We're Just Not There Yet - The Blog

Sometimes a Job can be Just Like a Relationship

2012-03-08T11:47:00.001-05:00

I don’t usually ask for advice. At all actually, especially here, on this platform. It’s just not my thing. Daryl and I have looped ourselves into the advice giving role. The parent role. The role of a wise seasoned individual ready to say just the right thing at the right moment to help out which ever fan it is that day who needs a hand to pull them out of which ever relationship hole they’ve fallen into.

We’re just normal guys though. And we have normal problems. Friendship problems, girl problems, work problems, family problems. Yes, as we say, they’re all just problems, but we have them too. And sometimes we need others to go to for advice, because it’s terribly hard to follow your own advice. So where do I go? Well my dad helps me a lot. And surprisingly, D and I help each other quite a bit. But, now I turn to you, our amazing and faithful audience, for a bit of help. And incase you don’t get the analogy here my recent business situation plays perfectly into a relationship. So take it as that… what would you do?

8 months ago, I got introduced to one of the most amazing products I’ve ever seen in my life. It was accepted in almost any industry, had the most amazing potential, and no one could say no to it. It was like the wonder product. Could be used by the stars (and they want to use it) but utilized by you and I, at home as well. So morally good, and had the opportunity to be one of the biggest products ever to affect our daily lives. This was brought to me on a whim. On another persons belief that I might see what he sees in it. That I might be the person to take it to the next level.

I was skeptical. Nothing in this world is this good. It just can’t be. So I got in cautiously, a little bit at a time. First a little bit of my free time, then more, then about half of it. Then I started traveling around for it. Building clients, becoming more and more invested in the idea of what this could grow into. It was amazing. If I could show you the financials I drew up, you would be blown away. It was a dream come true.

The only issue I saw at the time was my partner. He had a bit of baggage. Financial baggage, and it drove him to make uncalculated decisions because of his need for money. I of course figured it would all clear up once we really kicked off.

So I became financially invested. Paying for my own travel at first, then for the product, then a little bit of funds here and there to keep the deal a float. We were waiting for the big break! And then about 6 months into it, I took over the role of finding investment. Financial assistance for what could be the best pay off, best bet anyone could ever make. I could have turned to a bank, or a venture capitalist, or even a hedge fund. But no, I wanted people I was close to, to benefit off of this deal. So I turned to family. And it seemed to work out. All of it. Initial investment, stock allocation, bonus structure, year one pay off, and year two full pay back. Guaranteed returns of 1000% or more. It was the perfect investment. They loved the product just as much as I did. Maybe more! They would provide the money, I would drive the business.

But again there was the issue of my partner. It’s not that he was dishonest, he just left things out. Not huge things, just a lack of information here and there. Information that would have changed the way we approached certain deals. But I looked past it. The product was what I really cared about. I could deal with the little annoyances from him as long as I could still see the light at the end of the tunnel which was me eventually running the show. I wanted to be in the drivers seat. But he was currently in control. And without investment, that position would not change. Did he want it to change? No, but that’s ok, it was business. It happens all the time.

So I go to California (where the product was) contract in hand for the rights to the product. Ready with the investment pending on the other line, ready with clients lined up, ready to take this product to the next level. But I get there and things flip around. The product is still perfect, but the baggage has grown immensely. There are other people trying to do the same thing I’m doing. Lots of other people. Again, some information that would have been nice to know before hand. And the contract I wrote, isn’t excepted. Not good enough they say. They got greedy, and wanted more and more. It’s not like anything changed about the product, just everything around it. The opportunity is still there, but the game has changed. The same profit level was no longer there, the owners were sketchy as shit, and I was starting to have a bad gut feeling about it.

But now I have gotten family funds involved. People are counting on me. Friends are counting on me for future jobs, and everyone is rooting me on, saying this is the best thing they’ve ever seen me get involved with. But I just have that feeling it’s not right anymore. It’s not what it was. What it was portrayed to be. But it still has the potential, if done exactly right. If I ignored all the warning signs and moved past them, powered through them like they never existed. Then maybe, just maybe it would turn out to be the best decision I ever made in my life. The best decision I made for not only myself but everyone around me, all my friends, my family, my future.

So what do I do… I’m invested. Morally, financially and socially. I’ve poured my heart into this for 8 months, but I also have the opportunity to walk away and follow my gut feeling that it is not right, or I can always ignore the signs and power through because of the potential of the future.

What would you do in this situation. If it was you. If it was your future, your job, your relationship…

WJNTY - Seth
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Don't Waste Your Wish Upon a Star

2012-03-05T12:51:00.000-05:00

I work a lot. When you work a lot you no doubt have to give up other things. It sucks. You can’t be in two places doing two things at the same time. How to fit it all in? One of life's greatest challenges will always be finding a balance. We’re all faced with it from time to time. There are only so many days in a week, so many hours in a day, and so on.

People write and ask, "Do you believe in true love?" My answer: "Yes, but I also believe in life, and sometimes when you get one going well, the other one comes along and spits in your face..."

You have to find balance.

I own a business, authored a book, travel on the weekends for work, and I’m in a long distance relationship.

Balance is something that I’ve mastered.

Maybe mastered is the wrong word. Do I always win the battle? No, not even close, but I do win more often than I lose. Yes. To me it’s not about winning every single time, it’s more about winning most of the time.

People ask me,

Isn’t writing a book really hard?

Isn’t dating someone long distance really hard? Isn’t traveling so much really hard?

Yes… but so what?

You have to be able to endure. To power through it. To not give in. Or don’t, but then you don’t get to enjoy the pay off. Relationships are the same deal. All relationships are. You can either work at it or not.

You can always find a reason to leave. You can always decide that it’s just too hard. You can always decide that you don’t want to try anymore, you can always quit… but then you won’t get the good relationship, the happy marriage, or the well- behaved child. A fulfilling life doesn’t come without hard work and balance.

Now of course there will be some huge complications along the way. There will be moments of utter despair and of pain, stretches of complete hopelessness where all will seem lost, but so what. Honestly. So what?

It’s hard. It hurts. It’s not easy. Will it last forever? Most likely not. How do you make it through it then?

It’s very simple. You just decide to. You make the choice to.

It may not always seem like it, but you do choose most of what happens in your life. Whether or not you choose to acknowledge the responsibility of it though, that’s another question. You can decide in the very next moment of your life to change the cards, which you’ve been dealt. I have friends who are in miserable relationships, friends who have miserable jobs. Friends who are way too fat. Friends who don’t have nice children either. Who is to blame for all this?

Is some of it fate, or bad luck?

Sure.

Is some of it from choices that they’ve made?

Sometimes.

Here is the thing though; they all share a common thread with one another and that thread is this: it’s almost never their fault.

So whose fault is it?

Well the list is often lengthy; but I’ll give you the most common culprits,

Time, money, co-workers, energy, a spouse, a parent, a death, an ex, a sibling, a bad friend, bad luck and so on.

Those bastards!

Wait, actually maybe that’s not fair.

After all, aren’t all of those things just a part of life? Doesn’t everyone experience them, at one point or another?

People will die, yes, but we’re meant to lose the people we love, how else would we ever know how important they are to us? People cheat. But how else would we appreciate the ones who don’t? People lie. How else would we learn the value of trust? People will break your heart too. But how else would we ever know how good we actually have it with those who won’t?

People will say to me, “The way that you see things is too simple.”

My answer for them, “The way that you see things is too hard.”

Life is not simple. Life is not easy either. Thinking that it should be is their biggest mistake. That is where the pain and sorrow are born. People wish, want and dream… but then they won’t do the work. Life is not kind to these people. Love is even crueler.

People write and ask, "Do you believe in true love?" My answer: "Yes, but I also believe in life, and sometimes when you get one going well, the other one comes along and spits in your face..."

Those are the moments in your life when you work even harder. And I’ll tell you why, because what other choice do you really have?

You could give up?

That is always a choice now, isn’t it? How about, to wish? To want? To dream? Those are all choices too I suppose, but leading to where? Well that is the problem isn’t it? A wish, a want and a dream? Where do they go? I’ll tell you what I’ve learned,

Wishes are for the stars, wants are for children and dreams are for the people who are never willing to waste even a moment of their life. Dreams don’t come true. They’re achieved. They’re earned.

WJNTY- Daryl
Buy We're Just Not There Yet - the book, Today!

Back to the Future With a Little Relationship Help From the Past

2012-03-01T12:13:00.000-05:00

In my daily life, there are only two differentscenarios I associate with “time traveling.” One has to do with pastrelationships, and the other is when I drink way too much. The classicsituation which goes a little like this: “Man, last night is pretty spotty,where did we go after the bar? We went where!? And I did what!!!? Wow, I guessI was doing some serious time traveling...” Another great synonym to a healthyblackout would be, “temporary amnesia.” As in, “Son, sometimes when you drinkway more then your body can handle, you can fall into a state some call‘temporary amnesia.’ Some of your memories might come back to you throughoutthe hours of the following day. Many will be hazy, and you will likely lose allmemory of the most important parts of your night, such as the whereabouts ofyour credit card and the cute redhead’s name.” But today’s blog isn’tnecessarily about drinking too much, or about people with temporary amnesia,but rather about time traveling in a relationship when either it’s approachingthe end, or has just finished.

Breakups can be terrible.Adult breakups (known as divorce) are said to be up there in the top three mostdifficult moments of a person’s life. And although you’ll breakup with 99.9percent of the people you date in life before you find the one you’re destinedto stay with forever, people are still horrible at breaking up. There are manythings that can go wrong in a relationship to cause a breakup, and sometimesyou might not even understand why your guy left you. I won’t go into all ofthat, you’ll just have to wait for the breakup chapter in the book for youranswers. However, I will share with you a little secret that I’ve been usingfor years to help me come to terms with my relationship failures.

Time traveling is the actof putting yourself back into scenes from the first month or two of yourrelationship, to watch them unfold the way an outsider would see them. Thismight take a lot of effort, so I suggest at least 1.21 jiggawats of power andan old school DeLorean to make the first attempt easier. Picture a date youwent on months ago, one that you might think at first consideration was a finedate. If I asked you to give me a brief description of that night, here’s whatyou’d say:

“Jim was really sweet, andplanned this night out on the town. We went to a nice restaurant, had dinnerand wine, and eventually went to a movie. We talked about life, and kissed atthe end. I remember calling a girlfriend right after he kissed me goodnight!”

Now put yourself back into the picture,watching from above. Scrooge style if you will.

-scene-

You look bored. This mightbe because while waiting for the food to come out, he's texting. The saladscome out and you specifically asked for the dressing on the side. You never sawhis annoyed facial expression when you sent it back. The wine is ok, and youmostly talk about work. You view your past self go to the bathroom and realizethat while you're gone, your man calls the waitress over not only to apologizefor your earlier brash behavior in regards to the salad, but to check out herass as she walks away too. Dinner’s over and there’s way too much squabble overthe check before you finally let him pay. You think to your ghost-like self, “Iwas expecting him to pay anyway, why did I make such a big deal out of it?” Themovie is good, but you realize now that he brought you to a movie on yoursecond date. The kiss goodnight is awkward, but ok. Definitely not passionate.You see yourself call a girlfriend and tell her that you’re not positive thatyou’ll have a third date. The chemistry just doesn’t seem to be there you say.

-endscene-

When you’re in the verybeginning of a relationship, you will gloss over things much easier. No one wantsto be too picky to even have a chance of making it past the second date, andI’m not encouraging you to become that way. However, these are the things thatwill drive you crazy when the relationship grows from dates to months, andmonths to babies. Girls come to me all the time with the classic, “He never didthat when we were first dating…” line. Or my favorite, “Those things didn’tbother me about him at first, but now they drive me crazy!” My answer to lineone is simple: Yes he did, you just didn’t see it because you were too caughtup in his baby blue eyes, and the way his hand felt in yours. Number two? Yesthey did, you just put them out of your mind because you were too caught up inhis baby blue eyes, and the way his hand felt in yours. Remember, Miss Taylordoesn’t write breakup songs (unless of course they have a happy ending)…

No matter how amazing youthink your relationship was when you were going through a breakup, I promiseyou, if you time travel back to certain scenarios, you’ll find majordiscrepancies to what you chose to remember. All of these discrepancies willpoint to an overarching issue, one that you never saw coming, and one thatmight have lead directly towards the end. Is texting during eating going toruin a relationship? Probably not, but it’s rude behavior, and if your man wasrude enough to text while eating on your second date, he probably stoppedholding the door on the 5th date, and by the 10th he probably didn’t have anyenergy left to give you a massage after sex. Without time traveling you wouldhave never realized that what you thought was an abrupt, out of left fieldbreakup, was really a slow disaster in progress from the beginning. You alsowould have never truly learned from your past, and would just be doomed to experienceit with the next guy. This is why it’s so important to look analytically ratherthan simply emotionally at the reasons behind the demise of your relationship.All of these clues from your past relationship will inevitably save you fromMister Right-Now, and eventually land you in the arms of Mister Right. Guyswith hyphenated last names are weird anyway…

WJNTY- Seth

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Mardi Gross

2012-02-23T09:29:00.000-05:00

I hate Mardi Gras.

I’ve been around… to the majority of the large parties every year in the states. Kentucky Derby, Talladega Infield, San Fran Gay Pride Parade, New Years in NYC, St. Patty’s in Boston, Phish Concerts, Cubs Games, Gasparilla, Vegas Halloween… I’ve done them all. And believe me, they are all better than Mardi Gras.

First of all, the decorations for Mardi Gras are terrible. I feel like every Mardi Gras party is designed by a colorblind drunk college kid. I mean purple, green and gold? Really? Second, who came up with the idea for girls to show their tits for beads? This little scam is right up there with the French selling us bottled water, or Mexican food. I mean, talk about some of the all time best hoaxes… Burritos, Tacos, Fajitas, Quesadillas or Tostadas? They are all just tortillas with meat, cheese and vegetables. Damn you Mexicans. You crafty son’s of bitches.

Anyway, on a normal day, Girls Gone Wild has to pay major money and sign contracts to convince a girl on a beach to show her tits. And I wouldn't even be able to convince a girl to pop one out in a public place, even if I tried to explain to her that it’s all about the Benjamin’s, baby. But on Mardi Gras, all I have to do is pick up a dirty ten-cent set of beads off of the probably already puked on ground and hold them high in the air to have three or four sets flashing for everyone’s viewing pleasure. Seriously ladies, when did you get so easy? You do realize every phone has a video camera on it right? And most phones have twitter & facebook apps on them? Fuck it, you only live once, and it’s a party, right?

I think Mardi Gras further proves the point that girls are attracted to shiny things. More so when they are drinking, and even more so when there is sufficient peer-pressure around them. And in that I have found my foolproof marriage proposal plan. Get a lot of people in the room who are already married, get your girlfriend drunk, drop to one knee and pull out the shiny diamond! No creativity required. It’s fool proof! Her being the fool of course…

So, I guess this whole Mardi Gras thing can be fun for some people. Laughing, eating, drinking, puking, drinking more, enjoying random groping, crying, passing out on the street… the Mardi Gras night cycle is certainly a blast. But it’s just a little much for me. Maybe I’m old, maybe I’m just jaded. I did have a not so great experience one Mardi Gras, which has tainted my view of this celebratory holiday. So why ruin everyone else’s fun. Instead I’ll share my story for your enjoyment and just stay home this weekend.

I was in New Orleans about four years ago with my two best friends and girlfriend at the time, enjoying the sites (boring floats and fat men without shirts on), the sounds (police whistles and people ranting about Jesus) and the smells (piss and puke) of Bourbon Street. We were bouncing back and forth between different bars and side-walk beer vendors, grabbing a hurricane or a hand-grenade to drink whenever the line wasn’t too long, and trying to pick out our favorite costumes. It was overcrowded, and undertaining. So when night time hit, we decided to grab a good spot in a bar where we could watch some live music and have some proper drinks.

My girlfriend was getting sloppier and sloppier by the minute, and when her apparent theme song “Crazy Bitch” came on, she lost it. Cue C-list actor Steve Zahn to swoop in next to her on the dance floor. I was shocked, I mean Steve Zahn!? Most famous for his role in Saving Silverman as a Neil Diamond obsessed rodent removal expert? He was like my High School Hero! While I was running through terrible Strange Wilderness quotes to open with, my girlfriend took off her mask, whispered something in his ear, and before you knew it, he was sticking his c-list tongue right down her throat… right in front of me!

