A Hot Date

You know, I don't go out on dates anymore. Like I ever did. And I used to get really depressed about that.

A couple of weekends ago I was sitting late into the evening, by myself, on Mr M's leather sofa. I was watching TV. Saturday night/wee hours of Sunday morning TV for a man who doesn't have cable is some pretty slim pickin's, and so I was flipping around the now five fantubulous channels this man gets on his antenna. Well, his TV's antenna, I'm not sure he has an antenna.

PBS had left "This Old House" and was now telling me the wonders of some arctic underice pink slimy thing. Boy, do I miss their midnight weekend showings of "Antiques Roadshow." I'd rather see someone be told he paid $4000 for a fake Civil War sword than to see an arctic underice pink slimy thing any day of the week. Channel 7 was showing "Alias," as they do, because on Saturday nights and Sunday nights, they show "Alias" all fucking night long. There cannot be enough episodes of "Alias" to spread out over a weekend as many as they show. Channel 10 was signing off from their weekly infomercial for the Orek vacuum cleaner and heading to "Access Hollywood's" weekend edition, which makes me want to throw a brick through the television. And since it's not my television, that's not so good.

I headed over to Channel 38, the latest channel Mr M has started to pick up. Now, this is one weird little channel indeed. It used to be commercials. Well, infomercials, one after the other, 24 hours a day. Then it morphed into infomercials at night and religion in the day. Then it started throwing in some odd episode of "Medical Center" or "Little House on the Prairie" in the evenings, then headed right back to religion and infomercials. One of their religious programs features a woman labeled by Mr M as "hot," who wears glasses and a suit and writes numbers and squigglies on an erasable board. I always wondered who would shake him off the path of atheism - we may have a contender.

As you can guess from the above, I'd not found a suitable channel as yet in my surfing, and I only had one more to go. That would be Channel 27, the Fox affiliate. Saturday overnights on this station are a crapshoot, I've found talk shows, "American Idol" recaps, episodes of "Will & Grace," "Cops," really bad movies - it's like this channel can't decide what its weekend plans are.

When I hit the station, there was a commercial playing, and so I decided to wait it out. The commercial was for, well, they call it a "dating service," I call it phonesex. "I'm just sitting here waiting to talk to you!" Yeah, I'll bet you are. Sit back, let me tell you about the wonders of the arctic underice pink slimy thing.

That commercial ended, and another began. The next one featured three young ladies, and I use the term loosely, in various and sundry forms of undress, and they were coming up with a plan for the evening, unlike the channel on which they were being featured. There was a black girl and two white girls, one with dark hair and one blonde. A veritable smorgasbord of females.

"What's up for tonight?" says one.

"Wanna go out?" says the other.

"No! Let's call up some hot guys!" offers the third.

And so begins their night of bliss using the "Meet Hot Locals" phone service. "Meet Hot Locals" has a hell of a slogan: "They're Local, And They're Hot." Isn't that just perfect? I mean, what if the "Meet Hot Locals" slogan was, "They're Foreign, And They're Drab?" That just wouldn't work.

So Mr Voiceover shows up to tell us all about the 800 number we can call to hook up with some hot locals, who just happen to be local and hot, thanks very much, and we see the girls busying themselves by fixing their hair and removing more bits of clothing, and when the hot local guys show up - there are only two of them. To me, this says one of two things. Either there are only two hot locals in this town, or those three girls and two guys are going to have one of the more interesting evenings we can imagine. And it just may possibly be the second of those, because when the three girls open the door (and yes, this is true, for apparently nowadays it takes three grown women to open an apartment door) and the two guys are standing there, instead of saying, "Hello, pleased to meet you, I'm Local and he's Hot," they just stand there, staring at the women's breasts.

Now, as tiresome as this commercial was, and it was, mainly because it was about 3 minutes long, I still watched it with some half-smile of bemusement. I don't know, it just struck me as funny. And I survived it and was ready to see what Channel 27 was offering up for the night. And what they were offering was another of these commercials! Well, it was for a different place, catering to a shier, more demure type. The type that just has her date right there on the phone, no two guys, no breast-staring, no physical contact of any kind.

Because in this apartment, which looked suspiciously like the first apartment, there are only two girls. One brunette, one blonde. The brunette comes up to the blonde, who's wearing fancy white pants and a red sequined halter top, and the blonde is sitting on the couch, talking on the phone.

"Shhhh!" she says to the brunette. "I'm on a date!"

Then Mr Voiceover pops up again and tells us all about the joys of phone dating. Have the time of your life right there on the phone. He never mentions if the singles in the phone dating world are hot, and I don't guess it matters much, really, but he does stress that they are local. Which begs the question (pardon me, Nyssa), what the hell difference does it make? If you're too afraid to go out on a real date with someone, why do you want to not go out on a date with someone right in your town? Wouldn't you feel better knowing your date was in Puerto Rico? Then if you didn't like him so much, you'd never have to worry about seeing him.

Anyway, after Mr Voiceover is finished with us, we go back to the two girls, and the brunette says, hands on hips, "Well, aren't you going out?"

And the blonde smiles, puts her hand over the phone receiver, and says, "No, I'm right where I want to be!"

And I was left wondering why she got so damned dressed up to talk to someone on the phone, but that's just me, and at that point I didn't even care what Channel 27 was offering up, it could have been an Alan Arkin film festival, but I just couldn't watch anymore.

I ended up choosing a big fat nothing, turned off the TV, and called it a night.

And you know, I may be local, but not so hot, but if there's one thing these commercials did for me, it was to not make me feel so bad about sitting home dateless.

While I was watching that third commercial, I was reminded of one of the odder sights I've seen in my days.

About two years ago, we had a girls' weekend away, and ended up at a restaurant in North Carolina I'm quite fond of. It was very crowded, and we sat at the bar drinking martinis for an hour or so.

Across from us at the bar was a very fancily dressed woman, alone, on a cell phone. She was having a drink and talking to her party, apparently engaging conversation, giggles, laughs. She finished her drink and was brought a salad, and it all continued. Right there on the phone, yakking it up. After the salad, she was brought a meal, there at the bar in her fancy dress, and she kept up the apparently scintillating conversation with her phone mate.

And the three of us on our side of the bar actually speculated that this woman was having a date on the phone. Then we dismissed it as absolutely ludicrous. Who would do such a thing?

Now, having a phone date in your house is one thing. But can you imagine the person who gets dressed up, goes to a restaurant, and eats a meal while on a phone date?

And who pays? At the end of the evening did she hand the phone to the restaurant manager so her datee could give over his credit card number? Or is she left with a phone bill and the price of a dinner?

Oh well. To go through all that, I at least hope he was hot.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners, we have acrowinners. So, how tiny is your TV set?
- Honorable Mention goes to River Selkie, with her "Tiny Telly Communicator Atom."
- Runner-Up goes to Kellie (with an ie), with her "Too Tiny. Can't Arkinwatch."
- And this week's winner goes to Mike, with his "Thumb tack? Cool antenna." (Although your Tom Cruise one made me laugh, too.)
- Thanks to all who played - you've all done very well!