DEAR DIARY: TODAY I AM A CATCHPHRASE

My life dreams have all been attained. In one week, I've become a new genre, inspired a catchphrase that's undoubtedly sweeping the nation faster than you can say "Baby Fish Mouth," and I've been compared to Molly Ringwald. You all know that I really like my JDate profile. It used to begin "Funny, smart and sassy..." until I met Evan and he criticized my use of adjectives. So I changed it, and came up with something catchy..."Too cool for shul, but I go anyway. Sometimes." This is actually a perfect description of me--couldn't have written it better myself. (Um, right.) Anyway, imagine my surprise when I saw this catchphrase listed as a headline on JRant. It linked to a post on JDaters Anonymous regular Passionate Life, in which P-Life recounts his perusal of my profile and the subsequent adoption of my catchphrase by his entire family over Shabbat dinner. Clearly, he didn't sleep enough that night (or since), because he also thinks I look like Molly Ringwald. (Whatever...like I told him, I'll take it!) Later in the post, P-Life submerges himself in a reverie in which he imagines the girls he loved in high school and actually invents a prom. Since no one's ever written an ode to me, let alone created an imaginary prom, because of something I wrote, I'm flattered! To reward him for comparing me to an 80s icon, let's send good JDaters Anonymous karma over to P-Life...

ALL MY CHILDREN

And by "children," I mean my columns. (Self-promotion alert...) I thought it was time to post my master list of singles columns, here for your reading and commenting pleasure. "Separation Anxiety"--On the subject of separate seating at weddings (NY Jewish Week, 8/27/04) "Darkness Visible" --Singles column about spiritual darkness and an actual blackout (NY Jewish Week, 8/13/04) "The Blaire Hitched Project"--An interview with "MarryBlaire.com"'s Blaire Allison (NY Jewish Week, 7/30/04) "Life After Sex & the City"--An Interview with writer Cindy Chupack (NY Jewish Week, 7/16/04) "A New Profile, a New You"--Revising my JDate profile, with help from E-Cyrano.com (NY Jewish Week, 6/11/04) "Activism, With a Side of Love"--The social scene at the UJC Young Leadership Conference (NY Jewish Week, 5/07/04) "Adam Mesh, Average Mensch"--An interview with reality TV's "Average Joe" and his parents (NY Jewish Week, 4/09/04) "Seuss and the City"--A poem on living Jewish and single in NYC (NY Jewish Week, 03/06/04)

"HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU"

The ladies know what I'm talking about. Probably some of the men, too. That "Sex and the City" episode where that guy doesn't call Miranda and Berger tells her the secret: "He's just not that into you." Check out this article in the Washington Post about the phenomenon, and the L.A.-based comic and former "straight male" advisor to the late, beloved show who's written a book about it. Warning...not for the faint of heart. Contains phrases like: When you Google "Why didn't he call?" you get more than 1,500 hits...a column on AskMen.com called How to Reject the Girl You Don't Want.... When a guy is truly interested in a woman, he pursues her. That's the way it's always been, he says, and equality hasn't changed it...and MORE delightful tidbits... All I'm sayin' is, if you can't handle the truth, don't order the code red.

GOOD NEWS...

(Cross-posted from My Urban Kvetch) This just in, good news for Superfreelancer... My Jewish Week column, First Person Singular, is now going to be running every other week, instead of every fourth week. That means twice as many pieces on living single and Jewish in NYC. And that, in turn, means that I will probably find a boyfriend tomorrow, and be rendered so immobile with happiness that I'll be unable to muster the energy, let alone the creativity, to come up with topics of interest to singles. OK, it's a bit of an exaggeration (there's no boyfriend on the horizon, and I've still got about a dozen ideas in the creative hopper). But still, I need your help. I'm putting together a dating questionnaire that I hope some people will consider filling out and sending back to me. If you'd like a survey sent to you, please email me and I'll add you to the list of people who are absolutely guaranteed* to go to Heaven for helping me. Thank you! *Not a guarantee.

I'LL TAKE ONE PERSONAL AD, HOLD THE CLICHES

Is it really this hard to write an accurate profile of yourself that actually says something about you? Here's a WSJ article about the idea of "personals trainers" (which I think is cute, but unwieldy to say) like my L.A. friend Evan Marc Katz of E-Cyrano.com (although EMK isn't the focus of this article, and his company is barely mentioned...) At this point, I've written a bunch on the subject of online dating and putrescent profiles, so I'm declaring myself an expert, too. $50 and I'll give your profile an hour. I'll not spare your feelings, just give you my gut reaction: boring or ka-ching! And I'll tell you how to fix it. I'd be doing us all a favor, trust me. (Although if you're reading this and nodding, your profile may already be fine...) Maybe I should form a mega company, with all the people I've written about in my column in the New York Jewish Week. First, I'll form a national focus group of all the people I met at March's UJC Young Leadership conference in DC, to deliberate all things single and Jewish. Evan could hold round-the-clock workshops and revise people's profiles...Blaire could be the resident love coach, who will attend singles events and tell awkward singles how to get over their nerves...and Adam Mesh could be our celebrity spokesperson. I'd also enlist experts on other aspects of dating and relationships: my non-Jewish now-friend on navigating interfaith relationships, writer Cindy Chupack on what's so funny about romance, and then, yo, I'd flow one of my stone cold rhymes, freestyle y'all, 'cause I'm the original Jewish love poet, dawg--don't be hatin' my flow. Word. EDK out.

HAVE YOU SEEN HIS SOULMATE?

Have you seen Jacob's soulmate? Maybe he should meet Blaire Allison. Maybe they're MFEO. Just for the record, I don't know where my soulmate/husband/Mr. Right Now is either. But I guess I haven't gotten to the point that I want to put up a website declaring myself open for the romance business. In any case, marketing is marketing. Good luck to them both.

