78 Comments

the distance poster is amazing. MAKE IT A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE MR HOLLYWOOD

Expand full comment

its done. Netflix did it and now its done you an see it on the netflix soon but just log onto youtube instead

Expand full comment

Movie that presents love better than other movies: It's not romance love, but more like family/friend love, kind of. The Fall (2006) hits me in my heart. It features Lee Pace before he was in everything and then in nothing, and a little girl who they deliberately filmed interacting with Lee Pace because they wanted her genuine reactions to things. She befriends him and he tells her stories but she kind of drives the stories--you know how you tell kids stories and they help you make it up as they go? The movie takes place mostly in her imagination but in a cool way and not at all a childish way and it hurts my heart. It's a must see.

My wife and I have a good origin story. I took her on a date, and she is from a different country so did not understand the clear signals of interest I was sending, and thought she was just hangin' out with her good friend Scoot and it was super awkward. I texted her overzealously after the date because in my head I'm thinking "crushed it!"-- I did not crush it. She politely declined future dates and then a few months later she moved to a new state.

Three years later she texted me out of the blue and she was coming to town to visit and we met up and had a magical time and she's been stuck with me ever since. We lived in different states until we got married and once we got married her entire family came to visit from her home country and we drove up and down the east coast of the united states like three times, sometimes with a car filled with stuff because my wife and I moved to a new, third state immediately upon getting married. It's been a wild ride.

Expand full comment

dang this story is amazing i love it! Did she come to visit town somewhat to see you secretly? Or was it truly out of the blue

Also, I remember The Fall -- I feel like i would see bits and pieces of it every so often on tv which feels like the right way to see it, experiencing it somewhat like the little girl.

Also fun fact I acted in a movie w Lee Pace and that dude is Very Tall

Expand full comment

It wasn't exactly out of the blue. She was visiting other friends and appended a meetup with me to the end of that visit. She texted me a week before so we had time to plan. I texted my best friend and said "DUDE REMEMBER THAT GIRL OMG" and he was like "She's falling out of the sky, see where it goes and if it works it works and if it doesn't she goes back to the sky". She had texted me like once every 8-12 months to tell me she had a new number in the intervening 3 years. She told me later that she originally only wanted to apologize for rejecting me on our horrible first date.

Our second first date was much better, and seems to have worked, though.

You're right, that is exactly the right way to see it. Half remembered, strange glimpses of that world. The X-Ray Men with hyena voices remain the best representation of any villain I've ever seen.

Tell Lee Pace I said hi! He would know me from having played on my TV so many times. Must have hurt his back since my TV is so small.

Expand full comment

My husband keeps promising to show me The Fall but it's like impossible to get a hold of!

Expand full comment

It's on Amazon Video, if you have access to that! Good luck!

Expand full comment

It says currently unavailalbe. The quest continues!

Expand full comment

jk it says u cant watch in america

Expand full comment

Okay I followed you on IG so I expect to be entertained LOL.

Also. I was dating a real dbag in college who everyone hated. When I broke up with him, my high school ex-boyfriend who I remained friends with, became very insistent that I come and visit him and his then-girlfriend. So I go visit and start drinking because I was 22 and of course, and later on in the evening this guy walks in and I was like HEY YOU ARE CUTE COME DO SHOTS WITH ME and dragged him to my favorite local bar (this was in the town I went to college in; I had moved back home after college). TLDR, I ended up vomiting on the cute guy's frat brother's front porch while Cute Guy held my hair back. The next morning he came back over to bring me a ginger ale. Reader, I married him. He proposed one week after High School Boyfriend and his Girlfriend got married. TWENTY YEARS LATER THIS MAY here we are with 2 kids, 3 cats, 2 cars and a house. (Also we were long distance for a year after we met... although only about 230 miles so no worries)

Did you follow any of that? LOL

Expand full comment

hahaha omg this was incredible!! fav part:

TLDR, I ended up vomiting on the cute guy's frat brother's front porch while Cute Guy held my hair back. The next morning he came back over to bring me a ginger ale. Reader, I married him.

