Archive for September, 2012

It’s official. I’m hitting that age when everyone I know on Facebook is moving in with their significant other, getting engaged, married, procreating. It’s all right on time I suppose, considering I’ve finally hit the mid-20s checkpoint. I realize that I’m young and I’m meant to be in the mix of it all at this stage in my life. Still, I think I’m experiencing a minor case of FOMO. Don’t get me wrong. I am extremely happy to see these good things happen to my friends. But at the same time, it’s causing a total shift in how I look at dating and my future. Their life events are the real thing: the beginning of their future. The beginning of life beyond the 20s. Nothing quite that big is happening to me right now. In fact, it’s safe to say that the highlight of my week was when my TiVo recorded a couple of Gilmore Girls episodes because it thought I might like it…and I did.

I’m not yet at the point where I’m bitter. I’m a little too young and naive for that. The problem is that the more I look at what is going on in other people’s lives, the more I start judging my own. I fixate on what others have that I don’t. I try to justify why I’m still single and they are not. I look inward to see if I can make sense of everything, as if I can really change things that I know will naturally happen. I have little to zero control over it. It will all happen eventually… or at least that is what I keep telling myself. But until that day comes, I’m going to really try and not let it drive me nuts. Instead I will see that I get my butt out of my apartment and out into the full-speed world of NYC and live my own life instead of sitting on my laptop looking at the lives of others. That should solve everything, or at least just keep myself from standing too still. And if not, there is at least some comfort in knowing who I come home to each and every night. My new boyfriend TiVo, and maybe an episode or two of Gilmore Girls.

During this time of year, a lot of people, especially on Facebook, will post things like, ‘I’m sorry to anyone I’ve wronged this past year’ as if all you have to do is apologize for being horrible once a year and it absolves you of every awful thing you’ve done for the past twelve months. How about this. Just don’t be an asshole all the time, and if you do something bad to someone else, apologize immediately after, instead of waiting for a holiday.

Just be a good person as much as you can. You think that meter maid you emotionally crippled by yelling at three months ago will suddenly feel better after you spend a day not eating? No, she will still spend that day crying herself to sleep because of her completely thankless job having to deal with people like you all the time. Why torture yourself simply because you’ve spent the year torturing others? Be nice all the time, and eat whatever you feel like. I don’t know if I’m allowed to write this on 100hookup, but fasting for the purpose of penance has always seemed somewhat counter intuitive to me.

Okay, so maybe this is all just a subconscious excuse for me to not have to fast today. Maybe I’m just trying to justify my non-adherence to Judaism and lack of willpower. Either way, I still believe that being a good person outweighs a ritual that will absolve you of your sins. Fasting on Yom Kippur is actually a wonderful tradition that shows both one’s humility and adherence to their hookup heritage. It is a nice gesture that helps show the good side of humanity. I just think that people should also focus on being good all the time.

Also, if you’ve wronged someone over the past year, don’t leave some generic apology on Facebook. Apologize to that specific person. If a person you’ve wronged sees that message, they will just get angrier that it wasn’t directed only towards them, and then the meter maid, who for some reason is Facebook friends with you, will end up writing you even more tickets.

You should (must?) be honest in your profile, but there is such a thing as being TOO honest. If you are truly just a few pounds overweight, just select “athletic build” or “average” and leave it at that. You do not need to address your weight (ie. I just gained 10 lbs because I had a broken foot, I’m usually much thinner), let your photos speak for themselves. If you are a Democrat, you don’t need to discuss in your profile why you would never in a million years date someone who voted for Romney. It may be true, but it’s TMI. If you are 3 credits short of a Master’s degree but haven’t finished yet because of work/health/etc then you make the decision of whether to put BA or MA for what level of education you have, but no one needs to hear the details. Frankly, until someone gets to know you, they don’t care. All that detail does is make someone think that you are high maintenance, dramatic, and just too much to deal with.

Remember KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) if you want a kiss!

I am a healthy white male in America. What the hell am I doing? I can do anything I want. I am really under utilizing the advantages given to me by a Y chromosome, geographic randomness, and the false, fleeting love between my parents that lasted just long enough for my brother, my sister, and me to be born.

I am always on here complaining about loneliness, depression, anxiety, etc., when it is scarily easy for me to just become a powerful millionaire and be happy forever. I’m really not exploiting my white maleness as much as I could. I get all perturbed when I smile at someone on the street, and they don’t smile as much as I do. If I wasn’t white, not only would they not smile at all, but they would make it a point to make sure that I know that they are trying to move away from me as quickly as possible.

