A close friend and fellow Voice editor berated me recently for wearing sweatpants to the library, alleging that it’s an insult to both Georgetown and the world when I leave my apartment without wearing real clothes. I disagreed–I don’t have that many nice clothes, and who dresses up to do reading, anyway? But in the dating game, it’s a whole different story, as this week’s Date Lab proves.

The daters–athletic California transplants who like to cook–seem pretty well matched, and their conversation ticks along smoothly. But appearance, as they say, is everything.

He’s turned off by her low-maintenance beauty routine (”Attractive, [but] probably not somebody I would usually talk to. I’d date someone a little more fit. “) while she can’t get past his flashiness (”I really couldn’t see past the hat, the shirt and the watch. Maybe he’s just into another style that I’m not aware of.”)

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After reading this week’s Date Lab, I’m calling bullshit on the “I’m too tired” excuse. Unless you’re legitimately narcoleptic or you have to get up early the next day for something really important (not just another day of work), going home because you’re tired is just a clumsy way of avoiding someone’s company or playing hard to get.

I’m not sure which of those two the girl in this week’s Date Lab was going for, but if it’s the second one she definitely overplayed her hand. The date starts off promisingly enough–they’re both big readers and outdooorsy types with military backgrounds–and both say in the post-date interviews that there was chemistry and flirting and such.

But she turns down both his offer to go somewhere else after the date (”If I hadn’t been tired I would have, [but] I just wanted to crash”) and his invitation for lunch the next day (”I asked her if she wanted to do lunch the next day, but it didn’t work out: I had work; she had a meeting”) without suggesting an alternative. All this despite telling the Post “I’ll definitely go out with him again.” Mixed messages much?

Rating: 3. Cute enough, but nothing spectacular.

Chances of Success: 2. According to the follow-up there hasn’t been a second date yet. Unless he’s really confident or desperate, the ball’s totally in her court, but she doesn’t seem to have any intention of pursuing him. Maybe “tired” meant “blowing you off” after all.

Remember doing CHARMS the summer before freshman year, thinking you were getting along great with a potential roommate, imagining all the awesome times you were going to have together — and then your soulmate dropped off the face of the internet because he or she found someone else to live with? That sucked, but probably not as much as when the same thing happens with a potential new guy or girl that the Post set you up with.

Neither of the daters sounds particularly classy in their questionnaires: he lists porn as one of his desert island DVDs and worries that she’s “going to be ugly,” while she says she wouldn’t want to date someone “prettier than me.” And for someone who’s definitely trying to come off as ultra-manly, I thought it was pretty lame that he was too much of a wuss to go into the restaurant before his date arrived. You’re 45, divorced, with kids, and you’re making a woman wait for you? Please.

The date itself is a success: conversation, chemistry, kisses, etc. The two make plans to get together the next weekend, but…her flight is delayed and she misses their date, then says she’s sick the next time he calls. Both plausible excuses, but the failure to pin down a next-date plan makes it seem like this is going nowhere fast. My guess? She met someone else and wants to let him down easy till the Post hype dies down.

Rating: 3. Even though the date went well, these two were two trashy and unlikable for me to get into it.

Chances of Success: 2. I’ll give her a couple benefit-of-the-doubt points, but I won’t hold my breath on this one.

After dismissing my awesome Date Lab debut as little more than beginner’s luck, DL’s first-string is back to biting it in this week’s edition. Their first hint that these two weren’t quite a match should have been his Dwight Schrute-esque response to the three desert-island DVDs question (”None. Too busy building a shelter and way out”) in comparison with her totally normal, if fairly bland, selections (Office Space, When Harry Met Sally, Grease.)

The Post clearly took a Google Ads-style approach to this match-up, basing it entirely on the fact that he calls himself a cowboy in one of his questionnaire responses, and she says her type is “a real live cowboy. (In the post-date interview, she reveals that this assertion was “tongue-in-cheek.” Whoops.)

Nonetheless, the mismatched duo perseveres admirably to the end of the evening, though they both seem to treat it more like an anthropological experiment than a date (His take: “There weren’t any sparks, but that’s fine. It was fun talking to someone who is so different.”; Hers: “It was interesting because we are so different; he’s not someone I would have met in a thousand years.”) If the DLers were trying to set up some kind of elementary-school-style get-to-know-people-who-aren’t-like-you workshop, they rocked it, but otherwise? Better luck next time, kids.

Rating: 4. This date didn’t work at all on a romantic level, but it did crack me up, and everyone left happy enough.

Chances of Success: 0. I’ve never seen a more succinct follow-up than “The daters don’t plan to see each other again.”

When former Voice editor Mike Stewart called me at the beginning of the summer to tell me that the Washington Post wanted to talk about my Date Lab reviews, I naturally assumed that I was being sued, or at the very least being told to cease and desist my commentary on the weekly blind date feature. Imagine my delight, then, at learning that I was going to be a guest matchmaker.

Unfortunately, my first foray into Date Lab-ing wasn’t a raging success. Of the four couples that I chose during a two-hour stint in the Post’s newsroom (I only crashed the computer once due to overly enthusiastic database searching), one or both of the daters in each pair was no longer interested in being set up. Disheartened, I trekked back to 15th and L for another try.

When the DL editor told me that both daters in my first second-round pair were ready and willing, I was way pumped…until she emailed again to tell me that, after seeing each other’s names on the email about where to go for the date, the daters realized that not only had they already met, they had already dated. For two years. Hey, at least I was on the right track.

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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.

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.

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.