Dont Mince Words

I’ve been in Los Angeles four years. It’s hard to believe my stay has exceeded my time in New York. My LA Story isn’t filled without a few ironies:

Tan lines: For the past two years, I’ve had a vitamin d deficiency.
Body image: I’ve had fewer dates since I’ve lost 120 pounds.

Last night, I was at a special event in the New York section of the Paramount lot. While I was eating sushi on Delancey, my girlfriend asked me if I missed New York. For the first time, without hesitating, I was able to say, “No. I miss my friends, but I have friends all over the U.S. I miss.”

Besides, LA is filled with just as many soulless assholes as New York. Today my heart swings.

I’m kind of the grouchy old lady of the internet. I remember the internet when it was just tech geeks and sci fi guys who couldn’t get laid. Now, everyone is on the internet thanks to mass social networking sites like Myspace and LinkedIn.

I have friends and I have a professional network that I’ve maintained for 25+ years through paper and now by a digital address book. When someone told me that Myspace was no longer a recruiting tool for bands that couldn’t afford their own website database, I got on to, of course, put a dating profile up. What I got was spam from comedians and musicians asking me to see the shows. I set my six-friend profile to private. I joined LinkedIn years ago and didn’t maintain my profile because my old fashioned way was working.

This morning I received a LinkedIn friend request from my old boss in New York. After I accepted, I received a “You might also know” list of ten people. Check out how connected and random this is:

Ivan – a guy I dated
Lauren – a woman who runs a marketing network luncheon group I attended in 2003
Arthur – he dated a friend of mine
Cordes – she’s a worthless headhunter I tried using
Suzanne – she went to my grad school in VA
Terry – I met him at a technology event
Mark – my brother’s ex-roommate from 1994.

So, 70 percent of the people LinkedIn suggested I get in touch with I actually knew. That’s either one smart database, or I get around. My nine-colleague profile is expanding thanks to a DB email scrape!

I don’t know what traditional child-rearing is, but I’m sure when I get together with my single-mother friends, the kid is bound to learn something.

Mom and Kid arrived Friday night and requested what any land-locked resident would: sushi. We had fish alfresco where we could dine and scope out the pedestrian meat. Kid quickly learned to play the “gay, straight, married and beat down, or single” game. We got her on big wallet patrol. After a cocktail, I began my fast-track tutorial with Kid which ended with the quote of the night, “You need a strong man who knows what he wants and can make decisions, otherwise, you are just dating a pussy with a dick.”

Kid laughed and responded with, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Since Mom is a teacher, she’s very good at wrap up and summaries and made Kid repeat what she learned in the evening. “Yeah, Mom, I know. If I’m going to waste my time dating, he needs to have an education, a good job, some money, and be handy around the house.”

Our next meeting will include a visit to Home Depot where we’ll teach her the “do-it-yourselfer, contractor, or day laborer” game. The one thing I learned this visit: men look at you more if you have a hot, teen girl beside you.