Hey, ladies! Desperate for a mate and/or a father for your sinfully conceived rugrat? Well, pull up a Swiss ball, and listen to NPR’s Lori Gottlieb!

“Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling ‘Bravo!’ in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.”

Solid points all, but Gottlieb conveniently leaves out the most viable option: Mr. Nanny.

If you want to learn more, feel free to track down Gottlieb’s Atlantic Monthly article “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough”, which is currently being expanded into a less clunkily-titled tome, Marry Him! Finding Mr. Real. Just don’t try to acquire the book rights, ‘cuz Tobey Maguire’s already got ’em. And if you can’t appreciate the awesomeness of a hunky movie star advocating tepid marital unions between people who don’t find each other the least bit sexually desirable, you must suffer from halitosis and an abysmal sense of aesthetics.

I haven’t read Gottlieb’s essay, but it sounds like the kind of faux-upbeat material that Albert Brooks would’ve skewered in his prime (or a lie James L. Brooks would’ve elegantly put over with Albert Brooks starring as Mr. Good Enough). There’s no telling what Maguire plans to do with it (my guess is make a mush-headed, $100 million grossing chick flick), but I wish him the best. Whatever comes of Marry Him!, it’ll be co-produced by Warner Independent.