Consider Yourself Amazed. But wait til the end.

In Which Erin compares Infomercials, Romantic Comedies, and (briefly) Car Accidents.
Now, I've seen my fair share of the first two, but I can't say that I've seen all too many car crashes. But I'm told that it's one of those things where it's really bad, but you just can't look away. I believe the same is true for romantic comedies and infomercials. Now, don't get me wrong, I love a good romantic comedy. A GOOD one. Generally one that was not mass-produced in the Nicholas Sparks Recycled Plotline Factory. 500 Days of Summer was a good one. It was different, funny, light on the drama, with a happy ending that doesn't appear happy. The Last Song? A freaking terrible movie. Terrible! Who wants to listen to Miley Cyrus croak her way through crappy sappy dialogue with perhaps one of the most unattractive male actors ever? BUT WHY CAN'T I STOP WATCHING?? It's like when you're on commercial break, and all of a sudden you hear the deep, male voice going: "HATE doing things that are really easy? WANT to use a complicated device that doesn't really work to do those really easy things? THEN YOU NEED THE THING WITH THE RIDICULOUS NAME!!" All of this happens in the background of some video of a housewife in black and white struggling to do something that she could easily just use a nice brawny man arm for, and then the deep male voice (we'll call him Doug) announces The Thing With The Ridiculous Name, and everything springs to life in full-color, and you just think: "Oh, I get it. It's either describing an acid trip, or turning us into Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz". (Acid trip either way, really). All of a sudden this housewife can do everything she ever possibly dreamed of with this one ridiculously named device. Then Doug starts naming all the random crap you can do with TTWTRN, half of which you've never heard of before (Julienne fries, anyone?), the other half of which you never would've made in the first place. And while you're slicing and dicing and making Julienne Fries, all while keeping your family happy and healthy, Doug is throwing in a second TTWTRN for FREE! (Just pay seperate shipping and handling). Then they cut to the blue screen, read the phone number a bunch of times, and you can go back to your regularly scheduled programming and wonder when all those infomercial actors are going to turn into serial killers. The Last Song is exactly the same, except it's a romantic comedy. It follows Nicholas Sparks' favorite plot ever: Here we have Girl. Girl is in some way angsty or troubled. Girl meets Boy. Boy likes Girl, Girl is less than enthusiastic about Boy. Boy eventually makes Girl fall in love with him, even though she's been hurt before and is all troubled and angsty. Turns out Boy is unnaturally wealthy, This is a problem for Girl, who is not unnaturally wealthy. Boy's parents don't like Girl. Some random person dies, making Girl seem more tender hearted. Girl opens up. Something horrible happens. Girl and Boy have a big fight about nothing that important. Girl shuts Boy out. Eventually, Boy and Girl reconcile and make out somewhere cliche where nobody ever actually makes out in real life. If you switch the roles for Boy and Girl, change the order, and adjust the ages and/or era of Boy and Girl, you have pretty much every single Nicholas Sparks movie ever created. And yet they are as addicting as those stupid infomercials. You know how idiotic they are, and yet you can't look away. In the end, you're left confused and wondering why life doesn't happen that way. Why don't things immediately pop to color and we're handed a device that makes everything easier? Why are we not set to a specific storyline that matches those before us? This is freakin' real, right here. Nobody ever falls in love the way Boy and Girl do in Nicholas Sparks fashion. Sometimes we have to open jars with our bare hands and suck it up if our spoons roll around in the drawer.
I bet you didn't see a life lesson in this, now did you? Oh, I'm good.
See you tomorrow.