Chex and the City

Cereal Diet

2008-06-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

Ahh, it's been too long. And sadly, I'm here to report only that it's going to be longer still. As much as I'm starved for attention and affection and breakfast, I'm equally starved for vacation and since my job is giving me a 3 week hiatus, I'm heading for the border.

The goal, however, is to return relaxed and refreshed and ready to eat-and-tell with abandon. (Actually, the real goal is to return tanned and happy and not-quite-broke - or really just to return - but I'm gonna aim high.) So do stay tuned - I'm not done with you yet.

Date #21: Double Special K with Bananas and Berries

2008-06-03T14:32:00.000-07:00

Man, Special K sure is popular amongst the fellas. Especially this guy who, when informed that JuJu was out of his first choice “Peach Combo” bowl opted instead to double up on the fan favorite (two scoops o’ cereal makes for quite the breakfeast), along with bananas and berries (both blue and straw).

A native of Buffalo, this fellow Rust Belter arrived in Los Angeles just two months ago, following stints in D.C., Atlanta, and Houston. He’s got one of those technology/computer/software jobs that I don’t understand but tend to allow very pale boys to work from home in any number of exciting cities. Los Angeles! Buenos Aires! Rochester!

Anyways, he ventured out of fly-over territory for a job at UCLA doing media something or other for their library system and fills his spare time with on-campus classes and activities (personal finance, film, surfing – there sure are some nice perks over there at UCLA) and music. He’s a music guy. Loves music. Music is “his thing.” Loves a concert. Spent his summers in college following the Grateful Dead and Phish on tour. And he likes to travel. Santa Fe is a favorite – they have a great amphitheater, apparently. It resembles a cave, or something. Denver, too. You get views of the city as well as the Rockies from their venue. And the Everglades. Not much there, of course, but the place to be for a millennium New Year’s Eve show. But as for travel independent of aged rock legends? Nope. Umm. Oh.

Double Special K doesn’t look much like a Deadhead or a Phish follower, though. In fact, in his pale yellow striped polo he rather looked like a skinny, preppy Tom Cruise, minus the creepy laugh. He did have a kind of loud voice, however, that reverberated in the sparsely furnished establishment. Didn’t really bother me much (I mean what deep secrets of mine was he telling?), but the 95-pound septuagenarian in the wheelchair three tables over didn’t seem thrilled by it. (Seriously. And how ‘bout that? I thought Aaron Spelling was the last person over the age of 69 allowed in Los Angeles proper. And only because he had been grandfathered in.)

So, yeah. That about covers it. Smart guy. Nice guy. Just not my smart, nice guy. I did receive the following email a couple days later, though:

Subject: Juju has a secret stash

“I just read a review about JuJu that said they have a secret menu but only if you ask – Almond flavored milk and some other secret toppings. Yeah right they were out of my peach combo bowl ;-)

I still have a list of tacky stuff to see over in your area of town (La Brea tar pits, LACMA, etc…), if you’re interested in hitting up any of those let me know, and hopefully we can set something up when it’s not asphalt melting hot outside.”

A vegetarian answer to In-N-Out’s legendary secret-ish offerings? Well this is an exciting development. I informed him of my disdain for the tar pits (namely their intensely sulfuric stench), but told him to keep me abreast of any other tacky Miracle Mile adventures. (Not mentioning that the likelihood of me partaking in such pursuits hovers roughly around that of Elmo being named Obama's running partner. But hey, you never know.)

Subject: I Heart La Brea Tar Pits

“I know you’re a huge tar pit fan so I picked you up an ‘I Love La Brea Tar Pits’ shirt. I also got the most obnoxious color they had, fluorescent yellow. No worries, they were free with lifetime membership to the park. You can have that too. j/k”

Very amusing, Double Special K, very amusing. Must be that extra helping of all those lightly toasted rice flakes. Like Viagra for the funny bone.

No Jew For You

2008-05-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

So I opted out of Kosher in favor of this guy:

“Cereal IS awesome. I lean towards Sugar Bear and his delicious Golden crisp but sometimes I like to get crazy and hang with Cap’n Crunch. meh, depends on my mood that day. Definitely would be interested in hitting up JuJu, I live a few blocks away and haven’t been there yet so i’m pretty interested in how post modern design and old school nourishment fit together. Native east coaster, so the things on my feet are Sneakers, I call carbonated beverages ‘Pop’ and I take my humor dark and sarcastic. Recently moved here a couple months ago for a position at UCLA, saw your post and thought i’d drop a line, just looking to network and meet some new and different people here. Chill, laid back, yada yada…

Attached a pic, should give you the general idea of me in all scenarios of life – stoner style at a Phish show, some wedding, and working for The Man. Drop a line if you’re down for some cereal!”

