Was Angelina Jolie on a tram in Melbourne tonight being chatted up by a bloke who wasn’t Brad Pitt?
The success of Internet dating sites, speed dating, singles events and books that let people know how to pick up indicates that finding love these days isn’t such an easy task. For any single gentlemen reading this blog who are looking for a lady love (excuse my heterosexism and sexism) but aren’t sure how to go about it, I am happy to pass on something I heard on the tram tonight. Yes, one young chap managed to get the telephone number of a fellow passenger/female by loudly uttering such lines as:
Wow, you’re thirty, I wouldn’t have spotted that. You could be a model.
You really look like Angelina Jolie.
Yes, he actually got her phone number with those lines, so if he can do it you can too. Perhaps “Tram Romeo” has started something beautiful, but if he’s anything like some of the men mentioned in an article on The New York Times website she better read the “right” books. The item by Rachel Donadio is an interesting insight into a rather peculiar form of snobbery:
Still, to some reading men, literary taste does matter. “I’ve broken up with girls saying, ‘She doesn’t read, we had nothing to talk about,’” said Christian Lorentzen, an editor at Harper’s. Lorentzen recalls giving one girlfriend Nabokov’s “Ada” — since it’s “funny and long and very heterosexual, even though I guess incest is at its core.” The relationship didn’t last, but now, he added, “I think it’s on her Friendster profile as her favorite book.”James Collins, whose new novel, “Beginner’s Greek,” is about a man who falls for a woman he sees reading “The Magic Mountain” on a plane, recalled that after college, he was “infatuated” with a woman who had a copy of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” on her bedside table. “I basically knew nothing about Kundera, but I remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh; trendy, bogus metaphysics, sex involving a bowler hat,’ and I never did think about the person the same way (and nothing ever happened),” he wrote in an e-mail message. “I know there were occasions when I just wrote people off completely because of what they were reading long before it ever got near the point of falling in or out of love: Baudrillard (way too pretentious), John Irving (way too middlebrow), Virginia Woolf (way too Virginia Woolf).” Come to think of it, Collins added, “I do know people who almost broke up” over “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen: “‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’ ‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’”
This article really seems to have caught quite a few imaginations – both Pandagon and Feministe have had long threads on what would be a relationship “deal-breaker”.
Obviously it’s a very personal thing – one has to balance the potential benefits of introducing a new partner to the joy of your pet interest that they’d never before been exposed to, against the horrors of realising that the person you really fancy in many other ways simply doesn’t “get” your One True Un-negotiable Thing.
So, I’ve been married for nearly 20 years. Dating is ancient history for me, and it’s hard for me to remember all the various offputting things which would have had me refusing further dates with someone. But one thing I can remember very clearly: one of my deal-breakers has always been a man who wanted to call me “baby”.
If my wife or I had held each other to a taste standard, we’d have lasted about 5 minutes. The differences make it fun, even if the 47th screening of Groundhog Day is more about making fun of irritation. And yes, I’m pretty sure there’s an Adam Sandler movie somewhere in the cupboard (The wedding singer?).
On top of which, I don’t think there’s a single book in the house we both liked, our music collections are segregated into their own ghettoes (or folders on the computer these days) and besides The Carpenters (I like the pathos and the cheese, she likes the tunes) there’s probably nothing we both listen to other than the kids things.
Are we doomed, agony aunts? It’s only been 20+ years. I’m not sure what the deal breaker will be (other than infidelity). Will it be the 48th screening of Groundhog Day? Will Bill Murray finally shatter our happy home?
tigtog, baby please!
I was given Ada and told I absolutely must read it by a loverrr I’d always thought of as a bit of a lightweight, but I saw him in a whole new light after that, and I think of him fondly whenever anyone mentions the book.
Deal-breaker? No sense of humour. Every single other thing is negotiable.
Unless they, you know, smell.
Absolute deal breakers?
Obviously that would be a female with a demonstrated inability to:
Cook,
Clean,
Keep House, etc.
I went on a date with a front-walker, once. The kind of bloke who walks four feet in front of you the whole time. He also insisted on paying for absolutely everything, from tickets to drinks at the bar. And I mean insisted.
