Monday, February 19, 2007

Doesn't Ploy Well With Others

It looks like I need a new shtick. After the Latin poetry debacle, some of you suggested that I work up a new ploy to impress chicks. Okey-dokey, as Hannibal Lector used to say.

Since some of you are relatively new to my blog, you might want to start out with some history on my attempts to intrigue the ladies. I have tried out new gigs before. One attempt, described in "What A Friend We Have In Cheesiness," was sort of in keeping with the poetry theme. At least the poetry that resulted was in English, not Latin. But the little poem we came up with wasn't something you would expect to hear my pal Garrison Keillor read on "Writer's Almanac." I had to end up shelving that one after I got slapped up side the head a couple times.

Another great idea was peddling a supposed movie role to unsuspecting popsies; I talked about this one in "I Can Make You A Star." Unfortunately this plan required that I lie. Well, maybe not lie, but certainly mislead. I have no moral qualms about lying my ass off to get laid, don't get me wrong, I'm just not good at it. So that one had to bite the dust eventually as well.

The Catullus thing you know about already. It seems that thousands of men run around quoting Latin love poetry incessantly to young girls in bars, so the Catullus book goes back to the dust bunny farm.

Which brings us to now. I need something new, something unique, something that will Make Chicks Dig Me.

Some of you may be thinking, "Hulles, why do you need a ploy at all? Why don't you just use your natural charm to win women over and make them date you? Once they sleep with you they'll be hooked for life."

Well, thanks, but the old natural charm supply is down to seeds and stems these days. It seems to have been replaced in my repertoire by unrelenting cynicism. You were very perceptive to bring up the "sleep with me" thing though. It's only closing the deal that needs the work. I can handle it from there by calling upon my Tantric Sex Secrets of the Orient training and my own innate sex doggedness.

Unfortunately every time I think about Ploys To Make Chicks Dig Me I think about severe dorks I have known (that aren't me) that have carried this to the extreme. I would never do this, of course.

The first guy I always think about is some poor man in Portland who went to every open stage on the folk music circuit and played the spoons. He carried a case around with all his spoons in it and would somehow select a couple and during every song that anybody else did he would clackety-clacketa-clacketa more or less in time to the music. But this was his thing. He obviously had read something somewhere that said if you want to be popular it helps to have a talent. So he picked playing the spoons. I will hand it to him, though -- he pretty much had the spoon-playing niche to himself. Unlike me with Catullus' Latin love poetry.

Another guy locally here has a similar gig going on with bongo drums. He pops up like a mushroom at any bar that has a live band and chimes right in on his bongos whether the band needs bongo accompaniment or not. And most don't, frankly. Bongo Boy scares me a lot.

Yet another person that I know of carries a couple of cameras around to snap people's (generally women's) pictures and then talk about what a good photographer he is, yadda yadda yadda. This guy has not yet gotten his lights punched out in my presence but he's skated the edge a number of times. For some reason people seem to feel that having some dickwad take their picture is an invasion of their privacy. I can't understand this myself.

Almost forgot one -- I recently wrote about some old guy (who isn't me) who uses the tired "I'm a sensitive writer type" spiel to chat up the cookies. Disgusting.

You know, after talking about all these losers, not excepting yours truly, I think I'll just go back to the old "hand out a business card and tell 'em to email me if they want to" routine. At least I can maintain some shred of dignity that way. Too bad they never do email me. But that's okay. I have you all.

Although to be honest I have been working on a new clogging routine. You've never seen "Stairway to Heaven" clogged like I can clog it. I'm reserving it as a secret weapon to Get Chicks To Dig Me if you guys wimp out.

-- Hulles

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

So long as the clogging routine requires you to wear tights, and as long as the tights come off at the bar at the end of the performance! Come on man, you don't need a gimmick - even if it is a tight wearing clogger that disrobes at the bar! You're good enough on your own!

Erin

Anonymous said...

Or, maybe instead of quoting Catullus, you could quote some rosebuds-themed poetry, like "To His Coy Mistress" or "A Late Aubade", and then they would realize that life is too short to pass up an oportunity with you, and they would be like putty in your warm hands, and melt.

Erin

Heather Harper said...

Chicks dig authors.

The literate ones, anyway...

Heather Harper said...