TO REJOIN OR NOT TO REJOIN?

That is the question. It's been a little over a month since my JDate membership ended. If you remember, when we last left Our Heroine, she was getting no messages, and was increasingly frustrated with certain men, who did actually initiate contact with her in the first place, and who yet failed to follow up with any kind of contact outside of the email world. Plus, there was the whole issue of JDate's search engine finding forbidden words in my profile and removing them, rendering my profile an exercise in code-breaking idiocy. The day after my membership expired, I got two messages. By now, it's up to 8 messages, from men who apparently were sufficiently interested to read the first part of my profile, where I entice them with a witty and well-written profile, but who failed to read the part that says I'm not a member anymore and that they'll have to IM me when I'm online or send me an email c/o this blog. So now I'm looking at the "Members Who've Viewed You" page, and there are actually a few guys who aren't in their 50s who have viewed me and perhaps emailed me. So do I rejoin, only to find out that the messages are from friends who just decided to say "nice profile" or from guys to whose emails I had already responded with a "no thanks"? Or save thirty bucks a month and maintain my carefully cultivated "JDate disillusion"? Both, truly tempting options...opinions, as always, are welcome here.

CUDDLE PARTIES

This is like, almost the opposite of being Shomer Negiah. Of course, A Picture of C, always ahead of the trend, wrote about this a long time ago. Sounds like it's alternately a good and a bad idea. Thoughts?

BLOG YOUR BREAKUP

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WORD "FRUM" BAFFLES CASUAL SEX SEEKERS ON CRAIGSLIST

Yes, I know there are about a million things wrong with that headline. But as it turns out, apparently frum people need casual sex, too. At least in New York. This is excerpted from Anna Schneider-Mayerson's article in the NY Observer.  For the complete article, click here and scroll down to the second story, titled "Hot! Sex! Live! Frum!" Visitors trolling for casual sex on Craigslist.org last week were left scratching their heads over an unfamiliar reference that has surfaced in a flurry of recent postings. To the posters’ disappointment, frum (pronounced "froom") is not shorthand for a kinky new posture or adventurous attitude. It’s a Yiddish word that technically means "religiously observant," but for all intents and purposes is used by men and women who identify themselves as Orthodox Jews. Jeff, an events planner who grew up Catholic in the Midwest, said he kept seeing requests from frum men and women seeking frum sexual partners. "The only thing that was in my mind was fru-strated, m-arried … ? I had no clue what it was," he said. "I didn’t realize it was an Orthodox Jewish person. From what I understand, they’re supposed to put a sheet between them when they have sex." It turns out that the deeply religious have sexual tastes as mundane as the rest of us. "Single frum guy for single frum girl for fun!" wrote one 24-year-old. "Married, frum guy looking for a frum girl (married or unmarried) for some NSA [no strings attached] fun. We can have good time ‘learning’ together," a 31-year-old posted. "Frum married guy looking for frum guy to explore," wrote another, continuing: "I am a frum married 28 yr old guy … during the summer my wife will be upstate and I am looking to explore having sex with a man … please be frum." There's more to the story, so check it out on the Observer's website, link above. My comments? It shouldn't surprise you to know that I have a few. I wonder how long it's going to be until this article catches the attention of a group of rabbis who contact these people offering not sexual exploration, but an opportunity for repentance. It also may point to a need in the frum community (a term that is far-reaching and includes many subgroups of different observance levels, I understand) for something similar to the Amish rite of rumspringen, in which teenagers leave their home environment to experience the world-at-large (now being explored in a UPN reality show, where we discover the answer to the age-old question, Are the Amish Hot?). In some modern Orthodox communities, after yeshiva upbringings, a teenager will go to a secular college, and encounter the "outside world" there, with challenges to their observance of kashrut and Shabbat, among other things. It can be a bit of a culture shock, and so many yeshiva grads opt for years in Israel or for an education in safer environments (YU/Stern, JTS, or even Columbia/Barnard or Brandeis) but I think it's often important for individual growth to realize you're part of a minority, and that your view is actually quite separate and different from the consensus of what is appropriate, or right, or accepted. Maybe the whole frum experience of living apart, unquestioningly, in a modern world is too much for some people to handle. The ad looking for a frum guy to engage in sexual exploration with another frum man indicates that they know they're living in a culture that doesn't approve of their sexual identity, but that they still feel a need to explore who they are, within the safety of the company of someone else who will fully understand their conflict. The popularity of the outstanding documentary Trembling Before G-d seems to indicate that there's a real need in the religious community to explore sexuality, and ways to be more inclusive of people who are different and who still want to live Jewish lives. The issue of sexuality--casual and committed, homo- and hetero-, pre-marital and even extra-marital (Newsweek ran an extensive cover story about how women are the new face of marital infidelity)--is one that we continue to struggle with in our own lives, and for the religious among us, it's sometimes even more layered with difficulty, as these Craigslist ads reveal. [Esther steps off soapbox.]

LOVE AND POLITICS IN A YEAR OF ELECTION

The New York Times reports on new online dating sites that are targeted according to politics. An excerpt:   Most of the sites have popped up just in the last few months. And most of them trumpet a party affiliation from their home page. Love in War is a bit more subtle. Each personal comes with a mood meter, with the scale ranging from "Dean Angry" to "Clinton Mellow." And when Love in War members state their political beliefs (and they often do), they tend to echo the words of "LibGraphicDesigner," from Akron, Ohio: "Wake Me When Bush Inc. Is Gone." Want more? Click here.

SOMEONE ELSE'S JDATE ADDICTION...

