I might have a blind date one night next week. This would be a friend of Widget Mike, who after hearing about me has decided that he would like to meet me and maybe drink some bourbon. Nice! (See, I am talk-aboutable among men in such a way as to provoke the desire of such an encounter. That is good to know.) I don’t know thing one about this fella, but I mostly trust Mike. The only real risk is he’ll be a supersmoothie, all in Kenneth Cole with more hair products in his bathroom cabinet than I have and wanting to talk all night about absurdity as signifier in the oeuvre of the Coen Brothers. And even that I could handle – hey, I’m game. Also last night at trivia a friend of Mitchell’s joined us, who was not only clever and charming but exceptionally attractive. Really very good-looking indeed, so much so that I was noticing and appreciating it despite myself – usually I try hard to ignore foxy guys because I don’t want to contribute to their heads getting any bigger than they already are; it dismays me when a person I like is one who is widely admired (it also makes me feel common and insignificant to think that my taste is not unique) – and that when his thigh kept coming into contact with mine on the bench upon which we were sitting I got all high school and I was thinking Oh gosh oh golly is he doing that on purpose surely he can’t possibly be because what would such a superb specimen as him be wanting with dorky little old me? Which state of mind I almost *never* get into, so you know how devastating he must have been. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t having a self-esteem crisis, it was great giggly fun. Secret great giggly fun, I should clarify, because Carolyn, who’s met him on a few occasions previously, has such an obvious whopper crush on the guy that I wanted to hand her a drool cup. Can’t discern yet his orientation to her, but when Mitchell, who gave me a ride home, was quizzing me about his friend, whether I found him attractive, etc., I played it cagy and answered that I didn’t want to get into it right then because I didn’t want to step on Carolyn’s toes. I think that’s a fairly unmissable implication, don’t you? (And does the fact of Mitchell quizzing me mean anything?) When we were parting ways after trivia and saying our goodnights, the Superb Specimen bid adieu in a manly way to Mitchell, got hugged by Carolyn, then turned and hugged me. Not that I’m saying that’s a big deal, since most people are more huggy than I am, if they want to put their arms all around people they’ve just freakin met then that’s their business – I’m just setting the scene for you. I said goodnight-see-you-again-maybe, and he replied, in a teasing voice, “What, only maybe?” Karen said that part is very good, she gives it a Flirt++, and also if he likes smart chicks at all I really could not have been luckier than to meet him on trivia night, where everyone’s jaws dropped when I pulled Carole Lombard right out of my ass – not literally of course – and where if I hadn’t been overruled on two of my answers (ahem: by Carolyn) then we might have been contenders in the geography round. On the other hand, if the Specimen does not like smart chicks, the game’s already over. So who knows. I’ll keep you posted. If I don’t hear anything, then maybe sometime soon I will say to Mitchell at a time when Carolyn is out of the office, So how’s your foxy friend? or something like that.

