Week of 9/25: Modern Love and Meet Market Roundups

Busy week, so we'll avoid detail just to quickly go over the basics.

Modern Love was fairly depressing this week, although not nearly as depressing as the piece that Sunday Styles did on the Spin Doctors... anyway, Carolyn Megan becomes a reluctant motherly figure and shares some thoughts on it. It's funny how her sister's impending death from cancer gets pushed aside, because that's not nearly modern enough for this column. It's perhaps more trendy to not want kids. Anyway, I refuse to rip into this piece, because it was rather touching, contemplative, and well-written. It reminds us why people respect this newspaper.

Meet Market was also gold this week, but in this case for comic reasons. Last week's date was an absurd success, while this week's picks are good for a chuckle.

Jake chose Michelle and found success, so we give Tom and Laura credit for yet another victory. I'd say I was wrong in my predictions last week, but it does seem that Michelle swings enthusiastically from Jake's comedy-filled nuts and I mentioned that possiblity as a potential path to hookup success. Also, I'm almost never wrong.

Next week's date match is between Erin, a nice-n'-pretty girl wearing a pearl necklace (obvious "very hot-date" joke skipped for brevity's sake), and three guys who are really testing my self-imposed ban on commenting about people's appearances. Kevin says, "Physically, you could say I'm the average Joe." I'd agree that, picture + profile + job title, he'd be perfect as a contestant on Average Joe. Logan, meanwhile, cannot live without "Rooftops, walk-in kaleidoscopes and fog." If I were a girl, I'd have read that and thought, "I'm going to get raped on someone's creepy rooftop." Kalik's profile is much better than the others' (although it's so good that it seems to have been copied out of a book). My favorite line:

What do you like doing when you're not working? Sometimes relaxing with the quality people in my life, and other times just enjoying some much-needed solitude. I do enjoy going to church, the gym and dancing.

That was absolutely fantastic until the end. Gym and dancing, the Mary-Kate and Ashley of dating profile cliches. And it's my favorite line because I love to see the two juxtaposed as an unholy duo of contrived personal activities. We've been down this road before, I'm sure it needs no repeat explanation.

Kalik gets my pick, the voters agree, and we're done. Wasn't that easy?

New York Post Meet Market: He's Quite A Youngin'

The all-new Tom & Laura Show is up for scrutiny again this week:

Can I get through last week's date quickly? Let's give it a try: Martha picked Eric, Martha likes Eric, Eric likes Martha, and they'll probably remain just friends. They're a couple of music-loving hipster mopes, so this was the best possible romantic result. Of note is the fact that they departed from one another at Union Square, so feel free to attribute both of them with separate L.E.S. and Williamsburg addresses, naturally. My only burning question: since they're both former DJs, did either of them try to talk to the manager at Piola to see if one of them could get on the turntables? (Knowing that hipsters do shit like that all the time, and that Italian restaurants don't have turntables, you're supposed to laugh at that.)

This week's chooser is Jake, the full time comedian who missed a date with Amanda but is now up for more Meet Market laughs. His profile this time is cleaned up a bit from the attempt at a laugh-riot he had up the last time (when I called him a freak, literally). If anything, this displays the contrast between Laura and Mackenzie, International Woman of Mystery; while Laura is compassionate and thoughtful, Mackenzie had a wicked sense of humor and let everyone live and die by their own bizarre answers to the profile questionnaire. While the matches might turn out better, Laura just made my job a lot harder. (Thanks, Laura! *sneer*)

Who are we going to set up Jake with? No one in his age category, apparently! He's listed as 23 years old, while none of his dating matchups are younger than 28! (One is 33.) True, age ain't nothin' but a number - yet I have a feeling that this fact alone means there's a practically zero chance of any setup turning into a long-term romance. Women simply do not pursue younger men in most circumstances - and in the rare cases that they do, Jake is not the type of strapping young male that those kind of women pursue. So we're basically looking at a loss already. But we'll give this match our best attempt.

Michele is a non-vampire assistant:

What are three things you can't live without? Music/art, water and garlic.

Lovely. I hope it's an Italian restaurant again next week.

How would you describe yourself? I would say that I'm an intelligent and intuitive artist/human who is enjoying her life in New York City.

I can already see she's too serious for Jake, unless she's going to be his adoring audience or something like that.

Next is Naomi, a "technologist." I have no idea what a technologist does, other than bullshit on their dating profiles about what they do for a living. She enjoys chick lit and weekly dinner dates. In other words, not the type to be dating a comedian.

Our story of the week:

What was your worst date like? A guy told me he wanted to take me to a place where people go to have fun. He then pulled in to a parking lot of a seedy short-stay motel. I proceeded to get out of his car and got the hell away from him.

