Wednesday, February 18, 2009

More Gollum Greats

Hello there, dear readers.

For those of you who I haven't scared off yet, I have an update.

So I am still mad at the entire population of men, but I'm not as close to nuclear meltdown as I was during my last post.

and Gollum- the hot boy from improv- he loves live Irish music.

Come.
On.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

"you're my exception" my ass.

I'm going to warn you up front: The following is going to be a man-hating, frustrated, ineloquent whiney rant about how love, romance, men, and modern society all suck. If you're currently in a good mood, someone I could have a shot with romantically, or easily bored, I recommend just moving on. Here are some other fun links you can read instead of this one.

To set the stage, I'll give you an update on my last post. My nerdmate, remember Gollum? yeah. Turns out he's a major asshole. In the course of our improv class, we had to tell bad date stories. Very cute. (For those of you who know me, I told the "Greased Lightning" story and wished I hadn't.) It comes to Gollum's turn, and he begins to turn me off more efficiently than any man ever has. He doesn't really "do" dates; he prefers casual hang-outs, (read: hookups.) He then talked about how he is the worst boyfriend ever and doesn't believe in, and I quote, "romance, dates, love, all that mushy crap." I'm amazed that the other people in the room couldn't hear the deafening fsssssssssssssst of my bubble swiftly deflating. I've heard this from lots of guys before, but Gollum somehow said it with such naked honesty and conviction that it counted for extra super-duper turn-off.

None of this is REALLY a shock, but it was still upsetting.

Also, the other cute guy from my class, we'll call him "plan B", def has a girlfriend. Yeah. Sweet. awesome. Even the way-too-short-guy-you-had-already-made-allowances-for-in-your-head has a girlfriend. I mean, he's a great person and all, but I thought he was flirting with me, but he probably wasn't and even if he was he's got a girlfriend so whatever just deal. Yes, I know that was one of the worst run-on sentences of all time. So sue me, I warned you this post would suck.

This final blow came after a trifecta of perfectly placed pieces of media that created the perfect storm of my current funk and motivated this post.

1. The movie "He's just not that into you." I saw it with my cousins because there was nothing else playing at the right time. It was pretty cute, lots of celebs in it, blah blah blah. The movie set up this whole new paradigm of rules which seemed to make sense to me. Most romcoms take place in a version of New York City that I would love to visit, but certainly have my doubts that it even exists. I kind of dug it. The main girl needed to shut her mouth sometimes, but she was much more honest than a lot of heroines. Then, after the movie spent all this time setting up the new rules, it broke them even worse than the usual tale of boy-meets-girl. Justin Long's character, after he has coached her in the ways to interact with men, lead her on, rejected her, then mooned after her once she finally calls him out, says "You're my exception." And it just pissed me off. SRSLY?!?!? This was only the beginning.

2. A couple of days later, I made the mistake of watching "The science of sexual attraction" or some such show. It was pretty interesting, and we enjoyed lobbing a few poorly timed and superficial comments at the scientists and the participants. Then, as they were doing a study to watch how just peoples' faces and voices were more or less attractive. The narrator said one sentence that stuck in my craw, "We each start with the most attractive and work our way down until we find someone who will accept us." Man, do I wish I had NEVER heard that sentence. Yeah, I know that its probably true. It's still just entirely too clinical and cavalier about the struggle of people trying to find one another in the bar jungle of our generation. Sidenote: I think the scale is tipped in the favor of men. The theories behind THAT will have to be a whole other post.

3. This was the lit fuse finally disappearing into the ACME made bomb, and its always the dumbest little things that will set us off. It was an article in Cosmo, the world's most prolific periodical, and it was in the section "to give to your guy." (It's really not that bad, but this was just the grain of rice that tipped the scale.) It said "do you want to show your girl that you care about her? Do her a favor. She's much more likely to be in the mood if she's not worrying about getting the oil changed."
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ARE YOU FRIGGIN KIDDING ME?!?!?! What kind of society do we live in where an article in biggest pile of dribble of ALL TIME has to explain to anyone, male or female, that if you care about someone, you should do nice shit for them. I feel like it is a sign of the romantic apocalypse. Romance is ENTIRELY dead. And not in the sense that I'm delusional and read romance novels and there are no princes on steeds or pirates at the helm, blah blah blah. I've known that was long dead. It's even worse than all that.

Think about it. Say that you're a male between 22 and 35. Why on EARTH would you want to have a girlfriend? I feel like none of them even want one anymore. You certainly don't NEED one. There is just as much pressure about a career as there always has been, so its a viable excuse to just say you're focusing on work. (Same goes for women, but its only the beginning.) Men, from what I can gather, are innately LAZY. Girlfriends take effort. It seems as though most would choose an entire weekend of playing 38 hours of a videogame with no sleep and 5 separate pizza deliveries than a relationship. They have YEARS more of reproductive viability, so that's not an issue. They have less pressure from family and friends to settle down. And if they wanted to actually have sex, **gasp**, not a problem. There are so many attention starved BEAUTIFUL and AMAZING women that if they feel randy, they can put on a stupid button-up shirt, head out to the local bar, hook up with some woman WAY out of their league with a shot of whiskey or a long island iced tea and a minor put-down, and there's really not any expectation of calling her again.

