  YOU CAN’T ALWAYS RUN FROM YOUR PAST

  Emotionally Broken

  Because You Watched 27 Dresses

  Overboard

  He’s Just Not That into You

  I Am So Lonely, I Am So Fucking Lonely, lol, SEND, Obvious Child

  He Grasps at Emotion, or The Proposal

  You’re Supposed to Be Engaged

  Puff Puff, Give. Puff Puff, Give

  Acting

  The Acting Was Fantastic

  Forgetting Sarah Marshall

  You Fell for the Wrong Girl

  But Maybe He Wasn’t Really a Person

  On Every Television Channel

  This Is Considered Adorable

  Titanic

  The Stories You Build

  Nora Ephron

  QUIZ: Ever Wondered If You Might Be the Best Friend of a Romantic Lead?

  Sonnets for Supporting Roles:

  Rita, Bridesmaids

  Dionne, Clueless

  Muriel, It Could Happen to You

  George, My Best Friend's Wedding

  Kit, Pretty Woman

  Christmas

  Love Actually

  When Harry Met Sally

  Five-Star Rating

  The Movie Will Be a Disappointment

  What’s Happening Onscreen Isn’t Relatable

  Harold and Maude

  New Year’s Eve

  Soundtrack

  Everything Is Bad Choices that Make Me Feel Good

  Credits

  Blooper Reel

  About the Authors

  Meet Cute

  Spill sticky fruit juice on someone’s important papers.

  Wear a torn tracksuit, jog at the corner where luxury cars drive daily.

  Let your dog run into the street and hope for a beautiful hero instead of blood.

  Open your big, loud mouth and offend.

  Order an egg cream at a diner; hide your disgust as you taste the creamy soda.

  Pretend to be a golf enthusiast and pitch a nine iron into the rough.

  Reach for the Fig Newtons at your local, organic, free-range grocery.

  Get trapped in the subway station train for several hours and talk loudly on your phone to important people about how important you are.

  Trip and fall near someone’s butt.

  Meet quickly.

  It Happened One Night

  It was a hate-until-you-love,

  opposites-attract, sexual-tension thing.

  It was a nice touch: banter

  fresh as bobs and finger waves in 1934.

  It sent a shiver. She was set up

  by men who claimed to love her.

  It happened to pave a small piece of road

  for other women to click-clack down.

  It’s not so different now, expectations,

  how love should blossom into white gowns.

  It won all top five Oscars that year,

  the first to claim that fame.

  It wouldn’t happen like that now,

  get serious.

  Provincial Gym Monkeys and/or

  All the Places to Meet the Love of Your Life

  The gym.

  A coffee shop.

  A Hawaiian vacation.

  Through work.

  In the red-light district.

  While being arrested.

  The Internet.

  The Late-Summer Celestial Honey’s Love Union Farmers’ Market.

  Your apartment.

  An acquaintance’s wedding to which you’re not sure why you were even invited.

  Elementary school.

  High school.

  College.

  Your best friend’s dorm.

  A chocolate shop.

  The middle of the street with your stiletto trapped in a manhole cover.

  Their apartment.

  A sporting event.

  The basement of a deli.

  Your mom’s house.

  Your workplace cafeteria.

  Nazi Germany.

  Your boss’s office.

  The future.

  Post-Apocalyptic Zombie World without Twinkies.

  An English cottage you rented on a whim because you are so fucking sad and never learned how to cry.

  A strip club.

  The Prime Minister’s Office.

  Your Apartment

  Is stocked with plastic guardians of youth that watch over your comic-book collection.

  Makes your worried parents send cheques.

  Smells too much like roses, or bleach, or gin and tonic.

  Doesn’t have enough throw pillows.

  Wasn’t on a list of achievements you wrote to your future self.

  Creeps out your cat sitter.

  Will end up devouring your life, Poltergeist-style.

  Isn’t a place for inviting attractive men in suits who drive cars that don’t have duct tape on them.

  Has too many throw pillows.

  Has a roommate.

  Looks better in the dark.

  Gender Equation

  Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.

  Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds new girl, boy finds another girl, boy loses second girl, boy sees
first girl, boy gets third girl.

  Boy meets girl, boy disregards girl, boy goes through a series of zany adventures that ends up with girl.

  Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy uncomfortably forces girl into his life.

