Because then I’d have dozens and dozens to share with you here on my site.

Instead, I only have this small collection from 4 different people.

It starts off with a taste of what I like to call “The Life & Times of Matt” – join me as we take an inside look into the twisted, wretched shell of a young man groping at life to discover meaning and purpose… ultimately realizing there is never a rose without a thorn.

Then we’ll journey to the outer limits of someone I should’ve never given my phone number to in the first place with one I nicknamed… “Tequila Girl”, otherwise known as Stephanie.

Next up – the cute, adorable, almost-lovable-if-it-weren’t-for-so-many-damn-calls-at-all-hours-of-the-night-and-day… Tera.

Finally we’ll end with a call I got from a young gentleman concerned about the welfare of his genitals.

Enjoy! I certainly did whenever I put these together this evening

Oh, the memories…

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Out of that 400, about 310 of them are spam.

And since spam filters aren’t perfect, I do spend a little time each day making sure none of my REAL messages end up among all the garbage… wouldn’t want that inheritance check notification from granny flushed down the toilet alongside offers for replica Rolex watches.

So as I sit perched in my Ivory Tower overlooking the wasteland, I’ve discovered an interesting trend in spam the last couple years.

Spam used to be completely and utterly 100% Grade A moronic. But some of it has gotten halfway decent, and a few of them have gotten downright hilarious.

In e-mail marketing of any kind, it’s common knowledge the “subject line” and the “From” line are the two most important variables determining if the e-mail gets opened, and (hopefully) at least looked at.

Spammers test their e-mail subject lines relentlessly, as should anyone who uses e-mail to market products, legit or not. Even though my favorites are idiotic nonsense grammatically, some of them surprisingly tap into real core desires that exist within the target market.

Things most marketers are afraid to say or feel like they’re “above” saying, spammers go straight for the jugular. And it works, or else they wouldn’t keep barfing it out en masse.

Here’s what I mean:

#1. “women don’t like it when the friend in your pants is sleepy”

It’s funny to see how many creative ways spammers come up with to avoid triggering keywords like “penis” and “sex” that the filters constantly look out for. And it’s true; if you and your girl are wantin’ to get it on, it’s a pretty big downer when the “friend in your pants” won’t play ball.

Most guys react to this situation by making excuses like “this never happens, I have no idea what’s wrong” which… if ya think about it… is really putting the blame on the GIRL, and not the guy where it belongs.

Just as an aside, if you ever are in this situation with a woman, the “right” thing to do is own the experience, accept responsibility for it in your mind, and then make some comment like “eh, it’ll come around later… now in the meantime…” and then smile at her and use your imagination to please her in other ways until said “friend” feels a little more friendly.

#2. “bring back time when girls were yours”

Assumes a lot, doesn’t it? This one was my favorite for a long time. It’s the first spam I’ve seen hinting at the fact the reader might not have always been a total loser. Apparently girls wanted him at one time, but something happened and now he’s a leper. This spammer promises a return to the good ol’ days… that, in all likelihood, never actually existed.

#3. “tonight be a hero in her eyes”

I see a lot of “have great sex” sales pitches miss the crucial point this spammer here nails with perfection. Most pitches focus entirely on “mind blowing orgasms” and being able to “last all night”, etc etc. But one thing they don’t get is the core base desire of a man to be seen as a hero in the eyes of his woman. In fact, it’s such a strong base desire in most men, that many a successful business opportunity pitch has cashed in on precisely the opposite: being a horrible failure in her eyes, a man unable to provide for his family. It’s humiliating and emasculating to a man, and tapping into it works to sell him “how to make money” products. So why not harness the power of the opposite? If I ever wrote a sex pitch, I’d be focusing more on the look of ecstasy on her face and admiration in her eyes (the adoring way she looks up at you while biting her lip) and less on “lasting all night” – something most women don’t really want from a man anyway; they just want a guy to last “long enough” and then be done with it for awhile.

#4. “more man’s meat for laughable money”

Another great attempt to skirt the spam filters by not saying “bigger penis for less money” Classic.

#5. “never be flaccid again”

Holy shit! This would be a total nightmare. I guarantee you if this were a reality, you could make a fortune selling pills to make guy’s dicks SMALL and FLOPPY. Remember those Viagra ads where they say “if erection lasts longer than 4 hours, consult your physician”?? Oh, the pain, the pain…

#6. “do you feel like a giant compared to the midget in your pants?”

The mental image of this one makes me laugh every time. As a matter of fact, yes, I do feel like a giant compared to the little midget squirming around in my pants. He’s been slowly suffocating down there since 2004. No wonder I scare girls away.

#7. “girls will love you more with a bigger pole”

If only the real world really worked like this. If every time I wanted a girl, all I had to do was go out to some public place (maybe a bar, a club… Wal-mart), drop trow, show off my goods, and she’d come running. I wouldn’t even have to talk to anybody or any of that other lame shit. Life would be wonderful. And when I got tired of her and wanted someone new? Just go back to the frozen foods section and do it all again.

But for some baffling reason, women don’t base too much of their first impression of a man on the size of his dick. And they have this annoying habit of calling the cops if you try to show it to them before introducing yourself. Damn. I guess real life isn’t the dream world spammers would have us believe.

#8. “your big proud friend in the pants will overshadow the Empire State Building”

Now that’s just absurd.

#9. “you can appear rich by being very poor if you want”

This one confused me for awhile, until I saw they were selling replica watches. Then it made sense… sorta. See, if I wear a replica Rolex, I can appear rich… even though I may be living in my car. According to this spammer, the choice is mine.

#10. “don’t keep her waiting – change those ants in your pants to a real beast”

After I released the midget, army ants infested my pants like a motherfucker. But thank God, with this pill I was able to transform them into an unholy beast – to the delight of my girlfriend.

#11. “i showed susan my new length today”

Imagine waking up to an e-mail like this from your best friend. “Wow, I just thought Josh was joking yesterday when he said he was gonna show Susan in accounting his new penis.” As I click on the e-mail to open it, I can’t help but wonder, “Really, Josh, how did it go?”