Fucking scary! You date the wrong men, babe! But at least we now know that "technologist" is not a cover for being a $2 prostitute, so I'm slightly relieved. So I've narrowed her career down to medical technician, IT support, or Best Buy stockperson.

Finally, we have Dorie, the 28 year old. She's an event planner; maybe she can book Jake on a couple of gigs! Also:

What's sexy to you? What do you look for in a man? Sexy is a guy with a sense of humor about himself and about life...

Jake has a brutally overwhelming sense of humor! And we have a winner!

The polls agree with my assessment; Dorie is winning. Let's hope Jake makes the right choice and disappoints Dorie by being 10 years younger, 1/10th as rich, and 20 times more goofy-looking than she'd prefer. Maybe she'll even use the romance-killing phrase, "You're 23? Aww, you're still a baby!"

(Methinks the Post's summer winning streak is over. And won't be back for a while.)

New York Times Modern Love: Losing My Appetite

Ominous sign of missing quality - this week's link comes unadorned:
My Dinners With Andrew (New York Times)

Apparently, after last week's lovely Dan Savage piece (my favorite instance of, "Am I reading the right newspaper?"), the Times editors figured that us viewers had exceeded our satisfaction quotas for the month and decided it necessary this time to lay a big turd for a column. Sara Pepitone is back, inciting the rage of freelancers everywhere who are starving while awaiting the chance to excoriate their ex-partners in the Paper of Record. Sara's last effort, to summarize, was a piece about learning of your significant other's impending work termination - to her credit, it was a much more interesting piece than that description made it sound. This time, though, we witness her compare an old flame to a new date, watch the new date go awry, and...

Well, there's nothing else to it, really. And, this time, it is less interesting than it sounds in summary.

The article is mostly about Andrew. She dated Andrew, she loved Andrew, she lost Andrew, and she cries about Andrew at dinner with a supportive but not-Andrew gentleman. Food and restaurant service is prominently involved as a device symbolizing emotional connection and comfort, but I cynically believe that it's only because Sara has a cookbook coming out soon. It says so in the byline! Gotta love those freelance essayists; the piece is always the means to an end, never a goal in and of itself. (And you wonder why magazines eschew essays for service pieces as of late.)

In case you think I'm being harsh in my criticsm about the commercialism of this piece:

Later we realized the other place reviewed in The Times

The food promotion extends to the Times' dining reviews itself! I didn't know they felt it necessary to pimp themselves in their own paper to keep people interested. Perhaps it would have been a tasteful editorial choice to leave out the name of the newspaper and reference the reviews obliquely? After all, this sort of self-back-patting is more like something the Post would do.

The emotions expressed in the column are rather standard - they are not extraordinary, but are at least sincere and untarnished by hubris. I would think the Times would rise above schmaltz, but in the end I appreciate humility in a column where it comes rarely.

My final analysis is to see how this column represents the theme of Modern Love, and how it reflects romance and interpersonal relationships in this day and age, and the message is this: We are all yuppies who don't have time to cook for ourselves. Ms. Pepitone seems to have dust gathering on the pots in her kitchen, because her intimate moments all come in public restaurants. That's the "modern" spin here. What ever happened to eating at home? It makes me nostalgic for the old days, when bonds came from shared meals at the dining room table. Perhaps Ms. Pepitone would find more success in her personal relationships if she learned how to cook!

(The same goes for Andrew. Back down, feminists.)

New York Post Meet Market: Initiation

We have a special theme for today's Meet Market review (to see the original, as always, look right here).

Mackenzie, International Woman of Mystery, has departed for another section of the newspaper. It's supposed to be called "@Work", but I'll bet dollars to donuts that Republican bashing, gossip items, and Asian numbers games will eventually be crammed into it.

In her place, our new co-writer is Laura Vogel. Let's give Laura a proper hazing, shall we? Everything that's wrong this week is officially her fault. None of it will probably be something she could have helped (especially being new and all), but we'll blame her anyway. We'll make a sport out of it.

First up, Chris from last week chose Anna. I recommended this pairing last week, but there was no rhyme or reason to it other than some distant form of egotism on my part. Well, who cares why? It worked anyway.

Chris comes perilously close to the "wow, you look better in person!" screw-up:

I had seen a picture of her, but it was still a little surprising to meet her for the first time in person. She looked great, wearing a black dress, definitely athletic, and I was struck by her nice smile.

Nice! I think she looks particularly cute in the picture used from the date. Chris, however, continues to look particularly bony. Aren't we glad the Post provided him with a meal?

