Emily Perper is word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.
During rough weeks, I tend to refer back to a good #longread over and over. Here are four of the funniest around. Bookmark them, read them to your best friend on the phone, or save them for a particularly bad day. And when you read them, laugh.
1. “The Hunt for the Worst Movie of All Time: Elizabethtown” (Gabe Delahaye, Videogum, July 2013)
Elizabethtown gave us the Manic Pixie Dream Girl moniker, a wealth of plot inconsistencies and a weirdly ambitious road trip mixtape map.
2. “My Mother Explains The Ballet To Me” (Jesse Eisenberg, The New Yorker, July 2013)
“Why can’t you stand like that guy on stage? Look at his posture. Forget he’s black for a second, and just look at his body.” Eisenberg goes to the ballet with his mother so you don’t have to.
3. “The Dark Side of the Paddock” (Drew Millard, Kill Screen, February 2012)
Capturing the existential hilarity of the video game My Horse, this essay is bookmarked in Safari so I can read it when I’m feeling down.
4. “Flick Chicks: A Guide to Women in the Movies” (Mindy Kaling, The New Yorker, October 2011)
No one understands the intricacies of romantic comedy and genuinely loves the genre quite like Kaling does. Here, her descriptions of the supporting characters in rom-coms are spot-on.
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