GOING THE DISTANCE

He lives in New York, she in San Francisco—whatever, it’s just a way of reminding us that nothing in this world may touch: no sign to referent, no concept to occasion, no hand to mouth, no translation to poem but also no poem to its original, you might try to approach some quality of feeling by pouring words over it, you could drizzle or drench it with language, but all that icky stuff does is slough off or pool in crevices or rage in cataracts of noise and blah blah blah, some patriarchal hang-up about possession and I’m sorry, who cares, who worries about this? Not this guy. And not Drew Barrymore, certainly not, least of all Drew Barrymore. And another who couldn’t care is Justin Long, the voice of Alvin, Alvin we miss you, remember when the Chipettes sang, “If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it.” And that “it” may be the most mischievous and miscreant pronoun ever squeaked, not to mention there’s no way anatomical or metonymical that the two “it”s they sing could even be the same “it”—and yet they are, as New York and San Francisco, though not, of course, the same place, both have people in them who regularly think, in regard to the people in the other, “They’re probably pretty cool.”

Cold town, I can imagine eating its somewhat unsatisfying food and drinking its good coffee, bundled on a balcony, writing foggy thoughts on page after page of blinding white copy paper.

Probably the first rom-com of its kind to include the line, “I want to come all over you” (during phone sex). And Drew, when they compare pop-cultural pasts, “If you even say ‘Marky Mark’ I’m gonna come right now.” Now is that any way for a “31-year-old” “graduate student” in “journalism” at “Stanford” to talk? Second scene this year (Step Up) at that diner on Wythe, the one across from Zebulon. He works at a “record label” and in one part leaves his car unattended in front of the JetBlue terminal at JFK. Applegate married to Gaffigan. My point: the movie toys with credulity at every turn because in doing so it dares us to question the central premise that resides not in it but in us: that we can have it all. Like, if you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it. Could Beyoncé be possessed, could Beyoncé be contained? Don’t tell me, “Jay-Z.” Because we are hardly privy to the fundamental ways in which Jay-Z would know better than ever even to try that.