I believed I was so ugly no woman would ever want to date me.
I remember confessing this to a college roommate one summer. He was a handsome fraternity brother who had to fend off women when we went out. He was asking why I never talked to girls and I told him, “Well, I’m just not attractive enough, so why get rejected?” Now, the worst thing you can do if someone confesses their most vulnerable insecurity is to confirm it. Since I believed I was an ugly troll as much as I believed my name was D.J., the only hope that I had was that I might be wrong. But of course, he said the worst possible response.
Look, at the bars, you just don’t go up to the most beautiful women. They probably wouldn’t be interested. Just go for someone who is okay looking. Not beautiful, though.
I thanked him for the advice and then walked slowly into the kitchen to find a sharp enough steak knife to slit my wrists. My biggest fear had been confirmed. See – I wasn’t crazy. Other people thought I was hideous, too.
A year passed and I decided that well, I just couldn’t do anything about my looks. Bad DNA. But, I knew I was funny. Funnier than just about anyone. So, every chance I got I would approach women and make them laugh. I’d stand next to them and point something out that was going on and goof on it. Comedians call it observational humor. Eventually I became so good at it, I decided it was time to try to parlay this skill into romance.
One day I met this girl and I made her laugh. She was about the prettiest woman I had ever seen. I wanted to ask her out in the worst way. But I didn’t want further confirmation that I was un-datable, which I was convinced would come if I asked her out. So, I told her, “We’re going out on Saturday. The lead singer of my band is in a play. I’ll pick you up at five.” See, she couldn’t reject me if I never asked her out. She laughed and said she was looking forward to it.
We went on a few more dates and one night she said, “You know, you’re really handsome.” I replied, “Look, that’s very sweet, but there’s no need to lie to me. I know what I look like.” She stared at me like I was nuts. “Uh, no. You’re good looking. My friends think so, too.” From that moment I no longer considered myself ugly.
My point is that sometimes change comes from the outside. I know every self-help book would like you to think, “You won’t feel pretty until YOU believe it!” and yes, that’s technically true, but it doesn’t mean that something external can’t tip the scales.
Allison Arnone and I can be that external source. Are you a man/woman struggling with a gock/gunt? Is your hairline receding? Did you join the Spanx of the Month subscription service? How about those ashy elbows? Do your teeth point in every direction but north and south?
I’d like to point out that we don’t think any of the above conditions are “bad” or need fixing. If you’re happy with your physical appearance and its many, many imperfections, congratulations. But I’d bet there’s a few things that annoy you when you look in the mirror. We can help solve those issues.
Also, remember, the form is anonymous. Feel free to share your most insecure physical issues. We won’t ask for a photo, and I don’t really want to see your superfluous third nipple anyway.
Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to brush my hair one hundred times while staring longingly in the mirror.
Click here or fill out the form below to submit your issue about your physical appearance!
Women terrified me until I was twenty-two.
Without hyperbole I had a full, blown-out phobia of the fairer sex. Also bees. I can remember in first grade there was a girl who I wanted to date, or whatever we called it back then. I knew that I wasn’t good looking enough, however. That horrible self-image lasted until (in college) my first girlfriend told me that I was handsome. And she was beautiful. With her validation I realized that all those years I had been lying to myself. It’s not like after that moment I walked around campus believing I was chiseled from stone. But I no longer thought of myself as ugly. All it took was one person’s compliment and my lifetime of thinking I was gross-looking went away. I’d love to tell you that I came to an acceptance of my attractiveness through intense self-exploration and maturity. Nope. It just took the prettiest girl I knew to tell me I was hot. Sometimes that’s all you need.
The best part about being comfortable about one’s looks is that I simply stopped thinking about it. I don’t consider myself good looking or ugly. If I saw a beautiful woman sizing up the tangerines at the grocery, I’d approach. I’d get rejected, most likely, but it wouldn’t be confirmation that I was ugly. It would be confirmation that she has horrible taste. She’d continue on with her shopping, but make a near-fatal error reaching for the buttered pie tins in the baking aisle. She’d slip due to a not-yet-cleaned-up-but-still-invisible layer of coconut oil on the linoleum that a previous patron had knocked over. The cart and weight of its contents would press against her neck cutting off her ability to breathe. The irony of being killed by food which brings us life would not be lost on me! Despite my humiliation moments before, I’d spring to action. Using brawn, I’d remove the cart from her neck restoring her carotid artery to its working function. She’d kiss me deeply and whisper that she was sorry and had misjudged me over by the Mexican bananas. And then I’d laugh and say, “Don’t worry about it, kid.” I’d turn my back and leave the store a hero. Stock boys would toast me every December at the employee holiday party.