You know how sometimes you might think to yourself, “If my girlfriend made out with _______ not only would I be ok with it, I would be psyched!” Well, that wasn’t the case here. Our agreed upon get out of jail free card was only with Ryan Reynolds… not that fuck from Daddy Day Care. It was total breach of contract as far as I was concerned. And after about four seconds of thinking about confrontation, I decided the best move would be just to cut my losses and let Steve deal with the sloppy mess that had just ceased to be my girlfriend. But no, he had to get tired of her and move onto the next star fucker on the floor. I looked at my best friend. He had a look of pity mixed with whore, sorry, horror, on his face as she came prancing up with a stupid grin on her face.

Now Ex-Girlfriend: Did you see that! Steve Zahn just kissed me!

Me: Did you just see that? Oh, you missed it…

Ex: What was it?

Me: Steve Zahn’s career.

Ex: (confused) He just kissed me! How cool is that!

Me: Real cool, I heard he had herpes (allegedly). Thanks…

Ex: You’re an asshole…

Well asshole or not, it was time to get her out of there before she found some B-list guy to go down on. She argued about half way back to the hotel before half passing out and requiring physical support to get in bed. I chose the chair that night as my sleeping place.

Well, the next day she conveniently didn’t remember any part of the night after we'd left the Parade. Go figure. Blacking out would definitely be my go-to excuse in the ‘cheated on significant other in front of their face with a C-List actor’ situation. I’m not one to sugar coat things in break ups, or draw them out, so I ended it quickly citing cheating, lying, inability to handle liquor, possible herpes and bad taste in celebrities. I left New Orleans and never looked back.

Now, to be honest, the relationship wasn’t perfect, and in the back of my mind, I think I was looking for a good way out; her convenient timing gave me the perfect way. So maybe I was an asshole after all.

Either way, here are a few tips for this year’s Mardi Gras festival. Wherever you go, follow these rules, and hopefully you wont end up with herpes.

-Don’t travel to New Orleans, go to a party somewhere else. But if you do, do not leave one block on either side of Bourbon Street.

-Try not to drink too many sugary drinks like hurricanes or hand grenades. The hangover is terrible.

-Don’t wear heals if you are in an outdoor festival. You’ll eventually take them off and the streets are disgusting

-Green, Purple and Gold don’t go together.

-Leave the masks to Gaga

-A guy is not cool if he has a lot of beads; but a girl is a slut if she does.

-Be cautious of flashing when there are other flashes going off. You don’t want to wake up, with a sugary hangover to find a bad picture of yourself doing your best “girls gone wild” pose online.

-If you’re going to have a sloppy make out session, make sure it’s with your boyfriend, not some shitty actor.

Oh, and buy our book! www.WJNTY.com

WJNTY-Seth

Never Is A Promise, And You Can't Afford To Lie...

2012-02-20T11:13:00.002-05:00

Commitment is a funny thing. So is love...actually. How good is that movie? Anyway, I think the problem for most people is that they will try to make a go at both, most times with completely honest intentions too; but sadly they choose to do it with people who have incredibly different definitions of those words, from their own.

What does commitment really mean?

Does it just mean that if we’re together I won’t kiss another girl?

Does it mean I won’t think about another girl?

What if you cheat on someone but believe in honoring your commitment so much that you decide to never tell them? Is that considered keeping your commitment, or breaking it?

Does it mean that I have to tell you if I ever feel like I might be falling in love with another girl?

And how do you explain what "love" means for that matter?

Have you ever told someone “I love you,” but not really meant it?

Have you felt it before and knew without question that it was genuine, that you were truly in love with that person, but you just couldn’t get the words out?

Can you ever love somebody too much?

I wrote a book about this stuff, so I should have the answers, right?

Well I do have them, for me anyways, and that’s my point.

I’ve always known what “commitment” means and what “I love you,” means… to me. Which is a great thing to know I guess, but more important is being able to know exactly what they mean to the other person you choose to date. I once had a woman in my life who told me that she loved me, but then moved off to Slovakia with another man (I can’t make that shit up). Does that mean that she never really loved me?

Maybe.

If she did, it was the same way that she “loved” taking shots and watching him play hockey. Which was an awful lot apparently, but that really isn’t the point; the point is that we both had very different ideas of what “I love you” means, and that’s ok, it just usually works out much better if you know these sort of things up front.

I wrote a blog awhile back called, “Who do you love more? Yourself or me? I think it’s the perfect explanation of what I actually mean, when I say, “I love you.” To me it means, “I’ll love you”

It’s a commitment you make.

Which brings me right to the word “commitment.”

People use that term too loosely in my opinion. The same way that they misuse the word “promise.” Fiona Apple said it best, “Never is a promise and you can’t afford to lie…”

"You'll say you understand, but you don't understand

you'll say you'd never give up seeing eye to eye

but never is a promise, and you can't afford to lie…"

A commitment isn’t just something that you agree to do; it’s something that you agree to do and see through, even if, or when, you don’t FEEL like it.

Imagine if everyone only did what they FEEL like doing, when they felt like doing it, nothing would ever get done. That’s not how life works and it's not how relationships last either. You can’t love someone only when you feel like it, or only when it's fun for you, only when they’re healthy, only when they’re happy. That’s the commitment part. It means, even when or even though.

Do you really think that I feel like writing a blog every single Monday? Nope. Do you think that I felt like working on the book all of those times when I could have been doing something else? No way. Did it completely suck? Of course not.

There are up’s and down’s that come along with it, just like being in a relationship. I could have quit. I could have “cheated” I could have only worked on it when I was in a good mood, and felt like doing it. What would that have done for me though?

I was amazed how many people told me at our book release party, “What a huge accomplishment that is, to write a book!” Do you know how many people have told me over the years that they too were going to write a book?

But did they?

Nope.

Am I special?

No, not really.

What I did wasn’t amazing. It wasn’t done for ego. It wasn’t fun all the time. It wasn’t without stress either. It was work, really, really hard work. The pay off isn’t selling lots of books, it’s knowing that I can commit.
It's knowing that I said I would…and I did.

You do what you commit to doing or else what’s the fucking point of doing anything? If I only did what I felt like doing, I wouldn’t have a book. I wouldn’t have amazing friends either, for that matter. I’m a great friend, so I get to have great friends in my life in return for that. It’s a trade. Is it always an equal trade?

Of course not.

It's not always equal in my dating relationships either though, and that’s ok. If I only did what makes me happy, I wouldn’t get to have the woman in my life now that makes me wake up everyday wanting to be a better man. I have her because I worked for it. You earn these things, through honoring your commitments.

Do I always want to listen to my girlfriend’s problems or talk on the phone with her? Or be there for her when her she needs me? Do I always want to be nice or sweet?

No.

But I couldn’t imagine not doing those things for her. I don’t do it because I’m some super nice guy or because I want her friends to think that I’m such a great boyfriend. I do it because,

She deserves to have somebody really, truly mean it, when they tell her,

I love you, I will, or I promise.

I think we all deserve that, don't you?

WJNTY-Daryl

Now go buy our book,

Buy We're Just Not There Yet - The Book today!

Here’s the other blog I was talking about... http://werejustnotthereyet.blogspot.com/2011/08/who-do-you-love-more-yourself-or-me.html

Perception Isn't Always Reality

2012-02-16T10:13:00.000-05:00

I have a type (not Susan Boyle). I think everyone does. It’s almost impossible not to. I mean I’m attracted to many different types of girls, but I always seem to fall back into the same “type” over and over again. I’m constantly telling my friends that the next one will be different. She’ll have dark hair and blue eyes or she’ll be covered in tattoos or something, but lo and behold, the next person I’m with just happens to fall back into that loose structure that I refer to as my type.

This is my fault. It’s not that I can’t attract a person outside of my type, or that at the end of the day, I’m much more comfortable with someone like my past exes, it’s just that I judge too much. I’ve realized over the past few months that I, along with most other people I know, are notorious judgers and they don’t even know it. The final realization came to me this afternoon while I was in a bookstore.

Yep, you got it; I was judging books by their covers.

Now We’re Just Not There Yet, which was just released to the world this past weekend, has a very sleek, mysterious matte black cover. We spent a long time trying to figure out what we wanted for the cover of our long anticipated book, and although there were many reasons for going this direction, there was one large reason behind the all black cover. It stands out against the mess of other books on the bookshelf. Simple is good, and so many book covers are insanely complicated that I never get past the cover.

The issue is that many of those books with terribly complicated art on the cover are fantastic. I’ll probably just never give them a chance. Just like all the strangers I pass every day, unless I know them, or have been told to meet them, the chances of me starting up a conversation with someone random is very slim.

While at the bookstore today, I was looking at Steve Harvey’s new relationship book. I was wearing a bandana, sunglasses, cowboy boots and a leather vest (it was a nice day so I rode my motorcycle), and had an Aveda bag in my hand. A very pretty girl came down the aisle I was in, quizzically looked me up and down, at the bag and the terrible relationship book I had in my hand and halted in her tracks, only to turn around and walk the other way. I guess it was a weird combination, so I can’t blame her.

I started to wonder what she would have done if she had caught me on any other day in the bookstore. I’m in a bookstore at least twice a week (it’s comforting) and it seems I always find myself in a different scenario. Cowboy shirt and fedora checking out the latest humor piece, or vest and tie grabbing an entrepreneur’s guide to making the big bucks. I would assume that her reaction would have been quite different if she walked down an aisle found me in anything other than biker gear.

So I did the only sane thing I could think of doing, and set out to find her. A few aisles over I found her flipping through Naked by David Sedaris, and started the conversation with:

ME: That’s actually a really good book; you shouldn’t judge it by its cover.

HER: (noticeably anxious) Oh yea? A friend suggested it.

ME: (taking my bandana, sunglasses and vest off) It’s funny how unless someone suggests it, you’ll rarely take more than a glance at a book before turning around and walking off. And most of the time you’re missing out on something amazing inside.

HER: Does that Steve Harvey book have something amazing inside? Because his picture on the cover looks like Mr. Potato head.

ME: Nope, this will be shit for sure. I’m just reading it so I can bash it on my blog.

HER: (much more comfortable) You know, you looked like a scary biker when I first saw you. I thought you were going to stab me or something when you came up. I guess I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, right? I’m Jane…

We talked for a bit about perception, bad coffee and the collapse of the publishing industry, I convinced her to purchase a copy of We’re Just Not There Yet, and we parted ways, both happy to make each other’s acquaintance. Now isn’t that nice.

She was not the girl of my dreams, there was no love story ending, but the lesson learned for both of us was worth it. They say that guys go for girls like their mom. Well, I understand the basic underlying science behind it, but I’m not so sure it works in every situation. It’s pretty accurate for me though, and I think I definitely need to get off of that path because I can say with 100% honesty that I would never want to marry anyone like my mom (no offence mom). I keep saying my ideal girlfriend would be a girl version of my best friend, but at the end of the day, that’s not who I go for. That’s probably because if I met my best friend on the street and judged him by his cover, I would never get the opportunity to be his best friend. In fact, for the first two weeks that I knew him, I did just that. He was the one who made me realize there was more to him than just a guy running up and down the halls of a freshman dorm playing the bongos in a Speedo.

So I’m going to start to open my eyes more often to the opportunity of difference. Start approaching more people in perceptionaly weirder situations. Because you never know what is hiding behind those clothes, tattoos or book covers. It could be the best book you’ve ever read (www.WJNTY.com) or the love you’ve always dreamed of.

WJNTY - Seth
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Houston We Have A Problem…

2012-02-13T13:50:00.004-05:00

Houston We Have A Problem…

So, Whitney Houston has died. Of course, “The official cause of death won’t be known for weeks still.”

Um, I have my hand up, someone call on me please! We all already know how she died.

She was forty-eight and while she becomes another talent who put herself to sleep way too soon, this death seems to not be as sad to me for some reason. Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Bradley Nowell, Brittany Murphy all died way too young. So why is this any different then? Maybe it's because I thought that she was already dead? I honestly thought that she died back in 1992, along with her career. Too soon?

Well look, I'm always up for some dark humor. I think it's as important to be able to laugh about something horrible, as it is to be able to cry about it. To me, a gift of being human is being able to see that the ups and downs of life…are just that, a part of life.

If you ask me, being sad about the death of someone that I’ve never met before and someone who has wasted his or her own life, is a complete waste of my own.

Whenever these things happen though it’s a media outlet's absolute wet fucking dream, only this time it proved to be a difficult story for them to exploit, because there wasn’t any HD footage laying around. Apparently she hasn’t done anything besides smoke crack and fight with Bobby for the last decade and a half.

Which brings me to my best Whitney Houston tweet of the weekend, besides the one that became the title for this blog, which I’m proud to say was up just a short two min after the worldwide press announcement.

“I wanna smoke crack with somebody…”

See, I write about relationships, and so I see this unfortunate death as a real learning experience for women out there.

She made a choice in a man years ago, the wrong man, and it cost her, her career, her health and her life.

Is it all Bobby’s fault? I mean he was just “Being Bobby” after all, right?

No, it’s not his fault. She picked him, she loved him and she smoked marijuana laced with cocaine with him.

Choices have a funny thing that comes along with them and those are called consequences.

Who can really say for sure that if she’d never married Bobby in the first place, then maybe this wouldn't have happened?

No one can know something like that, but it sure didn’t help matters any, did it?

Drug addicts are self destructive by nature, with or without a buddy there to help them light up the pipe.

Amy Winehouse, Brittany Murphy, Michael Jackson and Bradley Nowell all chose their own way.

What I see though is two girls who maybe could have made it through, had they chosen a better man to begin with. Let me explain. Bradley Nowell was the saddest loss to me. He was a very troubled person who had so much talent and almost made it out of the darkness, but just couldn’t save himself from himself. He was a true addict, way before fame and success. Michael Jackson though reminded me of “Powder” for a lot of reasons, and I’m not making a joke here, despite the obvious. I absolutely love that movie. Powder is about a boy who has an amazing gift, but he reaches a point where he’s had enough of all the pain that comes along with being so different. He has a beautiful mind, but is also so misunderstood that his gift is a complete waste in this world and so he decides to just leave it all behind him, and disappear. I believe Michael felt the same way. How much is a man supposed to take? At some point it's just not worth it anymore.

Amy Winehouse and Brittany Murphy though?

Winehouse had a fucking dickhead of a guy who brought drugs into her life and Murphy did too. The fact was they were both involved and attracted to troubled, worthless men. Some men hit, some gamble, some cheat and theirs unfortunately did drugs. A choice of whom you let into your life has serious consequences.

Whitney Houston chose poorly, for years.

We all watched anyway, even Oprah made a buck off of it.

Winehouse taunted us with a song about not caring for rehab and we all downloaded away.

Do we really care? Did we?

I’ve said it before. Some people can’t be saved and some messes can’t be cleaned.

So when Lindsay finally checks out, or Sheen’s heart finally flips him off, let’s not act shocked and saddened about it. Instead let's go on with our lives.

Our lives shouldn’t have to stop because they sadly wasted their own.

Buy We're Just Not There Yet - The Book today!

WJNTY - Daryl

Intro Continued: The Lost Boys...

2012-02-09T14:31:00.001-05:00

The Lost Boys

They called guys like us “road dogs.” I don’t know why- or where- that term started, but I knew exactly what it meant. We traveled for work, from city to city, and were pretty much all living the same life: the life of the last Peter Pan. Young boys with a lot of money, and with no real place to call a home. A girl’s worst nightmare you’d think… or was it?

The Lost Boys, as it had turned out, were also having very similar experiences in the love department. Girls all over the country were in love with them as well! Well of course then these must have been some easy girls, some skanks, trollops, some scallywags… right?

That was the strange thing- they weren’t. All of us were completely different from each other, so because of this, the girls that we liked were all very different as well. Some were single and some did have boyfriends, some were pretty and others not really so much; a few were even married, and yes… some of them were what you’d call “classic town whores,” but still, what the fuck was going on here?

Look, honestly, we were all complete jackasses. Total assholes would be a much more fitting name. Sure, I guess that several of us were what you’d call good looking, I suppose. But we were also loose cannons with no stability. We came into town larger than life and left just as fast.

Were we “bad boys”? I guess so.

Was that attractive though? Maybe.

But how could that be what women really wanted? Guys to save? Or guys they could try and fix? That couldn’t be right, but it had to be, because why else were we all having so much luck? The best I’d figured at the time is that we were all just awesome!

Years later, I’ve come to realize, that it was all really just about timing. Just like with the gold rush, Beanie Babies or hair metal, if you’d gotten in at the right moment… BAM! You were golden. Something had apparently shifted in the world of dating, and we just happened to be there at that exact moment. You’ve heard people talk about the “Wrong place at the wrong time?” Well, we were in the perfect place, at the perfect time! Girls, it seemed, had decided collectively to lower their standards on men. We could do no wrong, we couldn’t fail. We couldn’t fuck this one up!

