Let me start this off by saying that I love and appreciate the talented work of John Cusack. That aside, he has really screwed over the gents. You ask any girl what they are looking for in a guy, I assure you, the word romance will be one of the first mentioned. And what is our shining example of romance? John Cusack. Sixteen Candles. Say Anything. Serendipity. The dude has been in the romance business for decades.
What I have taken away from these movies is this: any fuck up in a relationship can be surely glossed over with a killer Peter Gabriel tune, some sweet words, and a winning smile. The problem here is that girls want big romantic gestures, but the actuality of these wouldn’t go your way in real life. If I held a boom box over my head to a girl standing up at her window, the best I could hope for is a small chuckle at the reference, but it wouldn’t actually win her over. She would most likely tell me to go screw myself.
Another shining example I would like to give for this is from How I Met Your Mother. There is an episode where Ted, our hero, after 10 weeks of consecutive “no”s from a girl, plans an extremely elaborate date in just over 2 minutes. You can glance that here:
Incredibly sweet to watch, but it would be grounds for a restraining order in real life. If i went through the trouble of having an appliance store play a cut together movie, having my waitress acquaintance serve us 10 seconds of dinner and another 10 of dessert a minute later, and got a cab driver to circle the block constantly for 2 minutes, I’m pretty sure I would scare the bejesus out of a girl. All this, I reiterate, is following ten weeks of rejection. Sweet on screen? Yes. Creepy in real life? You betcha.
So what does this mean? Do we not attempt the big gestures? My assumption is always ere on the side of caution. We live in a jaded world these days. I can’t imagine a girl not getting creeped out at any romantic gesture that grand and meticulously thought out. That may be due to the fact that nobody ever really does these gestures, so when the occasional well-intentioned guy comes along and attempts them, it will mostly look crazy. Maybe romance is dead, or maybe we just have to dole it out in perfectly pint sized doses, and not have it shoved down there throat. Maybe a spoonful a day. In this modern-day, mixed-up, crazy world we live in the days of romantic cliches are gone. After 9/11 we can’t chase girls down to the gate anymore, what a stunning blow to romance.
