Items to be featured of the movie that I will never get around to writing, producing, directing, or starring in

1. Rich People




2. Sigur Ros




3. Arcane literary references




4. iPhones




5. Multiple endings depending on what theater you are in and how I've profiled its demographic. Lookout if you're watching the one in which Ice-Cube figures.




6. Cinque-Terre




7. Langoustines




8. Moping




9. Jokes about Matthew McConnaughy's ubiqitous pectorals




10. A Whit Stilman cameo appearance




11. Product placement on a scale as yet unseen.




12. An awkward briss




13. A woman mispronouncing "Hypocrite" as "Hippopotamus"




14. A room with a poster of Alex Kovalev




15. A direct-to-camera soliliquy on the unsung value of the side-part by the lead who, incidentally, has a side-part.




16. Chattering. Lots and lots of chatter.

Dear PMcE: Dating Etiquette

Dear PMcE,

As a single woman newly entering the dating scene, I find a lot has changed since I was vamping around in college. Adult dating apparently requires more than simply jumping around to House of Pain. For instance, finances are more complicated now. As a high-earning professional, I need to know where do you stand on the paying for dinner question.

Do you think a woman should absolutely offer to pay, even if she has no intention of doing so? Do you think not offering is rude, even though if he accepts she will never date him again? Do you think it is not equally appropriate to reciprocate in other ways, like paying for other non-dinner activities or hosting a follow-up dinner in her own home?

Sorry for the rapid-fire multiple questions, but I rarely let anyone get a word in edge-wise.

Confused in the Queen's Quay

Dear Confused,

I think that unless you are dating a younger man who you intend to ravish and never call again, perhaps also stealing one of his sweatshirts, you should NOT offer to pay.

Now, there are certainly exceptions, but most of them obvious - i.e. an extraordinarily expensive guest-chef-prix-fixe dinner that was your idea or something like that (ballet would fit here but that's kind of its own Dating Advice topic). But on the whole, I do not think that you should feel obligated to make the fake offer either, especially considering the consequences of his accepting are so dire.

I have always been a big fan of the reciprocity. In fact, I used to consider it the hallmark of a good date. Frequently I would suggest it myself while refusing a ham-handed attempt toward the purse (all my dates had hands made of ham, it's why I married a Latina woman instead: hands of cornsilk.)

The reciprocity game is socially graceful in so many ways:

1. It can bridge pay inequity, so the weaker earning partner can "reciprocate" with an appropriately priced event.


2. One can preserve the old-time chivalry of the gentlemen paying for dates


3. It means that the next date is assured, and, by corollary,


4. The sense of obligation can be quickly quashed in the time it takes to drink an apple martini at "this great spot I know" that also happens to be really close to your house.

As for the rapid-fire questions and general run-on sentences, don't let a little thing like the other person's thoughts get in the way of a good date. What if they turn out to be boring? Go with what you know is good, and that's you.

1000 hits!

What with the new baby, spring, countless hours reviewing Habs moments on my PVR, and studying for yet more regulatory exams (I had seriously thought I wrote my last one in 1999, and have been wrong about that just about every year), I haven't had much time. So content has been slim here.

Even my new site, which I thought would be easier to keep more regular since it doesn't actually require me to provide any original content (or, for that matter, even to think very hard) has been skinny.

But that hasn't stopped my hardy dozen or so fans from checking this here site on a regular and propelling my hit count over 1000! So thanks. It took about a year, but it was worth it.

Now: some sites are instant phenomena. And tough it was always my intention that this here site be more of a slow build, cultivating a dedicated and highly sophisticated readership, it's time to step up and get some freakin' hits. One Hundred Million Tiny Explosions in the Sky deserves One Hundred Million Tiny hits.

So forward the link to your friends. Make it your homepage. Add it as an RSS feed. Put it on your business card for crying out loud. I must be heard.

New Blog - PMcE suggested reading: Is That Something That Might Interest You?

Those who know me know that not only do I read a great deal, some of it is even interesting. If I was an older man, I’d be the type who mailed you articles that I’d neatly clipped from the newspaper with a little note written in the margin. “Thought you would find this interesting, especially given what you and the girls just went through!”

But I’m not that old. Instead, I tend to email articles to people that I think would be interested. Typically I choose recipients with care - targeted mail gets read, blast mail not so.

It recently occurred to me that maybe my hand-cut, ad-hoc distribution lists might be missing people who I knew but maybe wasn't as aware of their interests. More so, what if there were people I didn't know who would be interested? What if they could set up an automatic feed that would pipe all this goodness direct to their PC in an anonymous fashion?

“Brilliant,” I thought to myself.

So go check my new sister site: www.pmceReads.blogspot.com. And register for the Atom Feed at the bottom. This will feed it directly into the “feeds” window in your internet explorer. (Don’t forget to Feed this site too!)

I would think that it will tend to have much more frequent updates than this site as posting links/articles is significantly easier than generating original content.

Enjoy, and read up.

My Concubiine

I have taken a mistress and her name is Wii.

I think of her all the time. She keeps me up late at night, palms sweating. I no longer read, nor write. I barely go outside anymore. All I want is Wii.

After dinner, I tell my wife that I'm going to do the dishes and that she should go upstairs to relax. But instead, I turn the TV down low, drain the rest of the dinner's wine into my glass and slide the coffee table away from the fireplace. We get fairly acrobatic some nights. Aerobic even.

Sometimes my brother joins in. I've heard that Wii can actually handle four at the same time. I don't have the equipment though.

I've even gone so far as to encourage my wife to try it, but she's says she's not into that kind of thing.

"Why not take a break?" Wii asks me sometimes. She'll gently encourage me to go outside, feel the wind on my face. But I don't.

Even my old faithful friend, TV, has become an exercise in disappointment. Between the writer's strike and the frusterating one-way nature of our relationship, there just seems to be something lacking. When was the last time TV listened to my needs? I find myself swinging my remote at Roger Federer.

In the strictest sense of the word, Wii doesn't actually listen to me. We don't speak it all, in fact. Purely physical, she feels me. Wordlessly, silently, or, with soothing music. As a good concubiine should.

Moral Ambiguity takes it on the Chin

I found myself thinking, this afternoon, as Eliot Spitzer eloquently bolted for the door from the governer's mansion, "Wow".

I'm just not sure at all if my wife would be standing next to me at a press conference after finding out that I had blown what amounts to a pretty good post-secondary tuition for one of my daughters on a series of trysts with an obviously talented hooker. I just don't see it.

But then, I've also never lived in France. I've read Michel Houellebecq though, and I'm pretty sure he'd be ok with all this. Luckily, he'll never get elected in America. This is especially lucky for prostitutes. Because he'd be interested in doing things that might be considered dangerous. And that's not good for anybody: not the voters, not the girl, and certainly not the wife.

Juliet

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

Juliet James McEntyre - January 9th, 3:46 am. 7lbs, 3oz.