Heart Shaped Box

I swiped this title from Nirvana's second album. Today is St. Valentine's Day, a day when Love Is In The Air...allegedly. It is also a long weekend, tomorrow, Monday is Presidents Day. It was this weekend in 1987 that my last girlfriend, left some vital clues that she was no longer interested in being associated with me. I think it would have been a whole lot easier if she had just told me, but people make all kinds of decisions which others cannot figure out. This is just an example.

I hate to admit this, but looking back, I can feel pretty safe in saying that I'm not a very good boyfriend. I have no idea what women want and I'm terrible at figuring out what is the right or wrong thing to say, and I often get them mixed up. That aside, I've been alone so long, that I've lost my ability to compromise, a vital part of a lasting and enduring relationship. I've become self centered, since I'm the only person that I really have to deal with closely. One of my old girlfriends classified me as, " A Disposable Person" . At first I took this as a good-natured barb, but she seemed to hit the nail right on the head. It was early in our courtship and she didn't know me very well when she said it, but I am NOT the type of person that people miss, or cannot live without. When I am out of sight, I am truly out of mind. I certainly wish I could change that, but I've been me for so long, I don't think I could pull it off without coming across as a phony or a poseur, which I consdered to be worse, so that's basically what I'm stuck with.

In the early to mid-1980's I worked at a local radio station. It was during that time that the local newspaper, Long Island's Newsday began running personal ads. I was producing the morning show and one of the more valuable lessons I learned was, 'get material where ever you can'. So I began skimming the personals in search of humor, and I did write some moderately amusing sketches as a result, but the side-effect of reading these, was that I began to think, " Hey, she sounds like my kind of girl" and I started answering these pleas for romance. I wrote what I considered to be amusing, engaging and offbeat responses to women. When I got no responses, I began to feel like I was taking the wrong approach, yet I didn't want to alter my strategy, since I felt it accurately reflected my personality ( or lack thereof). One of the caveats was that a photograph was to be enclosed. At the time I was hovering around one hundred and twenty five to one hundred and thirty pounds, and often looked like a cadaver in snapshots. Since I was a loner, there wasn't anybody that I felt I could ask to take pictures of me, who could do a decent job of it. This is before digital photography, so I'd set up my 35mm camera on a tripod and use the 30 second timer to go and get in the picture. The problem with this is, that until the film was developed, I had no clue as to how they looked. I'd go through rolls only to find them unfocused, under-exposed, un-centered or just plain scary looking.

I became a regular at the 90 minute photo booth near my apartment, in hopes of getting the shot that would win the heart of a beautiful girl. The results were the same. I then began putting in the caveat, " I can undersand if you don't want to meet me, but please return the photograph" at the end of each attemtp to meet Ms. Right. Still nothing. I finally began including self-addressed, stamped envelopes with my responses. of all the mail I sent out, I only got one back. The gal wrote that she was six feet one inch tall and didn't feel comfortable dating a guy shorter than herself, which I considered to be understandable. It was at that point that I began posting my own ads, hoping that the fish would come to me, rather than trolling empty waters. I specified that I wanted to date women who were slim, thin, slender, petite, and weighed less than I did. My friend Mark told me that I better be ready to be lonely a Longgggggg time. Boy, was he ever right! I got three responses, one had no picturei and was written in pigeon English, which made it sound like this gal was looking for a green card. The seond was from a woman who looked to be older than my mother and twice as large, and third was type-written and easy to read, but was from a guy in the Suffolk County Correctional Center. Three strikes and I was out. From time to time, in desperation I'll give these types of hook-up media a try and each time I have to ask myself, "Why do I put myself through this type of torture?"

For me, dating is like work, I put in my forty hours and the boss says, " You did a good job but I'm going to have to pay you next week, we're a little bit short..." At first you shrug it off, but when it happens time and again, you have to tell yourself," I cannot afford to keep this up!" I keep doing the legwork but not reaping any rewards. I met one girl who had to weight at least 180 pounds. I don't understand why people think the person they're meeting won't notice, it's like they're setting themselves up for rejection.

On the other hand, there's no formula for what a person will like and won't like. I was meeting a girl in a bar/grille on a Wednesday evening. It had snowed earlier in the week and the streets weren't bustling with activity. The place she suggested had a bar that ran against the south wall. The door was on the west side and there was a step up to the bar area and a sunken eating area to the north side. The bartender was chatting up a couple who were parked at the eastern corner. I sat close to the door, at the south west corner , so I'd be the first person she saw when she walked in. I was served a club soda in a goblet the size of a small goldfish bowl. A gal walked in and I stood to introduce myself, she stepped into the sunken eating area, which was dark and hard to see into. I sat back down. A short time later, she came out of the area and asked if I was Tony. When I affirmed that, the look of disappointment on her face was like a neon billboard.
" Why do I put myself through this?" I asked myself, sat down and bought her the obligatory drink. We chatted for a bout half an hour and then she told me she had to leave. I thanked her and then left myself wondering what the next step was.

