Week of 1/23/2006: Old People Are Scary

Modern Love goes creepy this week: Abby Sher relates a tale of how she nearly seduced a gentlemanly older professor, and herself too - until she snapped out of it and realized that she just wanted to be around her dad. And Old Wrinkly Professor Guy is not dad. An admirable performace by Andrew while dealing with a mentally-crippling case of blue balls. And another lesson to not trust any girls under 25.

Verdict: It's good. Nice, sharp material.

Meet Market doesn't fare as well this week. To start, Michael ignored my advice and went for saucy Beth. Result: two people trying to find flattering things to say about each other while silently bemoaning the lack of chemistry on the date. It's like giving a eulogy for a mean aunt: "Well, ummm, she smelled nice. And she, uhhh, liked cats..."

Eulogy is correct here; there won't be another date. Will there be romance this week, though? Hard to say... I'm not getting any feelings of longing while seeing this week's daters! We've got a bunch of older double-baggers trying to find romance without vomiting. I say it's not possible.

Sonia picks. She's luscious. I beg to differ: chocolate cake might be luscious, but just because you eat a lot of it doesn't make YOU luscious.

When she's not working, she loves to "cook, sleep, read, listen to music, work out, take long walks and explore."

Explains the shoulders-up headshot, eh? Luckily none of the guys on this week's slate are athletic, either. Rob's about the only decent one overall. Not naming names, but I think being a pervert and having a second chin the size of Michael Moore would both be disqualifying factors for picture-dating, no matter how nice the people are.

Let's make this clear: save for one guy who looks a little sharky, they all seem rather nice. But that and $2 will get you a subway ride in this town.

My hasty pick is Rob. After having a minute to look over the choices, I decided quickly and then burned the newspaper to prevent these faces from haunting me. Think happy, happy thoughts... happy thoughts... pictures of Naomi Watts to cleanse the palette... ahhh, that's better.

Week of 01/15/2006: Two Things Are Certain In Life - Death and Neuroses

Modern Love has another Readers' Digest week. No one in the story is below 50 years old. (*snooze*) It's not that Caroline Miller's tale isn't a good one; it's just that there's more contemporary narrative in US Weekly than there is in these sort of essays. (50-year-husband had a life on the side. I've never heard of this happening before, ever. Really.)

The Post's Intimidate is a little better, though. Wilson's a tall, dorky, father psychology professor, so who better to pick for him but a self-admitted mental health case - like, say, Virginia?

We made nervous conversation at first, but when he told me he was a psychology professor, with a therapy practice on the side, I was fascinated. I've logged a few years on the couch myself, so I always want to hear what it's like from the chair. I asked questions and got him to tell me about transference and countertransference!

Transference and countertransference? Too lazy to Google today. Just wear a condom, kids. Keep it safe.

Yes, Virginia and Wilson hit it off nicely. Despite my poking fun, they both behaved respectably and got along memorably. Another win for Meet Market! Maybe Tom's dream of a Meet Market marriage may come true someday after all...

This week's daters? Michael's a "self-proclaimed agent provocateur." Bad news! I can assure you that an antagonist never gets past the first date. Will he behave? Also, he's looking for a smart girl... that request is really not hard to fill, but based on his hipster-ish preferences, I'm going to say that he wants someone who looks the part, rather than someone who's brilliant and fearsome. He needs a nice girl with thick-rimmed glasses.

Kara's the only one who fits the bill - out of all three girls, Kara really looks like the stereotypical hipster. Except, she's nice! Which is not to say anything bad about Beth (red mesh thong? I'm hot for teacher...) or Lauren ("sex kitten" + "the perfect first date" = extra horny), because they're both very nice as well. However, I can see things going nowhere with Michael and those other girls because they seem sexually and romantically aggressive, and that WILL scare him off. Kara, on the other hand, will be the innocent and low-stress girlfriend that Michael's looking for.

(Beth's thong is going a long way with the polls, though - she's crushing the other two with a ridiculous 50+ point lead. Perverts! But yeah, Beth is super-sexy. I'd like to be in her homeroom class, if you know what I mean.)

Week of 01/08/2006 - Dating Wrap-Ups

First, in Modern Love... three earth-shattering developments:

1. The author isn't selfish!
2. The author isn't trying to sell a book!
3. The essay's pretty funny!

Sure, we've seen these things happen before, but I'm not sure if all at the same time! Lainie Keslin Ettinger's piece is about... well, you could say that it's about a housewife that likes cheesy romantic movies and uses them to get excited enough for sex with her husband. I say, it's about movie theater masturbation. Hey, there's nothing like pressing your own button in a dark public place for a little excitement, right? Just don't let anything funky get near my popcorn, lady!

Meanwhile, over at Page Three-Thousand-Two-Hundred-Seventy-Eight, Josh found a Gillette Mach 3 and put it to good use on the scraggly beard... alas, an improvement in grooming did not lead to romance! Lilian was flattered, but ultimately unimpressed. The restaurant was Pair of 8's, but the ratings were a pair of 2's. Oh, well! Sucks to be Josh! (Lilian, that offer still stands, you know...)

MEET Wilson, a wry and witty 41-year-old psychology professor.

And the picture looks more like a 22-year-old gas station attendant! Young looking guys just don't score... I mean, I should know, I'm reduced to hitting on girls appearing in the newspaper from my blog... so I hope he's got the personality to make up for it:

(in response to the three things question: "I'm not sure what caffeine does, biochemically that is, but I'm pretty sure without it my head would implode. ChapStick is another thing; I can seriously jones for ChapStick. Finally, sunshine. For me, sunshine is like gasoline, except it's neither liquid nor flammable. And it's not a fossil fuel."

