We’ve all had our bad experiences, so how do we not take that feeling with us on our next date? Obviously we need to learn certain lessons, but there’s a difference between knowing not to tell that story about your untreatable rash and not assuming this date is automatically going to fail. Not every date is going to be bad or boring or lacking chemistry. And even when the date is fun and interesting and jiving, it doesn’t mean it’s your Beshert. Give each date his or her own chance; they deserve it just like you do.

Nu? As in the Yiddish expression, “So, what’s new?” Certainly not 5772, the year we Jews ushered in well over three months ago. My celebration kind of paled in comparison to the merriment non-Jews and Jews alike are planning, to welcome in 2012. Where were our wacky 5772 eyeglasses? Where were our noisemakers? (Our stomachs growling from the approaching fast is about all I can come up with.) Where was my hot Rosh Hashanah Eve date? Where is my hot generic New Year’s Eve date?

I didn’t even experience the exhilarating embarrassment of accidentally writing 5771 on my October rent check. Why can’t our holidays be as festive as everybody else’s? It’s not too late to glean a lesson or two from the galas about to unfold, and incorporate them into next year’s high holidays. Our high holidays, not the “high” holidays in which those planning to get high need a designated driver. Picture, if you will, September 16, 2012. It’s shortly before sunset. Time to kick back, pour yourself a glass of Manischewitz and tune into… Rockin’ Jewish New Year’s Eve!

To the chosen people around the world, thank you for choosing Andy Cowan’s Rockin’ Jewish New Year’s Eve. The feeling of anticipation is truly palpable – the anticipation I have that some of you are now looking up the word “palpable” to see if it also means “negligible”.

We’re just moments away from greeting the year 5773! Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Then again, 5772 didn’t exactly roll off the tongue either. We may be knee deep into the ‘70s, but at least we can all be thankful we aren’t wearing polyester leisure suits again. Speaking of the ‘70s, fellow sons of Israel, Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond, will be tearing it up here later. The “it” I’m referring to, is the business card of the agent who landed them this gig.

Can you believe another whole year has flown by since last Rockin’ Jewish New Year’s Eve? Me neither. Then again, last Jewish New Year’s Eve began September 28th, so that may have something to do with it. It’s a wild scene here at Times Square. Okay, maybe not wild, but I do see a reasonable amount of people ambling about, staring into their Blackberrys. Sarah Silverman is out there amidst the dozens of revelers, and we’ll hear from her when we come back!

(To be continued)

I have never been in less of a mood to write a post than write now. On top of compulsively eating 2,000 calories in one meal… there is nothing on top of that… that is it. I feel like crap.

I spent half a year on a rigorous diet losing a lot of weight. Tonight, while on a date that deteriorated from wanting the girl to not hate me to wanting the girl to not kill me, I simultaneously ate without realizing what I was doing. Before I could even walk out of the Starbucks, I had managed to make the girl I have been dating for a month literally and physically hate me, I somehow had inhaled enough food to feed myself until Valentine’s Day when I will inevitably eat myself to death, and I somehow also ruined an elementary school recital. I will now explain those first two things only.

I thought, for some reason, that it would be funny to jokingly insult this poor girl incessantly. I have no idea why I did it, but I feel terrible now. I really like this person a lot and cannot honestly find one fault in her. However, this didn’t override the fact that stupid petty jokes (that didn’t make sense) kept coming out of my mouth. It all coalesced in the car, after she had left me for the night, and the food and drinks I had ingested had finally reached my colon. At that point I got home and started writing this. That was about ten minutes ago and now I’m writing this part. Now I’m going to bed.

What would you say if I told you that you could cause women to feel high levels of attraction towards you without even doing anything?

Would you be interested?

I’m going to let you all in on a little secret that most people don’t know about.

The human body is a complicated thing.  We are constantly releasing hormones and chemicals that cause us to feel and experience different things that are beyond our control.  And with that said, one of the things that we can’t control are feelings of attraction.

Attraction is something that men and women just feel.  We feel it mostly when we see something visual.  Women feel it for ten reasons that have nothing to do with looks.

With that said, one way to make women feel attraction is by scaring them.  When women are frightened it releases many of the same hormones that cause attraction.  And while we don’t want to scare them in the, I’m a creepy online dater way, we can find many fun activities that will provide our dates with a scare during October.  Stay tuned to future blog entries for some great ideas.