“You sound like a good guy to eat cereal with. I also hail from the east but years of travel beat the ‘pop’ out of me and I have since adopted ‘soda’ as my own. If you think you can handle that, how does 2:00pm tomorrow sound? I find daring cereal combinations to be especially enjoyable around 2:00pm. I don’t have a picture on my computer that I can send, but I’m 5’5, athletic, long brown hair, dazzling smile. :)”

“Good to hear from you, i’m ver sorry to hear the west coast won the pop vs soda war, we’re a dying breed…No pics? Any flicker, MySpace, or a camera phone? Are you sending this from an Apple IIe powered by a hamster wheel as well? ;-) Just teasing – this is craigslist so forgive me I tend to be cautious and skeptical, one can never be too safe.”

“Well I usually keep a picture at the ready for such situations (you know, asking guys to meet me for cereal on Craigslist…) but seemed to have misplaced it in a fit of organization. But I understand your skepticism so I did a little searching this morning and found it in the aptly names ‘My Pictures’ folder. (Huh, who would’ve thought?) Anyways, a little more about myself…(insert a few scintillating personal details here)…

Don’t want to give away too much, as we’ll theoretically need something to talk about in person. You up for it?”

“Thanks for your message, yeah that helps a lot. I’ve bounced around the US a lot and craigslist has been great for almost every city – get my furniture, apartments, meet people etc… The people are always 99% cool. So yeah, let’s get some cereal @ 2pm, that menu looks out of control. Lucky charms, malt balls and maple syrup…damn, that’s hardcore.”

That it is, little one, that it is. I guess we’ll see if you can handle it. At 2pm.

A Little Jew In You

2008-05-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

Sensing another go with Craigslist was nearing, I recently drafted (and posted) this updated and undeniably awesome blurb:

“JuJu Cereal Bar?

Cereal’s Awesome. Combining different kinds and mixing them with fruit and candy and cake frosting in a chic, modern setting is even awesomer. Anyone up for checking out JuJu Cereal Bar in Westwood on Saturday afternoon, having a creatively fantastic snack, and possibly making a creatively fantastic new friend?

About me:
I love traveling, Friends, cruciferous vegetables, and witty sarcasm and I hate bars, clubs, mingling at parties, and vomit.

Just a fun weekend activity – no expectations beyond a breakfast-length conversation. Ages 21-34 only. Being awesome a plus.”

Come on, who wouldn’t want some of that?

As usual, I got a nice assortment of responses – some of which I may amuse you with in the future – but for today we’re going to focus on the following:

“Dude, JuJu is going to go out of business soon. I walk past there every morning on the way to the bus, and there’s like nobody there. Anyway, if you’d like to hang out in Westwood, that’s cool. I’d rather meet in Starbucks, Peet’s, Coffee Bean, or Seattle’s Best (in Borders, down the street from JuJu).”

Now, I was too annoyed by his brazen hijacking of my post (I don’t really care what you’d “rather” do, you caffeine addict. And I don’t particularly care to hang out in Westwood, either. I specifically was seeking someone to eat cereal with. It’s right there in the title.) to notice the even more shocking fact that this guy was walking…to the bus. People in L.A. don’t walk. Sure, they have legs that transport them from the valet to the restaurant, or their front door, or the gym – but they have cars. Everyone does. It’s just the way it is. Some people may also have to live inside their cars, but they have them. I may not agree with it entirely, but the fact of the matter is, if you live in Los Angeles and don’t have a car and your first name isn’t spelled G-O-D (‘cause God Don’t Own a Car – at least according to Jimmy Buffet) you are strange and marking yourself as such.

“Nah, I’m not really into coffee. I’m more into cereal. But let me know if you change your mind on JuJu – could be fun.”

“When were you thinking of going to JuJu?”

Again, right there in the post. Really not winning any points here, man.

“I was thinking maybe Saturday afternoon. You game?”

“OK. I’ll see you there. What time do you want to meet? Also, I’m a 27 year old male living in Westwood (I live ~4 blocks away from JuJu.) Thanks.”

You’re welcome.

“Cool. How’s 2pm?”

“OK. But I’m not promising that I’ll eat the cereal there! :)”

Whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Hold the phone.

“Well that takes all the fun out of it, then. Why bother?”

“OK. You’ve talked me out of it.”

What the fuck is going on here?

“Wow. What do you have against cereal?”

I can’t even imagine. The big reveal…

“The truth is that I keep kosher. I was too embarrassed to mention that to you, because I was certain it would put you off, which I’m sure it has. But, I would be willing to meet with you, if you’d like. I have attached a picture of myself to this message for your review.”

So many things wrong with this email. Seriously, I’m overwhelmed by the thought of compiling a list.

1. You are embarrassed by one of the pillars at the core of your beliefs.
2. You assume that others find this practice off-putting.
3. You actively seek out/respond to people who you believe find your lifestyle disturbing.
4. You are willing to go on a date with someone even if you know that they are disagreeable to the very person you are.
5. Your picture looks like a mugshot.

“Not put off by it. I don’t know too much about keeping kosher, admittedly, but I do have my own dietary preferences so I somewhat understand having to be conscious of what/where you are eating. Just curious, is the concern for the cereal bar that the food itself isn’t kosher? Or that the preparation isn’t? Or something else?”