Forget sunshine. I'd rather pour gasoline on myself instead, having just read that profile. Painful!

But not as painful as being a 26-year-old blogger having to make non-tasteless comments about women above the age of 40... which is what I must do now! And you know what? I'm abstaining. I'm just going to pick a winner, and tell you why.

It's obviously Rachel. First, she's in MENSA, so she'll appreciate those brainy psychology professor jokes that Wilson has waiting by the truckload. Second, she's the only woman who didn't specify "tall" in the requirements, and that right there is a major red-flag. (Leslie asked for: "A Bill O'Reilly type - tall and conservative." Ummm, practically the only person in the state of New York who meets that definition IS Bill O'Reilly!) All the other factors don't matter, because they're both smart and they're likely to be disgusted with one another - but at least it won't be as disastrious as a date with "Looking for a fuck buddy" Virginia and "Looking for Bill O'Reilly" Leslie.

Sorry for the lateness this week, will catch you here soon!

5Habits - yeah, I'll play along.

Not that I haven't been involved with enough blog-related bullshit over the past week... now the inimitable Angelina tags my ass and forces me to play in some silly blog game. Well, I'll have a go at it.

The rules are as follows:

The first player of the game starts with the topic, "5 weird habits about yourself".And people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits, as well as state this rule clearly. In the end you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged, and link to their web-journals. Don't forget to leave a comment in their blog/journal that says "you have been tagged" and tell them to read yours.

Bah. I have to do this here because among all my other blogs, this is the one with enough piss on it to make it worthless. Besides, Angelina tagged me at The Lectern. If you want to read a REAL blog, go here.

Onto the list:

1. I antagonize bloggers for fun. Not just any bloggers, but the biggest ones. Sometimes in-person.

2. I'm always wearing socks. I have nothing to hide, but it'll be a cold day in hell before you see me barefoot.

3. I eat my pancakes in a VERY particular manner. I cut them into a 4x4 grid and eat from the outside in. It's geometrically orderly and obsessive. I'm pretty sure that if you tried to force me to eat them differently, I would fucking kill you.

4. When I ride the subway alone, I have an intense need to peer out the windows into the surrounding tunnels and explore.

5. Conversely, when I ride the subway with others, I have an intense need to tell people about EVERY INCH of the system as if they cared where all the abandoned tunnels were. Well, I do care, motherfuckers! Deal with it!

People are gonna hate my ass for this. Faile, Whitney, Alli, Eefers, and Rudezilla. Seriously, these are the 5 people who would hate me the least for throwing this in their direction.

Week of 01/01/2006 - Dating Wrapups

Modern Love this week:

"...more than a quarter-century ago I wrote an Op-Ed article for The New York Times on the satisfaction of being a full-time housewife in the new age of the liberated woman. ... The column morphed into a book titled "Ever Since Adam and Eve," followed by a national tour..."

Christ, how low can we go here? Now we're using Modern Love to pitch books that have been out for years! And what about the idea that the NYTimes is putting their former columnists back up on the pulpit, in some roundabout self-promo scheme? Oi.

Anyway... the title of the essay is Paradise Lost (Domestic Division), which means you should expect a humdinger of a tale about someone's life being sheared apart. Simply put, the author was abandoned by her husband of 40 years, and she had to struggle in the aftermath. It was an experience filled with irony because of the book she had written years earlier expounding the virtues of domestic servitude, which is the interesting twist. The insufferable part, though, is that Ms. Hekker is so bitter with her experiences that she cannot find the good in her prior work. Instead, we're treated to a glorious bitchfest that dedicates only 6-7 sentences to the happy ending, as if it weren't so happy after all. She is obsessed with the misery of her bastard husband leaving her, and she speaks very little of what her family and her community did to help her through her trying times and lead her to independence. She does us all a disservice. She should turn that frown... upside down!

In Meet Market, things have a little more zip this week. Jennifer chose Aaron, and both found great chemistry on their little blind date. Jennifer's not as enthusiastic about the future as Aaron seems, and the writeups from both participants were very, very bland, but I'm thinking these two have a chance at future romance. A win for the Meet Market authors! (who, on my last check, now count more than just Laura and Tom, and it's just too much for me to keep track anymore.)

Next week, we have Josh choosing among three lovely ladies... ummm, seriously, where did they get this guy from? Did they just find someone living in a cabin in the woods or something? Scraggly beard, scruffy hair, puffy eyes, plaid shirt... is it safe to say that this guy is probably not from Manhattan? And here's the best part... he's a "financial analyst". There's no joke in the world that can properly illustrate the contrast between that statement and his picture. Well, maybe it's a bad picture? Maybe he's the only financial analyst on Wall St. with a beard? (and who does "stand-up comedy" on the side, too)

Our ladies? All recycled. Deepa, once again, looks vaguely boring and perhaps a bit scary. (I love it when women joke about drama and bad dates so that people can relate to them... and, instead, they look like they're one bad breakup away from boiling someone's pet rabbit. Comedy!) Lilian, once again, isn't going to put up but might put out. Denise, on the other hand, may have had her profile changed a bit from the last time; in any case, she does not come off as unattractive but she fails to be a convincing date. Naturally, Lilian is my choice here.

Next week, Lilian finds that her date is also in finance... and suddenly finds herself at some West Village bistro with the Man in the Mountains. Should be fun!