Last year’s Dupont Circle pillowfight

Will Marks at Saxaspeak is organizing a Georgetown pillowfight for October 24th on Copley Lawn. Impressively, 391 people have signed up for the Facebook event. How do that many people have pillows to spare?

The pillow fight in Dupont Circle last month wasn’t much fun, according to Voice writer Sam Sweeney. Hitting Georgetown students might be more fun, though, since you finally have an excuse to smack the guy who asks questions right before class gets out early. You can also smack with abandon–Marks says he’s getting GERMS on standby.

Could a film set in Georgetown have been in the cards for Paul Newman? As director Whit Tillman tells it, he and producer Ronane Glennane had dreams of Newman and his wife starring in their remake of the French film Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud:

“Soon we were planning a film set in Georgetown, with Newman to be a retired, Eugene McCarthy-like senator working on his memoirs with a brittle yet beautiful English woman… As we traipsed through Georgetown planning the film, it was if Newman were with us, his senator character dominating our thoughts.”

Their project stalled (rights to remake European films are hard to come by, Tillman said), and the two never felt far along enough in the planning stages to approach Newman.

Still, in a city where filmmakers usually only stop by to get a few shots of the Washington monument, the idea that a director wanted to set a film in Georgetown—and bring Newman along for the ride—is pretty cool.

I’ve heard of people keeping their options open, and one of my best guy friends tells me it’s important to always have a “list,” but I thought the key to such a plan was being fairly discreet about it. Not so for one of this week’s Date Lab daters, who says she’s involved in a “monogamous” relationship but is “exploring having deep friendships with members of the opposite sex that may or may not evolve.” I wonder how her boyfriend feels about that.

Even setting aside her non-singlehood, these two seem like a peculiar pair: he mentioned yoga three times in his pre-date questionnaire, while she says her best date ever was “hiking in a state park, followed by a meal in a brew pub and some good lovin’ afterward.” Well, then.

Luckily, his yogic mindset comes in handy when she drops the bomb about being taken: “They teach you to keep a neutral mind in yoga.”

Predictably, she chooses not the leave the guy she’s seeing for the DL yogi, and things pretty much end there. According to the Post’s follow-up, two week’s after the date she still hadn’t mentioned it to her boyfriend, and since he lives out of town he might never know about it. Except for, you know, the internet. I seriously hope there’s a follow-follow-up when he finds out.

Rating: 2. The girl is unlikable for leading him on, but the guy’s nothing special to read about either. Overall, pretty lame.

Chances of Success: 1. Even if she ends it with the other guy, it’s unlikely he’d trust her after being tricked in a national newspaper.

I can say with 99% certainty that the Date Labbers who set up this week’s date are not Jewish. Both of the daters are technically members of the tribe, but they’re clearly on different planes in terms of religious observance, and anyone who’s seen Fiddler on the Roof would have been able to tell that this match was doomed from the start.

He’s hardcore observant–keeps kosher, wears a yarmulke, visits Israel once a year–and she’s far from it (”[Inside, the women were] all wearing skirts and have multiple children, because that’s what Orthodoxish people do. I’m wearing my skinny jeans, my boobs are hanging out, and I’m going, Oh, this is mortifying.”) He wants a Crown Heights-style shidduch date followed closely by marriage and kids (”I’m [almost] 26, and I do have some pressure and some personal desire to have kids in the near future”) and she couldn’t be more terrified by that (”Dude, I’m 24; I’m not ready.”)

Surprisingly enough, the date is a total failure.

Rating: 3-4. Even though this was a painfully awkward encounter, I’m a sucker for anything Jewish, so I got a kick out of it. But aside from that it was pretty par for the course.

Chances of Success: 0. He’ll definitely have at least two kids with names like Chana and Rivka by the time she’s starting to maybe think about moving in with someone.

After seeing my room’s decor, my roommate’s mother called me a minimalist. My side featured a bare wall and two pictures of my family. Her daughter’s side of the room, in contrast, was covered with photos and food.

My decorating sense was shown up even more when I started visiting some of the other rooms on my floor. Check out these awesome rooms:

An Artist’s Room

This is Lena’s room. She’s an art major and she covered her side of the room with her artwork. Some people are so talented.

She also made two posters for her friends to leave stylized messages.

Nice!

(more…)

Funny people are usually fun to read about, so I was feeling pretty good about this week’s Date Lab. In the pre-date questionnaire, she says, “I’m told I’m funny in an ironic sort of way” (although I would have believed her a little more if she had actually cracked a joke.) Meanwhile, he shows off his own sneaky-funny vibe in the dream date question, saying that, “My biggest wish is that she wouldn’t cheat in fights.”

