Still single after all these weeks

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:07:00 +0000

About 53 weeks ago, Neenah Pickett launched a year-long husband-landing project at the blog 52 Weeks 2 Find Him. As she wrote in a recent post, prior to the project, she had "over a decade of experience of doing nothing to find a husband. From the time I was 22 years old through the age of 36, I didn't spend any effort on finding love. I lived a very full life. I had lots of friends, was social and active in my community, and even volunteered on a regular basis. I had a great job, yet didn't spend any more or less hours at work than any of the other people my age in NYC. But in those 14 years, I had only 2 dates." So Pickett decided to put serious effort into dating for a year, in hopes of finding a man to spend her life with -- and, as you do, she chronicled the experience online.

“Love Happens” — and it stinks

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:17:00 +0000

"Love Happens" isn't a romantic comedy, and maybe it would be more effective, or at least just livelier, if it were. Instead, it's a limp romantic drama that occasionally lifts its drowsy head to attempt a wan smile, a picture that starts out being harmlessly dull and ends, somehow, in a place that feels insultingly manipulative. Maybe there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes in a movie theater, but right now I can't think of one.

Aaron Eckhart plays Burke -- that's his first name -- an earnest-looking grief guru who runs popular seminars designed to help people get over the loss of a loved one. The seminars grew out of a book he wrote as he attempted to grapple with his own wife's accidental death. The book became a bestseller; the hitch is that it didn't really help Burke kick his own grief habit. He still hasn't adjusted to life without his wife, and he still feels guilt over her loss. It doesn't help that her ex-Marine father (played by Martin Sheen) does stuff like march up to Burke during one of his seminars and kick him in the pants -- figuratively speaking -- for being so cowardly about accepting the reality of his wife's death.

Salon.com > Love Happens

Still single after all these weeks

“Love Happens” — and it stinks