Yesterday my grandpa died.

He was my stepfather’s stepfather, but I’ve thought of him as my grandpa since I was six.  After my parents got divorced my sister and I spent a lot of time with them, Grandma Edie and Grandpa Ray,  in their small apartment, playing in an inflatable pool in the tiny backyard.  He loved Norte Dame and the Indy 500.  He named his cat Rudy and would playfully debate me on whether swimming, my sport in elementary school, was or was not far more dangerous than car racing.  He never talked down to me and even though I was probably a pretty annoying, precocious kid, he always made me feel like my opinions were respected.  He had a historical anecdote or interesting piece of trivia for every conversation.  He loved my grandma well.  If my marriage is anything like theirs I’ll have done something good.  He was loud and gruff and taught my three-year-old brother curse words while they watched football games.  He was passionate and too abrasive when he argued, just like I am.  And for my sister and me, when we were between realities, when our family was spread out over the country and we didn’t know where we belonged, he and my grandma took us in.  They made us feel welcome and loved.  They made us feel like we were their family before we were.

He was the only democrat in our family and the last time I spoke to him, when he was sick and tired and weak, I told him how I was trying to get into campaign organizing and I could hear him perk up.  I know he was proud.

I wish I had something more eloquent to say about him other than that he was a good man and that I loved him.

Oh, haven’t you heard? All women are lying, crazy, wedding-hungry she-beasts who will do anything to attach a “Mrs.” to that name.

That’s right ladies, Daily Mail and UKTV channel “Really” have found you out.  They know all about your dirty tricks to get engaged (like *gasp* asking a man yourself!!!)!   “Underhanded tactics” include threatening to leave them (know what you want from a relationship?  Bitch!), sending themselves flowers (Manipulation?  It’s what we ladies do best!), and, you guessed it, faking/getting pregnant!

Let’s ignore the fact that leaving a relationship/telling someone you will leave a relationship if you are not both on the same page is not a trick, it’s common sense (and neither is proposing yourself), let’s look at the “source” of this “research.”  It’s a channel that is pushing a wedding-centered upcoming season.   Do you think they have other motives to make the whole wedding world seem full of crazy-ass, tulle gobbling, hysterical bridezillas?  I do.

Here are some other interesting “facts” you might want to know:

• 62% of couples didn’t have sex their wedding night and “tiredness was cited as an excuse by nearly half of brides.”  Because ladies are the sex keepers they need excuses to justify not performing their sacred leg-spreading duties!
• “Over a quarter of the women questioned said their one regret about their wedding day was their choice of groom.”  Because women are so desperate to get hitched they are manipulating trapping weddingraping getting married to the first interchangeable penis to come along.  They regret it ’cause they probably found one with more money afterward!
• “Four in ten women said they attached too much importance to the wedding itself rather than a happy start to married life with their partner” Did you get that?  Because women don’t.  They don’t get it.  Because they are weddingwhores.

I feel like this is the grown up equivalent of rainbow parties.  They’re everywhere!  A friend of a friend of a friend totally knows this one girl who put a frozen hot dog covered in her boyfriend’s sperm up her hoo-ha so she could get pregnant and use all his money to buy a gigantic wedding and put Nair in all her bridesmaids shampoos and microwaved his cat to stop him from leaving her (from the backseat of his car one night when he was being followed by a trucker!!!!)!1!1!!!1@#$OHMYGODITSTRUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEE.

Sigh.

Barf.  I mean, right?  But let’s face it, anti-Valentines Day tirades are as tired as the stupid holiday itself, so I’ll skip my corporate-infantilizing-women-single-shaming-couple-obliging rant.  It happens, I ignore it, life goes on.  I’d like to talk to you about a far more prevalent Valentines Day, a movie which made the biggest President’s Day weekend opening ever.

I had intended to review it, and yes, I did go with my girlfriend, and yes we did sneak in mini bottles of Jack Daniels.  But even with no expectations of remote depth or insight, and even with a friend to snark to, and even with enough booze to make Two and a Half Men funny, it was painful.  Not Rom Com funny, or bad funny, or even confusing funny, just…boring.

There were so many “story lines” (and yes, I’m being generous), I kept saying, “Oh…that guy’s still in this movie.”  Generally I complain that the women in recent Romantic Comedies are shallow, poorly written crazy people, but VD really unilaterally distributed the pathetic character shells. And finally, whoever penned this beauty had a real chip on her shoulder about Indiana. What’s the deal, Katherine Fugate, you wanna start something with the Crossroads of America?!

Anyway, I get it, it’s Valentines Day so uncreative couples everywhere directed their obligatory date nights towards the thing most clearly marked “spend holiday money.”    But why does this movie have to be so bad?  There’s noting inherently bad about movies centered around love.  Are these stories clichés?  Sure, but so are most genre movies.  And Love Actually is a solid flick.  So why does this watch like someone put a bunch of dumb conflicts in a lottery cage and grabbed a handful.  Then used a mad lib to write the dialogue.  Then asked the most boring human they know to give them the adjectives and verbs.  Quirky brunette has a wacky job to pay her bills but her new man doesn’t get it!   Non-stereotypicaly gay person is gay! A MAN is a romantic!!!! Wha?!

Listen, women don’t just go to Romantic Comedies, but on the other hand, their target audience is women.  And for the last few years a LOT of movies seem to have a one lady requirement, so if women want screen time, they have to journey to this romance wasteland.  We would like to see reflections of ourselves every once in a while, and as evidenced by the awesome Superbowl ads, we are all harpy bitches who force our spineless significant-others to patronize ball-shrinking movies with us.  With all of that, why, oh why can’t someone, somewhere make a movie I can sit through?  I don’t know what’s worse, the sad, insane women-who-can’t-get-laid-because-they’re-SOFUCKINGCRAZY of He’s Just Not That Into You or the bland blandybeigeblandness of everything about VD.

Hollywood, if you’re going to reduce every talented actress in Southern California whose tired of playing tertiary support roles to Romantic Comedies, can you at least give them a script that is…decent?  Other than, the clearly brilliant upon reexamination,  The Proposal.  PLEEEEEEEASE?