So on the verge of The Notebook, Sex and the City and “Ross Geller and Rachel Green,” dramatic true love was all the rage. I of course didn’t figure any of this shit out until a much later time. I mean whoever really sees it as it’s actually happening, right? Only now, after much time has come and gone, can I look back and see what the hell was truly going on.

The smoke had cleared, hearts were broken, and morals lost, some people were forgiven, and some never spoken to again. People speak of the 60’s and 70’s like it was this wild crazy time: free love man, drugs, a sexual revolution, and still when they speak of it, it’s with an almost nostalgic innocence. I wasn’t alive then, I guess I can’t really say. I can tell you this much though, we had drugs, drinks, sex, and rock and roll about 10 years earlier than they did. We started younger, and we did it harder, faster, and with way less regard to ourselves and others. I’m talking about “us” as in all of us. You’re included. When did you first hook up with someone? How about watch porn? When did you first have sex? How about try drugs?

The Lost Boys told me some amazing stories from this time period. You know the time I’m talking about … “Our time.”

“This is our time, it’s our time down here!”

Thank you One-Eyed Willie.

The time we’re all living in right now. So when this book idea came up, I called on our Lost Boys about random hook ups and threesomes, drug abuse, cheating, sexual diseases, excessive drinking, good relationships, good marriages and bad ones, too. Did I entertain the idea of writing about all those crazy hookups and one night stands? Yes, I thought about it, but decided if that’s your thing, you’ll have to stick with Tucker Max. I don’t see the point of it. Personally, I don’t give a shit about writing down my sexual exploits, or anyone else’s for that matter. If I tell you about all the guys having tons of wild sex and about the slutty girls who did all the things that you’ve heard about (but don’t believe people actually do), what will that accomplish? This is not that book. This is about the relationships, the break ups and the lies.

The road dogs’ exploits were not told with beaming pride, the exact opposite, actually. Once guys understood the mission of this book, they buckled down, confessed their sins, and confronted the sordid past. We weren’t high fiving each other, instead we were asking the questions why, how and what do we do now? Now was the perfect time to make something out of the big mess that we’d left behind. Sure, I’ll admit it, maybe I was getting a little too…

“Yes we can!”

I just wanted to make some sense of it all. Guys are a huge handful. I have no doubt (Great band btw, Tragic Kingdom is an amazing record) that we have been at fault more than our fair share of the time. So taking that into account, we were ready to travel back into the past and take responsibility for at least some of it.

But then the other half is up to you. Deal?

We’ll have some great love stories, some absolute train wrecks, and, frankly, some things that shouldn’t ever be talked about. In the end, you may learn some things about yourself, about your friends, and maybe even about your own parents. After all the smoke has cleared I can promise you this much: at the very least, you will have been truly entertained. Can I fix all your dating problems? No… look, I’m not the “One” for you either. After all, I don’t even know you or your dating situation. What do I really even know about love, or about life for that matter? A few things, I guess. I’m no expert though, that’s for sure. And if you want my advice, you shouldn’t listen to people who tell you that they are. They claim to be an expert, in what exactly? Your heart, and how or who you should love? That’s crazy. No one can tell you how, or whom, you should love, ever. Not your own mother, not Carrie fucking Bradshaw either, and definitely not me, I’m a hot mess… trust me on that.

I can tell you this though, I’ve met a lot of different people in my last ten years of full time traveling, and I have been to a lot of different places (Up in the Air was my E! True Hollywood Story) and I’ve “known” a lot of amazing and completely different women. Does that count for something?

Well, what would? A Ph.D. in sociology? Sorry, this is not that kind of book, either. This is a straightforward field report from someone who has been on the front lines. Have some fun. It’s a great topic that we all spend way too much time on already. If you’re thinking that this is all a big waste of time, all I can say is that you may see yourself in some of what I have to say. Maybe you’ll be reminded of a close friend. Either way, I think that it’s safe to say that we’ve all been there before.

WJNTY

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Intro: A Love Story

2012-02-06T13:12:00.000-05:00

Intro

A Love Story

We’re just not there yet… Ireally love saying it. We’re… just… not… there… yet. Ha, ha, it makes me laughout loud every time, lol. Shit, did I actually just type lol? Man… next thingyou know I’ll be typing cute smiley faces… which, by the way, really needs tostop! We’ll have to touch on that one again a little bit later.

So what thephrase “We’re Just Not There Yet” really says is,

“I do like you…however…”

It’s anall-encompassing statement that neatly covers everything a man wants to say toyou about your relationship, but just can’t find the right words.

You could alsouse it to answer a tough question…

“Honey, will you goto Becky’s wedding with me?”

“Baby, can we goget our picture taken and wear those matching shirts?”

“Why aren’t youmore in love with me?”

“Why don’t you wantto marry me?”

“Why can’t I have akey to your place?”

Um… well,because we’re just not there yet.

Recently, I’dfound myself using the old faithful “WJNTY” line a lot more than ever before. Thething I would come to realize though was that it wasn’t just me; I wasn’t offin some remote relationship vortex all by myself. Everyone out there datingright now, or anyone who has ever dated before, had gone through the same sortof things I was going through. See, how this book really came about was thatonce upon a time, I too was in a relationship. It was a very seriousrelationship, actually. It was with a wonderful girl, and when this cute lovestory took place we were living together in the mountains in Tennessee. We werecrazy in love. It was a true storybook romance- for the moment anyhow. I hadmoved from the North, where I was born and raised as a Yankee, all the way downto the Dixieland South just to be with her. We were the ever-classic city boyfalls for the country girl love story (cue the Taylor Swift song please). Hervery first time flying on an airplane was to come and meet my parents.

So, from verydifferent worlds, and against all odds, we made a go of it, and it lasted for fivelong years. See, who says I can’t commit! It seemed to all that I was a greatboyfriend (and I was) although it’s quite easy to do when you’re madly in love.She was my whole world. Every girl from my past instantly disappeared *poof* with our very first kiss. I wasin deep.

I played therole of the tall, dark and handsome prince. She was my blonde-haired, blue-eyedprincess. If I showed you a photo of us, you’d probably throw up a little bit!We were that fucking cute. Everyone was cheering us on… at first.

The problem wasthat we broke up… a lot. Maybe a hundred times, if not more. We were like Rossand Rachel, always on “a break.” I loved her, and yes, she truly loved me, butwe just couldn’t seem to get it together. What was our problem? Well, we had alot of them actually, but that’s not what this book is going to be about(although I’m sure it would make an amazing read). It’s about what happened onall those little “breaks” that we took. See, every time that we’d be broken up,I kept trying to meet new girls. I was sad, for sure, but I wanted to move on,to start all over again, new and fresh. I just couldn’t take any more break ups.I’d had enough.

Sometimes, we’dbe broken up for only two days, but sometimes it would last over two months. Itseemed that no matter what happened, we kept going back to one another. Haveyou ever been there before?

I wanted morethan anything to meet a nice, simple girl. I think that’s almost exactly how Idescribed it to my buddies. Someone to just be happy with. Nothing fancy. Soevery time that we’d be on a break, I did my very best to find that girl. Ifigured that this would be almost impossible for me to do though. I mean look,I had baggage, lots of it, not to mention I was still in love with myex-girlfriend. I mean really? Who was going to want to date me?

As it turned out,lots of girls did. The problem was that every new girl that I met seemed tothink that “we” were meant to be together, too. I’d somehow gone from beingthat guy who was on his fourth failed relationship (and three of those girlsI’d actually lived with) to the most eligible guy on the market? Or at least itwould seem that way to these women.

The “one,”that’s what I kept hearing. I was somehow the “one” who was meant to be withthese new girls?! Something just wasn’t adding up. I wish I could tell you thatthis had all taken place in one small, charming town, because that would atleast be a bit easier to make some sense of. The fact was I was traveling thewhole country for work, changing cities every couple weeks. Well over half ofour break ups were because of that job alone. I was gone on the road, and hadnothing really special to offer anyone, besides a great smile and some dinnerconversation. Yet somehow, all these new girls that I was meeting were fallingfor me, and not just falling, but falling hard, over and over again!

Was I reallythat great?

I had adifferent pretty girl waiting for me in several cities. I must have beenamazing… right? I mean that had to be it!

Well, I’ll be honest and admit that I had a very healthyego at the time. Having pretty girls all over the country calling you, textingyou, and waiting for you to come back through to see them- it had that sort of effecton a guy. I was becoming quite the arrogant asshole, and I would have been morethan happy to continue on with my insane delusions of grandeur, that is until Iactually started to share some of these “love” stories with my fellow roadboys.

To be continued... Thursday

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Fantasy Football

2012-02-02T11:15:00.001-05:00

Super Bowl Sunday! Whether you love the sport, the commercials or the color blue, there is something for everyone this weekend. Super Bowl Sunday is host to many yearly records including more wings delivered/served than any other day of the year, the most expensive 30 sec commercials of the year, and the only time of the year when you can gamble on the length of the National Anthem: I'm taking the -240 over at 1 minute 58 seconds. Most people in America choose to watch the largest grossing single sporting event in the world at Super Bowl parties hosted by their friends, or at BW3’s, where sporting events come to life. I am, you guessed it, traveling. This time, I'll be on the last leg of a DEN-SFO-LAX-ATL-CLT trip. And even though I grew up cheering for the Pats, this year (for the second year in a row) I'll probably be missing the big game.

Now, it won't be the score that concerns me, or the fact that there will be way too much blue in the stands and on the field, but rather a poll I had read yesterday morning that shocked and awed me. You know Zoosk? The self proclaimed #1 singles dating site that always pops up on your Facebook add bar? Well Zoosk did a poll with their members concerning sex and the Super Bowl. The question was this:

“If you could only pick one, would you rather watch the Super Bowl this Sunday, or have sex?”

Here’s the scary part: 73% of women responded that they’d rather watch Sunday’s big game than have sex, whereas nearly 50% of men said they’d rather have sex than watch the game. The men part didn’t shock me, it seems like they are getting so little action that they'd even give up the biggest sporting event of the year, just to get a piece (either that or half of the guys were soccer fans). But the women? Football over sex! Ok, I know what you’re thinking… Commercials, and the halftime show, right? Wrong. The game ranked highest for all respondents as their favorite part of the overall event. The halftime show got only 20% of the vote! And for good reason too. I don't care if Madonna is planning on expressing herself. Is it still called karaoke when you're singing along to your own songs? I can't think of a good halftime show since JT showed off the girl Jackson's nipple clamp. Remember Fergie’s off pitch singing last year? Or the Stones awful display of wrinkles while playing instruments the year before? Don't get me started... Anyway, picking football over sex? What’s wrong with you people? I can understand maybe 20 years ago when there was no instant replay or way to watch the commercials on the Internet at a later time, but it’s 2011! Learn how to use TiVO!

Before I go any further, I feel as though this blog needs a disclaimer. I think it’s extremely sexy when girls are sports fans, and I enjoy watching sports with girls (when they're actually enjoying it). Believe me, I know sometimes it’s nice to just sit in front of the TV and do nothing, but read the poll question again: One or the other. This poll wouldn’t have shocked me if 90% of the guys said they’d rather watch the football game. Most guys enjoy watching over-grown men in tights play catch. Also, you’ve got to figure that most of the guys out there are planning on consuming so much beer during this game that they wouldn’t be able to get it up anyway. But 73% of women choosing the game over sex blew my mind. In my opinion, if you’d rather watch a football game than have sex with your significant other (this is for the guys too!), you probably have something wrong in your relationship. Maybe the sex isn’t good, maybe the communication is off, or maybe you’re just more turned on by Tom Brady's hair than your boyfriend’s penis. Whatever it is, you might want to re-evaluate your sex life and start working on that part of your relationship.

Sex is both one of the first things to start a relationship and one of the first things to go. Ever hear about couples in long term relationships who rarely have or never have sex? I do, all the time. Sexuality is a huge part of a healthy relationship, physically, mentally and emotionally. Did you know that when you orgasm your brain releases something called Oxytocin, which is directly attributed to relaxation, a decrease in anxiety and fear, and the slight euphoric feeling you experience directly after the big O? Yep, it's science. And I feel that if science says I need to have sex to maintain a healthy balance in my life, I should be taping the Super Bowl and rolling around in the sack instead.

I understand the Super Bowl is a huge event, and probably an isolated incident, but there’s always a great excuse to why you can’t have sex tonight. At some point you need to ask yourself (or your significant other), would I rather have sex or watch X Factor tonight? Experience ecstasy with your lover, or flip on CMT on Friday to catch the next Sweet Home Alabama staring the lovely Paige Duke? Make love with the person you’ve chosen to be with, or keep up with the Kardashians... again? If you chose the latter, you might want to invest in a larger TV, because after a few seasons, you’re going to need those extra inches to keep you company…

WJNTY - Seth

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You Can Be A Lady, Or You Can Be A Tramp...

2012-01-30T10:57:00.000-05:00

All right ladies, so we need to talk. There is an epidemic taking place right now and it’s time we addressed it. Many people assume that because I write about relationships and stuff, I must just sit around talking with women, listening to them bitch about their dating lives, and then go off and write blogs about it. I only wish I could actually do that shit! For one thing, I would never run out of material, which would be great; but of course the major downside of it would be that I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have any friends left if I did. And so I don’t.

I do have some really amazing girlfriends’ though. I have some women in my life that truly have their shit together, and when I say together… I mean that they require nothing more of me besides my company and pretty smile, that’s it. No ear raping, no Groundhog Day relationship problems for me to solve and no stupid boys draining the cool from them, which is a very good thing because I’d no doubt have to step in and beat them away with sticks, if I ever saw that happening.

That being said, I also know some complete hot messes too.

I don’t get too close to the hot messes though. I don’t really have time for it. Plus they'll never listen anyway, which is why they're a fucking mess in the first place! The truth is,

Some people can't be helped and some messes just can't be cleaned.

People will say, “You give such good advice!”

I don’t really see it that way. I just think I provide honest opinions when other people tend to beat around the bush.

“Do you think that he’s cheating on me?” -Yes.

"Do you think he'll marry me?"-No.

“Why does he lock his phone?”-Because he knows you wouldn’t have a reason left to trust him if you ever saw what’s in there.

“Are my roots bad” -Fuck yes, and you seriously need a fill in on those nails!

Should I call him again, or just wait till he calls me? -I’m sure as soon as he’s done fucking that other girl he’ll call you right back, lets just wait!

I guess where I’m going with this, is that I’m a bit put off lately by other people's dumb bullshit. That’s really why I don’t hang out with messy girls, or guys actually. I don’t have time for any of it. I also can't stand it when people are fake, that's the worst.

My life is ticking away one heartbeat at a time and I refuse to waste even a minute of it on people who aren’t sincere.

So on to this epidemic, I’ll make this simple, short, and sweet.

Ladies, whenever you say to a guy, “I’m sorry I’ve just been really busy!”

What he really hears is this,

“Sorry but I don’t think calling you back is worth my time; in-between looking at photos of myself on Facebook, texting my ex and bleaching my teeth... I’ve just been really busy”

When you fail to show someone even the common courtesy of sending a simple text back or returning their calls, you don't appear "busy" you appear to be someone who's lacking basic manners.

Manners are a very important thing, they still mean something in our world, or at least they do for what few true ladies still exist out there.

Yet most girls play games everyday. For example every girl I know has her phone practically glued to her fucking hand, yet I keep hearing these stories from my guys friends about girls that are constantly making plans with them and then bailing out at the very last second, without even a simple text or call to explain why?

So, like I said before, I don’t put up with girls like that. The girls who I call my friends, all have manners. A friendship without manners isn’t a friendship; it’s a waste of time. So maybe its time for a quick brush up. Justin brought sexy back; I guess I need to bring manners back.

Fine I got this one JT, Ladies, if you follow this advice, I promise you that manners will come naturally.

If someone calls you, call them back.

If someone does something nice, say thank you.

Everybody has a job, friends, and works-out, you are not any busier than anyone else is.

Don’t blow people off.

If you make plans, honor them.

People are not options, they’re people, treat them as such.

Don’t lie.

Don’t text during meals or movies.

Texting someone to cancel plans is spineless.

Playing with people’s hearts is classless.

Don’t make people wait, be on time.

Don’t say things that you don’t truly mean.

You don’t have to like everyone, but you should still try and be polite.

