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...