I was supposed to have a Match.com date for the first time since “Black Swan” came out, but then I sent her the following video and she canceled. Am I the only one crazy enough to think that Dexy’s Midnight Runners doing Van Morrison’s “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven when You Smile)” is incredibly cool and romantic? It’s even from an episode of the genius show of my adolescence “The Young Ones.”
Then I realized that this was the second time I’d been bludgeoned for my interest in Jackie Wilson.
The first Match.com date I ever had was in Chicago around 2000 and I invited this girl to a musical about the life of Jackie Wilson. I picked her up in my ’65 Mustang. There are plenty of those cars in Los Angeles, but in Chicago people were always beeping their horns at me. About half because they dug my car and the other half because I was a terrible driver.
I once had these Hispanic kids pull up next to me at a stop light. They told me they loved my car and then they – get this – offered to pass me over a can of beer! It’s a good thing that I don’t really drink because had I been arrested for accepting alcohol in a car at a stop sign by what were in all probability underage drunk drivers, I’m not sure that I would be able to stand the embarrassment
So I took her to this show about Jackie Wilson, and we were supposed to get dinner after that. We walk around the block and talk for about 15 minutes and then it turns out to be an amazing show, with great music and dancing. When it ends the audience, which was pretty much 99% African American, all stood up and gave the show a pretty unanimous standing ovation. I was standing up, they were all standing up. She was sitting down.
Afterwards, she pretty much asked me to drive her home immediately.
By far the best first date I had from Match was the girl I took to see “Glitter,” which had the unfortunate luck to come out on 9/11. She was cool and we had fun, but I think one of us moved before we had a second date.
Here’s another great life decision that I really screwed up. I had tickets to see Ray Davies and I thought about asking the Glitter Girl to it, but there was this other girl I thought I liked better and asked her. She was into John Cusack movies and had a fuzzy profile picture that seemed to be taken from a distance.
She turned out to be fairly overweight, which was no big deal, but I think that she implied something from my first reaction to her and turned out to be very angry almost instantly. She insulted my car – “I hate people who care about cars. I’m happy driving a used Toyota and anyone who has a better car than that is a loser.” It was like an anti-date. She was exactly the opposite of the personality in her emails.
I didn’t really care about cars. That one was very cheap when I bought it and at the time I could have had any car that I wanted. The apartment building I was in actually threatened to expel it from their garage when I hadn’t washed it in a month, although it was clean that night.
I did my best to be nice to her and have a decent night, but with the way she acted you could have transplanted her into Natalie Portman’s body and I wouldn’t have been attracted to her at all. Maybe she had been through this type of event dozens of times, which I can understand would be a real drag, but I swear I was really nice to her. Well, aside from spending the entire concert wishing that I had asked the Glitter Girl.
Wonder what happened to the Glitter Girl? She was not thin, but she was fun. I hope she is doing well.
