Kat George

I chose to leave good music out of relationships when I barely survived a tough scrape, but over the years and between the amassed relationships of my friends and I, I’ve noticed some patterns emerge in the way a chosen song informs a relationship between two people.

You know the drill. You meet; you fall in ‘like’. Maybe you develop a romantic history (drunk sex, a date, a dance floor pash), or maybe you just admire them from afar. You feel like if they were a pop star you’d put a poster of their face on your wall and blow it kisses before you fell asleep to dream about them all night. If you were in high school you’d write their name on all your folders and do love equations with both your names.

I was born shortly after the release of ‘Dancing In The Dark,’ and was fortunate enough to be raised by two fanatic Bruce Springsteen fans. I remember being about 11 years old when my dad sat me down on the couch, put a VHS tape in the VCR player and I watched in awe as Courtney Cox danced on stage with a young Bruce Springsteen. I wanted to be her, up there dancing with Bruce—I still do.

I will love you wildly and I will love you deeply. I will love you bodily. I will love you in a way that clicks in every step I take on the pavement, in a way that relieves me every time I scratch an itch, in a way that bounces back unruly every time I brush a fly away hair from my face. I will love you so much that some part of me will love you forever.

Congratulations! You’ve made it! Against the odds you’ve traversed the gauntlet of New York dating. You’ve survived the challenges of the infamously sketchy First Date, commando-rolled into the Second Date, excelled at Sex With A New Partner and now you’re about to embark into the treacherous landscapes of the Third and Fourth Date.

The fabled grass on the other side—I know you think it’s greener friend, but what I really want to tell you is that if you just take a moment to indulge in your surroundings, you will be awed. The lush emerald glow will reflect upon you, and your clawing desperation to cross to the other side will fade to a memory as you become content where you are.

Despite your good intentions, a vastly overwhelming majority of people you date are more twisted than they looked when you first laid eyes on them at the bar, innocently sipping their generously mixed drink. You start to feel like Communism or Lady Gaga—you should work, but you just don’t.

Aside from the very obvious, “because they just should,” and the even more glaring “because it’s the best TV show ever apart from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer,” here are seven more, by no means extensive or sole, reasons why they (and by ‘they’ I mean ‘The Man’) should bring back Joss Whedon’s Firefly.

‘Personal style’ bloggers have garnered an almost infallible legitimacy as purveyors and creators of sartorial news, and their following has boomed to a cult-like status. As these blogs have gained intense popularity and more prolific bloggers have established an online celebrity, the democratic value of blogging is becoming increasingly undermined.

As I was perusing the diverse display of Buffy memorabilia, a Sunnydale cheerleader sidled up next to me. She was quite wide, and her hair was graying. Her wrinkled face smiled at me, “first BuffyCon?” she asked. I nodded and she chuckled. “Cordy!” she called over her shoulder, and very suddenly mum and I were surrounded by a gaggle of cheerleaders.

None of it is a reflection on me—it doesn’t mean I am hot or special, I’m not a moron, I see right through all this eye sexing. What it means is that you’re a dirty pervert. Or maybe you’re just unable to control your innate sleaze.

Not only were the external stimuli I was exposed to promoting an “ideal” body image, they were also promoting a sense that unless I fit that particular ideal, I should be morbidly dissatisfied. And I was; for no particular reason other than I felt some sort of social pressure to find ways to hate myself, which, needless to say, is absolutely ridiculous.