{"id":450,"date":"2006-08-02T08:37:20","date_gmt":"2006-08-02T08:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/08\/02\/you-are-not-lloyd-dobler\/"},"modified":"2006-08-02T08:37:20","modified_gmt":"2006-08-02T08:37:20","slug":"you-are-not-lloyd-dobler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/08\/02\/you-are-not-lloyd-dobler\/","title":{"rendered":"You Are Not Lloyd Dobler"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Cocktail Party Physics, Jennifer Ouellette offers dating advice for the geek set<\/a>. Mostly, this reminds me again how happy I am to be married, and not worrying about this stuff any more, but her advice seems reasonably sound, save for one point:<\/p>\n

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There’s nothing sexier than a man who’s confident and comfortable in his own skin, and therefore isn’t afraid to show a little affection and emotion at opportune moments. To paraphrase a famous line in the classic film, Say Anything: don’t be a Guy. The world is full of Guys. Be a Man. Come to think of it, rent Say Anything for your date, and chances are you’ll win major points. Most women of my era consider Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack’s character in the film) to be the archetypal Romantic Ideal; we still get teary remembering that scene where he holds up the boombox outside his true love’s bedroom window, playing Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” in order to win her back. *sniff*<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Absolutely under no circumstances should you rent Say Anything<\/cite>, or any John Cusack movie from the 80’s, for one simple reason: You are not Lloyd Dobler. And you can’t hope to compete with Lloyd Dobler, so don’t even let it come up.<\/p>\n

Bonus Chuck Klosterman quote below the fold:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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I once loved a girl who almost loved me, but not as much as she loved John Cusack. Under certain circumstances, this would have been fine; Cusack is relatively good-looking, he seems like a good guy (he likes the Clash and the Who at least), and he undoubtedly has millions of bones in the bank. If Cusack and I were competing for the same woman, I could easily accept losing. However, I don’t really feel like John and I were “competing” for the girl I’m referring to, inasmuch as her relationship to Cusack was confined to watching him as a two-dimensional projection, pretending to be characters who don’t actually exist. Now, there was a time when I would have thought that detachment would have given me a huge advantage over Johnny C., inasmuch as my relationship with this woman included things like “talking on the phone” and “nuzzling under umbrellas” and “eating pancakes.” However, I have come to realize that I perceived this competition completely backward; it was definitely an unfair battle, but not in my favor. It was unfair in Cusack’s favor. I never had a chance.<\/p>\n

It appears that countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn’t the number-one-box-office-star in America, because every straight girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker. For upwardly mobile women in their twenties and thirties, John Cusack is the neo-Elvis. But here’s what none of these upwardly mobile women seem to realize: They don’t love John Cusack. They love Lloyd Dobler. When they see Mr. Cusack, they are still seeing the optimistic, charmingly loquacious teenager he played in Say Anything<\/cite>, a movie that came out more than a decade ago. […] This is why… the kind of woman I tend to find attractive will never be satisfied by me. We will both measure our relationship against the prospect of fake love.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(From “This Is Emo” in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs<\/cite><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Not that Chuck and I are bitter, or anything…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Cocktail Party Physics, Jennifer Ouellette offers dating advice for the geek set. Mostly, this reminds me again how happy I am to be married, and not worrying about this stuff any more, but her advice seems reasonably sound, save for one point: There’s nothing sexier than a man who’s confident and comfortable in… Continue reading You Are Not Lloyd Dobler<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop_culture","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}