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  • Wikipedia Tunnels: Get to Know Yourself

    Wikipedia Tunnels: Get to Know Yourself

    Last year, my blood-brother Watty and I were discussing the layered indictment of free trade and class structure in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  Our roommate Goose was hopelessly confused.  Watty sighed and gave him a trademark quip: “If you really want to join the conversation, think about three levels up from wherever you are in your brain, and I’ll try to reach down and grab you, okay?”

    Goose shook his head and asked, “Where do you guys get this stuff?”

    Nick and I stared at each other dumbly.

    “I dunno,” I shrugged.  “Just from like, knowing things.”

    As much as I love that answer, it is a total sham, as most of my answers are.  The origin of our astounding “smartitude” comes from three sources:

    1. excellent parenting/grade school education
    2. reading the newspaper
    3. digging through Wikipedia Tunnels for recreation

    Wikipedia Tunnels are those strange gaps in space/time where you start out looking up Franz Kafka, and you wake up 3 hours later and there are 30 open tabs on the browser and you’re reading about Azura Class Warships from Star Trek Deep Space Nine.  Those missing hours are a haze of speed learning.  Some may consider this a waste.  Those people are as wrong as the Jem H’Adar were when they thought they could rebel against The Founders in Season 4.

    It’s an easy mistake to make.

    The real prize of Wikipedia Tunnels is that the material in general doesn’t matter.  The attitude of the tunneler does.  The easiest way to get the most out of this exercise is to remember that you are an assortment of combusting fractals and energy reacting with the fractals and energy around you — no separation between anything — but if that mindset is spiritually impossible, fear not.  [Much of that attitude comes from my history of being read A Wrinkle in Time before bed each night]

    An amateur tunneler can start, at the very least, by keeping in mind this question:  How does this information apply to me, my generation, and our current situation?

    BE CAREFUL

    Wikipedia’ing something like “the Pope” can be a mentally intense experience.  Truth is almost always extremely scary, and the most “serious” of issues generally look hideously ugly when inspected up close.  Entries on serious subjects are like hard drugs.  Look what they did to Julian Assange:  the whole WikiLeaks project is like Requiem for a Dream.  A captivating exploration of loss, deftly edited.  A eulogy for our grandfather’s American Idealism with painstaking honesty.  No happy endings.  For mature audiences only.

    So to be safe, start small.

    WIKIPEDIA YOUR CHILDHOOD SHOWS

    If you were like most children my age, you had at least one hour’s worth of TV time allowed to you everyday.  If you sat in on a lecture for an hour every day for a year, you probably learned something whether you wanted to or not.  Now’s a great time to freshen up on what shaped you.

    Rocco’s Modern Life

    Rocco was a chilled out wallaby.  He had an incredibly relaxed and optimistic outlook on life despite being surrounded by an urban dystopia run by the evil Conglom-O Corporation.

    Conglom-O Corporation is the biggest company in town; it even runs City Hall. […] Conglom-O does not seem to have a specific purpose or product–it is a giant company that manufactures many products. Conglom-O’s slogan is always shown beneath its name. The slogan is “We own you,” revealing in a later musical episode that they own everything in O-Town. When Ed Bighead was shown to work at Conglom-O in 1961, the slogan stated “We Will Own You” (alluding to the future of megacorporations).

    Rocco was a child of the 90’s, a first generation American learning to deal with the impact of the Regan-inspired ultra-capitalism.  The comedy was slap-stick potty-humor, but the situations were all based on real-life.  In fact, the creator, Joe Murray, often found himself baffled that his stories were interpreted as a kid’s show.

    In 1992, two months prior to the production of season 1 of Rocko’s Modern Life, Murray’s first wife committed suicide.[5] Murray had often blamed his wife’s suicide on the show being picked up. He said “It was always an awful connection because I look at Rocko as such a positive in my life.”[6] Murray felt that he had emotional and physical “unresolved issues” when he moved to Los Angeles. He describes the experience as like participating in “marathon with my pants around my ankles.” Murray initially believed that he would create one season, move back to the San Francisco Bay Area, and “clean up the loose ends I had left hanging.” Murray said that he felt surprised when Nickelodeon approved new seasons;[2] Nickelodeon renewed the series for its second season in December 1993.[7]

    Thank you, Mr. Murray, for pushing through and using your personal struggles to redeem yourself and entertain/enlighten an entire generation in the process.

    Duck Tales

    Yes, obviously, this was a show about fighting against the corporate greed and atavistic money hoarding of our parents and grandparents (or uncles)… and doing all this with the idealistic sureness of ducks who found solidarity in adventure as opposed to material goods.  But I know what stuck with you most.

    The series theme song was written by Mark Mueller,[4] an ASCAP award-winning pop music songwriter who also wrote the theme song toChip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers.[5] Episode background music was written by composer Ron Jones.[6] In contrast to how other composers were creating a “patronizing” and “cute” score for the show, Jones says he composed the music with regard to the audience and its intelligence.[7]

    The DuckTales Theme was sung by Jeff Pescetto. There are four different versions of the theme song. The original version contained one verse, chorus, bridge, and then chorus. A shorter version of the opening theme was used in The Disney Afternoon lineup with the line, “Everyday they’re out there making Duck Tales, woo-ooh,” taken out. A full-length version of the theme song was released on the Disney Afternoon soundtrack. The full version contains a second verse, and it includes a guitar solo, which is performed with a wah-wah pedal while making duck-like noises. It also has a fadeout ending, unlike the other versions. There is also a rare extended version that was used in the read along cassettes in 1987. It has a sequence order of verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-instrumental break-chorus.

    Woo-ooh!  This wasn’t kids stuff.  This was internationally groundbreaking television.

    In Hungary the term “DuckTales generation” (Kacsamesék generáció) refers to the people who were born in the early to mid-1980s, because the death of József Antall, the first democratically-elected Prime Minister of Hungary was announced during a DuckTales episode in 1993. This was the generation’s first encounter with politics.[10]

    How’s that for a legacy?

    Captain Planet

    Almost everyone I know watched Captain Planet.  And it’s elementary to deduce that we were being Inception-ed with the concept of environmental concern at a young age.  It’s no wonder our generation has held onto it well into our twenties.  Almost all the cartoons we watched in the early 90s had a strong green hue.  But did you know Captain Planet also taught us about AIDS awareness and fearmongering?

    “A Formula for Hate”

    The episode titled “A Formula for Hate” (1992) was unique for the series in that it did not deal with environmental pollution or destruction. It was also the first episode in an American children’s animated series to directly deal with the AIDS–HIV pandemic (and also the first to directly mention sex on a children’s show).[5] In the episode, Verminous Skumm brainwashes a local community into thinking the virus can be spread through casual contact, and thus causing people to hate and fear a young man, infected with HIV, named Todd (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris, with his mother voiced by Elizabeth Taylor).

    Notice the appearance by NPH (who was in the closet at the time, but still delivering a very important message for tolerance towards same-sex relationships).  This is heavy stuff.

    Bobby’s World

    We were getting educated through that little black box.  Some of the themes were hidden.  Some just came right out and said it.  We were forced to decide, at a young age, who to trust.

    Endings of the show also featured Mandel breaking the proverbial “fourth wall” by talking to viewers about the preceding episode. In some part of the episode, Bobby will break the fourth wall by telling the audience his perspective on life.

    This shaped me hugely.  I was an only child and would spend hours and hours everyday alone with my imagination.  I had a bike (not a tricycle like Bobby).  And I had a stuffed Eeyore (not a spider).  But otherwise, we were pretty similar.  Even though I never trusted Howie Mandel (and still don’t), I trusted Bobby.  So when he broke the fourth wall and addressed me directly, he was sowing the first seeds of my techno-psychosis while also delivering a strong moral lesson.

    But what moral lesson?

    17 “Nightmare on Bobby’s Street“ September 28, 1991
    Bobby is scared of a mysterious house until he meets the man who lives there. This episode parodies the movie To Kill a Mockingbird.

    This episode taught me about the perils of ignorance — how it can lead to fear, bigotry, and isolation.  On top of that, Howie Mandel brought me the themes of To Kill a Mockingbird when I was 6.  Thanks, man.  I could almost forgive you for Deal or No Deal now.

    Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey

    Ted Theodore Logan has always been one of my role models.  I watched this movie endlessly on premium movie channels after its release.  I wanted, desperately, to believe that if I followed my passion and tried to do good… I could save the world without turning into one of the incredibly lame people we usually put in charge of such things.  We all want to change the world – but I wanted to look like an idiot while I did it.

    And these “dummies” were enlightened.

    When Bill and Ted are asked “What is the meaning of life?” they reply with the lyrics from “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison.

    I don’t endorse Poison, but I do endorse those song lyrics as an acceptable answer for the meaning of life.  And the introduction course to time-travel paradoxes and philosophical worm-holing presented in the third act would come in very handy later in my life.  This Wikipedia entry also reminded me that I used to watch the Animated Series… which is currently embroiled in a fierce legal battle over ownership rights.  No DVDs anytime soon.

    —

    TAKE A BREAK FROM THE SELF

    You can learn wayyyy too much about yourself while you’re deep in a Wikipedia tunnel.  So when you get exhausted looking into the mirror, try looking through it.  There are many questions and topics to dissect. For instance:

    What are your immediate speculations as to the type of person who filled out the character bios for the environmentally conscious children’s animated series Biker Mice From Mars?

