Immortal beloveds are Hollywood’s must-have accessories for the season. Seriously, we’re done with babies — adopted-from-Africa, L. Ron Hubbard-spawned, surrogated, unwanted-but-carried-to-term, whatnot. Done. Finito. We’ve transcended the cradle and succumbed to the grave. I don’t care if Angelina Jolie does try to reverse the trend by pooping out twins. Haunting honeys. I’m telling you — that’s what’s hot, and you read it here first.
Lets discuss an immediate plus of this development: For one, unlike infants, these perished paramours are not uncomely, diaper-wearing blobs (Angie’s word). The cinema tells us they’re odorless, disgusting-bodily-functionless sculpted Spartans (P.S. I Love You’s Gerard Butler, par exemple) and desperate housewives (like the star of this week’s release, Over Her Dead Body — veritable San Antonio royalty Eva Longoria Parker). Wo/man cannot live on eye-candy alone, surely, and to try to touch a spectral soulmate would be, well, impossible, to say nothing of embarrassing, but what is that in comparison to peeping one more infuriating picture of Suri Cruise on a reputed news site? Bring on Truly Madly
Deeply 2.
Should you at some point be so fortunate as to procure a buddy from beyond — and we urge you not to achieve this by illegal means
(candystriping is the key) — keep this in mind: While these fashionable phantoms might be useful for a thing or two — pranking your pals, invisibly dominating potential attackers — they’ve remained in this plane for one of two reasons: 1) To help you overcome your grief, 2) To fuck up your shit. Humor and/or drama should ensue. Occasionally
horror.
You’re looking concerned. Trust me, your friends will be chartreuse with envy. Wouldn’t they love it if people showered them with attention for being seemingly mad with anguish? Why didn’t their expired boyfriend save them from drowning, Always-style? Oh, that’s right, they don’t have one. If they did, they could enlist said croaked companion to scope out a new-and-improved cohort. I mean, you’d set them up, but you’re too busy watching Hannah and Her Sisters with your spirited spouse and his gang of ghouls.
How can you know you’re one of the lucky few whose partner has been good enough not to cross over and is indeed continuing to enchant you by meddling with your affairs, that it isn’t just your imagination? A few telltale signs: Someone keeps leaving the gate open; the heater is always on; your new crush has become clumsy; posthumous postage; you keep getting motor oil all over your face; perpetual someone’s-breathing-on-your neck feeling; constant guilt; and of course, you are approached by a comedienne who claims to be channeling the late Patrick Swayze.
Oh, the fun you’ll have! That is, until he or she completes his or her unfinished business, or, if the haunting is being perpetrated by your husband’s deceased extramarital partner — á la What Lies Beneath — until vengeance is served. But mostly there’s no reason to fear. Embrace the ethereal. Figuratively, of course. •