Don’t cheat on people.

Don’t talk about people that you don’t know.

Saying, “I didn’t see your call” is complete bullshit.

Don’t make people feel stupid, no one likes how that feels.

Always be gracious.

Don’t use people.

Some people have a lot and some people don’t, but everyone deserves respect.

Always be kind to servers and old people.

Don’t comment on things that people can’t help.

There are over seven billon people in the world today, some are kind and some are assholes, you need to pick a side.

Dress how you want to be treated.

Don’t be petty or cheap and always tip well.

Don’t punish people for past people’s bullshit.

“I love you” and “I’m sorry” should not be used lightly.

Always stand up for the weak.

If someone lies once, it’s their fault, twice, it’s your own fault.

Share things, just not boyfriends.

Vanity is a curse, be humble, it’s sexier.

I’m sure I missed a few, but it’s a start at least.

Be a true lady and start standing out, instead of just blending in to the messy girl background.

WJNTY- Daryl

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Open Your Eyes

2012-01-26T14:11:00.000-05:00

It’s been a rough road for me since my last breakup. Theloneliness, the questioning, the re-emerging and second-guessing. The postbreak up period is a terrible time for anyone. Even if you are the one whowanted out. Even if it was a terrible relationship. You still have secondthoughts, you still wonder, “what if…” In many of my past relationships, I’ve suppressed my feelings with rebounds. Great for a night, terrible for the long run. Sothis time around, I decided to spend some time thinking about myself and what Ireally needed, what would really, truly make me happy, and what I could becomfortable with in the future. I didn’t give myself a time limit and I didn’tmake any new relationship resolutions. I just sat back, relaxed, and for onceattempted to take my own advice.

It’s a catch 22 when you write for WJNTY. Coming up withgreat advice every week isn’t the hard part, it’s following it in your own lifethat is difficult. My close friends will laugh at me all the time because I’mthe first one to let the most hypocritical phrase out of my mouth: “Yea, Iunderstand, but my situation is different.” In other words, I have to wearreally thick-soled boots in my glass house.

But my time of reflection has been fantastic, and this time,more than any other, I actually feel that my rehab has been well received. Inow can admit my faults, see my future, and am 5 months sober, but still takingit one day at a time. But my real awaking was completed over the past 5 days,in the form of my Dad’s advice, a model couple and a single friend who have notonly opened my eyes, but also reinstated my faith in people and futurerelationships.

My best friend and I traveled a few hours away these past fewdays to go visit a girl we barely knew. She’s about to embark on a long journeyto another country, and I thought she deserved a proper goodbye. From the firsttime I met Amanda, I could tell she was an amazing person. Not amazing like,tells funny jokes and plays bingo with seniors on Wednesday nights, but amazinglike, the overwhelming feeling you get when you stare deep into someone’s eyes andwithin a split second realize without a shadow of a doubt they are 100%authentic and true. These people are rare, and deserve proper goodbyes. Sheportrays extreme beauty but doesn’t try for a second, powerful confidence witha hint of calm shyness, the quickness to be hilarious while making you feelthat you are the funny one, and the ability to remain friends with the oppositesex without even the faintest uncomfortable question that there might be more.She’s a catch for the right guy, but knows that there aren’t that many outthere who can fill the role. But the best part about her? The friends she keepsare all right up there with her.

Many are single, and a few are in relationships. Some aremarried, and one has a tiny little baby. But what they have in common is their unbridledlove and affection for one another. They welcomed my best friend and I withopen armed hugs, and made us feel like we were part of the group from minuteone. There was no trash talk between them, there was no cattiness, no drama andnothing you could consider as fake. We had serious talks about career goals ofone day reaching anchor on local news, and we laughed about ridiculousinfomercial ideas such as wacking and snacking. No conversation was out ofreach nor was held without full attentiveness, no phones were pulled out duringdinners and never was there a dull moment. And even though some may consider Amanda’strip risky, or even foolish, they were nothing but proud and supportive oftheir friend who has the balls to chase a dream. Our goodbyes were that ofpeople who have been friends for years. It was a relief to see a group of girlfriendslike that. Something I have not seen in a very long time, but needed toexperience more than I knew.

These amazing two days rode in on the coat tails of one ofthe better weekends I’ve had since moving to Charlotte. A bitter sweet goingaway party for my closest friends in Charlotte who are headed out west. I’llsave you the details on the weekend’s events. The party was great, food wasgood and booze was crazy. The turnout was huge for this amazing couple; peopleeven flew in just to wish them the best in the next chapter of their lives.

KC2, as we’ll call them, are admirable. They make true lovenot only seem possible, but extremely attainable and plausible. They have a wayof looking at each other that will melt the rest of the room away. Time stopsmomentarily as nothing else in the world could possibly matter except for thesilent communication that only they understand. Nostalgic stories are toldabout this kind of love. Wars were fought over it. It’s the kind of love we allpray to have once in our lives.

I’m just happy that I get the opportunity to see that itexists. Some people never get the chance to see true love, let alone experienceit themselves. Many people leap into proximity infatuation believing it willturn into true love and waste their lives away searching for the greener grass.KC2 won’t have that problem. I’d like to say they are lucky, but that would bethe easy way out. They created a foundation the right way. They dated for along time throughout huge changes in their lives. Between college, real worldjobs and traveling, they realized they still loved each other through differentperiods in life. It took engagement for them to move in with each other, andample time between then and marriage to make sure cohabitating worked. Therewas no need to rush into anything because being together was more than enough. Theirmodel was something we can all learn from, and I feel honored to even beassociated with this amazing couple.

So from the past 5 day’s events, I’ve had my eyes opened.And I’m proud to announce I’m back on the market. Through KC2 I was shown ata crucial time in my life that there are people out there worth dedicating yourlife to, you just have to look in the right places. And sometimes, it takes along time to decipher the map of your life to find which places hold troubleand which hold treasure. KC2 have shown me that there is such thing as a reallife fairytale. It may not involve magic carpets, glass slippers or tiaras, butwhat they have is so real and so beautiful that anyone could be happy for therest of their lives if they could hold on to the feeling they share today. They’veset the bar high, but there’s no need to lower it; this isn’t limbo, it’s life.Nothing good has ever come easy, and I love a good challenge.

I find it very ironic that it took two separate goodbyeparties to make me finally realize that there's hope to eventually find what it is that I truly want to come home to every night. I learned it’s in the situations you'd least expect, where you can find thegreatest impact on your life. So let’s all keep our fingers crossed that this timearound, when I let the chips fall as they may, may they line up in a pretty arrow, pointing me to the pretty girl across the table with blue eyes and hair as dark as the wine that we drink. And with any luck, the next card I pull will be an Ace of Hearts, with my name on it.

WJNTY - Seth
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She Looked Great on Paper

2012-01-19T09:25:00.000-05:00

I’m feeling more and more lately like I’ve turned a corner in my life. Maybe grown up a bit, I don’t know. But certain things in the guy/girl interactions that I used to love so much, have now turned into annoyances. Drunk dialing, falling asleep on the phone with another person, playing games to seduce a girl, laughing with hammered girls, even casual sex. It’s not that I see them as bad things now, just not something I want in the beginning of my next relationship. Am I getting old? If I had said these things a year and a half ago, I would be the biggest hypocrite in the world. So what has changed?

Well, I don’t know. But I think there comes a time in everyone’s life where they realize the things that used to make them happy, used to make them laugh, have turned into the things that annoy them. I find this happening in relationships all the time:

Girls will love the fact that a guy is so independent. But when the guy won’t allow the girl to move in with him, she’ll begin to blame him for not being able to commit or complain about his reluctance to take the next step.

You love the fact that he can control the room when he walks in. He exudes confidence and everyone wants to be around him. But over time his confidence and control start to worry you that other women might be trying to sleep with him.

He’s the most honest person you know. And that was your favorite trait about him, but lately you feel like he’s been telling you too much, and it makes you uncomfortable.

He’s a writer and touches many people with his articles about dating and personal experiences. You love that he can take a thought or a story and make it look so beautiful on paper. This is great until he keeps writing about personal experiences while you are dating him. You start to become self-conscious and more careful in the way you act around him, and begin to assume everything he writes is about you in some sort of way. Every time you read his writing now, you become hurt in some way. It is now a turn-off.

I do the same thing. I’ll choose to date a party girl and then get mad at her months later when she’s throwing up again at four in the morning outside of the bar. Or I’ll date an intellectual and be annoyed five months down the road that she never wants to go out and grab a drink with friends. Why can’t we just be happy with what we choose?

Well, most of the time, we don’t choose what we truly want. We’re blinded by the surface of something exciting, or different. We like the idea of a person, better than the actual person. We’re enticed by how they look on paper, but we never take the time to read the fine print. We become comfortable with their resume, but never worry about the interview process or background checks. Quite often, we don’t even know what we want. We tell ourselves that we know, but then chase after something completely different. We do this to ourselves.

You have to know what you want. Truly know. And then chase after that type of person. If you love the guy because he has an insane body, you’re not allowed to be annoyed when he spends his free time in the gym. Because what you really want is a guy who has a good body, but spends his time on other things as well. You chose wrong. It’s not his fault. He was always the same guy.

You might like a guy because he is so career driven, but then not understand when he tells you months down the road he’s never interested in having a family. He’s not a bad person for this, nor did he ever lead you astray or waste your time. You wasted your time, you chose wrong.

Everyone changes (this is something you need to remember), but not over a matter of a couple of months. I could understand if four years down the road suddenly your partner decides to pull a Mark Wahlberg, ditch the funky bunch and become a born-again Christian out of the blue. That would be their fault, not necessarily yours. But most of the issues in relationships, and the reason many don’t make it past six months or a year is because you chose the wrong person for what you wanted. And then you held on too long thinking they are going to change into that person you really desired.

Yes, it is up to them to be clear on their intentions. But unfortunately not everyone does that. They should, but some people are uncomfortable showing their true colors within the first part of dating. So it is up to you to know exactly what you want, and then do your homework. That way, if something really does change down the road, at least you’ll be able to say, “It’s not me, it’s you.”

So back to the change in my life. It’s not that I’m completely turned off by the casual sex or drunk dials, five phone calls a day or hungover girls at one in the afternoon. It’s that I now understand what I truly want. So I’m not going to get into a relationship with a girl who would drop her panties on the first night, and I’m definitely not going to become exclusive with someone who has the need to talk to me 8-20 times a day via phone call, text message, Facebook post, or the occasional email. I’ve decided to give the courtship a little more time, and to make a better educated decision on who the person really is past how they look on paper. This way, six months from now, I won’t be blaming them for something they never did wrong in the first place, I’ll be enjoying them for exactly who they truly are.

WJNTY - Seth

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I Swear to Tell the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth, So Help the Vagina

2012-01-16T12:27:00.002-05:00

We’ve been blogging at WJNTY every single Monday since sometime back in 2009. We’ve grown, expanded even. We have podcasts, YouTube videos, a book about to be released and twice as many blogs as before. We have the Monday blog, which I (Daryl) do, and the Thursday blog, which is Seth’s blog day. I love coming up with the new blog topics each week, and sometimes, if I’m lucky, my real life presents the topics for me. Todays blog is from way back in the day, in the very beginning of WJNTY, and although most times I’d like to completely rework them, I usually won’t. I realize that some of my old blogs are actually my favorites mostly for the fact that you can look back and clearly see the progression of it all. So here is an old gem for you.

Here’s the question, “Why Would I WANT To Meet Your Mother?!”

Here’s the thing, of course dating often leads to meeting Mothers, but I’d found the loop hole to avoiding that awful ordeal… the secret cheat code in dating land which kept me from ever having to meet them.

You may be thinking, “Why wouldn’t you want to meet her Mother?”

Um, I ask you again,

“Why Would I WANT to Meet her Mother?!”

So, I’ve been dating a bit. Yes, that’s right, the author of WJNTY does go on dates! In the middle of writing, re-writing and blogging, I guess I’d grown a bit sick of my old keyboard. I needed a change of scenery. So I started dating again. This week’s blog is about how simple dating really is. How little work it actually takes when you’re ready for it, and why, if it seems difficult to you, it’s probably your own fault. Dating is easy, finding love is even easier, and so is making it last.

I feel like the very first guy who figured out how to beat Contra’s last level on Nintendo. First blow into the game cartridge and then use the cheat code. See, once you learn all the tricks it’s very easy. The up-up-down-down cheat code is all you really need. If you still can’t win that game with unlimited lives, then you probably just suck at video games, sorry yo.

I have a dating cheat code that I’ll share with you in just a bit. Dating can be very tricky and we could all use a secret code to help us get to that next level. I needed it too! I hadn’t had a girlfriend in almost two years, so I’ll be the first one to admit that yeah, I was a bit rusty. Two years ago, the girlfriend I had told me,

“If you don’t get me a ring by Christmas, I’m leaving you.”

It was August at this point. I thought about it for a few days and told her that I didn’t really see that happening.

Well… she left.

I decided right then and there that I wouldn’t get serious with anybody else for a very long time, until I was ready. I felt bad that she felt so let down, and so for over two years I kept that promise to myself. I didn’t want to have a girlfriend or a wife, and I didn’t want to be a boyfriend or a husband. Most of all, I didn’t want to pretend to like things, that I didn’t really care about.

So I played the super single guy and just like a moth to a flame, the crazy girls came out of hiding. I dodged them the best I could.

I wasn’t interested and I was way over acting fake for anybody. I was done pretending to be flattered by silly girls. Was I supposed to be impressed because they had a push up bra and boobs? Wow, great! As they danced around half naked with the other drunken girls, I simply yawned. As far as I was concerned they were sloppy girls who tasted like Jagger and Marlboro lights, I wasn’t into it.

I waited and I watched, I played witness to my buddies; all of them now stuck paying the heavy fee for having chased after the young, sort of pretty, tight bodied, eye liner obsessed (Clinique High Impact Mascara is all you need ladies), team Edward cheering, Facebook stalking, push–up bra buying, immature hateful little hussies.

Phew, that felt good to get that out!

I tell ya nothing but trouble they were! Yes, Ray LaMontagne I agree with you, it was all trouble! Their relationship problems were always the same. The guys were trying to take these girls, who were way too young and more concerned with playing dress up, and tried to make them into real life Queens.

Good luck with that one! That’s like trying to get Lady Gaga to show us her penis, come on just a tiny little peek? Well the thing is, sometimes that pretty, pretty, princess still has some major growing up to do. And other times she has lots and lots of growing up left to do. You’ve heard that old saying, “You can’t turn a hoe into a housewife?” Well you also can’t turn a princess into a queen. That shit has to happen naturally on its own, over years and years.

When you glanced around the room the confusing part was that they all looked like grown women! They dressed like grown women and danced like grown women! But if you looked a bit closer, if you stared deep beneath their orange self-tanner hue, into their smokey eyes, you’d see that many of them were still 16 inside their silly heads. What I’d realized from watching my friends with these messy girls was that all these scallywags were fucking brilliant! See, they knew not to take it too seriously with the boys, they also knew that in the course of this MTV drama styled life, if they were hot, that was more then enough! There was no need to worry about much actually, because boys would do almost anything for the chance to play Doctor with them.

“But wait, what if I have two boys that both want to play Doctor with me?”

“Will they fight for me?”

Easy Bella,

The thing was it didn’t really matter how hard we tried to make these young girls to snap back to reality, because their world of L.C., vampires, and Sarah Jessica Parker kept getting them high on love and ego!

Well, like I’d said before, I stayed out of it. I gave up on silly girls, no more for me; I cashed in all my chips, and swore that I’d never play another hand until I was really ready, for real this time. I of course had some slip ups here and there, but I didn’t let myself get even close to having a girlfriend the entire time! I was done. I even gave up sex… gasp.

Remember how I said I was going to tell my cheat code? Ok so this is what I figured out, you may realize right away that this is not some new revelation, but to me, it was so very simple. You want to know how to make a relationship work?

Pick somebody cool. Not could be cool, not sometimes cool, and not most of the time cool. Pick someone that is cool.

I told you it wasn’t amazing news, but it is that easy. All relationships have two time bombs that can go ka-boom at any minute, one is intentions and the other is compromise. If you can be honest about your intentions and never compromise you will be happy.

Intentions are simple. What the fuck do you want? Not what do you think you may want or what would be nice. Plain and simple, what the fuck do you want? If it’s marriage, then say that. If it’s just for some sex, then say that. But the second that you’re not honest about your true intentions, it’s all headed to being over!

I put it to the test. For two whole years I gave up the ability to bullshit and sweet talk girls. I just stopped. I refused to let it go any further then even holding hands without first telling them my true intentions.

