I Wanna Get Lost

In honor of the premiere of the last season of everyone's favorite desert island show (sorry Gilligan's Island), I'm contemplating the hotties who make Lost even more worth watching.

There seem to be two trains of preference as far as the hot males on the island go. Some people fall into Team Sawyer, and like the rugged bad boy, a reformed con man who is unpredictable and a romantic underneath his rippled exterior. And I am not exaggerating when I say rippled. The scenes of him cutting firewood with his shirt off are totally extraneous to the plot, but ABC's gift to women everywhere.



The other people fall into Team Jack, and have a preference for the somewhat reluctant leader of the pack, a spinal surgeon who once was addicted to alcohol and pain pills but now tries to lead the survivors to the best of his ability. Despite his previous problems, he is a capable, mostly clear-headed decision maker who is constantly worried about the well-being and survival of his people.



And yes, there is one woman rounding out the love triangle, a little piece of eye-candy for the men: Kate, the girl-next-door tomboy beauty who has a fugitive past and a streak of rebellion in her. She kissed Jack and told him she loved him, but then slept with Sawyer, but then started dating Jack and got engaged to him, but he broke up with her because she did a favor for Sawyer she wouldn't tell him about, and looked like she still had feelings for Sawyer, who possibly reciprocated but was dating Jack's ex-girlfriend because they were stuck time-traveling together on the island. And if you're not confused yet, then please explain it to me because I sure as hell am.



I can't think of any girl who wouldn't want to be Kate, stuck between two gorgeous men who both love her and want to make a life with her. Plus it doesn't hurt that she can kick ass, shoot a gun, escape from the FBI, all while looking magazine-perfect and naturally gorgeous.

Now, I understand the appeal of Sawyer. I don't know why, but girls always have a weakness for a bad guy with a good heart. This is probably why so many girls fall in love with an asshole at one point in their lives. We seem to think that deep down underneath, they are good people and if we work hard enough, the good guy inside will eventually emerge. Unfortunately, most of the time, they are just jackasses. After all, if it looks like an asshole and talks like an asshole, well it's probably an asshole.

But Sawyer is a guy who on the exterior only cares about himself and makes a living by deceiving and cheating others, but once in a while his real character shines through and you see that he has good intentions and realize he is constantly caught in a battle between these two sides of him. That makes it easy to root for the good Sawyer, and why we constantly overlook all his selfish deeds.

Plus, let's face it. One of the biggest appeals of the dirty, hot asshole is that he looks like he'd be really, truly fantastic in bed. There is something about Sawyer that just exudes dirty, awesome sex, the kind where he would just throw you around and have his way with you and afterwards, you'd just want more. Case and point, this scene of him and Kate, having sex for the first time in a bear cage:



Despite my lust for Sawyer, at the end of the day, I am fully embedded in my position on Team Jack. There's something about his masculine jaw-line, his brown eyes, his rugged good looks, and the sureness he exudes with every word that he knows what is best and is going to save everyone that gets me every time. He is a good guy struggling with his own demons, a man of science who might have some romance buried deep inside.

Not to mention, Dr. Jack Shepherd puts the sexy back in cut-out sleeveless shirts (but that only works when you're trapped on a desert island and it's too hot when your button-down shirt are sleeves covering up your rippling biceps, so seriously guys, please don't cut the sleeves off your shirts, you look ridiculous).



There is something so sexy about a great set of biceps with a tattoo across them. It implies that there is a hint of badass in the nice guy, doctor exterior. The tattoos are not actually a part of Jack's character persona; they are actor Matthew Fox's actual tattoos.

(Side Story: I actually spotted Matthew Fox about a year ago in the city. I was late for a train at Grand Central, and running with my luggage to catch my train when I spotted him walking down the street. I was hit with the urge to turn around and follow him, but then fought my instincts and caught my train.

I tried to rationalize it afterwards by telling myself that it wouldn't have accomplished anything if I had followed him; after all he's happily married with children. So instead of escorting him back to my apartment and undressing him, realistically, he probably would've walked into a Starbucks and asked a policeman to get the creepy girl with the duffel bags to stop trailing him.

Even knowing that, however, to this day I regret not running after Matthew Fox and am pretty sure I made the wrong decision. As my friend K gasped to me later: "Forget the train! You ALWAYS choose Matthew Fox!")

In my ideal world (so basically not an island with polar bears and smoke monsters and hostiles running rampant), I would get to sleep with Sawyer but end up with Jack. That's totally going to happen, right? Well, a girl can still dream.

