Vertigo

me: 6th row from the back (or is it top?)

Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" starts with a scene where Scottie, a detective, slips down a steep roof and ends up dangling from a flimsy rain gutter.

While I was dangling upside down in the "Vertigo" rollercoaster at Six-Flags Marine World during our team offsite, it felt like I would have been better off hanging on to a rain gutter and that I'd taken a wrong turn in life. The fries in my stomach made it clear that they only wanted to go in one direction: up.

Before riding Vertigo, I made sure that I didn’t have any loose items in my pockets. When I was about to remove my Google badge, one of my peers told me not remove it. “If you want to pick-up women, wear your badge. It’s a statement that you have a job and they love that!”

The subtleties of dating are all in the details: rings, badges…

Sideways

With my dating life fading, letting go leaves me with a problem: how am I going to maintain this page and create new content that still relates to the title of this blog?

Introducing: Nick and the Celine. They flew in from Las Vegas for a long weekend in Napa. Both divorced, their kids with their exes and judging by the way how they looked at one another, it was clear that wine was not the main objective for their trip. Their brand new Mustang convertible stopped next to my Miata on the empty parking lot just when my friend and I were about to leave my car to check if the tasting room was still open. And as the winery wasn’t closed just yet, my friend went back outside to let Nick and his lovely companion know that they should come in as well. While they entered the tasting room, my friend jokingly told the woman behind the counter that the guy who came in just after us would pay for our tasting.

Nick didn’t blink an eye, pulled a stack of twenty dollar bills out of his pocket and put two of them down on the counter to pay for our tasting. Despite our objections, he insisted on paying and with the conversation flowing as easily as the wine, we convinced our new found friends to join us for one final stop at Vander Heyden. Different tasting room, familiar scenario. Before we were able to close the door behind us, Nick put his twenty dollar bills on the counter and minutes later we were sipping a late harvest cabernet...

Three weeks have passed since then and it appears that Celine travelled back to France. It's unclear if this is a permanent move. But if a sequel for Sideways hasn't been planned for yet, I think I can provide some plot ideas... :)

Fight Club

First rule of Fight Club: do not talk about Fight Club

I would argue that the movie Fight Club is avante garde sublime art. The film seduces and indoctrinates, urging the viewer to confront his or her own emotion. Despite the destruction in the movie, the visual image is beautiful.

Edward Norton plays Jack, the main character in the movie. In today’s western culture that's been robbed of its masculine principle, Jack finds himself only accepting his masculinity through tears and the estrogen-enriched breasts of another man. Jack represents today’s males - they're lovely, valuable people, not interested in harming the earth, or starting wars. But there's not much energy in them. They are life-preserving and not exactly life-giving.

And then, something happened to Jack. He let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. He found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.

Lately I'm starting to think that I should let go as well with regards to my dating efforts. Freedom.

Kinsey

Science versus Emotion

One of the best films of 2004, Kinsey pays tribute to the man who revolutionized our understanding of human sexuality. Indiana University researcher Alfred Kinsey was so consumed by statistical measurements of human sexual activity that he almost completely overlooked the substantial role of emotions and their effect on human behavior.

The film has some funny moments; when conducting sex interviews to make a census of American sexual behavior, an immigrant in broken english reveals he had, "sex with horse", to which the interviewer tries to retain composure and interrogate him further, and the immigrant replies, "No, I had sex with Horace. Horace!"

Last week I ran into my ex girl-friend. The one with the pearl necklace. Amazingly, the scientific side of my brain was telling me 'What did you ever see in her anyway' but at the same time my emotion was going the complete opposite way...

Big Fish

Daffodils in Big Fish..

Tim Burton's "Big Fish" and the book "Life of Pi" are very similar in that they both are a manifestation of people telling their life stories, leaving it up to their audience to determine whether those stories are based on true facts, just imagination, or both.

Telling stories is a big part of dating as well. It's the initial process of getting to know somebody as it provides information on who we are and the choices we make in life. And as it's only natural that when you like somebody, you want to make a good first impression, there's the potential that the real story gets a little decoration to make it look better. That's not necessarily a bad thing; don’t we all want to be entertained? I therefore think that the final question in "Life of Pi" with regards to which version of the story is the better one is a rhetorical question.

My stories from last week include meetings with women I don't get, I can't get or I couldn't retain. Even decoration wouldn't make any of those stories entertaining.

For the record, I just want to state that all the entries in this blog are based on real stories... :)

Seinfeld

Jerry and co

How do you determine if somebody you're dating isn't a date anymore but has become a girl-friend... Are these the correct criteria to check for:

• How long have you been seeing her?
• Phone call frequency - are you on a daily?
• Do you have to ask her out on Saturday night or is a date implied?
• Does she have anything in your medicine cabinet?
• All of the above?

So if somebody you're seeing wants to spend her birthday with you, does this supersede any of the criteria as mentioned above?