    Some of the information was harvested from various fan sites, but the person actually in charge of streamlining it — with journalistic ideology and unbiased integrity maintained — is an interesting subject for study.

    I, for one, am happy that a man with such triviatic knowledge was able to finally find an outlet where he could reach his target audience.  Imagine having such mundane tidbits of fact stuck in one’s head… They could eat you alive, those Biker Mice going to town on your frontal lobe.

    And what a service he provided while emptying his brain of all that “useless” information!

    I don’t know if your memory can reach back this far anymore, but do you remember how frustrating it was when you couldn’t remember an actor’s name in a movie?  I’m talking pre-IMDB.  It’s no wonder our parents are crazy.  Not being able to remember the eyepatch mouse’s name (Throttle) is enough to drive someone over the edge.  That feeling is excruciating.  How much would you have paid to make it stop?  Well, it’s free now.

    We’re a spoiled generation.

    This is why I’ve donated to Wikipedia multiple times in the past, and why I’ll continue to do so.  It’s the only organization that’s ever received any of my money.  It’s worth plenty just to keep it ad-free and out of the paws of those who would seek to manipulate the power of knowledge for their own twisted ends.

    And trust me, that day is coming.  Power corrupts.  Evil always takes over.  We own you. But the Good that’s there now, it can last a lifetime — if you download it into your brain.  So go on, get it while it’s free.  Find something random.  Look at it.  Then look closer.  Then extrapolate.  Then look back.  Now climb a few rungs up.  You will get dizzy.  You might even black out for 3 hours.  But when you wake up, you’ll have more than you went in with and you’ll be higher up the brain-ladder.  And then you’ll be able to reach down and help someone else climb up, too.

    Happy tunneling.

  • The Christmas Present (WTF!)

    The Christmas Present (WTF!)

                 The night I returned from Utah after my disastrous experience with Kenzie, I invited Nancy, 28, over for a “hang out.” I’d been seeing Nancy, a tall brunette with fake knockers, a couple nights a week in the three weeks before Christmas. We’d met on Match.com, and though she was sexy and mysterious at first, she introduced me to her nine-year-old son on our second date, raising 42 different red flags. I continued to see her anyway because she seemed genuine and sweet–and because she was good in bed, a sensual below-the-nutsack licker. Not to mention she had an amazingly yummy vagina–meaning it tasted like nothing. When it comes to pussy, the best flavor is no flavor. My mind can fill in the blank.

                  While we’re on the topic, I was curious to find out the correlation of a girl’s hotness and her vagina flavor, so I decided to input data of twenty girls (the first twenty that came to mind) I’ve gone down on. I forced myself to be as objective as possible. Please note: This graph only took into account looks, and even though I’ve hooked up with many more 4s and 5s, they don’t appear here because I was coherent enough that night to do the finger test. Or I’d already come to the understanding that I was hooking up with a beast and knew better (The “1” that appears I choose not to discuss*, and the “2” was the Mr. Rooney chick from my Euro trip when I ate the weed brownie–so the data is likely skewed for her. Because I’m such a lucky guy and things always work out for me, both 9.5s shown had average to below average tasting vaginas–lazy ass chicks couldn’t even douche their ham wallets.). Overall, there wasn’t much correlation in this sample–for you math geeks (me), the r coefficient was about 0.15. Take a look:

                Nancy was all done up, wearing more eyeliner than on our first date, as she walked through my door. I noticed she had some sort of mini duffel bag strapped over her shoulder.

                “What’s in the bag?” I asked.

                “Your Christmas present.”

                “Oh really?”

                Great. It was obviously lingerie, which I haven’t found sexy since the Pamela Anderson/Jenny McCarthy era. Maybe if I’d never seen Nancy naked, it’d be somewhat tantalizing. But an already-banged chick dressed in lingerie excites me about as much as MTV did when they constantly aired “The Grind” in the summer of ‘94–a show that will forever tarnish MTV’s past the same way slavery scars America. When it comes to undergarments, a new G-string is the extent of my arousal.

                I went down on Nancy for a solid ten minutes. Instead of saying standard things like “That feels so good” or “Don’t stop,” she repeatedly said in a childish voice, “You rock,” every time I came up for air. Gross. On paper it may seem cool, but in the heat of passion, it almost made me go limp. Chicks saying things “rock” make me think of Harley Davidson and feathered hair. I’ve had my share of these awkward sex talkers. One said mid-fuck, “I want to swallow your babies.” Another panted, “Alan can go fuck himself.” Who’s Alan!? Another exclaimed mid-blowjob, “Fuck! I forgot to Tevo Real Housewives!” If a girl doesn’t know proper sex talk, then they should shut their damn mouths.

                After we both agreed her time was up, it was my turn. She told me to lay down while she brought out her duffel bag. She removed what appeared to be an ipod and sunglasses from the bag. There had to be more. As she fiddled with the ipod, I couldn’t resist commenting, “Are we going rollerblading?”

                Still fiddling, she snickered and said, “No, it’s Mind Spa.”

                “Huh?”

                “You’ve never heard of it?”

                “Mind Spa? No,” I said, furrowing my brow. “This is my Christmas present?”

                “Trust me. It’s awesome.”

                Considering I was open to letting a girl lick my asshole that first time six years ago (a night I can only describe as “The Revolution”), I had to give this a shot.

                Nancy put the headphones on to check something, then put them on me. She handed me the glasses, but when I put them on something wasn’t right. I was expecting some sort of three-dimensional feature like in National Treasure. Instead, the glasses were flickering light in an epileptic frenzy. “There’s something wrong with these glasses,” I told her.

                “Is it too bright?” she said, ipod in hand. “I can turn the intensity down.”

                “Oh. It’s fine I guess.” Don’t knock it ‘til you try it, I thought.

                With my eyes now entering an intergalactic wormhole, suddenly music started blasting through my ears. I recognized the song immediately. It was that ATB song “Till I come,” one of the pioneering techno songs from the late nineties, where the only lyrics are “Till I come” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY81QFir2sw).

                I felt my pants being unbuckled and removed. Then kisses on my lower abdomen, finally landing on my dick. I cheated several times on the blowjob, removing the glasses to catch a glimpse of the lips-on-dick image. Then I put the glasses back on, pretended I wasn’t at a rave, and soaked in the new experience–like Sylvester Stallone had to do when he fucked Sandra Bullock via headset in Demolition Man.

                Just before I was about to bust–and have a brain seizure–Nancy stopped sucking, reached into her bag, and took out a condom (I didn’t see it, but I could sense it). Then she rolled the condom on, got on top of me, and started riding. I peeked out through the glasses and saw her smiling at me. “You can take off the glasses now,” she told me. I was still wondering why she hadn’t worn the glasses when I went down on her. What a hypocrite.  

                Having arrived back in Newport Beach, I began screwing Nancy fast and hard. Not surpringly, while on top with her back facing me, she stopped, turned to me and said, “I have an IUD in. It’s not hurting you, is it?” Limp dick.

                I’ve seen Nancy–headset free–a couple more times after that night, mostly for the sex and because I’d forgotten the term “Mind Spa,” which was imperative info in order to write this blog. Nancy explained that the purpose of Mind Spa is to rejuvenate the mind–either in the bath, during a workout, or for a deep relaxation session before bed. And also during blowjobs. Frighteningly, this stuff might be the future of sex and even porn. Would I do it again? Yes, but only with a clearance slip from a doctor. Either way, Judgment Day is nearing.

     *The “1” from the graph was a whale I hooked up with back in college. I haven’t told many people about it because I don’t remember much from that night, and because I was disgusted with myself. It was late after a fraternity party; I was four 40s deep; and she was…there. She refused to give me a blowjob unless I ate her out first. I accepted her proposition but only stayed down there for thirty seconds until I realized there were chewable particles in my mouth. She had pussy chips. The end.

  • My First Match.com Date

    My First Match.com Date

    I’ve decided to jump back into the world of online dating. I joined Match.com in hopes of finding the perfect : fun loving, adventurous, down to earth, easy going, outgoing, passionate about music, loves to go out but also enjoys staying in, sassy and smart, new-to-this-whole-online-dating-thing-and-still-thinks-it-weird-but-thought-she’d-give-it-a-try girl. I chose Match.com over some of the free alternatives like Plenty of Fish because I appreciate the commitment it takes to give out your credit card information and spend 25 bucks a month to find love.

     

    (more…)

  • My First Match.com Date

    My First Match.com Date

    (As you might guess I’ve been terrorizing the online dating world for some time, but I wrote this one a couple years ago after my first date.)

    A conversation: 

    Him: “Dude, I’m telling you…Match.com and Yahoo Personals is where it’s at.”

    Me:   “What? Explain.”

    Him: “Dude, no joke, I’ve fucked at least thirty girls from these sites.”

    Me: “Bullshit. Really? I mean, I’ve heard stories about this online shit, but nothing like that. Wow!”

    Him: “Yep–two or three dates maximum, and you’ll be hittin’ it.”

    Like any man with social skills, I had grown up thinking that any guy who had to resort to the Internet to find a date was either a suicidal schizoid or an ex Magic: The Gathering card game champion. And I had convinced myself that no hot girl would ever go to the Internet to find a man. I was wrong. The online dating revolution had started years ago, and I was missing the ride. So, I hopped aboard with the rest of the dating geeks and pierced the wacky realm of online dating.

