A Few Odds and Ends

First of all, welcome to everyone who found this via Lemondrop! I've had fun with this blog and fully intend to keep this going until I find me a wifey. Enjoy the next 5 - 10 years of entries!

Secondly, tons of folk misconstrued the question I posed in that forum. I could absolutely care less what religion you are. My question was simply rhetorical as to why some people feel the overpowering need to marry within their religion. I just don't get it - I would never let silly dogmas get in the way of something bigger. That's right, I'm talking to you Frieida Pinto of Slumdog Millionaire! Don't act like you're not impressed with Mikey!

Lastly, I'll have a follow-up post about the Lawyer/Librarian from last week soon.  I am still waiting to see if  this turns into a DWO. If history is any indication, this should be 3 weeks tops.

And feel free to e-mail me.  I have a corporate job.

I'm Tired

Ladies, I propose a new rule. 

 

If the date is going well... and you plan on seeing the guy again... and said guy lives an hour away, the cut-off time for when you can send him home is 1 am.  Anything after that and you're going to have to take a chance of me being a creep and trying to play a game of "Look What's in my Mouth"

Either end the date earlier, or get a canbottle of mace and take your chances. I thought I was going to have to drop Red Bull directly into my pupils on the way home.

Contestant Numero Dos

I've yet to write about our newest contestant of the HelpMikeyFindaWifey gameshow. The reason being is I've had about four dates sort of materialize over the past month - yet not quite. Getting a girls number is only the first step of what truly should be a much easier arrangement. Actually securing the date is like playing a giant game of Plinko from The Price is Right. You drop your invite and cheer as it plunks it's way down to the middle "Saturday Night Date" column. Then, at the last moment when you think you've successfully avoided every pitfall, that little bastard disc makes a wrong turn and it lands in the "watching Love Actually with your Married Friends" column.  (The analogy can safely be used to describe the whole process of getting a girl from her living room to her bedroom also.) As far as I can tell though, the Plinko disc has safely landed in the middle, and I do indeed have a date tomorrow night - 14th street for some sushi and sake!

Sushi is the optimal first dinner date. Sure it's chic, quite tasty, and every city girl loves it, but the real reason it's ideal is because it's hard to spill any on yourself - and it wont make you gassy. If you go for Italian, some drop of Ragu is invariably going to find your shirt cuffs, while American food has a high probability of not sitting right in your stomach jeopardizing any post date action.  And, if you're thinking about finger foods on a first date, you are simply asking for trouble.

Additionally, the alcohol served at Japanese establishments is strong enough to power alternative fuel cell vehicles.  It definitely serves to ease the mood and make my jokes funnier. This always helps because I can never refrain from yelling the word SAKEEEEEE! like Mr. Myagi screamed BONZAI!!! in The Karate Kid. Some girls find this amusing - others, not so much.  It all depends on the Sake.

The woman to be met is a tall, cute lawyer from the city.  She seems incredibly sweet and funny. She also has shown me a certain link... to her blog... with a picture of her wearing an Obama t-shirt. I know what you're thinking - liberal mess! However, being someone who once created a"Mikey/Obama 08" t-shirt back in '04, I'm trying to avoid any unfair labels. She's going to have to attempt a third trimester abortion with a recycled earth friendly wooden hanger right at the dinner table before I pass that judgement. 

I've actually read most of her blog and it's doesn't cry self-indulgent. She simply serves to observe city life in quite a witty way.  Some excerpts:

There are two acceptable paths up or down any staircase; the right side or the left. Not the middle. Only take the middle if you would like me to think horribly bad things about the size of your ass.

What is with those clear-ish umbrellas that look like mini-domes? They seem so constricting. Just looking at them makes me claustrophobic. And why are they always carried by Asians?

See, not bad eh?  A little on the hater side, but kind of attractive if you ask me!

Of course, the most attractive part of her is that she wears glasses. Not just any glasses. The black thick librarian glasses that somehow made their way into every male's fantasy over the past 10 years. Im giddy with this prospect. I've seen my share of B rated movies. We all know how the story goes. In fact, I demand that as she enter the sushi restaurant she whip them off in one fell swoop of her head and untie her hair bun through the sheer power of her mind alone. The success of the date hinges on this moment. I am thoroughly excited.  Wish me luck!