This article by Amy Klein appeared last year in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles... It's long, but definitely worthwhile, and all-too-relatable. It's titled: True Confessions of a JDate Addict... An excerpt, for your convenience: Over the next six months, I receive e-mails from more than 250 men, correspond with about 60, and date about 30 of them. JDating is like a parallel universe, a bustling underground populated by people whose online lives are nearly as demanding as their daily jobs. It requires constant e-mailing, instant messaging, phone calls, meetings, follow-up e-mailing, more meetings and, finally, the messy business of purging failed dates from the system — and getting purged yourself. It’s taking up all my time: I can’t stop looking at the Web site. If dating is a numbers game, surely this will increase my odds. My numbers are not as impressive as Amy's. My experience has yielded few emails, and even fewer actual meetings. Anyone else wanna weigh in?

NEW ISRAELI WORD/SITE

(Via the Town Crier.) You'll be glad to know that there's a new Hebrew word for people who are both in our condition (single) and who want to move to Israel: singOlim. Click here for their site. Their mission statement: The goal of Project SingOlim is to prove that there is NO NEED to “compromise” on either Aliyah or on getting married. Whether you have a pioneer spirit or would prefer to share this common goal with someone special, Aliyah can be the most powerful experience in the world! By providing Singles with all the proper resources KUMAH’s Project SingOlim seeks to remove the “Marriage Excuse” obstacle from those with even the slightest desire to come on Home. I'd be very interested in your comments, especially from my Israeli readers...

ITCHY INSTANT MESSAGE FINGER

It's official. My JDate membership has ended. So of course, after months of silence from the JDate men, someone contacted me today. Now that I can't see who it was. I'll never know. I can't IM anyone, and all I get are those frustratingly unoriginal, bereft-of-any-creativity "teases," even though I've expressly requested that interested gentleman callers say something of their own instead of opting to "tease" me with inappropriate words. Damn this all to hell. I'm itchy, and twitchy, and restless. Can't get comfortable, like an addict in withdrawal. Except that being addicted to JDate never felt that euphoric to begin with. It's been more of a habit than an in-your-blood-and-every-fiber-of-your-being addiction. But I'm definitely ready for a break. The first 24 hours is probably going to be the hardest. After that, it's all downhill. Which was pretty much my experience on JDate to begin with. (Negative enough for ya?) Whatever. I'll keep up my therapy by coming here, and I urge you all to do the same. Send me your huddled stories, yearning to breathe free, and I shall release them into the ether--they will plague you no more, and we will embrace you in support. As Dionne, Elton and um...other people sang, that's what blogs are for. Or something like that.

MARRY BLAIRE

Almost-27-year-old Blaire is just like the rest of we single women in our 20s (and dare I say, 30s): tired of waiting around for Mr. Right. So, thanks to the Internet and the media, she's taking her search global. You may have seen her profiled in this Sunday's New York Times Style section. Check out her website. Originally via Spot On.

I LOSE MY SASS ON JDATE

I haven't really lost my sass. It's just that my JDate profile used to say I was "Funny, smart and sassy," but now, the JDate censors have caught up to my plan to sneak the word ASS into my profile and deleted the words. So I did what any rational person would do. I quit. That's right. I've had it with them deleting things from my profile and not telling me about it. It would be one thing if they sent me an email or refused to post my profile based on some egregious misspelling or horrible misanthropic/psychotic sentiment. But I can't take it anymore. My words are all I have in a profile, and when I use them, I want them to be, um, used. But I'm zany that way. I'm not ending the blog, though. Even if we all quit JDate, I think we'd all have enough stories to sustain us through a good year or so more of posts. And I think it's important to have a place to go to where our PTSD is shared, and understood unconditionally. I'm hoping that I won't have to go back, but I know I will. You can't help it. Love it or hate it, JDate's a part of the Jewish single experience. In sickness and in health. Until marriage do us part.

SAW YOU AT SINAI

"Matchmaker, matchmaker, match me a match... Find me a find, catch me a catch... Matchmaker, matchmaker, look through your book and find me the perfect match." (Or something like that. It's been a while since I saw Fiddler.) Heard anything about Saw You At Sinai, the (relatively) new matchmaking service? Here's an article from the Blueprint on the service. And I also found a few bloggers who have undergone "The SawYouAtSinai Experience": Rabbi Josh Yuter describes how matchmakers decided his bashert was his ex-girlfriend. Meredith's experience was totally different. She was set up with someone who was paralyzed from the neck down. Click here to read the letter of complaint she sent to the Saw You At Sinai administrators. We need to hope that somewhere people are having good experiences with the fledgling service, but so far, I've not found any. If you have had a good experience with SawYouAtSinai.com, why not share your experience with the group? Post a comment here, or if you're shy, drop me a line. My Carrie Bradshaw moment on matchmaking: We're always asking matchmakers to look through their books and find us the perfect match. But what if our match isn't even in their book? What if matchmakers are checking out their books from the wrong library?

BANTERIST: ONLINE DATING PICTURES

This Field Guide To Online Dating Profile Photography is truly masterfully done. Take one normal-looking guy and, through different shots, show how different his photos make him look and why he might post such pics online with his dating profile. Spot on, Banterist. And props to Superjux for clueing me in on this one...

KERNER GOES DOWN

I saw this column in New York magazine and had to share it with my readers. It's a review/interview with author Ian Kerner, whose new book She Comes First is all the rage in Manhattan these days: Naked City: Head Case By Amy Sohn, who you might remember as the novelist who wrote Run Catch Kiss.

A LETTER TO JDATE: SUBMITTED BY A READER

One of my readers copied me on this letter she sent to JDate. Her issue with them is that she feels their claim to have a certain number of members is misleading, since any number of those "members" are actually "profiles" and not paying members who could view your emails, were you to contact them... Dear JDate: It now costs money to send email and/or to view email. This enables you to say that you have x number of people who belong, that there are x number of people online right now and that you are the world's largest Jewish dating site when it is unclear how many of these people can't be accessed. I believe this is tantamount to fraud. So I'd like to be taken off your site. I couldn't find a way to do this on line. Sincerely, J. Agree? Disagree? Discuss.