A. I don’t want a girlfriend, and as sweet and as pretty as you are, I promise you that you will never be my girlfriend, and I won’t fall in love with you.

B. I’m not a liar so I refuse to pretend for you, even just to make you feel better. Look, you’ve been led on by boys your whole life, I promise to shoot you straight even if it stings a bit.

C. Take it or leave it, this is me.

Well, although it wasn’t very pretty, it was completely honest. I’ll tell you what happened in just a second, but first I want to tell you about that other time bomb, “Compromises.” Compromises will kill your relationship every time. You know what they call people who compromise?

Divorced

Look, you know yourself better than anyone else does; you know what’s cool for you, and what’s not. You can’t bend so much that you become some altered version of yourself. When that happens you’ll begin to hate yourself for bending in the first place. What’s wrong with being picky? What’s wrong with having standards? What’s wrong with wanting to be happy? When did being honest become… wrong?

My buddies were fucking idiots. They were sweet talking girls into bed and then spending years fighting with them after that. On again, off again, on again. The fights all boiled down to the same problem, the girls were constantly being disappointed whenever the boys showed glimpses of their true colors, true colors that were always there, just hidden under the polo shirts and scent of Drakkar. Not me though, because I found the secret code. It was all very simple.

Just be honest.

Sure there were girls that wanted nothing to do with me, especially once I stated my house rules. That was all right though, because I didn’t want to hurt anyone, and I especially didn’t want to waste anybody’s time. Of course I had more than a few girls over those two years that told me I was the most honest guy they’d ever met. They would thank me for being up front with them, and not leading them on. Guess what else? No break ups, no fighting, no games, and no stress.

Was it perfect? Well for me at the time, yeah it was. Though I’m sure that a few of those girls thought they could maybe change me, or thought that I was the ultimate challenge. Most of them seemed to realize that I was actually just a really great guy, who refused to bullshit them.

Fast forward to now.

I’ve learned what I want and don’t want from a relationship, and what I will, and won’t accept in a woman. I decided that I wouldn’t get into a new relationship until I found a girl who was cool with that. Well… I’ve been dating now, like I said earlier, and it’s never been easier, happier, or healthier.

I’ll save the fun details for another blog but I’ll leave you with this.

You’ve got two choices… you can find someone who thinks you’re “cool” or someone who’s “cool” with you.

Guess which one will last?

WJNTY - Daryl
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Your Heart’s Writing Checks Your Brain Can’t Cash

2012-01-12T11:08:00.001-05:00

It doesn’t matter how much I date, how often I give advice, how long I stay in a relationship, or how many articles I write, I’ll never truly understand the heart. With everything we know about the human genome, the way our brain works, the synapses that send electrical pulses to control our bodily functions, how to cure countless diseases that affect the way we live, we still cannot understand our heart. Not the physical, blood pumping, left ventricular clogging, red blood cell creating heart (we understand that), but rather the heart that controls our emotions. The heart that lands on greeting cards everywhere, and dominates hundreds of sayings and speeches. This idea that one of our central life giving organs has become the international symbol for love is something I will never understand. Heartbreak? Heart throbbing? Heartless? Heartfelt thoughts? When you really think about it, it doesn’t make any sense.

The heart runs shit though, and it’s amazing to watch all logic and clear thinking go straight out the window when the heart gets involved. We will follow our heart so far into something our mind is telling us not to get involved with. They are two very different organs, the heart and the brain, but yet any of these “heartfelt thoughts” that we feel come straight from our brain. The heart doesn’t think, it beats. What we feel when we follow our heart is a function of our mind. So when someone says to you, “Don’t think, just follow your heart.” What they’re really saying is: turn off your straight thinking, analytical mind, and use the part of your brain that is missing logic and accountability, but loves taking chances and listening to poetry.

So then, what is this heart thing anyway? Well, it’s a figment of our imaginations. It’s a feeling that we cannot describe, understand or pinpoint, so we create the idea of an intelligent heart that will lead us in the right direction. And I believe that this figment is by far the most confusing part of dating and relationships that we will ever deal with.

Love is synonymous with the heart. If someone you love doesn’t love you, you become heart broken. If you truly want to be with someone, your heart is his’ or her’s. If you really miss your love, your heart will be longing for them. Love is also just as intangible and confusing as this idea of a “heart.” But if our “heart” is just a function of our mind, why can’t we think clearly when love is involved?

I was lounging around with one of my friends this past weekend. She’s kinda in a messy situation, one that I’m not necessarily sure she wanted me to find out about, but she was about as easy to read as our soon-to-hit-the-shelves book. We didn’t get too deep into her exact situation, I did not need to know what kind of problems she was having with her boyfriend, to me it didn’t matter. The fact was that there were problems.

Financial problems, family problems, sexual problems, drinking problems, other men problems, work problems, living situation problems, they are all just problems.

Although they were her personal problems, in the grand scheme of things, they’re no different than the next couple’s problems. I asked her to try and step out of her current position and to take a birds eye view of the relationship. From up there, things look a little bit clearer. When you’re eye to eye, on ground level with your relationship issues, your heart is doing the thinking for you. You don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. You don’t know what’s really best for you, and you can’t formulate a concise plan to change anything. You feel stuck or trapped in your own heart. It’s awful to be in a messy relationship, even if it’s only a little messy. Many times you don’t even realize that there’s anything wrong because you’ve been pushing all the little issues to the side, ignoring them like they’ll just disappear. They won’t disappear; they’ll build and build in the background like a storm, until it finally gains enough momentum and hits the land with enough steam to destroy everything. I like to call it Hurricane Baggage. Ignore the issues long enough and you might have a category five on your hands.

My friend was following her heart. She loved him, with all her heart, and couldn’t picture a life without him. At least that’s what she kept telling me, over and over. The problem was, she was telling me this while lounging around the morning after spending the night with me...

I was the scapegoat, the break from the monotony, the illusion of something not necessarily better, but different, the unknowing pawn in a dangerous game of her heart.

Her heart would not let her mind see the real problem though. The problem wasn’t infidelity;

The problem was something in her relationship, which lead her to that point where she was ok with the infidelity.

She had been avoiding all the little issues for so long that it felt more comfortable to throw everything away and lay with another man rather than try and patch up every tiny hole in her own situation.

Following your heart is romantic, but not practical, and if you want true, long lasting, healthy love, at some point you need to be practical. But following only your mind is practical without being romantic. If you want passionate, take your breath away, body tingling love, at some point you need to be romantic. In the end, it’s not about an either/or situation, because when you meet the right person, your heart and mind should be telling you the same thing.

WJNTY - SETH

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Crazy Carrie in the Closet.

2012-01-09T05:22:00.004-05:00

Have you ever had your own relationship fall apart because your best friend’s was? Well, I have, and it was a good lesson in friendships, naps and misperceptions.

I had this friend who was going through a rough patch, his life was good but his relationship with his girl, not so much, ever been there before? Me too!

So here’s the back story: His longtime girlfriend (who’d begged him for a ring and of course got it) all of the sudden decided that she hadn’t “lived” her life enough yet, and so she set out to collect some exciting stories that she could NEVER tell to her grand-kids.

So off to Jamaica she went. No, her name was not Stella.

Well, apparently one drink led to another, which then led to sex with some dude on a beach. We didn’t find this out right away though. All we knew at the time was that her and her pretty ring ran off to Jamaica, without him, to “find” herself and do some seriously fuc... um thinking.

So now you know his back-story.

My story was that I was living in a church (way longer story) with my girlfriend at the time, whose name was Carrie. She and I were doing well and had a pretty good relationship going at the time. Well, at least I thought that we did.

I mean yes we were living together in sin, in a church, which makes it a tiny bit worse probably... and we weren't even a little close to getting married, but I wouldn’t say that we had the whole deck stacked against us? I mean after all, I was taking care of the church, so you’d think I’d get a free pass of some sort for doing that, right?

It’s a reminder though that sometimes even if you didn’t do anything wrong, you still can be found guilty by the crazy girlfriend court.

So my friend Mike was really in need of a buddy to lean on during this time. He really got the bad end of the whole deal. He didn't get to go have sex in Jamaica. He’d also been away from the dating scene for so long now that he didn’t know where to even start.

Of course I had a girlfriend, but I guess he saw me as the most logical choice to play wingman for him in this dark time. Hey that's what friends are for.

I started him off real slow. "We" still didn’t know for sure if she’d cheated on him or not, (I did, but he wouldn’t listen to me) still I didn’t want him to go out and do anything crazy like end up with a baby, or even worse another shitty girlfriend! So in order to prepare him for the scary bar scene again, we first had to train. We began to go to this ping-pong place every day after work. We’d play a few games, bitch about our girlfriends and drink a little beer. Baby steps. Usually at least once every game we’d try and figure out what really happened down there in Jamaica... in her pants.

-scene at our ping-pong table in the corner-

Mike: Do you think that she fucked someone down there?

Me: Yes.

Mike: I don’t think that she would do that...

Me: Well, she did.

Mike: Do you think she’ll ever come back to me?

Me: What? Are you fuckin...

Mike: Your serve... but do you REALLY think that she had sex, I mean really?

Me: Dude…

-repeat this scene everyday for two months-

So one day I get this call from him and he says to meet him at the place we play. I walk over there to the ping-pong club and he’s standing with two of the sketchiest, scallywag looking girls that I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

Like a Snooki, J-woww clone, except add in a midwest beer gut and much cheaper extensions.

Remember, this was a few years before that whore-shore was ever put on the map. Still, their makeup was all over the place, boobs were popping out, roots showing, and awful heels in animal print. I mean really? Who the fuck plays ping-pong in heels? I half expected him to hit me up for some cash. But instead he leaned in and whispered,

Mike: Hey, is Carrie home?

Me: No, but I just had the furniture cleaned.

Mike: Come on, let’s take these girls over there, hang out, and have a drink.

Me: It’s Tuesday and I live in a fucking church, plus what if it starts on fire when they walk in?

Mike: Please man… I need this.

Me: Shit.

So we walked over to my place. How did I get myself into this mess? I was trying to be a good friend, that's how. Besides Carrie was at work till five, so as long as I had these scallywags out of there by four, I figured we'd be fine. Once in the house I made everyone a drink and we all sat down in the living room. Within a couple minutes time he was already kissing on skank#2. This was not in the handbook! I felt like I was back at some basement high school party, OMG did he just tongue kiss her? While this was happening skank#1 moved in closer, now she was sitting right next to me… they were like valasoraptor's!

Skank #1: Hi

Me: Hey

Skank #1: You’re cute!

Me: I don’t carry cash...

Skank#1: You’re funny (And then she leaned in, I think to give me the Clap!)

Me: Ok, Mike I got shit to do buddy, sorry guys, I need to get some stuff done.

Skank#1: OMG, ha ha, you’re so scared of me, I not going to try and Fuck you silly!

Me: No, I know that, it's just I need to…

Skank#1: Oh, what, you don’t want to fuck me?

Me: Mike, really!?

Skank#1: I bet you wouldn’t turn down a blowjob though; I’m great at them!
Skank#2: It's true she is...

Now you see why I didn’t even give these girls proper names for this story? You thought that "skank" was a little harsh, didn't you? These girls were so gross, I was actually beginning to worry that Mike was catching the herp right there as he sat tongue kissing skank#2, and now I was getting even more pissed off because I knew that I would have to get my couches cleaned... again!!!

You may be wondering why I didn’t just tell her that I had a girlfriend, right? Well, one, she didn’t strike me as the type of girl who would care, and two, I was still trying to play my part for my down in the dumps, heartbroken, might now have the herpes, didn't get to have any sex down in Jamaica, best buddy.

Finally, I couldn’t take it any more so out the door the hoes went. Game over! As I shut the door on the three of them, I heard a voice scream out,

“YOU ASSHOLE!!!”

What the hell?

It was Carrie.

Carrie: I was in the closet the whole time, I heard everything! You’re such an assho…

Me: Wait, what the fuck were you doing in the closet?

Carrie: I heard you coming in with some girls so I jumped in the hall closet, I wanted to see what the hell you were doing!

Me: What? What does that even mean? What did you think I would do?

Here’s the crazy part, the dirty girls and Mike were over at my place for at least an hour if not longer. I asked her how long she planned to stay in there and she told me that she'd actually fallen asleep! Over an hour in the hall coat closet!

Crazy Carrie in the Closet.

Well, even though I didn’t technically do anything wrong, she was super paranoid after that whole closet deal happened, but so was I! I started looking under the bed, in the drawers, under the sink… wherever I thought she could be lurking.

Our relationship soon fell apart just a short time after that. She actually cheated on me, which is another great story for a different day. Mike did not get the herpes thank goodness, and soon after that he got back with his girl, just long enough to marry her and then divorce her when she pulled that bullshit again.

I learned a good lesson from all of it though. If a girl is willing to spend over an hour in a coat closet just to catch you being shady, the relationship is pretty much over from that moment on. Also, never believe an orange girl in heels when she says she wants to play ping-pong with you. She’s lying, and really just wants a chance to tongue kiss you in a church!

WJNTY-Daryl
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I Did It... A Cautionary Tale

2012-01-05T11:22:00.000-05:00

Remember when OJ Simpson wrote a book called I Did it? Well, it got pulled off the shelves of bookstores across the country, two nights before it was to be released. Not that OJ ever did it, but if he did, he was going to explain exactly how it would have gone down. This blog is going to be a bit like that. Except I never killed anyone, or drove a white bronco. So let me preface this one with this…

One: Here at WJNTY, we strive to give our readers the most honest, hard hitting, no bullshit material out there, and cheating, although a very sore subject for many is one that is rarely honestly written about.

B: I’ve never cheated on anyone. And that’s the truth. I just don’t believe in it. I feel that if you really feel the need to become exclusive with one other person, and hold their heart in your hand, you carry with that the responsibility to be faithful to that one person. You wanted, and asked for the relationship, now you should obey the rules and deal with what comes with it. No one forced you into your current situation (unless it was a shotgun wedding).

And Three: I’ve been cheated on 5 times (that I know of)… it sucks. Three of them I took back only to be broken up with down the line anyway. So I have some experience in the town of Cheatsville, population 70% of my exes.

I was talking to Daryl the other day about a particular relationship from my past. He asked if I could have done anything different, what it would have been? “Cheated,” I replied. “I would have cheated on her.” I don’t think it was the answer he was looking for. Now, it wasn’t that she was a bad person, and I don’t believe anyone deserves that kind of treatment in a relationship, however, I think I knew for a long time that the relationship was doomed for disaster. This relationship took place in my prime ass getting years, and therefore, I believe I passed on quite a few great stories because of my genuine good heart. In fact, at one point during this relationship, I had to run out of the house of a girl undressing herself, and I turned down a threesome as well. Those decisions were simple at the time. I was in a relationship, what other choice did I have? But if I knew then what I know now, I would have definitely pounced on those opportunities.

I think a lot of people are dumb cheaters though. And contrary to popular belief and everything “they” say, it’s never really about the person they cheated with. But always about the person they cheated on. There has to be something wrong with your relationship, something missing, to look towards infidelity for the cure to unhappiness. People don’t just cheat for the hell of it, and if you were really, truly, 100% happy with your relationship, you wouldn’t cheat. I don’t care how much chemistry you thought you felt with that guy on Spring Break. He wouldn’t even show up as a blip on your screen if there weren’t something else going on behind the scenes.

There are many reasons for cheating, and it will forever be the worst relationship issue most of us will have to deal with. I don’t believe there’s a cure to this plague, so as the Romans say; if you can’t beat them, join them… Here’s a top ten list of stupid things you shouldn’t do while you’re being stupid. Like I said, I've never done it... but if I did, these are the things I would make sure to avoid, so I didn't get caught.

1: Don’t cheat with someone in your social circle

How dumb do you have to be to cheat with your boyfriend’s friend? Do you really think that they will have more allegiance to your vagina than their bro? No, they won’t, and eventually they’ll say something and ruin the entire social circle for everyone involved. You’ll be to blame for breaking up the “crew,” and forever cast out as a slut by the girls and a laughing stock by the guys. The guys will continue being friends after about a 3-month break. You’ll probably lose everything.

2: Don’t cheat on vacation

When you get back, your boyfriend is going to ask how everything was? What was your favorite part? Did you meet anyone cool? Did you have any crazy adventures? Drunken stories? You will have to answer every question with some sort of lie. And that will suck, because now not only are you a cheater, but you’re a liar as well. Now you’re hiding pictures, dragging girlfriends in on elaborate made-up stories and omitting entire nights from your vacation. You better be a great storyteller to get through this one.