In the annals of bullet-dodging:

Chris: Then the conversation pretty much went on a tear. She has traveled to some exotic spots. We both have traveled through Eastern Europe, but that turned out to be not so much of a coincidence, seeing how Anna seems to have been almost everywhere, not just Eastern Europe - East Asia, obscure little islands and places like that.

Somehow, I feel lucky to not have been forced to explain on my own date that Staten Island is an exotic trip for me. Perhaps Chris offered a more robust travel itinerary:

Anna: Chris and I talked about traveling (we've both been on some pretty interesting trips) and skiing (Chris makes a lot of winter ski trips) and any other topic that came up.

Good to play up the skiing angle - because if you're more of a beach person this time of year, you're SOL. Any other quotables, guys?

Anna: At one point, I told him I wanted to go to MoMA to see the Cezanne-Pissarro exhibit. He pulled out an extra guest pass he happened to have and gave it to me. Nice!

Bribery! Well, since he didn't seem to bring flowers, I guess we can consider this a rebound move. Laura, why didn't you tell him to bring flowers?! Big mistake!

In the end, they kissed good night and hope to see each other again. Another win for Cupid Murdoch.

This week, we have to set up Martha, who stands gloriously in front of a teal background. She looks like she's about to tell us the weather. She's "happy, social, silly, creative, independent, funny and a tad eccentric." Plus, she likes sewing! You know how much I like that! After all, with all these socks and all these holes...

Our story of the week: Martha lets the man of her dreams slip away -

Martha's worst date came courtesy of a day trader who couldn't stop blabbing about his bills.
"He spent the whole night talking about how much money he makes gambling and how he's so great," she recalls. "He promptly got drunk. Apparently when he's drunk, his favorite thing to talk about is how all women are only out for his money. When I took offense, he swore at me. When I decided to leave, he chased me outside, angry that I wasn't going home with him."

Umm, that's not even funny. Damn day-trading pricks. Laura, why didn't you give Martha an escape route for this nightmare date? (Note that I'm running really thin on these initiation ideas so far. Pretty soon I'm just going to have her drink a quart of milk and run up and down 10 flights of stairs like all the other Meet Market pledges.)

Who do we pair with the beautiful and fabulous Martha?

Hey, it's Phillippe again! Different pic, same "all-you-can-eat" line. Oh, and he drinks a lot. While listening to NPR. Well, if that's what gets you through Garrison Kellior...

Then there's Eric, the animator. That job sounds kind of fun. What can we glean about him from his profile?

What do you like doing when you're not working? People-watch, walk around Manhattan, play records and eat trail mix.

Oh, and animate stuff.

How would you describe yourself? A tall, gaunt man with a sardonically irreverent sense of humor.

(*scrambles to look that up in the dictionary...*)

What's attractive? What's sexy? Intelligence, jocular sense of humor, confidence and someone who has a positive body image.

Jocular? Well, I don't know if she likes contact sports, but Martha can sew! I kinda like Eric better than Phillippe at this point.

(Sorry, Phillippe. You'll meet someone someday. Hey Laura, why are you making Phillippe so unlucky at this dating game? Better have him be the lead dater soon; we don't want to leave this poor guy to fend for himself at TGI Friday's.)

Finally, there's Dan the finance guy. He answers my favorite question:

What animal do you most resemble and why? I guess a golden retriever. Not too big, not too small, just the right size - handsome and muscular, without being too bulky. And I'm always happy and always smiling.

Hey Laura, why do you ask these silly beastiality-related questions? I like Dan's answer, but you must know already that few people answer this well. Time to retire it. You can ask this instead: Beatles or Stones? I think you can figure out everything you need to know about someone from that question. Important, never pair people who disagree.
(I'm just being silly, you know. But, do indeed retire the beastiality question)

Anyway, Dan's a pretty solid guy. There isn't a lot of detail in the profile, though, that makes him look suitable for Martha. I think Eric, by virtue of being more creative, looks like Martha's type. 60% of the pollsters agree.

That's all for this week. Welcome to the party, Laura Vogel! I hope our little hazing exercise didn't hurt you too much! Just be prepared for some more of it here at the Lectern, from now through the indefinite future! Heh heh heh!

New York Times Modern Love: My Two Dads

(note: I'm in a terrible rush while writing this, so pardon if it comes out looking like something other than English)
Having a column that relies entirely on random freelancers (usually describing their own love lives) entails a hit-and-miss pattern of literary quality. Accordingly, we've endured some stinkbombs in the past month or two, yet this week we get paid off with a truly exceptional and emotional essay about an adoption, a flawed adult, a growing child, and a concerned and caring observer.

