Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

Boys and Girls

I’m somewhat depressed. I just watched this movie called Boys and Girls on TV while I was sitting at home on a Saturday night, eating canned ravioli and frozen garlic bread for dinner. It’s one of those college comedy/romance movies, starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and Claire Forlani as these two college students that are opposites but very paired together. They keep running into each other by chance and don’t entirely click, but over the course of their college career, become the best of friends. Then they semi-accidentally sleep together at the end of Act II, insert cliche commotion, and the whole thing ends with her giant soliloquy as he’s on the plane leaving for home at the end of the year, about how she needs him and really does love him, etcetera.

It all sounds very cliche, and it is. But I guess it was very well done, at least as far as these sort of teen college movies go, and it caught me for some reason. Maybe part of it is Claire Forlani, who is not only very easy on the eyes, but also had this role where she seemed to be the perfect, down-to-earth female, the kind of girlfriend one would really want, both very sexual and beautiful, yet very carefree and open. But part of the reason the film stuck in my craw was the same reason I spent so long writing Summer Rain: I really do feel nostalgic over my years in college. Even if the fairytale romance like the one in this movie (or, for that matter, the one in Summer Rain, which was fictional) never happened, that era was the playing field for something like that to happen. So I did enjoy the movie, but it also brought this weird funk over me that I can’t seem to shake.

(Weird aside – the movie also briefly featured Heather Donahue, who was in The Blair Witch Project, although I didn’t even know it was her. It also had Jason Biggs as Prinze’s roommate, and Alyson Hannigan as Prinze’s first girlfriend. And then in the American Pie movies, Biggs and Hannigan end up married. Weird.)

So I got audited AGAIN, by the State of New York. They claim I did not file a tax return in 1999, which is humorous considering I DID file a return, and I’ve got a copy of it sitting right here, and then they later audited said return to squeeze a bit more money out of me. Fuckers. I would like to send them a letter saying “Dear NYSIRS: it appears your records are FUCKED. I did pay my taxes, you pieces of shit. You now owe me a refund of 25% of the amount of taxes paid for wasting my fucking time and another stamp to mail this stupid letter, you pieces of shit. Love, Jon.”

I got Command and Conquer: Generals and it is the most perfect way to destroy any writing ethic I may have remaining. It’s a pretty cool game, albeit a slight bit sluggish on my machine.

Not much else is going on. The weather is a bit shitty, and I am broke, so I’ve spent most of the weekend sofar either running errands or trying to clean the house. I am slowly making progress on the apartment, and there are a few new patches of floor visible from the shifting of things. I’m throwing out junk, trying to shuffle the bookshelves a bit to get things off the floor, and just trying to put things away as I can. Nothing major, but it’s getting there.

I should write, but I don’t know if I can. Either way, I should get something done now…