3: Don’t cheat when they’re out of town

It would seem like a good idea to put as much distance between your boyfriend and your lover, but you just couldn’t handle that, so you had to go and fuck in your backyard (no pun intended), didn’t you. Well, now you have the great opportunity to run into your lover with your boyfriend at any number of daily errands or social events. Way to put yourself into an awkward position, especially when they hit it off and become friends!

4. Don’t bang your hired help

Pool boy is the classic example. Could be the mailman, gardener, painter, the guy who checks your plumbing, or changes your oil. Whoever it is, if you’re paying them to do a job, there’s no need to throw in a tip too. And remember, every transaction leaves a paper trail. And if you’re living with your guy and he pays the bills, this could be one of the worst situations for a guy ever to be in. He’s basically paying someone to fuck his girl. Awesome.

5. Never put your lover’s name in your phone as a girl’s name

If I ever cheated, the new girl's number would never go in my phone as "Mike," "Bill," or "Trey." Why? Because I would never have a friend named "Trey." We know this trick. And we can tell very easily if it’s a man or woman on the other end of the conversation (text or phone). Oh, and you’re about as good of an actress as Kristin Stewart... "

"I mean he's like a werewolf, and so, he like, doesn't have like, hair... or whatever, on his, muscles... he has muscles, like on his body or like, whatever?"

It’s just a sure fire way to lead to questioning. And you don’t want complicated questions when you’re trying to get out of the house to go bang someone else.

6. Don’t cheat on your boy with a girl

Want to really hurt your boyfriend? Just a quick, “You weren’t good enough so I started hitting it with Jimmy…” isn’t good enough? Try, “You were so bad that I had to start fucking women.” That will really let him know he was a failure in both the relationship and at life. Good luck picking up those pieces.

7. Don’t hook up with anyone who works in the nightlife industry

Everyone knows everyone. Even in a large city. They have no life outside of their bar, or the one they go to on their night off, and for this reason, they love drama. Also, they couldn’t care less about normal people and their normal feelings, because normal people don’t tip very well. They’ll be the first to tell your boy the next time he walks in to order a beer. And they won’t care, because there is a line of girls out the door who will blow them if you wont. And if they don’t tell him, one of the skanky cocktail waitresses will, just out of spite, to get back at you for trying to get into their circle.

8. Don’t cheat with anyone who is addicted to their twitter account

We all saw what happened to Tiger, Weiner, Kobe, Ashton, and Arnold just to mention a few. People like to tweet everything these days. And although most of it is pointless #hashtagging or mundane happenings in their day, every once in awhile, this tweet–aholic, will have something exciting to write about (i.e. a crazy, unplanned, drunken hookup) and next thing you know, you’re trending, #whore.

9. Make sure your cell phone is nowhere near you when you are in the act

I’ve had two of my past girlfriends speed dial their parents while we were doing the no pants dance. Want to talk about an awkward Thanksgiving? Have you ever listened to yourself have sex through a message machine? It’s not a great experience. Now of course this was back in the day of cell phones with buttons and land lines, but still, it seems that your phone sometimes has a mind of its own, and if it’s going to make a call on its own, it will inevitably make that call to the one person who you don’t want to take it. Trust me. That’s a Men’s Warehouse guarantee!

10. Don’t join a dating site with the mindset of cheating

With the exception of Ashley Madison, these dating sites are actually made for people to find love, not be the recipient of your unhappiness. This will only give them one more reason to hate the world of dating. Plus, if your situation is so bad that you have to resort to dating sites to find someone to cheat with, there’s a good chance that your boy is doing it too. How cool would that be if you found each other’s profiles?! Maybe you both like Pina Colada’s? Or like getting caught in the rain?

The only true way to avoid the cheating situation is to cut it off from the beginning. Never even give yourself the chance to have your top off in a hotel room, wondering if you’re doing something wrong. Intentions are the way to go here. Make sure you share your relationship status within the first ten min of conversation. Not like, hinting at the fact that you’re not single, but rather tossing your boyfriend’s name in the conversation. I always tell girls that there are only three ways to go from here: One: He leaves the conversation because he really just wanted to bang you. Two: He’s so confident that it didn’t even register in his head that a boyfriend might stop him from being able to bang you. And three: He’s gay and couldn’t care less that you have a boyfriend, because he’s disgusted by the idea of banging you. You’ll be able to tell fairly quickly which situation you’ve found yourself in.

People always try to define cheating. It’s a tough one. But I say cheating is: Anything you do with another person, that you would not be comfortable doing if your significant other was in the same room.

This changes with every relationship, and every different level of open communication. Just think about that definition next time you’re wondering if you are cheating or not…

So the point of all of this, is that there’s not really a good situation to be cheating in. If you can’t do it on vacation, or with hired help, with anyone who has a cell phone or a job, then whom can you do it with? Well the answer is no one. In a survey that I never started, I found out that 85% of people, who cheat, get caught. Now that’s a pretty high percentage for a completely made up statistic! And I would hedge a huge bet that the intoxicating feeling of cheating, doesn’t even compare to the horrible feeling of being caught. So when it really comes down to it, it’s just not worth it. Which is why I did NOT do it!

WJNTY – Seth
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Author's note: If you think I'm talking about you in this blog, I'm not... I'm talking about her. She knows who she is.

Ten Reasons Your Bridesmaids Secretly Hate You…

2012-01-02T10:43:00.001-05:00

I’ve never been a bridesmaid, thank God for that. And thank God for the fact that brides can be such a royal pain in the ass to deal with, because when the actual wedding occurs, bridesmaids are so stressed out that even my friends who never, ever, get any action, have a legitimate chance at seeing a naked girl.

As great as that is for my buddies, I still feel I need to intervene. I’m going to tell you the top ten reasons your bridesmaids secretly hate you. This is straight from the horse’s mouth, and you should listen to me because it’s the one day of your life that you can’t do over. Also, you should ask yourself why you’d let your girlfriends who resemble horses sit at the head table? They belong at table nine in the back, the one on the left, not the right, near the children… remember dear, wedding pictures are forever. So in no particular order:

1.Destination weddings are awful.

The only person who truly enjoys destination weddings is the bride. The rest of us just make the best of it. Why would you ever think that anyone would want to be on a vacation with strangers? All you’re really doing is taking up everyone’s precious vacation days to go all the way to a place that’s tropical, just so that I can end up eating chicken or steak anyway. I could have done that in Charlotte and not had to use four days of my vacation for what should have been just a six-hour event. If it’s not on a yacht or in a castle you’re wasting everyone’s time.

2.Shoes, dresses and alterations.

First of all, if your photographer is taking pictures of feet, you really need to Google him for priors. Shoes don’t matter enough to force your girls to spend over a hundred and seventy dollars for a pair that they’ll never wear again. Jessica Simpson’s line is beautiful, affordable and wearable. Pick out shoes that someone will actually want to wear again.

Now the dresses are another whole deal all together. Simple rules, although you may think that your wedding is the most important one of all your friend’s lives, it’s not the only one that they’re attending this year. Picking an expensive dress is selfish. The dress should be comfortable; it’s a party, not a gala at the White House. Also, girls are shaped different. Some of your bridesmaids do yoga and some have back fat. If you put a back fat girl in a strapless, I will say it for her… you’re a bitch. Think about it before you go with the sea foam and dress your friends up like mermaids. Now as far as alterations go, why do brides never remember the last wedding they were in? Getting alterations sucks and is expensive. If you pick an ugly or expensive dress, then you should offer to pay for alterations.

3.You’re getting married on a holiday or a Friday.

This is a huge pain in the ass. 4^th of July, New Years Eve, Thanksgiving weekend? Honestly, how much attention do you need? Your wedding is so special that it trumps America’s birthday? I’m telling you right now that nobody wants to be there on a holiday! Fridays are only slightly better, but still a complete clusterfuck. First, bridesmaids have to take off on Thursday for the rehearsal dinner, and then again on Friday for the wedding. It’s two days off of work for your one day wedding? Do the math. Don’t inconvenience your friends who are doing you the huge favor of standing up. Weekend weddings are way less stressful for people with real jobs!

It may seem easy to take off work, but remember, you’re the actual bride, groups of girls all get married around the same time, so your bridesmaids may end up having several different weddings to attend in the same year; it’s not easy to get off work the fifth or sixth time, be considerate of this.

4.Cash bars are tacky.

If you really can’t afford to pay for the liquor at your reception then you should just do kegs. Seriously. Having kegs of beer is less tacky than charging your fucking guests. No matter how much planning goes into it, I promise you that your reception is just like everyone else’s… fun with alcohol, amazing with free alcohol! Don’t skimp on the liquor… ever.

5.Hair, make-up, nails and tanning.

I understand wanting your wedding to be exactly the way that you’ve dreamed it up since you were five-years-old but if you’re not offering to pay for their hair and make-up, where do you get off demanding anything?

Someone explain to me please, why do brides suddenly turn into the mothers of Georgia pageant girls when it’s time for their own weddings?

“We need to all be the same color orange, of course, and your nails should look like this, your make-up like that, and your hair like however the fuck I tell YOU TO BECAUSE I’M YOUR MOTHER, NOW GET YOUR LITTLE FOUR-YEAR-OLD BONEY ASS OUT THERE ON THAT STAGE RIGHT NOW AND WIN US THAT GOD DAMN TROPHY AND CHICK-FIL-A GIFT CARD!!!!”

6.Your wedding is at noon and the reception is at seven?

Thanks, we really didn’t have anything to do today anyway. Bridesmaids love having just enough time to not go home, plus sitting at a fucking Applebee’s with an Updo is always great! Do you really think that hanging out in dresses and heels for six hours is enjoyable for anyone? Has it ever been?

7.Bridesmaids are only single in the movies.

You should be accommodating to other people’s relationships. Nothing is worse for a guy than having his girlfriend be in the wedding and him not being able to go along with. He’s stuck staring at a Google map trying to find the church while she’s in the limo texting him to bring her deodorant. He sits alone at the church, while she takes pictures with your husband’s cousin Tony from Jersey. She has to sit at the head table while her boyfriend gets to go sit with the other singles at table twelve, but hey, at least it’s the table nearest the desserts! This is not cool. You need to plan arrangements for the wedding parties’ other people.

8. The weeklong wedding.

Two weeks vacation doesn’t mean that a week of it gets donated to your wedding. You’re marrying the rich dude, not your bridesmaids. She has to be in town on Wednesday to get settled in, Thursday is nails and last minute errands, Friday is spray tanning and rehearsal dinner, Saturday is the wedding, and Sunday is brunch. You need to realize that people have lives. They have other things to do besides hold your hand while you play Princess Barbie for the week.

9.Who is paying for all this?

Not the wedding, but all the other stuff! The bachelorette party is out of town for two nights, the engagement party is on a Wednesday afternoon, the bridal shower is at a sit down fancy restaurant, and the dress fitting is three hours away! Not to mention all the gifts that are expected to accompany all of this bullshit! It’s fucking insane! Your girlfriends are broke and you know this, yet you still expect them to get a second job (because that’s what it takes) to bankroll the eight months of activities leading up to your wedding day? This is what the C-word was invented for.

10.Weddings are depressing for bridesmaids.

Remember how you felt during the last five that you were in? You were happy for your girl for about thirty minutes at the church, sad during the dinner realizing that your current boyfriend is a dickhead and was probably never going to ask you to marry him, and then you got hammered for the rest of the evening, before waking up and hating yourself in the morning for hooking up with Tony from Jersey, gross.

Weddings are mostly lots of work, unless you’re a guy. So think about what you liked and didn’t like from the weddings that you’ve been a part of, and make your own wedding a day to enjoy for all.

WJNTY-Daryl

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Have the Hap, Hap, Happiest Christmas!

2011-12-26T12:53:00.000-05:00

So, I’m a bit of a Scrooge. At least that’s what some of my friends think. This isn’t necessarily the case. However, over the past 5 years, I’ve kinda disappeared and spent the holiday alone in a new location each season. You see, it’s usually the only extended period of time that I get off each year, and I liked to use that opportunity to explore new territory, see and try new things. I’ve spent Christmas in Miami, New Zealand, Mexico, Switzerland and the Bahamas. I’ve met some of the most amazing people in my life on these solo holiday trips, and created some of the most unique stories I have to date. But this year, for the first time in a long time, and after my family said please, I decided to come on home for Christmas. I’m proud to say, I’m still terrible at wrapping presents, but I had one of the best holidays in a very long time. The same old Christmas parties I used to go to as a kid, snow on Christmas morning, great food and quality time with my parents, siblings and nieces, all made for a wonderful trip.

Even though the idea of Christmas spirit and what it means to people has changed over the years, I believe I saw more of that spirit this year than I had in a long time. Bieber finally put out a Christmas album, LED bulbs have officially taken over the old school hit-or-miss strands, Santa got an iPhone 4S with siri to help make deliveries, more people than ever got injured on Black Friday trying to get the best deal on a toy for their kid, and I got to catch up on all the Christmas films I haven’t seen in years.

I learned to tell someone I loved them from Love Actually, even if it was your housekeeper, best friend’s wife, employee, classmate or one-night foursome. From The Stone I learned that even if your family hates Carrie Bradshaw, they’ll learn to love her once she starts dating your younger brother. I learned that Olive, the other reindeer is a bully. I mean, why do you always have to laugh at and call Rudolph names, Olive? I learned that yellow cars wont stop for you, even if you dress like an Elf and truly are from the North Pole. That if you lose a hundred pounds and become a record executive, she’ll still see you as “just friends,” and that sometimes, being green, taking away all the lights, presents, trees and food can’t even break the Christmas sprit. But the most important lesson I learned while curled up on the couch, drinking hot apple cider with rum this holiday season, was that Clark W. Griswold is my idol.

D and I, along with a few very close friends watched Christmas Vacation this year as our choice comedy of the season. But as I watched and laughed, I really started to understand the underlying message: the struggle of a husband, father, son, employee and neighbor. Clark spends the entire movie trying his hardest to make sure everyone in his family has the “Old Fashioned” Christmas they’ve always dreamed of. He opens up his home to anyone who wishes to come in, works his ass off to make sure everyone has the best presents, and he lights up the entire neighborhood so no one else has to worry about spending their hard earned time or money putting up lights of their own.

He does all of this selflessly. With no thought of his own happiness or well being in mind. The one, and only, time he gets upset, it’s only over a situation that will affect the overall happiness and joy of his family; the bonus he’s entitled to and has worked so hard to receive.

It makes me wonder, are there men out there today who have the ability to be as good a man as Clark Griswold? Clark wasn’t interested in going out with his friends for drinks on Christmas Eve, nor was he concerned with watching the football game after dinner. He wasn’t upset when he didn’t receive the latest technological gadget, nor did he buy his kid a present like say a PS3 that was really more for himself than his daughter. And even though the in-laws (and their pets) caused so much turmoil, he still invited them all back in the spring for the groundbreaking of the pool.

He cried while watching old family videos of his kids, changed the outlook of his boss and even had time to read to his family on Christmas Eve.

Clark W. Griswold is a man. Not a boy who’s interested in checking his fantasy football scores during dinner or gets drunk and embarrasses you in front of your colleagues at the Holiday party. He’s a man to look up to, a good role model for his children and a husband that will always fight for his marriage, because just picking up and leaving couldn’t possibly be an option.

Do you have a Sparky? Or are you still just running around with a boy? Have you been waiting holiday season after holiday season for your boy to turn into a man? Or do you have one who is willing to place his life on the line so you can be happy during the holidays? Which one would you rather bring around your family the next holiday season?

WJNTY - Seth

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The Pretty, Tiny, Blonde Girlfriend Factory...

2011-12-19T11:48:00.000-05:00

What was wrong with her? She was so pretty!

Yes, she was very pretty, and she was a “nice” girl.

So what.

People say I’m too picky.

“You shouldn’t be so picky!” They say.

I don’t understand what this means?

Another question that I often get is, “What is your type?” As if women come in music genres, or are displayed like pies at a bakery, “I’ll take that one please!” I only wish it were that simple. I don’t really have a “type” not in the same sense that they mean it anyway, though if you were to ask my parents they would have you believe that all of my past girlfriends have come out of the same factory; the pretty, tiny, blonde girlfriend factory, somewhere down in Florida… Orlando maybe?

While it’s true that most of them have been blonde haired, that’s merely a pleasing feature to my eyes, much in the same way that over the years now, they’ve had four German shepherds. One will grow old and die, and within a week’s time, a new beautiful German shepherd is there to fill its seat. So, I do the same thing with blondes… I guess.