    It started off slowly. I entered the website thinking I was God’s gift to cyberspace. Expecting an overwhelming response, I sent out hundreds of winks to any girl in Orange County who was an eight or above. Only two girls returned my wink: both were girls I almost didn’t wink at. To my dismay, only about twenty percent of the winked-at girls even looked at my profile (There is a sleazy feature that allows you to see who looks at your profile.).

    I specifically only went for girls aged twenty-seven to forty-five. Any girl younger than that was considered “Plan B.” I cut off the young girls for two reasons:

                1) They’d probably want a relationship, with feelings.

                2)  It would take at least four dates to fuck them, and they’d want feelings.

    Nothing wrong with feelings; I’d just rather use my feelings on a woman who actually understands her own. Even though I’m no stunning intellect, I refuse to tolerate most younger women because of their consistently unattractive traits: self-absorption, disrespect, carelessness, dishonesty, inexperience, naiveté, and materialism. That, and I don’t have the patience to go on a myriad of substance-less dates with a dopey hot chick just to finally attain a few minutes of sexual gratification in exchange for hours upon hours of hearing “Yes/No/Really?” answers and “I know, right?” confirmations and contrived attempts at sincerity. Anyone who does is working too hard for pussy. 
     
    At least with most older women, there is no bullshit. They understand what men want, and they give it to them if there’s something in it for them. No games. Less rules. More sex. As long as you are honest and don’t make them out to be a whore, stimulating sexual relationships blossom. This is the beauty of experience and age. Young girls are unable to understand that sex can be fun and meaningless at the same time. If I were to discuss this notion with them, they’d throw a hissy fit, call me an asshole, and say, “Well, I hope you find yourself a nice whore! Goodbye.” Then they’d storm off or slam the proverbial door. Fuck that.

    Either way, my winks weren’t working. I adjusted. I only displayed my seven sexiest photos, which ranged from me wearing bathing suits to business suits to club attire in order to portray my pictorial charisma. I changed my cocky profile to something more romantic, writing less about myself and more about “qualities of cool women,” which included girls who “smile,” “laugh for real,” “take risks,” “can handle sleeping bags,” “take adventures,” “care about loved ones,” and “cut losers,” among others. It was amazing how many girls would message me claiming they “have those traits.” I provided more information about my “hot spots,” which did not include Starbucks, and I changed my username from the trendy “OCguy37653422” to something more daring like “adventureguy789.” I ditched the winks and started sending teasing messages about one unique thing about their profile description or pictures. Suddenly, the messages began to pour in.

    I heard from a twenty-three-year-old blonde fitness instructor: “Math teacher, huh. I was never any good at math, but I made it through. Just wanted to say hi. Write back!”

    “Soooooooo I loved everything you wrote in your profile, but what’s wrong with bustiers?” was from a thirty-one-year-old Hispanic veterinarian.

    “Hey there. Got any crazy plans this weekend?” wrote a streaky-haired hairdresser with one too many photos of her cats.

    I did get bombarded with a few emails from girls with faces in the shape of a basketball, but there was one girl who distinctly stood out from the riffraff: Wendy, a sexy forty-year-old “searching for a man 26-42.” Her page displayed professional modeling photos of her in seductive positions on chairs, in white rooms, on a king-sized bed, and she was actually smiling in her pictures. After a few short messages back and forth, we agreed to hang out on a Sunday night at a local pool hall–her idea. I really didn’t care. As long as she wasn’t one of those coffee-date girls, I was happy. Just because that coffee place in the sitcom “Friends” looked happy and lighthearted didn’t mean coffeehouses were actually like that. Apparently delusions are acceptable to some girls. (Update: I’ve changed my mind about coffee houses. I’ve been on too many bad dinner dates lately and no longer feel like paying fifty bucks on a dead-end chick when I can be spending $2.50 on a tall frapaccino and ditching her in twenty minutes.)  

    I was scared. I had heard the horror stories–hot in her pics, disgusting in person. This would officially be my first online girl ever. And I know myself–I’m not the type to run away; if she turned out to be repulsive, I would have lived with my misfortune and stuck it out for an hour. Sadly, when it comes to non-sexual affairs, I am a follower of the “treat others as you’d want them to treat you” rule. I have my parents to thank for that.

    I entered the pool hall and the first thing I noticed about Wendy was her height. Since she had modeling pictures in her profile, I assumed she was probably at least five ten because every model in professional spreads mysteriously appears close to six feet. But when I saw a five-foot-two-inch blonde woman–with heels–in a sundress waving at me from across the bar, I was a bit surprised. Nothing wrong with a short girl, but it’s just strange how my mind skewed her appearance. Nevertheless, she looked just like her pictures: sexy.  

    Wendy destroyed me at pool. After a third consecutive thrashing (I tried really hard to beat her after the second loss, but her pool skills were well-refined), we sat down at a table and talked. Even though we were having a stimulating conversation, suddenly I felt strange, as my subconscious reminded me: “Dave, you found this chick on the fucking Internet. She’s probably not that cool.”

    Other than that, everything was going well. The conversation sparkled, the questions volleyed back and forth at a fair rate, and she cleverly threw me sexual innuendos. After one shot in which she pocketed two balls, she looked at me, smiled, and said, “I’m good at that.” But I was most impressed by her dating stories. Experience from dating online guys for months by then, she told me she got hundreds of winks and messages a week; she didn’t even read them all. If the guy wasn’t appealing in his photo, she’d skip to the next one. I was flattered when she said, “Yeah, you were hot, and, I don’t know, you seemed confident.” For a moment I felt like I had beaten out all the douchebags. Deep down, however, I knew she had probably fucked dozens of those guys.

    As a goodbye, she made out with me. Mid-make-out we briefly discussed our next meeting. She taught grad school on weeknights, so we wouldn’t be able to hang out again until the following weekend.

    That night, I went home and masturbated to a milf porno.

    The ensuing week, we texted back and forth, making plans for that Saturday. When Saturday arrived, I was all business. There would be no beating around bushes. The situation felt like I was strategizing for a mind-wrenching game of chess. We had already made out, so if there wasn’t any progress, I would be indirectly communicating to her that I wanted something serious. The phone conversation was critical. After talking about our days and settling on a time, I made my move.

                   Me: “You want me to pick you up?”

                   Her: “Ummmmmm.”

                   Me: “It’s no big deal. I don’t mind driving.”

                   Her: “Ummmm.”

                   Me: “If not, it’s cool.”

                   Her: “No, it’s fine.”

                   Me: “OK, what’s the address? I’ll MapQuest it.”

                   Her: “Can I pick the restaurant?’

                   Me: “Sure.”

    She can have a bishop, but I’m taking the queen. Picking her up meant we’d end up at her place drinking beer or wine or champagne. She wouldn’t be able to resist me. Sex would surely follow.

    Our dinner conversation was abominable. Apparently Wendy had an obsession with boats. She couldn’t stop talking about them: Catamarans, Dinghies, Houseboats, Motorboats, Pirogues, Sailboats, Schooners, Skiffs, Yachts, on and on and on. I tried to be an active listener, nodding my head and keeping eye contact, but my smile had faded. I ate my pasta quick and messy. I had food all over my face, but I didn’t care. Twice she motioned her hand to her face to indicate I had food on my cheek. I wiped it off impatiently. This dinner had to end.

    After dinner it got worse. The restaurant was also a bar, and there was a dance floor. They were playing 80s music; she wanted to dance, but I didn’t. I used my favorite excuse, “I can’t dance to this music.” She couldn’t protest, it’s understandable, and I won’t get judged on the-way-a-guy-dances-is-an-indicator-of-how-they-are-in-bed theory, thus preserving my mystique. 

    She begged incessantly. Luckily, I ran into an old flag football acquaintance I knew from college. When she asked if it was okay if she danced with him, I exclaimed,“Yeah, of course!” Anything to stop the pleading. Even if it might cost me sex, I’m not dancing to Cyndi Lauper’s “Goonies” song.  
     

    I relaxed on a barstool, babysitting the last few sips of my no-longer-cold beer. After two songs, she excitedly ran up to me. “Okay,” she panted, “we can go now.” I smiled, took her hand, and we took off.

    Her house had boating paraphernalia everywhere–books, paintings, models. Then came the moment of the night.

     Me: “Do you own a boat?”
     Her: “No.”

    There are some things in life I will never understand. This girl was one of them. She had a huge house and six-figure salary, yet wouldn’t indulge in her one true passion. That’s like being obsessed with porn but never jerking off.

                 I forgot about her contradictions when she brought us two glasses of champagne, and we made out on the couch.
                 I took her top off, exposing her fake breasts, of course.
                 I sucked on them.
                 We made out more.
                 I suggested we go to her room.
                 She said, “Do you really want to? I don’t do one-night-stands.”
                 “Me neither,” I lied.
                 “If you sleep with me once, you have to come back a second time.”
                 “Duh,” I lied.
                 We went to her room.
                 Then we fucked.

                  Checkmate.

    As we lay in each other’s arms, she admitted that she “knew” I wanted sex. I asked her how she knew. She said, “I knew when you asked to pick me up. It was obvious. But I figured, well, that could be fun.” I love older women.

