Psycho

Lurid Love Letters

Last night, I saw an outdoor screening of "Psycho" with some friends in San Jose. As I only remembered the shower scene, I'd forgotten about the opening scene where the camera pans across skyscrapers, pauses at a half-open window - takes a moment to adjust to the black interior - and then pans to the right where a semi-nude couple just completed an intimate lunch-time encounter:

Sam: You never did eat your lunch, did you?
Marion: I'd better get back to the office. These extended lunch hours give my boss excess acid.
Sam: Why don't you call your boss and tell him you're taking the rest of the afternoon off? It's Friday anyway - and hot.
Marion: What do I do with my free afternoon? Walk you to the airport?
Sam: Well, you could laze around here a while longer.
Marion (foreshadowing a future hotel visit): Hmm. Checking out time is 3 pm. Hotels of this sort are interested in you when you come in, but when your time is up. Oh Sam, I hate having to be with you in a place like this.
Sam: Married couples deliberately spend an occasional night in a cheap hotel.
Marion: I know marriage can do a lot of things deliberately.
Sam: You sure talk like a girl who's been married.
Marion: Sam, this is the last time.
Sam: For what?
Marion: For this, meeting you in secret so we can be secretive. You come down here on business trips. We steal lunch hours. I wish you wouldn't even come.
Sam: All right, what do we do instead? Write each other lurid love letters?

It's a fitting scene for a hot summer evening in downtown San Jose. The warm weather always brings out my desire for a summer fling. For now, I'll have to settle for lurid love emails though as everybody seems to be out of town.

Das Boot

Fresh Air

"Das Boot" is one of the most convincing war movies ever made. The film is authentic, captivating and features great acting and character development. When the crew finally gets a breath of fresh air after being stuck on the bottom of the sea, I literally could feel their relief. As a viewer you emerge from the experience drained, blinking in the light, but oddly triumphant.

It's the same feeling I'm currently experiencing while looking back at my affair with the girl with the pearl necklace; I'm able to look at red Corolla's now without my heartbeat going up. I can listen to music that I bought her without actually starting to think about her. There are still things that I miss - doing groceries together, lying in the grass on a Sunday afternoon, impromptu meetings at a restaurant, cooking diner at home. But I've been meeting some interesting women and I'm convinced that pretty soon I will find somebody else to do those things with. And more. A breath of fresh air..

No contact

Pim's Angels..

The job of a track Marshal is to ensure that drivers are obeying the track rules. I'm not sure though why during our team offsite at Gokartracing, every Marshall appeared to hold up the sign 'No Contact' every time I passed them. Traffic lights that are signaling me, Marshall's spelling it out - although women seem to enjoy talking and emailing with me, maybe I fail to really get through to them: 'No Contact'.

Race result: I finished on second place.. :)

Resevoir Dogs

Ms. Blonde & Mr. Blue, Brown, Orange,White, Pink..

Quentin Tarantino came out of nowhere and turned Hollywood on its ear in 1992 with his explosive first feature, Reservoir Dogs. In the special feature section of the DVD, Eddie Bunker, one of the actors in the movie, is interviewed while driving around in a convertible. At some point he states "Perseverance overcomes everything; luck, intelligence.. everything".

I had to think about this statement during a management offsite in Napa where I found myself sitting in a stretched limo, surrounded by Harvard MBAs, former CEOs, Novelists, and people who lived in hostile parts of Russia and Africa. For a moment I felt out of place - an ordinary guy from a small village in Europe. How did I end up sitting in this limo? I realized that it wasn't just luck and that it had something to do with perseverance. And at least some intelligence.. ;-)

The Oscars

Fooooooooosball

My dormant competitive nature reared its ugly head again this week during an innocent foosball tournament. We played against one of the favorites and after we took the lead, things were getting down and dirty. Our opponent Ra was getting irritated with his partner Pa for not blocking my shots and then Pa took it out on me, saying that the Dutch were despicable because they came out in their boats to destroy villages and rape the women. OK, the Vikings weren't actually Dutch but still, the tone was set. It was hilarious and despite her verbal tactics and battle cries which could be heard througout the whole office, we won and I could feel the adrenaline flowing through my veins. I couldn't believe how caught up I was in the game.

Competitivenes not only plays at an individual level; because my team did a great job on hitting their numbers last week, we received a standing ovation in our departmental meeting. For a moment I thought I was attending the Oscar ceremony. Sometimes it feels like I'm living my life here on one big Hollywood set; in Holland people are less abundant in celebrating their achievements so I’m not really used to it. Still, doing better than the other teams felt good.

Maybe that's why I'll never be comfortable with this whole dating ritual; I hate coming in second..

LA Story

Signs

The movie "LA Story" with Steve Martin is a reflection of life in Los Angeles from the perspective of an intellectual weather man looking for love and guidance from a highway traffic sign.

Something weird happened tonight when I was doing my late night run. The first time it happened, I didn’t really pay attention to it. But when it happened a second and third time within 10 minutes, it began to feel spooky: when I came close to a road light, it either started to blink or went out completely.

