Meeting Neil Strauss – Actually
If it wasn’t clear yesterday, I’ll say it now: I had a severe case of ‘fan-girl’ syndrome descending upon me as we pulled into Neil Strauss’ driveway – not the best way to enter any situation, let alone one where I’m supposed to be composed and in charge. Megan was busy assessing space and filming [...]
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Meeting Neil Strauss – Preamble
The morning after Disneyland and Craigslist dating, I was a bit of a wreck. See, before I left on the 50/50 road trip, a friend of mine who has asked to remain anonymous handed me his copy of Neil Strauss’ The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick Up Artists. “You might be interested in this,” my [...]
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Getting Our LA On
Ed Note: Before we begin, got some cool news this afternoon: the 50/50 Twitter feed was named in the top 200 feeds for info about dating! Read about that cool tidbit on the dating blog that named us here. Okay, back to the LA speed dating! After spending a few days in Alaska, where the air was brisk and [...]
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The Dark Matter of Breakups
One of the downfalls of dating – and of being a human who goes outside (or even of the Boo Radley variety for that matter) – is the aftermath of breakups. Since the whole fifty dates project was inspired by a heartbreaking work of breakuppery, ghosts of relationships past have certainly wafted through my mind [...]
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Memos About Dating You Missed While You Were Married
Divorcee’s and singletons who recently exited over five-year long relationships, take heed: a brave new datingverse emerged while you were coupled up. Whether you’re the wring-your-hands-and-fret type, or the cool-cucumber-pretend-dating-doesn’t-exist type, it is clear that you’re going to want to meet someone special eventually. While I can’t tell you what the dating landscape will look [...]
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Craigslist Personals: A Sample of LA Responses
Before we were even near the Grapevine, Megs and I had decided to try a new dating tactic: speed dating in Disneyland. Which meant I needed a date (or two, three, four, five) fast. And in order to not feel weird about suggeting a five minute to hour long date with someone, I needed men [...]
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A Detour to Shangri-L.A.
As previously noted through two separate posts (here and here,respectively), the final dates for 50/50 were spread out a bit due to about ten gagillion things. One of those gagillions was a long-awaited trip to Los Angeles to interview pickup-artist extraordinaire – and incredibly likable human being and menace of a critical thinker – Neil Strauss. Once [...]
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Only Thing To Do Is Jump Over the Moon
There’s this weird thing that happens when you set out on a life-changing adventure: it changes your life. I know, I know – that should be apparent by the very defining term of “life-changing adventure” but I guess I wasn’t quite prepared for precisely how my existence was going to be altered. I expected to [...]
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Conversation Starters
Sure, Megs and I differ in several ways. We are, however, also quite a bit alike and this isn’t more apparent than in our love of stories. Particularly, we revel in the unsung stories of those around us – think This American Life or Snap Judgement but often with [...]
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Dating Is Like Medicine
Sometimes dating feels like a lot like taking medicine. While the cough is irritating, you gulp the poorly impersonated candy-flavored syrup so the cough doesn’t wallop your face into a case of pneumonia. That whole idea basically states at first the malady feels better than the antidote but, as my mom is prone to reminding me, if [...]
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