See, this can be a learning opportunity, too, friends.

“Thank you for understanding and respecting my beliefs. I’m glad you’re not some yuppie snob from West L.A. Theoretically the cereal at JuJu may very well be kosher. In fact, everything in the store may be kosher. However, someone (i.e. me) would have to look everything over, check packaging. In other words, it would be a pain in my ass. But their juice drinks should be kosher. That said, would you be willing to have dinner with me at a kosher place? My philosophy is: I’ll try anything once. Who knows, maybe you might enjoy putting a little bit of Jewish in you!”

Seriously, again? I’m so tired.

1. Who’s to say I’m not just a tolerant West L.A. yuppie snob? (Or a Hasidc one?)
2. Again, title of the Craigslist post, buddy. MY Craigslist post. I don’t want to eat dinner with you. I want breakfast. At JuJu.
3. You’ll try anything once? Anything like cheeseburgers? And Gentile cereal?
4. And are we still talking about food here? Or is the “Jewish” you hope to put in me referring, possibly, to something far scarier than Gefilte fish?

“Thanks for the invite. My intention, however, was to check out JuJu, so I think I’m gonna pass for now. Have a good weekend.”

I considered it for about a half a second, understanding that the true intention of Cereal Dating is not necessarily to eat cereal, but to date – or at least meet (and subsequently blog about) new people. But despite our blog-worthy exchange, this shiksa was utterly unamused by these emails, which historically doesn’t bode well for the person behind them. Perhaps if he’d actually used the phrase “a little Jew in you.” It’s far funnier.

Date #20: Sambazon Acai Bowl (a.k.a. Hemp Milk)

2008-05-19T12:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, first manner of business is that Flake, the new cereal bar, sucks ass. I mean sure, it’s better than my roommate's sister's box of generic Fruit Loops that’s been sitting on top of my fridge since November and a carton of rapidly deteriorating strawberries, but as far as options go, it ain't got shit on JuJu. No Fiber One. No Kashi Go Lean. No banana-flavored milk or cake frosting. (Though they did offer Pixie Sticks, which I found equally horrifying and fabulous.) And unlike JuJu, where your basic bowl gets two cereals and three toppings, at Flake it’s one and one. What the fuck? For $4-plus? Let me see...that could potentially buy a full box of Kashi, a carton of soymilk, and at least a half a bunch of bananas. Sure, it takes some of the fun out of it, but these are tough times my friend and at least then I could stay in my PJs. But whatever. The staff was exceedingly genial.

Without any of my high-fiber favorites to fall back on, I went with Puffins and raspberries this go 'round. (I got exactly three raspberries, just so you know. I think you can even see them in the picture. If you look closely.) And my date, Hemp Milk himself, went with a “Flake Specialty,” the Sambazon Acai Bowl – frozen blended Acai with vegan hemp granola (ha!) and bananas.

Okay, before I get into the details of this much anticipated date, I’m gonna quickly walk you through my somewhat spotty relationship with Acai. I’m a big fan of nutrition and superfoods and secret elixirs from the depths of the rainforest jungle and the like, so when my office stocked a box of Acai flavored Emergen-C not long ago, I was only too happy to jump on board with the wonder food. Now, when I was about eight years old my cousin had a birthday party at a hotel. We swam at the pool all day then ate BLTs for dinner and I promptly went home and vomited for the rest of the night. By some stroke of gastronomical fortune, that was the last time I spewed forth anything other than expletives, but the contents of this Acai immunity-boosting packet nearly had me revisiting the Great Ralph of ’89.

I realize that Emergen-C isn’t necessarily the go-to for accurate flavor profiles, but this was vile. It, and anything resembling it, does not belong in or near the mouth of anyone possessing functioning taste buds. (Word up to my roommate who actually doesn't! Seriously.) So I think you can imagine my skepticism surrounding Hemp Milk's choice.

But Hemp Milk loves Acai. Can’t get enough of it. In fact, in addition to its pantheon of breakfast cereals, Flake also carries some really hard to find Acai juice that Hemp Milk actually orders by the case and “gives weekly motivational speeches” about. (His words, not mine. Paints quite a picture though, huh?) Needless to say, before date’s end I was force-fed Acai in both liquid and frozen blended form and, I happily report, it is far more delicious than its powdery perpetrator.

So we finally sat down, me with my trio of raspberries and Hemp Milk with his Acai and hemp granola, and we got down to business. Hemp Milk is not a hippie, in fact, but a European. Half German and half Hungarian, he came to the U.S. 14 years ago and – remarkably – has not even a trace of an accent. (Not a trace!) He was a theater major at NYU, but he’s not gay. I assumed as much, considering he agreed to a date with me – a female – but he really wanted to make that clear and, really, it never can hurt.