AND THIS IS JUST RANTING ABOUT THE LACK OF DATING SCENE.
Dating. Casual. Not committed. BIG SCARY THING, isn't it?

Don't even THINK the word "married", heavens to betsy, they all just get a runnin'.

Look. I know that this is hands-down the most psycho post of mine, but I'm really not that crazy. It was really not that long ago that it was reasonable for a girl to want to get married before she was 40. Or hell, to even want to kiss a guy without it being a deathwish for their friendship. And I'm not ready for anything major, it would just be nice to get to hold hands at the movies every once in a while.

The fact that its "trendy" to be an single, womanizing douchebag is unnerving though. We now expect this from our guys, and kind of hold it up with our barside banter and self-conscious hairflips. The standards we have all come to expect, and even perpetuate is the scariest part of all.

A wise woman once told me two words, and I hope they help me make it through this hurricane of romantic jackassery. She said "never settle."
And even though it may harder than ever, I don't intend to.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Nerdmates.

OMG.
So hi all! It's been a while since I've posted.
Now, I have some juicy news. Well, not juicy yet, but it's kind of fun so I felt like writing about it.

So a few weeks ago, I signed up for an improv class. I did improv in high school and loved it, miss doing theatre, need more friends, yadda yadda yadda. So I signed up for a class with Washington Improv Theater, (WIT.) I've got to tell you, it's AWESOME. I'd like to end up on one of the troupes one day, but in the meantime, I get to laugh hysterically for 2 and a half hours every Tuesday. I loves it.

So, its the first class, and I was waiting for the 15 or so drop-dead-gorgeous, crazy funny, and all-about-me-guys to walk into class that I was expecting, and then HE walked in. All of the people in my class are AWESOME. There's a lot of energy, everyone is really funny and we have a great time. And I get to flirt with some of the guys so I can dust some of my flirtskillz off. They've been out of use for a while, (question mark?) When HE walked in, (we'll call him "Gollum" and you'll find out why in a minute,) I was pretty stoked. So this kid is supercute. Great jawline, pretty fit, quite funny and SO nice. Then, he started stealing my heart away.

Each week, I have gotten a little nugget from this guy about how MUCH we have in common. The first week, he made no less than 2 Lord of the Rings references. Which, you may well know, is one of my FAVES of all time. Then, via our weekly email listing thing, I found out that his email address has "Gollum" in it. So he's not just a little bit of a dork. It must be pretty serious.

Then, the next week, he made a reference to Step Up 2 the Streets. BEST MOVIE EVER. And not just like a little reference, but it was all-out and awesome. And I thought that I and my roommates I dragged to see the movie were the only fans. Nay. He is also counted among our ranks.

I then did some friendly Internet stalking, (a phrase which cracked my dad up. It's kind of cute really, the things old people giggle at,) and I found only one hit on him. A website in which he was selling off his "Magic the Gathering" cards. HUGE. CLOSET. DORK. I'm the biggest dork I know and I don't even play MtG. Although, after a friend said it had been used as a hilarious drinking game, it no longer sounds that crazy.

And then, last night, the final nail in the coffin was driven home. I found out that he, "Gollum," is... (take a huge breath,) a huge pirates fan. We're talking wants to get a parakeet and wear it like a pirate, has a picture of Johnny Depp as CAPT Jack Sparrow, skull and crossbones, and a ship in his house. I nearly choked. It must be a sitcom, I mean COME ON. WHO IS FEEDING THIS EXTREMELY HOT GUY THE LINES?!?!?!? In retrospect, its really like he's me trapped in a superhotboy's body. We are, as my best friend so adeptly coined- as she always does- nerdmates.

**sigh**

So now the question remains: how to proceed? Does this guy's nerddom extend to a social awkwardness around women so I should take the lead? Or has his face/body been used to his hotness, although I am not, so he's never had a problem in this department so I should continue with operation "breezy and awesome"? Sigh. Also, I fear that there are a few cons I should list. He's only 22, and 2 years isn't a lot, but he just graduated, so he's most likely looking for something different in the realm of romance than I am about now. He alluded to being a bit of a ladies' man, but again, that could be the totally truth or something any dork would say as an endearing, self-deprecating "I'm such a dork" joke, although that's probably just wishful thinking. Also, there is the bubble of the class- we all love the class and it is TOTALLY drama-free, so I feel it should stay that way.

**sigh again**

I fear that I may just have to let this one slide. It may be like being stuck in a rowboat having been stranded at sea for weeks and just letting a cruiseliner with a rock climbing wall and 24/7 buffet and open bar pass you by, but it may be the best answer.

Did I mention that he's in a similar line of work as me, wears glasses sometimes, has an adorable like duck-tail-in-front hairstyle and also made a Dumb and Dumber joke?

srsly.
nerdmates.