Goodnight, sweet Jordan Catalano

There are some things so painful that we shrink in terror from them, hoping that we can hide from the truth until TomKat annihilates the world and it won't matter anymore. But, dear readers, the only way to conquer these demons is to look them straight in the eye, to feel their hellfire singing our eyebrows and melting our eyeballs. And so:

This is Jordan Catalano, the beautiful, silent, unattainable boy Angela Chase yearned for and, in that one heartbreaking episode, kissed in the boiler room in My So-Called Life. He formed the basis for the romantic dreams of, one must assume, the majority of the girls and boys who came of age in the early 1990s. True, in recent years Jared Leto, the actor who portrayed Jordan, turned into kind of a lameazoid, acting very little and skanking around in an age-inappropriate manner with Scarlett Johansson and Lindsay Lohan. But Leto's indiscretions could do nothing to change the memories of Jordan, ah sweet Jordan Catalano.

Until now. Here is Jared Leto now. Defamer says he's gained the weight for a role, dedicated to his craft, Oscar bait blahblahblah, but the only thing that's impressing me here is how easy it was for all of our girlish visions of love to be crushed into a flabby little pile under the sole of a late-model Elvis impersonator who apparently ate Jordan Catalano for breakfast.

I know, there's an empty space where my heart used to be, too. But all is not lost: at least we still have Christian Slater in Heathers.