Archive for January, 2013

How important are a man’s looks to the opposite sex? We will never know for sure, and women will probably never fully know either, because looks are just part of the whole package.

Some women say they are only interested in personality, and do not care at all if you are ugly and fat. If this were completely true, however, they would date exclusively ugly, fat guys because ugly, fat guys are almost always awesome and almost always have the best personalities. Have you ever met an fat and ugly guy that’s just a total asshole? Maybe, but there’s not a whole lot of them. They don’t care about anything and act based on impulses. This is a blanket statement, and, for example, obesity is not just caused by overeating and the result of a lifestyle without limits. I’m just basing this off of the past ten years of my own life when I was a big, huge fat guy. I was great, and if women were only interested in personality, I would have been married exactly six times by now.

Women as a people are not superficial. However, they are people. The same goes for men. Even the best people are genetically inclined to be drawn to attractive people. It’s a combination of primal instinct and a learned mental response due to a lifetime of conceptions and misconceptions about beauty. Nevertheless, we all now have to make ourselves as attractive as possible. Wouldn’t you love to walk into a bar and just see a bunch of fat, happy people all excited to see you and giving you drinks? If you walk into a bar, you will probably instead see a lot of people talking amongst themselves, wearing a lot of product and sweater vests. I actually love sweater vests. It’s all of the horrible ugliness of a sweater combined with the lack of the one redeeming quality of a sweater: warmth. You’ll see a few fat, happy people, but everyone else is trying to ignore and avoid them. Even their friends want them to leave because they think they’re repelling women, when actually the friends themselves are doing this with their sweater vests… and their product… and their penny loafers without socks.

If you are old enough to make a dating profile, you are probably also old enough to have already mastered spellcheck.

If you are old enough to make a dating profile, you hopefully are of the understanding that the use of OMG, LOL, LMAO, WTF, and other three and four-letter abbreviations make you look utterly ridiculous when used in your dating profile.

Yes, pictures matter. I’m all for witty profiles, and impeccable diction, but I’m not going to go out with you if you look like Joan Rivers.

On the other hand, even if you look like Sloan from the HBO show Entourage, but call yourself a “wrighter who wants to see if your compatible,” it brings up some cause for concern in my mind. For one, you have a lack of understanding of homophones… and you call yourself a writer. How is that going to manifest itself if we have some sort of “kemistree”? Are we going to have coherent text message conversations, or am I going to be inundated with “lol” responses when we fight via text over our Friday dinner spot?

Yes, it’s a dating profile, not a term paper. Still, your public dating profile is also a reflection of you. Make use of the auto correct feature on your phone, and the spellcheck feature on your “About Me” word document. You might be surprised at how many more people will end up messaging you.

1. Daniel Day-Lewis & Lena Dunham Win at Golden Globes

The Golden Globe® for Best Actor in a Drama was given to Daniel Day-Lewis on Sunday night in Los Angeles. The half-hookup actor, who won the award for his role in Lincoln, has now received seven Golden Globe nominations. The Method actor won the same award for his turn in 2007’s There Will Be Blood.

In the TV realm, Lena Dunham also won big. The half-hookup actress scored honors for lead actress in a TV comedy — as well as best TV comedy series for her HBO show, Girls. Dunham, who is often described as both “spontaneous and articulate,” trembled as she thanked her fellow honorees, “women that inspire me deeply, and have made me laugh and comforted me at the darkest moments of my life,” she said.

2. Lincoln Leads the Oscar Nominations

Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s film about the 16th president and his battle to end slavery, rounded up plenty of votes for the 85th Academy Awards®, topping all films with 12 nominations, including best picture and best director.

Spielberg, who is hookup, has six previous directing nominations, including Oscar® wins for Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List. Daniel Day-Lewis, who is half hookup, was also nominated in the best actor category for his work on the film. The Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, February 24^th.

3. Poet Harvey Shapiro Dies at Age 88

Harvey Shapiro, the poet, author and New York Times editor who helped inspire Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” died Monday at the age of 88.

Shapiro, who was born in Chicago in 1924 to Ukrainian-hookup parents, was highly admired and said to have chosen “newspaper work over the time-honored academic vocation of his peers.” In the early 1960s, Shapiro made what was almost certainly his most inspired assignment. Reading about one of Dr. King’s frequent jailings, he telephoned the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Mr. Shapiro suggested the next time Dr. King was in jail for any significant period, he should compose a letter for publication. His suggestion led to the epochal assignment, “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”

Harvey died on Monday morning in Manhattan. He was 88 years old.