  Boy meets girl, boy pretends to like girl, boy meets boy.

  Boy meets girl, boy is left by girl, boy obsesses over girl, boy meets girl.

  Boy meets girl, boy misunderstands girl, boy watches girl from outside her perfectly framed apartment window, boy performs grand gesture, boy gets girl for the time being.

  Boy meets girl, girl “loses” boy’s phone number.

  Boy meets girl, boy walks in the other direction.

  Boy meets girl, boy makes a huge mistake, boy admits mistake, boy makes out with girl in the rain.

  Boy meets girl, boy leaves his wife for girl.

  Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy travels through time to manipulate girl, boy gets girl in the future.

  Bobs and Weaves

  You can learn a lot about love by analyzing hair. Length, thickness, colour. Cropped hair is trouble, lacks the tactility of true love.1 Redheads burn with crushes, not real desire. Ginger romance fades into a muddy, pink puddle.2 Brunettes with bobs have moderate success, long-haired brunettes try harder than anyone. These efforts are not rewarded.3 Blondes often believe in forever and ever, even if they pluck strays from their scalps. Some blondes can cause spontaneous naps, even during sex.4 Bleach drains libido. Flaxen hair indicates unhealthy codependence.5 Surprisingly, fake hair has no bearing on love realness.6 Hard truths await those with curly hair.7 Cold dinners are a result of overusing a flatiron.8 Men’s hair is most often inconsequential.

  There are exceptions. Hugh Grant9 always has a lot of hair and a lot of trouble getting the girl, but when he does, something seems off. His natural wave prevents him from attachment. We hope for Colin Firth’s10 natural perm to envelop us at the end of a chase. But we mostly end up stranded in our underpants, watch Hugh Grant’s floppy locks swirl as he walks away, both of us looking for new waves of love.

  1 See Pixie-cut drama, i.e., Winona Ryder, Demi Moore.

  2 See Tepid conditions and conditioners, i.e., Lindsay Lohan,

  Emma Stone, Amy Adams.

  3 See Chocolate loneliness, i.e., Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Garner.

  4 See Bleach blandness, i.e., Kate Hudson, Katherine Heigl.

  5 See “The Rachel” syndrome, i.e., Jennifer Aniston.

  6 See Weave miscommunication, i.e., Jennifer Lopez, Queen Latifah.

  7 See Corkscrew neuroses, i.e., Andie MacDowell, Sarah Jessica Parker.

  8 See Early aughts time management converges with beauty management.

  9 See Rakish indifference to hair maintenance, to women.

  10 See A romantic ideal, groomed by a woman off-screen.

  You Need Abs to Be in Love

  for Mila Kunis

  I talk about you a lot. Like, a lot, actually.

  Sometimes it is just in passing, but sometimes

  it is to talk about your voice, or the way you

  fall in love, or your small fists, or your tight abs.

  When he left me, I said I needed

  my Mila Kunis, the one who would be

  at hotel lobbies, bringing me to dangerous bars,

  running off cliffs, clapping her tight

  abs against my tight abs. Or my Mila would find me a job

  at GQ in Manhattan and show me the tops

  of mountains in urban forests before abs

  would slap to abs.

  I talk about you a lot. Maybe I’ve given into

  fantasy, and maybe I can’t afford a physical trainer

  to tighten my core. But you casually

  crunch mens’ hearts with smokey eyes. Because

  I was never good at this. Because

  I tried to get abs once, but mostly I felt

  hungry and complained about bread.

  Because you lured Justin Timberlake to bed, abs slammed

  against abs. Because I don’t need men to have abs for

  them to lead me off cliffs.

  Jennifer Aniston

  she is his favourite daughter anyway, because she has always done things her own way, and the same goes for meeting someone, she is a young woman seeking her Prince Charming somewhere among her unsuccessful dates, she is “not stable enough,” she is a woman who learns that her family was the inspiration for the book, she is married, she is clearly not very interested in him, she is a divorced mother of two, she is a free-spirited wanderer, she is a bail-jumping ex-wife, she is a paranoid neat freak, she is the exception, she is the rule, she is working on a story, she is surprised he knows so much about her, she is the body that she makes

  Jennifer Lopez

  Turned dancer, make bride, she meets.