HAD TO SHARE...

Tonight, in cruising JDate profiles, I came across the following opening line: "Physically, I am 6 feet tall." Hmm. My response? "Emotionally, I weigh 115 pounds."

LIVE, FROM NEW YORK, IT'S PAMENSKY...

Huh? I feel the same way. Aryeh Pamensky, an Orthodox rabbi from Toronto, conducts a dating workshop in NYC next week. A friend told me that Pamensky is hilarious, but this article in the Jewish Week highlights his approach and not his humor (IMHO). He says that people who "date for fun" are developing skills that will not result in a long-lasting relationship, or that will destroy a relationship that results from a dating-for-fun scenario. I think "dating for marriage" is too much pressure. My feeling is that maybe one can "date for fun," then like them sufficiently that they find it worthwhile to spend the time working through relationship issues (intimacy, long-term compatibility, commitment etc) and end up dating that person for marriage. I wouldn't like to eliminate the fun, flat-out. That's been my major issue all along, that none of my recent dating experiences have been any fun. If Pamensky were universally righ, I might as well marry someone boring right now. But no one approach works for everyone. That much is clear. And Pamensky's addressing a very religious audience, so their concerns and approaches are somewhat different from those of more modern/secular daters. What do you think?

SOULMATCH

I just learned about a new online dating service. I have not tried it yet, but they take a more soulful approach to the whole Internet dating thing. Beliefnet, the spiritual gurus of the Internet, is readying to launch an online dating component called Soulmatch: Beliefnet's mission is to help people meet their own spiritual needs, and perhaps none of these is greater than the need for companionship, connection, and love. That's why we've created Soulmatch--a dating site focusing on values, spirituality, character and beliefs--all the qualities that matter most to you. If you try it, let me know what you think.

I BEG OF YOU

Do me a favor. Kill me. Kill me now. Before I have to read one more profile with a moronic header. It would seem like common sense. You use JDate, you know how your profile appears. So why shirk the instinct to be interesting? Why, when your profile appears as "David, 34, New York City," do you begin the opening statement of said profile with "Hi! My name is David, I'm 34 and live in New York City!" Then there's MORELATERMORELATERMORELATER. That means you couldn't come up with 100 characters to describe yourself. Modesty aside, we can all find 100 characters to describe ourselves. If you truly cannot talk about yourself for at least 100 characters worth, why would I want to even read your paltry profile, let alone consent to talk to or eventually meet you? Not enough for you to kill me? How about blinding me? So I don't have to read any more of these mind-numbing profiles... Please?

LIKE SOMEONE? HERE'S HOW TO TELL THEM...

For your consideration: New publisher Arriviste Press introduces the Virtual Wingman, your solution to crushes you don't know how to handle. The upshot is that you fill out a form, and Arriviste has a professional writer craft a witty email to the object of your friendship/affection. Just click on the link above to get all the details. And yes, Madames and Messieurs Scrooge, it is free. Try it out, let me know if it works!

MORAL QUANDARY

Earlier this week, I posted that story about the guy who invoiced his date for her half of the dinner that they had on their date. Even if the story and the names are true, I'm not going to conribute to the rumor mill. If the guy were a serial rapist, it might be a public service to make others aware of his nature, but this (his sending an invoice) is a poor choice that might have been meant as a joke... Who among us has not been misconstrued in a letter or email we sent, where tone was not apparent, and a joke went unabsorbed? I know I've been a victim of this before, and therefore live in a glass house as far as this is concerned. Far be it from me to throw the first name.

A READER'S QUERY

Has anyone ever used a different Jewish dating site besides JDate? Jewishfriendfinder? JMatch? JewishMingle? J2Jsingles? etc.? Feel free to post your comments here, about all online dating services. Just because it's "JDaters Anonymous" doesn't mean you can't contribute wisdom gleaned from other online experiences...

A MUSING, OR AMUSING?

Can't decide whether this is a musing or amusing. One of them for sure. Since I founded JDaters Anonymous, the only readers who have written to me about the site are men. Since the publication of my latest Jewish Week article (see post below) about JDate profiles, the only readers who have written to me are men. What does this mean? I'm convening a subcommittee to investigate.

TV IS LOVE

Of course, I'm in love with my TV, that goes without saying. But this is something different: a new dating TV channel in Israel. Here's an excerpt from Viva Sarah Press's article in the Jerusalem Post (you may have to register to access the article in its entirety): Lying about one's looks when it comes to TV is a hard thing to do - as each participant on the new dating service will feature in her or his own self-promoting video clip. The two-to-three minute clips, done in interview format, will be broadcast around the clock and will cost approximately NIS 480 to make. Subscribers who want to view the channel at home will have to pay NIS 35 a month for the service. Everyone will receive an intranet post box through which to communicate with potential partners. As opposed to Internet dating where everyone and anyone can peruse a profile on line, Klika's service can only be accessed by subscribers. And to be a subscriber of Klika, one has to show his ID card to prove he is who he says he is. "You can get a picture on the Internet that is five years old," says 32-year-old Ganor, who has on line dated on-and-off for three years. "The video is current. JDate.com, even with a picture, is still a blind date. Here, I can choose the videos to watch. I don't see TV personals as a blind date." And that's exactly what Klika is about. "We're trying to take the blind out of date," says Arieli, 39. "On the Net, you're in a fantasy world. You never know what the person looks or sounds like until you actually meet him. I'm single and it's easier for me to date someone having already seen him." For Ganor, who recently returned from abroad and is between jobs in the hi-tech field, that the television medium enables interaction is a bonus. "I'm very cynical and I see people don't understand what I write," she says. "The Internet is flat. There's no tone on the Web." I just keep remembering that the camera adds ten pounds. And I know that unless people have professional makeup and hair crews working on them before air-time, people look different on TV than they do in real life. So, as usual, I'm skeptical. But we'll see what happens, if this takes off in Israel and if (a big if) it ends up migrating to the States.