This week, our writer is Dan Savage, best known as the author of Savage Love (a syndicated column that runs locally in the Village Voice) and a truly talented and professional author. This is not the usual "good pitch turned into a bad piece" Modern Love essay; Savage is one of the best we have when it comes to breaking down emotions and composing reactions for everyday life situations involving romance, love and loss. His talents clearly show in this week's essay about his experience with an open adoption and its aftermath.

The short story is that Savage and his partner (Dan bats for the other team, if you know what I mean) adopted a newborn baby from a homeless girl, and the situation devolves as the homeless girl grows to be a highly unreliable and deeply troubled woman. Savage laments that his adopted child's mother cannot fix her problems, and ends up contemplating (in a regretful way) that perhaps it's best for this woeful tale to end, either for best or for worst.

Along the way, there is deep heartbreak, difficult explanations to an innocent child, and much-needed rescues for both the mother and her companion pet (apparently a necessity for the young mother, described as "petite" by Savage). There is no happy ending here, and the whole situation is truly heart-wrenching.

All of the blame for the problems here can be squarely laid on the mother's shoulders. She is completely irresponsible and unnecessarily stubborn. There is absolutely no need for her to be in a troubled situation, to be a drug-addled vagrant with many problems and no solutions. I would go as far as to call her mentally ill.

Savage is exceedingly sympathetic and tolerant when describing the mother of his adopted son, and is also unselfish in providing assistance during emergencies. DJ's new "alternative lifestyle" parents are nothing short of God-like when coming to the rescue, able to solve the toughest problems (including bail money) and address the toughest issues (example: when should they tell DJ that his mother is seemingly dead). The silver lining of this story is that DJ is in the best possible care, and will surely avoid his mother's fate.

The essay ends on a terribly dark note - Savage painfully stops an inch short of saying, "If she cannot clean herself up, she's better off dead." Yikes! I can't criticize that emotion, as Savage is hoping for euthanasia rather than trying to rid himself of a pest. He has his priorities aligned perfectly, and his priorities lie with his son and family. He regrets that his son's biological mother cannot meaningfully or productively participate in family life, but it is too painful for him to watch her destroy herself from afar, repeatedly. And I agree with his sentiments, as it is too painful for us, the readers, as well.

I think this essay serves the column's subject well. As a fresh take on contemporary relationships, this essay provides an optimistic look at families with homosexual partners (which, in our current national social climate, deserves all the positive attention it can get) while providing a view on several difficult contemporary family and lifestyle issues (namely, adoptions, vagrancy, drug abuse, and perhaps mental illness). It's tough to provide love and care to someone who makes irrational decisions. It's terribly difficult to deal with poverty, homelessness, and drug abuse issues in a modern family. Adoptions, and the attachment and authority issues that come with it, have always been tricky. Homosexual couplings are a hot-button topic among political leaders and media pundits right now, stirring controversy among people of all kinds of morals and political alingments. It's all very modern and topical, which made this essay a slam-dunk choice for this ongoing Modern Love column.

But, in the end, I suppose the most important bonds of love here are the bonds among DJ, Dan and his partner - the results of quality parenting. I don't think we have enough of that in this country lately. I think that's the desired result here, although I truly regret that it began with taking a child out of a sobbing teenage mother's arms.

(Times editors: consider this a thank-you note)

New York Post Meet Market: Have A Drink On Me

A little bit of update on Meet Market: we're losing Mackenzie Dawson Parks, International Woman of Mystery, to another section of the New York Post. And I'm ever so sorry to see her go! After all, her efforts at matching daters have been largely responsible for turning around the direction of this column from disappointing to hopeful. Yeah, I think Tom helped too. But Mackenzie should get a lot of the credit. What will we do without her?

(ummm, keep wisecracking, that's what)

Amanda, who I reluctantly jilted in favor of Shevi, winds up having a lovely time with Roberto instead. Well, that's rather nice, isn't it?

Amanda: We talked about how we'd gotten involved in the Meet Market column, and we were relieved to discover that we had both fallen into it almost accidentally.

You mean having been sniped off of Friendster by Mackenzie? I told you all, we're going to miss her very much!

What can I say otherwise about the date? Well, Roberto seemed to be pretty laid-back and conventional, so my concerns from last week were completely eliminated. Amanda was pleasant and polite as expected, and as a result they meshed fairly well. They even managed to overcome the fact that she's a few inches taller than him, which is impressive considering how many people would immediately consider that to be a deal-breaker. That all said, they didn't really show any true sparks in their post-date writeups, so all I can summarize from this is that they'd probably make pretty good pals for the future. That might not be the ultimate romantic victory, but it counts as a win for the Post.

