When I started back at The World-Herald last year, most of the newspaper’s columns weren’t appearing in their entirety on omaha.com. This blog site was a step toward more accessibility and more online content for our readers.

Recently, The World-Herald has decided to share all of the newspaper’s columns — everything from Michael Kelly, Robert Nelson, Tom Shatel, Brad Dickson and me — online, all in one place. Which is a very good thing, I think.

This blog page won’t go away immediately. (Now’s your chance to comment on all those old Gleecaps.) But you’ll be able to find all of my new stuff at www.omaha.com/section/columnists — and, of course, in the Living section of our print edition.

If you’re curious about what’s going on with my book, Attachments, find me on Facebook or check out my author Web site — www.rainbowrowell.com.

Thanks for reading this site, and thanks especially for commenting. The most fun I had on this page was in the comments section.

You’re all invited to join me at one these celebratory events. Expect to find me standing in the bookstore/library with my eyes dilated, muttering to myself, “I have a BOOK.”

OMAHA

Release day party!
The Bookworm, 8702 Pacific Street
Thursday, April 14 · 6 p.m

Reading/Talking/Signing
W. Dale Clark Library, 215 S. 15th Street
Saturday, April 23 · 1:30 p.m.

Summer Reading Event
Oak View Barnes & Noble, 3333 Oakview Drive
Saturday, July 16 · 1 p.m.

LINCOLN
University Bookstore
Nebraska Union, 14th and R Streets
Tuesday, April 19 · 7 p.m.

SIOUX CITY
Barnes & Noble
Southern Hills Mall, 4440 Sergeant Road
Saturday, May 14 at 2 p.m.

DES MOINES
AViD Author Series
Central Library, 1000 Grand Ave.
Monday, April 18 · 7 p.m.

KANSAS CITY
Rainy Day Books
2706 W. 53rd St., Fairway, Kan.
Wednesday, April 20 · 6:30 p.m.

If you were to ask me the one thing I hate about living in Omaha …

If I didn’t say the heat or the humidity, or the politics, or the scarcity of public transportation, I’d think I’d say the grass.

Or rather, the lawns.

I don’t understand lawns. As a concept.

The idea of covering every scrap of ground with the most innocuous, boring plant possible — and then obsessing over its length and consistency.

The fact that people spend their free time doing this. The fact that they spend even more free time talking about it. The fact that chemicals are involved.

For me, grass is the botanical equivalent of beige paint. It’s a way to make everything look neat and uniform, but also exceedingly boring.

I understand gardening. I love landscaping. But lawns? Pfft. Why bother.

(Have you ever been so glad not to live next door to someone? I should send all my neighbors fruit baskets …)

Being anti-lawn in Omaha, Nebraska, is only slightly more acceptable than being anti-Husker. (I’m pretty sure both opinions will get you searched at the airport.)

People care about their grass here — and not just in our golf-course suburbs. I challenge you to find a spot in this town where you can’t at least see a lovely patch of lawn. Even our medians are green and freshly clipped.

Travel to a different city, especially a bigger city, and one of the first things you’ll notice is the sad state of their grass.

That’s one of the first things I notice, anyway. I’ve spent much of the last two weeks in Chicago and New York City. In both places, I stayed with friends who live in trendy urban neighborhoods (Lakeview and Brooklyn, respectively).

My Chicago friends have a bit of earth in their back and front yards — enough for tulips and tomato plants, but not enough to justify even thinking about a mower.

In Brooklyn, forget about it. Their front yard is a bit of sidewalk where they put their trash. And their backyard, as my host said, “looks like a set piece from ‘Annie.’ ” It’s walled-in, paved and about the size of a public
restroom.

At first this seemed marvelously freeing to me.

To imagine going all summer without ever thinking, “Bah. We have to mow the lawn.” Without ever worrying about crab grass or dandelions going to seed.

(Why should I spend my life harried by crabgrass? I resent having to care about things that I don’t really care about. It sends me to a very defensive get-off-my-lawn/not-in-my-backyard emotional space. Does this make me a Libertarian?)

Anyway, once I noticed all the missing grass, I couldn’t stop noticing it. I couldn’t stop looking for it.

In four days in New York City, I don’t think I saw even a patch of grass outside of two busy parks — Central Park, and a new park called the High Line, installed on an abandoned train platform. You have to climb two flights of stairs to see a narrow strip of green. It’s lovely, but unsettling. (New Yorkers sunbathe up there, so desperate are they for a place to stretch out in the sun.)

