I Love You, Let’s Meet

this is a great gimmick — search for people based on their facial resemblance to celebrities. Because everybody’s gonna at least want to know who their celeb doppelgangers are.

I tried unsuccessfully to link to my page, so I’ll have to tell you: Over half my facial sisters are in fact sistas. And none of the “you kind of look likes” that I DO get are on here: the mom from Gilmore Girls, Debra Winger (back in the day), Maggie Gyllenhall.

Instead here are Janet Jackson, Gabrielle Union (twice), a seeming child named Gabby Soleil, a stone babe named Susan Ward, Marilyn McCoo, Catherine Keener, and my childhood hero Rhoda Morgenstern!  I wonder if a lot of guys begin their searches with “Looks like Valerie Harper.” (maybe some gay guys of a certain age would).

I didn’t think they’d come up with a bachelor but they did. The geeks at OKCupid assume everyone has a cell phone and texts, so I hope my fellow geezer just shows up at the (formerly very trendy) bar they’re sending us to at the right time. They send us blurred pictures of each other and we each did a little self-description. I’ve blind-dated without a cell phone for this long, I don’t know why it wouldn’t work.

It seems like a long shot, but maybe random adventurousness will do the trick where picky picking hasn’t.

Am I crazy? Blind? Dating? I guess so!

It’s from OK Cupid, who I like for being odd, so that’s partly why I did it. I’m also fairly sure they won’t be able to dig up a dude in his 40s, so I got to be brave without going on the date. I signed up for the 15th, the same night I also signed up for a free ticket to a sneak preview of Margot at the Wedding. Wouldn’t it be dreamy if OKCupid found me a guy who was psyched to see that movie and we fell in luv?!?

Honestly, my hopes are more along the lines that Margot is as good as The Squid and the Whale. Which everyone said was such a terrible movie title, but I didn’t think so. And I loved the movie.

Great Boyfriends.com already did this.

But cute logo.

If Nick Hornby’s middle-aged single guys are boys, then I suppose in this context I am a girl. (Not that I want to be; I was just remarking to a friend how people used to give men shit for referring to women as “girls”; now it seems completely acceptable. Why did that start being OK again? It’s so retro in a bad way, it makes me think of “the girls in the secretarial pool.”)

But like Hornby’s immature protagonist, I like dating single parents. I’m pretty much off online dating, but this Times piece points out that for all its faults, it is a jungle stocked with my preferred prey.

I’m less of a fuddy-duddy than the Gray Lady on this one: Of COURSE you can’t make a meaningful connection in a “brief, Web-brokered Internet chat session” — duh. But you get the info you get online plus the let’s-face-it-important information of how he looks and sounds in motion.

Since I last posted, I saw Skype for the first time. A couple friend of mine who’s separated use it every night, and I was over visiting one of them when they Skyped. The Times guy is right that it wasn’t a flattering picture, but it is better than nothing. Interestingly, I got the sense that these lovebirds do their phone sex over the regular phone rather than flashing each other on the Webcams.

Re the Times guy’s objection that Webcams invite exhibitionism, again, duh, and so what. My gay hairdresser told me that in his, er, circles, everyone has their Webcam pointed downwards and just cuts right to the chase. I asked if there was the technology for a wider-angle shot, so you could get face and body in one frame, and he wrinkled his nose and said, “What kind of weirdo would want his face in the shot?”

Here’s another blogger who’s with me, for slightly different reasons.

On the subject of exhibitionism, relationship to images, identity, etc., I just finished Jennifer Egan’s 2001 novel Look at Me, and wildly recommend it. I feel so lame that I’m just now getting around to reading her novels, in order, as it turns out; I loved The Invisible Circus, then devoured Look at Me, and am very excited for the new one The Keep.

A lot of people I interviewed in 2003 and 2004 said web cams were the next big thing in online dating; these Stanford kids are combining web cams with online dating with speed dating.

As gimmicks go, the sum seems an improvement on the parts, slightly less excruciating than real-life speed-dating where all the others are jostling in your peripheral vision (I bet if I did it, I’d keep losing focus on my own mini-date while trying to eavesdrop) and giving a structure to web cam interactions with strangers.

Also seems a little like an open mic night; I imagine speed daters have more canned performances online than in person.

I’d love to hear from someone who tries this service what it’s like.

humans can upgrade themselves to dogs sniffing each other’s pee, and hopefully, butts.

this is so wrong on so many levels! (A) You shouldn’t date co-workers (say many, I don’t know if I agree) and even if you do then (B) isn’t that one place you don’t need online dating?

And even from The Man’s prospective, it seems nuts. If the goal is indeed to increase worker productivity, having your employees online date ain’t gonna get you there.

aren’t all dating sites interracial?

The tagline is Sexy White Women and Black Men, but the second picture is of the Halle Berry-looking woman. does she represent your potential child?