The point is that women don’t freak me out anymore. I found that after the phobia lifted, I enjoyed their company. I don’t understand them, of course. They’re nuts. Everyone knows that. But, I get along with women. I dig hanging with them.
When this blog began someone told me to go BlogHer, an all-women’s conference. Since I do what people tell me, I went. At the time I was writing for a humor website (the now defunct AimingLow) which was staffed by women. If I remember correctly I was the only male staff writer. That brings me to InThePowderRoom.
I met Leslie Marinelli at the Aiming Low Non-Conference, which actually was a conference, but we’re cool and irreverent and make fun of things like conferences. I also knew Leslie because she contributed to AimingLow and I was a fan of her work.
Every year I’d see Leslie at a conference or two and we’d chat it up about something. Once I was walking with Kate Hall and Stephanie Sprenger, both bonafide successes in the blogging world, and Leslie messaged me that I better get my ass down to the hotel lobby stat. Kate and Stephanie looked at me and said, “You know Leslie Marinelli?” I said I did and they both squealed with delight and asked if they could tag along. Everyone adores Leslie and she has true celebrity status in the blogging community. I just have a that’s-the-weird-guy-who-goes-to-women’s-blogging-conferences status.
At some point a few years ago Leslie took full control of InThePowderRoom and became its sole owner. Since it’s clear from the site’s title that the focus is on women, it never occurred to me to ask to write something for them. But, 99% of my blogging friends were women, most of my readers were women, and I feel like I can crank out toxic shock jokes like a broad. So, earlier this year I reached out to Sarah, the deputy editor, and pitched an idea. My thought was that it could be an interesting concept if a guy reviewed women’s products. If you watch television commercials you’ll see that men are often portrayed as morons. I would adopt a persona of a bumbling guy who would take a product specifically designed for a woman and write about how it confused him. Since their readers are largely married women with husbands, I felt this idea hit their demographic perfectly. I’d represent their idiot husbands. Sarah pitched to Leslie and they agreed to give it a test.
Since I’m not privy to their stats I have no idea if their audience actually liked my column. But Sarah and Leslie liked it. And we worked out an arrangement where I would give them exclusive, fresh content every month. This was a big deal to me. It was an honor to write for them on the regular and I worked like crazy on each sentence to make it perfect. Leslie’s the kind of person that, if I tweeted out a link to their site and it generated big traffic, she’d email to thank me directly. That’s thoughtful.
Sadly, Leslie and Sarah announced recently that the site has stopped publishing. It may be temporary, but nobody knows. While it never would have occurred to me to ask, Leslie reminded me that the contract I signed allowed me to republish the content I created for them on my own blog after a certain amount of time has passed. So, over the next few months I’ll start dripping in those pieces, because they are pretty damned funny. Because Sarah and Leslie are damned funny and they knew how to edit my stuff to make it better.
I hope they reopen the store at some point and I can’t wait to get back to work reviewing women’s products. There’s something called a Hermes Burkin bag which is like 20k and I have a lot to say about it. Just kidding. I have nothing to say about it. But I’ll make some shit up and send it over to Leslie and hope that she publishes it. Because that’s what you do with your friends. You build things together.
I’m honored to have been part of InThePowderRoom’s history and glad to have met Leslie. I doubt she’s written me into her will, but if she croaks and leaves the site to me, I’ll reopen it immediately. I even have a new tagline – “We Don’t Poop Because Women Don’t Do That.” Also, we’re going to have a lot more nudity. Playboy folded and that created a hole that needs filling. Unintentional pun there, but I’m leaving it in.
Thank you to Leslie and InThePowderRoom for creating amazing content for many years.
Here’s a link to everything I wrote for InThePowderRoom.
I’m going to write a part II to this celebration of InthePowderRoom discussing Leslie’s right-hand-woman, Sarah del Rio. She gets her own article.
]]>Every month I pen a short piece for InThePowderRoom, probably the greatest humor blog on the web. Or, more accurately, the greatest humor blog on the web that has asked me to contribute. And every month, the head editor Sarah reminds me a week before my deadline. The column is titled “What Does He Think?” and involves reviewing products designed for women, but from a male perspective. And since I’m not a broad, each month I freak out because I don’t know much about women’s products. Obviously I’m up on all the latest lip plumper glosses (who isn’t?), but I can’t write about that every month. I’m a professional, dammit!