    Despite her positive attitude, there would be no second go-round with this girl. While she was honest with her sexuality, the nautical dinner conversation killed her mental allure.

    Engulfed in the online dating world, I am currently sifting through a daily dose of online women, lining up dates when convenient. Wendy was my first, but cyberspace is infinite. I am now officially an online predator.

     

  • No Bliss First Kiss

    No Bliss First Kiss

    May we please skip the first kiss?

    I’m awkward.  Yesterday, I tried teaching my sister table etiquette while at an upscale dinner fundraiser with Los Angeles elite fluttering around every corner.  While explaining proper fork grippage, my knife plummeted toward my chest in fury and stabbed my purple satin dress with crème fraiche.

    I inadvertently create awkward situations and a few years ago, while experiencing the new world of singlehood, I crafted a hefty collection of goofed up stories…primarily during first kisses.

    Bamboozled Smooch

    I don’t like bringing booze to a person’s house because it runs the risk of there being more for me to drink and more embarrassing moments to happen. Instead, I peruse the local bakery and purchase something sweet, like for this occasion- Monday Night Football at a boy’s house.  I brought a variety of Sprinkles cupcakes (a delightfully popular cupcakery that’s hype and expectations are met with every crumb and morsel wrapped in its paper).  Football and cupcakes…exactly.  I’m awkward.

    When I arrived late, after an excruciatingly frustrating commute in Los Angeles traffic, I wished I brought vodka and not the dumb cupcakes. For the first time in a long time I had a one-on-one at a boy’s house and between that and the drive, I desperately needed something to ease the anxiety. And a normally appropriate gift of Pinot Noir would NOT have worked fast enough.

    He opened the door and I did a little dip and said, “I come bearing gifts.”   I showed the dainty box of treats and the bewildered look on his face sent a jolt through my body. Diabetes? Allergies? Bad memory of an ex who used to work at Sprinkles? Vegan?  He turned his back without saying a word, leaving me, red velvet, peanut butter, chocolate chocolate and vanilla behind. He walked to the kitchen and revealed a box of cupcakes that HE had bought for the occasion. We now had six cupcakes and a promising future in the palm of both of our hands.

    The football game had run half of its course by the time we acquainted ourselves and sat on the couch. Due to my anxiety, my appetite had died, but I didn’t want to seem like an anorexic so I did the opposite and shoved my face with the Asian soiree that he spread on the coffee table.  I made it through the eating portion of the night with just a little bit of soy sauce on my shirt and a chocolate sprinkle in my tooth. When the game concluded, we presented ourselves with the “Now what?” moment. We weren’t ready for the big kiss, I mean, I wasn’t. I had my legs and arms crossed on the opposite side of the couch and for some reason, I couldn’t find my chapstick. My lips had no right kissing anyone in their condition and with each sip of my night’s painkiller of choice (the wine HE provided) they became redder and drier. I had to switch to water and for the life of me and my future, I HAD to find my chapstick.

    I switched to water (I eventually needed to drive home) and suggested watching Sweeney Todd (to kill time). I bragged that I saw it on Broadway and I’m cultured and well-traveled and love to cook, because all of this is relevant..right? Well, until I found my chapstick, you better believe it!!!

    Then the movie ended and we watched the “Nigthman Cometh” episode of the show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia four times (the second, third and forth time per my nerve’s request). After that completion, he scurried upstairs, promising a quick return.  He returned and cuddled up next to me with fresh minty breath. ugh! Colgate vs. Dried Up Rainbow Roll.

    We snuggled for a second as I made small talk, avoiding the obvious. “You know, we should make red velvet cupcakes out of human blood …like a spin off of Sweeney Todd! No?..”

    Finally, he shut me up with his lips- pulling me in, tilting my head and pressing his soft mint clouds onto mine, both chapped and salty. He took it slow, half mouth kiss while I forcefully tried to slip in some tongue (not because I wanted to french him, but because his slowness made me anxious). He didn’t want any of that though, he only smooched delicately, one after the other. Minute after minute. No tongue, no frisky business.  It felt like a handshake of the lips, “Peace be with you”.

    After my self-provoked confusing kiss sesh, I proceeded to the door, some how securing another date. Goodness gracious the kiss seemed so bland and friendly.

    Birthday Kiss
    Some girlfriends and I walked into the very trendy Roosevelt Hotel a few years ago sometime in December.  I noticed that everyone adorned themselves in black except for me, the spring chicken- naive, confused, wearing a pink slip dress in the dead of winter. The mood of the patrons reflected their attire; I quickly became bored and couldn’t wait to leave. Until…

    He, the 6’4″dapper goofy charm king summoned me with googly eyes. I approached him with a collective swagger that somehow overpowered my intense inebriation. We instantly hit it off, and soon exchanged contact information and details for his birthday party the next day.

    “You need to be there,” he coyly pleaded.  “My birthday will be a bust without your presence.”

    “I already have plans, but I will see if I can switch them around,” I slyly lied, acting partially unavailable.  The fact is I had never been more available and began counting down the minutes.

    When I arrived the next evening, the party boy beamed with a smile so big it almost knocked me down.  He continued the night by showering me with a cluster fuck of ideas and sentiments that would ultimately bewilder me: He introduced me to his friends as his future girlfriend, told me our common interests made us a perfect pair, and basically promised me the world.

    He desperately wanted me to be his “birthday snuggle.” As much as that sounded fun, I knew what “snuggle” meant and I pride myself on my sacred hoohoo so I talked him into a “birthday kiss” instead. As I left, he walked me to valet and we engaged in our first kiss- think lips meet mustard bottle. For some reason, I took him as a mustard bottle: him open and ready while I anticipated a sour sloppy mess—reluctantly opening my mouth for a taste…I think I might’ve been squinting too, not closing my eyes, but squinting.

    “You kiss like a friend,” he sourly admitted.

    I succussfully denied him a birthday fuck for a friend kiss. Poor guy.

    That explains the confusion of cupcake kiss…I’m the worst first kisser ever.

    Pity Pat

    I met a short man at a networking event.  We bickered about our residential preferences- I love the Westside and he loves Hollywood.  At the time, I lived in Santa Monica.  For the few weeks that followed we dined at fancy restaurants and thoroughly enjoyed each other’s complete opposite interests.  We hadn’t kissed because I was not attracted to him.

    On date four, I met him at his place and he took me to Harold and Maude at a the ArcLight- a brilliant idea/experience.  I sat next to him fidgety, not wanting to hold his hand.  He didn’t try, so I didn’t try.

    We grabbed a bite to eat at a nearby place I had never been to, Jones Café.  I pointed out my friend’s apartment on the way and told him I would be staying there that night because I had to work close in the morning and didn’t want to commute.

    “There’s a ‘for rent’ sign on the building!  You should move there!”

    “It’s HOLLYWOOD! Never!!!”  I lied again, knowing secretly about the charm of the building and the vacant apartment that I had already considered moving into.

    “You should just give it a try, you live once.”

    After eating at Jones and falling in love with it, I realized that I really wanted that apartment and that restaurant/bar/café as my corner bar.  I kept that to myself and quickly remembered, “we are now driving to his place…he will kiss me, I know it…I can’t deny it…he’s too nice…and picks perfect dates…”

    He gave me the grand tour of his beautiful home that stood regally on the hill overlooking the twinkling lights and stars of Hollywood- Santa Monica at a verrrry far distance.  He led me to his downstairs and showed me photography from his travels; I looked while keeping my arms crossed.  He offered me a drink and I kindly declined, and excused myself to the restroom.  I slapped my face and tried to pull it together; I felt awful because I still did not want to kiss him.

    After returning to his presence I explained that I had a long day ahead of me and needed to return to the Jones area for my night of rest.

    “That is fine.  I’ll walk you to your car.”

    Ok…so the kiss will happen outside…by my car.  A quick exit.

    “Well, thanks again.  I really enjoyed myself. You think of the best ideas.  And dinner was great too.  What a nice café.  And you know everyone.  I want to know everyone at a bar sometime.  Like Cheers, ya know?  What a fun thing.  They know your order…”

    “Yes, I do.” He interrupted me and pulled me in for a kiss.  A tender kiss to the lips- both sweet and kind.

    I couldn’t take it.  My heart did not want to return the kiss.

    Which meant I had to stop.

    I pulled away slowly and gazed into his eyes while my arms and hands instinctively rose up towards his biceps and above.  I smiled at him innocently and patted him on his shoulders.

    “Thank you.  You’re nice.”

    He led me to my car and bid me farewell.  I cried the whole way back to my friend’s apartment…Such a gentle man deserves more than a pat, and that’s all I could give.

    I never heard from him after that and I moved into the vacant Hollywood apartment two weeks later, making Jones Café my corner bar, my cheers.

    Clearly, at age 27 I am still not a proficient first kisser.  But I guess the thrill of the first kiss is receiving a unique hint that leads you to what lies within, lies beneath, lies beyond the lips.  For me, it is an awkward gal that will inevitably and endearingly break your water glass while stretching, fall on the stairs with the shoes you helped pick out, or smack your face during a flirty twirl.

    Please know, however, that all the wounds I accidentally cause will always be carefully mended with a kiss…after the first one, I promise they get better…

    MUAH!