Sometimes I feel like I’m bad at dating. Some who read the previous statement might think that it is ridiculous for me to feel this way because so much of dating comes down to chance and timing; however, every once in a while that’s just how I feel. Perhaps I am just getting frustrated that I’ve been consistently going out on dates for about a year now and haven’t met someone with whom I’ve become seriously involved with, but ultimately I know that really isn’t necessarily because I am not doing anything wrong or am bad at dating.

I think sometimes, whether it’s dating, work, or picking horses at the track, you get on a roll, your confidence shoots through the roof and, as a result, you feel fantastic about that aspect of your life – but what really makes that happen? With picking horses you can do more research, and at the office you can stay later, but what can you do if you feel like you are in a dating slump?

For one, you can go out on more dates, which is what I’ve tried to do. However, I honestly think that has exacerbated the problem. The more dates you try to go out on the looser your standards become for who you go out with, which potentially opens you up to more issues because you are going out on dates with people you probably aren’t compatible with. There’s an analogy we use in basketball that you can practice free throw shooting all day but if you shoot them the wrong way every time you’ll never get any better, which is, unfortunately, how I feel with dating sometimes.

Ultimately I know that it’s not that I’m bad at dating, but that perhaps I’m replicating the same mistakes on each date. Whether this is true or not, short of videotaping my next date and then breaking down the film afterward to identify what the good and bad elements of my performance were, I guess all I can really do is try to go out on dates with women I truly believe I’m compatible with, be myself during our them and then hope it all works out in the end.

It isn’t easy being a JBlogger.  On average, JBloggers should go out on about two dates per week in order to assess enough material to write two posts per week.  This comes out to 104 dates a year, which would technically make me a prostitute.  Except it would be worse than a prostitute.  It would make me a prostitute who doesn’t get paid.  I don’t even know what that is.  Actually, aside from the fact that I would quickly run out of the money that I never had in the first place, going on two dates per week would be nice.  I would, though, have to figure out how to date on a budget à la Dave Chappelle in Half Baked.  By the second week, I would not be above stealing from blind homeless people.

I haven’t made up dates that never happened in order to have material for the blog.  Instead, I go off topic and talk about politics or my childhood, which are equally inane.  If you would like for me to stop talking about my own childhood, I suggest you volunteer yourself to go out on a date with me.  I will pay for your dinner, and we can split a dessert.  I also promise to contribute one hour of relevant conversation.  After an hour, I usually go off on a tangent which usually ends with me crying.  You must be willing to nurse me while I cry uncontrollably.  I suggest you start watching Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz in order to learn how to quell somebody else’s overflowing emotions.  Really, any program whose title begins with ‘Dr.” would work.

After that, be prepared for me to propose marriage to you.

I definitely consider myself to be lucky since during the time that I’ve been active with online dating I haven’t gone out on any bad dates. Even though I’ve gone out on first dates with women that I decided not to ask out again, I’ve still always had a nice time simply because I was getting the chance to get to know someone new. Also, even though I have left dates where in spite of having an enjoyable time I just haven’t felt that spark which would prompt me to ask them out again, that situation doesn’t bother me at all and I’m perfectly content with that being the ending to my evening.

The confidence I have in my ability to read people and situations has helped me to distinguish between women that I’ve had a nice time with but don’t feel that deeper connection with, and those whom I think there could really end up being something with. However, in either case, I’m honestly happy just to be going out on first dates and simply meeting women. This version of socialization is definitely good for me since I often let what I perceive are my social limitations keep me from putting myself consistently in positions to be social and meet people.

I think one of the keys to consistently having good first dates is that I try not to ramp up my expectations for every date I go on. Sure, there have been times when I was more excited to meet someone because our conversations had been particularly interesting and I was eager to continue them in person, but even in those cases I don’t show up for a date expecting to meet Ms. Right. Instead, I go into each first date hoping that I meet an interesting person that I can have an enjoyable time with, and by having this approach, whether we end up going out on a second date or not, I have been able to go out on a lot of nice first dates.