Interested in making actual money, Hemp Milk gave up acting in favor of real estate. (Though he still rents.) He’s into music, going to the gym, and basically living in Santa Monica. He played competitive tennis for 20 years. Oh, and back when he was living in New York, he signed with a record label and made an album. A pop album. Oh, Eastern European vegan semi-professional tennis pop star former actor turned real estate agent, you make my dreams come true.

And that, literally, was everything. No concerns about cereal sog here, because our date was pretty much an extended staring/chewing contest with intermittent bursts of banal questions. For two people who share a love of the Acai berry and dairy alternatives, we sure didn't have much to talk about.

When we finally finished, Hemp Milk suggested we hike on over to the beach. You mean extend this awkward discomfort in both time and space? Sure! It’s sunny out. Why not inch my way toward melanoma with someone I have nothing to say to. And so we racked our brains for conversation starters and we walked, mostly in silence, down the Venice boardwalk. From the Jamaican proselytizer to the Russian father-son acrobatic duo we literally didn't say a word to each other. Not one. When we got to the guy blasting “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” from his boombox, I suggested we turn around. And then we walked all the way back.

Fortunately, I think Hemp Milk and I were on the same recycled page when it came to the success of the meeting, because the date ended shortly thereafter, with nary a phone number request. I’m back, baby!

Hemp Milk

2008-05-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

From the dating website:

“Hi there! I really like how you describe what you want in your profile and would be interested in chatting with you. If you would too, than just drop me a line.”

Hmm…how do I describe what I want in my profile? Let’s see…

I am seeking a: Man

Solid.

For: Hang out.

Brilliant.

“I appreciate wit and sarcasm.”

Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm.

“Would love to meet someone with a fun, slightly adventurous nature who shares some of my interests – or at least has an interesting perspective to share. Bonus points if you know the difference between ‘their’ and ‘there,’ or ‘your’ and ‘you’re.’”

Ahh, that must be what he’s referencing. Yep, all true. Alright, let’s see whatchya got. (And because it’s been a while and the people, they want themselves some Cereal Dating dirt, I’ll ignore the than/then misstep up there. But don’t think I didn’t notice.)

Profile says:

adventurous…love to travel…always looking to have fun…blah blah…easily excited, especially if there is someone else getting excited with me…huh?...watch what I eat…work out regularly…take care of myself phisically and emotionally…check a dictionary…would like to find a girl who is confident, takes care of her body and health and likes to send me qute text messages while I am at work. She needs to be emotionally stable and have an outgoing but friendly personality.

Indeed, I am the picture of outgoing, friendly, emotional stability. And I do love text messages. What kind of text messages is it that he likes, do you think? Cute? Quote? I’m gonna go with cute. And introduce him to Webster. But I’ll bite.

“So I checked out your profile and it’s a good start, but pretty general. Would like to know more about you. Interests? Hobbies? Do you like cereal?”

“Ok, here is some more: I am adventurous and can get excited about pretty much anything especially if there is someone else also getting excited with me. I hope that made sense.”

Makes sense but damn, fixate much?

“My friends say that I am funny and I agree. I like cereal but I have to say I am kind of picky about the kind that I will have and I will probably have it with almond-breeze or hempmilk. By the way, there is a new cereal breakfast place that opened up in Venice. That might be fun for us to meet there (just food for thought). As far as my interests and hobbies; I go to the gym regularly and I like going to restaurants as well as visiting new places randomly. I am well cultured and traveled. I know that you like a little sarcasm and I have that quality in my repertoire…”

Okay, I grew up on regular ol’ 2% milk, then eventually switched to skim and am now a soy convert. I’ve also been known to enjoy almond milk on occasion and even had a brief romp with rice, so I know my way around the dairy case. But hemp milk? Hemp milk is where I draw the line. I really think we’re pushing it with hemp milk. What is that, like, a euphemism for bong water or something?

Also, I find evidence of humor and sarcasm preferable to reports of them, but I guess I can judge for myself because he won me over with the suggestion of meeting at Flake, the second Los Angeles cereal bar to permeate my consciousness. He is one lucky little hippie. What do you suppose he eats in his hemp milk? Granola, right? What else would go in hemp milk besides granola? Tobacco?

Back in the Cereal Saddle

2008-05-12T15:39:00.000-07:00

Due to my 7-day work week schedule as of late, Cereal Dating recently experienced a forced hiatus, but I’m happy to report that my weekends have since been returned to me and, as such, the never-ending quest to enjoy ill-timed breakfasts with the menfolk continues.

Since last we convened, unsurprisingly, not much has occurred. CASKWBPBACS went on a week-long business trip to San Francisco, effectively ending our communication. I didn’t make any efforts to contact him, nor did I hear from him, and I’m pretty comfortable with that. He was a nice guy, but I wasn’t really feelin’ it and – let’s face it – whatever lucky guy ends up with all this is gonna have to show me he wants it.

