I Need Your Help

Okay guys (yes you four), I need your help. I was just presented with an amazing opportunity and need advice on how to take advantage of it. Here's the story:

Two years ago my aunt somehow managed to win tickets to the Dr. Phil Show at a silent auction. (She later claimed she was just trying to bring up the bidding and had no intention of actually winning, but I think the fact that she chose to put her name down for them at all instead of I don't know, a trip to the Bahamas or a karaoke machine, tells you a little bit about her personality. This is a woman whose apartment occasionally resembles a QVC warehouse, and who will relate episodes of The King of Queens as though they involved people in her actual life.) What Susan didn't know was that show tapes on L.A. which is roughly 6 million miles away from where she lives in Philadelphia. Instead of doing what a normal person would and selling the tickets on Craigslist, Susan decided that it would make far more sense to fly across the country and stay in a hotel for four days rather than let them go to waste. Naturally she invited me.

The trip was insane. We stayed in a fancy hotel, hired a private driver to take us on one of those "tours of the stars" where you drive around the Hollywood hills like a stalker trying to peer through the hedges surrounding celebrities houses, and took a VIP tour of Universal Studios that we ducked out on early because we thought it was boring. By the time the Dr. Phil taping rolled around on the last day it was kind of anticlimactic. The studio was about 5 degrees and the guests were a slutty Miss USA contestant who was disqualified because someone found pictures of her drunkenly licking her friend's ass and a woman whose husband kept cheating on her. I have absolutely no recollection of the advice Dr. Phil gave them, but I do remember that it made no sense and that the Miss USA contestant was wearing an obscenely short/tight dress that quite clearly couldn't accommodate underwear and that when she wobbled off the stage in her stilettos the people in the front row got a very good view of her junk.

What is the point of all this you might ask? WELL, somehow my name must have ended up on a Dr. Phil contact list, because I just got an email saying that they're going to be taping the show in New York. Not only did they ask if I would like to be in the audience, they also presented me with the opportunity to actually be on the show. All I have to do is detail what my problem is and send in a picture.

!!! Never mind that I could probably get better life advice off the back of a cereal box. I HAVE to have a crisis only Dr. Phil can solve. What could it be? Suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Preferably ones that have something to do with my actual life, but I'm not picky. Help!

Confession

Since I spent all of last week writing about Sex and the Single Girl, I think I might as well confess that a couple of months ago I actually bought and read He's Just Not That Into You. It was insanely depressing and I didn't add it to the list of books I've read because it's not so much a book as a very long Cosmo article written with the aim of convincing you that no one you've ever dated as ever been into you. Or at least that's what I took away from it. Reading it did, however, inspire me to come up with some criteria of my own compiled from personal experience.

He's Just Not That Into You If . . .

He cancels a date because it's raining.

He misspells your name on your birthday card.

He sends you an email telling you he's way too busy to spend time with you, then goes on to say that he's been sleeping until noon every day and going to tons of awesome shows.

He shows up 30 minutes late for your first date without apologizing, then asks you to pay for everything because he lost his credit card.

He cuts you then steals your stash. (This last example might be from The Wire. It and the movie adaptation of HJNTIY were both set in Baltimore so I sometimes get them mixed-up.)

SATSG Part 3

I SWEAR this is going to be my last post about Sex and the Single Girl. It really is one of the greatest things I've read in a long time, but this blog is starting turn into the Cliffs Notes for it and that was not quite my intention. So, I'm going to close off SATSG week with a few quotes from Helen Gurley Brown that aren't batshit crazy. Contrary to what my two other posts might have you think, my love for her is not entirely ironic. By the end of the book I actually found her really endearing and kind of wanted to be her friend.