Flash forward several years. I was watching the television program "CBS Sunday Morning" it's an hour and a half program about arts and entertainment, done in a style sort of like "Sixty Minutes" but a little more lighthearted. They ran a feature about the internet dating site E-Harmony, basically gawking over their success rate for matching people up and how many had gotten married and were living happily ever after. The ads on the tube all stated, " Join now and get your first connections for free. This led me to believe that it is no bargain as far as cost goes, so I never bothered to look deeper into it. After afew months of seeing their ads, I decided to see what it cost. I got on-line and read all the fine print and those long, tedious and confusing terms and saw no mention of fees, so I continued with the sign-up process. Next I was faced with filling out the personality profile. Four hundred and fifty questions of profiling. At the time the TV show, " Rock Star Supernova" was running so at nine o'clock I had to stop to watch the show, dashing back and forth to my computer during the commercials to answer another question or two. It was well past the eleven o'clock news, and into the Letterman show that I finally finished the questionaire portion. Next I had to wait while all the data was correlated and see what they had for me. I got a note stating, 'that even E-Harmony cannot find a suitable match for everyone'. At least they didn't charge me for that tidbit of self-confidence busting.

So here it is February 14th 2010, and I haven't any girlfriends or even any potential girlfriends in the wings. Thinking back to this weekend twenty three years ago, the girl I'd been seeing I was making extra efforts to insure that she'd keep seeing me. She had stopped being home when I called her, and didn't return my calls. I called her at work, where she couldn't dtich me.
" Are you avoiding me?"I asked.
" Oh no, it's nothing like that..." She let the sentence hang.
" Well this is the long weekend and Valentine's day, I'm off from work and I was wondering if we could do something?"
" You could give me a call..."
" That's what I'm doing. You haven't returned my calls for two weeks"
" Things have been kind of crazy, I'm just getting ready for when I go to England, call me at my other job"
" Okay, I'll call you Sunday night" Feeling a bit relieved, I convinced myself that I'd just let things get blown out of proportion in my head. I went out and picked up a heart-shaped box of chocolates, sexy lingerie, and a long stemmed rose. She worked nights at a Pizzaria and generally got off around eleven thirty p.m. I called at ten, only to have whoever answered the phone tell me that she took off early that evening. I packed all the stuff she'd left at my apartment, along wih the drying rose, box of chocolates and black lace teddy into a big box and on Tuesday I sent it UPS to her, with a note saying that if she didn't want to go out with me anymore, all she had to do was say so. I don't know why she had to let me think that things wer a lright, I'd think that she'd want to tell me just to get me off her case, but as I stated earlier, I have no clue how women think and I suppose I never will.

There are lots of Conspiracy Theorists who say that St. Valentines day isn't a real holiday and that it was invented by corporations, yet the legend of the holiday goes back long before Hallmark and Hershey's were big industries, so who's to say? I just hate the feeling like I'm not a part of it because I'm a solo act and don't have anyone to lavish my affections on. On the up side, think of the money I save not buying those heart-shaped boxes!

Supersonic

This title is vintage '90's Alternative, stolen from the often warring band, Oasis. The Gallagher brothers seemed to steal a page from the Davies brothers of Kinks fame, and on stage sometimes came to fisticuffs. Oasis has broken up several times, and in 2009 announced that they will never perform together again. It's a shame since they made music that has been compared to The Beatles. But that's not what my mind is on today..it's...

Football!

Today is February 7th, 2010 and marks the forty fourth playing of The Superbowl. This matchup between the AFC and NFC has gone through a lot of changes. I recall watching Superbowl 3 when Joe Namath and the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts. It was played on a Sunday afternoon, just like any other football game...prior to Monday NightFootball, Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football and the playoffs when games are played on Saturday and Sunday. Of course this is all due to the imense popularity of football and it's television coverage. Halftime events used to be a bunch of marching bands and baton twirlers, allowing viewers to head to the bathroom and grab more snacks to engulf during the game. This has become impossible. I would become independently wealthy if I could invent an external bladder that can be worn on Game day. You see, now the commercial ads are almost more of an attraction than the game itself. At a cost of between two and three million dollars for a thirty second spot, advertisers want to get the most bang for their bucks. As many people will discuss the ads around the water cooler on Monday, as the plays that were run during this extended hour of competition. In the past I've seen some brilliant ads, but many were so entertaining, I had no recollection of what the product being hawked was, which kind of defeats it's own purpose. Not only that, but now halftime is a mini concert extravagnza, featuring name acts like The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Aerosmith and the biggest mystery of all, Michael Jackson have all appeared. Michael Jackson and football should never be mentioned in the same sentence, let alone performing in the same arena. It's like seeing Ku Klux Klansmen wearing "Have A Nice Day" buttons on Martin Luther King Day. They just don't mix!

I'm getting off track here, tonight's extravaganza will feature The Who, or the remannats of the legendary band performing at halftime, leaving me to ask the question, when do I get to run to the bathroom? I don't want to miss the game, nor do I want to miss the ads, and now I don't want to miss the halftime show! What's left???

Is there some sort of medical procedure that I can undergo, which will keep my bladder from filling up? Should I just abstain from liquid refreshments? Is it too late to install a television in the lavatory? How does the average American football fan deal with this dilemma? I am set to record the entire program just so I can review memorable ads in the event that I miss one. The things we have to do in this day and age in order to enjoy sports!