It often takes time for me to zero in on the main joke of an article. The easy part is to find a woman’s product – but then I have to come up with the angle that makes it worth writing. This month it took me until the day before deadline. I had remembered that a few years back Bic had created a pen line exclusively for women. The company just took existing pens and colored them pink and purple (some had sparkles). Social and traditional media united for an assault on Bic for reducing women to traditional gender stereotypes. It’s not the biggest misstep a marketing team ever made, but they sure took a beating in the press.
During the product launch people took to Amazon in droves to write satirical reviews. Most of them are still up. I didn’t want to rehash someone else’s review, or try to best them. This left me with no original ideas for my article. But my instinct said there was a joke here, and a good one. I had no idea what it would look like, but I had to trust that it would emerge.
I know I sound like a pretentious douche, but it’s a good lesson for me in trusting intuition. And five days later the joke came to me. Not unlike Moses with the tablets of the law, I was visited by a spirit. Also, atop a high mountain, ironically. (I’m an avid rock climber.)
Just for the record I’ve never climbed even one rock. But one time I drove into Yosemite and cracked a Fresca while watching people attempt to scale El Capitan. That counts.
The concept for the Bic piece is this – what if I wrote a review where I never actually reviewed the product? Oh, and a Franz Kafka-esque tie-in would fit nicely, I felt. And nothing is more satisfying to me than finding a joke that was before hidden in the brambles of my mind.
You ought to go read it right now before you step outside your apartment complex on your way to the market and get hit by a bus. Don’t scoff. It happens!
Above image is the Copyright of Hold My Purse Productions, LLC.
]]>How to listen to Bloggers are Weird:
Or just watch it on YouTube if you’re confused on how to fire up a podcast. It’s okay to admit that you’re a dopey luddite.
Once in a while I make a good life decision. Recently, I worked out an exclusive content agreement with beloved humor site InThePowderRoom. This means I write fresh stuff for them every month.
My deadline for this month’s article is Thursday. I’m nowhere near finished. It’s a funny idea but I need to cram in a few more jokes before submitting it to the head editor, Sarah. She and I go way back and the last thing either one of us wants is for her to have to tell me the piece sucks and to rewrite.
The column is where I review a woman’s product every month. And since I don’t understand women at all, I love the concept. A few months ago I wrote about The Diva Cup and last month about a cookie that is supposed to grow a woman’s boobs by up to three cup sizes. I’m writing this announcement here because I forgot to promote the cookie piece.
You should go read it right now.
I’m not one of those assholes that asks for comments or shares because I hate when writers do that. But if you want to write the publisher and tell her how fortunate she is to have my talents exclusive to her website, well, I’m not going to stop you. I’m not going to write you into my will or anything, but maybe I’ll visit you in a dream and engage you in an intense makeout session. I’ve been studying astral travel for a few months and it’s actually really easy to penetrate someone’s dreams. I do it all the time. Also, if you cheat in a dream, it’s not really your fault and it’s not considered adultery. You don’t even have to tell your partner. I certainly won’t!
Chicks only.
Above image is the Copyright of Hold My Purse Productions, LLC.
]]>Just wanted to say that. Great opener, yes?
Let’s move on.
We all need a council of people that will tell us the truth even when it hurts. If you don’t have such a group, you may want to build that into your life.
(that was the original opener)
No, scratch that. You NEED to build that into your life.
Mine is my pal Karen.
She’s not afraid to tell me when my writing sucks. She’ll call me out when I use a literary trick to get attention. If I tweet out something that’s hacky, I’ll incur her disapproval. She’s a critical and tough broad.
But, you see, I employ her to do hold me accountable to my authenticity.
The bottom line is that I’m not always conscious about what’s in my best interest. I’m not always aware of my true motivations. Sometimes I know exactly what I’m doing when I try to trick the reader using a cute allegory, and I do it anyway.
Karen brings me back to authenticity, which, as I’ve come to believe is the only real goal of life. Brene Brown writes about connection being the most important human quality, but that only through authenticity can connection exist.
Which means that I must get present for my motivations. I need to ask myself before tweeting out something , “Am I really being funny here or am I just looking for attention?” Or, “Is this blog post reflective of what’s really happening a deeper level in my life?”
Most of the time, my authenticity is demonstrated appropriately in this blog. Sure, I fire off a nice crotch joke from time to time, but that’s just because dick humor is awesome. Vagina humor, too. Especially vaginas.