Operative word: “Once”.
I hear ya.
Lived with one of those for some time (he had many redeeming qualities). But I spent more time than any girl should ever have to pointing out that I wasn’t the Duke of Edinburgh.
Anyone who says, “I was almost certain that you would be a Capricorn.”
I found the article infuriating and kind of funnny at the same time. There are always going to be things people don’t share or see eye to eye on. The idea of anyone saying, “You don’t have a copy of Proust, bugger off” is just laugable to me. It’s just “Seinfeld” in an intellectual way. David and his love seem to have got it right.
I am not sure the “baby” thing gets said as much these days….
Steve at the pub, you cheeky bugger. Surely you can pick up a counter meal on your way home so a potential love doesn’t have to cook.
Yes, I am not a tall woman so people who take big steps are just being rude and discriminatory.
Anyone ever been to one of those “literary speed dating” things? I believe the State Library of Victoria organised same a few years ago.
Sorry, who is “Angelina Jolie”?
Ho Ho Peter.
Actually, that brings up another deal breaker. Despite Ms. Jolie’s obvious physical charms, the fact that she was romantically involved with Billy Bob Thornton is a deal breaker for me (not that I would in any way entertain the idea that Ms. Jolie would want anything to do with me). She’s either got terrible judgment or a streak of crazy, but in a relationship DO NOT WANT! Plus, there’s the sharp knees thing.
I’m a bookworm but I once had a long term relationship with a girl who I gave a book to as a present about a month after we met. Her immediate response was, “Shit, I don’t read books.” Nevertheless, we lasted quite a long time.And one of my shortest relationships was with some-one who more than shared all my literary and historical tastes, and gave me a copy of The English Patient. We’re still friends and have a great time when we run into each other but we weren’t relationship material. Incidentally, I thought it was one of the most boring movies I’ve ever seen, and I’m also addicted to cinema. Never read the book.
I once sorta went out with a girl who had no sense of humour about music.
Fuck that.
Peter Wood says:
She’s totally over rated, isn’t she? I mean, compare her with Penelope Cruz.
Anyway, I would definitely hesitate to be seen in public with anyone reading ‘The da Vinci Code’ and once left a lunar landing conspiracy theorist standing alone in the NSW Art Gallery.
I’m sorry – Angelina makes my skin crawl.
says:
That’s nothing. I’m a big bookworm, too. Like, I get bulk discounts are Ariel, I’m not kidding. And the mother daughter team who own Ariel go ‘Hiiiii! How are you?!’ whenever I step through the door. So, I meet this lovely girl who curates for a major regional art gallery. She was formerly a ballerina. Our first date is to a Tallis Scholars concert. So, I’m curious what a girl like that reads.
“Oh, nothing. I never read books.”
She has a Masters in Arts Administration from Sydney.
What does that tell us exactly?
For me, and this is from personal experience, it’s less so the tangible things such as literary preference and more so personality traits like being a control freak.
I was lonely when I moved to Melbourne, and made ‘friends’ with a girl I met on the plane. We didn’t have anything in common, except for that plane flight, so in order to get into compromising positions there was a lot of compromising to be done. She didn’t talk about music, books or politics (apart from telling me she was a liberal monarchist. I was lonely, and it was cold). She’d always come to stay at my house until one day I visited her digs: the state of kitchen and the smell of her cat provided impetus for me to leave quickly.
Now … I’ve found someone, I am not lonely anymore, we have a tidy kitchen and my lover has the most wonderful collection of books. And that keeps me happy.
Kim, you should go; that’d make an interesting post. After I mentioned that I’d read Who this week, I’d be stuffed for anything else to say.
Peter, I don’t believe you don’t know who Angelina is. The situation is dire if you don’t and in need of a copy of Who to remedy the situation.
Oh no, David, Angelina emailed and asked for your number
I suspect that when she was going out with Billy Bob she was a little crazier than she is today.
The English Patient is one of my faves, Paul. However, I suspect it’s just a chick flick for chicks who like to think they think.
What do you mean, FDB? Did she not laugh at Leonard Cohen or something? People who take their taste in music too seriously are just wallies.
Yes, Robbo, of course we all have our little flaws.