#12. “your bed will be attracting women like a magnet”

Displaying my penis in the grocery aisle was easy enough, but having a bed attract women to my place automatically?! Now THAT’S efficient! I can only imagine what late-night infomercials would be like if Tempur-Pedic sold Chick Magnet Mattresses.

#13. “if there will be only girls around, will you be ready?”

You’re knocked unconscious. Drugged. Beaten. Stripped naked. You wake up in the fetal position in an all-white padded room 8 hours later, surrounded by beautiful women. A bright light shines overhead. Then an ominous robotic voice crackles over the intercom: “If there will be only girls around… will you be ready?”

Finally put to the test. Glad I read my spam.

#14. “punish her – to have sex 10 hours in a row???”

I can see the “punish her” subject line definitely appealing to some people, me included. And the little winking smiley face was a nice touch adding to its attention-getting power. Inside the e-mail body it simply read “to have sex 10 hours in a row???” followed by a nonsensical link. The triple question marks, though spammy, is actually an effective way of enhancing a message IF it’s used properly and above all, sparingly. Even though having sex 10 hours in a row isn’t something most mainstream people want, the “punish her” bit definitely taps into something core.

#15. “yes, girls always tell their girlfriends about the men they sleep with”

Reminds me of a typical Sex & The City cafe gossip scene. This line plays off the fact that if it’s bad for your woman to think you’re a crappy lover, then it’s a HUNDRED TIMES worse for all her friends and half the block to share the same opinion. After the two of you break up, the only sex you’ll get will be in another zipcode. But you can avoid this terrible fate by simply “being a hero in her eyes.”

#16. “Don’t let your love making rod become rusty due to its size”

How many times do the spammers have to remind us? The truth, dear Brutus, lies not in our personalities… but in the size of our rods.

#17. “the most powerful weapon for your sex battles”

Ah, so sex is a “battle” now. Two opponents square off between the sheets and, just like the Highlander, There Can Be Only One. With each woman I vanquish, my immortal penis grows stronger, standing firm to receive the Life Force as excruciating little bolts of lightning pummel my balls.

#18. “don’t you just want to run away when you can’t satisfy your girl?”

Sounds funny, but it’s no laughing matter to the man who feels like a sexual failure in front of his woman. Bravo to the spammers for coming up with this nugget. The target prospect will “get it” immediately.

#19. “women will be eating your watch with their eyes”

I’ve heard of women “undressing me with their eyes” before, but never snacking on my watch. Oh well. I guess as long as my bed magnet is working that night, who cares.

Guys, I can tell you first hand that wearing an expensive watch impresses no one but yourself… so make sure it’s one that makes YOU happy. I recently went out to dinner with a beautiful woman and my $108 “pretty good” watch got the same kind of attention as my $3,400 James Bond watch does.

#20. “lead your boner to victory”

Over trecherous mountains and through mucky swamp, I shall faithfully guide my shaft to its ultimate destination.

#21. “now your member can be as hard as Pinocchio’s nose”

What?! And besides… wouldn’t you want to say “as LONG as Pinocchio’s nose” ? Shocking how a spammer correctly spelled the word “Pinocchio” but can’t grasp basic grammar.

Hmm, come to think of it… a pill that, when swallowed, will make a man’s penis grow every time he tells a lie?

Make your own joke out of that one

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I have. A shitload of ‘em. And I love it.

Why? Because recording successful teleconferences by well-known pseudo-celebrity marketers is a great way to discover new appeals, offers, and selling strategies that’d otherwise fly under the radar, completely unnoticed. As a copywriter, they’re good as gold.

But they don’t always go as planned. Some of them tear apart at the seams…

…And some of them downright suck.

In February of 2006, famous marketer Jeff Paul (best known for his excellent old “How To Make $4,000 A Day Sitting At Home In Your Underwear” ad) did a joint venture with some idiotic company, pitching some innane “Internet Business In A Box” shit-wad of crapola.

Bad move letting these guys have a free run at your teleseminar list, Jeff.

But as god-awful as the company’s ad was, it’s not the issue here. No, what was most interesting (and hilarious) was what happened AFTER the pitch was over and everybody on the call was supposed to hang up and go buy the latest turd-ball money-making gizmo.

Like all of Jeff’s teleseminar work, I began recording the thing far in advance. But that particular day I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before and was tired. Real tired.

Within 5 minutes I drifted asleep on the call, while my little digital recorder captured every juicy detail.

When I awoke, the call had been over for 45 minutes! I rustled around, trying to hear what was going on, when some guy on the line belted out, “Who the HELL is still on this line!?!?”

I hung up immediately.

Then I checked the recorder. Tons of bad copy sales drivel. Gobs of it.

But then… something surprising… then funny… then instructive…

As you listen to this recording, keep these things in mind:

1. If you ever joint-venture with someone and let them use your list, YOU BETTER MAKE DAMN WELL SURE YOU KNOW WHAT THEY’RE GOING TO BE PITCHING THEM. In this case it was some fart-worthy product called Ispeedway (Internet Speedway) or whatever. And it was pitched by an obvious recording from some robot pitchman who couldn’t sell water in the desert. Not only does this kind of thing result in poor sales, but it also makes you look like a bumbling doofus to your customer list. Bottom line: Don’t do it. It’s not worth a few bucks to soil the good name you took so long to build.

2. The disconnect between the pitch and the listeners is blindingly obvious here. These guys were not being talked to by someone who understood them and could talk their language. Sure, these guys were looking to make some money, yes, but so is everybody else on the face of the planet. There was no real message-to-market match with this business opportunity (biz-op) market here.

3. Listen to how the biz-op market buyers REALLY talk. Get a feel for it. These guys are YOUR customers too. They are having REAL conversations about this stuff, trying desperately to find solutions to their problems. And what do they get? A buffalo shit-bomb from someone who couldn’t give a damn. Whether you think these guys are very bright or not isn’t the point… they still deserve better. People don’t buy from big companies or faceless robot pitchmen… they buy from PEOPLE… people just like them. And Jeff Paul does an excellent job of that. It’s one of the big reasons he’s so successful. That’s why I still can’t believe he let these numb-nuts use his list.