I have in my mental possession a vagina joke so offensive (but hilarious) that is would upset a majority of my readers.
But, I didn’t write the amazing vagina joke. Also, I would be submitting it for shock value. Not authentic.
This blog started out as a bastion for sophomoric humor. And, to be honest, I’m damned good at that stuff. Even a cursory glance through my Top 20 stories will demonstrate that ability. But over time I realized, like Brene Brown teaches, that I really just want to connect. I already know I’m funny.
Could I have the strength to share the pain of divorce or the shame of illegally downloading music or how sometimes I just need a virtual hug? Will that connect with a reader? Does that matter to me? What if nobody comments?
Here’s a current embarrassing truth – I’m close to 100k Twitter followers. In my mind crossing over that threshold means something important. Of course when I pass that marker nothing will change. The next milestone will be set and I’ll delude myself into thinking that’s the magic number to fulfillment.
After bragging on Facebook and Twitter, I’ll call up Karen. She’ll allow me to boast, congratulate me, and then cut me off. “So, what’s really going on in your life?”
The truth is that I’ve been slacking lately and not writing, yet it’s my favorite daily activity. I’ve become scared of this blog. That I don’t have anything of worth to say. Fear has paralyzed my ability to act. I’m not even sure what I’m afraid of – last year I posted every single day without a miss. This year, barely a hundred published.
So even this post, as all over the place as it is, is a massive step forward. And, I know, that in a few weeks, I’ll be back to my normal self. I will go through highs and lows. From time time I will write shitty pieces. I will brag about accomplishments for attention. I will pepper in dirty one-liners because I’m afraid to publish too serious of a story.
But I will also stand on that precipice where I’m afraid to tell the truth. Most of the time I’ll push through it and lean into the fear. Sometimes I’ll wuss out.
Did you notice that I figured out how to weave in precipice? Full circle, motherfuckers!
Anyhow, my best friend’s father passed away and I traveled back to Peoria to attend to the services. I also was in a bad car crash (thankfully nobody was injured). Since then I’ve purchased a new car. Oh, and I went down to Dallas to visit my aging grandmother this past weekend.
All that I’ve been able to creatively is blast out a few funny tweets now and again. I wish I could get paid for that, by the way. Some company told me that due to my social reach each tweet of mine is worth $99. This sounded awesome until two months went by and the broker had failed to provide me even one company willing to cough up dough. So, technically, my tweets are worth nothing monetarily at the moment.
However, I have had a few funny responses from unlikely corporate sources.
First was O’Hare airport. Believe it or not, they have a twitter account. I’m sure it’s probably designed for emergencies. But behind every Twitter account is a person manning keyword mentions. And sometimes they have a sense of humor. Here’s what transpired…
First I love that they got the joke. Second, you’d think they’d have something better to do that respond to a bozo goofing on shitty airport food. I nearly replied with something vulgar and horrible, but I decided to be nice. I went to the one good restaurant, and to be fair, it was the best meal I’ve ever had at an airport. I tweeted back to them and they thanked me. I then wanted to start a conversation about smelly foreigners in their bathrooms, but I decided against it.
Then, yesterday on my way back into Chicago, I tweeted this out…
A pretty innocuous joke. Not my best. Today they replied:
I couldn’t tell if they were being silly or serious. I am never serious on Twitter. So we went a few rounds.
Now, this is a company with a sense of humor. I love that. I sent them a DM and offered to work out a funny bit we could do together on my blog. Not sure if they want to be in bed with me, but I give them props for having a little fun. I grew up eating Chili’s – it was the first good chain restaurant to come to Peoria. To have them tweeting with me is sort of surreal. Been eating there for for over twenty-five years.
I recently pestered Jockey to do a jag with me because we tweeted a little about their new Stop the Stink underwear which I thought was hilarious. I wanted to be the official Stop the Stink blogger, but they didn’t bite. I had a bunch of good ideas. Oh well…
I never thought working with brands would be fun, but after last month with Cottonelle, I realize that some of them are great sports. I know you don’t come here interesting in reading about me pimping out products and services. I don’t want to be that guy anyway. But once in awhile I can team up with someone to do a funny bit.
I have some future posts coming up on aging, the loss of friendship, caffeine addiction, how to buy a car from sketchy Polish guys, the new website for men I’m creating, why Apple initially banned my ThoughtsFromParis app, and how watching your forty-seven year old uncle run 100 yard wind-sprints up a hill is depressing. You know, the stuff I love to ponder.