Believe me they’ve all been “nice” girls. For me that wasn’t enough though. There are amazing women out there; I know it, and if I‘m being honest with myself (and with you) I’ve met a few women who I would be willing to marry in a heartbeat.

Yet, I’m still single?

Yes.

Not because I can’t find a good girlfriend though. I’ve had lots of girlfriends; I’ve never had any trouble with that. It’s not because I want to play the field either; I find the whole causal thing to be quite boring actually. I’m single because I still haven’t found “her” yet.

Believe me though, I’m looking. I’m always looking.

The truth is for me, I can tell within an hour or so, if I would marry someone, or not.

How is that even possible, right?

It’s only possible because I know EXACTLY who I am. When you have that sort of information, things become crystal clear, sort of like the Matrix. I know what will work for me, and what never will. Of course I haven’t figured it all out yet. Sometimes I get tricked. Even I get stuck in the chic-sand from time to time. Sometimes they’re really sneaky!

“You sneaky girlfriend!”

So then, what about the ones I would be willing to marry in a heartbeat?

Well that happens. I just met a girl this last week that I would marry in a heartbeat.

Her name is Sarah.

She is an amazing woman. She has what so many women are lacking these days.

Character.

If Sarah says she will do something, she does it. Sarah doesn’t talk bad about other people, she doesn’t pretend to be too busy, so as to seem like more of a challenge. If Sarah says she’s going to call you, your phone rings. She is honest. She believes in love, but isn’t afraid to be alone. If you ask her a question, she thinks about it before she even speaks. She listens when I talk, and doesn’t stare at her phone the whole time. She loves bourbon over ice, but doesn’t blame it for her choices. She doesn’t obsess over her looks or about her exes. She says thank you. She thinks Facebook is sad, and would rather read a book, or be outside. She is generous. She has true friends and understands that being a good friend is about doing for the other person. She doesn’t take the little things for granted. She doesn’t expect to be taken care of either. When she asks about my day she means it. She volunteers, she gardens, she even finds time to bake me bananna bread.

Sarah is my next-door neighbor, and she is ninety years old.

If I could find a girl who had even a tenth of her character, I’d marry her right on the spot.

But I haven’t yet, and so I’ll stay single until I do, because for me, having anything less than that, just isn't worth it.

WJNTY-Daryl

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Fashion Sensibility

2011-12-12T14:27:00.000-05:00

This past spring and summer, I wrote two fashion articles called Fashion Sense and Fashion Sensitivity, the former about fashions guys hated and the latter about fashions we love. They both received great press (some good, mostly bad) and they kick started my now illustrious fashion career starting with a simple phone call from Mr. Versace himself (yes, I realize he’s dead. It was a call from above…) calling me the modern day Mugatu with better hair. So this fall, the calls came flooding into write a fall/winter version of the piece. So without further delay, here are 8 great rules to follow this winter season…

-Don’t Wear Sweatpants

You shouldn’t wear sweatpants lounging around the house. It’s sloppy. Katy Perry doesn’t wear sweatpants while lounging around her mansion. Never. That’s just one of the great things that keep her and superhunk, Aldous Snow, together. Katy Perry’s awesome, and she’s good at staying in a relationship. Now, don’t look at the sweatpants as the real problem, look behind the sweatpants. What do you see? That’s right, it’s Katy Perry’s… will, to never get complacent & lose the original things that made the relationship great. She wants to always impress her hubby, and you should always want to impress your man. Do you think the un-showered, oversize t-shirt, baggy sweatpants wearing version of you turns him on? You’re supposed to be making him think of fireworks, not clipping coupons. Class it up a little, at least let him see your curves, and remind him why he still gets turned on by you. It’s rumored that Brad left Jen because of too many Sunday morning sweatpants parties…

-Rainboots are Awesome

These are the cutest things on little boys and girls. Running around, splashing around in puddles and laughing. Sometimes rain sucks, but have you ever not gotten enjoyment from splashing around in puddles? So now they make these in big girl sizes, in way cool designs and even in cowboy boot shapes! They’ve got the 3 F’s of fashion: Functional, flashy, and… um… fashionable. Pick yourself up a few pairs for the grueling winter and show off without ruining your Uggs. Speaking of Uggs, if you are a guy and not an Australian surfer or author of WJNTY, I don’t care if they feel like a bunch of rabbits fighting to keep your toes warm, these are not meant for you.

-Choose Your Headgear Wisely

This one’s very important. It’s not everyday of the year that you get to throw your hair into pigtails and toss a hat on. But with so many varieties, how do you know which ones to rock, and which ones to shy away from? Well, there’s only 4 types of winter headwear as far as I’m concerned:

The Standard Beanie – Classic and warm. This will get you through most any situation this winter, is more or less acceptable indoors, and you don’t have to spend too much time doing your hair, but still get to have people comment on how good it looks. You can buy one in any color to coordinate with just about any outfit, and all for pretty cheap. Site Note: Seriously southern girl who’s never seen snow before, a toboggan is for sledding down a hill, not something you put on your head. Can someone explain this to me?

Fur on your head – Now, I can understand a well-made fur hat that might have been your grandmothers, but these new, chincy, faux animal fur woodsman’s hats that are all the rage? Please. These are going to be one of the things that we look back 20 years from now and say, “What were we thinking?” It was cool when like 4 kids had those, now that every other college girl is rocking one and sighting warmth as the reason. They are getting as bad as uggs with skirts.

Santa Hats – Only to be warn if you’re not wearing much else. Then these are awesome. Or if you’re on a beach, then it’s acceptable as well.

Ear Muffs – Do you really like your hair that much? These are so impractical. You lose 80% of your body’s heat through your head, not your ears. And your nose gets cold just as fast as your ears, so shouldn’t you have a cover for that too? Just stop trying to be so cool and by a beanie already. Unless you’re trying to bring back the 80’s. And if you are, bring me back Patrick Swayze and leave the muffs. Thanks.

-Your tall, skinny, non-fat, soy, peppermint, mocha latte with whipped cream and two cups… is gross

You’re holding up my order, stop it. Can’t anyone just drink coffee anymore? It’s not, “How do you take your coffee?” Anymore. No, we had to add in flavors, and sprigs, and other machines, and berries, and chocolate and time. I know you like it, but try to simplify your order a little. Especially when it’s cold outside and the lines are wicked long. If you’re trying to pick up a guy in a coffee shop, he’ll be impressed by your simple order, and your pension for drinking your coffee and throwing it away rather than turning your paper Starbucks cup into an accessory. I’m very simple in the coffee shop; after all these years, I still like my coffee like I like my women… Hot.

-Turtlenecks Are Not Even Funny as a Joke

Unless you are wearing this turtleneck with a gold chain and about to pump out yet another youTube sensational hit, please don’t wear these. I guess it’s appropriate under a one-piece ski suit as well, but really, what isn’t. I had a teacher in high school that always wore a turtleneck, even in the summer, and it really creeped me out. What are you trying to hide, you crazy English lit teacher!? These went out of style long ago, no matter what the lady at Burlington coat factory tries to tell you. We need to make a Facebook group, “Save the sexy, get rid of turtlenecks.”

-It’s Ugly Christmas Sweater Season

Best holiday parties ever. Well, they were until this year. Now everyone’s doing them. It’s not cool once everyone figures out what’s going on. I remember two and three years ago when there was a real art to finding a really ugly Christmas sweater. Now you can pick up one at target on the way to the party. So if you’re going to get one this year, search the antique depots and thrift stores near nursing homes. In fact, do some volunteering at a nursing home and snag an original. Then you have a winning sweater and a great story about stealing from old people to go along with it. In fact, if I see a mass-produced ugly sweater at a holiday party this year, I’ll probably spill eggnog on it.

-Your Mittens Don’t Need to Accomplish Two Things

Mittens that are also gloves are stupid, and they don’t really do either job very well. Listen, I’m 28 years old, do you really think you’re going to catch me walking around a park wearing glove-mittens? I don’t think so! If your name isn’t Marv or Harry and you’re not part of the wet bandits you have no practical use for these. They had nail boards and paint cans, tar & feathers and hot stoves to dodge, all while chasing after a heathen of a child. They needed the versatility of a glove-mitten, you don’t. Mittens are always cuter than gloves anyway, I don’t know why, they just are. So hook yourself up with some sweet woven ones for the cold days and keep them stashed in that luggage you carry around with you every day.

-Puffy Jackets WERE All The Rage

I think it’s safe to say that these blobs of warmness have worn out their welcome. I remember back in the day when they became all the rage. I didn’t even know what they were, but my cousin (3 years older) bought me a black and green north face that was at least two sizes too big. I loved it, but the mean kids at my school didn’t, and they figured it was fair game to throw me around like a pinball in the hallway. Once they got board with that, they would just stab at me with pens. It sucks walking across campus in the wind, with a trail of feathers blowing around behind you. You look like a mad Donald Duck. Now, that kind of behavior hasn’t happened in the forthcoming years since they’ve become popular, but leave the puffy stuff to vests and comforters. Get yourself a pea coat or leather jacket to roll around in everyday. You don’t always have to leave the house prepared to climb a mountain.

So this season, while you’re drinking warm apple cider, enjoying snow days, hitting the slopes, or making out with your coworker at a holiday party, just remember, winter’s a time to bundle up and stay warm. Focus on looking cute rather than hot, and mix it up with some clothes you don’t get to wear for the majority of the year. Have fun with it, stick to the rules above and you’ll breeze through the season like the tiny unique snowflake that you’re not…

WJNTY - Seth

The 90’s Taught Me Everything I Know About Love…

2011-12-05T10:58:00.005-05:00

When you look around at the state of relationships these days, it’s easy to see that things are very complicated. Everything, it seems, is more complicated than EVER before. We don’t write letters anymore, we write on walls, we carry around multiple tiny screens with us, and our phones have no wires. We watch other people’s families for entertainment; we watch them get married, go on their vacations, and even get divorced. We watch “Situations” as they happen, and “Snooki’s” as they self-destruct. It was all so much easier before.

But when exactly was “before?”

That’s simple. For me it is anyway. I see the world in two different time periods, before 1996, and after 1996.

That’s when I first learned about love; 1996. Love was everywhere, and having crushes was huge. Would you like to hear my top ten most important lessons I learned about love from the 90’s?

You got it dude!

1. You were only allowed to sleep with ONE friend in your circle. That’s the rule.

Can you imagine it?? Today’s girls have it made. They can sleep with one, two, even three of their guy friends, all from the same circle, and nobody really bats an eye. This wasn’t always the case though. Ross and Rachel are the perfect example of this, even when Rachel tried to date Joey, it didn’t last. Still, she tried to break that rule. Bad idea. I believe it was because of her going for Joey (behind Ross’s back mind you) that kept guys in real life from wanting to date her seriously. There are rules to it, and I’m sorry but if you break them, you end up having to date John Mayer. Elaine knew this; that’s why she dated Jerry, but never Kramer or George. Rebecca “Becky” Donaldson didn’t mess around with Joey, or Danny Tanner, she was fucking Uncle Jessie… Have Mercy! Even the guys followed the rules. Zack could bang any girl in the entire school, all of them if he wanted, except Lisa or Jessie. Rules are rules. The only 90’s show that broke this rule was 90210 but let's be honest, they were a bunch of scallywag whores.

2. The nice guy always wins!

Think about it… Tom Cruise? Keanu Reeves? Jerry Maguire? Tom Hanks? They always got the girl! Even when Jenny caught the “AIDS” Forrest still got a billion dollars from Apple. See, the nice guy wins again. If you were a rich businessman like say, Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) you could actually pay your hooker to quit hooking! Such a nice guy! So he got the girl of course, never mind that he liked hookers! Even if you died, it didn’t matter, if you were a nice guy you could find yourself a black lady with dreads, and she’d help you make out with your lady one last time! Speaking of black people we loved us some Fresh Prince, I mean LOVED him! I’m serious once upon a time, before Hitch and before he pushed his might-as-well-be-white, no talent, annoying, performer children on us, he played himself in every single movie that he made, and we didn’t even care. I’m telling you, nice guys could not lose… except Dawson.

3. Jordan Catalano was fucking beautiful, and even for guys he was an acceptable male crush to have, no homo.

4. Every girl was good looking.

Topanga, Blossom, Clarissa, even Kimmy Gibbler were all considered "good looking." Were there hot girls? Sure. Scary, Baby, Posh, and Ginger were all considered hot girls, oh yeah and Sporty Spice too… if you played lacrosse or softball.

5. We didn’t care a thing about Internet porn.
We didn’t need it, we had a girl named Britney Spears.

6. Girls loved musicians too, any musician, even the dirty ones.

The Counting Crows dude banged both of the hot girls from “Friends” (No, not Phoebe). Sporting a Mr. Rodgers sweater could get you some girls, but a sure thing was saying that you loved Dave Matthews; that shit would get you laid, but you had to listen to Crash about fifty times in a row. When bands came to town girls didn’t just fuck the lead singers, those days were over, now everyone had a shot… even the fat back up singers. Yes, even Joey Fatone got laid.

7. Hot girls killed vampires.

They didn’t try and bang them. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had it right. Although to be fair, the vampires in the 90’s didn’t have P90X yet, so the whole sexy vampire with “Stackhouse” abs, wasn’t really a deciding factor.

8.Safe sex was very important.

TLC wore condoms all over their clothes. It was ok to “creep” but you’d better wrap it. Somehow Magic Johnson didn’t get the memo, he should have stuck to the rivers and the lakes he was used to.

9. I was in love with Brad.

No, not Brad Pitt! Brad Taylor. She was a rich girl who trained horses and lived way out on a ranch somewhere, with an Indian guy named Danny, and a hot girl named Melody. Bradley was a complete bitch, but I loved her anyways. She is the reason today that I always fall for bitches. Hey Dude was my favorite TV show ever, and if you don’t know it, well that sucks for you.

10. If you were a gifted enough athlete then you could get away with murder.

No, not get away with murder like Kobe, Big Ben, Tiger or Vick. I mean actual murder… like killing. Like you could actually kill your wife. Hit me baby one more time. Run, O.J. run! People actually ran out and bought white Ford broncos because of that high speed chase, crazy right?

We were all a bit crazy back then, but love was simpler, maybe not for Zack Morris, but for the rest of us, it was for sure.

WJNTY-Daryl

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The Time I Rented a House

2011-11-28T11:03:00.000-05:00

One time, I decided to rent a house. I had been looking for a couple years, but never found anything that fit me perfectly. I would stay in decent hotels for a week or so, or fancy hotels for just one night. Sometimes I would crash at a place I used to stay in long ago, but most of the time I would stay at a friends house or had no place to stay at all. So I wandered around the country, looking for that perfect place I could call home.

And so I found it, I thought. The realtor and I talked about the place for a couple weeks; she showed me a picture or two and a short description. It sounded perfect! Possible long-term lease, newly remodeled, freshly cut grass and trimmed hedges, an addition to original house that really upped the value, and the prettiest outside color you’ve ever seen! It was the perfect size for one man to live in, not too small, but not big either… It was a newer house, not even 30 years old, but to the realtor’s knowledge it had been vacant for a couple years.

I didn’t think twice. From the moment I first saw the house in person I knew I had to have it. I couldn’t believe how well the house fit me. And it was a lease-to-own, what luck! Well, I took it, and about two weeks later, after staring at pictures multiple times a day, I finally had the chance to move in. Since I had been bouncing around from hotel room to hotel room and had not had a house in almost 3 years, I didn’t have too much baggage. And what I had, I put away neatly in my room. No need to clutter such a nice place. My first night sleeping in that house was pure bliss. I felt like it was meant for me. I was so comfortable, that within the next few weeks I started to spread around my artifacts from my room. A book of stories here, pictures there, a box of my most sacred items up on the mantle. I wanted to have my entire life on display in this house, because I was sure I would live in it for a long time. Those first two months were bliss.

It was not until a few months into my new situation that I first met the neighbors. They were nice, but a little quirky, and seemed to be having many problems in their own homes. I wasn’t quite sure why. They were nice enough, but not what I would have picked for my neighbors if I had the choice. I wasn’t worried though because I had many friends in their own homes in the area. Six wonderful months went by.

