Got an advance DVD of I Love You, Man -- the genuinely funny and smarter than you might think male-bonding comedy featuring L'Ecole de Judd Apatow alumni Paul Rudd and Jason Segel -- yesterday and something unexpected occurred to me while I was checking it out. So pardon the seeming digression before I get to it.

Anyway, as we've noted here on several previous occasions, The Sages of Hellas -- yes, them again -- enumerate three great truths...

A) Everything flows, nothing abides.

B) All things may be reduced to moisture, whence they came.

...and lastly, and most relevant to our discussion...

C) The career arcs of actresses and actors in Hollywood are rigidly circumscribed, but in gender-specific ways.

Let's recap them, shall we?

The Three Stages of A Hollywood Actress' Career:

1. Babe.
2. District Attorney
3. Driving Miss Daisy.

The Five Stages of a Hollywood Actors' Career:

1. Who is Hugh O'Brian?
2. Get me Hugh O'Brian.
3. Get me a Hugh O'Brian type.
4. Get me a young Hugh O'Brian.
5. Who is Hugh O'Brian?

Before we go any further, I should add for the benefit of our younger readers that Hugh O'Brian was a large slab of beef who achieved a brief celebrity in the title role of the ABC television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, a Western which captivated our noble Republic in the years between 1955 and 1961.

Okay, that cleared up, and bringing this all full circle back to I Love You, Man, let me reiterate that it is indeed very funny, that Paul Rudd is looking more and more like the deftest romantic comedy leading man of his generation, and that if I never hear the phrase "bromance" again it will be too soon.

Anyway, while I was watching I couldn't help noticing that charming co-star Rashida Jones looked awfully familiar, and not because I'd seen her work before, which I don't believe I have. Rather, her presence in the movie -- and this takes nothing away from her own genuine talents -- seemed pretty conclusively to be a gender-bending example of an actress being cast due to one of the previously mentioned stages in the actor's arc. Specifically, number 3. Which is to say that some producer involved with the film must have said to himself -- Get me a Jennifer Love Hewitt type....

...and positively flipped when he saw an 8X10 of Jones.

And on that note, given that, in Groucho Marx's immortal phrase, my preceeding very long build-up just resulted in a very feeble Separated at Birth wheeze, let me simply remind you that you can -- and perhaps even should -- pre-order I Love You, Man over here.