I started to feel like the entire city was upholstered in pavement. Like there wasn’t anywhere I could stand to feel connected to the planet.

And I started to feel sorry for all the dogs.

New York City is full of dogs. (“Oliver & Company” is true!) Nobody has a backyard, so they walk their dogs on the street.

I’m not even an animal person, but I got so melancholy imagining the life of a dog without grass. All the dogs I saw seemed happy enough, but still. If I, as indoorsy as they come, was missing the earth, think of the dogs.

Think of the kids.

Can you imagine growing up in a place where grass is a special occasion? Where you have to get on a bus to get to some real dirt?

All the kids I saw looked happy, too. I don’t want to get carried away with this …

But I also don’t think I want to move to New York City. (Even though I miss it as soon as I leave.)

I may hate Omaha’s lawn-fetish, but I need the green as much as the next Nebraskan. I need real ground to feel grounded.

It smelled woodsy. Like antiques and new leather. And expensive men’s cologne.

“Like new clothes …” rhapsodized Rob Busson.

It’s been a few years since Rob was a regular Post and Nickel shopper — since we went to high school together in the early ’90s. But news that the store’s last Omaha location at 132nd Street and West Center Road was closing still struck him as sad.

Me, too.

When we were teenagers, there was nothing else in Omaha like the Post and Nickel stores.
There still isn’t anything quite like it.

Omaha is a more fashionable city now, with trendy, independent clothing boutiques in every other shopping center — and, especially since Von Maur came to town, you can find pricey designer jeans and European shoes at the mall.

But I can’t think of another store, outside of chains like Abercrombie & Fitch and Old Navy, that captures a complete aesthetic like the Post and Nickel does.
The stores always had a distinct look (and smell) and personality, a whole vibe.

Even though the décor is Little-House-on-the-Prairie chic — with antique farm equipment, exposed wood and bricks, and stained glass — the Hitchin’ Post always felt like a big-city shop.

The high-plains look and the rustic name don’t match the merchandise now, but they reflect the era when the stores were born.

Murray Fredrickson, a Post and Nickel employee since 1972, opened the West Center location with a partner in 1981.

“There was hardly anything out here,” he said. “This was pretty much the edge of town.”

But he and his business partner believed that the city would continue to grow west, and they felt lucky to find a corner lot on West Center Road. (The CVS pharmacy that’s replacing the Post and Nickel must feel the same way.)

Many of the current employees have been with Murray since the store opened. “We’re like a family,” he said.

In the ’70s, the Post and Nickel stores were the place to find trendy designer clothing.

When my parents came into Omaha for a rare date night in 1977 — to see “Star Wars” for the first time — my mom remembers going to the Post and Nickel to buy a special dress.

The store was full of Gunne Sax dresses from San Francisco then, part of the Holly Hobbie-like prairie-revival trend. My mom bought a black printed peasant dress for almost $70, a head-spinning amount at the time, and she wore it for every anniversary and special event for years after.

She thought she was it in that dress.

When I started going to the Post and Nickel in the ’80s, it was still the it place to shop.
Rob, the most fashionable kid at our high school by a country mile, remembers getting all his favorite clothes at the Post and Nickel, usually at the long-closed 72nd Street location. (The one with the awesome shoe basement.)

A Donna Karan coat, Perry Ellis cardigans, “a Tommy Hilfiger suit before anybody had a Tommy Hilfiger suit,” a pair of paisley topsiders by Zodiac “that were my favorite shoes ever…”

Rob still can’t throw those clothes away. Other stuff gets weeded out, but the Post and Nickel stuff is just too good.

Post and Nickel stuff is almost better because you bought it there — because you remember the experience of shopping, that feeling that you were partaking in something exclusive and extra cool.

I always loved going to the Post and Nickel, even though I never felt comfortable there. I felt like I was trespassing; I was sure that the impeccably groomed salespeople knew that I couldn’t afford or probably fit into anything in the store.
High-fashion clothes come in high-fashion sizes.

My friend Cathy, who is very beautiful and also very, very tall, jokes that when she walks into the Post and Nickel, she self-consciously feels the need to announce, “I’m just here for the shoes.”

As a great big, clumsy — and also poor — teenager, I always felt like I needed to announce, “I swear I’m not a shoplifter.”

But that never stopped me from going in, and, after I got a real job, from buying a few pairs of really cool shoes.

The awesome thing about buying shoes at the Post and Nickel — besides the unique selection — was that shoes would stay on the clearance shelf, being steadily marked down, for years. You could say, “Sorry, $80 Campers, I’m coming back in four years to buy you for $9.90.”