When I walk into a bank, nobody gets nervous. When I walk into a prison, I leave because I realize that I meant to walk into the bank instead. I need to take a lot less for granted. I could have it so much worse. I get depressed when my wallet gets stolen, without realizing that hundreds of people get murdered every day. I’m not saying that that’s going to stop me from getting upset about getting my wallet stolen. Actually, now, it will make me feel even more dejected that I’m getting distressed about some trivial inconvenience, while people are getting killed on purpose by other people. And then I’ll feel even worse that the knowledge of these anonymous peoples’ deaths has no effect at all on my well-being. It’s a vicious cycle of obsessive-compulsive disorder and white guilt.

So, though right now, my life is great, and by world standards, really great, I can’t really appreciate how great I have it, nor can I use my inherited advantages to further advance myself because of the mental setbacks associated with this privilege.

1. Jon Stewart Should Have Won an Emmy for Rowdiest Celebrity

When Jon Stewart’s name was called as winner in the variety category, Stewart was teasingly tackled by Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon. The two comedians who were up against Stewart in the category were teasingly keeping The Daily Show host from getting to the stage.

When the hookup TV show host finally made his acceptance speech for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’s 10th consecutive win, he was out of breath. “Oh, I am not in the kind of shape to do a bit with Jimmy Fallon, who is in very good shape. Son of a b****!”

He then went on to drop the F-bomb after complimenting the other comedians who were up for the award by saying, “Stephen Colbert — their show, what they did with Super PACs this year was ridiculous, ridonkulous. Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, I spend way too much time on the Internet watching their shows. Real Time with Bill Maher is constantly writing lines I wish I’d written. Without Lorne Michaels and SNL, I don’t think any of us would be doing this. We make topical comedy which has the shelf life of egg salad, so to do this for 15 years and have tangible proof that what we do isn’t just ephemeral is wonderful. Years from now, when the earth is just a burning husk and aliens visit, we’ll find a box of these and they will know just how predictable these f***ing shows were.”

2. Julia Louis-Dreyfus Thanks the Producers of Parks and Recreation for her Emmy Win?

Julia Louis-Dreyfus won the Emmy for lead actress in a comedy series for her role as frazzled Vice President Selina Meyer in HBO’s Veep. Louis-Dreyfus, who won the category in 2006 for The New Adventures of Old Christine, made a teeny mistake though during her acceptance speech. The hookup actress “accidentally” switched thank-you speeches with fellow Outstanding Actress in a Comedy nominee, Amy Poehler, and began to read that speech!

When the two restored order by swapping notes, the Parks and Recreation star still had the last laugh. After thanking the usual suspects, Louis-Dreyfus read off her notes, “Isn’t it a shame that Amy Poehler didn’t win?” Producers panned to a shot of Poehler sitting in her chair with a pencil in hand! Sneaky, but funny!

 3. Kat Dennings Wins for the Best One-Liner of the Night

People.com put together a list of the evening’s best one-liners and who topped the list? One of our favorite hookup actresses talking about trying to cover her top section!

“No matter what I do, they’re there. I looked in the mirror and I was like, ‘Oh God.’ But what am I going to do? They’re always there.” Kat Dennings, who stars in ABC’s hit show 2 Broke Girls, said she had trouble finding a dress that could handle her ample bosom. She eventually gave up and went with a cleavage-baring, but very sexy red dress. It appears as though it all worked out though; we didn’t see any crazy wardrobe malfunctions from Dennings!

“How about my place?” always only means one thing – wanna have sex? And if you don’t want to have sex, then don’t accept the offer to go upstairs. It’s a difficult question to answer because you want to spend more time with your date and yeah, you probably do want to make-out a bit, but if you say yes to going home together then you will only have to reject your date later when you’re rounding 1st (or 2nd) base and you suddenly feel uncomfortable.

But rejecting the offer for a nightcap, or even just “hanging out”, doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you. In fact, it probably means your date may just want to hook up and doesn’t see the relationship going anywhere. This isn’t always the case, there are exceptions to everything, but 9 times out of 10 it will only lead one place: sex.

If you want to have sex then great, but if you’re expecting a phone call the next day… don’t hold your breath. And if you reject the offer to go home with your date and are expecting a phone call the next day… don’t hold your breath. Bottom line, this is not the right person for you if you are looking for something serious. Better (and less awkward) to reject the offer to go home together then to have to wait and reject the offer for sex once your shirt is halfway off.