Additionally, since creating the Sliding Doors map of my future, I have heard from Gentleman #2 (Granola and All Bran) but twice. The first email arrived about a week or so after our date (and, if memory serves, after two emails from my end). Anyways, he reported having a “crazy couple of weeks” but had a “fun time as well” and thought “it would be good to get together again.” Not this weekend but, you know, sometime soon.

I shall eagerly await it.

And exactly twenty anticipation-riddled days later I received the following email:

“Hey there, I hope everything has been great in the wonderful world of [L.A. Cereal Dater]. Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, but the past couple of weeks have been something else…what an experience. Anyway, that is all done now, so if you are still interested and haven’t already married an artist from Echo Park, I still want in. Actually if you get this and are free tomorrow, my friend is having a pool party in her new house in west hollywood. I know its last minute but if you want to go, break all your rules and call my cell so I can fill you in.”

I like a guy who can respect my bevy of phone number rules (actually, it’s really just the one: Don’t give it out unless you actually want to speak to the person requesting it), but I’m not so much one for last minute invites to strangers’ pool parties, so I coyly played it like I didn’t get the email until the next day and, instead, offered up the following weekend for pre-approved activities.

Now, I don’t know if he drowned at the West Hollywood housewarming bash, or suddenly found himself entrenched in a couple more weeks of disconcertingly vague “something else,” or if my joke about a brief engagement to a musician in Los Feliz scared him off, but it’s been a good two weeks so I’m thinking maybe he’s opted out of this deal.

I imagine I’ll get another email from him in a few weeks’ time, but who knows where my British-accented-multiple-hairstyle-sporting-Gwyneth-Paltrow-catching/missing-a-train-movie-loving soul will be? I’ve got new Fiber One frontiers to forge.

Craigslist Creepy

2008-04-26T14:24:00.000-07:00

Due to an increasingly demanding work schedule as we push toward our looming wrap date (hello May 3rd…haven’t had a day off since Daylight Savings Time began) and exactly zero suitable prospects, my Cereal Dating came screeching to a halt in the past couple weeks, as evidenced by my lack of posts and mild whiplash. Probably best, however, since the neck brace makes for an awkward kiss goodnight. (Kidding, of course, as the whiplash is metaphorical – or, well, a lie – and we all know that I’m not kissing anyone goodnight these days.)

I do, however, have one tale to share, regarding a character I have dubbed, in a feat of grammatical trailblazing, Craigslist Creepy. (“Creepy” brazenly posing as a noun in this instance.)

Oh so many months ago, when I first posted my unique breakfast-loving desires on Craigslist, I was greeted with an onslaught of responses, including the following:

“I like you’re idea for a cereal break. I also have been trying to think of something interesting and slightly adventurous to do. This sounds like it! Anyways give me a write back and maybe we can meet up for a bowl and a conversation.”

His incorrect usage of a contraction aside (lots o’ English-oriented snark in this one), he seemed worthy of a follow-up email, so I sent him what was serving as my personality litmus test at the time: (what else but) Bernard Pivot’s questionnaire made famous by James Lipton at the end of every episode of Inside the Actors Studio. Some of the highlights:

“What is your favorite word? thingy”

Really? That’s kind of a dumb word.

“What turns you on? …are we talking physical things or non physical things?”

No no no. I’m the one asking the questions here. Or maybe James Lipton is. But either way, it’s not you. Your job is to answer. Which you didn't do. Not winning any fans that way, buddy.

“What is your favorite curse word? bastard”

Bastard is so not a curse word. Pussy.

"If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? Welcome home, son.”

Blech.

“Do you have any idea where I got these questions? careerbuilder.com…maybe lol.”

LOL. Double blech.

I think I pretty much wrote him off at this point. Craigslist Creepy, I soon learned, is not one to be written off, though.

February 2, 2008 – No response?

Yeah, sorry, been really busy, blah blah blah. Maybe next week?

February 3, 2008 – No problem. I don’t really have any special time frame or anything. I was just starting to think you may have forgotten about the whole thing. Keep in touch.

Unlikely, but okay. (But take the hint, dude.)

February 16, 2008 – You know, I still haven’t given up on the cereal thing. How have you been? its been busy up here, but I have sunday and monday off, any chance you’ll be free?

“I could actually do Sunday around 4pm if that works. Back to work on Monday, though. Let me know.”

February 18, 2008 – if i had read that earlier i would have been able to….curse my bad timing.

Why on earth did you ask if you weren’t going to check your email?

“Oh well. It’ll happen eventually. Have a good week.”

February 23, 2008 – I’ll try. Are you open for anything on monday or tuesday?

No, dumbass. I told you last time, I have a job.

March 14, 2008 – I haven’t heard from you for a while, how are you? Whats your schedule been like? How close are you to monterey park?

Right. Because I haven’t written to you in a while. And Monterey Park? Umm…not that close. Like, not cereal close.

April 12, 2008

Damn, he is persistent. It’s just freaking cereal, man. Get over it. But anyways…

April 12, 2008 – How are you doing? Other than busy that is ☺. A thought just popped into my head here, so I thought I’d see if you know, are there any hampton inn hotels that are close to you?