NEW JEWISH WEEK ARTICLE

My new column's up and this one is about, um, surprise, JDate. Here's the link: A New Profile, A New You. (And if you decide to contact E-Cyrano for profile help or go to the workshop at the 92nd Street Y, tell Evan I sent you!)

A READER DISCOVERS THE UP-SIDE TO CENSORSHIP

I guess there's always a way to make lemonade from JDate-given censored lemons. A reader writes: I think the jdate censors now block the word "excite." There is a guy whose profile used to begin, "Promise to Excite and Entice..." (He's in my list of people who've viewed my profile. Now it says, "Promise to and Entice..." Is this because some small number of people use an email service at excite.com? Soon there will be nothing left. I'm glad you've exposed this problem, though, because now I am not as judgmental about sentences that seem disjointed. Instead of assuming the writers are careless or stupid, I can blame it on jdate... I agree. Knowing that there are other forces at work on these profiles make me also think twice about discarding a profile for perceived lapses in otherwise-coherent sentences. I'm more tolerant now, and it's all because of me. :-)

HOW TO JDATE FOR FUN, PROFIT AND JAIL TIME

The Forward reported that an Orlando man used JDate to “lure women into dating him” was arrested in Broward County, and bail was set at $21,000. (Here's the URL, though I think you'll have to register with the site in order to view it.) I know many of you are thinking that maybe he was arrested because he claimed to be 5’10 and he was really 5’5. But no…the 34-year-old was charged with grand theft. He swindled at least fifteen women, “stealing credit card information, personal checks, a car and identity information.” The kicker? The so-called “Internet Casanova” who is described as a “published poet,” wasn’t even Jewish. And a close reading of the article reveals that only one of the swindled women was a JDater. What do we learn, boys and girls? Sweet words aren’t everything, and anything that seems too good to be true probably is. Dating in general, let alone Internet dating, is a scary world: go forth and have great adventures. Just remember to proceed with caution.

A Reader Responds

M., a reader from California, shares the following found example of JDate's seemingly random censoring of certain clusters of letters... -- Perfect First Date: "It would where we first get to know each other. The venue is not that important. We would be relaxed and enthusiastically talk about various su ects. A good place to meet would be a cafe or restaurant." -- "su ects." JDate censors "bj." I don't know if I should be amused or appalled. M., be appalled, and not just at the censoring of BJ (what if the person was talking about a synagogue on the Upper West Side?). Be appalled because this person has constructed a well-oiled cliche to show his (boring) vision of a first date, be it perfect or not. "where we first get to know each other"--this is any date. "enthusiastically talk about various su ects"--even "adding a BJ" here isn't going to help. "A good place to meet would be a cafe or restaurant"--props for spelling restaurant right, a word I still occasionally wrong with a misspelling. But this reminds me of an improv "ask," where we ask the audience for a setting before constructing a scene within that context. You've seen it: "Can you give me a location, where two people might meet?" This is so general that it's really up to the creativity of the individual to tailor it interestingly. A cafe or restaurant? Almost never. More likely, the audience responds with a subway platform, a library, the corner market, a doctor's office...none of which I would select for a first date. But all of which would be more interesting than anything this guy would pick. I'm harsh, I know. Call it high standards, or high-falutin', but I'm simply not willing to compromise on creativity.

Q & A

Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here, but I’m back now, with a Q&A inspired by a reader and JDate subscriber in Boston. How about a “profile workshop”? Participants could offer candid critiques on each others’ profiles? Good idea. I’m sure we’ve all had friends look at our profiles and give feedback. But sometimes you need a professional: a friend of mine founded a company that does exactly that. Check E-Cyrano.com, and let him know I sent you! How about a piece on “tips for hiding your email address [in your profile so you don’t have to pay for the service]”? I could definitely publish tips for hiding your email address in the text of the profile, but it's become very difficult to get away with this, since JDate censors have stepped up their censoring of anything that might be an email address. I actually wrote a piece on this for My Urban Kvetch, the other blog I run. I’ve reposted it below for your convenience. You’ll see that the censoring crackdown has resulted in fractured sentences and errors that seem like typos, but aren’t. Irks an editor something awful, I tell you. JDate seems to be pushing this whole “perfection” thing (“perfect first date,” “ideal relationship,” etc.) As often as not, people reject this and write “well, not expecting a perfect first date, but…” Don’t you think JDate could be more in touch with what members consider relevant? Of course. JDate should actually go out with some of these people who have profiles on their service. Then they’d be just as horrified as the rest of us are. In terms of "perfection," people on dating services state their "ideal" because you don't go into a pay service saying "I'll settle for..." If we're going through the rigmarole of defining what we want (which we don't get the advantage of doing in real dating life) we're going to shoot for the moon, so to speak. Almost no one says, “I’d like to date someone who’s visibly flawed, has no sense of romance, and brings his baggage to every interaction.” There seems to be no consensus about whether folks like to chat for chatting’s sake or if an IM automatically means “I’m interested.” Me, I’m a chat fiend, so just enjoy a chance to relate. There’s a definite comraderie that fellow searchers can enjoy (I’ve made a few good friends from contacts in online personals). Some women, when I IM them, their first response is “hold on, I’ll read your profile and see if I think we’re a good match…” Um, hello? There really is such a thing as just saying hello. If I’m looking for a date, I’ll be explicit. Which is why women that I IM seem to be more at ease if they’re not local. In life, yes, there is such a thing as just saying hello. In the context of online dating services, not so much. There are undoubtedly some JDate members who like to chat for chat's sake. But I would think that the general rule is that unless you have something substantial in common with that person that's obvious from the profile, and you're connecting to ask a question specific to that topic (say, improv; or once I contacted someone in St. Louis about a shared love of Buffy), I think most people think the IM chat is a preliminary to dating; most people want to date someone in their geographical area, which is why many might be reluctant to spend their time chatting with someone out of area. In the chatroom, yes, since it’s a gathering place for people from all over, but not the one-on-one of individual IM. Also, you need to remember that most women in their thirties are on JDate not to meet friends, but to meet potential mates, or at least dates. They already have plenty of friends in real life. (Theoretically.) Therefore, a friendly IM from someone out of area who's just saying hello might seem annoying, or a waste of their JDate time/money. If you know you're a chat fiend and often send IMs to women out of your area or who you're just saying hi to, you might want to add that to your profile so people know what they're getting when they hear from you, and will maybe treat it a little less seriously. …and thanks for creating the Jdaters site. I feel pounds lighter now. Dude, I’m so glad to have helped. Disagree with my responses? Got some advice to add? Let me know via the comments function or via email…