The date itself goes well, although they’re both awkwarded out by the fact that the restaurant’s staff is so intent on them falling in love. Weirdly, they’re both surprised by the fact that the other person likes NPR; he apparently thinks that’s abnormal for their age (23), but I’m pretty sure the 11,292 members of the i heart npr Facebook group and the Voice’s own Simone Popperl would disagree.

Radio predilections aside, both of the daters say they’re better off as friends. But when he loses her card (intentionally or not) and fails to contact her again, her interest is renewed. She gets back in touch with a Facebook message, he invites her to a party, she says she probably won’t make it. Maybe that little bit of validation was all she needed?

Rating: 3. Reading about the waitstaff being so intense was just kind of squirmy, and there wasn’t much on the plus side to compensate.

Chances of Success: 2. The initial date probably didn’t provide enough momentum for them to make it through another round of this hard-to-get back-and-forth nonsense, so I’m guessing that’s the end for these two. But since they didn’t actively despise each other, you never know.

To those not seeing Burn After Reading tonight: get your step on, yo.

Really, do it now: world-renowned step/stomp/kick troupe Step Afrika! is giving a free performance at the Kennedy Center tonight, and you’re going to have to get in line early to get one of those steamin’ hot tickets. Performance runs from 6:00 to 7:30.

Step Afrika!, Kennedy Center, 6:00-7:30 tonight 

It’s Date Lab Rat, but this week, it’s late. This just means fewer days till your next installment.

At first, this week’s Date Lab pairs a shared love of the outdoors, nerdy consulting jobs, similar backgrounds and mutual sushi appreciation. Success, right? When they ended up hanging out in his car for an hour and a half, I was almost sure of it.

According to the follow-up, though, they only got as far as texting the next weekend and failed to meet up while they were both out. He doesn’t seem entirely averse to seeing where things go (”I assume we’ll see each other at some point”) but she doubts he’ll make it happen and has no intention of making the first move (”I don’t really expect to hear from him.”)

Rating: 4. The date is cute, and for once these people actually seem like someone you could know in real life, which is nice.

Chances of Success: She’s afraid of getting burned (”I’ll put the ball in your court. I guess it’s a coping mechanism. I’m not ready to get my hopes up.”), and probably not without reason. But they both seemed into each other enough that texting/meeting up during a future weekend night out is almost a guarantee if neither of them is dating someone new. The verdict: 4 that they’ll meet up again, 2 that it’ll actually last.

When a guy says he’s looking for someone “not tall or short,” you probably think he’ll be the one to dismiss his blind date as not up to par. Oddly, though, it’s the girl in this week’s Date Lab who ends up dismissing her date on looks alone. She starts off the post-date interview with the damning, “He’s not the kind of guy that I’m attracted to…I kind of made up my mind that it wasn’t going to go anywhere.” Sure, it’s not me, it’s you.

She takes everything he says the wrong way, and vice versa. She gives the date a 3 but sounds super bitchy about it, while he somehow manages to sound nice even while giving it a 1.

His parting comment? “I think the most off-putting thing was that she made up her mind from the beginning and didn’t even try to get to know me. I wish she had at least tried to make the best of the experience.”

The commenters all side with him, saying she shouldn’t have been so quick to write him off, but I have to disagree. Being led on is way worse than being shut down from the outset. Man up and rip the Band-Aid off.

Rating: 2. Actually being a part of this date was probably more awkward than reading about it, but not by much.

Chances of Success: 1. I mean, she’s 29. Standards have to drop eventually, so you never know.

Welcome to Friday Night, Saturday Morning, where every week Shira Hecht brings you a new song for your weekend. They won’t all be party songs (although this one is)–they could be songs for pregames, songs for hangovers, and songs for Sunday afternoons when you realize you didn’t accomplish anything this weekend.

The Similou - All This Love

This past week has been full of signs that summer is over: chilly winds, too-familiar faces, $400 dropped at the bookstore. Fall has arrived.

These few weeks always make me feel sort of bittersweet, and unaccountably nostalgic. As does this song, a Swedish one-hit wonder from a few years ago. The Swedes have somehow mastered the art of the heartbreaking pop song, and this one is a particularly catchy example. Bouncy keyboards with just the right amount of jangle, vague references to times spent and love lost, and a nice big singalong chorus. It makes me think of missed opportunities, sad endings, perfect days and fading memories. The end of something wonderful, bittersweet and incandescent.

If you want, you can dance to it.