    …and Happy Valentine’s Day, suckers!

  • Music Snobbery: A Reason to Live

    Music Snobbery: A Reason to Live

    I met Christine at a bar.  She had an MFA in journalism, and was currently interning for Rolling stone.  She said Lady Gaga was “a genius”.

    My hand involuntarily reached for the Beretta tucked in the back of my pants, but I stopped myself.

    No, not here.

    People have asked me before what my goal in life is.  The answer is simple.  My goal is to not kill myself.  This is not an easy task.  Music helps.  People like Christine do not.  It’s a tough choice, Sophie-from-Schindler’s-List-Style, as to whether Christine or I deserved the single bullet in that metaphorical Beretta chamber.

    Get me my chalkboard, let’s dig in.

    So, it’s 2011, and we’re squarely in the middle of the electronic music generation.  It’s a perfect fit.  We structure our jobs, our relationships, our governments, and our recreation with our technology… why not our music?  Those who say that electronic music has no soul are the same people who bought Passion Pit CDs.  They’re not wrong, they’re just slow — and working with what they know.

    “I think, fundamentally, music is something inherently people love and need and relate to, and a lot of what’s out right now feels like McDonalds. It’s quick-fix. You kind of have a stomachache afterwards.”

    – Trent Reznor, Salt Lake Tribune Interview (29 September 2005)

    Electronic music has given us not only a new genre, but a rapidly expanding and splintering one.  The popular consensus of those “in the know” is that it’s growing faster than we can name it.  That’s fast. And in the clusterfuck confusion, a lot of people are getting credit for copying off of other people’s tests.  Not chill.  Let’s dish out some credit where it’s due.

    “Ideas are like fish.  If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.  Down deep the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”

    – David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish (2007)

    Kraftwerk is the granddaddy of the scene.  These men, we’ve learned, were visitors from the future in 1978 (with their seventh record, The Man Machine) when they basically invented house music.

    Kraftwerk – Minimum/Maximum

    They saw it coming.  Even down to the theme of “Man/Machine”.  And yet, they are barely now getting recognition for what they started.  When Daft Punk pirated the entire concept of Kraftwerk, watered it down to make it more socially acceptable, and then added some bounce to attract 12 year olds… it still needed the help of Kanye West in “Faster Stronger”.  Finally, in that unholy year of 2007, people praised Kanye and Daft Punk for introducing something “new”… 30 years after it had been done much more intelligently.

    Aphex Twin was basically Nostradamus in 1999 when he released “Windowlicker” — the title, the sound, the progression, the video… it all paints a portrait of the genre’s future.

    Aphex Twin – Windowlicker

    It starts out as a sexy 4/4 dance beat, as innocuous as the thousands of other club anthems of the late 90s … harmless, saccharine, playful…   just a few cross-dressing or transgender people looking to have a good time, the envy of the gangsters in the worn out classic vehicle… hey I wish we could get in on that shit… then it begins to break down… glitch, trip, switch time signatures… until finally, it rumbles into dark, dark territory with an ugly side… before finally crushing under its own weight and delivering a disturbing view of the face behind the dance… and the audience is forced to sit in silence and wonder if what they just saw and heard was a joke, or serious.  And as the years tick by on our digital calendars, the more we realize how serious he was.

    There’s enough depth in a 30 second clip of an Aphex Twin or Kraftwerk song to sustain the entire career of one stagnant (and rich) musician — and the evidence is all around you.  But they weren’t satisfied with 30 seconds.  They went all the way. They were over 25 years ahead of the curve… we’re only now catching on to everything they were trying to say back then.  Maybe that’s why their newer stuff has sounded so shitty.  We’re cavemen staring at a TV set.  What the hell is this?

    “I want it to be all back together again; I want to go out to a club and listen to all different types, not just one specialist type.”

    –  Richard D. James

    Do you remember how frustrating it was in grade school when you knew the answer to a teacher’s question, raised your hand, and she still wouldn’t call on you?  Now imagine holding your hand up for 25 years until Ke$ha blurts out a poorly worded, watered down, annoying-sounding version of your answer.  And then gets awards and millions of dollars for it.

    She won’t be the first.  Kanye did it with his song “Runaway” by copying a 5 year old sound, almost note for note, and turning it into a slamming hit.  Look at him pushing boundaries! And if that’s frustrating for me, it surely must be frustrating for the old pioneers.  Some Christines of the world will say, “Oh, don’t blame Kanye, he just took something out there and made it better.  Facebook did it to Friendster.  Google did it to Yahoo.   He brought it to the mainstream.  It’s the American Way.”

    Now that’s not only a sad comparison, but it’s a dumb one, because in business, the 2nd generation generally improves on the last.  This isn’t the case with music.  Britney Spears, for example, who hired a one-dimensional, second-rate dubstep DJ, Rusko, to produce her new album, is vastly dumbing down the pioneers of new sound.  Maybe there’s merit in that.  Perhaps people “aren’t ready” to hear something new.  Their heads may explode.  She’s bridging the gap, making sure the 12 year olds are safely on their way to avant-electronica, instead of dangerously jumping in to someone like Burial who might make them realize that mainstream artists created in a boardroom are, in fact, talentless hacks designed to pickpocket naïve children.

    But more likely, there is no merit in that.  It may in fact be entirely evil.  She’s slowing us down as a species.  If she’s going to “do us a favor” and bring something to the mainstream, why leave the real beauty of it hidden?  If someone’s head is going to explode, let it explode.  Darwin would be proud.

    People say to me, “Oh, Bill, leave them alone.  They’re so good, and so clean-cut, and they’re such a good image for the children.”  Fuck that! When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children?  I want my children listening to people who fucking rocked!  I don’t care if they died in pools of their own vomit!  I want someone who plays from his fucking heart! “Mommy, the man Bill told me to listen to has a blood bubble on his nose.”  SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO HIM PLAY.

    –  Bill Hicks, on the topic of New Kids on the Block, George Michael, Madonna, et al.

    It’s the way of the world.  The true geniuses usually go on to generate a fiercely loyal, but small, fan base… and then the locusts come in, steal the idea, make things worse, and collect awards on stage while wearing suits of stitched-together hundred dollar bills… hundred dollar bills which were earned by suing teens who shared their ripped-off watered-down music online.  And there will be no time for these copycat thugs to say thank you, they’ll be too busy counting “Most Innovative Artist” awards.

    I don’t know why things are this way.  It may have something to do with our abysmal education system.  In an increasingly experimental artistic field, it can be difficult to immediately determine who is actually talented and who is just fucking around.

    The best argument for liking a song is “it sounds good to me.”  That’s an absolutely acceptable answer.  But it’s no qualification for “genius”.

    “You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it’s really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.”

    – Stanley Kubrick, Newsweek (26 May 1980)

    A true work of genius, in my opinion, can appeal to a wide audience.  And it can give each subsection of that audience something different.  It can insert clever messages and show-off-moves that non-experts won’t see.  And it can speak to the man who just happens to stumble across it in a car commercial.  All shapes and sizes.

    And at the same time, a work of genius has to provide much more with each listen.

    I mean, I read Catcher in the Rye when I was 14.  Then I read it at 18.  Then 22.  Let me tell you, it was a completely fucking different book each time.  And each time, it was sensational.  Who knows what I’ll see there at 26?

    The more I hear Lady GaGa, the more I see her watered down version of the FameHateLove act perverted from the thousand of times it’s been done before, and her songs begin to fall into the predictable chord progressions of sugary disco — and it makes me physically nauseous when I think about young girls with her posters on the wall.

    “I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes.”

    –  Hunter Thompson, in a speech to the University of Colorado Student Union

    We have to look back, in order to see the genius that we missed.  The answers are there.  And they aren’t going to be spoonfed to us.

    And we shouldn’t need them to be.  It’s sad that this needs to be said.  But tracing the source of things helps you understand their true value.  Without studying the history of a genre, a voice, or an ideology, we can fall for some pretty nasty tricks.

    “I don’t want anybody to have the spotlight but me.  Don’t share.”

    –  Lady Gaga, March 30th, 2010

    If these artists were saints, they’d say, don’t worship me, worship my creators (my fathers, my influences), and rejoice in the music (the eternal, the holy spirit).  But even Christ couldn’t get that one right, because he decided he was God half way through the New Testament.  Fame can really mess a person up.

    What I’m starting to understand, what the very best understood years ago, is that it’s not the artists/politicians/singers/writers/messiahs responsibility to deliver the blueprints to their work.

    It’s our responsibility to find them.  Checks and balances.  In a freemarket of artistic ideas and creative thought, it’s up to us, the fans, to set them straight.

    And I think we should do it at the top of our lungs.

    I guess that makes me a snob.  I don’t want to be.  The minute you say you like your usual stuff more than stuff you haven’t really listened to, you start to sound like you stopped reading books before you got to Green Eggs and Ham.

    “I actually don’t read anything, because I feel like the haters really like to hate out loud, [and] that people who love sometimes love quietly. So I don’t really listen or look at anything. [But] in general, f— the cynics. Go be cynical … I’m having a good time. Like, who would you rather hang out with? That cynical dude or, like, me with my laser beams?”

    – Ke$ha, Entertainment Weekly

    I have no laser beams.  I don’t care what you hate and what you love.  But I’ll take the title of cynical snob over the title of thieving ignoramus if I have to.