Dear Women at the Gym

Please do not become angry and shoot me "Excuse me?!" looks should I stare at your buttocks while you are on the stepping machine. You see, I am a voracious reader. I read everything in sight in order to further educate myself. Therefore, if you have P on one ass cheek and NK on the other, I am merely staring intently, trying to find out what this could possibly mean. Proper spelling is key to my understanding. " Just looking for the "I" maam... just looking for the "I"."

The Brazilian...

I got your attention didn’t I? When you find out someone is ethnic you always become more interested. I’m convinced she used this fact to become more appealing, much the same way I use the statement “I’m Puertorican” to secure more jobs in landscaping. I do not like to write about anyone that I know will read this, but she recently threw out a crazy line via e-mail that prompted me to type away.

She was a publicist from NY... a dark, foxy, tall drink of water that reminded me of one of Charlie's Angels (for fun, sometimes I like to describe girls how my father would. Didn't you get a Dick Tracy feel with that line? I just lit a cigarette and leaned towards my desk fan with no protective facing.) She was also a writer with an effusive way with words which she liked to display in her very own relationship blog. At the time, this sounded awesome. Another person that likes to express themselves in long winded diatribes! Advice to other men who might find this intriguing: Stay away. People with blogs are slightly off-kilter, self-indulging, loquacious folk who analyze themselves and all their relationships in life like the FBI analyzed the grassy knoll video. Trust me.

After one date over 10 dollar drinks, she told me that she had met someone else. No biggie, I know the rules. However, she did add that she wanted to remain friends. I found this odd, but harmless. Of course, when I never expect to hear from them again is always when they pop up with an e-mail.

I cautiously went out with my little canasta dancer a few more times over the next two months. When I was younger, I lived in Spain for a while and formed a pre-pubescent fetish for Spanish dancers. I was always hoping she would show up in a long frilly dress like she was about to crush grapes with her feet and she’d roll her R’s as she recited funny lines from Anchorman with me. In reality, she showed up in American jeans and we went to bars where I was forced to have mojitos, listen to U2 and lose more of what precious little masculinity I have left.

We seemed to be clicking. She was incredibly engaging. I was drawn to her like Matt McConaughey to a bad movie script. She challenged me to read books without staples in them and she perfectly balanced all her talk about art and politics with a goofy joke about, you know, stuff that really matters. Everything was going well except for her score of 11 on the shadiness scale. For every one date we went on she would cancel about 4 times leading up to said date, yet continue to call and plan for future dates. I knew something was off, but I ignored it. After all, her little blog (ugh) said she had just broken up with her bf - she was probably just moving slowly... *

At some point though, the craziness must stop and the confrontation begins. It turned out she had a boyfriend all along, but he was just moving out of the country. She wasn’t sure if she was breaking up so she was seeing me “as a friend”, but surprise, after I put my toungue in her mouth, things became more than just friendly. I was pretty pissed that someone could be so inconsiderate of me and my time - but I understood.

I’ve always found it quite ironic when we say that silly little quote at weddings about “Love being kind, and love is not selfish and love is this and that.” When I hear this line at weddings, I become more infuriated than when they play the new electric slide rather than the old one. Love is one of THE MOST selfish feelings out there. When you truly are in love, or you think you have the opportunity for it, you will do ANYTHING for it and you will act in the most callous of ways to achieve this. There’s a reason people keep watching that craptastic movie The Notebook. That love shit is powerful and we will do what we have to make sure we have it. The problem arises when we hurt others to achieve it. I can honestly understand why people leave marriages after 20 years, but I’ll never understand why people cheat. In one instance you are looking for love, in the other you are willing to hurt another to do so - not my style. In the Brazillian’s quest for love she decided to travel across the ocean to be with her man and when I confronted her about it, she had the decency to be honest.  I can respect this. In my life, I've done similar, and so have you.

By the way, the funny line that she recently told me: “Hey, I didn’t have a boyfriend when we went out. He wasn’t official – ok he was, but he wasn’t I’m getting married official”  Right.

There are two morals to this story. 

If you read over you can figure out the deeper one. I'll stick to the superficial one: 

You can get away with a lot when you have long legs that say Made in Brazil.

* You may think I'm stupid for not realizing the obvious but I should add (after doing some Googling) that I found a video online of her and her friends in her backyard – having a pillow fight.....pause.....I swear I'm telling the truth. A Brazilian pillow fight. She even displayed a Street Fighter move a la Ken with the pillow, twirling around in order to knock out everyone in her vicinity. At this point, I was sold. I didn't care how crazy she was, I was going down with the ship. "Sure Mr. McConaughey, the names of the movies are Fool's Gold and Surfer, Dude. But you’ll be making 20 million and you’ll have the chance to work with your shirt off!"..."Where do I sign?"