I’m also going to try to work on getting out more with the Widget crew in general. I was shocked last night to learn that there have been numerous wild parties, hiking trips, camping excursions, and the like from which I have been summarily excluded. (That’s how Carolyn and the Specimen know each other.) I was a little bit hurt but tried to suggest in a non-pathetic way that I was available for and interested in such activities, making a joke of it. They were nice, they apologized and clearly meant it, but they said, You know, it’s just a matter of getting to know you – no one knows you very well yet, and you have to get to know people around the office before you start inviting them to outside events. I have been working here for almost a year, I said (scary thought, right?), and you still feel like you don’t know me? They nodded, That’s right we don’t. This is crazy because I feel like I’ve been making myself *so* accessible as a person, I’ve been talking to Mitchell and Nancy about my sister and VP Jeannette about my nutty childhood, I tell Jim and Mike cleaned-up versions of some of my exploits, I swap books with people, I serve and am served by the gossip mill, and I allow friendly jokes to be made at my expense over how I jump when someone comes up behind me or how I sometimes forget to eat lunch. I bring in baked goods. I have absolutely not been closed off to the possibility of making human contact with people at work, I have in fact cannily been conducting myself in such a way that I thought would be conducive to same – because in the past I have been accused of seeming impenetrable to the kind of casual acquaintances one has in a workplace environment, and not being that way is something I now work at – and here it turns out that I’ve been a world-class flop. How can Mike describe me to a good friend of his as potential datemeat if he feels like he barely knows me? How can Jim solicit me to be his good-luck charm at blackjack yet assume without malice that I would not deign to come to his barbecue? I swear, I will never figure these people out. I am hoping that now that I’ve spelled things out for people – I would like to be invited out. I like you and am not, myself, an unlikable person. Please think of me if you are looking for someone to go off and have an adventure with or to join one already in progress– it might finally sink in. Also, I’m going to make it a project to drop by the joint where Mitchell tends bar a few nights a week, maybe with Vanessa, and just be, I don’t know, on the scene and pleasant, so that this is entered into the Widget social record. Vanessa and I watched “The Philadephia Story” last Friday night, and though I must humbly insist that you read the parallel between myself and Katharine Hepburn only in this circumscribed context, I have always had the same problem that the Tracy character in that movie does, I tend to seem to other people not real, not like them, a fascinating concept but somehow not occupying space in the actual world – they think fondly of me, even think I’m a character, but somehow I just don’t *occur* to them as someone who would have fun at a barbecue. This more than anything is I think what I’m referring to when I describe someone as recognizing me. People whom I talk about as recognizing me understand that I have been afflicted with and affected by the Tracy syndrome but are themselves immune from its environmental effects, couldn’t lift me onto a pedestal if they were Magnus Magnusson. My affection for them will always be tinged with that gratitude.

Oh by the way: Mitchell doesn’t have a girlfriend after all. (I was going to add “and approachable” to “pleasant” in the previous paragraph, then thought better of it both on that account and the one of the bar setting.) I thought he did, but either they’ve broken up or I was wrong. Carolyn has also broken up with the long-term boyfriend for whom she’d been planning to relocate within a year or so. Jim did have a girlfriend but now seems not to, though there’s a prospect simmering which last night both the Specimen and I advised him strongly against. And the Specimen himself was described by Mitchell on the ride home last night – this is when all this came up – as “very single.” Mike, in case you are wondering, has a gorgeous girlfriend whom he loves madly and who makes piles of money. Joe and liar-girl seem to have stalled at takeoff, too bad, and Tony, how could I not have known this, has been seeing someone for going on a year. My sister is attracted to a debonair and attentive travel agent, but his name is Dewey and that troubles her.

Now that Andrew’s got the handy search feature enabled, I might go through here one day soon and change a few names. Just being paranoid.