In the meantime, I will settle for some answers to the burning questions I have about what is happening on this island. Who is Jacob and why did Fake Locke want to kill him so badly? Did detonating the bomb undo the crash of Oceanic 815, meaning they could've led parallel lives where they never ended up on the island? Do Jin and Sun finally reunite? Is everyone who died on the island really dead? Meaning, if I really cross my fingers, will Boone finally return from the dead and join my list of hot men I'd like to spend some time locked in a bear cage with?

Stay tuned...

They Make the Rockin' World Go Round

I have this theory that nerds are better in bed than hot guys for the simple reason that they try harder. The hot guys always easily got girls and therefore never had to actually put any effort into the sex to keep girls coming back, whereas the nerds needed to bring something to the table to have a chance to have sex at all.

And to quoth the genius of Revenge of the Nerds, "Jocks only think about sports. Nerds only think about sex."

I've honed this theory over time. A while ago, I was dating Client Boy, a self-absorbed and sociopathic idiot I had once worked with who stood me up multiple times and then sent me inappropriate text messages for about a year, even after I had blown him off repeatedly.

The only reason that I dated him in the first place is that he is ridiculously good looking. I'm talking model good looks. He's 6'5", with a lean muscular body, deep soulful brown eyes, perfect hair, sexy lips, sigh. Back in the days he was my client, the girls in my office would just sit around and stare at pictures of him.

So I had high hopes for him in the sex department, but soon discovered that he was awful, just terrible. I mean, he gives new meaning to the term "jackhammer." It was one of the most disappointing experiences of my life.

I later found out through mutual friends that he has a reputation around some circles of being terrible in bed. Apparently (many) other girls around the city had fallen for his boyish good looks, just as I had, only to suffer through the ordeal that he is under the impression qualifies as sex.

He also confessed to me later that many meant MANY, as in he had slept with over 100 girls already, which is no small feat considering he was only 27 at the time. This was a whole new level of manwhore, so it's no wonder he had a reputation throughout the city. It's only a shame that I didn't know about it prior to my wasting my time.

Knowing what I know now, it's no surprise that he was horrendous in bed. I mean the kid didn't give a shit about anything but himself in life, so why should sex be any different? Let that be a lesson to you girls. If a guy is selfish in life, he's probably also selfish in bed.

So in the multiple ensuing conversations I have had with friends about my theory that nerds try harder, I've found out that guys have a similar theory, only it applies to fat girls.

According to my male sources, fat girls try harder in bed because otherwise they don't get laid. Unlike attractive girls who can just pick up a guy whenever they feel like it, the fat girls need to put on a show and do something special so that they have an edge over more attractive females, and can keep a guy coming back for more.

My initial reaction was that this doesn't logically make sense since girls who have positive body-image and self-confidence are more comfortable with themselves and subsequently tend to be better in bed. That isn't to say that I don't think a heavier girl shouldn't be happy with her body; it just happens that in my experience, as a girl's weight increases, her physical self-confidence plummets.

I've been hard-pressed to find a guy that will actually CONFIRM this theory, since most guys don't like to admit that they sleep with fat girls. I'm pretty sure my guy friends are just covering for a night that they choose not to remember, because every one of them has told me, "Well I heard that from my friends. I personally wouldn't know." I'm calling bullshit, guys.

I don't really have any fat girlfriends to ask about this either. I'm not weight-ist or anything; I just happen to have friends that are very active in their day-to-day lives (two of them just ran half-marathons, you go girls!). And I don't really care to have a token fat friend just to make me look skinnier when we go out together.

Not to mention that even if I did have a fat friend, I'm not sure how I would even broach that question: "Hey, do you think you're better in bed because otherwise guys wouldn't have sex with you because you're overweight?" Yeah, that would be an easy way to prompt someone to commit suicide and I'm not comfortable with being held responsible for that.

So basically, unless I can convince a guy I know to go sleep around with a lot of skinny girls and then a lot of fat girls and draw up generalizations for me, I have no way of confirming or denying this rumor. And really, if I know someone who is willing to do that, I'm not sure I want to be friends with him.

I am highly skeptical there is any real correlation between weight and being good in bed; it's probably one of those rumors that guys spread around to convince their wingmen to take one for the team and hook up with the fatter girl so they can have the more attractive one to themselves. That sounds about right.

But, I stand by my theory about nerds. If you're ever looking for a night of good sex, bypass the hot, cocky guys at the bar and go find the unassuming science nerds discussing the intricacies of mechanical engineering in the corner.

Living in a Digital World

I read a fascinating article in the NY Times the other day about how breaking up has become astronomically more difficult since the advent of the digital age.

Anyone that has gone through the hell of changing their relationship status in Facebook to "single" already knows this to be true. But once you factor in legality issues in divorce cases, online stalking, and just the constant omnipresence of an ex in your life even if you can get rid of them physically, everything gets much more complicated.

