list 43 women i wouldn't kick outta bed

That accent. That smile. She reminds me of my girlfriend, London-style. When I fell in love with her: Notting Hill.

I would pay to listen to her sing the phone book. She’s my hometown girl (close enough: Jamestown) and 10,000 Maniacs is the reason my first girlfriend and I became pals. When I first fell in love with her: Hope Chest.

If you haven’t seen her cover of The Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps,”...well…here it is. She rides a motorcycle! She’s Canadian! She’s a Gemini! She’s played the role of God! (I can therefore overlook that she’s from Ottawa, and therefore a Senators fan. Blech.)

I was living with my first girlfriend in New York City during the summer just after my 16th birthday when Jagged Little Pill was on heavy rotation on Z100. It was part of our soundtrack in the summer of 1995. Her acoustic re-release of that album ten years later helped me remember what it was like to be young and gay. It helped me accept that old girlfriend was gone and propelled me out of a marriage I didn’t want to be in.

When I fell in love with her: You Can’t Do That on Television.

Where to start? I’m glad Charlie Kaufmann puts her in nearly everything he does. Seeing her work alongside Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Synedoche, Capote) is the best thing going in film right now. When I fell in love with her: Being John Malkovich.

I don’t remember exactly when she started showing up on my radar screen, but I now go to movies when her name’s in the marquee. She didn’t get much of a chance to shine when she played alongside her brother in Donnie Darko, and I’m still waiting for her to ditch mainstream films and come back to the indie side. When I fell in love with her: Secretary.

My girlfriend teases me for giggling at the wordplay she comes up with on her late-night MSNBC spot, The Rachel Maddow Show. I love that I can get her in podcast and watch TRMS whenever I want. My love for her even helped me score a 620 on the verbal section of the GRE – yes, that’s in the top 11% – when I wrote this essay to help me remember some of the more esoteric words they like to quiz you with: (Forgive me; I’m still stoked about it.)

Her trenchant insights on the president’s incompetence is a plangent clarion call. Her obstreperous criticism of Bush has garnered much approbation in left-leaning circles. Her show highlights the day’s most apposite news stories and concatenates them together. From the effrontery of Blagojevich to the inveigled South Carolina election antics of Karl Rove, Maddow’s opprobrium for those who deserve it is not for the pusillanimous. She even averts Pat Robertson’s attempts to calumniate Obama in various misdeeds. Her sapient analysis showcases her refulgent nature. She doesn’t come across as a puissant Stanford-educated Rhodes Scholar, and at times seems positively diffident when meeting with people she admires. Where I was once phlegmatic about liberal broadcast chit-chat, Maddow has managed to propitiate me toward it! Imagine my surprise! I cannot dissemble my love for Rachel Maddow; she’s even on my MySpace and Facebook pages. I look forward to being on her show someday after my time in the Ivory Tower. I aver my eternal devotion!

When I fell in love with her: Air America Radio, circa 2006.

Her new book, which will obviously be her last, opens with a paragraph about coming home to Pakistan after living in exile for eight years. The PPP was enormously lucky to have Bhutto as their leader; a mother, a wife, a hero. When I fell in love with her: CBS Evening News, circa 1990.

I just heard her new album, ‘Acid Tongue,’ and fell in love with her…again.

She brings her easy luminescence to every project she works on. I watched the nonsense called Phone Booth just because she was in it. She is at her most brilliant in Melinda and Melinda. Wow. When I fell in love with her: High Art.

Two words: Rilo Kiley. When I fell in love with her: More Adventurous.