In Date Lab Rat, Anna Bank (editor-in-chief, hopeless romantic) bravely experiments on herself with each week’s installment of the Washington Post’s Date Lab, where the Post tries–and often fails–to fix up applicants.

Looks like the Date Lab team’s strong showing last week was just dumb luck after all. This week’s installment is a complete flop, both in terms of the duo’s romantic prospects and the amount of enjoyment you’ll get from reading it — it’s pretty much a tutorial on how not to set up a successful blind date. But then, that’s why I’m here.

First of all, I don’t know if Date Lab is running low on applicants or if the Post’s matchmaking team overestimated the daters’ appeal. He thinks he has a good sense of humor (who doesn’t?); she says she’s D.C. because she gets “annoyed by tourists who don’t stand on the right when going down Metro escalators” (more like she’s D.C. because she sounds like a witch in a major paper). There doesn’t seem to be anything in either of their questionnaire answers to suggest that they would make a particularly good pair, other than her stated preference for black guys, and that’s not much to go on.

Unsurprisingly, the sparks don’t fly: she’s not attracted to him, he thinks it’s lame that she doesn’t want to order free wine , she freaks out when he puts his arm around her for the photo. He’s nice enough to give the date a 3 out of 5, while she returns the volley with a damning (and weirdly specific) 1.9.

Rating: I’m sure this could be worse somehow. There were no acts of physical violence or outright psychological warfare, but after last week’s turnaround, DL slump is back. I’d give it a 1.

Chances of Success: Are negative numbers allowed?

In our new recurring feature Date Lab Rat, Anna Bank (editor-in-chief, hopeless romantic) bravely experiments on herself with each week’s installment of the Washington Post’s Date Lab, where the Post tries to fix up applicants using a secret formula known only to journalists. This week’s installment comes a week late because of problems isolating the case study.

After a recent run of failed fix-ups, Date Lab decided to introduce a new gimmick this week, hoping for a better match or at least some humor value. The trick–having a monkey select the two daters instead of using the Post’s “expert” matchmaking team - was just plain dumb, and given the pair’s similar questionnaire answers (they’re both company project managers and say that there’s either a 99 or 100% chance that they’ll talk to stranger in a bar, although maybe all Date Lab contestants say that), I’m guessing this primate wasn’t given many potential daters to choose from.

Stupid monkey tricks aside, though, this is a pretty high quality edition of Date Lab, and a good intro if you’re new to the feature. Both daters are attracted to one another, which is always fun to read (DL connoisseurs know that the most cringe-worthy sensation is reading a match where one person’s feeling it and the other completely isn’t.) The girl manages to pull off a semi-slick venue change by asking if he wants to go somewhere to watch a basketball game, and the night ends with kisses and text-message follow-up.

Rating, using the DL 1-5: 4. 1 point docked for the gimmick, but as goes Date Lab, so goes my week, and I love when things work out.

Chances of Success: 4. He’s already scraping off expired parking stickers so she won’t get a ticket, completely skipping over the infatuation phase and into domesticity, which makes is seem like this could last for a while. But they both claim to be more sarcastic than they let on during the date, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens when the claws come out.

Photo from Flickr user Little Brown Monkey

Fresh off a victory over Gonzaga led by 40 points from sophomore Stephen Curry, the Davidson Wildcats will face Georgetown tomorrow afternoon in Raleigh. Mike Stewart tells you how the Hoyas plan to shut down Curry and more, over on the main site.

Curtis Sittenfeld, opening her talk on Tuesday night, sounded more like the insecure heroine of her first novel, Prep, than a best-selling author when sheepishly asked, “This is a really weird question, but do any of you know my brother?” Then again, only about two dozen Hoyas showed up to hear Sittenfeld speak—fewer than I would have expected for an enclave of prepdom like Georgetown.

But maybe that’s just because if you’ve lived it, you don’t need to hear someone else talk about it. In response to a question from a graduate of the Groton School, Sittenfeld’s own alma mater, she said, “I think if I read a book about Groton that someone else wrote, I would find it really distracting,” and compared it to reading a book by another author about your own family (”But Aunt Myrtle’s car isn’t blue!”).

Sittenfeld read aloud from Prep and from her upcoming third novel, mentioned that Noah Baumbach (who wrote and directed 2005’s brilliant The Squid and the Whale) will write the screenplay for the movie version of Prep and discussed the different reactions that the novel has gotten. She said that some people view the ending—in which the main character realizes that all of the people she had spent her high school experience obsessing about are totally inconsequential in the scheme of things—as a downer, while others read it as a triumph. For her part, Sittenfeld seems to have mixed feelings.

“The happy ending is the realization of how insignificant your high school experience is,” she said. “It’s so weird, it doesn’t matter [now] … I almost wished I cared as much as I did in high school … Enjoy the campus life, you know, where you turn a corner and you might see that person you love or hate.”

Ed note: The Voice ran an interview Sittenfeld last week about Prep and her upcoming visit.  You can read it here. 