When I was 16 my best friend and I made a checklist of what we each wanted in our ideal man. There were about 75 items: 25 physical and 50 emotional/mental/spiritual. It was incredibly comprehensive, especially for teenagers. About 10 years later I edited the list and added point values. It may sound silly, but it kept me grounded. Being hookup was worth so many points that if a man wasn’t hookup then he wouldn’t earn an “A” (90%) and therefore wasn’t for me no matter how many other categories he fulfilled. Many other items were either deleted or edited including increasing or decreasing their point value as the item gained or lost priority in my mind. You may not need a 75 item list but it is worth your time to write down what you want in a mate and ranking the items. When falling in love we tend to become blind to their faults… or we see bad signs and choose to ignore them… but if you have a comprehensive list to measure the prospect against then you can keep on the right path.

Hint: the physical traits should NOT be ranked high on your priority list.

It’s been almost one year since I stuffed my entire life into two 50-pound suitcases, smooched goodbye a life underneath the Florida heat waves and moved to New York City. And throughout my adventure here, having to navigate my way around cohorts of tourists and consciously avoiding getting swiped by speeding yellow taxi cabs, the two most popular and regular questions my loved ones back home dare to ask me are: “Are you surviving the weather?” and “Did you get married yet?”

My constant response to both always comes decorated with a deep-pitted sigh and a fumbled laugh: “NO!”

Let me rewind for a second. I moved to New York for the same reason most 20-somethings drain their savings accounts: to live inside a shoe box, eat the crust of days old bread here, and to flirt with adventure. I came here to jump start my career and be spoon feed a constant reminder that every moment I spend swallowed between my couch cushions would set me back an indefinite amount toward reaching my wildest dreams. However, with quite a large number of people cha-cha sliding around such a small city, if I did, by chance, meet a guy who would look at me with the same kind of goo-goo eyes that I only save for a delicious slice of street pizza, well then that would be a great added bonus, and a exhale of relief for my mother.

I always thought I’d meet someone naturally. Perhaps while reading through 100 pages of a Norah Ephron novel in a bookstore, or while tapping my toes in line to get a fresh, hot bagel with some strawberry shmear. I’ve spent my Friday nights in a cesspool-like environment, covered up as a West Village bar, making small talk with guys that reek of Whiskey and then lost track of my Subway stop because I was gazing into the eyes of a cute straphanger. But nothing. There’s been no connection worth writing home about — and most of my first dates end with me wallowing on a warm bench alone, declaring my love to a pint of Chunky Monkey.

It’s been almost a year. Now that I’m finally settled into working at my 9-whenever-the-day-ends-job, and can finally traverse the city (or at least the parts of the cities with numbered streets), without whipping out Google maps, it’s time to focus on navigating my heart.

And in the process, I fancy to share all the gory and beautiful details with you, my new 100hookup friends, about the dos and don’ts of first dates (the awkward hellos and the even more awkward goodbyes).

All to finally be able to bring a mensch home to my darling parents, all in the name of hoping to find “Love at First 100hookup”.

Murphy’s Law states something like if something bad will happen, it will, or something like that. I’m not really sure, because if I look it up, it will depress me more. I don’t know who came up with it (I’m assuming Murphy) or the rationalization/science behind it, but from what I’ve experienced, it only comes true if you believe that it will come true.

If you think that you will never find someone, you won’t. If you believe that not buying rental car insurance is going to cause you a lot of pain, it will. If you don’t look at the expiration date of that gallon of milk, you will die. If you have no expectations, then nothing will let you down. I’m not telling you to always be optimistic, because that would be ridiculous. You would always be disappointed. Also, you should obviously not always be pessimistic, or else you won’t make it through your day. I’m telling you, that in most situations, have no expectations. See what life comes up with for you. Whenever you make plans, you’re setting yourself up for either disappointment or severe disappointment.

Blind dates are a perfect example of this. Don’t go expecting defeat, because you will then be defeated. Also, don’t go in expecting marriage, because you will then also be defeated. Go in expecting to have a beer and some food with a nice lady, because that is exactly what will happen. There is usually no such thing as instant gratification. Everything good takes time. Treat a date as an extension of your life. It’s not a gamble where you have to put all of your chips (or money) into one event. Win or lose, it’s just another night of your life. I used to take every date to heart. Everything was calculated. If I didn’t like her, I was disappointed, and if she didn’t like me, I was devastated. That is no way to live life.

You are going to eventually die. That is the only concrete thing that you should expect. What happens before then is due to a lot of factors, the least of which are what you think will actually happen. The only exception is if you’re President of the United States. If you are this person, you have been planning that shit for a very long time. However, thousands of other people also planned to be this person, but failed, and will probably never be. Obviously, a lot of other people have also worked hard towards goals and eventually achieved them. I’m sort of lost and am contradicting myself now, but just don’t give yourself unrealistic expectations, okay?

