manny_delgado tender square if there’s one character in “modern family” i relate to the most, it has to be an early manny delgado. this morning michael watched a rerun of the pilot while eating breakfast and he called me in to witness the following scene: manny runs up the mall stairs to a landing, lovelorn look in his eyes as he clutches a poem in one hand and some plucked wildflowers in the other. he gazes across the way and sighs, “brenda feldman.” the scene cuts away to a bored girl playing on her phone while she works at a booth called “foto fun!” gloria (manny’s mom): “what is that?” manny: “a poem i’ve written for brenda feldman.” jay (manny’s step-dad): “of course it is.” manny: “i put my thoughts into words and now my words into ACTION.” jay: “hey—i’ll give you 50 bucks not to do this.” manny: “i’m eleven years old; what am i going to do with money?” jay: “what are you going to do with a sixteen-year-old?!” manny leaves, runs towards brenda. he comes back a little while later, dejected, holding some kind of file folder. “she has a boyfriend,” he says. “i gave her my heart and she gave me a picture of me as an old-timed sheriff.” he turns the folder around and shows the sepia tint. he has a ridiculous pencil mustache above his frown in the photo. (for examples of similar dust-ups in my own love life, see the early posts in “indiscriminate.”) michael often calls me his “little love entrepreneur”; says he pictures me with a hiking stick and sun hat climbing up the himalayas looking for love. recommended listening: lenny kravitz and sean lennon, “all i ever wanted.” this song did things to me when i found it in high school; it still does things to me. 210921 what's it to you? who go blather from