  Falls for handsome, separating inseminated,

  not to say, organized. Mistaken

  she proves impulsive and a mother as

  shortly expression worse, a love life

  blind pushing Miss every way icily

  when distance finally destroys her.

  The throws happen. Meets identity.

  When she’s together still

  afraid of gaze, the steps: job,

  family, baby, decides, procedures relationship.

  Her worlds continue having it away, even love

  but Manhattan (literally)

  has her nevertheless missing.

  She makes life.

  Charming to commute yet

  finds a career! Does anyone study herself?

  Plan wedding, his turns will sign a mother to you, because

  merciless is dancing.

  His hard-working, John sees

  life in love, artificially handsome,

  revealed on loving just as clueless.

  He is endless,

  reduced to political clumsy

  lessons, and knows wants.

  Teacher or man,

  she falls.

  Haunted her

  woman window

  letting not evening

  fate, single, his is one with woman,

  lost something he is, but

  even they get fate.

  Jennifer Lawrence

  Jennifer Lawrence is your best friend, she makes you smile when the comical anvil slams down on your heart, and she told you once that you were all she needed. She taught you to dance when schizophrenia ghosted your body and garbage bag running suits tailored you in anger. Jennifer Lawrence saved a baby from a well once, took care of you while you had a fever, fixed a building after Hurricane Sandy. Jennifer Lawrence once saved you from a crumbling civilization. Jennifer Lawrence wrote a tell-all about your friendship, and told the world that you were the one who saved her. Jennifer Lawrence called to tell you she was thinking about you, late at night when you were certain the winter outside was leaking into your body, crystallizing your skin, turning your body into a plastic version of itself. Jennifer Lawrence taught you what love is, from a laptop glaring in the darkness, filtering through your eyes. The truth is, Jennifer Lawrence isn’t your best friend. You don’t have a best friend, just the rage sweating from your forehead.

  Easy A

  for Emma Stone

  Virginity is usually lost in a messy

  bed, crushed covers flopped to the side

  with shame condomed, shrink-wrapped

  over body. I lost my virginity in

  his sister’s bed while Family Guy

  played in the background.

  “I don’t want anything more than

  this,” holding his body

  as pain slits me, until we

  Jenga-drop over the bed.

  Warmth Etcha a Sketches through my

  body to be shaken out and forgotten.

  Now I watch you, scarlet A’d over

  easy, pushing men off of body.

  If there was anything to be learned

  as a girl in high school

>   is that no one will ever believe you

  even with proof.

  50 First Kates

  Someone plays a character named Kate.

  Someone plays Kate as a lonely heart.

  Someone plays Kate as a shrew.

  Someone plays Kate as the boring protagonist with funny friends.

  Someone plays Kate badly.

  Someone plays Kate as a person deserving or undeserving of love.

  Someone plays Kate as a player.

  Someone plays Kate because Mila dropped out.

  Someone plays Kate because Kate dropped out.

  Sometimes a Kate replaces a Kate.

  There are actors named Kate.

  Actors named Kate are American.

  Actors named Kate are British.

  Actors named Kate are not defined by geography, only their ability to turn words on paper into love.

  Actors named Kate appear.

  Actors named Kate disappear.

  Actors named Kate gain visibility through the use of newborns, divorces, Vanity Fair.

  Actors named Kate hide their feelings.

  Actors named Kate are varied in their Kateness.

  Actors named Kate should not be compared.

  Actors named Kate are all we have, it seems.

  Sometimes a Kate plays a team player.

  Sometimes a Kate eats kale.

  Sometimes a Kate tries slapstick.

  Sometimes a Kate is just a Kate.

  Sometimes a Kate plays a Kate and the world lurches into a

  new existence.

  Sometimes a Kate plays a Catherine in period costume, and there is heightened drama for only a few seconds during an entire movie.

  Sometimes Kate fights with Anne in a movie about weddings no one wants to attend.

  Sometimes Kate dates old men.

  Sometimes Kate grates.

  Sometimes Kate is greater than the sum of letters in her name.

  Kate is plain.

  Kate is bold.

  Kate is tradition.

  Kate is a metaphor for all women.

  Kate rhymes with many words.

  Kate can’t skate.

  Kate breaks up with husbands and never looks back.

  Kate breaks down on the way to the grocery store because she’s afraid of being compared to thin stalks of asparagus.

  Kate applies make up.