So maybe she has a teensy bit of an eating disorder and has a less than progressive attitude towards the gays. She's also funny, self-deprecating, and frequently offers advice which she admits she doesn't follow herself. It's also the only dating book I've encountered that doesn't spend 100 pages telling you what it means when a guy doesn't call you back in two days or whether it's okay for you to approach him or whatever. Sure all of her advice about decorating your apartment, developing a personal style, and even getting ahead in your career is ultimately in the service of meeting a man, but at least it's in there. It was refreshing to read a dating book that actually acknowledged the reader's life outside the nonsensical hell that is the dating world.

On that note, here are some of my favorite bits:

On sexual difficulties: One of the things a single woman can have is a good sex life, and the disturbed boy is doing you out of it. A married woman has every reason to help a semi-potent man get back to normal, but you have no more incentive than a short-term tenant has in rebuilding his apartment. Not all of your beaux need to be he-males . . . just the one you sleep with.

On married men: As the eligibles become fewer, it becomes increasingly tempting to take a married lover; but it is best to know what you're in for. A friend who had a long-term affair with a married man had this to say: "It's a real education in human suffering and makes all past and future relationships less painful by comparison."

On whether to tell a man you're a virgin: I can't imagine why, if you aren't. Is he? Is there anything particularly attractive about a thirty-four-year-old virgin?

On being productive: It's my opinion that people writing "onward and upward" books (like this one) get carried away because as long as they're giving advice they don't have to do anything. There are acres of days when you don't feel like doing a bloody thing, but sitting stolidly on your fanny. That's okay. You can also start lots of things you don't finish.

Brilliant, right? But for every nugget of Amen to that I want to be your best friend advice, we also get paragraphs like the next one which make me wonder if the two of us could ever truly have been.

Suppose You Like Girls: You've already worked out a way of life for yourself to which I could contribute no helpful advice. I'm sure your problems are many. I don't know about your pleasures. At any rate, it's your business and I think it's a shame you have to be so surreptitious about your choice of a way of life.

Surreptitious? Is that really the word she meant to use? Whatever HGB, even if you don't approve of all my choices, I still love you.

SATSG The Sequel

I know that me writing posts about this book will probably get old if it hasn't already, but the three of you who read this blog are just going to have to deal with it because I am completely obsessed with SATSG. Okay, so the twenty pages devoted to styling your apartment with the help of a decorator and the twelve pages of recipes for things with names like Chocolate Angel Pie, and ingredients that include canned mushrooms and vanilla pudding mix aren't the most fascinating read, but I promise the rest of it is priceless.

In a chapter called "The Shape You're In," Helen Gurley Brown outlines her dieting tips as well as her opinion on "fatties." After reading this chapter, methinks HGB might have something of an eating disorder.

On Crash Dieting: If you'd like to crash away six pounds in two days, here is a diet men like. Invite one to join you.

Breakfast: 1 egg any style, no butter, One glass white wine

Lunch: 2 eggs any style, Two glasses white wine

Dinner: 1 steak, Finish the bottle of white wine

I'd suggest the weekend for the crash. Sufficient nutrition in here, but you get fuzzy.

(I think I know people who are on this diet, they're called alcoholics. I would also like to see a copy of her food pyramid. Moving on . . .)

On What Constitutes a Full Meal: A jar of yogurt or wedge of cheese could be lunch. Of course, you'll have to find something else to do during lunch hour. What about a juicy novel, or a nap?

On Eating on the Cheap: It's silly to say you can't afford protein! A cup of cottage cheese is 25 cents. Add some fresh peaches, and that's dinner.

On Cookieholism: Fatties never give skinnies credit for any will power. They prefer to assume you're one of the freaks. Well, I diet every day of my life by willfully selecting health foods. Cookieholics, like alcoholics, are only arrested, never cured.

She also goes on to say that she weighs 109 lbs and has a 23 inch waist. I have no idea what a 23 inch waist even looks like, but I would imagine that having one would also require you to shop at Baby Gap, which doesn't sound very chic to me. As I've decided to adopt HGB as my new life coach, however, I'm going to have to take her word for it. Now where did I put my glass of breakfast wine?