The Post and Nickel will still be around, even after the West Center store closes. The Lincoln location remains open — and there’s talk of the Lincoln team relocating the Omaha store.

But it won’t be quite the same. For one thing, longtime owner/buyer Murray Fredrickson won’t be a part of the new store. He’s taking a well-earned break.

For another, it’d be tough to match the artsy, woodsy, careworn vibe of the current store.

I’m not sure you can recreate 30 years of history.

And a new store won’t have that intoxicating Post and Nickel smell.

You know how sometimes you’re standing at the grocery store or the coffee shop, holding your kid and trying to find your wallet, and then you drop your keys, and it seems like you don’t have enough hands . . .

What would you think if the person standing behind you offered to hold your baby?

Would that be weird?

It would, wouldn’t it? A total stranger asking to hold your baby. A total stranger with a sad, hungry glint in her eyes . . .

It’s pointless. I’m never going to get to hold a baby again.

My only hope was the kindness of strangers.

There are no babies left in my family, and my friends all have grade-schoolers. Unless I start cultivating close friendships with pregnant women — that would be weird, too, right? — I might even forget what babies smell like.

And I can’t believe that I care. I was never a baby person. Never.

In my 20s and 30s, when people would bring their new babies to work, I’d walk all the way around the newsroom to avoid them. I never knew what to say . . .

“Wow, look at her. Is it a her? Oh, him. Wow. Well. He sure is a baby, all right. Congratulations.”
If someone held a baby out to me, I’d try to back away.

“Oh, no,” I’d say. “He looks pretty comfortable.”

In those days I felt like I’d had enough baby-holding to last me four lifetimes. That’s how many younger brothers and sisters I have — four. By the time I was 13, I was so used to having a baby on my hip that people used to assume my youngest brother was mine. (Which is great for a 13-year-old’s self esteem.)

Back then, I took everything about babies for granted. Like how soft they are. How warm they are. How they curl into your arms. The way they stare up at you, like you’re fascinating . . . All I could feel was them hanging on me. Like monkey-armed parasites that always started crying whenever I tried to talk on the phone.

Having kids of my own changed all that, of course. Everything’s different with your own babies. Even if you’ve never had any interest in other people’s kids, you’re still totally charmed and amazed by your own.

Once I had my own kids, I finally got what all the baby hubbub was about. I realized that holding a baby is as close as anyone ever comes to touching perfection.

What I didn’t realize was that my sons were changing me permanently. I thought that when they outgrew their baby selves, my interest in babies would return to its previous nonexistence.
It didn’t.

If anything, I get more baby crazy as they grow up. I look at my kids and see how big they are, how fast they’re growing. My 3½ -year-old is still pretty cuddly. But holding him is more like holding a small ape or a border collie than a baby. And he’s totally lost that new-baby smell. (He kind of smells like a border collie, too.)

I look at my kids, and I love the boys they’re becoming — but I don’t want to forget what it was like to hold them in my arms.

Having another baby isn’t an option. And even it were, I don’t think it’d be smart to have a whole kid just because I miss having an infant. I keep thinking that if I could just hold somebody else’s baby, I could stock up on that feeling and move on.

It would be weird to explain all this to the ladies I see at the grocery store, right?

“Hi, you don’t know me, but I’ve got a real bad baby jones. And if I could just hold your baby for a minute, I really think it would help. Is that cool with you? I’ll let you hold my border collie.”

Rumpelstiltskin, Thumbelina … If Disney hasn’t taken a crack at a fairy tale, it’s off his radar. I’ll bet he’s never even heard of Hansel and Gretel.

And yet, our house is full of these stories.

The fairy tale remix is my favorite genre of anything. Books, comic books, movies, music, musicals. I’m counting the hours until I can see the new “Red Riding Hood” movie, and I’ll see “Beastly,” too, even if they’re both terrible. If this fairy tale trend never ends, I’ll live happily ever after.

But I’m not passing that love down to my kids. (Or I am, but in a very careful, limited way.) Fairy tales, in my mind, are for adults.

I didn’t start out feeling that way. When my first son was born, I went out of my way to buy books of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. I especially tried to avoid modern twists on these works.

The fairy tale remix trend applies to kids entertainment, too. Aside from Disney, it’s easier to find “Shrek”-like takes on fairy tales and nursery rhymes than it is pure stories. (Everything today is meta.)