In trying to prove a point to my girlfriend Julie, I sat down with her in front of her laptop as she logged on to 100hookup. I expanded her preferences as necessary (age, distance from, level of Judaism, level of education, height, etc) and then clicked “search.” I wanted to show her that there are indeed plenty of men out there who are her type. And there were definitely tons of more options, but I was aghast at the vast number of dark, overexposed photos! Yeah, I get it, you were on vacation and standing in the ocean and your body looks great and your hair is perfect, except… I can’t see your face! That’s because the sun is behind you (or the light if you’re indoors) when the best lighting is either you facing the sun (while trying not to squint of course) or overcast. You think it’s a great photo of you because you know what you look like. We don’t. And we can’t figure it out because you look like your shadow. Only use such photos if you have 4 other great, close-up, well-lit photos and never use such a photo as your profile picture. As much as I proved my point that Julie has many more potentials to check out, about a third had to be automatically docked because why would she even bother with the ones she can’t see?

There is a drawback to losing weight that is even worse than all of the positive attention, lack of heartburn, general overall wellness, self-control, ability to consistently sleep, a reason to wake up in the morning, an increase in energy, and a less-sensitive Pavlovian response telling my body to throw blunt objects at mirrors.

Losing weight also comes with the very real possibility that you will acquire crazy eyes. In photos, while large people may not like the way they look as much, they generally seem level-headed, and their eyes are often nice and human-like. Before I lost the weight, and after Facebook was invented, I noticed a trend among photographs of my friends. My larger friends all seemed relatively normal, while a lot of my thin friends looked absolutely crazy. I think I need to clarify that thin people do not have crazy eyes in real life. They only look crazy in pictures. This, of course, is not applicable to all people. But try to stay attuned to this when looking at pictures of people.

Actually, the prevalence of crazy eyes in photos of thin people seems to be higher in thin people that have lost a lot of weight. I can think of several examples of this off the top of my head, myself included. When I look at pictures of myself now, I think  ‘Wow, I look great. I’ve really come a long way.’ and then my eyes move up to my face and I think, ‘Gahhh what the hell is wrong with me? Good lord, give me some food.’ I bet at least five people that have never met me, but seen photos of me on Facebook or something think that I sleep in my bathroom and own 25 cats that are all named ‘Lucille’, without realizing that only half of that is true.

I’ve become what I hate the most. I hate crazy eyes. Once I realize that a friend has crazy eyes, it makes it very difficult to maintain the friendship. Maybe that’s why I have no friends. I hope I haven’t ruined your life with this theory of mine, but I haven’t, because you’re probably not reading this.

100hookup has added lots of great new features including more questions. Take the time to answer at least the original questions so that you don’t end up looking shady with tons of blank spaces. People get suspicious when you repeatedly avoid answering a question. Your basic profile (multiple choice answers) really, really ought to be answered. Then answer as many questions as you can. You don’t necessarily need to answer every quiz  (if you answer every single little question every day then you can start to look a bit overanxious (read: desperate)) but you shouldn’t make it look like you’re trying to hide something.

I have one friend who refuses to acknowledge that we met on 100hookup. We’ve known each other for almost four years now, but a while back he made the executive decision to rewrite the history of how we met. So all of his friends have the new truth, while all of my friends have the original story from our first 100hookup. I even had a nickname for him based on his “About Me” section that I still refer to him as to my friends. I have total respect for his privacy on the subject, because I realize that for most people (myself excluded), online dating is a personal choice. However, I do believe that you can’t decide how you meet the love of your life. That’s going to happen when and where it’s going to happen. Unlike most things in my life, that’s one thing I can’t schedule.

The thing that I find so funny about is that I know of so many couples who met online. It’s like everywhere I look I see online dating success stories standing as tangible proof that it works. And yet when they are asked, “How’d you meet?” They lower their voices and say, “100hookup” or say it so quickly that we don’t fixate on that part of the story.  I just don’t get the stigma about it. I’d much rather claim 100hookup, as opposed to telling my kids the story of how I met their father at a frat boy filled dive bar. “Well, hunny. One night I was out with some friends at Brother Jimmy’s. Daddy saw me standing at the bar when I was going to buy a drink, we started talking and before I know it we were flirting and he bought me my next vodka soda. At the end of the night he asked me for my phone number. We texted for a couple of weeks and then he asked me out! Isn’t that, like, so romantic?!” (Disclaimer: I do not go to Brother Jimmy’s).

Don’t get me wrong, I’d really like to meet the great love of my life in person, and have a great story to go along with it. My parents had the kind of story that just makes you smile and laugh and you can even feel your heart just warm. I can’t help but want the same. But like I said, you can’t schedule the where and when. That’s why we so often turn to online sites – it can make it happen, even if it’s not spontaneous. I just know that if I ever meet a guy at Brother Jimmy’s, Central Bar, Bar None, or any bar like that, and things get serious between us, please sit me down and have an intervention about which bars I frequent and my recent life choices. And then please help me figure out how to rewrite the How We Met story. Because that’s a story that just won’t be pretty.