Sunday, January 23, 2011

Breakup Song Watch Sunday: Hope It Gives You Hell, by All American Rejects



What is the perfect breakup? Is it that fantasy where you both end it as friends who love each other but for some reason move on to new partners? No. That’s naive bullshit for high school kids and the White Stripes.

Better: Savoring everything about your new life that you couldn’t enjoy with your ex. Bonus points if you can work up a frothy lather of condescension for every way your ex differs from you in values, tastes, and habits.

But ask yourself: If she was such a greedy, bourgeois square, then why was I with her in the first place?

Ask yourself: If I’m so happy with my new life, why am I focusing so much energy on wishing revenge on my ex? Why did I feel the need to recruit my friends into broadcasting that fantasy?

Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? The whole problem with the relationship was how it undermined your position in your social cohort. Your buddies are cool musicians who reject the suburban 9-to-5 lifestyle and everything that comes with it. Your girlfriend embraced it. (Did she really embrace it? Or is that just you fudging history a little bit to make your point?) And now that you’ve eliminated your weak spot, you’re doing your utmost to solidify your place at the heart of the group by leading them to turn on the ex. It’s like Mean Girls, only with penises and electric guitars.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Today's Breakup

Well, it had to happen eventually

On the bright side, maybe now Clyde will give up that silly dream of making a life in Cleveland and come back to Manhattan so he and Liz Lemon can live happily ever after.

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Monday, January 17, 2011

It’s a Baby Boom!



It seems we are enjoying the fruits of a very prolific prolific season in Celebritopia this winter.    Consider this list of first-time mamas:  Natalie Portman, Jane Krakowski, Selma Blair, Pink, Mariah Carey, Christina Applegate, Penelope Cruz, Jewel, Alicia Silverstone.  And let’s not forget the sequel-lovers:  Kate Hudson and Victoria Beckham.

What happened late in 2010 to make all these women decide to finally become mothers?

We scanned CNN headlines of major news events in 2010 that might account for this population explosion and found nothing.  We knew we needed to start thinking “outside of the television set.”  What happened some time around the beginning of October 2010?  Of course!  It was us!  BreakupWatch.com, with its October 10 inaugural post, is responsible for all these celebrities becoming first time mothers!!!

But why?  Are they anxious to prove all our axioms wrong by forming a family unit that will endure (says them)?  Does our humor and insight lull them into irrational, unprotected sex?  Or do they harbor an unquenchable hope to one day make it into the hallowed entries of this young, yet auspicious blog?  (Lucky Natalie Portman has already scored a mention!)

Yeah, that’s probably it.  These women convinced and/or tricked their boyfriends and/or husbands to forego the usual condom/diaphragm/hormones/ritual sacrifice in order to conceive a human being as a first step in a spectacular relationship failure.  All because they hope to earn the special honor of being featured in Breakup Watch.  After all, nothing stresses a relationship out more than hosting a screaming, self-centered, illiterate, incoherent, incontinent houseguest who hangs on for 18 to 50 years. 

Good luck, ladies! 

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Monday, January 3, 2011

Macaulay and Mila Call It Quits

Macaulay Culkin and Mila Kunis have ended their seven year relationship.  Reports have it that the two parted a few months ago, but waited until after Mila’s movie opening festivities to go public with the news.

Surprisingly, this is not a case of the natural end to young love.  Macaulay's already done that.   My guess is that it was Mila’s experience filming Black Swan that spelled the doom of this relationship.  Movie sets are well known to be old relationship killers and new relationship hothouses.  And we have reason to believe that Black Swan was probably the same, only more so.  First there was the release of the love scene between Mila and Natalie Portman.  Yowsa!  Then there was last week’s news that Natalie is engaged to the choreographer and expecting his baby.  So we can positively confirm that it was a sexually charged atmosphere for Natalie Portman, if nothing else!

I think it won’t be too long before we discover Mila out and about with someone else affiliated with the movie.

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Sunday, January 2, 2011

Breakup Song Watch Sunday: You Oughta Know, by Alanis Morissette

Alanis Morissette’s breakout song is so raw, so angry, so . . . what’s an adjective that describes how you feel when someone steals something precious from you?  Boned.  So incredibly, irretrievably boned.  And not the good kind, like you want.

Does she know how you told me you'd hold me
Until you died, til you died
But you're still alive

You sense that she wishes the song itself could reach through the radio and punch her ex in the kidneys.

An older version of me
Is she perverted like me
Would she go down on you in a theatre

So you see why she’s so angry.  A girl expects some respect after fellating her boyfriend in the theater!  As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s a universal experience.  You do stuff you’d never have considered, except that he’s so dreamy, and you love him so-o-o-o-o much!  You want to demonstrate your love by doing this special thing for him that no other woman will do (ha!). 

Dan Savage has great advice for women whose boyfriends/husbands/partners ask them to do something that crosses a boundary:  Absolutely, lover.  Only, you go first!

(Incidentally, what do you think it was like for every single guy after 1995 who wanted to ask Alanis out for “dinner and a movie”?)

Does she speak eloquently
And would she have your baby
I'm sure she'd make a really excellent mother

So the ex enjoyed the perverted sex with Alanis, but preferred a more conventional partner in the long run -- one who may not give semi-public BJs, but who will be cool changing diapers, playing Candyland (and not the good kind like you want) 5 bajillion times, and pulling carpool duty. 

Well, this, too, is part of that kaleidoscopic experience we call life.  I’ve said it before, you can’t have a wonderful relationship until you’ve endured that really shitty one and all the painful lessons it bestows upon you, making you so much wiser, more discriminating in your taste in friends, and an altogether better partner.

That is, as long as you don’t punish the new guy for the sins of your perfidious ex.  Which, by the way, is exactly what Alanis promises to do:

And every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back
I hope you feel it...well can you feel it

Let’s hope she got all that out of her system before she married Mario “MC Souleye” Treadway, with whom she had a baby last week.  Little Ever (I know, right?) doesn’t need the stress of that psychodrama!

Here’s the Dan Band with a very up-tempo cover of You Oughta Know.  They’re the dudes who perform the over-the-top wedding reception song in The Hangover. 

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Did She Drive Him Crazy?



Some guy named John Cooper Messerschmidt made it big in Australia three lifetimes ago and is now divorcing his current wife.

John Cougar Mellencamp John Mellencamp
Elaine Irwin Elain Mellencamp