I wanted my kids to hear the original stories first, not the stories that make fun of them. If you don’t know about the Gingerbread Boy, how can you appreciate the Stinky Cheese man?

An author I interviewed this week — Carolyn Turgeon, who’s written adult takes on “Cinderella” and “The Little Mermaid” — talks about fairy tales living “in our blood and our bones.”

That’s what I wanted for my kids, cultural literacy, a blood-and-bone appreciation of fundamental stories.

And then I started reading some of these stories out loud at bedtime…

I realized that, almost without exception, they’re completely messed up. They’re violent, they’re confusing. The characters are awful, even the heroes. A lot of times, they don’t make sense.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water…

You know what happens next. My kids don’t. Because whenever I try to read them nursery rhymes (starter fairy tales) they look at me like I’m crazy. Like, “Is that it?”

Jack and Jill went up the hill … Why? To what end? Why did he fall? What’s a crown? Did Jack die? Why did Jill fall, too? Is she OK?

We read them a lot of fables and folk tales, and those can be problematic, too — but when we get to fairy tales, I find myself changing the plots as I’m reading them. I never get to the part in “Red Riding Hood” where the hunter hacks Red out of the wolf’s carcass, or the end of “The Three Little Pigs,” where the wolf falls into the pigs’ stew pot and is boiled to death.

I just can’t justify the violence. The stories don’t seem to have earned it, and I don’t feel like it’s worth going there with my full-of-questions kids. In my son’s eyes, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” is a go-nowhere story where a thoughtless girl breaks things and then runs away. But at least the bears don’t die gruesome deaths.

I buy into the theory that fairy tales are basic, elemental stories with primal lessons. But when I’m reading them to my kids, I question the value of those lessons. These stories are in my blood and my bones, but are they doing me any good?

Turgeon wrote her books “Godmother” and “Mermaid” from the perspective of minor characters in “Cinderella” and “The Little Mermaid,” stories that she fell in love with as a little girl watching Disney movies.

In a way, she says, rewriting those stories was a way to reconcile them for herself.

“They’ve fed you certain fantasies,” about love, men, womanhood, “that maybe you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself as an adult.”

In Disney’s “Cinderella,” the heroine is abandoned by her parents and enslaved by her stepmother, but finding a prince makes everything OK. In Turgeon’s book, “Cinderella is pretty damaged.”

Another author who’s taken on “The Little Mermaid” is Omaha author Timothy Schaffert. His short story “The Mermaid in the Tree” appears in the anthology “My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales” alongside authors such as Neil Gaiman and Joyce Carol Oates.

Schaffert thinks we have a “perverse” need to revisit fairy tales. “Didn’t you used to wonder about the aspects of these characters’ lives that we weren’t hearing about?” he asked. “As adults, we’re allowed to articulate these childhood curiosities.”

Maybe that’s why I can’t get enough of fairy tales — because more than anything, these stories feel unfinished to me. They got under my skin when I was a kid, and the colors and emotions are indelible. (Red apples, dark woods, run from the beast.) But my adult brain wants more from the stories.

There once was a girl called Red Riding Hood, I’ll tell my sons, and it doesn’t matter that nobody would ever mistake a wolf for a grandmother.

You’ve got to let these stories in now if you want to enjoy taking them apart later.

Contact the writer:
402-444-1149, rainbow.rowell@owh.com
twitter.com/rainbowrowell

First of all, I’m taking some time off to make the most of my book release. (Just in case this never happens again, I want to really savor it.) I’ll still be writing lots of columns and stories that will be posted here — just not quite as frequently through March and April.

I’ll also be shifting my focus a bit from now on. I’ll be writing more stories and profiles, and fewer blog extras, such as the TV recaps.

I’ll really miss writing the recaps and chatting with you all about the shows. So if you need to vent about Glee, you should totally look me up on Facebook. You know I’m always ready to talk about Chris Colfer.

Also, if you ever want me to write about something specific, shoot me an e-mail or give me a call.

rainbowrowell@gmail.com
402-444-1000

When a grown man starts to obsess about winning, it seems like he’s lost track of what’s really important. Winning is for games. Not for solving problems like unemployment and health care …

Oh, wait, you knew I was talking about President Obama, right?
Because if I’d been talking about Charlie Sheen, it would have looked more like this:

#WINNING!!! #TIGERBLOOD! #VATICAN- ASSASSIN-IN-TRAINING!!

Also, I would have been banging my head against the wall because that’s how tired I am of talking about Charlie Sheen.