Are the road lights giving me signals, just like the traffic sign in "LA Story"? If so, what are they telling me? Just like my dating instincts, at times I'm kind of clueless but maybe they are saying "This blogging is taking way too much time. Stop toying around and get a steady girl-friend". :) Easier said than done though.

Garden State

Sleepwalking

This weekend I picked up the DVD "Garden State". The film features pleasant quirky characters, has a real sense of humor, affection for its title location and a romance that feels sweet and comfortable.

During the four days that occur in the film, Andrew, the main character, is being thrown out of his complacent medicated state, literally and metaphorically - his dead end job at a Restaurant and his futile pursuit of a real acting job. At the end of the movie, he's only just beginning to deal with how to live his life and create his own destiny.

The movie has a true message for anyone who feels like they've been sleepwalking through life. I might have been in a similar state in my late twenties and early thirties so maybe that's why I can identify with this feel good movie. That and the great soundtrack.

Shrek

Oulala!!; my French Fiona

Movies can provide valuable guidance in today's dating jungle. Unfortunately Shrek wasn't one of the movies I was hoping for to be part of my guidebook. That my ad resulted in mistaken identity was pretty funny. Looking back, I'm still not sure if the following exchange was even funnier or just plain sad. It started of with this reply to my ad:

Reply #1: A pic is attached...you can guess which one I am and send one to me...maybe you in the middle of your 100 co-workers at the last Christmas party ??!!

Reply #2: Anyway, I just hope you are not the guy almost seated on the right. And If I am wrong you owe me anyway another chance...as I am your third choice on my pic!!

(ouch - she was my third choice out of 3 women on the picture)

Reply #3: So I was more than wrong???? Oulala, what a poor beginning!!! Maybe we should meet, just to laugh about that and see if you and I are finally looking better than Shrek!

(ouch - I was the person seated on the right)

Date Identity Theft

If love isn’t coming to me, then I'll have to find it myself. That's what I decided a while ago. But maybe I've overdone it a little. This became even more apparent when I noticed that the contextual Google ads on my blog are all related to 'dating' which means that Google's technology considers that to be the main topic of my blog.

Maybe I should check out some of those dating ads for advice. Why? I'm not even getting the opportunity to be rejected anymore because other guys are stealing my dating identity! This is a note I received from somebody I emailed with quite a while ago. At the time she stopped replying to my messages and we certainly never spoke on the phone:

I was so taken by your emails that I wrote a bunch of responses, and you responded and I responded again and then it turned into a picture and then phone conversations and then we made a date. I have to say, I noticed the emails started to get less and less interesting, and on the phone you actually sounded like a dork. I asked you something about your marketing job and you responded, "What? I do computer consulting." I realized that somewhere along the line I mixed up your email address with someone else's. What I want to know is if YOU have a picture you'd like to share, maybe seeing a face along with a screen name will save me (and some other unlucky guy) some grief!!!

So this dork got to meet the woman that enjoyed talking to *me*. How pathetic is that. So where can I learn how to become a dork..? :)

Impuls buys

X&Y

When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
and ignite your bones
and i will try to fix you

Until recently I always made sure that I would get the best deal when shopping around for something. Lately I've been relying much more on impulses. Like yesterday when I picked up the lastest ColdPlay CD. It has some amazingly beautiful songs on it that go straight to the heart.

Small Talk

Wine and dine

A common thread with regards to most women I'm dating is that I'm ending up in this situation dreaded by all men: just being friends. Which brings me to friends of friends.

This weekend I spent the Saturday with my date from Sweden, exploring the best that the wineries of the Santa Cruz Mountains have to offer. It's June, clear blue skies, temperatures in the high seventies, the top of the car is down and sunscreen covers our arms and faces. In a restaurant we run into a friend of my Nordic companion to open the conversation, her friend's boy-friend asks me this first priceless question:

Do you snowboard?

How can you not love friends of friends.

Unlisted blogdress

Note from a friend: "Curse you and your blog!!!!!! Now that I've discovered it, I keep going back and discovering more things. How will I ever get any work done now??"

Quote from a chat with another friend: "If I were dating you, I wouldn't like finding information about other dates on your blog; it might actually drive women away because of perceived competition".

Starting a blog seemed to be a good idea at the time - keeping family and friends informed and offering an avenue to reflect on things that go on in your life. But maybe the benefits of my life adventures being an open book are outweighed by less desirable consequences. Or is there something like an unlisted blogdress?

Crash

Crash revisited

My personal ad implied that it would be ok for respondents to overhaul my wardrobe and crash my car. However, after seeing the movie 'crash' I am starting to wonder if crashing my car first might actually be a better way to 'connect' with somebody instead of having it crashed later.

'Crash' begins with a monologue by a police officer in the aftermath of a fender-bender. "We're always behind this metal and glass," he murmurs. "And we miss the sense of touch so much that we crash into each other." In the movie some people are literally coming together as the result of various crashes although the title of the film also applies to the interactions of the city's various ethnic groups, encounters that can range from a gentle bump to a head-on collision.

But how would I know if somebody really is my soul-crash-mate? I only have one car so I'd need to get it right the first time around...