Daily Archive

The Times once again finds a way to elicit an onslaught of reader responses.  Published on December 11, this lightweight (if that is the right word?) piece by an American screenwriter, who tells us he was raised in Britain, already has over 500 comments as of around midafternoon today, December 13.

At least he is, evidently, a real person, and not a self-penned, fictional second self. But as a screenwriter, undoubtedly he’s thinking of a screenplay. They always are.

So to sum up the basis for this one in less than 100 words: 18 year old British women are naturally beautiful; “older” British women are lazy about working at their looks and turn prematurely frumpy, but are also refreshingly non-materialistic (Helena Bonham-Carter is supposedly representative), and/or pint-swilling, goodtime gals; in turn, American women are also beautiful but work harder to try to stay that way, but are shallow, money-obsessives; and intermixed are my various, clever transatlantic male insights — such as Michelle Pfeiffer being Ms Bonham-Carter’s American equivalent. (Who knew?)

Hmmm, it has its film possibilities, clearly; although that he managed to omit a certain Ms Keira … oh, you know her name, won’t help sell it.  But “500+ comments” in The Times in two days might also be somehow fit into the witty plotline.  No?

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UPDATE: The wife just read the above post:

You don’t think I’m frumpy, do you?

Any married man either side of the Atlantic knows the correct answer.  In contrast, his having composed a piece like that, one can understand perhaps why that screenwriter, whose Times byline tells us is single, has not yet managed to find either his own ”English rose” or . . . the American equivalent.

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Incidentally . . .

. . . Oh, yes, frumpy indeed.