BACK AND TO THE LEFT

Here's an article on Yahoo News about how Barack Obama is among the many left handed Presidents we've had. I like the choice of photo they used to accompany the article about Barack's left hand. Kudos, Yahoo News.

ADVENTURES IN ONLINE DATING PART 2: BEYOND THUNDERDOME

So in my last post, I spoke of joining a few dating websites in an effort to develop a new relationship show for the production company where I work. But there turned out to be unexpected consequences.

As soon as I put a profile up, women Winked™ at me, they Flirted™ with me, and they emailed me. I had gone online for work research and ended up becoming a gazelle hunted by lions.

The first woman to email me was a 40-something cougar. Scary for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which was that she told me that the number "420" in her username was not a marijuana reference but rather her ex-husband's birthdate.

"Oh," she added, "And Hitler's too." Again — the user name which she chose contained Hitler's birthdate.

I think she'd do gangbusters over on JDate.



Below: "...and the award for Most Bizarre Opening Sentence On A Dating Profile goes to..."

Oh, that old category.

One girl turned out to be a Facebook friend of my friend Jerry, so I emailed him to find out what this girl's deal was. Turns out she has a kind of Sex In The City blog; each guy she dates gets a nickname and a catty little story. I didn't go out with that one. I can't stand assholes with blogs who nickname people.

Anyway, next was Perfect On Paper Girl.

She's a gorgeous 29-year-old who went to UCLA and listed Curb Your Enthusiasm as her favorite TV show. And not only does she not want children, her name actually means that in Korean. (Her mom had three girls in four years and then said "No more!" So she named daughter #3 "No More Children.") Perfect On Paper Girl was perfect on paper, but in person I wasn't quite feeling it.





Fashion House Girl seemed really pretty & interesting, and Mortgage Girl was cute & funny. Both got derailed somehow.

I just didn't get Girl Who Said She Liked Jazz But Didn't Like Jazz At All.

Getting hit on by Bikini Girl was extremely flattering.

And as pretty and cool as Girl Who Had The Same Name As My Sister was, I just couldn't go through with it. Because, well... she had the same name as my sister.


I was pursued by several women over 35 who could not hide their desperation to bear children as soon as possible... I could acutely sense that I was being sized up by each woman not as a date but as the father of the unborn child that has been gestating in her brain for a decade.

Joyless Jewess was a real letdown. Didn't smile, didn't laugh. The only time she got remotely animated was when she gave me a full-series rundown of her favorite television show, Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso, a Spanish-language telenovela whose title translates into "Without Breasts, There Is No Paradise."

To entertain myself on that date, I decided to play a game called How Many Times Can I Say The Word "Rape" Until She Will End This Date? It wasn't easy to work the word "rape" into the conversation, but that was the fun of it. (By the way, the answer is 2.)

So I let all my subscriptions expire; with no plans to renew them. It was a very enlightening — and in some ways bizarre — experiment. And I developed several television formats based on what I learned. Perhaps one of them might end up on TV one of these days.

Oh - and I did meet one nice girl after all. She's pretty (Prom Queen 1994), she's tall (5'10"... and it turns out that I'm not 5'10" after all), and she's smart. Which is a good thing, because if this turns into something, I'm going to need help coming up with a story about how we met. Because seriously... the internet?
.

ADVENTURES IN ONLINE DATING PART 1

About three months ago I started a new job. The company that produces Big Brother, Wipeout and Deal Or No Deal hired me to sit around all day and dream up ideas for new shows.

Contractually, I can't get too much into the specifics of those new shows, but I can say that early on there was a request for dating programs. For one of my show ideas, I wanted to explore the area of "the perfect match," but I wasn't sure how that would actually work in practice. How could degrees of compatibility actually be quantified?

I knew there were some websites that, in fact, do just that: Chemistry, JDate, eHarmony, and so on. Match.com, goes so far as to list your mates by percentage of compatibility (this girl is your 100% match... that one is an 88% match, etc.). So in October I signed up for a few of these sites to learn how each one attempts to quantify the unquantifiable.

By the time all my subscriptions expired last month, I had a few solid ideas for new dating programs (again, I can't get into the details), but in the process I also learned a lot about online dating and online daters. There's too much good stuff for one post, so I'll break it up over a few.

The first thing I noticed as I looked through the profiles was a pattern when it came to women and their profile photos.


The profiles of most women under 30 contained a photo taken at a bar or party with a drink in the gal's hand. I guess the intended message is "Look at me! I'm fun!" But the message I got was "How do you feel about cleaning up my vomit on a regular basis?" (One of these girls above actually seems to be drinking and driving in her profile photo.)





By contrast, most women over 30 had in their profile photographs of themselves as a bridesmaid at someone else's wedding. The unintended message is "Here's the precise moment when I decided I had to begin internet dating... (I can't believe that fat pig Kelly is getting married and I'm still single!)"

I also noticed the Height Thing. I have a 5'6" tall male friend who tried online dating, and he claimed that every woman who subscribes to an online dating service wants a man 5'10" or taller — even if she herself is only 5'0". I investigated, and it's true. Here's a link to a girl who is 5-foot even who won't settle for any man who's shorter than 10 inches taller than her! (And great news, fellas — she's Mormon!) I can't fathom why any gal would prefer a guy she'd literally have to climb in order to kiss (but that didn't bother me too much because I'm 5'10").

There were,  

of course,  

plenty of loonies. 

Check out the 

Crazy Eyes 

on this one. 

And just how many people were 

cut out of this picture? 

It looks like Cookie Monster 

ate most of this photo.

And then there were the foreigners. Their profiles were the most entertaining of all.

This one below might be the funniest thing I read in 2008:

(click on it to make it larger)


In order to test the various matching algorithms of each site, I put up a profile of myself. And in a development that I hadn't anticipated, as soon as I put a profile up, women Winked™ at me, they Flirted™ with me, and they emailed me. I had gone online for work research and ended up becoming a gazelle hunted by lions. But we'll get to all that in Adventures In Online Dating: Part 2 — Beyond Thunderdome.