Practice

Years ago I used to wrestle. You know, the real wrestling on a mat where you starve yourself for days so that you can go up against someone equally as small as you in a battle to see who's the toughest... at 141 pounds. I mention this because in my 10 years of wrestling I probably attended close to 1500 wrestling practices. That's right, about 3000 hours of wrestling PRACTICE. 125 full DAYS of my life PRACTICING for a sport that while I excelled at in high school, never took me to any accolade worth mentioning. (Scholarships to Franklin & Marshall & Drexel do not count - Blue from Old School could've started at their schools.)

I've begun to think about wrestling practice because after my best friend Johnny asked for a run down of my date Friday night I mentioned that it was kind of like going to wrestling practice. Approaching the bar (gym) I knew what was about to ensue. Two hours, or in this case because of an inordinate amount of appetizers, four more hours of PRACTICE. Once you settle into your bar positions and give a few warm-up laps you sadly realize you are going through the motions that you have gone through for 10 years of dates all in anticipation of a the big match with someone else. But you have to continue with practice. Coach aint blowing that whistle for at least two more hours. 99 percent of your dates in life are practice for that big final match at some point in life. For some people in life that match sadly never comes or you become so impatient that you label the wrong person as your big match and then you become like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty or, more realistically, Al Bundy. At this point you are probably assuming that the date went bad. Not so.

We had good conversation for almost four hours.  We had a good span of topics from the idea of destiny vs. choice in Slumdog Millionaire, my current favorite movie, to her actual lilliputian like height. (Upon first meeting she didn't actually walk up to me at the bar, in so much as jump up like a kid trying to catch a balloon that flew away. Keep in mind I stand a towering 5-10.) 

One interesting conversation was on wine etiquette, of which I could write five boring paragraphs on how much this bothers me. Now I know some of you are wine afficianados, but I have always thought wine to be the drink of a higher class. It's just an old and admittedly false thought I have from a decidedly lower middle class upbringing, but it's there. I can enjoy a glass of wine but I cannot talk about it in terms that I would normally reserve to describe a sexual experience. I realize this is a serious hobby for some people but it just makes me giggle. (It just occurred to me that I talk about fantasy sports as if it were a viable second income so perhaps I have no room to bitch)

Peaches was especially astute to these descriptions and thought it would be fun if I could describe four different wines in terms like 'sparkling vs. robust' and 'deep bodied vs. shallow' and my favorite, 'oak-filled vs. floral-crisp.' I thought it would be fun if we ranked the amount of alcohol she was ordering as "acceptable vs. youbestbepayin for that" She even ordered four appetizers of various mushrooms, cheeses and hold onto your taste buds - raisin bread! I actually shouldn't make fun of raisin bread. On the hierarchy of breads it is only one spot below the king of all breads - cornbread. The appetizers were tasty, but here's a good time to mention she had only 7 dollars on her at a cash only bar that she herself recommended. Oh to have the mindset of a woman for just one day! I had to leave the date briefly to go the nearest Korean store and get some cash.

Again, the date wasn't bad. In fact it was rather good, and judging from her mandatory post date texts she had a good time as well. I especially liked how she mentioned she was 'surprised by me.' That is basically a judgement on my place of residence. I'm telling you, no one likes to date someone from the Jersey Shore - it's like admitting you have a case of non active herp on a first date. That's why I go to NY and Philly.

Despite the good time and the refreshing feeling of dating someone with one foot "in the clouds and one in the cubicle," I know this was just practice. I may try one more date to be sure, but we all know you can't fabricate chemistry, or that special feeling where you want to take her back to your place to recreate that scene from Fatal Attraction (it's a joke).

I can only hope that all this practice is for a reason. I hope when the big match comes I'm fully prepared.  In my final collegiate wrestling match I eked out a come from behind 4-3 win in front of my family and my girlfriend. It was one of only a handful of matches I won in college but it was definitely the most rewarding. It put everything in its place so to speak.  It justified years. I walked off the mat with no regrets, and thankful for everything wrestling brought me - even the practices. Maybe things will turn out like this in my love life- minus the sweaty guy I was laying on top of in spandex during the final seconds.