Everything was going great until one night, I came home to find the house’s architects sitting on my front porch. I was very happy to see them, as I wanted to share my love of the house with its’ builders. They didn’t seem as optimistic as I though, and told me, although I was a great tenant, that soon I would out grow the house and want a mansion. I couldn’t possibly see how. The one I was in was perfect, and I didn’t see how I could possibly be good enough for a mansion. They mentioned a few imperfections and some problems other tenants had had in the past. They had even lived in the house for 18 years, and it was always a slight struggle, however years 14-18 were particularly dicey. I chose to ignore their warnings and thanked them for everything as I walked into the house and shut the door. Interestingly enough, that night a closet door opened; one that I had never seen before. It was filled with interesting, some curious and some scary, items that past tenants had left. The closet was packed full of baggage, and when I went to poke at a bag, they all spilled out on the floor. I tried to stuff them back in the closet, but from that day forward I could only keep all the baggage in the closet for a day or two at a time. It had me completely baffled. How could I have not seen that closet before? And why would it not stay closed for more than a couple of days?

This went on for about a month until one night I came home from the local bar, trashed at 2am, feeling like a million bucks. The closet door was open again, but I ignored it and went straight to the bathroom. And wouldn’t ya know it, at the most inconvenient time, the plumbing happened to be broken. I couldn’t believe it! It wasn’t like I was going to go to another house’s bathroom, so I just went outside by myself. This continued off and on for the remainder of that cold month, but for some reason, it only happened late at night when I was drunk. I finally got fed up with this problem and went to stay at my friends for the weekend. When I came back the following Monday, the realtor had changed the locks. I was locked out of my own house! How could this have happened? I spent hours and hours working on the locks until finally I was able to get back in. But now for some reason, every other night when I would come home from dinner or drinks, I would have to fuss with the door for an hour or so, just so I could get some sleep. It was getting ridiculous.

Around this same time, I got a letter in the mail that the rent was raising. By 50% each month! And it also reminded me that if I were interested, a purchase offer would be accepted. I decided to stay in the house, even with the 50% increase in rent. I mean, where was I supposed to find a better place? All my friends loved my house, and I had put so much time and effort into becoming comfortable with it already. There was no way I could move. But I figured I needed a small vacation to think about my future in this place.

I came back a week later to a place that seemed to have been professionally touched up! The closet door was closed, grass and hedges trimmed perfectly, even a new coat of paint on the outside! I couldn’t believe it! I tried out the plumbing and it worked better than ever. It was like I had come back to my house, 2.0. Things were great for the next couple of weeks. I mostly stayed inside, rearranged all my belongings and even started to draft a letter to the realtor to extend my lease with intent to purchase. I was at the kitchen table finishing the letter when another guy wondered into the house. “Can I help you?” I asked. He said nothing, but turned around and walked back out. I thought it peculiar but paid no attention and continued to draft my letter.

After dinner one night with a friend, I came back to that same guy leaving my house. “Hey!” I yelled, “Come back here! What are you doing in my house?!” He took off sprinting, and I wasn’t able to catch him. I looked for clues all over my place but wasn’t able to find any. Just a few scuff marks that I had never noticed, and a pair of socks that I didn’t think were mine, but couldn’t be sure. So I stuck with my plan. I was all ready to send in the lease extension letter with my new 3-month required deposit when I decided to go out and have one or two drinks to think over this huge life decision.

There he was, sitting at my favorite bar. The guy I saw coming out of my house! I approached him, and after a little threatening, he admitted that he had been sleeping in my house off and on whenever I was away for the past month and a half. I couldn’t believe it, I asked how it started, and he said he showed up to a party at my place one weekend when I wasn’t there. I must have left a door open, and he walked right in. He told me the house looked lonely and he was too drunk to get home that night so he just stayed over, not really thinking anything of it. In the morning he ran out, so ashamed to have stayed over at someone else’s house, but after a few days he found himself drunk again, wandering over to my house, and with me gone again, he was able to let himself right in for a sleep over. This had become a more frequent thing in the past month and had started to include weekend stay-overs and even mid-day naps! All without paying any rent or having the pressures of extending the lease!

I couldn’t believe it, and couldn’t take it anymore. So I went home to pack up and leave. How could I continue sleeping in a house where someone else was crashing, rent free, whenever I was not around? Of course, I had to leave many of my pictures and memories inside. I stuffed them all in the closet with the other baggage. It was very difficult to leave, none of the doors would open, and the windows were all locked, but I eventually got out, leaving a large part of me behind in that house for the next tenant to deal with.

The realtor and I never did get along after that, I had to see her at random social functions, and she never would give me the time of day. I stayed with friends for months after moving out before crashing at my first hotel in well over a year, but it just didn’t seem right. Something was missing; there was no connection with the hotel room, nothing personal, no intimacy.

I still drive by that house every once in a while, wondering if I should stop in to see if anything has changed. It looks better than ever from the street. Every few months I’ll hear from a friend that a new tenant has moved in, but they don’t last long. I really loved that house, maybe I still do? But I’m now sure that someday I’ll be able to drive by that house on my way to my beautiful new mansion, and I won’t feel hatred anymore, but rather look at it as just another lesson learned in life. I’ll know that without that one-year lease, and all the short term rentals and extended hotel stays before it, I would have never learned all the lessons I needed to live out the rest of my days in a mansion.

WJNTY - Seth

Greetings from Key Largo...

2011-11-21T12:56:00.003-05:00

Greetings from Key Largo from us here at "We're Just Not There Yet!"

We're just not in the mood to blog today. Every single Monday without fail, WJNTY does a new blog. Every Monday that is, except for the one Monday a year when we relax down in Key Largo, Florida. It's been a great year and we thank you for keeping up with the blog each Monday. See you next week, and don't forget to check out our top ten blogs of the year.

Keep well,

WJNTY- Daryl and Seth

Feel it, Feel it, Come on, Come on...

2011-11-14T12:06:00.001-05:00

Were do I even begin?

So once upon a time I was on a music tour for an American pop singer. I wasn’t singing on it or anything like that, I was running the daily meet and greets with the fans for her. Anyhow, as we traveled around the country I started dating her girlfriend Natalie, who was also her personal assistant for the tour. We hung out every night and she showed me the ropes of the Hollywood posh lifestyle.

When the tour was over they went back home to Los Angeles, and about a month’s time had passed when she called me up and invited me out to New York City. They had some one off show to do. It was a Bat Mitzvah for a little girl, and the theme was “Willy Wonka.”

It was a very over the top party, the whole place looked just like the chocolate factory. There was a full size gummy bear tree, a chocolate stream, a bunch of Oompa Loompas running around and of course a popular pop singer doing five of her hit songs for the party’s main event.

We were all dressed up to the nines. I can’t even guess what that party cost to put on. Tommy Hilfiger was there, the Duchess of York as well and a bunch of other people whom I didn’t recognize. So what do grown-ups do at a “Willy Wonka” Bat Mitzvah? Drink for free of course. So I had some drinks, many drinks, and I wandered around waiting for my chance to tell Mr. Hilfiger that I really just didn’t get his clothes, and why wasn’t he wearing a puffy jacket? I didn’t end up speaking with him though, but I did talk with the lady that was dressed up as the goose (or maybe it was a swan) who was on a perch laying her golden chocolate eggs, no shit!

The songs were preformed, and the band was a hit. To celebrate her super easy payday the singer decided that we were all going to Nobu for some sushi. Nobu is an amazing place to go to dinner. Very celebrity friendly, very popular and not always the easiest place to get a table, but luckily for me I had a pop princess asking, and they usually got whatever the hell they wanted.

So we sat down. Natalie gave me a kiss; she told me that I looked as handsome as she’d ever seen me. She looked amazing too and I felt like a million bucks! Well actually I felt a bit drunk, but I felt like a million bucks too. It had already been an amazing night with much more hopefully to come. We were staying at the Four Seasons across the street from central park; it was very fancy, we even had a telescope in our room!

I can’t even tell you how big time I was feeling! Town cars, pop stars, Nobu, Oompa Loompas, pretty girls and foot tall eatable gummy bears!

So this was the good life that Kanye was singing about? I actually felt like I fit in, you know? Like I belonged here. I had arrived. People were coming up to our table to say hi, and I had a gorgeous woman holding my hand.

Nothing could ruin this night.

Nothing… except for maybe Marky fucking Mark.

So the tour manager (who is now one of my dearest friends) had been in the music business for a while, and he knew a lot of people. He was sitting across the table from us. It was one of those big round tables, I’m not sure if that helps you, but I’m trying to paint the whole scene. Well, so as I’m looking over the table, who is leaning down to say hello?

Yup, Marky.

Turns out that my friend was also his tour manager back in the day. As he introduces himself to the whole table, my penis started to cry. My penis already knew what I didn’t yet, that “we” didn’t stand a chance, against this real life-walking statue of David. He flashed his million dollar smile and in that bad boy accent said,

“Yo, Yo, Yo, it was wicked nice to meet you girls.”

Or however the hell he talks.

The girls were busy talking to each other, no doubt about him, when my buddy’s blackberry started vibrating on the table…

“D, Marky wants Natalie’s number!”

“What?! Don’t do it!” I begged him.

“Well what should I say,” he asked

“Um, say she’s with me!!!!”

“Fuck!”

“What’s wrong?” asked Natalie

“Nothing, eat your sushi”

“D, he just texted me again!”

I looked over and there was Marky holding his blackberry, he looks over his shoulder in my direction and flashed me smile.

Oh hell no!

I get up and go over to his table, and with help from every drop of alcohol that I’d already had that evening I say,

“Hey, where I come from that’s called being an dick! You don’t see that I’m sitting right next to her? Why are you being an asshole?”

“Excuse me? I’m sorry, what are you talking about bro?” He asked.

“The girl is with me, and you’re being a dick!” I informed him once again.

“Yo, what’s up with your boy?” he asked my friend.

I turned around and headed right outside, I guess I thought that’s where we’d settle it as men, though I think I’d forgotten to tell him to come along.

There were a bunch of smokers standing out there, and me. Smoke was now getting in my hair. Fuck New York City and fuck the funky bunch! I’d had enough.

My buddy comes outside and immediately starts laughing,

“Yo, you are tripping yo!” he said with a huge grin.

“Why are you so mad, he just wants to feel it, feel it, come on, come on.” He was dying laughing.

I decide that I can’t possibly go back into the restaurant. So I grab a cab and head to the hotel. The next thing I remember is waking up next to Natalie and trying to put my arm around her,

“Don’t touch me, you were a complete prick last night” she snipped.

“I came in and tried to hook up with you, but all you wanted to talk about was how you thought “Fear” was a shitty movie, and that you would have abs too if you shaved your body? What the hell were you talking about? What was your deal?” She demanded to know.

I told her the whole story, that I felt super insecure, and was afraid he’d steal her from me.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” she said.

Well, she did have a point there; I mean when you really think about it “Fear” is actually a pretty good movie.

WJNTY- Daryl

The Scarlet Baby

2011-11-10T11:57:00.000-05:00

“His name is De’Andre Swagboy Pierce. That’s gonna be my baby’s daddy right over there.” She motioned to the boy sitting in the corner, trying to look a little too thug. “Pierce is my last name, Baby Daddy’s gonna be salty when he realizes I gave it my name over his.”

Chanel Cookies Pierce is a fairly normal Texas sophomore. She plays on the JV basketball team, has a “B” in her geometry class, and hopes to get a job at the Sonic next year so she can have some extra spending money. But the one thing that sets Cookies (she prefers to go by her middle name) apart from the other 1000 students I’m speaking to today is the baby carriage in her hand. I didn’t think much of it until I saw her purse lying on top of her baby, sitting in the sun, on a hot Tuesday afternoon. I couldn’t help myself; no one else was saying anything, so I took it upon myself to be the responsible one… and sent over one of my guys to check it out.

Clarence: Excuse me, do you think maybe we should find you a spot in the shade with your baby?”

Cookies: Hahahah! That’s not real! You must be trippin. Hahahahaha! It’s just a doll, I carry it around as my punishment.

Clarence: (confused) Your punishment? I don’t understand. Is this for some class or something? SETH! You better come over here.

She continued to tell Clarence and I the story of what I’ve now deemed to be her scarlet baby. It turns out that Cookies’ Dad walked in on her and her boyfriend having sex last week. She’s 16. He’s 17 and drives a ’92 probe with 22’s. Her parents, realizing this situation was serious, took a chance at a highly unorthodox punishment. To really teach Cookies a lesson, they came up with the idea of a scarlet baby.

“My momma don’t want me to have a baby when she did. She loves me an all, and I’m her only so she wants more for me. She had me when she was 15 and had to drop out of school and stuff. Her life was hard, still is, but she has so much hope for me.”

Cookies’ mom has tried other punishments before. She tried grounding her daughter, blocking MTV, BET and the Food Network (she’s a bit overweight), taking away her cell phone, and even not letting her go out when boys are around. But nothing has really sunk in until this.

Cookies has to walk around school for two full weeks with a fake baby, as if it was a real one. She’s not allowed to neglect care or leave him unattended, and a few teachers and other parents are in on it to make sure she holds up her part of the bargain. She had to pick a name for him (didn’t get to choose girl or boy). Her mom gets her up at 4 am to the sounds of a crying baby over her stereo. She has to have him with her at class, lunch and practice, and can’t go out with her friends unless she can come up with enough of her own money to hire a professional baby sitter.

“It was kinda a joke for the first few days. My friends would borrow De’Andre Swagboy for pictures. The boys snickered. But then I was tired all the time and then I couldn’t go to the movies last Saturday or the mall on Sunday. And I can’t get in a car with my friends because there isn’t enough room for the carrier. And now I only have 4 days left, and I don’t know if I can make it… “

Me: But you’re leaving the doll out in the sun, with your purse on top of him, or it, or whatever you call it.”

Cookies: De’Andre Swagboy. Well that’s the thing. I can’t handle it right and he ain’t even real. My momma said I better treat him like a real baby, you know, that cries and stuff. And after a few days I started to really try. But it got too hard, so now I just let De’Andre Swagboy sleep till 3 when I get back home from school. It’s easier that way.

Clarence: So why didn’t you give the baby your “Baby Daddy’s last name?”

Cookies: Cause mine sounds better. His is dumb.

Me: What’s his last name?

Cookies: (pause) Uh… YO, JORDEN! WHAT’S YOUR LAST NAME?

Me: Nevermind.

Cookies went on to explain that this has been a real lesson to her. The teachers talk about teen pregnancy in school, and teach about protective sex in sex ed class. But you never actually have to deal with it in person. And schools are still missing the boat. In Texas (where this story occurred) schools are not required by law to teach sexual education courses, and those that do (mostly High Schools) must emphasize abstinence and the failure rate of contraceptives that might prevent STI’s or pregnancy. In fact, just this past Feburary 23^rd state lawmakers filed legislation that would require sex education classes in Texas to include information about contraceptives. Cookies and I discussed how teen pregnancy affected her school. She said the few people she knew that had gotten pregnant in the past years just kind of disappeared. After a certain point they just left school and you never heard from them again. Therefore, not only were the students not getting proper sex education, but also they weren’t exposed to the life changing effects of having unprotected sex… the life of a teen parent. Out of left field, she threw out an analogy that almost knocked me off my feet:

“You know how like in Chemistry you’re taught how to do experiments with dangerous things and stuff? Well take away any of the hands on parts, and that’s what you get with our school’s pregnancy teachings. If I had never used a Bunsen burner or hot plate, I would probably think I can just use them whenever with no consequences. Now that I’ve had a hands on experience, I know that I won’t be ready for years to have a baby. But I thought it’d be no problem before. You don’t know till you get burned.”

There has been some controversy at the school about Cookies’ punishment. Some parents think it’s too heavy, some teachers think it’s a distraction for other students. But Cookies’ mom is holding her ground. And from what I saw, Cookies’ casual attitude had been all but exterminated (well at least probably cut in half). She knows it’s not a joke anymore, and her scarlet baby has spread to the other students as well. The general consensus at this school is one of protected sex if any at all.

Chanel Cookies Pierce wants to be a pediatric nurse when she grows up. She wants little De’Andre Swagboy to be a football player. And she’s headed in the right direction with a 94 in her child development class, even though we need to work on her vocabulary and pronunciation a little.

The real hero today though is Mrs. Cookies (whatever her real name is) for standing up and actually creating a punishment that teaches rather than just prolongs the inevitable. In a day where it’s easier to step back and say that it’s not your problem, she’s standing up for what she believes in. No matter how much flack she’s taking from other parents and school administrators, she’s taking real world education into her own hands and standing her ground. I admire that. As for her dad who walked in on the incident? Well, I don’t admire him, but all good lessons have to start somewhere…

WJNTY – Seth

Special thanks to Clarence for making the interview possible. And to Cookies for telling all, even if most of what she said didn’t make any sense to us.