Cats don’t smell, do they? They’re notoriously clean creatures. Hmmm, you think she would have at least had a tidy kitchen for your first visit. Lovely that you’ve met someone and that things are going well
Angelina Jolie,
quite ugly really, tho’ doesn’t “jolie” denote “pretty” in la langue d’amour? Don’t look for logic in the world of love. Literary snobbery’s a bit of a turn-off, IMHO. Hard to put up with in a cafe, let alone in a more intimate setting…..
Sense of humour? yes!! And I still laugh over Elle McPherson’s response to an Aussie journalist who noted [waspishly?] the absence of books in her expensive apartment: “I don’t think you should have any books that you didn’t write yourself.” Golly – there goes the publishing trade!!
AIICTT I thought Elle a fairly plain girl too, not that you were asking.
Omina vincit amor
XX
XXXXXXXXXX
Darlene wrote:
Again? Tell her I’m washing my back, nose and ear hair and am therefore unavailable
Wish I had a copy of “They Call Me Naughty Lola” on hand to quote from…
David wrote: ‘If my wife or I had held each other to a taste standard, we’d have lasted about 5 minutes.”
I’m hearin’ ya.
Oh David, she’s not pestering you TOO is she?
I told her – rather, I had my person (wife) tell her person – that it just wasn’t on, though I don’t think it was her crummy looks that did it. I mean, it’s completely unfair to refuse a woman just because you find her unappealing, is it not?
Must have been a matter of fidelity.
Ambigulous wrote:
She won’t quit even when you explain your marital situation though. Look at what she did to Brad Pitt. Absolutely relentless – thinks she can leverage the money and that stellar bod to tear you away from small town domestic harmony. I mean, who would give up crying babies, fighting kids, bills, arguments over Dexter vs. whatever that green tomatoes movie is called etc. for a life of leisure, glamour, stunt sex and wealth?
Sheesh!
Sheesh indeed! Voracious hussy is she? We’ve only had 19 phone calls so far; sounds as if you’ve taken the Brunt of her Hunt. Not surprised of course: you’re a much better specimen of Australus Erectus than me [flabby, wise beyond my years, eyes beyond my ears, memory loss, grey hair, did I mention the poor memory?]
I think the film is “Fried Green Tomatoes at the…..” [memory malfunction] and the closing scene hints at the secret murder of a nasty man plus cannibalism, so why is it called a chick’s movie? do some of them enjoy cruelty? Heavens, does Angelina enjoy cruelty??
Well you can have your opinions I will have mine.
Though yeah, she’s moonbat crazy
Why’s she “moonbat crazy”? Just wonderin…
Ps – I would find it very hard to date anyone who listed “Dan Brown” as their favourite author. So sue me!
MY girlfriend was on the train yesterday and got approached by a young man who said “hey…… I’m from Penrif……. can I have your phone number?”
She apparently gave him a cold NO and a death-stare, and was apparently appalled that he would ask like that.
I dunno, it sounds cute, at least he was polite and didn’t indulge in exaggerated flattery, unlike that jolie comparison guy.
——————
Had another female friend who was on the bus, and a huge african-american gentleman who she described as looking like a gridiron player walked straight up to her after getting on and drawled something with a heavy american accent like “mai gahd, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve seen, can i have your number?”
She gave it to him (????) and he called a day later aid said “just wanted to call again and tell you that you are beautiful.”
And that was that. no other calls, no asking for a date.
… Whistle Stop Cafe?
There speaks a man who never sullies his coffee table with Who or New Weekly.
Is it just on trains and trams that people chat each other up? I’ve never seen it attempted on a bus. There’s an interesting sociological question there!
Trains and trams are easier – there are sections where the seats face each other, where buses most of the seats face forward as do the poor bastards standing up for the journey.
I recall one evening coming home on the train in Sydney – it was late and I’d had a bastard of a day, corporate tie askew, sitting in the “communal” bit of the train and staring aimlessly out the window trying to quell a headache. A nice young lady approached me, noticed by two young blokes sitting across amazed at my animal magnetism. She started out with reasonable line of patter “you look tired” etc. but directed the conversation into an invitation to her culty church, to which the two blokes across the train reacted with with peals of laughter. I apologised as nicely as I could in the circumstances.
