Self Absorption at Discount Prices.

(pictured above: your recovering bloggers as real adults in 2016)

Hi there, Tumblr, it’s me, the ghost of 2009! AKA one half of the Dealbreaker team. Which one? Well, I’ll give you a hint, it’s the one that has stayed unhealthily glued to social media since we started this blog and not the one that deleted her twitter and occasionally posts Instagrams of her home renovations. That’s right, it’s ya boi Dave, and I’m here at the end of 2016 to say a very simple “hi.”

It’s been a long long time and I thought maybe I’d check in. You know that text you get from an ex from 6 years ago on a totally unremarkable thursday night? And you think, “that’s weird, it’s 11:45, I’m about to go to sleep, no one texts me this late” and it’s your dang EX? You know, not the one that REALLY hurt you, and not the one that left no real impression on you, but one that you kind of have mixed feelings about? The one that’s not really in your life anymore but you’ll still like the odd facebook status from? Maybe they don’t live in your town anymore, or even your state, but you know what they’re up to thanks to the internet and you still have a photobooth strip of the two of you in a shoebox somewhere? Anyway, Dealbreaker is the ex you never really forget about completely. At least it is to me!

I started to think about this blog, and how I grew up with it. It started my whole writing career. I’ve had really wonderful things happen because of it. People really liked it! These were the heady days of the mid aughts/early 2010s when anything was possible and making a CBS sitcom out of “Shit My Dad Says” seemed like a great idea (it wasn’t). Tumblr blogs could be turned into books. People had “meetups” at bars where they met and took pictures together (we didn’t have the word “selfie then, it was just "picture”). I barely had any gray hair! It was truly magnificent.

So, when I went to log in for the first time in a few years and found that my password no longer worked, I freaked out in a nostalgic panic that could only be remedied by rocking back and forth in the fetal position listening to the first Wolf Parade album. The mixes I’ve made for this site are long gone, the links on old file sharing websites expired. The “Guestbreakers” submitted by our loyal readers are now null and void, everyone’s preferences changing and evolving over the years. After jumping through a few hoops, I was able to change the password and log into this graveyard of pre-viral content. We were so dilligent! We posted all the time! We really went for it!

Now Tumblr is a differnet place entirely, and not at all in a bad way! 19 yr olds who are cooler than I’ll ever be are posting mixtapes and lookbooks and gifs and Jaden Smith poetry (I’m assuming). Does the written word have any place on here anymore? Who knows? Should I revive Dealbreaker and help a new generation get over their dating discontent in the age of Trump? No, the answer is a definitive, resolute no. That ship has sailed, baby! Dating is a nightmare no matter what year it is, no matter how old you are, and no matter how hard you pretend to like your significant other’s terrible favorite movie (bad news, kids: Donnie Darko doesn’t hold up). If anyone is going to read this, you can find me on twitter @Dave_Horwitz, watch a short I made here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1SH0o2J5A, and some more I made here: tinyurl.com/jful88m. More from me in 2017, I promise. As for Marisa, she’s doing GREAT and her mom loves the show Supernatural. It’s real endearing. You can find her instagram if you try, but don’t stalk her. Be nice to her. She probably won’t write back to you because she’s too busy interacting in the real world because she is a healthy person and for that, I envy her.

If you made it to the end of this, you deserve some kind of wisdom. How can I end this and make you feel like you did a worthwhile thing by reading it? Okay here we go: everything is a surreal weird joke right now. If you are reading “real” news, things are getting stranger and stranger, and not in an Eggo Waffle/Spielberg homage kind of way. So, go take a chance on that cool weirdo at your office you wanted to ask out. Make out with your friend you think you might like. HELL, I know a couple who met BECAUSE OF THIS BLOG! SHE read Dealbreaker, and followed me on Instagram because of it, and HE saw her username on a picture of mine that she liked, and he clicked on it, and saw she was reading his favorite book, and they commented back and forth until they were facebooking, then talking on the phone, and then the next thing you know she’s moving across the country and now they LIVE TOGETHER. The world is stupid, life is short, you’re not going to be this cute forever*. Take a chance.