But I guess you can’t talk about winning, as a concept, without talking about the two-and-a-half man. I wouldn’t even be thinking about the State of the Union right now if it weren’t for Charlie Sheen. For good or for ill (almost definitely ill, right?), Sheen now owns “winning.”

A few weeks ago, it was Barack Obama.

Before you think I’m some sort of Obama hater, I have to tell you that last week at Target, I almost bought a piece of Barack Obama wall art. I eventually put it back because it wasn’t flattering enough.

I deeply admire the president, even when I disagree with him, like now. #WINNING.

Back in January, Obama made “win the future” the theme of his State of the Union address. It was a good speech – very inspirational – but I couldn’t get past his frequent use of the word “win.”

He talked about what it would take to “win the future,” and he said that America is having a “Sputnik moment,” when we have an opportunity to surge ahead, just like we surged ahead of the Soviets after the Sputnik space missions.

My first response was – who does he think he’s talking to? Who cares about winning right now?

Corruption, health care, meaningful work, the environment – these are the things I care about, and winning doesn’t seem to apply to any of them.

Does he think that the way to our hearts is to tell us that we deserve to win? Does he think America is that shallow?

When I hear “Sputnik moment,” I don’t think of research and innovation, as the president intended. I think of the Cold War, decades of fear and wasted resources, and “do the Russians love their children, too.”

I don’t want to win the future if it means somebody else has to lose. And I don’t want to really believe it will work. Winning isn’t an answer to any worthwhile question – it’s just an ego trip.

#TIGERBLOOD

I don’t think Charlie Sheen was thinking about winning the future when he started shouting “Winning!” at radio show hosts and anyone (everyone) else who would listen.

But the fact that he chose it as his narcissistic catch-all kind of shows what an empty slogan it is. Winning isn’t thinking or solving.

Winning is what you care about when all you really care about is yourself.

Contact the writer:
402-444-1149, rainbow.rowell@owh.com
twitter.com/rainbowrowell

After months of auditions and performances and flying back and forth between Fort Worth and Los Angeles — Tim’s “Idol” adventure was over.

“Where are you flying to?” someone with the show asked him.

“Can I go to Omaha?” Tim asked. “I was like a little puppy dog. I wanted to come home.”

Omaha’s first “American Idol” finalist is back in town this week, spending some serious quality time with his family and trying to decide what’s next.

Eventually, Tim, 23, will head back to Fort Worth, where he’s lived since he graduated from Texas Christian University. But for the next month or so, his only focus will be making the most of his “Idol” exposure.

Tim feels like he’s in a better position than most “Idol” cast-offs.

When he auditioned for the show, he was already almost finished with his first full-length album, and he’d been performing live with a band. In fact, his music career was progressing so well, he was reluctant to audition for “Idol.”

He’d auditioned before, back in 2008, when the show held try outs in Omaha. Just two years out of Westside High School, Tim went blank when it was his turn to sing in front of producers.

“That experience was so devastating to me, I told myself I’d never try out again.”

But a friend suggested Tim audition last year when word got out that “Idol” was accepting entries on MySpace. Tim entered, reluctantly, and when he was invited to audition again in Los Angeles in November, he still wasn’t sure he should go.

“I still was hesitant. I had a lot going on.” Plus he had to pay for his own plane ticket.

But he did go, and within a few days, he was singing in front of Randy Jackson, Steven Tyler — and Jennifer Lopez, whom he’d had a crush on as a kid. Tim mentioned that crush to the producers, and he could tell they liked that. He ended up serenading Jennifer during his on-air audition.

“When people recognized me in public,” Tim said, at least for the first few weeks of the show, “it was always about JLo.”

When the Hollywood rounds began, he put his game face on.

“I wanted to be sure that I was the artist on the show that I’d be after the show.” Anything you do in front of 22 million people is hard to shake, he said.

Tim coordinated that stand-out performance of the Beatles’ “Something” in Las Vegas, working with fellow finalist Julie Zorrilla to turn the song into a piano duet.

Everyone behind the scenes was very supportive of the contestants’ artistic choices, he said. “Everything really is ultimately your choice.”

Which means that, yes, it’s was Tim’s decision to sing “Streetcorner Symphony” by Rob Thomas on Tuesday’s first big perfomance night. “I wanted America to see that I wasn’t a one-trick pony, that I wasn’t just stuck on ballads.”

The judges said that Tim didn’t show voters who he really was and all that he was capable of — but Tim stands by his song choice. He stands by all of his “Idol” choices.