Trains, I hate ‘em.
David, I suspect that AJ is not a woman to take no for an answer.
That was the film (Fried Green etc):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_Green_Tomatoes_(film)
The film is aka “How to Cook Your Abusive Old Man”.
Mmmm, Steve that’s kind of weird about the “beautiful” guy.
“hey…… I’m from Penrif……. can I have your phone number?”
That is nice and simple and not full of horse dung like the Angelina boy. The thing I can’t work out about her is that after he got off she said to the woman sitting next to her, “I had good feeling about him”. I mean he came off like a total twerp (and she didn’t look anything like Ms Jolie). The silly boy was trying so hard he forget to get off his stop until the driver gave him a yell.
There’s more formality on buses (although I do remember one woman in Brisbane inflicting her tales of parental woe – her dad was a violent drunk – on another passenger she’d only just met).
There was a kind of chatty vibe on the tram and it was beyond peak hour.
Good question, Mark. Since I’ve not had the, er, pleasure of being a public-transport chatter or chattee, I can only speculate that the extra space on trains and trams gives people a confidence boost to behave more naturally.
It would be hard to work up a manly swagger or coquettish twirl in the narrow, lurching aisles of a moving bus, and the whole “personal space” thing is too cramped in the tiny seats. But trains and trams allow for more movement, body language cues and also some space to retreat with honour after the inevitable brush-off.
My wife still dines out on the story of being chatted up by a devastatingly handsome Nigerian fellow at our local train station. I think he made quite an impression!
And despite the nay-sayers here, Angelina gets my vote for UN Ambassador to Hottania. She can illegally adopt me any time she likes.
Why’s she “moonbat crazy”?
Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelina_jolie#Relationships
Eliot, every now and then I get the sensation I could quite possibly warm to you for seconds at a time.
Mercurius nails it:
tigtog says:
Oh, thanks tigtog. I sometimes like to think the girl I left in the NSW Art Gallery stil wonders whether (a) I was ever there with her in the first place, and (b) whether the NSW Art Gallery isn’t itself an elaborate set on a studio backlot.
Check out this picture of Penelope.
Okay, she steps on to the bus at Custom House in Queen Street / the QVB outside Sydney Town Hall. And you’ve got until when the bus reaches Roma Street Station / the Opera House forecourt to clinch the deal.
Just what the hell could you say?
Eliot, I guess you’ve blown it with Angelina and the woman with the Master of Arts or whatever she’s got.
Darlene says:
Yeah, hopeless.
“Just what the hell could you say?”
“That does sound like some hot fun and I appreciate the offer Penelope and I really don’t want to hurt your feelings ‘cos you seem like a nice person but basically you’re just not my type. Hey, you don’t happen to have Scarlett Johanson’s phone number on your PDA do you?”
“Just what the hell could you say?”
The only place I’m gonna go that Tom Cruise has gone is The Danger Zone.
Eliot Ramsey wrote:
I’d say “WTF is up with your makeup lady? Do you always go out dressed like a raccoon?“
I represent the Captain,
It’s my duty to inform you
Of the conditions under which
He comes here.
In one thing he is very strict:
The women must be young and picked,
And as for the men,
Well he don’t want no bums here.
ALL: There must be no bums!
The men must all be very old,
The women hot, the champagne cold.
These are conditions under which he comes here.
ALL: Hooray for Captain Spaulding,
The African Explorer!
He’s brought his name undying fame,
Hooray hooray hooray.
He put all his reliance
In courage and defiance
(And blinded us with science!)
And that is why we say Hoo-
ray, Hooray!
Hey! You really look like Penelope Cruz!
Who would have guessed j_p_z is a Marxist?
But that gives me a blinding flash of inspiration. The next time I try to chat up a beautiful girl on public transport, I’ll sidle up to her, look her in the eye, and say, in a warm romantic tone of voice:
“One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I don’t know.”
I’m still waiting to hear whether she actually did look like Angelina Jolie.
If youse guys are going to be quoting Marx, I’ll have to counter with Eric.