Cosmo Girl

On Wednesday I started reading Sex and the Single Girl. It is a dating guide written in 1962 by Helen Gurley Brown, the founder of Cosmo. It is also one of the most insane and amusing things ever written. When I started reading it I thought the antiquated advice would make me angry, but it's just so over the top ridiculous it's hard to get worked up about it. Also, HGB is HILARIOUS. Sometimes intentionally so. A few choice gems (trust me, there will be more to come. I'm not even half way through):

On where to meet men:

Work - The quality of the men you meet at work is usually pretty satisfactory. At least they are not chaps who go to movies all day in hopes of sitting next to a nine-year-old girl.

Alcoholics Anonymous - I don't know her personally but a friend tells me a friend of hers plucked herself a steady beau and subsequent husband from A.A. If you are going to try this approach to men, I suggest a wealthy chapter of A.A. Might as well start with a solvent problem child, like say someone with liquid assets.

Active Sports - Never mind you were voted the kid most likely to drown when all the kids on your block took off for the old swimming hole. Men like sports, can you afford not to?

On homosexuals:

How do you tell when a man isn't a man? Suppose he's over thirty and lives with another man. The situation bears watching. If he has a male roommate and he's over forty, there's very little doubt about his sex. He's a girl.

On being sexy:

Your figure can't harbor an ounce of baby fat. It never looked good on anyone, but babies.

Being able to sit very still is sexy.
Not sexy: flesh not secured firmly to the bone.

Clean hair is sexy. Lots of hair is sexy too.

Talking all the time about anything is unsexy. Sphinxes and Mona Lisas knew what they were doing!

Another way to be "genuinely" sexy, though not recommended, is to be an actress.

The Rules has NOTHING on this.

Something I Have Discovered

You make a lot of new friends when you are reading Kurt Vonnegut. Since I started Breakfast of Champions on Friday, two people have felt compelled to talk to me about it. The first one was a guy at sitting at the table next to me when I went out to dinner on Friday. I had been reading it while I was waiting for my friend to show up and when he got up to go to the bathroom, the guy next to us asked me how it was. Because I have lived in New York for too long and am skeptical of any kind of spontaneous interactions, I assumed he was going to hit on me. I said something moronic about it having lots of pictures, and he smiled politely and left me alone.

The second guy was on the C train. He was a middle aged man with glasses and a beard and was clearly on his way to Penn Station. The exchange went something like this:

Him: How are you liking that?

Me (trying to be neither rude nor friendly): It's pretty good. I hadn't read anything by Vonnegut yet.

Him: Yep, he's a pretty great writer.

Me: Uh-huh

Him: I mean, I haven't read anything by him, but that's what they say.

Me: ??!?!?

As a consequence, I am now trying to come up with jackets I can make for my books that will guarantee no one will talk to me. So far I've come up with, Venereal Shmemereal and Role Playing With Cats.

I Have An Exciting Life

What I Did This Weekend:

Friday night - My friend Dan and I went out to dinner, then to a lesbian bar in the West Village called Cubbyhole. As the name indicates, it is awesome. It is tiny, crowded, and they have a lot of stupid crap hanging from the ceiling a la T.G.I Fridays. Dan and I have met many fantastic people there. Something must have been off last week, however because not only did neither of us get hit on, but when Dan was waiting for the bathroom a group of girls "jokingly" told him that they hate men, and later someone pointedly (and confusingly) asked him why straight people went to gay bars. At that point it was already 10:30 and because I am an old woman I was ready to call it a night.

Saturday - I went to see Funny People with Leigh. In addition to making no sense, it was also two and a half hours long. This kind of running time is appropriate for Harry Potter and the French version of Lady Chatterly's Lover, not an Adam Sandler movie. If you decide to go bring lots of snacks. And maybe a book.

Sunday - One of my roommate's work friends came over for dinner and we all ate vegan sushi, drank wine, and smoked while she explained how even though she feels uncomfortable around men and only makes out with girls she is NOT a lesbian. By the end of the night I was so out of it that this started making sense.