Photo courtesy Flickr user Misoon *our page*

Gary Shteyngart, whom Program for Jewish Civilization Director Jacques Berlinerblau described as a “preternaturally gifted young novelist” in his introduction, spoke to a full house in Riggs Library last night. Shteyngart’s first novel The Russian Debutante’s Handbook was received with great critical acclaim when it was released in 2003 and the New York Times recently called his most recent novel, Absurdistan, which he was signing after the event, one of the top 10 books of 2007.

Although many of Shteyngart’s quips last night resonated particularly strongly with the largely Jewish audience (he said that he wrote satire while working at the United Jewish Appeal fundraising agency because he “couldn’t help it”), his answers to Berlinerblau’s questions were funny enough to appeal to everyone. Speaking about his college years, Shteyngart said, “At Oberlin being an immigrant was the best thing you could be, aside from being a person of color or of a different sexual orientation.”

Shteyngart’s humor is all the more compelling because of his thoughtfulness, which was revealed during the talk’s more sobering moments. He discussed his feelings about Russia and the Russian language (”When money comes out of the ATM, I’m always counting it in Russian”), Putin’s government (”I’m such an oaf, such a sap for believing that things would change”) and the future of Zionism (”One hopes Israel will survive, but…the ends will not justify the means in any nationalistic enterprise”).

Shout-outs to fellow “immigrant lit” writers were plentiful, including Junot Diaz, Chang-rae Lee, and Sigrid Nunez (side note: if you’re looking for a quick but brilliant read, Nunez’s A Feather on the Breath of God is where it’s at). Shteyngart also had praise for the Russian novelist Vladimir Sorokin and for Russia’s response to Sorokin’s controversial work, saying, “I like a country where people care enough about their literature to make giant wooden toilet bowls [to throw the books into]. That means it matters.”

In the end, though, Shteyngart was at his best when speaking about himself and his own writing. When Berlinerblau asked why he consistently returns to the Russian experience in his novels, Shteyngart replied, “It’s the only way I can understand my own identity. Oh, I hate that word. But there it is.”

Photo by Sam Sweeney, Blog Editor

Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan, is going to be speaking on campus Thursday night at 6:30 in Riggs Library. Forget the way-overrated Jonathan Safran Foer — for over-the-top self-referential Eastern European Jewish wit with just the right amount of poignancy, Shteyngart’s your guy, and he’s sure to be a hit in conversation with Georgetown’s own Jacques Berlinerblau, director of the Program for Jewish Civilization.

Update:  RSVP and further information is available here.

Photo courtesy Flickr user mezzoblue

—Anna Bank, Managing Editor

After an appropriate bereavement period for the late Chu’s Cafe, I decided to check out the new restaurant in the old Chu’s location, Tuscany Café. After waiting for half an hour for someone else’s food and having to haggle with the staff to get it switched — “No, miss, you ordered a veggie wrap” — my meatball sub was cold and the meatballs themselves were suspiciously stringy. Nothing could have measured up to an order of crispy beef with steamed dumplings, but Tuscany Café would have been a disappointment even without Chu’s legacy to live up to. If you’re looking for lunch or dinner on Prospect, stick to Booey’s or Bangkok.

Tuscany Café is located at 3261 Prospect Street. Their meatball sub costs $6.45 and is served with potato chips.

- Anna Bank, Managing Editor

With Thanksgiving approaching, it’s once again time for those perky “101 Things to Be Thankful For at Georgetown” fliers on the back of bathroom stall doors around campus. This year, the Voice made the list at #13, placing us in the company of perennial heavy-hitters like the Center for Social Justice and the Tombs, while both the Hoya and the Independent were left off entirely. Rock on.

-Anna Bank, Editorial Board Chair

So, everyone on campus—or at least everyone who works for the Voice—is waiting with bated breath to see whether or not Jack DeGioia will deign to speak at GU Pride’s Coming Out Week forum tomorrow night. The prez addressed the hate crime today in a campus-wide email, saying…well, not much. Aside from declaring that hate crimes and homophobia will not be tolerated (a no-brainer) DeGioia declined to discuss any concrete actions for preventing these incidents in the future or actually changing the campus culture. A couple of Hoyas decided to take matters into their own hands by starting a Facebook group taking Jack to task for his most recent spin-doctored missive. Sure, the group only has two members for now, but you know how fast these things grow.

Anna Bank, Editorial Board Chair

Was anyone surprised to discover that, once again, our esteemed student government experienced electoral technical difficulties last night?

“Due to unforeseen technical problems, the GUSA Senate online voting system was not functioning last night. The site is now back up and voting is live. In the wake of the outage, voting is extended until Wednesday, September 26 at 9 PM.”

I’m not sure if GUSA, UIS, or the Election Commission is at fault here, but it doesn’t really matter. Voter turnout — and for that matter, candidate turnout (my “district” was uncontested) — is low enough already, and every botched election turns a few more people off of the campus democratic process. GUSA made a big play to be taken seriously last year with their successful anti-keg ban advocacy, but if they hope to be a respected organization, these election glitches need to stop.

-Anna Bank, Editorial Board Chair