Ultimate List: Unrequited Love

So many media blogs, so many of them do lists, right? Of course they do, they're fucking vultures who couldn't be creative with a stack of playdough and three hits of acid. So we here at DTC have had a hard time figuring out the list problem. Namely, how do we do lists that don't seem like everyone else's lists. New lists. Controversial lists. Listless lists that come on Listmas and live in Listbon. Here is one of undoubtedly at least three attempts to make the list as glorious as it once was.

First off: The ULTIMATE BEST!!!!
AHAHAHAHAH
WOOOOOOO
*73 minute guitar solo that would make Yngwie Malmsteen shit his chain mail underdrawers*

What is the ULTIMATE BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you may ask? It is simply a list of various types of media that represent a certain theme. This week, since it's Friday, the theme is Unrequited Love. This is most often experienced when MM goes out drinking on a Friday night, smears her makeup all over her face in a bathroom stall after doing too much X and cries her way back home when the bartender that seemed SO nice wouldn't go home with her. Also, Jena Malone won't return my god damn phone calls I BOUGHT STEPMOM ON DVD FOR NOTHING.

BEST ALBUM:



Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River

The temptation, of course, is to put In The Aeroplane Over the Sea here simply to forward the argument. However, I really don't want to be one of those people who attempts to elevate interest by lying and making ridiculous statements (btw FUCK THE DARK NIGHT MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL = TEH FAT). As much as I love the Anne Frank mythology behind Neutral Milk Hotel's final album, everyone has to be able to recognize the wealth of other material in there.

Plainly put, Black Sheep Boy deserves this because unrequited love is all the album has going. This is not a negative, and also not a universal opinion, I'm sure (there is a lot of father daughter imagery to support such a theory). Rather, Will Sheff and crew does what the band does best: completely nail a story and its narrative over an album. The tale of the presumed Black SHeep Boy in love with a woman who constantly tells him no such love is possible. From the heartbreaking "A King and QUeen" through the final death knell in "A Glow", the album exists solely to tell the story of someone in love with what is not there, and all the efforts involved in extricating oneself from



BEST MOVIE, or film. Does film sound too pretentious? I'm gonna go with film.

BEST FILM



The Science of Sleep

Michel Gondry is my favorite director simply because he accomplishes my most pressing issue with film: how to make the love story interesting again. Other directors do a fine job with such a task, but few with the vigor and sweet tenacity of Gondry. The terrifyingly tender story of Science, where the chronically childish Cael Garcia Bernal attempts to open up to the discreetly beautiful Charlotte Gainsbourg while coping with his dream-obsessed mind, might as well be shaped and referred to as a dagger when presented to awkward males. Simply put, this movie hurts to watch; it creates a sort of mythical Catch-22 where the woman might be interested, but the man doesn't see it as such, so he blames her, he blames himself, and generally acts the fool all over the place until everything is ruined. The films' final scene states the final tragic idea in the most blatant way: life is so much better in dreams.



BEST TELEVISION DUO/TRIO

This has got to be Pam and Jim right i mean it basically dominated television for about two years and



Charlie, Dennis and The Waitress, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

OOOOOOOOH SNAP.

Charlie might be the best character on television right now. His actions are, of course, morally reprehensible for the most part, but unlike Dennis or Dee or Mac his poor actions come from ignorance. He can't read. He can't write. He has an excessively childlike mind. He huffs glue and paint. He lives in an efficiency with Danny DeVito. His life is so sad on so many levels, and it is only compounded by his love for The Waitress. From the first episode on, The Waitress rebuffs any and all of Charlie's advances with a mixture of scorn, disgust, and outright vitriol. She, however contains the same amount of unadulterated love for Dennis, who at various times turns her away or (more often) takes advantage of her emotions to gain something over the rest of his friends. In the midst of a terribly funny television show, this is easily one of the saddest love dynamics on television today.

Case in point: The episode "Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom". Charlie, suddenly given an amount of power over the rest of the crew thanks to Frank, uses his power to (of course) stop Dennis from having sex with the Waitress by having Dee show him attempt to hit on the various mothers of the other friends, who all are not interested. Charlie's desired effect, of course, is to influence The Waitress to lose her attraction to Dennis. Instead, she responds by having sex with Frank, thus turning Charlie's arguably one true win in the series into the shows' most poignant and tragic moment. Making it all the more heartbreaking for Charlie is his unwillingness to to stop: unlike The Waitress and her infatuation with Dennis, Charlie doesn't understand this is a losing game. Charlie, hopelessly, believe he can win her heart, no matter how off-putting or foul-smelling he may be.



BEST PLAY

The Glass Menagerie

In a play absolutely filled with both old and new unrequited love, the extent that it plays out with the two minor characters, Laura and Jim, is the strongest and most immediate. Laura, a young woman crippled more in mindset than body (though she acts oppositely), has spent her life since high school listening to old records, playing with her imaginary jungle of glass figurines, and nursing a love for the high school hero, Jim. Through stupid chance, the two are reunited in an attempt to find Laura a man. The minimal relationship between the two is rekindled ten-fold, she gains her change into the world of humans, they kiss...and he chooses this moment to reveal he is engaged to be married, never to return to the apartment and all its bizarre glory. It is the fragile edge the play walks along, and the moment it falls off is the end for all involved.