One of my best friends has been flirting with the idea of joining JDate for some time now. Ever since I first joined at the beginning of the summer whenever we hang out he asks me about it and expresses his interest, however, he has been unable to pull the trigger. His procrastination is probably due to the fact that he meets a lot of women, and goes out on dates pretty much every week, so a part of him is probably pretty content with his current dating life.

However, in spite of the volume of women he meets, and number of dates he goes on, I suspect that deep down he knows that JDate would be a great resource to him because it would give him the opportunity to meet different types of women that he otherwise would have probably never met. I think that part of the problem that people like my friend run into is that even though they have an active dating life and are meeting a bunch of people every week, they are meeting the same type of person.

For example, if you go to the same bars and hang out with the same people you are going to be limited to a general type of person who enjoys that particular bar and works or hangs out with the people you know. Therefore, while you may not necessarily be limited by the number of people you meet that are potentially datable, you are still keeping yourself from meeting people from other circles. It is a result of this limitation that I believe directly correlates to why my friend’s dates never seem to turn into relationships because ultimately he is just replicating the same dating situation over and over with the same type of girl.

This is why I believe that the online dating community would open up his dating world to women that he would have otherwise never met, since unlike his usual bars, JDate is populated by people of all different personalities, backgrounds and ideologies. You see, my friend has inadvertently put himself in a box, like so many of us have during our dating careers.  That’s fine for a time, but whether it be with the people you are meeting in bars, or those you are trying to start conversations with online, sometimes you have to go outside your box and shake things up a little bit, which in the example of my friend, would be joining the online community and having the chance to meet all different types of interesting women.

The oppressive heat has finally broken and the end of summer is on the horizon. As we retrieve light cardigans out of the back of our closets, a new oppression afflicts us. What the cooling temperatures should mean to you and your neuroses, if they don’t already, is an apprehension about ringing in the New Year alone. Binging on honey-soaked apples without a human honey, you are asked to consider your chances of surviving the year. Contemplating the creation of the universe, you will be confronted with your own failure thus far to create a family. Many of you will suffer the Day-of-Judgment in the company of families who judge. Then, there is no respite after the feast, for now you face 10 days of a nagging desire to have a romantic partner to fight bitterly with and subsequently apologize to. Hungry for more than food on Yom Kippur, you will have no one’s hand to squeeze during your rabbi’s most poignant sermon of the year, the one he would hope to win an Oscar for, if rabbis won Oscars. But please don’t despair, it is only August. You still have over three weeks to let JDate help you find a special someone to share this with. May the High Holy Days turn your dating life around, and let us say, Amen.

Although I am now a JDate pro, I have to admit one thing – a couple months ago I wasn’t completely sold on the idea of becoming a member of the JDate community. Before I joined I had many friends who had enjoyed the experience and encouraged me to create a profile. During their pitches they would inevitably recount past dating successes and failures to illustrate the wide-range of people and personalities you can meet online compared to a crowded bar on a Saturday night. After hearing so many of their stories I began to see a pattern emerge in how each of them referred to the people they met and went out on dates with; it was never Jenny or Tanya or Michelle… they all used nicknames.

When I asked my sister, an experienced JDater®, about this phenomenon she informed me that the only way to keep all her dates straight was to take a characteristic or personality trait that was unique to them and give them a nickname based on that trait. So, for instance, the guy who studied biology would become “Bioboy,” the guy who went to Harvard would be “Harvard Boy,” and so on. Unless of course you had the mind of an elephant, she said, there was no way she could avoid confusing all of her dates.
 
When I eventually joined, I came out of the gates a little shaky but quickly gained momentum as I built up a rapport with “Med-School Girl,” “The Artistic Chick” and “Unemployed Nanny” before going out on a date with “Tap Dancing Woman” and then dating “The Runner” for a couple of months; and I’ve got to say that coming up with nicknames helped me develop a keener eye for noticing those little special quirks about the people I was getting to know.

My sister and I used to laugh about all of her dates, and the funny nicknames she gave them, but the truth is that she had the opportunity to meet so many different people on JDate that she otherwise would have never met. Ultimately, it is the members of JDate and their individuality that gave she, and I, that exciting opportunity. So, if you look beyond the funny names, and get to know the people behind them, you may meet someone on JDate who you can truly be happy with.