I didn't come of age in the Facebook era; I didn't become a member until a year after I graduated from college and even then I deactivated my account and have only been an active member for the last year and a half.

However, last year I found out the ex-love-of-my-life had gotten engaged and is getting married this summer. Now, I had already defriended him years ago, and maintain no ties whatsoever. We have literally had no contact in three or so years.

BUT when he got engaged, he changed his profile picture to a photo of his fiance's engagement ring, and I was suddenly informed by numerous mutual friends of ours of his impending nuptials.

Now in traditional pre-social-networking society, I would've found this out the old-school way, like at our ten year college reunion when he had become so fat he was unrecognizable and his wife had turned into some hideous minivan-driving soccer mom.

Instead, I knew within DAYS that he had gotten engaged a girl he met in law school. AND how many carats the ring are and when they were planning on getting married. So obviously then I had to see for myself so I spied on his profile to check out what she looks like. (Whatever, you know you'd do it too.)

In the old days, I would've had to hire an expensive private investigator or travel hundreds of miles and put my life on hold to physically stalk him to attain this level of information. Now, it was just one click away.

And there's no nice way for me to say this without sounding petty, but she's not a looker. I'm sure she's a lovely person but she has a strange face and yellow teeth. I swear. I may or may not have sent photos out for my friends to judge and guy friend R, who doesn't know the meaning of tact, told me she's not attractive and little sister E said, "It looks like her face was shrunk bizarrely. She's really unattractive...I can't look too long at the pictures without cringing and needing to look away."

Which then spun me into a weird emotional dilemma of whether I should feel relieved or insulted. My initial reaction was, "Ha, he's going to have to wake up next to THAT for the rest of his life," before "Waaait...do I look like that?" settled in.

Talk about too much information...

I can't help but think there's something wrong with a society in which we take such stock in status updates and wall posts, and can use these facile interactions on which to base entire conversations, friendships, and even real feelings like sorrow and mourning.

And logically, I'm concerned about my own digital footprint, and what other people are inferring based on my Facebook profile. I know this seems incongruous considering I write a blog for the world to see, but I am actually a very private person and there is information I reserve solely for my close friends. Thus, the idea of people, especially exes, finding out personal information about me online, frankly, scares the bejesus out of me.

But if I feel that strongly about it, why not just cancel my account, right? Because I don't want to be left out of any of the social interactions either. It's a regular Catch 22 - damned if you do, damned if you don't.

So I'm left with a lingering concern that this is how relationships are destined to end from now on; with status updates and photos of new paramours being spread around the internet at faster-than-light speeds. I never really believed in the idea of a dignified break-up to begin with, but this is definitely NOT dignified.

Maybe we weren't meant to have so much information readily available. Maybe sometimes it's better not to know. Maybe we were meant to have to dig around for and/or wait for devastating news, instead of having it there just a button click away.

Or possibly I'm wrong about all of this and knowing is better than not knowing because it leads to, if nothing else, absolute closure in text and pictorial form that cannot be denied.

Love Question Mark

I recently watched the movie Paper Heart, a mockumentary about love, centered around a girl who's not sure if she believes in love and is even capable of falling in love. (Rent it immediately. It's adorable.) And it got me thinking about the idea of love in general.

Interesting fact I'd never really thought about before: since love is a chemical reaction that occurs in your brain, it is technically possible for someone to be lacking the chemicals necessary for this process. Therefore, it is entirely likely that a person could be physically incapable of love.

(Thus, to all those guys who have been using that as an excuse to get out of a relationship, now at least you have some scientific research to back that shit up!)

For most of my adult life, I have been opposed to the idea of people getting married too young (by young I mean before or during your early twenties) for all the logical reasons: high divorce rate, being too young to know what you want in life, lack of real-life experience, the necessity to date around to know what qualities you need in a spouse, etc, etc.

I am, however, now questioning my previous judgements on the matter.

My cousin, who just turned 21, looks like he is on the verge of proposing to his girlfriend of over three years even though they're only seniors in college, and a bunch of voices (including his parents') have chimed in that they're too young to get married. Although I understand their reservations and the rational part of me agrees that they should wait a few years before they get hitched, I am actually, for the most part, very supportive of the idea.

This particular cousin used to be somewhat of a nightmare, the black sheep of the family (which worked out well for me, because my exploits paled in comparison), the one who got arrested in the middle of the night during high school and had to wake his parents up to bail him out of jail. He was also, and I say this with love, somewhat of a jerkface, which is why we weren't particularly close growing up.

Since he started dating his girlfriend, though, he's a completely different person. He's nice, thoughtful, a hard worker, and actually fun to be around. And seeing him around her was bizarre experience at first. He's attentive and protective, constantly checking to make sure that she's ok. I'd never seen him like that before. If this is the person that he is when he's with her, I see nothing wrong with committing to be like that for the rest of his life.