CRACKING THE CODE

(Reprinted with permission of the author--me--from My Urban Kvetch.) Read any number of JDate profiles, and you’ll notice that there seem to be random words missing from the essays. At first, I was blaming the men for their carelessness and laziness, that couldn’t spare the time to proof essays, or they would have found these errors and curtailed my annoyance in advance of my spending time reading them. (“Blame the men” is often my default setting, which is its own problem…) I thought it was random, a glitch in the system, that sporadically caused words to be deleted. After reading hundreds of profiles, I figured out that it's deliberate: JDate deletes words from profiles. I had begun by looking for patterns, feeling not unlike Russell Crowe’s character in A BEAUTIFUL MIND (although I didn’t get good at math as a side effect, and my brilliance seems to be limited to this particular discovery, so that’s where the similarity ends. But I did invent a handsome male companion who looks like Paul Bettany to accompany me through this endeavor. His name is Fabrizio. You’ll meet him soon, unless I start taking my anti-psychotic meds again…) Here’s what I discovered—there are two reasons a word may be deleted: * If JDate censors determine that the word in question is part of an email address. * If JDate censors determine that the word in question may be perceived as a curse word. For the uninitiated, it is free to post a profile on JDate, but if you want to contact anyone, you have to pay the piper/prue/paige/phoebe (CHARMED fans will get that), to the tune of about $30 a month. Lots of people try to get around this fee by embedding their email address within their profile. Periodically (I believe it’s any time you change your profile), JDate must run the essays through some Boolean filter or something. And any time the word ‘hotmail,’ ‘yahoo’ or ‘America’ appears (or the word ‘com’ following the word ‘dot’), it is deleted, because it is perceived as an attempt to circumvent JDate’s system. I embedded my email address a few times, first unsuccessfully and then successfully, but you have to disguise that it’s an email address so much that if you're successful, the result is that your profile makes you sound deranged. It is all fine and well that JDate’s trying to protect their services and keep them for paying members only. But this filter-and-remove system also confuses readers, as it routinely eliminates words that are necessary to understanding what the member is trying to convey: I figured this out when I included the following sentence in my profile: “I believe that basic cable (Comedy Central and the possibility of seeing THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION forty times each day) is the right of every American.” The day after I made this change, I looked at my profile and discovered that the word America had been deleted, leaving a lonely, widowed n on its own, looking very much like…(creepy drumroll)…a typo. This would not do. A typo in my profile? No way—I’ve got a rep to protect. Now I have to remember to censor myself, to steer clear of the word America in my JDate essays. That’s literally the most un-American thing I’ve ever experienced. Then there’s the issue with obscenities. This is mind-boggling, because references to porn go untouched, but any juxtaposition of the letters a, s, and s are targeted for extermination. How’d I figure this out? Here was the clue for me: “I like activities such urfing.” Clearly, the writer of this profile did not intend to convey that he was an urfing fanatic (although urfing does sound fun). Then I looked at the missing letters, and EUREKA! The missing letters spelled ass!! Even with a space between the letters, JDate’s search engine must have picked up on this: “Ooh, you rascally clients, you—trying to sneak a naughty word like ass into your profile…” In reality, none of these clients were trying to do this. It was an unlucky placement of letters that led to words being deleted and creating the impression that the profile’s writer is illiterate or careless. The slippery slope here is clear. It’s only a matter of time before we’ll have sentences like this to look forward to: “ensible an ensible can be, I’ll ess your profile before contacting you. If thi s all the right note cept musical ones, LOL, contact me.” (Not a code-cracker yet? Try this version: “As sensible an American as sensible can be, I’ll assess your profile before contacting you. If this hits all the right notes except musical ones, LOL, contact me.”)

AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW I feel like I may have reached the end of the JDate rainbow. Only instead of a pot of gold, there's one of those recycling bins, a receptacle for all the guys I ever went on one or two doomed dates with. Some of them remember me, but more often, I remember them first, and more clearly. And they take this to mean that I liked them. But more often than not, the impression, while deeply etched, was not necessarily a positive one. Seeing them is always awkward, especially when I apparently didn't make enough of an impression for them to acknowledge remembering me. It also hurts more than a little that I'm still out here, canvassing the scene, looking for Him, so divine and elusive an ideal that I might as well capitalize it. Him. He, whoever He is, is somewhere. He's probably up, like me, on JDate and watching Ghostbusters on TNT at 2:30 in the morning. He'll probably be at tomorrow's Salute to Israel Parade on Fifth Avenue. He's probably started his own blog, to record and analyze his experiences, so he might learn. But whoever He is, He'll make an impression on me. And I'll make one back. And it will be positive. And maybe then, at the other end of the JDate rainbow, there'll be a pot of dating gold.