Wreckless Eric that is:
Excuse me
Darlene #8. Don’t you think it would be better if I picked up pizza instead? Counter meals presumably would tend to slide off the plate on the way home. That aside, how does that solve the cleaning/laundry etc issues? nyeh nyeh nyeh.
PC you’re slipping. The answer is at 32.
I don’t really believe in deal-breakers (other than liking George Bush/John Howard), but I do find couples with nothing in common a bit weird.
I once had two housemates whose tastes were so different that if they went to a film they could be certain there was no chance both would like it – one liking it was a bonus. On top of that they fought plenty. Nor, as far as it was possible to tell, was their sex life anything to write home about. Nevertheless, they’d been together for two years, and I still run into them a year later, and they’re still together.
Feral Sparrowhawk: #49. Total & complete political differences I don’t know about, but admiration of a politcal figure I loathe (or vice versa) has not in itself been a problem for me.
Paul Burns #12,
Eliot Ramsay #15. Had a similar experience at the casual mention of the Prime Minister’s name, confused look, then understanding “ahh.. political stuff, I don’t follow it, sorry”. She was an accountant, and was unable (and uninterested) to correctly name one high profile politician, nor state with any accuracy which party was in government. Nor was even one political party able to be named reliably.
Lauredhl #5,
Pavlov’s Cat #6. I have a similar experiences with committed “hind walkers”. Let’s hope they got in touch with your “front walkers”.
Eliot Ramsay #14. Have never experienced romantic discrimination based on literary snobbery (the topic of this thread) but a slavering admirer of the works of Pablo Picasso (whose idea of a dream holiday was to go to Barcelona & spend all day transfixed in front of a wall upon which a Picasso hung) markedly backed off & eventually faded right away after I once inadvertently revealed that despite his obviously superior talent, I plonked Pablo in the same basket as Ken Done & kindergarten kids, and that I would be most uncomfortable with a Picasso Print hanging in my home.
If you geeks didn’t have your noses in books congratulating yourselves for being so clever, you might get more than the occasional root.
In defense of the ‘Slingblade’ and ‘Santa’ actor I would like to say that when HE starts parading around with vials of HER blood – and a motherfucking Che tattoo to boot!- then, and only then, will I question his, whassisanmes, sanity or fuckability or whatever.
Jolie sounds like ‘crazy’. But I wish her all the best in her asylum off Doha.
Oh, it’s worse than that, John Hooper. Everybody knows if you read books you’ll go to Hell when you die.
And you’ll go blind!
In defence of geeks:
mr tog and I had had a few dates, but when we seriously suspected we were meant for each other was when I spotted an astrophotography lecture at Sydney Town Hall by David Malin in the paper, and I rang him and invited him to accompany me.
Sure, we still had some courting to do after that to be absolutely sure, but that was the click moment.
And you know this how, exactly?
Pavlov’s Cat has a point.
Literary geeks probably don’t get even the occasional root.
Thanks for the offer John Hooper, but I’m already spoken for.
However, if anybody else would like to get ‘more than the occasional root’ with John, you need only cease reading and he’s all yours.
Ooh, ooh, JH, that stings!
[/sarcasm]
Thanks to John Hooper for stopping rooting for one moment to pay LP a visit. You’re the maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.
No, she didn’t look like Angelina at all. She was American, but other than that….nope.
Shows how much you know.
At it like weasels, every one.
John Hooper.
Re the sex lives of literary geeks … oh, what’s the point? You wouldn’t believe what students used to get up to at the 10 day English 101 External school at UNE, anyway. We also had lengthy discussions on some very good books as well, set and non-set texts.
Literary geeks no doubt get up to all sorts of stuff. No doubt wearing nanny outfits & spanking each other with a cane followed by quick furtive coupling in the library, probably have themselves convinced this puts them up there with Rugby League players when it comes to scoring roots.
Ah well, those who never read will never know, will they.
Paul B, I would believe it in a heartbeat — used to teach in similar gigs at Deakin. Come the 9 am start you could always tell immediately who’d had 8 hours’ sleep and who’d been having a more interesting time.
PC,
Those were the days. I used to perform at the external poetry reading as well. My own poetry – that helped a lot too.
I think there may be a bumper sticker needed!