spoof/review of Don't Call That Man! from the Boston Globe 2000- VERY FUNNY

spoof/review of Don't Call That Man! from the Boston Globe 2000- VERY FUNNY/VERY ENTERTAINING
by DIANE WHITE


Emma Bovary sighs. She weeps. Rodolphe, the love of her life, has deserted her. She must have him or die.
What's this?
A book has arrived in the post. "Don't Call That Man! A Survival Guide to Letting Go."
Emma doesn't recall requesting this book. Yet the author's oddly euphonious name, Rhonda Findling, resonates. Did she perhaps write any of those forbidden romantic novels Emma devoured so many years ago at her convent school?
Emma has time to kill. She opens the book and reads:
"Sheila, an attractive 27-year-old computer programmer, sat in her apartment staring at the telephone. She yearned to call Tony, a handsome life insurance agent she had been dating for the past six months."
Oh Sheila, I know your pain, thinks Emma, I, too, yearn to call the man I love, even though the telephone won't be invented for another 40 years or so.
Emma reads on and learns that Sheila's heart sank when Tony said he didn't "see himself" marrying her.
Cruel Tony! Cruel Rodolphe!
"Now Sheila felt alone and desperate. She wanted to be with Tony on any terms. . . she couldn't bear the thought of life without him."
Emma feels faint and throws herself onto a nearby divan. However, just prior to falling into a serious swoon, she picks up the book again and turns to another chapter. After answering a series of probing questions posed by the author, Emma comes to realize that she has turned to Rodolphe, a classic "ambivalent man" type, because she is the victim of inadequate fathering.
I am a victim, says Emma to herself. I have always suspected as much. She reads on.
"Whenever there is a loss, you have to feel the pain of the loss," Rhonda Findling advises.
Emma learns that she must get in touch with her grief and give herself permission to experience her pain. She howls and weeps and rolls on the Turkish carpet and beats her tiny fists against the cold, hard plaster walls.
After an hour or so of refusing to deny her pain, Emma feels much better. Now what?
Emma turns once again to the book and reads about the crucial importance of having a network of understanding friends. She decides to start a "Don't Call That Man!" support group for literary figures in similar straits. Anna Karenina is the first to join. Tess Durbeyfield comes around, and brings Scarlett O'Hara.
"Hester Prynne wanted to be here but she couldn't get a sitter," Tess tells Emma.
Together they work through the "Don't Call That Man!" 10-step program. Step nine, they all agree, is the most difficult. It requires each of them to keep an hour-by-hour diary describing any urges they may have to call their former lovers and how they manage to resist calling. They all agree that the total lack of telephones makes not calling a lot easier than it might be otherwise.
Emma and Anna, Tess and Scarlett consider Findling's suggestions for self-nurturing. This is a very important part of the healing process, Findling writes. Go to Paris. Get your hair done. Go shopping. Go to concerts. Go off your diet and eat desserts all day long. Go to the movies. They decide to do it all, even go to the movies, as soon as someone invents them.
In Paris, Emma has an idea. "Let's get a literary agent and write no-holds-barred, tell-all memoirs for big money," she says.
And so they do, and they live happily ever after.

Being friendly with your ex

published by Hollywoodlife.com - where I was interviewed about being friendly with your ex

Are YOU friends with any of your exes? Or do you just pretend to be – and get insanely jealous with you see him with his new girlfriend?
We’ve got to hand it to Terri Seymour, the girl is one cool cucumber. Exhibit A – witness her laid-back behavior around ex-boyfriend Simon Cowell , 50 (who she has to INTERVIEW for her show, Extra, by the way – such an indignity!), but the way she actually hugs his new girlfriend, make-up artist Mezghan Hussainy, 36? Astounding!
But how does Terri really, 36, really feel about her ex and Simon’s new woman? We’d be seething inside and internally visualizing pulling Mezghan’s hair! This leads us to wonder: can you ever really be best buds with your ex-love?
Lynn Harris, co-creator of Breakupgirl.net, says yes! “Sometimes you were friends all along, and that probalby was the way it was supposed to be,” she tells HollywoodLife.com. “Sometimes the relationship was based on passion, without the aspects of friendship.”
But is it a good idea to be besties with an ex-lover? We’re skeptical. “It’s nice and makes life easier,” admits Lynn. “If you run into them, you should say ‘hi’, but it’s not a judgement of your skills in a relationship if you’re not. However, if you did have a fondness for your ex and it was an OK breakup, then I can’t imagine not being civil to them.”
Rhonda Findling, psychotherapist and author of Don’t Call That Man! disagrees for normal folk – but says that celebrities often play by a different set of rules. “I don’t want to talk to anyone that ends it with me, and I certainly don’t want to meet their new girlfriend, but in Hollywood things are different. There’s no hard and fast rule here,” Rhonda tells us. “As for Terri, it’s possible that she’s faking it for the public, and she’s just trying to show that she doesn’t care. I would suggest she not talk to her ex, because it can open up a lot of feelings and wounds.”
Who needs that? What about you ladies? Are you friends with your exes, and if so, how in the heck did you manage to pull it off? Tell us your stories here!
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