4. Despite that, it’s still funny to listen to them muse about making money.

Here it is… enjoy…

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Hey, is there anywhere to get a decent cup of coffee around here?

Oh, come on. Don’t look so sad. When we’re in the mood for a twenty-four-ounce cup of pumpkin-pie-flavored Cool Whip, a Feist CD covered in mocha fingerprints, a possibly exaggerated memoir by a former child soldier, and some customer “service” that denies our essential humanity, we still head straight to our corner Starbucks. Or the one across from that one. Or the one that will have opened farther down the block by the time we finish typing this sentence.

Here’s the thing, though: We’re never, ever in that mood.

What we do like is coffee. If coffee were smack, we’d be Pete Doherty and we’d refuse to give it up, even if it cost us our career and our supermodel girlfriend. And we’ll tank up anywhere: the neighborhood joint with the womyn-friendly breast-feeding policy and the couches composed entirely of rusty springs; the swill dispenser down the hall; an AA meeting. Anywhere, that is, but Starbucks.

In this we’re not alone. America is a caffeine nation, perpetually jacked up on gallons of magma-hot fuck-yeah juice, and logically you guys should still be making more money than Halliburton and Hannah Montana combined. Instead your market share is crumbling, and so is your cultural primacy. Snooty people have moved on to snootier coffeeshade-grown, fair-trade, artisanal, brought down the mountain by mules that have good dental coverage. Everybody else went back to Dunkin’ Donuts. You’re still part of the fabric of American life—think of Mary-Kate Olsen’s ever present Venti cup, proof despite massive evidence to the contrary that she’s Just Like Us—but so is soul-crushing corporate suckitude. Your new ads spotlight a straight-down-the-middle brew called Pike Place Roast. We’re glad you’re getting back into the coffee business—seriously, is there anything you haven’t put in a latte yet? Courvoisier? DayQuil? unicorn tears?—but we’ve tried this stuff, and it should come with an Egg McMuffin on the side. It’s a rich, complex blend of desperation and mediocrity.

The real problem is that there used to be something about you, Starbucks, and now there isn’t. You were a quintessentially ’90s company. You were from Seattle, the same rainy cradle of anticorporate corporateness that gave us Microsoft and major-label grunge.

Young dreamers camped out in your stores all day like the cast of Friends, filling napkins with business plans for e-commerce Web sites. (“It’s like Pets.com for Wiccans!”) We were all going to get crazy rich and wear ironic SEXY GRANDPA T-shirts to offices where we’d play Frisbee golf instead of working. A $4 latte wasn’t an extravagance; it was a little rehearsal for the cushy life that was about to be ours. Even your stupid fake-Italian language made us feel sophisticated. The 7-Eleven crowd could have their week-old bubblin’ crude; we’d be over here, talking like Marcello Mastroianni, because we knew better. Even back then, you seemed a little evil-empireish.

But man, your chairs were comfy. So we drank your overpriced espresso-shakes. We drank them up! You know the rest. Cobain died. We got Dubya, war, a recession, and our workplace doesn’t have a Centipede machine. We’re living in an era of diminished expectations, and if things aren’t going so well for you, maybe it isn’t because people resent your McDonald’s-esque omnipresence, those cups adorned with quotes from deep thinkers like Josh Groban and David Copperfield, or the fact that you roast your beans under the space shuttle. Maybe it’s because your neither-luxurious-nor-particularly-affordable idea of affordable luxury now seems like a nonfat, half-caf, quadruple-grande bad joke. With extra foam.

In other words, you’ve brought this on yourself. If we learned one thing from The Wire, it’s that you can only control all the corner real estate in town and pay disenfranchised young people to sling an addictive product for so long before you lose your grip on the game. But we’re not mad at you, Starbucks. Give us a call sometime. We’ll grab a coffee. It’s on us—we just shorted your stock.

Yours with shaky hands,
G

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If you were one of the “lucky” ones to work through the days of the 90′s tech hype, you’ll be able to identify with the “stock photos” below on the next page, which more or less personify the additude and “aura” displayed by most business people at the time. This attitude of “just sit back in my dream remote location and do nothing while every real decision and bit of work is done by ‘someone else’ while I occasionally teleconference from my laptop in the woods or on a lone stretch of beach to ‘keep touch with the common man’” is what drove so many to failure and bust trying to emulate the success of the few Silicon startups that covered every bit of almost every magazine, TV show, and newspaper at the time.

Widespread hysteria enveloped the masses of small business owners who tried to grab their piece of the Great Silicon Gold Rush. And looking back, even as a casual observer at the time, it’s easy to see why; the unyielding barrage of media from all angles were screaming “New Economy” this and “The Dawn of the New Age” that. If you weren’t part of it all, or busy working on a strategy of integration, you were considered an “old dog” that no one had any use for. Companies went boom and bust in a matter of months or even weeks or days. It was the era of the “Power Lunch” and the “One Minute Millionaire.” There seemed to be a new “Captain of Industry” touting a new technology that was supposed to revolutionize the world about once every few days. This went on hardcore for a couple years. Admittedly, it was very difficult not to get caught up in at least some of the hype.

And this, as in all extremely bullish times, led to a watering down of society in the most extreme sense of the term. Caught up in all the hype and spin, people didn’t seem to have time for much of anything anymore. Everything from books to news to advertising blasted off from the Earth into a spacey world of vagueness by means of symbolism and pictorials…not unlike those found in childrens books.

Thus…the perversion of that which we call Stock Photography. 

You see, stock photography was a way for artists and media professionals to catalog their less-interesting and more generic work into its various subjects as a means of selling and sharing it with others who may find its use more beneficial to their project. But during this time of the 90′s blitz, stock photography evolved into something quite innane.

