Online Dating Part 2

A good friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, read my blog and sent me a terrific email. So, I felt obliged to post it on my website, with her permission of course. I think the female perspective helps. Thanks, friend that shall remain nameless. Enjoy:

I was just complaining about the EXACT same thing to a friend of mine
yesterday, except with changing the word "ladies" with "guys."
Seriously. They ALL write the exact same thing. They all have a
sarcastic/dry sense of humor, like to travel, love their families and
friends, are up for going out or staying in ... They all like
intelligent women with a sense of humor who, you guessed it, like to
travel, are close to their family, and are up for going out or staying
in.

The picture section is even worse. I would like to send all guys on
that thing a list of what not to post.

Do not post

1) A picture of you in front of some European cathedral, to prove to
me that you like to travel, in which you are 2 centimeters big.
Everyone and their moms backpacked across Europe in their 20s, and
that cathedral looks like every other cathedral in Europe. And I
still have no idea what you look like, and that makes make me think
you don't want me to know.

2) (I know you did this, because you told me so, so forgive me) A
picture with your niece/nephew/daughter/son/random child to prove to
me you like kids. Yes, I get it. There are billions of these.

3) A picture of yourself without your shirt on. No. One dude who
winked at me was even lying down on a bed posing. In fact, there was
a SERIES of photos of him on/beside the bed without his shirt on. I
wish I was kidding. (Along with this is a picture of you with a
tank-top/muscle shirt on ... Guess what? Those went out in nineteen
eighty-something ... Wait, those were never in. You make me worry
that if I scroll down, you will be wearing zoobas.)

4) A picture of your dog/cat/fish/horse. I don't care.

5) A picture of cars you like. Seriously, don't do this. Some guy
who looked like a cross between Joe Piscopo and Rambo and winked at me
and had Ferraris in his photo section. No.

6) A picture with two buxom women on either arm. I cannot believe how
many guys do that. Is it to prove you could get women if you really
wanted to? That you're a ladies' man? It's even better when they
scratch out their faces in a very scary manner.

7) An outright bad photo. I know not everyone is photogenic. I, for
one, can't take a good picture to save my life. But there HAS to be
one better than some these guys post.

Anyway, to answer your question, the experience has been a big bust
for me. I'm glad I'm only signed up for a month. I am quite popular
with the out-of-state divorced 40-year-old father of 2. Oh, and
incredibly short dudes with no college degrees. The normal looking
guys I wink at want nothing to do with me, which really hasn't done
very good things to my self-esteem.

In conclusion, I am going to die alone.

Have a great day!

Online Dating Part 1

I’m going to make a confession: I dabble in online dating. Hey, there are millions of people doing it. Allow me to paraphrase what every loser writes on their page to justify being blatantly lonely enough to try this endeavor: “I just wasn’t meeting the quality of people I’m looking for in the bar scene.” How about, “I’m just so busy during the week, that I don’t have time to meet people.” Better yet, “I was holding out for a long time, but my friend has been begging me to sign up, and here I am.” Please accept any one of those horrible excuses, and we’ll simply move onto uncovering the embarrassing world that is online dating.
I’ve only been on 5 or 6 dates, and I’ve been signed up for over a year. I’m sure you’re thinking I’m being overly picky, but if you saw some of the women that email me, you’d understand. Sometimes I’d like to email back one of these unfortunate looking, young ladies and say, “I didn’t know Trolls really existed! Isn’t there a bridge you should be under right now, or do you get a wireless signal under your bridge.” Okay, so I don’t get the random emails from attractive ones, but I do find lots of pretty ones when I sort through the profiles. Pretty ones with anything INTERESTING to say in their profile, now that’s a different story. Allow me to list some boring elements that I guarantee a profile picked at random will have at least one of:

“I really like to travel” – I do too, but I can’t fucking afford it. I can love it all I want, but let’s face it; my salary only allows me to do so much. Well, hope she likes the Wisconsin Dells! I know a guy that can get us the best bench at Paul Bunyan’s, so we can share a romantic flapjack meal.

“My family and friends are very important to me” - I want the one that says she’s alienated and estranged from her family, and the split has to do with a horrific incident that she’s only able to talk about through hypnosis. It would be scary, but at least be interesting . . .

“I want a man that’s confident but not cocky” – You rarely come across the gal saying she’s looking for an arrogant prick of a man that picks a bunch of fights with strangers.

“I enjoy going out, but I also like staying in” - Doesn’t everyone love those two things? If you did just one or the other you’d either be a raging alcoholic or a hermit. I think we all strike that balance, honey.

I think the reason for the boring female profiles is that men are under the gun to be funny and witty all the time, and online dating is no exception. When I get an email or a wink (how nerdy is that) from someone, they are usually interested in the picture or something they found funny on the profile. I’m almost always interested solely in the picture, then I frantically skim through the profile for something mildly interesting to comment on, and if I don’t find it interesting, I fake it, like this, “Wow! I like to travel too, usually with my family, who is so very important to me. I love going out almost as much as I love to stay in, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s cocky men. Damn those cocky bastards . . .” Am I lying when I say these things? Of course I am. The whole world of online dating is based on lying, which I think will be the topic of my next blog. Stay tuned . . .

New Show Hits Close To Home But Still Manages to Kind of Suck

I was kind of excited to watch that new show Love Monkey with the guy from Ed, so I taped it and watched it today. Why in the world would I get excited about a new sit-com? Well, it’s supposed to be about a guy that drinks with his buddies, has a series of failed relationships with women, and he’s a huge music fan. How could I NOT watch that?