Expand full comment

I always forget how funny it all was. Although a little difficult to explain to your kids how Mommy met Daddy when Mommy..... really doesn't remember it.

Expand full comment

Also High School Boyfriend was our best man and the guy whose porch I vomited on was a groomsman and he hooked up with my older, divorced sister during the wedding lol

Expand full comment

My (future) husband and I lived in Montréal in the late 80's. He went out with my close friend for a few months and when they broke up, she wasn't too happy about it. He and I would hang out, as friends. One day, I had a thought that hit me like a like a thunderbolt: oh no! I'm attracted to him! This isn't going to go over well. And it didn't. But to back-track a bit... for my 30th birthday a group of friends gathered at a restaurant/bar. He was there, she was there. It was uncomfortable due to their break-up, but not so much that they both couldn't be there. David (future hubby) and I talked and talked and talked and talked and talked (and laughed) and I learned later that my friend was none too pleased. Eventually everyone had left except he and I, still talking—basically the restaurant had to kick us out because they were trying to close. We stood on the corner talking some more, until I awkwardly offered "uh, well since we're so close to my place, we could, uh, you could crash at my place if you want..." To which he replied—and you'd have to know him to be able to imagine his total prairie-boy deadpan manner of speaking that friends love to tease him about—"Well what does that mean... because it is springtime, and I do have a crush on you." SPROING!!! We've been together ever since. There's more to the story, for example how my friend found out we were together by dropping by his place two days later and seeing me through the window doing his dishes, which two days previous would not be a thing. It wasn't pretty. But that was 32 years ago and we all got over it and we're still good friends! THE END.

Expand full comment

hahaha damn that line! what does the "its springtime" part mean - that's the real stroke of genius in that line and I love it lol

Expand full comment

Spring fever maybe?

"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love" (Tennyson) maybe?

BOTH ARE TRUE

Expand full comment

the man was and continues to be, a genius

Expand full comment

Ha ha

Expand full comment

I met my wife on Halloween, in line for the bathroom at a Ghostbusters themed party thrown by a few LA comedians. I was dressed as the Swedish Chef. She was dressed as a beautiful woman. I assumed she was out of my league and asked if she wanted to connect on Facebook. She gave me her phone number instead. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. ❤️

Expand full comment

SUCH a great love story, Alex!

2. I have to say 'Dirty Dancing', and specifically for one line. No, not 'Nobody puts Baby in the corner', but this one (spoken by a very cross Baby Houseman):

'Me? I'm afraid of EVERYTHING. I'm afraid of who I am, of what I saw. And most of all, I'm afraid of walking out of this room RIGHT NOW and never feeling IN MY WHOLE LIFE AGAIN the way I feel when I'm with YOU.'

Excuse me while I just go and wipe my soggy face...

Expand full comment

whoaaaaa I have never seen this movie and I know I need to! I also didn't know the 'baby in the corner' line was from it either hahaha

Expand full comment

This was fun. One of the marks of great writing is range. This had a lot of it.

Expand full comment

thank you Mark!

Expand full comment

Bahaha, my husband also sleeptalks and sleepdoes. It's always hilarious and random. I'm so excited to watch Distance. The trailer is awesome!

1. When Harry Met Sally.

2. Resident Evil.

3. Husband saw my legs in a friend's album and wanted to order me, and so he did!

4. Well, now I must!

Expand full comment

also wait re: #3 -- whaaaat tell us more! what was your first date like?

Expand full comment

I have a friend I met online and we bonded and got to visit each other, she from NY and I from Montreal. I was one of her bridesmaids for her wedding. My husband sadly didn't get the cut in being invited. But he saw the album and was impressed by the mail order bride! So he found me on FB and added me. Not weird at all! Our first date was amazing. My friend and her husband and another couple came to visit me along with him and we went to Quebec for a day. I don't think this is something that would happen today.