I am reading Jean Kilbourne’s “Can’t Buy Me Love,” which Vanessa loaned to me, and I don’t think I’m going to finish it. (Sorry, Sarra.) I remember seeing one of her films when I was in college and thinking, Wow, that sure packs a wallop, and I am very interested in advertising especially in the scientific sense, but this book is a big letdown for anyone who wishes to approach such study intellectually. It is a shriekfest, science-free except when Kilbourne quotes nifty statistics that I will be trotting out at parties for years to come. My main problem with the book is that in a fundamental sense she seems not to understand capitalism and the free market, or to be willfully ignorant of their precepts. It’s fine for her to be a Socialist, but as an analyst of United States popular culture, she has a responsibility to grasp the principles of the market even if she will never sympathize with them. She keeps trotting out these martial metaphors, companies and advertising agencies having declared war on consumers, bombing them with falsehoods, etc., and doesn’t seem to realize that agencies are competing against other agencies and companies against other companies, that the world of commerce is Darwinian and that entities are going to do what they have to in order to remain afloat. Really now, why would a business want to annihilate the group without which it will not survive? This is sloppy, sensationalistic, and irresponsible writing. She also levels the following charge: “Newspapers are more in the business of selling audiences than in the business of giving people news.” But “giving” people news – Kilbourne’s own word choice is telling – is the opposite of running a business. On the college circuit which touts her, Kilbourne doesn’t exactly “give” lectures, does she? Well, newspapers and magazines are not charitable outlets, either. And if a newspaper were to renounce advertising so that its reportage could remain unsullied by the suggestion of conflict of interest, the price per copy it would have to charge to sustain that non-business model would make it prohibitively expensive for a majority of the population. Look what happened to Ms. magazine. It dropped advertising and the cover price skyrocketed, and its reader base got much older, whiter, and more affluent, so much so that a few years ago it ran a campaign asking its readers each to subsidize one or more subscriptions to be sent to women’s prisons, welfare centers, and poor single mothers. Kilbourne rightly calls attention to the invisibility in most media of poor people and challenges us not to pretend they don’t exist, but doesn’t she want them to be able to afford the newspaper with the job listings in it? Her faux naiveté is also grating, as when she parses a print ad for shoes that shows a little girl running into a woman’s arms and the copy “What’s important is what’s right in front of you.” Kilbourne writes, “One hopes, expects, that what is important to this woman is her child. But no, it turns out that the ad is referring to her shoes.” Right, because it’s an *ad*, get it? Who on earth would spend the money putting a full-page ad in a national magazine reminding women that their children should be important to them? And what percentage of women who would read that magazine are in need of a reminder? I think she vastly underestimates the ability of the American population – and it is not often that I lobby for more credit to be given in this department – to know that they are being manipulated and consciously to recognize advertisements as such. Yes, I know that much advertising works subliminally, and I know that there are major ethical issues surrounding product placement, advertorial, and the dissolution at some publications of the traditional Chinese wall between business and editorial, and these are also concerns of mine, and I do not wish to downplay their real-world impact or to suggest that they’ll go away if we ignore them. But for all Kilbourne has to say about “the cultural climate” and “the cumulative effect” of advertising – I’m not even 100 pages in and already my eyes glaze over at these phrases – she doesn’t excavate precisely what she *means* by them, she doesn’t offer compelling causal relationships between ads and A and B. There’s no original data. I don’t know what’s more offensive, the laziness of writing a book that’s basically a long sermon to the converted or her tacit assumption that the converted aren’t even bright enough to conduct a critical textual analysis, even such a cursory one as I have here. And sometimes she just lies for effect, as when, in a discussion/dismissal of the Absolut Vodka ad series, she writes, “All vodka is essentially the same,” a claim for which there is no endnote, imagine that. This also insults the intelligence of her readers, the overwhelming majority of whom I would bet money can tell Popov from Belvedere. The shoddiness of the whole book in this respect is just making me disgusted. I think I’m going to return it and go back to Waugh.

Today KT was flirting over the phone with a woman who’s part Hungarian. I’m having printer issues and all of IT is on vacation, so in exchange for printing my moussaka recipe, he made me say something in Hungarian for him. Fine, I said, szerbusz baratom, that’s just the hello you would say to a male friend of yours. His eyes widened and he leaned back. He looked at me in disbelief and repeated what he’d heard: “Sorry I bruised your bottom?!” Ah yes, Hungary – it’s a very sexy place. What, you didn’t know that?

(All of the above I wrote at work today. I fully intended to finish tonight – I’ve got stuff to finish with – but it’s late and I’m wrecked and I’ve been in the kitchen doing party prep and then dishes for most of the past six hours. I have two moussakas in my refrigerator and I’m not afraid to use them. Since I’m not getting paid at the Widget again, though, I am back to feeling not particularly inclined to work, so maybe I’ll write some tomorrow. Boy-wise, by the way, the game may indeed be on. I’ll try to find out more tomorrow, and should there ever be any developments, they will be reported here.)