As once content-rich and informative advertising became more “one-liner” and pictorial, so did everything else that could possibly be watered down. Something already pictorial like stock photography went even farther, however. It became a bastion of dumb stunts, idiotic symbolism, and perverted imagery (“perverted” in the sense that it was warped out of context).

The result was precisely like many of the examples I am presenting in this tribute right now. As a sign of the times, you can just browse a database, slap one of these babies on your ad or website, and “be done.” Of course the wiser of us will realize that substance always wins out (even when “unpopular”) and that by stooping so low as to seriously use such imagery in real practice, is unprofessional, unfunny for most businesses, and draws a lot negative attention. In other words, one would only use them for real if lacking real substance to communicate a message by any other means.

Now the reason I can and do use them here, is because this is a tribute to such examples. Why a tribute? Well, take a look around and see the enjoyment you can have by making fun of the stuff. I mean, c’mon!

I have found many examples, both on the web and in magazines when the very same royalty free stock photo will be used in an advertisement. This is ok and very much expected, but not when you lead the public on. For example, a very deceptive trend among a lot of advertisers is to use “pictures of employees” in their ads as a means of creating a “human image” of the company in hopes that the customer sees the ad, identifies with the human image and either inflates the positive image of the company in the customers mind or, preferredly, the customer goes right out and purchases whatever it is the company sells.

This is wrong advertising thinking on so many levels (discussed in other articles on my site) but the part of it I want to bring to attention right now is the use of stock photography and stock video in these ads.

I saw a full-page magazine ad in “Business 2.0″ magazine (I won’t comment on the magazine itself, which is very hype-y) for a company that was using the “look, this is one of our employees” gimmick. Well, I clearly recognized the photo being used as something from a stock photo library. Utterly rediculous, but more-so an outright LIE.

Ok, so lying in advertising isn’t anything new, but this is both ridiculous and deceptive. If they lack the substance for a REAL marketing message (as opposed to just “doing it because its what everyone else does”), as well as the substance of the company to do something decent with a $50,000 full-page ad, then I guess this is what they have to do in order to “get their name out there and hope someone will buy.” In the meantime, this 90′s way of thinking will bankrupt them as it did so many other fly-by-nighters.

Enjoy the ride while it lasts. And oh yeah…keep using that stock photography in lieu of substance — Stock Photography, we salute you.

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Do you think European men are more romantic than we Americans?

Maybe you should read these letters before passing any hasty judgement…

Letter #1:

I just got back from a semester abroad in Europe, and let me tell you, it truly was the most magical, amazing experience of my entire life. The French countryside was like something out of a storybook, the Roman ruins were magnificent, and the men, well, European men are by far the most romantic in the world.

You American men all think you’re so suave and sophisticated. Well, think again! European men make you look like the immature, inexperienced little children you are. They really know how to make a woman feel special over there. Unlike the so-called men here in the States, European men know how to treat a woman right.

For one thing, European men aren’t afraid to come up and talk to you. And they know how to start slow, with a nice cup of Italian espresso or a long walk on some historic street. They know the places you can’t find in any tourist guide. They know the whole history of the cities in which they live—who the fountains are named after, who the statues are.

I remember one unforgettable night in Athens, I sat and listened to a Greek sailor for hours as he told me about the countless men who fought over Helen back in ancient times. Afterward, he told me he loved his homeland even more now that he’d seen it through my eyes. I ask you, would an American man ever say something as deep and beautiful as that?

European men know the most romantic little cafés and bistros and trattorias, candlelit places where you can be alone and drink the most fantastic wine. They tell you what’s on the menu and what you should try. (If it wasn’t for a certain young man in Milan, I never would have discovered fusilli a spinaci et scampi.) And the whole time, they’re looking deep into your eyes, like you’re the only woman on the entire planet. What woman could resist a man like that? Then, after a moonlit stroll along the waterfront and a kiss in the doorway of their artist’s loft, you find yourself unable to—well, I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

I’ll never forget my magical semester abroad. One thing’s for sure—I’m ruined for American men forever!

Letter #2:

I’m a 25-year-old carpenter living in Rome, and I don’t mind telling you that I get all the action I can handle. I’m not all that handsome or well-dressed, and I’m certainly not rich. In fact, my Italian countrywomen could take me or leave me. But that’s just fine, because Rome gets loads of tourist traffic, and American co-eds traveling through Europe are without a doubt the easiest lays in the world.

Being European gives me a hell of an advantage. I’m not sure why, but there’s something about the accent that opens a lot of doors. All you have to do is go up to them, act a little shy and say, “Whould hyou like to go with me, Signorina, for a café?” I actually have to thicken up my accent a little, but they never, ever catch on.

After a cheap coffee, which to them always tastes better than anything they’ve ever had, because they’re in Europe, it’s time to walk them. Now, all they know about Rome is what they’ve read in Let’s Go, so you can pretty much just make up a whole bunch of shit. It’s fun to see how much they’ll swallow: As long as I refer to Italy as “my homeland” and other Italians as “my people,” they’ll believe pretty much anything. I don’t know who most of the local statues are, so I tell the muffins they’re all great artists and poets and lovers. Once, just for the hell of it, I told a psychology major from the University of Maryland that a public staircase was part of the Spanish Steps, which she’d never even heard of. Another time, I told this blonde from Michigan State that the public library was the Parthenon, and she cooed like I’d just given her a diamond.

For dinner, I usually take them to some cheap little hole in the wall, someplace deserted where not even the cops eat. American girls think candlelight means “romance,” not “deteriorating public utilities,” so they just poke their nipples through their J. Crew sweaters and never notice that there’s no electricity. Just as well, because Roman restaurants aren’t exactly the cleanest. After a bunch of fast-talk about the menu, I get them the special, which is usually some anonymous pasta with spinach and day-old shrimp, and whatever cheap, generic, Pope’s-blood chianti’s at the bottom of the list.

