A cute wine bar on Broome Street

So tonight is date night.  I actually didn't know I definitively had a date till about a half hour ago when we solidified our plans via - what else - text message!  Using a phone requires time, energy, and old fashioned communication skills.  People don't really combine these three traits all that much anymore.  Fielding a date amongst the city types requires careful planning and patience. If MacGuyver were on the air today, ther would be an episode where he has to go to work, travel home to change, AND meet someone for a mojito...ALL CROSSTOWN!  The complexities of this are enormous. They must finagle their work schedule, (100 percent of their jobs would collapse like AIG if not for their presence on that particular day), maneuver around the island of Manhattan as if it were the board game Mouse Trap, and still make it home in time to catch an hour of Grey's.  This requires the use of text messages and e-mails, 12 taxi cabs, and some sort of Blackberry device.  I've also found out that if you live on the lower east side, you've seen the upper east side about the same number of times as you've seen Cheboygan Illinois, so don't think about suggesting a place to eat that is greater than 3 blocks from their residence.  These are facts, I kid you not.

In any case we are meeting at 7:30 at "a cute wine bar on Broome Street."  Since I still have the Philly girl on my mind I have no expectations and little excitement for this.  That is always a good way to go into a date.  I haven't even cut my hair in three months.  Some guys do this.  After certain moments in life they don't shave or bathe.  Since I have a desk job and bills, I am forced to do some minimal grooming, but the hair is growing like a Chia Pet on steroids.  For those of you who do not know me, I kind of look like this guy, multiplied by this guy, with a dash of this guy.

Although my mental state can be more properly likened to this guy.

Wish me luck with Peaches tonight!

Contestant #1

After the latest DWO (didn't work out), I wasted no time in putting myself back on the site that spawned most of the past year's tales - Match.com.  As many of you know, I am no stranger to internet dating - I might even be called a wily veteran at this junction in life.  The Jamie Moyer/Derrick Mason/Steve Martin of internet dating.  I view it as a necessary evil - especially being a bustling citydweller like myself* -  in today's harsh romantic landscape. 

I will reserve my drawn out love/hate feelings towards Match.com for another day, but after a week of sifting through the NY/NJ singles mess I found a girl we'll call Peaches.  She is unlike anything I have ever attempted to date because she is white. When her picture first came up, I tried adjusting the contrast on my screen to make her appear darker.  I kid... but she really is white, and a redhead to boot.  Whenever I meet a girl I always quickly imagine what our offspring would look like.  I fathom this pairing would kind of be like the bastard love-child of Elmo and Burt from Burt and Ernie.  

Despite our unfortunate offspring potential, she is pretty cute and she has a really awesome profile. Just saying those words makes me slightly nauseous. "She has a really awesome profile..." Bear with me, this is dating in the 00's in the city* Let me show a few excerpts that caught my fancy...

 - I especially love people that border on ridiculous

 - I like to talk about politics, social responsibility, karma, why i am here, the past, the future..

 - As much as I like to have fun and act giddy from time to time, life and all of it's mysteries are not far from my thoughts..

 - hobbies include volunteering, flea markets, and like everyone else "exploring the city"

She sounds like the perfect liberal mess that will undoubtedly love me and dump me in a month.  I can only hope she is a vegan of some sorts too.

I am in the midst of setting up a date with her right now.  I am thinking the usual.  Two bargain basement 10 dollar drinks by a man dressed in all black beside one candle that gives off just enough light to let me know I am talking to a female.  She'll order a glass of wine and I'll order something I'll later regret.  (I have no knowledge of hard alcohol that hasn't been mentioned in an R&B song.)  This reminds me of the time I was handed a glass of wine to drink with three, yes THREE glasses.  Apparently you were supposed to mix one of them or something.  All I know is one of them was a goblet and I mentioned that I felt like Harry Potter in a Snoop Dog video to my date.  She didn't laugh.

*I really don't live in NY (my family did), but I do spend lots of time there volunteering and pretending to be an urbanite.  I tell girls I either live in NY or Philly because I have convinced myself that I will be moving to one of these cities very shortly.  Cmon, do YOU want to meet someone from the Jersey shore?

The Bagel Women

In every office situation I've worked in there is always someone kind enough to bring in a dozen bagels or donuts. This surprise find in the kitchen is like a mini Xmas morning.  In every office situation I've worked in there is also a person who finds it necessary to cut up said bagel, or donut in half, and then cut in half again, and another half, thereby diminishing the food to a morsel not even a pigeon would touch while simultaneously rubbing their grubby fingers all over the food.  Do you think I'd like to eat that powdered donut when there's no more powder on it?  The thing is this person is ALWAYS a woman, and she always comes back for the rest of the bagel/donut later in the day.  I hate to generalize or anything.

No Hoodie

I was in the Princeton area yesterday - a mere 30 miles from my hoodie - when I came to the conclusion that, while most of my friends were in full support of me getting my stuff back, it was merely because they were hoping for a humourous debacle to occur akin to the Gingerbread house explosion of '02. (Way back at Xmas time of '02, my gf at the time thought it would be cool to carry a fight from our room to the living room where my friends were and verbally embarrass me .  I then thought it would be equally cool to grab a gingerbread house we made earlier together and scream "You see this! This is our house together! This is our wonderful houuuse!" right before launching it into the wall.  I was vacuuming up M&M's and jelly drops for days.)

In any case I decided to leave all is well alone.  After all, I really was more interested in leaving the door open for us meeting up again and not in retrieving my clothes.  Instead I went to Starbucks to begin the the hunt for my wifey.  We all know coffeehouses are the best place to find smart artsy girls.  It happens in all the movies I watch so it must be true. 

First Post

They say writing helps get things out.  By they, I mean the shrinks.  If nothing else I plan on entertaining myself and a few of my friends.  I know I wont find a wifey, but I might as well chronicle all the fun. By fun, I mean heart wrenching torture.  It does seem to make for some good stories.

I don't have time for a backstory on me, and you don't really want to read one, so we'll just get right into what's going on right now. (ok quick: 28 y/o average dude with an advertising artist job, single, living in the Jersey shore, nice guy, liberal, sports nut - you get the deal)  I got dumped last week - by e-mail - by a girl who I thought I was about to start a relationship with. Nothing new, except for the extreme briefness of the e-mail and the fact that she actually wrote "it is what it is"  A few e-mail exchanges later and we are officially done... but she has my hoodie.

Now the hoodie isn't all that exceptional.  It was only 25 dollars and probably made in China, which I strictly oppose, but man that thing is like my Linus blanket.  It's got that towel feel to it and it worked well with every pair of jeans I own.  And now it's probably on the bottom of her chair with the sleeves getting stepped on.  I could just cough it up as a casualty of dating - much like my sanity, almost every DMB CD from college, and my phone bill from the girl I dated in Ohio.  But I don't like the way we left things.  I'd like to see her one last time.  I want to show up to her Philly apartment and be all nonchalant.  Say a few last words and leave off with a wink and a turn of the back.  Maybe even flip my returned hoodie over my current hoodie James Dean style and then fist pump the air like Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club. 'Don't You Forget About Me' will be playing in my head and she'll wistfully think, "Damn he was a pretty cool guy... maybe I'll see him again sometime..."

What will more likely happen is she'll leave it out on the doorstep or I'll show up and she'll curtly say; "Here. Ok I'm in a rush, gotta run - Take care"  I'll stumble over a few words and say "Hey!..um, don't be a stranger!" or another statement just as effeminate and then I'll awkwardly walk back to my car kicking myself in whatever testicles I have left, wondering why I even bothered.