CLICHEBOY TAKES ON JDATE'S...UMM...CLICHES ClicheBoy, the satirical JDate alter ego of a single guy named Jay, echoes my feelings about the cliches that people use in their profiles. If I could figure out how to use TrackBack, here's where I'd start, but in the interim, check him out at: ClicheBoy (scroll down to the May 8th entry).

WHAT'S YOUR PROFILE PET PEEVE? You know you have them. Those things in people's profiles that really irk you something awful. It doesn't matter if the person profiled looks like Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston: you see this phrase, and you're outta there. It can be a simple statement or a run-on sentence, but it is probably a few boring words strung together that don't tell you much of anything about the person. So, which profile proclamations constitute your pet peeves, and why? I'll share a few to start you off: * "Friends and family are important to me." (Duh...) * "I like to laugh." (Bully for you. I like to breathe.) * "She should feel as comfortable in jeans as she does in a little black dress." (This describes no one I know. Sweats are the most comfortable, but no one brags about that...) * Spelling errors in third-grade level words, misused verbiage or excessive use of the abbreviation LOL. * "She should have a sense of humor (laugh at my jokes)." (Hello, not the same thing.) And oh, there are more. But I'll open the floor to comments from the peanut gallery.

A Reader Responds... "I'm a man in my 50s, viewing your page...Reading your entry made me wonder...perhaps it's just that men in their 50s are the ones more likely to appreciate you/your blog/someone like you? That doesn't necessarily mean that something about you appeals to older men. Maybe, or even more likely, it's that men, in general, don't appreciate these things in a woman until we are in our 50s. At that point we finally begin to realize the interest and attraction of intelligent, nuanced women. Perhaps we (men in our 50s) just long for women our own or closer to our own age who explore, luxuriate in words, perhaps we don't find them elsewhere. Or again, putting the fault on our side, don't KNOW how to look for them except in disembodied web pages. Here we see women inside before we judge them on the outside." Interesting points. Then he continues: "On the other hand, do you know of women in their 50s, also on JDate, who write blogs? Are there many? All those I've seen are by younger women. I'd love to be pointed to their blogs or web pages." Got an answer? A comment? A reaction? Comment away, my friends...

A JDATERS ANONYMOUS PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: A MATTER OF SIZE A little hint, boys: When emailing, IM'ing or talking to your intended JDate lady on the phone, DO NOT ask her what her bra size is. I know some of you are definitely "breast men," but to have this subject come up in the first conversation is simply not appropriate. I didn't think it was such a far-reaching problem, but after hearing the same complaint from three different women in three different cities, I can only assume that there's either one perp whose interests span the nation, or that this is becoming a more common question. Ladies, should you find yourself asked this question, I wanted to suggest a few appropriate responses: "I'm an Infiniti ZX." (This should confuse them.) "None of your business, and I must bid you good day, sir. I said, GOOD DAY!!" (This is very good if you're British and live in the 19th Century.) "Well, now you'll never know." (Particularly effective followed by an immediate hangup.) "Well, I'll tell you, but I have to ask you how many inches you are. I only date men in double digits. Unless you'd be willing to get a penile implant..." (When you hear nothing from the other end of the phone, feel free to hang up.) In summary: If you want to know if a woman is well-endowed, wait. Work on your inner monologue and your conversational filters. If you're charming and sincere, you might get to find out for yourself. But this is not important information to know before you even meet her... Growing up in yeshivaland, there were always a couple of boys who talked about a woman's middot (values) and meant middot (size)...it wasn't charming then, nor is it now... So ask us other things--about what we read, what we think, what we like to do, but steer clear of a question like this one, unless you're getting the clear green light. If at any point you encounter a woman who likes to be asked this question before the first date, please have her write an entry for this blog and send it to JDaters Anonymous. Thank you.

I'VE BEEN FOUND/ON A LIGHTER NOTE... Well, that didn't take long at all. I built it, and people came. And they officially pronounced this site "depressing." To depress others was never my intention--I wanted to create a community so we could bond through our experiences, good and bad, and find hope in each other. But until other people start to contribute, I'm here on my own. And I've got to brighten up the place with a little humor. So, I give you "Seuss and the City," from the New York Jewish Week, 3/5/04. It is a humorous, hopeful tale of one woman's dating odyssey in New York City. Enjoy... Seuss and The City by Esther D. Kustanowitz - Special To The Jewish Week There once was a girl who lived in the City And yearned for a guy who was smart, fun and witty. Every week, after shul, she had Shabbat dinner But hadn’t yet met the one guy who could win her. So to make her love life a bit less inert She went on a quest to find her bashert. One Friday at BJ, in the Upper West 80s, She sat in the pews amidst hundreds of ladies. The scene that Shabbat was singles a-plenty, Ranging in ages from 50 to 20. But the organ-based service just wasn’t her style, Even before people danced in the aisle. Saturday night, over Drip’s apple pie, she decided to go give speed dating a try. “Why are you here?” “What do you do?” “What’s your position on ‘Who is a Jew?’” “Do you like your family?” “Have you been to the kotel?” “Should we get a room later at a local hotel?” Besieged by the questions, she ran into the night and sought sweet, cold refuge in Tasti-D-Lite. On Sunday, she met her friend Sue at Makor to see what that center for Jews had in store. They had some Merlot in the basement cafe and met two great guys — both turned out to be gay. Monday brought time at the new JCC, The building a-gleaming, the hip place to be. She went to a program that got her bells ringing: a screening of “Grease,” with lyrics for singing! She arrived at the place with vocal cords poised, But of the assembled, there were only two boys. She went out to Fairway on alternate Tuesdays, walking past kiosks of Time Outs and Newsdays. Buying produce for dinners and cooking for one was more cost-effective, but not too much fun. She also checked out the nearby Zabar’s scene, with its pickles and olives, and babkas by Green’s, She swore to herself: if she found no takers, by this time next year, she’d own a breadmaker. Wednesday, at Xando, she scarfed down some s’mores and ducked former JDates because they were bores. She went out to dances and lectures and stuff and found, with each day, it was getting more tough. Why was it so hard? She could not understand — it wasn’t world peace — she just wanted a man! Familiar with Hebrew and maybe some Yiddish he’d know that the motzi’s preceded by kiddush. This Jew would be close both in spirit and miles, and would be of good humor, with generous smiles. Should she, like Madonna, go kabbalistic? No, she decided, once again realistic. But where else to go? What else to do? She sometimes wished she just wasn't a Jew. Then she’d date any man she found attractive without worries of parents gone hyper-reactive. 'Is he observant? Is he Reform? Is he agnostic? Are we getting warm?' They hadn’t been right, not then and not ever — She began to believe she’d be lonely forever. Then, one Thursday night, after great Kung Pao Chicken, she opened a fortune cookie, and felt her pulse quicken. It read: “Don’t stay home, alone in your cloister: the City is yours: one big kosherized oyster.” Pondering this, she sipped tea with a sigh and decided to give the old scene a new try. She knows that she’ll know when the chemistry’s right — Until then, she’ll always have Tasti-D-Lite. She’ll use all her assets: her wit and her smarts will help to attract the most caring of hearts. Her future is bright, full of roads not yet tried, and she’s forging ahead, ’cause her world’s open wide.