By this time, they’re usually standing in a slippery little puddle. Going in for the kill, I walk them past one of Rome’s famous 2,000-year-old open cesspools. Then, as we open the door to my shitty efficiency, I kiss them on the eyelids so they don’t see the roaches, making sure the first thing they see is the strategically positioned artist’s easel I bought at some church sale. That’s usually all they need to see and, like clockwork, they fall backwards on my bed with their Birkenstocks in the air.

I mean, they’re hardly Italian women, but we have a saying here in Europe: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

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Personally to me, the most important point he makes is at the very end of the article, which I have taken the liberty to underline and italicize. I think it’s important both men and women understand that key statement about why guys REALLY desire this type of woman in their lives. And in understanding why, you will gain a better perspective into your OWN relationships and how to give them new life.

The Back-Burner
by Dan Kennedy

She’s smart, she’s beautiful, she laughs at all your jokes, she knows your darkest secrets… and your girlfriend has no idea she exists. She’s your back burner – your plan B. The one you keep waiting in the wings. And your life wouldn’t be the same without her.

I bet you have someone on the side. In fact, I know you do: someone who will flirt back at your mere off-the-cuff flash of wit or listen, rivited, to your stories of recent semi-daring adventure. A woman who makes you feel like you’re still, how do I put this… appealing to the opposite sex, ten years younger, dangerous, infinitely charismatic, yet also a man of restraint and very strong principles, like a sexy cross between that guy from Scrubs, Bono, and the pope. She’s your back burner – that “friend” who just happens to be female, just happens to be someone you could see yourself dating if it weren’t for the small fact that, well, you’re already in a relationship.

I have a back burner, too, and I’d be with her now if I hadn’t, eight years ago, somehow conned my beautiful, intelligent, well-traveled, funny girlfriend into committing to me. But what I’ve learned after years of being in a serious relationship is that a man needs a woman to help him not feel like an ordinary, everyday, Advil-taking, TV-watching bore. And that woman cannot be your girlfriend.

When I first met my first back burner, Tammy, she was a young actress, by which I mean she bartended and modeled leather and vinyl corsets for a small regional fetishwear catalog. She was the perfect contrast to my girlfriend at the time, a suburban, sensible 28-year-old fitness instructor convinced I had the potential to become a well-organized vegetarian with long range goals and a more optimistic outlook on life – an agenda that concerned me because it seemed to leave little time for drinking excessively and sleeping in.

Tammy always seemed to be killing time at one of my favorite downtown hangouts, waiting for me to share a story or joke. And when I did, she’d laugh hard, like she’d just heard it for the first time, because, well, she had. (Unlike my girlfriend, who was, I imagine, starting to feel like the road manager on a Catskills comedian’s never-ending tour.) Any anecdotes I shared with Tammy seemed to come out of my mouth in a casual and cavalier fashion, free of the realities, constraints, and little indignities of day-to-day living. These anecdotes were about a life that sounded so good – even to me – that they somehow let me feel like the man I’d always pictured myself to be but was pretty damn sure I wasn’t.

Allow me to illustrate. Guess which exchange I had with Tammy and which one I had with my girlfriend…

Exchange 1

Her: Hey, how are you!

Me: Great… just got back from skiing in Sun Valley for a week. Yeah… [long stretch that probably comes off as luxurious and athletic] we got lucky, just, like, seven powder days in a row… just basically ski all day, then go to awesome dinners at night with some friends from L.A. who had flown in to ski with us…

Exchange 2

Her: Are you okay?

Me: Yeah, it’s just… Goddamn, my knees are killing me from last week. It kind of freaks me out a little bit.

Her: Why didn’t you take Advil?

Me: Honey, I can’t go taking Advil every time I go skiing, as if I’m 90 years old or something. [trying to stretch back and legs] Plus, I don’t even think it’s from skiing as much as from having to carry the gear from baggage claim all the way to the rental car shuttle. Do we have a heating pad? Didn’t we buy one when I did my hamstring thing at my softball game?

Now, I was never the cologne-soaked desperado calling home at five to play the working-late card so that Tammy and I could sadly dry hump our way through a Coldplay CD. On the contrary, my back-burner relationship remained innocent. Okay, maybe innocent isn’t the right word. The truth is, no matter how much I told myself I wasn’t going to do anything wrong, there was always some seediness below the surface. A moment when, even though I was armed with the most gentlemanly intentions, I’d look at my gorgeous back burner from across the table at lunch and suddenly realize I’m thinking things like “If one thing goes even slightly wrong at home in the next six months, I’m going to see if I have a chance at getting on top of this woman and not rolling off until we’re smoking post-coital cigarettes and talking about how we took too long to finally get to this.”

I would even fantasize about pushing the envelope with a terrible conversational joke that I would probably later find every reason to feel guilty about, the one that starts with my back burner asking me about how my girlfriend was doing, and me responding with something like “She’s dead, actually. Yeah so she’s just…” [I use my hand to make a sort of "out of the picture" gesture]

But none of that ever happened, thanks to a system that kept me platonic, kept me from caving in. Whenever my mind drifted from harmless flirtation toward actual temptation, I summoned a few sobering facts: “She’s eight years older than I am, and she evidently reached that age where she can spend an entire afternoon slamming pitchers of draft beer in a tavern and showering strangers with photos of her old (i.e. dead) cat while doing her ‘happy crying’.” If those two facts failed to cool things down in my head, I simply pictured her smoking menthol 100s in an old terry-cloth robe. This was the perfect system, imagining her this way. This was how to quell any urges that might exist, I told myself.

As time passed, the system ultimately gave way to something else – the natural shelf life of the back-burner relationship. Sooner or later, the funny, daring, super version of you has to make an exit before the real, day in, day out version shows up and ruins the whole thing. Tammy and I are proof positive that you can’t maintain a back burner forever. Both of our ordinary selves showed up around the same time and ended it all. We were talking on the phone when she told me she had “rescued some malnourished kitties” that had been hanging by her place in Harlem, where she had been living with the idea that saving money on rent meant she’d be able to pull together enough cash to renew the registration tags on her car. Tammy’s yammering about her impounded second-hand sedan and calcium-deficient strays wasn’t exactly phone-sex material. But in all fairness, I wasn’t helping when I went on about how my girlfriend and I have been stressed about money, trying to save up so we can put a down payment on an apartment in the city.