What? WTF? Why?

“I’m good, thanks. Enjoying the beautiful weather as of late. Sorry, I have no idea if there are any Hampton Inns near me, but I imagine their website could help you out.”

April 16, 2008 – Well, I don’t really need the website. I was asking because I work at a hampton so if I go somewhere I can stay at one dirt cheap. If I know what area to look in I can find them pretty quick, I just wanted to know if you knew of any over there. I’m just trying to think of ideas for interesting things to do with my days off.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. You’re seriously going to spend a night in a hotel to eat cereal with a stranger? I hope you understand that the “interesting thing” you’re going to do with your day off is not, well, me. Likelihood of me telling you what area I’m in? Not high. Likelihood of me responding to this email (or any subsequent ones that I’m sure you’re already drafting)? Take a guess.

And that would be the story of Craigslist Creepy. Though, despite my wishes otherwise, I somehow sense it may not be the end of the story. Oh how I long for the innocent days of Rice Chex with Almond Milk, who could be funny over email, crazy to your face, particular about his milk, and didn't require a reservation for any of it.

Voting Along Cereal Lines

2008-04-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

I think I could argue (and really, who could stop me?) that any and all cereal-related news or banter is fair game here at Chex and the City, regardless of its relationship to romance. And while I shall practice restraint in this regard (what with there being such a surplus of cereal-related news and banter out there), I can’t help but to share some very exciting findings brought to us this week by the New York Times.

I am over the moon to learn (and share) that my preferences for breakfast cereal and Presidential candidate are in perfect alignment, as scientific research has proven that Hillary Clinton supporters prefer Kashi GoLean over all other cereals. Very exciting. Very reassuring. I am Cereal Dater, I am liberal, hear me roar.

I am, however, having a much harder time dealing with the news that John McCain’s rabid fan base would chose – of all the cereals on all the shelves in all the world – Fiber One. Fiber One! Now I realize that by divulging this I’m probably also revealing some aspect of my character that I’d really rather not, but Fiber One is, without question, my number two cereal choice when it comes to Cereal Dating and – as much as it pains me to admit in light of this new information – my uncontested favorite in the home and workplace. I love Fiber One. I crave Fiber One. It’s old people food, but it’s awesome. Oh, the shame. The horror. The self-hatred.

Obama lovers, it seems, love Bear Naked Granola. Good stuff, but too caloric for my serial cereal consumption.

Now, aside from the extensive soul-searching that I’m clearly obliged to begin, what really stuns me about this situation is the specificity of it all. What are the odds that my two very favorite cereals are actually the exact brands cited in this study? Seriously. It’s not like we’re talking Cheerios here. All data would indicate that I must be an incredibly politically-driven breakfaster and, as such, that you (yes, YOU!) should take my word as gospel. And my word, so you know, is “Hillary.” Hillary’s where it’s at, yo.

(Interestingly, one might also deduce from these low-fat, high-fiber preferences that we, as a voting nation, are an incredibly healthy – not to mention regular – lot. So take that for whatever it’s worth.)

So that’s all. Just found it interesting and (somewhat) relevant and wanted to announce it over my own little megaphone to the world. And because I can’t bear to see the fun end here, I’ll throw you some more startlingly specific candidate-linked product preferences:

Clinton supporters enjoy butter, white wine, Fig Newtons and other fruit-filled cookies, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Red Lobster, Krispy Kreme, Newman’s Own pretzels, Luna Bars, Boca Burgers, and Odwalla Super Protein drink.

Obama Girl & co. lean towards olive oil, lattes, The Cheesecake Factory, Panera Bread, Starbucks, Kettle Chips, Lara Bars, grass-fed beef, and Izze sparkling juice.

McCain followers/Republicans/the Downfall of our Nation as we Know it go for bourbon, scotch, stuffed crust pizza, red wine, Dr. Pepper, Fuddruckers, Chick-Fil-A, Chips Ahoy, Sun Chips, Fiji Water, PowerOne bars, corn-fed beef, and SoBe energy drink.

Pepsi-Cola and Sprite, clear liquors like gin and vodka, and Evian water fall decidedly in Democratic territory, but don’t differentiate between candidates.

Date #19: A Fork in the Spoon (But Not a Spork)

2008-04-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

I think it’s over for CASKWBPBACS. Not because things have changed but, rather, because they haven’t.

I had a very lucid moment whilst on my date with Granola and All Bran oh so long ago. Now finding myself with a second cereal suitor possessing even a shred of promise and, with it, the prospect of options, I couldn’t help but to acknowledge a somewhat pressing notion that I had, in fact, approached a proverbial fork in the Cereal Dating road. Now, I realize I’m getting ahead of myself here (hey, offers a better view than the alternative, badum-ching), but my mind kept wandering to two images: what my life would look like if I were to chose one of them over the other, if I were to “end up” (if you will) with CASKWBPBACS or, alternately, with Granola and All Bran.