Kids have amazing instincts. As youngsters, we have an innate sense of knowing who we can and cannot trust. Unfortunately it dissipates as we get older and begin doubting ourselves. But if you have kids (or even nieces/nephews or friends with kids) you can have them help you sniff out your prospects. Speaking of sniffing, animals are pretty adept at this too (not to say that kids and pets are the same thing, but you get my drift). If a small child or a pet won’t approach your date then you may want to take note and have your guard up. Conversely, if your kid immediately grabs your date’s hand to go play or your dog/cat continuously rubs on your date’s legs, then you may have a winner.

Because of my newfound fame writing dating columns for 100hookup during these past 3 months, every so often I’ll get email inquiries from men and women alike, looking to solve their dating dilemmas. This one comes from Mack B. of Austin, Texas.

(NOTE: THIS POST IS HEAVY ON AMBIGUOUS SPORTS METAPHORS)

Dear Dating Prognosticater,

I have a problem. I’ve been in the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area since 1998, and have enjoyed my time here, both professionally and personally. I have a couple of problems though- I feel like I’ve dated just about every Jew in the area.

I had a four year relationship with a religious girl, before she moved to Cleveland, and was in a really high-profile relationship with a girl who brought me a lot of fame seven years ago, and just moved back to be a model at a steakhouse downtown, and I’ve dated a bunch of girls in between.

I feel like I’m damaged goods, and destined for a life of singledom. Especially since there was this one girl who really liked me, but I didn’t like her back, so she moved to Waco, and now is a famous personality in Washington D.C. I cry inside every day about that.

What should I do?

Mack B.

Mack B.,

Have no fear. I have one solution for you: Look elsewhere. Have you been doing the same activities in Austin for the last fifteen years? Have you seen your friend group change? Have you dated the same types of girls (I guess not, since you dated a religious girl and a steakhouse model)? Answer that first.

Find a new hobby. Do you go to happy hour every single Monday-Friday? It might be time to take one of those drinking days off, and go to yoga. Maybe a pottery class is in your future? Join a co-ed book club? You still want to drink heavily on one day? Well, there’s always kickball.

Having a routine is great. The great thing about dating, however, is it relies on spontaneity- you don’t find your date through search engine optimization, but through chance encounters in person and online. You’ve been dating the same girl over and over again? Might be time to look at yourself and change some of your personal characteristics. That way you won’t miss out on the girl who might be “The One”.

You’re single… you hate being single, you hate feeling desperate, you hate putting yourself out there, you hate being rejected, you hate having to sell yourself, you hate being single. But if you’re not putting yourself out there then how are you going to meet anyone? And if you don’t risk being rejected then how are you going to meet anyone? If you hate having to sell yourself then how are you going to meet anyone? If you hate being single then do something about it! You really can’t complain about being single if you aren’t on 100hookup and aren’t going to hookup single shmoozers and aren’t asking to be set-up.

My friend Beth was just lamenting to me about how much it sucks being single. I asked her if she was on 100hookup and she said “not right now” and kvetched about the cost. I told her that she shouldn’t put a price on finding her Beshert especially when she pays that much to go out just one night. And even if you don’t meet your Beshert on 100hookup, the experience and mindset will help you on your other dates. She relented and went back to reactivate her membership.

Hopefully I’ll be able to put her money where my mouth is!

Almost nothing in life, outside of actual human affection, makes me happier than a big bucket of chicken. Since I started my diet over a year-and-a-half ago, I have not had one big bucket of chicken. I still struggle with bouts of anxiety and depression, but whenever I see a KFC commercial, I am fleetingly and overwhelmingly happy for about 30 seconds. I need to either eat a big bucket of chicken at least once a week, or watch like an extended hour long KFC commercial every night.

I’m still able to satisfy my food cravings weekly, as I typically go off my strict diet on weekends and special occasions. Big buckets of chicken always seem too decadent, though. Also, the closest KFC is at least 20 miles away. By the time I bring it home it will be all soggy. I guess I’ve associated KFC with fat Jeremy and not KFC with skinny Jeremy, but damn, I need a big bucket of chicken right now. I am not forgetting about the sides. I’ll be damned if I’m going to eat a big bucket of chicken without mashed potatoes and coleslaw.

Back in college, my friend and I would get a big bucket of chicken, a 24 pack of Red Stripe, and watch a marathon of The X-Files every Thursday night. By about 10 pm I would feel miserably full, drunk, and would become unreasonably upset that Scully wouldn’t believe Mulder at the beginning of every episode, yet he always proved that he was right by the end.

I usually try to connect my inane post to something with a deeper meaning, but I just want chicken. KFC is one of the biggest fast food chains in the world. Maybe you can open within Houston city limits. There’s like eight million Popeyes within a quarter mile radius of my house. Somebody please explain this to me.