“I can’t say, ‘what if, what if.’ It’s not worth ever thinking about … I want to be sure that I’m moving on, moving forward.”

Contact the writer:
402-444-1149, rainbow.rowell@owh.com
twitter.com/rainbowrowell

Three things came between me and Meg Ryan last month: Glee and American Idol came back, and I had to finish my second book. Not finish-finish. There’s still lots or rewriting ahead of me, and the whole thing is probably a mess. But still … Big deadline.

Anyway, I’m coming back big – You’ve Got Mail. This one has practically achieved romantic comedy sainthood. I had kind of an attitude about it; I remembered seeing it in 1998 and thinking, “Blah.”

Which makes it official, I was an idiot in 1998.

This is a GREAT movie and a practically perfect romantic comedy. All the elements are there — Tom Hanks is lovable, Meg Ryan is adorable, New York has never been more charming. The whole movie has that honey-light, ideal romcom feeling. If You’ve Got Mail had a smell, it would smell like essence of romantic comedy.

So many movies TRY to look and feel like this, I almost forgot that the real thing actually existed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCetfaS7GAo

After watching all these ’90s romcoms lately, I’ve been thinking that the No. 1 thing that’s wrong with today’s romcoms is that everyone is too beautiful. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are not the most beautiful people on earth, and I’m not sure that they’re sexy at all. (At least not on screen.) But they are, I think, the most lovable people on earth. They’re irresistible.

When Meg Ryan’s cuteness and Tom Hanks’s likability are in the same room, they’re blinding. You have to watch them through a pinhole — which is probably why they spend most of this movie apart.

And even then — even though they fall in love with each other in separate rooms, sitting in front of computers — they’re still more more convincing than people who are actually in love in real life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2ACWi-Jm-o

And they’ve got such great material. This movie is a MACHINE. So tightly written, so carefully directed. The timing of the jokes, the progression of the love story, it’s a modern marvel.

(Maybe the difference between me in 1998 and me in 2011 is that now I’ve written a romantic comedy myself — an e-mail-driven romantic comedy, no less — and I know how hard it is to coordinate all the moving parts, while still making everything feel this light and smooth. Now I watch You’ve Got Mai and think, “I wish I could do that.”)

Though certain part of Y’veGM movie play differently with 13 years of hindsight:

Now that we know what happened when the megabookstores came to town — and now that the megastores and even books themselves are in trouble — it’s kind of hard to root for Hanks’ Borg-like businessman. (YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.) Especially because he never repents.

Meg Ryan’s bookstore closes and she just starts writing children’s books herself, and it’s like, “Thank God he killed her wonderful business because she might never have written those books otherwise.”

The movie seems to blithely accept that progress is progress, and it’s all inevitable, and everything is going to be OK. And you’re sitting in your living room in 2011, thinking, “No, it’s not. This whole courtroom is out of order!”

Also, two characters could never likably get away with e-infidelity today the way that Tom and Meg did in 1998. When Meg asks her coworkers, “Is it infidelity if you’re involved with somebody on e-mail?” you’re supposed to think this is a legitimate question.

Thirteen years and a thousand “emotional affair” horror stories later, the answer is obvious: YES. Stop cheating on Greg Kinnear.

Greg Kinnear is hilarious in this movie. And so is Parker Posey, who plays Hanks’s girlfriend.

I could do without some of the other second-tier characters (everyone who works at the Shop Around the Corner), but now I’m just niggling.

This is a great romantic comedy and a great movie.

LAB NOTES:

Romcom cliches: Manhattan. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. A big dog. Louis Armstrong on the soundtrack. Beautiful woodwork. (This might be a Nora Ephron cliche. Everywhere these people go, there’s stunning woodwork.)

Surprises: Did you remember that Dave Chappelle was in this movie? Me neither.

Great quotes: This entire movie is a great quote. (It reminds you what a movie sounds like when it’s actually written.) But it’s so tightly written, such a COMPOSITION, that it’s hard to pull quotes out. They just aren’t as funny out of context. For example:

Parker Posey: “Where are my Tic Tacs? Arghuh! … What?”

Great romcom moments: Hanks in Ryan’s shop for the first time. The e-mail scene where he wishes he could give her a bouquet of sharpened pencils. The finale, where she says, “I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPA8v06EsIY

Most importantly: do you believe that these two characters fall in love? YES. Completely. You watch them fall in love twice — first online and then in person. You believe it so much that it’s actually a disappointment to think that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan aren’t in a committed relationship.