Open Letter to Zooey Deschanel: Your Eyes Are Pretty

Dear Zooey Deschanel,

I've noticed that you, more than any other actress, have been typecast as the girl who gets fallen in love with. That's got to be kind of fun and weird! In a story-book kind of way, wouldn't that have to be almost the most wondrous archetype-sculptural mold into which the molten wax of one's heated professional persona could be poured to cool? Of course, sometimes the stories themselves don't live up to the part you could play in them. And even when they do, many artists find the idea of being cast in a certain mold, or as a certain type, to be itself limiting. Disappointing. Less than they signed on for, maybe. I get that. But I suspect what type you get cast as has got to count for something! Also, whether you created and blazed your path to it yourself, or were stuffed and forced into it.

I don't recall Clint Eastwood complaining much about the kinds of roles he was expected to play, for example. You seem to have a pretty good sense of wonder and humor, and gratitude for the opportunities you've made magic of, and - at the risk of missing your ass entirely with such poorly-aimed kisses as these - it seems to me you bring that wonder afresh every time and are, in some way, maybe a diametrically diagonal female Clint Eastwood, of sorts.

You're not even my favorite actress! Just one of those people you wish endlessly well, you can't help but wish them well, you know? I'm sure you know people like that.

I'm not really sure who I would even cite as my favorite actress, to be honest. To rate and rank a work, a performance, that seems only fitting! Seems weird to rank human beings.

Okay. We now come to the difficult, and perhaps awkward, point of this open letter: its purpose, arguably. At very least, its pretext.

I don't know if you got my previous Open Letter to you?

If not, please disregard. It was primarily a lambasting of the media, over their insensitive and ham-handed handling of coverage in previous life events of yours, which frankly were not then nor ever would be the media's or the public's business. And which frankly I was like "butt out!"

Yet now I eat crow for some reason. I feel as though I must be a hypocrite, and I need to ask you - am I off-base on this? Or would you back me up, here? Because let me tell you, I was just dumbstruck happy-as to hear the news of your recent, love-based conversion experience. Not because such a leap is necessary to love, but because - well, especially coming after the tasteless and tawdry coverage a couple years back, when things were not so storybook, this news just washed over in a glow of welcome, breathtaking waves of restored faith in humanity, in life, restored faith in love and the possibility of love, renewed trust in what futures can be when shared fully, and a celebration of covenant. I'm a sucker for romance in general, but ritual forms of woo are a special weakness. I love love sealed and stamped, perhaps ceremoniously. Some say all that stuff doesn't matter - and they're right. Which is their loss.

I don't say it's super-important, obviously! What's between two is everything, and some folks don't happen find that stuff congenial, is all. Most people, it seems, don't. So it's just that unexpected extra bit cool, and hushed and sacred when some do. It adds something that is much more than ambience - for me it does, anyway. I always love seeing it, when someone takes a leap for love - unless of course you know both people and they're totally wrong for each other, and the whole thing's fucked up already before it even gets out of the gate - ugh. Not cool. But most of the time, if you're not privy to that level of detail, why assume the worst? Why not assume one can walk into the storybook tale. Such tales we tell ourselves, they so often fail and people so usually give up. Which makes it forever for them a lie. To assume one has entered the storybook, and to act in good faith as if, is the only way it ever comes true. So when people take some extra-devotional leap into togetherness, it just makes me step back and realize. Be reminded of what can be, and where you can land, given the occasional blind leap: breath caught, footing found. The horizon expands in glows of gold and rose, a love that will dawn forever. Or feels like!

Plus, if I may say so, in broader, cultural terms - this is a huge coup for Jews.

I digress, though. The point is: what am I, a hypocrite? Good news gets trumpeted and rings throughout the world, and everyone is happy to be part of it or hear it, no one curses the media. But then bad news comes.

Can I be right to blast the media for considering themselves entitled to the good and the bad?

Anyway, it's something to think about. It kind of just struck me.