A life with CASKWBPBACS, I imagine, would be one filled with movies and board games and evenings at home or friends' homes. Animated, exaggerated stories would accompany Sunday brunch with his family in the Valley, followed by aisle-wandering at World Market and Barnes & Noble. Quiet conversations over meat and potatoes (or matzah and gifilte fish, or lentils and butternut squash) would crescendo with an evening of falling asleep on the couch. We would exchange humorous literary passages, creative larks, travel tales, and the occasional passive-aggressive argument. I would gain, potentially, ten or fifteen pounds, but also a sharper, quicker wit and a better understanding of the allure of Star Wars.

Life with Granola and All Bran, on the other hand, would be markedly more kinetic. Passion and fire and sunshine and travel. Up early, even on Sundays. Creative breakfast combinations that include oatmeal and cacao nibs and flax seeds. Hiking and swimming and home-cooked vegan Thai food. Trips to Whole Foods and the Indian spice market and Costa Rica. Lots of talking – mostly his. Exhaustion. Possibly sunstroke. In this scenario I would take up rock climbing, sport a perennial tan with ever-changing cuts and bruises, and possibly get myself into some sticky situations involving rickshaw drivers and obscure Cambodian laws.

But those were just the quick, spur-of-the-moment images that popped into my head. Neither perfect (which leads me to believe my search may continue beyond this duo) or necessarily preferable, just starkly different, intriguing, and – strangely – a reality check of sorts. Is it possible that I could really change that much depending on the person I am with? Really? Stubborn, independent me? How is that so?

Such big questions for breakfast food. Such existential crises for cereal. So let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Let's get right where we are, which at #19 with CASKWBPBACS…

Our fourth (and, I believe, final) date included a mutually agreed-upon movie and quasi-meal (I ate corn on the cob in anticipation of running up the street for sushi as soon as we parted ways. He had pizza.) at the Farmers Market. It was all very nice, as usual, but let's face it - I just don’t see this taking a romantic turn and it wouldn’t be fair (to him, to you, to Cereal Dating, to those starving kids in Africa) to continue to refer to these encounters as “dates.” So barring any drunken rehearsal dinners in London (anyone catching the reference there?), unforeseen plot twists, or particularly blog-worthy occurrences, this shall be the last you’ll hear of CASKWBPBACS.

I’ll give you some time to say your goodbyes.

Date #18: Operation Rape Kiss Evasion

2008-04-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

Alright, so before agreeing to date numero tres (yes, this would be the one I returned home from on Saturday night with a “decided lack of enthusiasm”), I sent a pre-emptive warning to CASKWBPBACS, laying some necessary evasive groundwork. I basically said I’m most comfortable developing solid friendships and letting things evolve naturally from there, if they’re meant to, rather than diving right in, and if that’s not really his style or he doesn’t want to wait around to see if and when that happens for me, that’s his prerogative and I totally understand. (Okay, so that’s exactly what I said.)

Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that. I know that guys already have friends and don’t want more, blah blah blah, but dammit, I want my romantic life to mimic those of my favorite sitcom characters and, as it happens, they were Friends first. So screw that. I’m not being coy, or hiding anything, and if my fantasy’s not going to fly, it’s up to you to man-up and say so.

But I don’t mean to be too harsh there, because I genuinely would like to get to know CASKWBPBACS better and see if he suddenly does turn into my Prince Chandler. So I also added, in an effort to quash any notes of rejection, that (being the independent and strong-willed but no less lovable girl that I am) I pretty much never do things that I don’t want to, and I would like to hang out again.

His pretty perfect response to my dating disclaimer:

“I totally understand…So here’s the thing. I find you attractive and I want to know more about you. I also like spending time with you. I’d like for something to happen, but if it doesn’t I won’t be upset or offended. But I’m happy to move at your pace. Does that sound fair?"

Incredibly fair, CASKWBPBACS. Completely fair. Supremely fair. Exponentially more fair than the fact that I’m sharing this personal sentiment with the whole of the online community. But I guess that’s what makes you a better person than me. And I’ve made my peace with that.

So our third date occurred at CASKWBPBACS’s apartment – nice place, smells like incense (or pot), great coffee table – and included a viewing of the very excellent documentary King of Kong, microwave popcorn, engaging chit-chat, and no kiss good-night. All in all, it was a wholly enjoyable evening with my “friend” CASKWBPBACS which, when converted from friendship to date, apparently translates into “an unenthusiastic fine.” Weak exchange rate. Blame the economy.

So I’m still neutral. I like him: he's interesting and amusing and good company. I’ll see him again. We’ll see what happens. At least we have similar taste in very excellent documentaries. And coffee tables - that coffee table was pretty fantastic.
(It's hard to tell here, but each side slides open to expose nine little compartments in which you can display any 8-inch by 8-inch treasures you so desire.)