Expand full comment

BTW, Alex, one of your Substacks inspired a post in me so much (in case you ever wish to read it https://whenhopewrites.substack.com/p/obligatory-post-soviet-couch-photo). Thank you so much! Your posts have been making me laugh and cry.

Expand full comment

ok wait how is REsident Evil a romcom lol

Expand full comment

It is! There is some love shenanigans. And the film is horribly bad it's hilarious! To each their own rom-com, I guess? XD

Expand full comment

One of my new favorites. 💖

Expand full comment

thank you!!

Expand full comment

Favorite rom-coms: The Pride and Prejudice mini-series and When Harry Met Sally. I've got a good origin story for my husband of over 50 years, cute meets, that includes the running and breaking up with the boyfriend, who I had never been that into. But I prefer my Dad's romance.

My parents had a good strong marriage, but my mother was often ill, and probably for the last 5 years of her life was an invalid. When she died, it was a blessing, and my father, only in his late 60s spent the next year dealing with her death by traveling to see people (since he hadn't been able to travel for years because of my mother's health.) The plan at the end of that year was for him to visit us in California, to see if he wanted to move permanently. But, he told us that he was going to go spend a week with a woman he had met on his travels in Michigan 6 months earlier. A double date with his brother, that ended with them discovering they were both poets, and promising to write after they had only spent one evening together.

What followed was 6 months of writing and sharing poetry (all of this unbeknownst to me or her 4 children.) At the end of the week, he called us to say he was cancelling his flight because he wanted to stay a little longer. We got 3 more of those calls, and the last one he announced that they were getting married the next weekend. I had just started a new job and said I was afraid I couldn't make it, and he just laughed and said I wasn't invited. He never did make that move to California, and they ended up having a wonderful, nearly 20 year marriage. That is the romance part.

I guess the comedy is how appalled everyone was when they heard of the marriage-that came "so soon," after my mother's death and after such a short acquaintance.

I wasn't the least bit upset, because I trusted my father's judgement, he certainly deserved a happy rest of his life, and my step mother is a lovely woman. But what I said, each time someone asked in hushed tones, "aren't you upset!" and this did generally get a laugh, was since I was an only child, with a father heading into his 70s, I was delighted that he was remarrying...a woman 12 years younger and a nurse!

Expand full comment

hahaah this is incredible! Does any of their poetry to each other or in general exist to the public?

Expand full comment

When I started my substack, every Sunday I put up one of my Dad's poems. Unfortunately, when I have asked my stepmother about poems of hers, she always says they weren't good enough. I don't know which, if any of the poems I put up from my Dad were directed at my step mom. The truth is, there are a fair amount of pretty sexual poems that I haven't put up, not sure about how my readers would feel about them. Since he shared with me (as he slipped into early dementia in his 80s, which pretty much removed his censor) that after his remarriage, he had the best sex of his life during his 70s, I have imagined that these particular poems were, in fact, written to her. (smile.) Here is the link to my dad's poetry. https://marylouisalocke.substack.com/s/my-fathers-poetry

Expand full comment

omggggggg amazing ok very excited to check these out! Also I do think you should publish the sexy ones!

Expand full comment

Maybe I can give them a separate tag, or put a bunch of them in just a couple of posts, rather than put one up at a time, because I found there was a subset of my followers who just didn't like the days I put up poems (while others loved them.) That way, those people who like a good mildly erotic poem can check them out.

Expand full comment

yeah! Or publish them but don't email the new post to everyone, and then just link to it in a different post or something

Expand full comment

Thanks for sharing this! Your continued honesty and vulnerability inspires me to be more open and honest in my own posts, so thanks for being a real one✌️ lol.

I have so many fav rom coms though. It’s so hard to pick, but I guess I’d have to say

1. The Half of It

2. When Harry Met Sally

3. You’ve Got Mail

4. 13 Going on 30

5. Notting Hill

But one of my favorite rom coms that isn’t actually a rom com is Little Miss Sunshine. It’s such a sweet, funny, and messy movie about familial love and real life struggles. I also really love La La Land. I don’t know if that’s considered a rom com. I feel like it kinda is? But maybe isn’t because of the ending? I dunno but it definitely has a lot of truth about love in there.