That would be the literate chicks, not the literate authors. (That would be redundant.)

cK said...

Note to self: Hide teak spoon case until AFTER marriage license is signed.
-cK

Kristen Painter said...

I think you should be the guy who hands out lattes or Godiva. Women groove on coffee and chocolate.

Anonymous said...

In the movies one of the classic ways to meet a chick is when you're playing a game of football on the beach and the quarterback tosses the ball in the chick's direction. Maybe it hits her, or maybe you run into her, but either way contact is made. So, since you have neither a beach nor a football, I'm thinking you should throw your laptop at the next woman you see.

Heather Harper said...

LMAO, Rett!

Stephen Blackmoore said...

I see two problems here. The first is that you're not in a target rich environment. Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of beautiful women out in St. Paul (you've mentioned a few of them, in fact), who you manage to chat up on a daily basis. It is, after all, the Garrison Keillor hot bed of pretentious young literary ladies who like to read Catullus.

And that leads us to the second problem. You don't need beautiful, charming and witty. You don't need erudite, learned and intelligent. Strong women, who know what they want, who are dynamic, goal oriented and enthusiastic about life, they're just going to leave you depressed and sad as they move in with their alcoholic creative writing professor who, despite looking like a rumpled bed, is, you know, not just a professor, but a writer. And writes stirring memoirs of a young boy sent to war in Africa and how he watches the disintegration of his tribe and then, when he comes of age, he realizes that there's more to life than violence and bloodshed. Maybe, oh, I dunno, butterflies. Butterflies that remind him of his prostitute mother who was gunned down in the street before his eyes by the Somali warlords who then brought him to violence. Butterflies who, when they fly, remind him of his momentary boyhood and all of his possibilities. And then, as his realization slowly unfolds before him, and he thinks that, perhaps he can become like that butterfly. New, beautiful and free. He dies. Alone. Maybe from syphillis.

Anyway, what you need to do is lower your standards. And once they're lowered, take outlaw Willie Sutton's advice who, when asked why he robbed banks, replied, "Because that's where the money is."

Your bars are not seedy enough. Your late night forays to the dank underbelly of society not low enough. Find that one, desperate, lonely woman, the one hanging on to the edge of the bar with that glazed look of Xanax and gin. Sure, she looks like she's been ridden hard by life, but that's exactly what you're looking for. Because she's lowered her standards, too. In herself, in you, in the world. Her expectations have been felled like a mighty oak by a succession of abusive boyfriends who go for cigarettes and don't come back, performance reviews in her cube farm job that always use the word "mediocre". A dog that eats her shoes and pees on her best dress.

See? Next to all that, you're a real charmer.

Hulles said...

"An magic marker" should have read "a magic marker," obviously. See, if I would have had a literate chick digging me while I wrote this stuff she could have corrected that before it went out.

cK said...

Maybe you and Erin should invent break-away tights. You know, like basketball players entering the game ripoff those break-away warm-up pants.

It would make ankle tattoo revealings that much easier late of a night in a Russian bar.

(I cannot envision how to more easily put the tights back on. But that night was really funny.)
-cK

Hulles said...

ck, I'll pass your break-away tights idea on to my pal T. M. Lauth, designer of underwear with pockets. Yep, it was a fun evening. I'm proud of our pal Erin for her boldness, even if she was MOTHified at that point.

Anonymous said...

I wasn't MOTHified!!! I'm just crazy like that! (Well, maybe a little MOTHified).

Back in college, I showed off my tattoo to some bikers in Northwest Arkansas - I think they thought I was crazy, because why would some college chick be showing her single ankle tattoo to heavily-clad, tattooed bikers!? They admired it with a mild amount of chagrin.

Erin

Hulles said...

E, truth be told I just wanted to use the made-up verb MOTHified; you were fine.

Everybody else -- we were at Moscow On The Hill in Saint Paul, which becomes MOTH for an acronymophile. Hence MOTHified.

Just be happy I didn't say you were fubar, which is an acronym I truly truly love being a part-time computer geek as well as a full-time sex dog.

Heather Harper said...

"Now all I have to do is become an author. Sigh."

What do you think you are now?

Hulles said...

Um...sex dog? But speaking seriously, thanks for the vote of confidence Heather. I appreciate it. XO.