You could really hear the fizzle.

Tammy led to Kathleen. After that lost its luster, I met Leanne. Back burner begat back burner. So why did I even need the attention of another woman? I mean, I know we’re genetically hardwired to think about mating with as many females of the species as possible during our all-too-brief time on earth. But the fact is, there’s only one woman I truly want to spend my remaining days with. I love my girlfriend. She makes me laugh; we can still stay up all night talking; when we travel, she wants the aisle and I want the window; at home we like watching the same movies and shows. All signs of true love, as I see it. And there’s maybe the biggest sign of all: two people slowly realizing that over the years they both made the decision to stay together, even after the opening-night dazzle had begun to fade.

The back burner is just a place to feel like you can still be the more mysterious and exciting version of yourself. If it were to ever go beyond that, well, that’s reality, and that’s a whole different ball game. I’ll always have those benign, fleeting moments of fantasy about taking it to the next level with the back burner, because its natural to want to feel like you’ve still got it and that if you were out there again, you could still get it.

…which is why I’ve got a lunch coming up with my current back burner. I’m not planning on having an affair or breaking up; I’m just saying, you know… maybe something happens to the woman in your life and you’re forced to have sex with other women. Maybe she leaves you to join the Peace Corps. Maybe she falls for the trainer from her gym who is a professional surfer in his spare time. You would obviously, basically, have to move on to sleeping with several other women totally guilt-free.

Listen, it could happen.

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…So you’d better appreciate

Why I’m Cool (With Being Uncool)
by Dan Kennedy

Comes a time in every man’s life when he realizes that wearing ironic t-shirts, sporting asymmetrical haircuts, and listening to noise rock is no longer appropriate (or enjoyable). Dan Kennedy has reached that point–and he couldn’t be happier…

I officially give up.

For the past 20 or so years, I have spent far too much time and money doing things that I thought made me cool. I read vaguely liberal weeklies in cafes, looking like I wanted to be left alone. I listened to ska for awhile, insisting that so-called pop music bored me. I purchased several $375 shirts from British boutiques. I even highlighted my hair, hoping to look a little more rock n’ roll.

After all this, I’ve come to only one conclusion: I’m tired.

I’m folding, or whatever they say in poker, which I never learned how to play and which has gotten very cool lately. Does folding mean quitting?

I’m not going to lie–all those years spent aligning myself with hipster culture did win me the company of a few attractive women. The girls I met were usually cute, charismatic community-college narcissists who subsisted on plain yogurt and pots of brown rice and beans. They lived like pretty hobos who had developed seductive traits like stubbing out their Camel Lights at the halfway point in an attempt to ration them.

When I wasn’t busy courting these women, I spent my time drinking beer in local clubs where I knew the doorman or standing around at small house parties, bashfully reaching into some friend of a friend’s fridge for cans of beer, summoning the confidence to seem unaware of the fact that I’d brought none with me. Slower nights consisted of renting movies and staying in. And here’s where the effort really started to kick in. There was nothing more secretly heartbreaking and difficult to pull off than acting excited to be walking out of the local video store with Fellini’s 8 1/2 or a Noam Chomsky documentary while leaving behind a copy of the evidently less hip Beverly Hills Cop or Stripes on the comedy shelf.

When I’d get home, I’d usually watch intently at first, trying to feel brilliant and, above all, very interested and very clear on just how compelling the film was. But within 15 minutes, I’d inevitably be thinking, “Damn it. There’s something about this that I’m just not getting. Watch harder! Come on, let’s do this!” Another 15 minutes and all I could think was, “Jesus, Noam Chomsky, we get it: You feel that the profit and loss economics of mass media drives a biased agenda. Would it kill you to incorporate a hilarious detective from Detroit acting like a flamboyant gay man in order to get into a fancy Beverly Hills restaurant, genius?”

Fact is, with the exception of rollerblading and college, I’ve tried just about every cultural movement of my generation on for size, but they never really fit. I tried to rock a more punk look and had a three-quarter length black leather jacket that, for reasons I can’t explain, I always wore with a white V-neck t-shirt and a black beanie. I sort of looked like Joe Pesci when he breaks into Macaulay Culkin’s house in Home Alone. I tried to hang with that whole grunge scene, but somehow, when I rocked the flannel shirt and boots, I wound up looking like a handyman with a steady gig at a cozy bed-and-breakfast.

Right around the time the Seattle scene was on its way down, I got the first inkling that I didn’t have many shots at being cool left in me–I wasn’t going to get up, dust myself off, and try much more. One night I was standing in a club, pretending to look like I “get it” as Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth played a solo gig by rubbing his guitar black anf forth on a metal folding chair. In the middle of this perfect storm of screeching, I realized I wanted my $20 back. Not that I was counting, but it was probably the 2,408th time I’d been standing somewhere like this, attempting to convince myself and a stranger in my peripheral vision that I was really into what was going on. It was also suddenly pretty hard to ignore that I had arrived at an age where the 21 and 22 year olds at the show were, well, way younger than I was. Instead of pretending to understand what Thurston was doing onstage, my attention shifted to how much my feet hurt. My back was just on fire. Putting on a good show for well over a decade had taken its toll. Going out to gigs like this one; ironically drinking cheap canned beer in well-worn dives with people who brag about not having televisions; acting interested in really broad discussions about foreign polity with stoned record-store clerks; making a point of ignoring cute girls in hopes of getting their attention while trying to convey the vibe that I was more intense than their boyfriend–it got to be a full time job. It started to feel a lot like punching the clock. And was this job ever going to get any easier?

Now, this isn’t the sort fo message I’d ever deliver to the kids out there, and saying what I’m about to say won’t get me a lot of spoken-word gigs at South by Southwest or Sundance, but here goes: Being driven by pop culture is painful past age 30… for everybody. And by everybody, I mean you, me, and the loved ones, coworkers, passersby–all who bear witness to one’s aging and belabored bid to remain on the so called cutting edge.

