Episode 22: New Years Eve

People lament that the world is getting more homogenized.  Gone are the mom and pop stores and quirky coffee shops, replaced by a Barnes & Noble and a TGI Friday's.  Gone are daring creative musicians and daring journalism, replaced by Clear Channel and cable news.  But the reason people give for this decline is money, as if money was never a motive before in thousands of years of human history and only recently did greed evolve.


The truth is that more and more people are capable of sharing, of broadcasting one idea or one paradigm to the globe.  It's possible for a Swede to make a furniture store for the world or a Brit to make a music program for the world.  And Ikea and Idol are good enough to draw millions of people.  But in appealing to millions they lose the intimate connection that is only possible when you're not reaching out to just a few.

I'm a big fan of the band Ozma.  Almost no one else I know knows them and I like that.  They're not like Coldplay or U2, where I see a bunch of morons and car commercials repeating their choruses as if the singer is really talking about whatever stupid thing is on their mind or about how great it is to drive a Ford.  The singer is talking to me.

But I'm not some sort of Michael Stipe background vocals in It's The End of the World As We Know It who desperately needs to be alone.  I went to an Ozma concert in 2006 and discovered that other people liked Ozma, too.  There were like 200 people there who all knew the words to songs I thought only I knew.  And it was wonderful to share that experience of being a part of something very personal.

New Years Eve is a phenomenon that happens to everyone throughout the world.  It is pretty great to be a part of something that big.  But it's the opposite of personal.  This year I wasn't ready for it, yesterday was not the natural endpoint of my year, it was just an arbitrary day.  Being a part of it felt like nothing to me.  Contrast that with the election of Barack Obama last year, which also happened to everyone throughout the world but was so unique and crazy that being swept up in it was downright magical.  I just wandered the streets, stumbling upon a spontaneous celebration in Union Square and into a bar where the everyone was silent and the speech from Grant Park was broadcast seemingly throughout the country.  It wasn't unique to me but I really felt something was happening that had an effect on me.

The magic of making out is the feeling that something special is happening.  You get to leave the real world for a few moments, close your eyes, not talk and just disappear into someone else.  New Years Eve asks you to join in some big forced moment of that and, for some people for whom the start of a new calendar year is important, that can mean being a part of something big.  But for many people, it's forced, like being excited about a Chili's or a Target.

I say, make your own New Years Eve.  Share it with others, pick an anniversary that's important to you and other people for some personal reason and celebrate that with a make out.  It won't be as big, but it'll be far more potent.
 The Panel: Rudy Gilman, Bryce, Gun Street Girl, Greg

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Episode 21: Nothing Good Happens After 3AM

I love New York because anything can happen here.  You never know where you're going to be 3 hours from now.  It's that sense of adventure and promise that gets my hopes up every night but often leads to disappointment.  After all, just because anything can happen doesn't mean it usually does.

When I was younger (i.e., about a year ago) I never understood why anyone folded in poker.  Folding literally means you automatically lose.  I saw no upside in it.  Even if your hand was terrible, there was always a chance you could bluff the other players or that your bad hand was still better than your opponents.  As I have learned, this isn't good poker strategy.  If you have a finite amount of money, it is better to allocate your money from hands were you aren't likely to win to hands where you are more likely to win.

Time isn't that fungible though.  I believed that 3-4AM on a Friday night is more valuable make-outwise than 9-10AM on a Saturday morning.  Though the odds aren't great of meeting a girl on the L train home, they're even worse meeting someone in my apartment.  However, there are costs associated with staying out later than 3.

First off, you seem desperate.  There is something very anti-desperate about being able to take control of the night and checking out on your own terms.

Secondly, the additional hour of sleep you get makes the following day more productive, which may mean you go out and meet someone then.

Third, psychologically you spare yourself the rejection that comes after 3AM.  Quantum mechanics relies on the idea that the rules of physics are incredibly different in the realm of the incredibly small.  No matter how great your game is at regular hours of day, after 3AM, entirely different rules of physics apply and it's easy to feel bad about yourself because of what happens after 3.  You can avoid this confusion by not even playing this con game where your wins will be far outweighed by your losses.

That said, if you find someone before 3 and they want to keep you out, that's the best.  If I can make one tip there: don't get too drunk and keep yourself and other people well-fed, particularly with sugary stuff.  Trust me.

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Episode 20: Movies Part 2

We finished our review of Nerve.com's Top 50 Date Movies, which are basically movies to make out in.

I never liked how kisses in movies had music in the background and were done up all dramatically.  Real kisses aren't like that.  For one thing, you keep thinking during a kiss.

When you see a movie character make out, it's as if their entire being vanishes and they are wholly consumed by the kiss.  I think this may be true for sex.  I believe that during sex, people often stop their rational thoughts and just become primal.  But for making out, my autopilot inner monologue continues nearly unabated (though it may shut up for a moment or two).

I think that's something I want out of a makeout, to quiet down the barrage of concerns and worries that rattle in my brain, some sort of tongue massage that can ease me to relax.  Movies make this look easy, but it's not so.

I remind myself that filming a kiss scene must require a lot of takes and a lot of acting.  What I'm seeing isn't real and isn't as spontaneous or magic as it looks.  But with anything fake, there is the sad effect that it renders the real less magic.

Anti-pornography activists often argue that pornography degrades actual sex.  But because pornography is so unbelievable, in the sense that it defies any bounds of logical social reality, it almost never colors my expectations of the real world (though it some cases it may, I bought a belt once because this one male porn star had one like it and he got two chicks at once).  In contrast, movie scenes often (far from always) have believable kiss situations.  And the added unbelievability of the actual kisses make me disappointed with my reality.

Then again, it does give me something to strive for, and something to imitate that resonates in the romantic imaginations of my partners.  In that regard, movies are a double edged sword.  They call on us to understand that what we're watching is not to be expected from real life, but also invite us to try.

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