    Because spreading awareness for the saints who slipped through the cracks is better than becoming fan #4,005,288,179 of a plastic person.  Because some people are trying to trick those who are less aware.  Because others are trying to shed some light but they’re getting buried in bullshit.  Because I know the tremendous pain of sitting with a hand up, knowing an answer, and watching idiots get called on left and right.  So if I can’t get called on, I’m at least going to try and get my friends and heroes called on, because I know they’re going to call on some other awesome people, too.

    And there are so many, it could take a lifetime to list them all.

    “If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
    THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
    FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
    WAS MUSIC.”

    –  Kurt Vonnegut, “Vonnegut’s Blues For America” Sunday Herald (7 January 2006)

    It’s enough to keep me from pulling the trigger.

    Happy digging.

  • The Sex God

    The Sex God

    A couple years back, my struggling buddy Napolean began getting all into pick-up literature. His methods with women weren’t rendering any results, so he hit amazon.com, and he hit it hard. Every new conversation we had brought news of a new book he’d just read and how he was already applying his new methods “in the field.” I’d read a couple books on the topic, but since I was doing fine for myself as a slithery salamander I didn’t feel the need to invest any more time learning about new pick-up techniques. Napolean sent me these audio interviews called “David DeAngelo’s Interviews With Dating Gurus,” so I uploaded them onto my Ipod and played a few during my drives to work, which was better than listening to the Black Eyed Peas-infested radio.

    With the exception of a handful of interviewees, every “dating guru” sounded like a total dork, including David DeAngelo (who claims that one time he put an “L” on his forehead and mouthed the words “loser” to a girl, and she found him attractive). What gave these guys “expert” status made no sense to me. I will admit, however, that there was some interesting stuff on there. One of the gurus described a tactic in which he’d program his phone number under the name “Sex God” into girls’ phones. Though it’d been over a year since I heard that particular interview, while talking with a hefty 31-year-old blonde at Woody’s, I applied the technique hoping all that time spent in the car listening to these hopeless bozos would yield some results.

    Her name was Pam. She was an inverted Butterface, so instead of having a hot body and ugly face, Pam had a hot face and ugly body. When I asked my buddy Axe if there was a name for that, his response was: “Fat.” Fair enough.

    Pam was on her way out as I punched in my plagiarized cell phone name. A half hour later I began texting her:

    Sex God: “Where’d you go?”
    Pam: “WTF!!! Who is this!!!”
    Sex God: “This is the Sex God, duh. Your lame friends just dragged you out of here. We’re gonna need to hang out asap.”
    Pam: “HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! I’m at the Blue Beat!!! Come over!!!!!!”
    Sex God: “Cool. After I finish my beer.”

    I turned in an 0-fer at Woody’s, so I strolled over to Blue Beat sometime after 1 a.m., drunk and horny. I found Pam making movements on the dance floor in a swashbuckling mess, limbs flailing everywhere. I made the mistake of letting her see me while she was dancing, and she stomped over and plucked me like a Jurassic predator. While grinding on me, she planted a wet beer kiss all over the lower hemisphere of my face. Then her friends grabbed her for last call, leaving me standing stupidly on the dance floor, still unmoved since being seized, but now with beer-saliva on my face. I called it a night and went home to masturbate.

    I texted Pam the following evening with a basic “Holy crap.” I could tell the “Sex God” thing had already seduced her, so I doubt it really mattered what I texted. Two texts later she invited me over.

    It was a five-minute drive to her house, which she owned, yet she’d been unemployed for over a year. I later learned she used to be a scuba instructor or something, but was now spending time “finding herself,” which apparently meant eating KFC everyday and drinking five nights a week.

    When I arrived, Pam and one of her unattractive friends were in the kitchen eating chips and salsa. I noticed one of the kitchen walls was a gargantuan painting of a chef. The chef literally was the wall, constantly reminding Pam to keep eating. “So you’re the Sex God?” her friend asked.
    I smiled at Pam. “Geez, Pam. You’re such a blabbermouth.”

    Pam laughed. “I know. It was just too funny,” she said between bites. “But you know? It probably wasn’t a good idea to say that because now you have a lot to live up to.”

    “Oh, I know,” I fired back.

    “I mean, you’ve really set yourself up for failure,” Pam continued, her eyes dilated.

    “I don’t know about that.” I opened the fridge. “Will you drink a beer with me?”

    “Of course.”

    Her friend took off moments later, and Pam and I migrated to the couch. After she tried getting to know me and crap, we went upstairs, flopped on the bed, and made out. She’d been drinking earlier that day, so every kiss had a hint of booze in it.

    I tried taking her clothes off, but she was being stingy, saying things like, “What about you? You first.” In the end, I was naked and she was in a tank top and soccer shorts. It wasn’t a fair exchange, but I figured only good things could happen if I was naked. As I lay on my back, Pam began caressing me all over. The caressing turned to a barrage of tickles–on my feet, arms, sides, neck, and legs. Because I’m abnormally ticklish, I began squirming like a little girl. My squirming sent Pam into a frenzy, and she began laughing like a maniac. She suggested handcuffs, which I immediately dismissed. As a compromise she put my arms back. With my legs spread, my body was now in a vulnerable X shape, making me look like the Vitruvian Man.

    Pam went ballistic, tickling me slow then fast, and laughing normally then crazily. She’d been tickle-torturing me for thirty minutes without ever touching my penis. “I could do this all night,” she told me. “I’m kinda sadistic.” Since the tickling felt good at times, I let her go at it, taking the pain in stride, faking enthusiasm and paying my dues for an eventual copulation.

    She finally began stroking my dick, but then returned to the tickling for another five minutes. Back and forth for another hour. I began to wonder if my dick would ever get wet, but then I remembered she was over the age of 25, which kept me at ease. It seemed every squirmy reaction from me made her cream. If anyone knows the sexual term describing the tickle-torture fetish, contact me. Even in all my porn watching, I had yet to see any video that involved tickling.

    The tickling intervals eventually became shorter and all her attention focused on my dick–stroking then sucking. Finally. I got her naked and feasted on her triple D fake tits. After I slipped on the condom she said, “Sex God, huh? We’ll see about that.”

    Due to her softball-player body size, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to begin plowing. A blowjob with a happy ending would have sufficed, but I guess I had to live up to my name. I slipped my condom-covered hard-on into her moist cave.

    Things were going fine at first, but then everything started smelling. Badly. It was as if her pussy had eaten an order of spicy tuna rolls, and then let out The World’s Nastiest Queef. Within seconds, my wiener went soft serve, and I slowed down my thrusts like a puttering ’57 Chevy.

    After I’d come to a complete halt, she looked into my eyes, dejected.
    I spoke. “Sorry, uh, all that tickling wore me out.”

    She looked away. “Yeah.”

    I rolled off her and faked a giant sigh as if I was exhausted.
    “Long day, huh?” Pam asked.

    “Big time,” I said. “I think I’m still hungover from last night.” This was a lie of course, but I had to say something.

    After “resting,” I took my condom off, laid in the Vitruvian Man position, and let Pam tickle me again to satisfy her sadism, eventually busting in her mouth. She swallowed because I told her it was “unsexy” for girls to not swallow (which is true). I left shortly after, leaving Pam to ponder the disappointment my Sex Peasant status. Maybe if she douched beforehand, I could have given it to her good. I think girls should meet once a month to inspect each other–make sure it doesn’t smell down there, shave off that patch of hair on their ass, etc. Then I could have been a real Sex God. Instead, all I have is a stinky excuse for going soft.

    Epilogue

    A month later, while drunk at Woody’s again, I ran into Pam. We said a few words and introduced each other to our friends, and then she took off. After turning in another 0-fer, I texted Pam (plan Z). She’d apparently taken a liking to my buddy Punchline and stealthily offered us a threesome at her place. Punchline took off, and when I told her it was just me coming over, she said, “Oh, OK.” I went over to her place, let her tickle me, and then she sucked me off. She never took her underwear off probably because either she was on her period or because she was self-conscious about the spicy tuna smell.

    Since I’d cabbed it there, I spent the night. Sometime around seven in the morning I woke up with a furious case of morning wood. And I had to pee. I went to her bathroom and made a frantic attempt at urinating, but I was lazy with my boner-peeing and pissed all over the place. Because I’m such a great guy, I tried to wipe it up using toilet paper, but I’d put money on it that in 24 hours, yellow-orange crustiness began mysteriously sprouting on the peripheries of Pam’s toilet. I went back to bed for an hour, and then she drove me home. I doubt Pam will be contacting the “Sex God” anytime soon.

  • The Fairer Sex

    The Fairer Sex

    It’s a cold world for a bachelor.  Nothing makes sense.  Our expectations have been spoiled by cinema and literature.  We’re a bunch of apes living in Babel, none of us texting in the same language.

    I’ve been out there in the field for a while now.  I have a few soul-rattling heartbreaks under my belt. Women have beaten me up worse than an extra in Fight Club.  But there are a few things I’ve learned at the price of disillusionment and rejection.

    Disclaimer:  This post is focused on relationships, dating, and winning female hearts.  If you are more interested in the sexual side of things, I highly recommend you check out Dave Glenn’s section of the site.  The man is an anomaly.