After all, if you love someone and you're 100% sure that they're the right one for you, there's no real reason to wait to get married. A few of my friends have parents that were high school sweethearts and are still happily married today, thirty years later.

There's something to be said for young love. One of the couples that was interviewed in Paper Heart met when they were only 14 and got engaged their junior year of high school. They said of their early marriage:

"I think the young love can sometimes be the most important. I know that many people now are waiting until later to get married, but I think you lose something. We could've chose not to marry before he went to college, but waiting five years would have lost much of the magnetism that we had for each other."

Although I definitely don't condone teenage marriage or the (kind of creepy) idea of getting married at 17, there is a spark of truth to what they said.

My girlfriend S and I went to college together and actually dated two roommates for the majority of our college years. One day, we were discussing our college sweethearts and what had happened to them in the past five years. Both of the exes have gotten fatter since they exited our lives (not being smug, just stating the facts!) and (more relevantly) got engaged this past year.

So even though both S and I know that we are far better off without them in our lives now, we both agreed that there is a part of us that still misses them. And it's not the physical guys that we miss (after all, they did get fat); it's the feeling.

The feeling of being twenty years old in college when your life revolves around learning and having fun, when your entire life is ahead of you, when there aren't any real world worries to weigh you down yet, when there's just the magic of being in love for the first time in your life and believing wholeheartedly that it will work out and you will be together forever and ever.

I honestly don't think things would've worked out between me and the college boyfriend; there were too many long-term obstacles that would've resulted in us hating each other eventually. But, and I can say with the certainty of someone who has been in love since, I will never again feel the way I felt about him. There was something pure and magical about that first love that I will never be able to recapture.

And perhaps, that's the main reason that I am optimistic things will work out for my cousin. Watching them from across the room one night, I couldn't take my eyes off them. And after seeing him reach over to take her hand, I figured out why they made me happy and sad inside all at the same time.

I realized that's what love looks like. There’s something about the way love looks, about the way that people who are in love just glow and pulsate with their own energy, and it hit me all of a sudden that I will never look that way again and it simply knocked the breath right out of me.

At the end of the day, there's something to said for marrying before cynicism and being jaded settle in and you wind up a cranky adult (like me). There's something to be said for marrying your first love and making it work by holding onto that feeling.

So maybe I'm not as cynical and jaded as I originally thought, because I really believe it'll work out for them.

Welcome, 2010!

I hate holidays that have a lot of pressure associated with them. There are always so many expectations for holidays like Valentine's Day and Halloween and New Year's Eve, especially in a city like New York, that people start making their plans months in advance and then discuss all the awesome things they are planning on doing.

So now as I get older (and crankier), I am less inclined to do anything at all and would rather just sit in my apartment wearing my pajamas instead of fighting for my personal space on the streets of Manhattan.

And due to my inability to make plans this year for New Year's Eve, I finally just decided to host a party at my apartment and invite everyone I like and trust not to mess up my furniture, which is only like five people. (Once again, the getting crankier with age spinster thing. It's entirely likely that I start covering my furniture with plastic in the next couple years.)

I didn't get to wear my sweatpants, but I did get to ring in the new year inside my warm apartment with people I actually enjoy spending time with, pink champagne, and red velvet cupcakes.

When R and I decided to try to venture outside for the after-party, we encountered a shit-show of proportions I haven't witnessed since that spring break I spent in Cancun a decade ago. It consisted of my two least favorite types of drunk people: the fighters and the pukers.

Apparently New Year's makes other people feel violent as well because there were multiple fights breaking out and I saw a guy whose entire shirt was covered in his own blood. Then there were multiple people puking in the streets and after I got into my elevator, the guy that entered after me announced, "I don't think I am going to make it to my apartment...If I don't puke in here I'm definitely going to puke in the hallway."

I politely asked him to aim away from me and got the hell outta there as quickly as I could. Luckily he lived on a higher floor so I didn't have to find out if he did end up puking all over the hallway.

And yes, I am an asshole, but I did laugh when I saw a woman literally fall face-first out of her cab and into a bike rack. Yes, it was slushy outside, but she was definitely completely wasted.

People, what is the point of getting so drunk that you can't make it to your own toilet to puke and you face plant getting out of a cab? Yes, it is a holiday when we celebrate a brand new year, but really, if you think about it, it's just another day. If you want to get that drunk, OBVIOUSLY you save it for an actually important day like ChamPAIN Tuesday.

I suppose in an ideal world I would have Mary Poppins-like powers that would have allowed me to clean up my apartment with a snap of my fingers, and there would've been a special someone for me to kiss at midnight, but even taking those things into consideration, it was a pretty great start to 2010.