AGE BEFORE BEAUTY After having several men in their fifties viewing my page, and yes, even trying to contact me, I find myself wondering about age. It's such an arbitrary thing--we decide that we want a man between the ages of 29 and 40, and no one above or below that range need apply. But in viewing the thousands of profiles on JDate, you realize that youth is really relative. You find guys who look like they're in their late 40s, even though they're only in the beginning of their thirties, and you get other guys in their 40s who look like they're fresh out of college. So, does age matter? When you meet someone, the first thing you see is never their age. You can date someone for months without knowing whether he is 37 or 40 or 34. The truth is, unless someone's biological clock is ticking, age doesn't come up. At least not naturally. It may come up contextually, as in playing Jewish Geography--if your date attended Brandeis, you are automatically compelled to ask: "Ohmigawd! What year'd you graduate?" and you might find out your date's age that way. But the things we know about JDaters before we meet them, or before we even exchange IM's, set up an artificial image in our minds. When people meet, no one says: "Esther, this is Sven. He's 38, 5'10 and likes to laugh." Similarly, I rarely say things like "Hi, my name is Esther, and I am equally comfortable in a black cocktail dress or jeans." This struck me as odd. I wonder what would happen if we started introducing ourselves that way in real life...

TIRED Tired of typos in profiles. Tired of lame-ass descriptions of what people like and don't like. Tired of superficial guys who "need a woman whose in shape." Tired of people who confuse "whose" and "who's." Tired of getting instant messages from guys with no pictures and who say nothing more than "hi." Tired of teases, which are pre-written and take no imagination. Tired of the guys who seem promising, who make me laugh over endless emails and who take no initiative in expressing a wish to take the laughter offline. Tired of having more fun IM'ing my JDate gal pals and discussing the problems we have with JDate guys than with said JDate guys themselves. Tired of men who can't muster up the effort to craft 100 words into a sentence about themselves. Tired of finding out the cool guy in California used to live in NY, but is now ensconced in the L.A. lifestyle and couldn't move back to NY even if he wanted to. Tired of emails from Rami in Hod Hasharon, who writes in Hebrew which is then rendered by my non-Jewish computer as gobbledygook. Tired of staying up late, hoping for stimulating discourse in the chatroom only to be treated to chatters finding ways to insert the word Hung (as in American Idol wannabe William) into movie, television and book titles ("Indiana Jones and the Temple of Hung!" one writes triumphantly), as if somehow this is acceptable pre-relationship banter. Tired of making the first move, tired of initiating contact only to be ignored, tired of sighing when I see the photos of the guys who have viewed my profile since my last login. Tired of being seen as a potential trophy wife by men in their 50s, while men in their 30s won't give me the time of day. Tired of hoping, tired of waiting. Just plain tired.

RAISON JD'ATE-RE There are thousands of us out here, in the online netherworld, shopping for love and companionship over the Internet. And if we are dating online and we are Jewish, we are probably on JDate. We have experienced the joy of an email from someone we thought we found interesting, only to be disappointed in real life. We have encountered people who lied about their height and interests. We have chatted with people online who seem witty with the 10-20 second IM delay, and moved the relationship to the phone, only to find that their conversational skills are clearly lacking. We have wondered how to handle the delicate situations we encounter, and have sought advice from friends. Now, there's one more friend to consult. And then there's the technical joy of dealing with internet dating...We've been frustrated by the random disconnections by the JDate server, by new payment policies, by Big Brother JDate censors removing segments of our profiles. We all have our stories to tell. Of men and women who never called back. Of men and women who had no chemistry. Of men whose interest waned because of a date's few extra pounds, and women turned off by a date's legacy of student loans. We all have our areas of superficiality, but in order to overcome them, we must acknowledge them--with humor and in the embrace of a community of others. Though it sometimes seems impossible, there are those who have found love online--their stories are an inspiration, and will also be welcome here as a buoy of hope in the dating ocean. The goal of this blog is to record our experiences, good and bad, of men and women, serial JDaters and novices, from NYC to L.A. and everywhere in between. When the muse inspires, there will be features, rants and raves on related subjects. But this is your blog, your forum. Speak.