This show has been billed as Sex and the City for men. I see the connection because it has the same obsession with narrating the SHIT out of something instead of letting the characters tell the story. “And then it occurred to Miranda: She had hair EXACTLY like Ziggy Stardust.” Have you seen those episodes? I mean, I like Bowie as much as the next guy, but I have no desire to have sex in ANY city with a girl that looks like an androgynous, fictional, rock God character that David Bowie portrayed, “God-given ass” or not. I always loved that line . . . Wow that was a tangent.

I guess a rock music related rant like that is case in point why I’m like the guy in Love Monkey. However, if I am ever portrayed in a movie, PLEASE write a better show to highlight my dysfunctional rock music obsession. There is one scene when a girl breaks up with him and says, “If you love someone set them free,” and they cut to him and the narration says, “Did she just quote Sting?” If I were writing that scene she would have been walking away and he would have muttered to himself, “Wait, fucking Sting!!?” Then hollering to her, “Fucking Sting! You’re breaking up with me using a Sting song?! Do you want to give me one of his speeches now about the rain forests or the two-hour-long tantric sex he claims to have with his wife?” See, funny, and no narration necessary.

There’s a couple things I liked about the show. I liked that Brandon from 90210 got fat. It makes sense though because he plays the complacent brother-in-law/friend of The Guy from Ed. I’m too fricking lazy to look up the names of these actors in case you can’t tell. I didn’t, however, like how his other friend was the stereotypical, oversexed, black man type just like in 40-Year-Old Virgin. I liked a couple of the music references and how he values good taste in music in girls he meets, but I think that they will not be able to keep the music tie-in going into later episodes, and then we’re left with a mediocre sit-com. I get the sense that there was a good script in there somewhere that would have been really good had it been on HBO, but because it’s on CBS, everything is cutesy and the plotlines and characters are all neat and tidy.

You know what else I didn’t like? I hated that there was a young songwriter act that The Guy from Ed is trying to sign and he is claiming that he is a genius, yet he’s a poor man’s John Mayer, and in my estimation, that is PISS poor. Does anyone else think John Mayer blows? I think he plays guitar okay, but his vocals are weak and constricted like someone has a wrench around his throat. My stomach still hasn’t stopped churning at the “body is wonderland” line. Why not your body is Disney Land or your body is Six Flags Great America. Your fucking body is like the ride The Edge that fucking killed a few guys! Now THAT is a compliment the likes of which a chick would not get every day. Your body is like drinking a can of Jolt cola while riding The Edge, or whatever they called that ride at your local Six Flags.

This is when the overnarration in my little story would chime in and say, “So, that’s when he decided to END his crazy, ranting blog entry . . .”

Gancing

It occurred to me that I’m four entries into my blogspot and I’m yet to explain the title of the page. What is gancing you may ask? It is a term that a friend of mine came across somewhere, but while whatever publication it was coined the term, I believe my friends and I have perfected it, and indeed made it an art form.

Gancing is when two or more guys are dancing, essentially with each other, with no girls around. Hence, the “g” in the word stands for gay. Hold on, I’m not saying this is something that you see at a gay club. That’s a whole different animal. An animal which I don’t have as much knowledge about, and of course, the lack of knowledge does not stem from intolerance or fear, but just a lack of interest in hairy assholes, or guys assholes in general, regardless of hair. In any event, the type of dancing that gay men do, and they probably dance a hell of a lot better than my friends and I, is done with the intention of hooking up with his dance partner, while ours is to hook up with girls.

How does one hook up with girls by dancing with his male friends you may be asking yourself? It takes a lot of patience, but simply keep dancing with your friends as if you don’t have any interest in hooking up with girls. You are just there to dance and have a good time with your friends, which is what girls always say they are doing. That is bullshit and it’s bullshit when we do it, because of course in the back of our minds men and women want to meet someone, but the trick is to LOOK like you don’t. Then the women say, “Wow, would you look at those guys! They are so much fun!! I want to hang out with THEM!” What they won’t ever say is, “Hey, look at that brooding, depressed guy standing off to the side. I want to rock his world!!” Of course you can still be the brooding depressed guy on the inside, but the trick is projecting an image of a fun guy to the people around you.

Now a problem may arise if a girl thinks to herself, “Jeez, I don’t remember seeing this many openly gay men in this bar . . .” Now that’s a problem if they think that. I didn’t say this approach is fool proof, and I don’t as of yet have a solution for this particular dilemma. I have to say though, if you’re dancing well enough that girls think you are gay then you are gancing all WRONG! The gancer must say to the people around him, “I can’t dance for shit, but I don’t let that stop me from gancing the night away!!” You go from casual gancer to PROFESSIONAL gancer when you actually ARE having fun and are no longer feigning enthusiasm when you gance. This can be done through going out with the right people, the right blend of loud mouth soup, the right place, and most importantly, the right music. If you actually ARE feeling the song and having a good time, then your gancing is no longer a cheap ploy to get girls, it actually IS what you want to be doing at that time, and when this happens more girls believe that a dancing with your male friends is all you want to do. When you get in a groove like this just keep it going with the occasional survey of the room to look for pockets of girls who may be lancing (hmmm, that’s a new one) and especially you need to keep your eyes pealed for everyone’s favorite band of bad decision making lancers (the term is growing on me), the bachelorette party.

So, I say to the gancers of the world. Gance! Gance like you’ve never ganced before. Gance, damn it!