Mustering the determination to be the hippest adult on the block is a long road paved with dads and uncles who still get high and 40 year old guys who talk about this month’s band with conviction instead of a simple note of interest. Riding that road for too long brings to mind a saying about being a motorcycle rider: There are two kinds of riders, one who has crashed, and one who hasn’t yet. I rode a motorcycle for a summer when I was 28 and have always felt lucky to have sold it before ever having crashed. But Christ, I’m 39 now, and I’ve officially hit a wall.

Getting out wasn’t easy. If you’ve been buying the myth of cool as long as I have, you’re not going to spend 20 years pursuing it and then get out clean overnight. It required patience. Each day was punctuated by a thousand tiny decisions that seemed simple but carried a lot of weight.

For example:

Moment: Should I get those black and red skull Vans that the 16 year old guy on the skateboard was wearing downtown last night?

Tiny Decision: When my dad was my age, he had a mortgage, a wife, a 16 year old daughter, and a 10 year old son. No, I will not go for the Vans.

Some of the tiny decisions were less painful then ever before, thanks to the anonymity of online shopping. Up until music became something you got on the internet in the privacy of your own home, buying the first Boston album meant facing the impossibly skinny record-store clerk with spiked hair. The video store was no longer a place where I left my favorite movies on the shelf. Instead I simply hit up Netflix, clicked on Elf, clicked on Tootsie, clicked on Old School, Stripes, Groundhog Day, Caddyshack… Ah, the pleasure of not having my head X-rayed by the brainy, judgmental stare of a 23 year old video store clerk with chunky black glasses.

After a few years of daily victories like these, after years of not spending all my time and money and energy doing what I thought I was supposed to in order to be cool, I noticed that I had more time and money and energy. Dull as all the little changes were, things started to get interesting when I had the opportunity to figure out what I actually like.

I enjoy writing, it turns out. I like traveling and do it constantly. I’ve had the same girlfriend for eight years. I have a real couch. I have a real bed. I couldn’t tell you the name of one member of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. I have no interest in trading my skis for a snowboard. And nowhere in my apartment will you find weed stashed in a sad little wooden box that I bought in Oregon when I was 26.

I also gained an important piece of insight: I’ve seen enough people come and go. I’ve watched more than enough flavors of the month melt in the sun and run off. That really hot, tattooed, devil-doll chick from the last city you lived in? The one with the penchant for fast cars and sex in public places? She finally went into rehab, got married, and now owns a house on 40 acres and an inn in Vermont. Even the lead singer from that postpunk band you loved back then, the one who wrote those anthems about doing nothing with your life because it was more fun? You find out everyone in the band bought mansions after that record came out. Meanwhile, you’re 39 and still renting. It’s right about then that you realize it never really mattered what strangers thought of you. Personally, I realized these strangers don’t even exist– these people in my peripherial vision I’m convinced might notice anything from my nose hair trimmer to my shame-spiral-inducing Ipod playlists, these phantom judges I’ve been striving to impress: hip-looking strangers on sidewalks, anonymous peers at gigs in dive clubs, and girls who watched Fellini films. How much of my life so far had I lived for them? How much cumulative time was I never going to get back?

There definitely were moments in the process of becoming uncool–bumps in the road, you might say–that were a little tricky. I bought a rain jacket, for instance. This might seem small, but after thousands of rainy days spent getting thoroughly soaked in thrift-store jackets, I came in from the storm and bought a coat that–get this–kept me from getting wet in the rain. There is probably nothing less hip than a $300 Patagonia rain jacket the color of eucalyptus (um, green). And I will be perfectly honest with you and admit that, yes, I did get a little carried away and bought rain boots too. Okay, and some black Gortex pants. A rain suit, if you will. The first time that I realized I had to walk across town in a New York City rainstorm I was actually prepared for, this little panic of a thought raced through my head: “Jesus, am I just 10 years away from being that crazy old guy riding around town in shorts and black dress socks with 20 little pinwheels and a CB radio affixed to the handlebars of a 3-wheel bicycle?”

Maybe this was an embarrassing road I was headed down, even worse than the 40-year-old-wanting-to-be-young direction I was headed in. Maybe I should be worried. But man, even contemplating it for a minute became exhausting. The truth is, I stopped humoring the voice that told me to stay young and started to face a startling truth:  It’s not always about me. That is to say, relax–nobody notices the rain suit.

So I’m finally, confidently, ready to remove the word guilty from the phrase guilty pleasure.

Watch this:

Ladies and gentlemen, I am willing to admit publicly, right now, that currently I sincerely, without hipster irony, love falling asleep most nights to a sweet, strong cocktail of Steely Dan, Joe Jackson, and Supertramp.

That felt pretty good. Okay, I’ll do another one…

I love the Southwestern Lobster Roll appetizer at Red Lobster. I love to have it with a Diet Coke for dinner. Last night when I was at the Lob, they were playing “Africa” by Toto on the restaurant’s sound system, and I was eating at the bar alone, enjoying it all. Loving it.

Yes! This feels awesome.

I think Ghostbusters, The Wedding Singer, and L.A. Story are pitch-perfect classic American comedies. And I never liked Ingmar Bergman. There. I said it.

I think I’d been carrying that last one around for awhile. Okay, let’s see…

While I respect your diligence in listening to and pledging your allegiance to your suddenly new favorite band, Clap Your Hands on the Supersonic Chemical Death Cab, lately I’m sticking to Rush for the fast songs and “Eyes Without A Face” by Billy Idol for the slow jam.

Okay, reader, now you! You say one!

[Long pause]

Hey, you do one!

Okay?

Hello?