Expand full comment

omgg I frikkin love little miss sunshine! god the scene at the end with the lil girl dancing damn I need to rewatch that. Also Paul Dano's first movie!

Expand full comment

these are great Sunshine was brilliant and your picks reminded me of others like BIG and oddly Castaway with that scene at crossroads at end after the tough journey he had had romantically...power of love shit and that truck with butterfly winged art on it.....Notting Hill room-mate perfect foil and julias best role IMO (im crazy and neither eating loving nor praying helps much) and also that line in Runaway Bride where she jumps on UPS or FedEx truck enabling wry comment by veteran actor elizondo in reply to where she is going "i dunno but she'll be there by tomorrow"

Expand full comment

I met my husband on a blind date. It was in a group setting so either of us could bail if we wished. Neither of us wished to and talked and drank all evening. He walked me to my car and I said, “Wow! its been great talking to you Steve. I hope you’ll call me. “ Only problem was his name is Dan. He didn’t call. A couple of weeks later I was looking for a card for my friend’s birthday. I saw a card that on the outside said “ Let me call you sweetheart… “ on the inside it said “…because I can’t remember your name. “. I sent it to him and he called. Married to him for 15 of the best years of my life! Our 43rd anniversary is next fall.

Expand full comment

omg haha this rules...so was it the card specifically that made him change his mind?

Expand full comment

Seems that way! He said he was interested but did not think I was. The card did the trick.

Expand full comment

This was beautiful, Alex! Thanks for sharing.

1. 50 First Dates. Makes me cry everytime!!! I also really love Submarine, which captured my attention by its soundtrack but now (after watching it 100 times) I love everything about it.

3. She walked in a bar when I was singing - screaming, top of my lungs, in the most shitty voice a human being can sing, sweating like a pig - Bad Romance on karaoke. She was with a common friend and I was so ashamed that I didn't even said hello, just started talking about random stuff!

Expand full comment

wow that story is amazing lolol. I guess if she's already seen you at your worst (singing), then you can be vulnerable real fast

Expand full comment

can't wait for part 2! also where did lauren go to grad school??

Expand full comment

woo! Pt 2 is out and pt 3 coming tomorrow eeek.

Lauren went to UNCSA!

Expand full comment

no way, I'm from Winston-Salem and know so many uncsa folks! what a small world

Expand full comment

WHAT!! what the heck. Are you there now?

Expand full comment

no, I'm in Minneapolis now but 100% going to move back to nc, I love it there

Expand full comment

Hubby and I are the empty nester version. I'm a sleep talker-- still-- after 31 years. I know you didn't ask for a sleep talking story but I'll share our favorite. Three dogs ago (25 years ago?) the night before our puppy was to be neutered I woke up and said to hubby, "Here, take them." He said, "Take what?" "Take them," I repeated. "What?" The big reveal-- "His balls."

Expand full comment

Oh, I even held out my fist to him as tho I was grasping something.

Expand full comment

hahahaah incredible

Expand full comment

You are going to think I am making this up. When I was 19 I asked God for a husband. I gave Him a list of what I wanted too. Time passed and passed. One night I got depressed and remembered the prayer. I was now 26. I said, What gives, God? It has been 7 years. And I heard, It will be another 7. I was not happy! But I went on with my life. Some years later I was feeling said and lonely and I suddenly remembered the prayerI was 33. It had been 7 more years. I said, Time's up God. If you don't do something right now I will become a nun.

The phone rang and on the other end was my future husband. I didn't tell him what had happened, and I didn't jump to conclusions, but we ended up talking for several hours, and we had our first date the next weekend. We dated 2 1/2 yrs. And have been married for 33 years.

Expand full comment

wow that's a trip!

I am assuming you've told him since??

Expand full comment

But not until after we were married!

Expand full comment

Yes

Expand full comment