    —

    THINGS THAT DO NOT WORK WITH GIRLS

    Poetry. In high school, I had a huge crush on Heather.  One day, I decided to make my move.  I gave her a bouquet of shitty flowers I pulled from the ground.  They may have been weeds.  I tied them with a shoelace from my left Converse (which smelled exactly like a shoelace from an old converse sneaker), and tucked in a crumpled piece of paper.  On the paper, I wrote:

    We are careening towards each other

    Slowly

    Time, geography, circumstance,

    Dissolving

    The obstacles between us

    Melting

    Soon there will only be

    Us

    The next day, Heather had informed the entire girl’s soccer team about “what a weirdo Matt is”.

    I’ll never know if she understood the context of the shoelace and its inherent metaphor.   She made no comment on my progressive use of language or meter.  But she was still perfectly within her rights to classify me as a weirdo.  The line between stalker/serial-killer and suave-romantic is extremely fine.  To this day I’m still trying to find the balance.  I blame television.

    Logic. I have this medical condition where I am always calling girls the wrong name.  Occasionally, the “wrong name” happens to also be the name of another girl I know.  Girls have no sympathy for my disability.  I’ve gotten myself in the doghouse this way a dozen times at least, and I’ll get there the same way a dozen more.  A few years ago, while staring into my then-girlfriend’s eyes, I said, “I love you Janna”, which, entirely coincidentally, happened to be the name of a previous girlfriend.   My then-girlfriend ran into the bathroom and started crying.  I had a conversation with a voice behind a locked door, and it went something like this:

    Me:  Baby, I’m sorry.

    Her:  Fuck you!

    Me:  I just say the wrong name sometimes.  I’ve called John “Shawn” before.

    Her:  That’s bullshit.

    Me:  You want to call John?  We can call him together if you want.  Or I can call, and you can listen in.

    Her:  You’re not taking this seriously.

    Me:  No, I’m not, babe, because this isn’t serious.

    Her:  IT IS TOO SERIOUS.

    Me:  Okay.  You’re right.  Let me explain.  For 8 horrible months, I mistakenly thought I was in love with Janna.  She was my love symbol.  But then you came along, and showed me how wrong I was for thinking that.  And then I fell in real-love with you.  Now you’re my love symbol.  So I got my labels mixed up, that’s all.

    Her:  I AM NOT A SYMBOL.

    Me:  Baby, Carl Jung would disagree with you.

    Her:  I hate Carl Jung!

    Me:  That’s ridiculous!  You’ve never even met the man!

    After that, she started pounding her tiny little fists against the door until she finally tuckered herself out, whimpered a few unintelligible noises, and slept on the porcelain.

    —

    THINGS THAT KINDA WORK WITH GIRLS

    Romance. It was 80 degrees and pouring rain.  I had met Tasha a week prior – she was perfect.  We had all the same likes and dislikes.  She could keep up, or even outpace me, in just about any field.   One afternoon, she called and told me to meet her in the park by the water.  We went to an outdoor concert and watched some big-name bands play for free.  We stole bottles of wine and danced as we got soaked.  When the sun started to set, we ran up to the roof of a tall building and stared at the skyline of the world’s biggest city — tiny lights blinked through mist and skyscrapers stood like giants.  The word surreal didn’t do it justice.  Our eyes locked.  Her damp hair fell in her face (which looked better without makeup) and she smiled at me.

    There’s just one thing I want to make absolutely clear I said.

    I leaned in and kissed her.

    And she didn’t kiss back.

    Uh, was that it she asked.

    She looked like she wanted to throw up.  Then I kinda wanted to throw up.  There seemed to have been some sort of miscommunication.  So I went back to her apartment, charged my phone, and left.

    It didn’t feel like a complete failure, though.  I stand by my actions.  Romance and tragedy are close relatives.  And if you want to create a cinematic moment, you have to be willing to play the part of the loser now and again.  Besides, I got to kiss her and overall I still had a good time.  What base is that?

    Being Yourself. The only exciting part about dating a woman, besides sex, is that you get to experience another human being.  You get to see her world, the things she likes, the things she does that differentiate her from the herd.  And that goes both ways.  So if you want to be the generic stereotype guy who takes a girl to an Olive Garden dinner and an Adam Sandler movie, then you are going to bag the generic stereotype girl who enjoys shitty food and shitty movies.  If that’s your thing, you don’t need my help.  Go out on the street and just swing a dead cat.  You’ll hit three women who match up with you.

    But if you want someone interesting, you have to be interesting.  Take her somewhere she’s never been before.  Show her something you love that others don’t.  It can be as simple as a non-descript looking park where John Frusciante etched his name in a wooden bench when he was young.  Just make it unique.  This will either end magnificently or disastrously.  But it will filter out the chaff.  If you take a girl to a secret rooftop-drive-in Kubrick screening in Downtown LA and she isn’t stoked, then feel free to leave her up there when the movie’s over — don’t feel bad, she has plenty of things she needs to think about/re-evaluate.

    Yeah, maybe she’ll be weirded out if you take her to ComicCon.  Forget her, then.  If Comics are your thing, stick by them, man.  You want to trade your childhood integrity for a hot body?  Go to a strip club, you sad, sad, soul.

    —

    THINGS THAT DO WORK WITH GIRLS

    Flowers. Really?  Really.  It’s 2011.  How do you own a television and not know that girls like flowers?  Don’t be discouraged by Heather’s reaction to my high-school attempts at romance.  Send a girl some damn roses.  It takes slightly more effort than sneezing.  It probably won’t fix anything, and it might not win anyone over, but it’ll at least make her smile — and that’s a huge step in the right direction.  Be happy that it can be accomplished as easily as giving her some weeds she can watch rot on her bedside table.

    Honesty. My freshman year of college, there was this gorgeous sorority girl.  She had the body of a sex-worker, the smile of a used car salesman, and the hair of an Herbal Essences commercial.  Everyone wanted her.  For some reason, she introduced herself to me at a party.  We talked, kind of.  She asked me to describe her in a word.  I looked her in the eyes and said, “Vapid.”  She blushed and thanked me for being “sweet”.

    We dated for over 2 years after that.

    —

    Happy Early Valentine’s Day, in the most ironic way possible.  You’ve got a week.  Make some moves.

  • Introducing the “Proving Grounds”

    Introducing the “Proving Grounds”

    It can be a cold and heartless world out there. Filled with degenerates stealing your bicycles and looting your coffers as you scrape and scrounge for that last morself of non-fat yoghurt in the midst of wide eyed and frantic hooligans. Here at Our Thursday we understand your plight and we want to help. To that end we are proud to introduce the “Proving Grounds“!

    The Proving Grounds is our way of inviting you the reader to share with us, and the Our Thursday community, your tales of titillation and stories of stalwartness. Just goto the link at the top of the page and submit your story and let the world handle the rest. Slander an annoying thespian. Predict the super bowl results with eloquence. Smash a smash brothers addict. Make fun of red heads. Recite that haiku you worked on for so long. It is all very much welcome and I do hope some of you participate.

    We have received our first Proof titled the “Neverender – A Four Night Stand” and it is a dazzling doozy. Go on and check it out, comment on it and let the world know what you think. Click a star at least!

    We look forward to your submissions.

  • Neverender- A Four Night Stand

    Neverender

    Our story begins with a phone call… “They’re calling it Neverender, and they’re only performing in New York, London, Chicago, and Hollywood!” Zach shouted over the phone as soon as he heard the announcement. His enthusiasm for Coheed and Cambria, our absolute favorite band, was exceeded only by my own. They would be playing all four of their albums in their entirety, one album per night, four nights in a row. This was a once in a lifetime event. “Four nights in a row?! All four albums? Is that too much Coheed?” Zach asked. “No, no it’s not.” I replied as I bought my tickets for all four nights two months in advance. Unfortunately, concerts sometimes don’t live up to the anticipation, and I had never in my life been more excited for a show. Little did I know then, but not only would these four nights meet expectations, but far surpass anything I could have hoped for. This is a story about love, music, and trying to get laid.

    Night 1
    “Wooooooooo”, we screamed as we practiced our pre-show ritual of sitting in my truck on a Hollywood side street drinking Jagermeister and Bud Light. Despite living in or around this city for all of my adult life, I still get goosebumps sometimes driving down Sunset Blvd in anticipation of a rock show. The lights, the energy, the marquees. I dreamily envision seeing “Gun’s n’ Roses” or “Motley Crue” in giant letters above The Whiskey or The Troubador. A simpler time, swimming through a sea of leather, cocaine, and sexy women in spandex with giant hair.

    Once we were sufficiently tipsy, we abandoned our empty bottles and charged into The Avalon. We managed to get one more beer at the bar before Coheed burst onto the stage. As the lights went down we began to push our way through the screaming, sweaty crowd, overweight bearded guys in black T-shirts, high school kids with stretched earlobes in black T-shirts, and the even the rare girl…in a black T-shirt.

    Zach and I had always stood out like sore thumbs at metal shows, which we attended regularly. Unlike your average heavy metal music fan, spending their day trolling the internet in their mom’s basement, sitting in the dark and arguing over Mastodon’s newest album being “not heavy enough”. We have actually felt the warm rays of the sun and the sweet caress of a woman’s touch. Coheed and Cambria are hardly Cannibal Corpse but still, the odds of striking it up with a beautiful girl here were as slim as the jeans on the 90 pound kid in front of me. There’s plenty of reasons to go to a metal show, but for us at least, meeting girls isn’t one of them. We were perfectly content getting wasted and storming the mosh pit with our fellow metalheads. This was 2008, and despite my dreams of earlier times on the strip, Tawny Kittaen would not be showing up on the hood of a red Trans-am.