Thanks for sticking with me through this truancy.
]]>Seriously, and they’re not paying me to say this (well, they are sponsoring the blog, but did not specifically ask me to say this), Cottonelle has the best damned toilet paper in these United States. And their adult wipes are important to my overall well-being. I’m hooked.
If you don’t see the video below (because you are using a mobile browser or on my Apple or Android app), click here to watch!
This a story I just plumb forgot about. If I ever open up a retail store, it’s going to be nothing but bidets and urinals for the middle class. We deserve what the rich have already figured out. Until then, just use the wipes.
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There are a lot of posts out there with these types of titles. Usually lists of stupid things people do on Twitter which cause the author to roll their eyeballs and not respond. You’ve seen these kind of posts before. There’s talk of Twitter etiquette and being courteous and not doing anything troll-like because we all know that blog authors are really important entities and are not to be fucked with.
This isn’t one of those kind of articles.
Because of the nature of my Twitter account, I submit a lot of jokes and one-liners. Probably three to five a day. I’m a decent joke writer so most of them hit and I receive a healthy amount of retweets and favorites. Some fall flat like this one that I just fired out while sitting on the toilet. I found it hilarious. Nobody else did.
Usually I get around ten to twenty responses per tweet. These are often attempts to best my own joke. Many times they do. I almost never respond, though.
Am I a colossal dick whose ego is so fragile he can’t accept someone being funnier than himself?
The truth is that I LOVE when a reader outwits me. It’s a highlight of my day. In a mildly-sick way I sort of use it to congratulate myself. I actually think, “I prompted that person to make a funny! I DID THAT.” It’s sort of messed up that I take credit for the genesis of someone else’s genius. I’ll bring it up with a shrink.
Aside from self-congratulation I dig your jokes because I, well, love to laugh. A good one-liner is not easy to craft. I am constantly amazed how many of you are truly funny people. Seriously, it’s inspiring. I can’t tell you how many times someone has written something that kicked me in the ass to produce better quality content. Not that everything I write is funny. But when you let me know that I’m not the most hilarious guy on the block, that drives me to write better stuff.
So, why don’t I reply to your tweets?
Whether this is a good idea or not, I have decided that most of the time I shouldn’t. Let me explain.
A few years ago I had a massive crush (still do) on Adam Carolla newsgirl Alison Rosen. She was relatively new to Twitter and I sent her a few tweets. The first two she didn’t respond to, but then the third one she did. It was a highlight of my online life. I figured we were tight and that this would blossom into a beautiful friendship. It didn’t. In a weird way I was really bummed out. I think I tweeted her a few more times and never heard back.
I’m sure it wasn’t personal. She has 58k Twitter followers. But I did take it personal. Yes, I’m nuts.
I’m coming up on 80k followers and there is one sad downside to having this number. Yes, it’s cool to get all sorts of great responses. As I mentioned earlier, I literally read them all (no foolin’), and more often than not, I laugh like a bastard.
But if I respond to one person somebody writes me a personal message (or in public) with “you never respond to my stuff!” Good point. That would piss me off, too. I’m sure I’ve lost a lot of followers over the years who have written me dozens of jokes and I never wrote back. I know I’ve upset people because they tell me and then I never hear from them again. They’re gone. Can’t blame ’em.
So, I don’t want some people to feel like I only reply to others but not them. The only fair thing I know how to do is to just not respond to anyone. I mean, once in awhile I do. But rarely.
The other piece is I don’t want to clog up my tweet stream with replies. You read my tweets because you dig my humor or whatever. You don’t want to read me saying, “Good one!” fifty times a day.
So, it’s an unfair and shitty policy. In order to protect my precious tweet stream and not to piss everyone off, I don’t respond. In doing so I piss people off who think I’m so high and mighty I don’t reply to their tweets. It sucks and I can own that. I’m sorry.
But here’s what I can and will do – respond to most (if not all) blog comments. Sometimes I fall behind (currently I’m a few hundred comments behind – ugh), but I’m grateful people read these posts, watch my videos, and listen to my podcasts. I owe it to let you know I appreciate your comments. Less than 1% of you comment, so at this point in the blog it’s something I can still do.
I look at Twitter as a never-ending commercial where I broadcast one-liner humor. Here is where I can engage and thank you in person. If you have great Twitter jokes, I hope you keep replying and sending them over. I love it so much. But it’s a selfish love.
Here I will reply to you. Maybe not the same day – but I will. I promise.
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