Hello there, I am a feminist. This is not meant as a surprise. If you google “Emily Heller f…” it autofills with “feminism,” because apparently I’m the only female comedian in the world whose feet the internet does not want to see. And, though it contradicts our Official Feminist Recruitment Platform, I have to confess something. Me and my friends - we hate men. I admit it! We often sit around talking about how much we hate men, and the society they made, and the shit they put us through on a daily basis. You got me! I confess! ;-P

Sure, there are some good ones in there. My boyfriend, for example. Terry Crews, for another example. AND YET. When my coven and I are sitting around bitching (lol) about men and plotting the downfall of the patriarchy, you know what we never, ever talk about doing? You know what strategy has never once crossed our minds?

Pretending to have been raped.

I know that might come as a shock to you, considering how incredibly certain some folks are that the women making these accusations against Bill Cosby, James Deen, R. Kelly, and many others are lying. You know, just making stuff up to try and destroy an innocent guy’s reputation, because they hate men or something, like I do. And while I’m not surprised people think that way, I feel I have to set things straight. Us man haters, when we want to ruin a man’s life, that’s not how we work.

I’m a little hurt, honestly. You don’t think we’re creative enough, smart enough - hell, evil enough to come up with better revenge plots than that? You know, stuff that would feel more at home in a montage under an angry Beyoncé song?

Here’s just a SHORT list of punishments I’d rather inflict on a guy I hate:

- Hide a hundred alarm clocks in his room set to various ungodly hours

- Put a bunch of wack bumper stickers on his car (I did this one time. It was great. One of them said “The Goddess is dancing and magic is afoot”).

- Stretch cellophane over his toilet bowl (but under the seat).

- Do everything they do in the song “Hit ‘Em Up Style”

- Publish his poetry (no man’s poetry is good)

- Pile a bunch of watermelons at his door and then ring the bell and run

- Release his high school band’s demo (if anyone did this to me I would die)

That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are better ideas out there that would be more satisfying. I haven’t seen Waiting to Exhale, but I vaguely remember from the preview that they set someone’s car on fire in it, and while I’d never do that myself, it does seem like a hoot! Accusing someone of rape, on the other hand, isn’t even Plan Z.

You know why? Because making a false rape or abuse accusation is NOT FUN. Making a TRUE rape or abuse accusation is NOT FUN. It is, instead, a reliable way for the accuser to get harassed, doubted, mocked, threatened, sued for defamation, ostracized from her community, scrutinized for her sexual behavior, blamed for her own pain, and generally treated like crap. It’s one of the least effective, riskiest, most terrifying ways to fuck with someone’s life other than your own. And the chances of it bringing consequences for the accused are perilously low! According to RAINN, only two percent of rapists will ever see jail time. Think of all the famous men who have been accused of violence against women. Are any of them bankrupt? How many are in jail? And how many are walking around still adored millionaires?

Before she was the award-winning director / writer behind the brilliant film The Diary of a Teenage Girl, my sister Marielle Heller was making her living as a theater actor in New York. One day she called me to ask for my advice about an audition she was offered, because she knows I’m a genius. The role was a rape victim on Law & Order: SVU. You see, she wasn’t sure she even wanted to audition, because - get this - she didn’t want to pretend to have been raped. If she landed the part, they were going to pay her money! She was going to be on television! She was going to meet Richard Belzer! She would get to eat all kinds of cheeses off the craft services table! Maybe even brie! But she knew that in order to get all those things, she’d have to spend the day thinking about being raped, and talking about being raped, and acting as if she had been raped, and she wasn’t sure she could handle it. If my sister didn’t want to play a rape victim for money, an IMDB credit, and face time with the Belz, what makes you think these women want to do it for free, for fun, for spite?

So, yeah, men. Sometimes we do hate you. What do you expect? You harass us, you cheat on us, you legislate our bodies, you blame us for the Beatles breaking up.  And sometimes we even want to ruin your lives. But we’re too clever and wonderful and self interested to lie about being raped to do it.

Feral Audio Weekly Roundup - Dec 27 (Part 2)

The last one of the year! Close out 2015 with this week’s all new Feral Audio podcasts!

Harmontown: 178 – Press F To Control Fred

The Adventures of Danny & Mike: 22 - “Holiday Power Hour 2” w/ Brett Davis

Dongtini: Episode 135

Slumber Party with Alie & Georgia: 72 – We’re Both The Left Boob

Improv Nerd with Jimmy Carrane: 168 - Adam Mckay

14 – The Lil’ Cuties Meet Jake Weisman