    Once we had pushed our way close enough to the stage, jumping and singing with the first song, I noticed two lovely young girls directly in front of us. My eyes focused on the shorter of the two. I swear she was glowing. It was like the scene in Wayne’s World when Wayne first see’s Cassandra. Everything slowed down, “Dreamweaver” started playing in my head, and I prepared to make my move. She looked over her shoulder at me, flicking her hair. I smiled, she smiled back. I was standing directly behind her, it I had popped a boner it would have touched her. She looked back to the stage, then back at me. Her friend whispered into her ear. I tried to pretend I was watching the band, but was hopelessly transfixed on what was developing a foot in front of me. Now the floor of a rock show isn’t the best place to strike up a conversation, It’s incredibly loud, and you’re constantly getting pushed in all directions, but despite my usual shyness in these situations, I felt compelled to do something,

    “I’m Dustin!” I shouted over the music.

    “I’m Kelly!” she yelled back with a smile.

    She was beautiful. Blond hair, tan skin, killer smile. I was hooked. “I’m Kayla!” I heard the other girl say to Zach before shaking hands with both of them. There was no grenade to jump on, both girls were smoking hot. Kayla was taller, dark hair, dressed like a stripper, but in a good way. Her white tank top struggling to contain the breasts underneath it. After our introductions, we all put our focus back on the show. I moved closer to Kelly and put my arm around her stomach, she held it as we sang at the top of our lungs. I looked at Zach, we couldn’ t believe it! Ten minutes into night one we had struck gold. We discreetly gave each other a high five.

    Kelly and I only spoke a few words in between songs, but there was an immediate connection. I noticed Kayla visibly swooning over Zach as well. We quickly learned that the girls had driven up from San Diego, had a hotel room nearby, and were also attending all four nights. The rock & roll gods were smiling upon us.

    After the show we invited the girls back to Zach’s place nearby to watch a movie. I accessed our situation, and not being particularly experienced in one night stands, I was nervous. Zach put on some terrible Norm McDonald dvd, and the four of us watched from his couch. About halfway into the movie, he and his girl got up to go to bed. This is always a delicate time. You know that your friend is going to be boning his girl, so you want to do the same. But is she down? My mind raced. In order to avoid an awkward moment, I immediately asked her to take off her pants. She giggled, but declined. I liked this girl, and we had three more nights. I felt much more at ease as we talked for hours, made out for a bit, and went to sleep.

    Night 2
    I found out the next day that both Zach and the girls were out for night 2, so instead I brought along my brother Dane. Instead of our usual routine, getting hammered and moshing, I actually watched and listened intently from start to finish. What a concept! However, I couldn’t help but look forward to night three. Zach and I had joked when we bought our tickets two months earlier about meeting some girls over the course of the four nights, and I couldn’t believe that something we had optimistically envisioned had happened ten minutes into night one. The seed had been planted. He called me after the show and was obviously bummed that he couldn’t make it. We planned and plotted for night three. He told me that he didn’t sleep with his girl the first night either, but that she “took care of him in the morning”. This made me feel a little bit better in that we were still together in our quest to bang the “Coheed Girls” as they would later become known. I could not have been more excited for night three.

    Night 3
    Back in the saddle, we added another friend to our foursome as our buddy Brian Pratt was along for the ride. He joined Zach and I as we religiously practiced our pre-show ritual once again. Brian was briefed on the events that had transpired on night one. He had bought a ticket for this night weeks in advance as well, and was noticibly upset once he realized that instead of a night out with the guys, he’d be playing the third wheel. We met up with the girls out front of the Avalon. Brian asked half jokingly if they happened to have a third friend on the way. “No, sorry.” they said with a laugh. I felt for him being in this frustrating position, but I was too into Kelly to let it get me down.

    Despite Brian’s sulking, we continued where we had left off the first night. Sparks flew and emotions ran high. The show kicked ass as anticipated, and afterwards we were ready for a night on the town, and I hoped ultimately leading to pound town. Unfortunately for Zach, he had prior engagements and had to leave immediately after the set. Brian’s eyes lit up as he heard the news. This was an unexpected turn of events, and I could sense his mojo returning as he stepped towards me with a grin,

    “Dude, i’ll just take Zach’s place and bang his girl tonight.”

    “I don’t know man, she seems pretty into him.” I replied. Zach is a good looking guy, not to mention he’s 6 ft 7″, with a personality that commands attention, and I could tell he definitely had Kayla’s. However, Brian was determined.

    “Dude, maybe she’s a massive slut.” he said with nothing but seriousness on his face.

    I admired Brian’s optimism and encouraged him to give it a shot. It’s not that Brian isn’t without his charms, but standing almost a foot shorter than Zach, and an inch or two shorter than Kayla herself, I knew his chances of bedding her were slim. We went out for dinner and drinks. I continued to egg Brian on, even though I was certain he had no shot whatsoever of hooking up with this girl tonight. Kelly could see it too as we whispered to ourselves while we ran our hands over each others legs under the table. Despite Brian’s best efforts, turns out Kayla wasn’t as slutty as he had hoped.

    We decided to head a few blocks over to Brian’s very babe friendly apartment to spend the night. By this point, I could see by the disappointed look on his face that he had given up. We had a few more drinks, but with the night winding down, I surveyed the area looking for the ideal place for Kelly and I to bed down. This was a studio apartment, and as sweet as it was, Brian’s bed was out in the open, separated from the living room only by two steps and a handrail. Basically just one room. With no privacy and Kayla without Zach as her hook-up, it was apparent that once again, I was not going to get laid.

    The girls were getting tired so we debated over who would sleep where. Brian agreed to let me sleep in his bed with Kelly, while he would share the couch with Kayla. Unfortunately for him, Kayla had other plans. She jumped into bed with us. “Holy shit!”, I thought, things were looking up. I manuvered myself between the girls, trying to give Kelly the impression that I was still one hundred percent focused on her, while putting out a vibe that would suggest otherwise. Despite giving subtle hints and suggestions for this potential manage a trois, i soon realized that this fantasy would not become a reality. I settled for some cuddling instead, but making a point to tickle them every now and then solely so that Brian could hear them, imagining I was rounding the proverbial third base on my way home, as opposed to laying down a bunt single. I still like to remind him of this night on a fairly consistent basis, when he slept on his own couch while I shared his bed with two beautiful girls.

    Night 4
    It all came down to this. Saturday night, Zach & Kayla, Kelly & me. Once again, Coheed was amazing, but by this time, it was apparent to me that this was a special night. This wasn’t just another concert. What had started with two friends going to a place that they had been to before, watching a band they had seen before, had turned into something else all together. We knew that Coheed & Cambria would deliver, but these four nights had now become a truly memorable time of our lives. They say a great Rock show can change the world. I don’t know about that, but it can be a magical experience. For the rest of that night, it was as if I was in a dream. Four people without a care in the world, fueled by live music, young lust, and alcohol.

    After the show, we were on our way back to Zach’s, his roommate was having a party. Having to get our vehicles back, we all drove seperately. Coincidently, It was also the night that California’s initial vote for Gay Marriage had been denied, which provided a most surreal night in Hollywood. The city was flooded with flamboyant protestors and demonstrators. Helicopters with spotlights crossed the night sky as I tried to navigate my way through the crowded streets. Hollywood traffic is bad enough on any given Saturday night, but this was out of control. I sat alone in my truck cursing and banging the steering wheel. Highland closed. Sunset closed. Vineland closed. My once tranquill mind was now on the verge of madness. I seriously thought of just going home. A swirl of brake lights, traffic signals, and scantilly clothed homosexuals danced through my head. I passed a sign for the 170 freeway, my way home. But while my emotions leaned toward leaving, my boner, like a compass pointed to the north, pointed directly toward Zach’s house. I took a deep breath, passed right by the onramp and on to the party. As soon as I opened the door, Kelly ran up to me and gave me a kiss.

    I knew I had made the right decision. We drank and danced and laughed. The DJ spun the type of songs that a DJ usually plays at a party. Kelly and I snuck outside and shared a cigarette, talking about the concerts and which of the four nights was our favorite. What we didn’t talk about was how our four day relationship was nearing the end, although I was definitely thinking about it. We had exchanged phone numbers and I even planned on keeping in contact with her, but I knew that this epic experience was best left alone, not to be soiled with later exploits. With the party raging inside, Kelly and I shared a kiss under the Hollywood Moon. We had become truly close since our introductions three days prior, in a way even falling in love, a love I would cherish for the rest of my night. Kelly shot me a look that suggested a trip upstairs. Between the alcohol, adrenaline from the show, and the anticipation four nights in the making, it was a truly mind blowing lay. We stayed up all night, the absolute perfect climax to an extraordinary four days. With Kayla and Zach in the bed above us, we tried to be discreet, but after a while we didn’t really care. We fell asleep naked just as the sun began to rise, arm in arm wrapped in a sheet on the floor of Zach’s bedroom.