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The e-mail was called “have become available to Linux users since the first release.” and began thusly:

ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX Now for upcoming I thought I was kill at least 89 in BaghdadTwin attacks.downloads now in Y! Music’s TV Wants You. when you find yourself cracking up uncontrollably.I had noIdol begins this week! and you’ll discover that this man isn’t just a smart-ass, but one really smart guy.I’d love to be involved, but I just find it hard to be motivated to do another screenplay right nowand you’ll discover that this man isn’t just a smart-ass, but one really smart guy.I’d love to be involved, but I just find it hard to be motivated to do another screenplay right nowUniversity bombings Check out filming in your area. Is it time for your star to shine?Nigeria clashes prompt Shell evacuationsthat was the best career choice for me.

Then Mr.(?) William went on to recommend what he called “a hot stock pick about to soar through the ceiling, bringing 300% of first day power” and to buy this stock now so you can “ride the sweet ride to the top.”

The stock was “PHYA” – Physicians Adult Daycare – and the e-mail ended with “Check exciting info on your broker website about that amazing stock! WARNING: It is impossible to PURCHASE this exciting share via online brokers site. PLEASE telephone YOUR brokers AND MAKE your order. BUY this exciting share on MON DAY!!!”

And for those of you who don’t know, any stock that is un-buyable via normal brokerage means is a “pink sheet” or “Over-The-Counter” stock…which in normal terms means it’s probably a smelly load of shit.

Now normally, I just delete these kinds of stupid e-mails just like you do. But not this time. No. This time I got curious. I wanted to see what would really happen over the longer term if someone really decided to take the stock touting advice of spam.

So I tracked the performance of this “hot buy” over the course of the next month, and I think the following chart speaks for itself:

As you can see, following Mr. William’s advice would have lost me around 60% of my portfolio’s value in less than a month. Statistically, you’re really better off taking your money to a casino and playing slots or blackjack. Literally.

Better luck next time, William. Time to get out of the stock ‘pump and dump’ business and go back to asking people if they want to supersize those fries.

But you may be thinking to yourself (pssh, right) “Ok Greg, but that is just one spam stock recommendation. You can’t make such a blanket statement as you have based solely on one example.”

Well, ok, wiseass.

Let’s look at this 2nd e-mail I received from a “Cartwright C. Virginia” called “citizens living overseas.”

This e-mail read:

Investors Are excited As “Hound Dog” Continues make the news! More news
expected Thursday!

The Motion Picture Group
Symbol: MPRG
Price: $0.22 UP 16% today

Investors are grabbing up MPRG as the media continues to buzz about
Dakota Fanning’s new film “Hound Dog”. Volume jumped 350% and price
climbed another 16% today alone. Jump in and grab MPRG first thing
Thursday.

The e-mail then goes on to cite several fragmented passages from some semi-well-known classical works of literature, and finally ends up concluding with a cut-and-paste discussion about horse racing.

(seriously though, does anyone actually make trading decisions based on this kind of hokey bullshit?)

Ok, well anyway I decided to also track this Motion Picture Group stock. Here are my findings (which should not be at all surprising to you):

Sure, there was a pop there at the end, but who cares? This piece still lost well over half its value. (or… “value”)

This is complete B.S. and anyone who follows the advice of SPAM should probably be barred from reproducing.

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But when you get the kind of mail I sometimes get, it really makes ya want to stop for a bit and wonder what’s going on here…

Reprint of an actual e-mail letter I received on (of all days) Christmas from “bob” (obviously fake) from an e-mail address that was also fake:

“You are a FUCKING scam artist…a snake oil salesman…I hope your dick rots off, scumbag.  I hope you’re happy to have wasted my time…why should i pay an asshole like you to get rid of this fuckin’ virus?  I can just let my insurance pay for another asshole to give me some goddamned snake oil cure.

I am sending every BLACK thought your way in the hopes that you will DROP DEAD and rid the world of one more LOSER.

FUCK OFF DICKWAD…”

End quote.

Nice guy, huh? I really should remember to buy him a card or something. And you know what the funny thing is? This guy didn’t even BUY my product! Nope. He just up and decided to send me his “blackest” without even knowing who I am or trying what I sell.

Some people out there are fucking crazy. Take this letter I got on November 8th, as another example:

“well first of all you could say that there 6 people out of 726 that it didnt help and you dont know why well you are lying and everyone is thinking surely i wouldnt be one of them people and it comes to find out it really isnt helping no one, im not stupid you are a fraud and i will report you!! it doesnt work you have already took my money and i have almost got my page going to let everyone no how fake the stuff you say works is ive also hired a lawyer and plan on getting this stuff solved with you.”

Oooh. I’m scared. “dr.smith” hired a lawyer and is gonna come and get me! Help! And that webpage he/she has “almost got going” is surely to drive me out of business for sure, for sure.

This elegant e-mail came from a “dr.smith” (exactly as printed, lowercase, poor grammar, punctuation, and all.) Obviously fake, and was also from a fake e-mail address.

Yet another coward hiding behind fake names and e-mail addresses, who never even bought from me, cussing me out for no real reason whatsoever.

Seriously now, the morons who sent these two e-mails must think I’m pretty stupid not to be able to tell what’s what. I can do traces on them and also look up order histories in mere seconds. Who do they think they’re fooling anyway?

Well, let me tell you there have been over a couple thousand people buy the particular product these e-mails were about and almost everyone has been happy. I get rave reviews on it all the time… but… every once in awhile one of these statistical anomalies rears its ugly head in a very weird way.

Oh well. Moving on…

This next one wasn’t hate mail, and I don’t think I have the original e-mail to quote from anymore, but I want to share it with you just the same. It came from a guy in Canada who sent me an e-mail saying he bought something I sell but never received it.

So… I e-mailed him back saying I would gladly replace it if I could only get his info so I could look up his order. He e-mailed me back a receipt from Paypal that “clearly showed his proof of purchase.”

Except for one thing… after looking at it for a minute and doing a little research on eBay (it had an eBay item number on it), certain things didn’t look quite right and I could see it was a forgery he made in Photoshop or some other graphics program using a receipt he got for buying jeans from another guy in Canada!

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Ah, whatever. This kind of thing happens so often, I should be used to it by now. But… I’m not. Things like this still surprise me and make me shake my head.

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