This week's date chooser is Chris. How would you describe yourself, Chris?

"unfathomably wealthy and good-looking."

I know that's just a joke, but seriously. That sort of joke is not funny when you're wearing a horizontal striped shirt where the center stripe significantly sags on the sides. At the very least, he's a fashion disaster. You should have rocked out with the black cocktail suit and the light pink dress shirt, collar open. That's what all the handsome guys are wearing.

(hahah, yeah right - more like "goofy looking" guys. Maybe I'll wear something different the next time. Like a paper bag over my head.)

All sartorial concerns aside, Chris looks a bit like a hipster, but without the asshole qualities. Maybe it's because he's creative, but grounded. That's a good start for us - who can we pair him with?

Sheela's our first choice. She likes wine, it comes up twice in her profile. That makes me verrrrry cautious. But she seems pretty harmless otherwise - she enjoys dining, walking, tennis, dancing, etc. There isn't a very strong profile here, but her bacchinalian tastes are her only true weakness. She's in the hunt.

Next, we have Denise. Bars and tequila come up as two separate answers here, which begs the question: how did they manage to pair a seemingly non-alcoholic guy with a couple of imbibing females? It's usually the guys who do the drinking. Baffling. Anyway... she's pretty normal, but not a standout candidate. I'd say Sheela and Denise are running pretty even right now.

Finally, we have Anna, who's getting a second chance in the choosing pool after she was first shown to me. She certainly had some popularity among my associates when I was making my choice (again, the choice was made long before anyone knew who I had to choose from), so that's a plus for her. Then again, it seems like her profile was better the last time - and now, all of a sudden, she's talking about happy hour. Wha? Can we get away from the booze for a second, ladies? Chris never said anything about bars, tequila, or happy hours. I wonder where this trend is coming from...

In the end, all the girls are pretty nice, but none of them stand out from one another. I really can't decide on any of them, but since I want only the best for the girls I had to choose from, I suppose we could pick Anna this week for Chris, and then let the other two reappear to pick some guys of their own (as the tradition seems to be around here). Anna's leading the polls, so I suppose that's not a bad strategy. Of course, this has no bearing on Chris' choice, so we'll just find out next week how his own strategy fared...

New York Times Modern Love: I love you, and you, and you, and...

Stephen Elliot did not care that we were all on vacation this weekend, and decides to print a piece on a polyamorous relationship that requires a bit of overtime thinking just to get through to the end. The plot is simple: Stephen loves Angelina, but she's involved with another man as well, and married to yet another. With children. Maybe the relationship itself is complicated, but the whole piece boils down to Mr. Elliot's need to share his feelings on the situation.

Is there a moral to the story? Of course not. The article isn't even ended properly, because there's zero resolution. It seems the Times has devolved to printing stuff worthy of blog posts. Perhaps next week we'll see someone talking about how they love their cat. Modern Love indeed.

What bugs me the most about this week's story is that, although I should probably be appreciative of new perspectives on love and relationships, this article completely wastes my time by trying to present this concept as if it were actually practicable. This type of relationship is completely unconventional, and Mr. Elliot's reaction is very demonstrative of why it's a far-from-ideal relationship setup (to the extent that people usually give up and don't even bother to try in these circumstances). Because it's so tricky, and perhaps futile, to share intimate relations with multiple people while evading feelings of jealousy and abandonment, polyamourous relations are avoided by the general public. For all practical purposes, they're non-existent in the general population (unless someone's trying to pull it off on the sneak). In the end, this piece is either a personal essay with no basis in reality, or a fiction without a real plot. Either way, I'd have rather played Sudoku than spent 10 minutes trying to slog through this piece.

And, as the icing on the cake, Mr. Elliot displays an obvious and worrisome emotional fragility that makes his viewpoint on the matter all but invalid. He's the archetypal "unreliable narrator" because of lines like this:

I was inches away from crying. I pushed my face into her collar, gripped her tightly.

Ummmmm, yeah, every guy feels that way when they're (apparently) waiting for someone to find parking. One time, in Midtown, I needed Xanax while a friend tried to find a metered space big enough for an SUV on a Saturday afternoon.

His feelings are obviously deranged (but I mean that in the nicest possible way), so why should we trust his hope above our own doubts? He certainly failed to earn my trust as a reader. Although I admit to being deeply cynical and therefore unreliable myself, the one thing that has me thinking the most about this piece is just how many thoughtful readers did, in the end, trust Mr. Elliot to have rational expectations for this unconventional relationship.

Did I forget to mention that the rationale between Mr. Elliot's attempts to find understanding in others' feelings is primarily driven by his own needs for emotional support? That's never happened in this column before! *shock*