Date #17: Granola and All Bran with Raspberries, Blueberries, and Goji Berries in Vanilla Soymilk

2008-04-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

Well this is unprecedented. Another good date (that would make 2), this one also at the cereal bar. In fact, I’m considering a permanent relocation, as it’s proving so very date-friendly. (Plus, since Kashi hasn’t yet come through with that big Cereal Dating sponsorship, I really have no reason to maintain such public loyalty to the brand.) As such, I opted for a bowl of Shredded Wheat and Fiber One with strawberries, bananas, and chocolate chips in plain soymilk this time around, which I found to be not only more magically delicious than any leprechaun-endorsed fake marshmallow feast, but also highly compatible with my date’s Granola and All Bran with Raspberries, Blueberries, and Goji Berries in Vanilla Soymilk.

Yes, he’s a healthy one, that Granola and All Bran (with Raspberries, Blueberries, and Goji Berries in Vanilla Soymilk), and his passion for wellness spewed from his mouth as though he’d engaged in a coming-of-age nutrition book bender the previous night. (Admittedly, this was far preferable to those other things commonly referenced in spewing stories.) Being so nutritionally-minded myself, though, I didn’t much mind.

In brief, Granola and All Bran (with blah blah blah in blah blah blah…) is getting his master’s in nutrition sciences, starting a supplement business, and would like – one day – to write his own nutrition book. He switches between vegetarianism and veganism; however, he will occasionally consume fish (which as we all know, would actually make him a pescetarian but, alas, that is another post for another time).

Exciting though the wheat germ talk was, after about an hour with Dr. Oz my attention started to wane and I grew weary of his single-mindedness. Perhaps sensing this, Granola and All Bran deftly switched to his other passion – the ever-pleasing, fan favorite topic of travel. Ahh…travel. Always there when I need you.

Granola and All Bran is adventurous - a real backpack and trail mix kind of guy. Unafraid to throw himself into new situations, he has engaged in a number of activities that I’ve never seemed to have proper companionship for, like driving through Central America, and couch surfing (not a euphemism for some sort of collegiate sexual romp, despite the apt name). And, he even comes with a personal guarantee that “every single person” he’s ever traveled with has had “a great time” (so suck that, Rick Steves).

At exactly an hour-and-a-half in, newly entrenched in passionate travel discussion, the alarm on my cell phone alerted me of my expiring meter and provided a well-planned escape, were it deemed necessary. I deemed it not. I fed my meter and Granola and All Bran proposed we go for a walk. Well damn if I wasn’t planning on taking a walk when I got home from this very date! Now I could do both at once! So efficient! I love efficiency! And a good exclamatory! So we took it to the streets of Westwood.

The loquacious and passionate Granola and All Bran, in fact also asked many a substantial question (and actually seemed to care about their answers). He was confident without being arrogant, boasted an appealing laid-back but motivated nature, appeared alarmingly mature for his 25 years, and was not unpleasing to the eye. His face did, however, conjure persistent (and disturbingly incestuous) images of my brother, reminding me of a similar experience I had with Cereal Date #2, Special K Vanilla Almond who – as it were – looked nothing like Granola and All Bran, causing me to wonder if, perhaps, I actually have no idea what my brother really looks like. Eh, whatever…

By the time we wandered our way back to our cars, just minutes before my second meter expiration (that would be nearly 2 ½ hours and still going str- well, still going), we had exchanged email addresses (having previously communicated exclusively through the dating site), hugs, an awkward low-five, and enthusiastic interest in hanging out again. And I would like to enthusiastically hang out again. Maybe on the second go we can even upgrade to a clumsy high-five. Or passionate love-making. Or lunch. The sky’s the limit. Well, the sky and our vegetarian/vegan diets…and our individual schedules…and my prohibitive student loan debt…and, of course, the accepted standards of social behavior… But that’s all.

The Soymilk to my Kashi

2008-04-03T15:04:00.000-07:00

Kashi GoLean with soymilk. That would be the – I must say, exceptional – cereal preference of my next prospect from the dating website. (And what he unwittingly led with in his introductory email.) Visions of compatibility danced in my head. A peek at his profile revealed an athletic nutritionist who’s looking for not a girlfriend, or a friend, but an “activity partner.” Interesting. Well I like activities (assuming they don’t involve bars, genital mutilation, or the forced ingestion of beef) and I’m open to partnerships (in the proper context). No hilarious top ten lists or tales of monkey thievery, but a good looking chap who appears to have a few brain cells. I graduated him from round one.

Let’s see…Interests: nutrition, fitness, health, wellness (seeing a pattern here - is this the anatomy of a Kashi guy?), sociology, philosophy, surfing, hiking, climbing, great conversation, reading, yoga, movies, cooking, dreaming, traveling the world, fighting for the little guy.

Alright…a palatable mix of recreational, intellectual, and utterly metaphysical. My initial thought was that these interests/hobbies/windows into his soul seemed a little narrow, but then I opened my mind fractionally and considered that maybe they’re just related, which seems supremely more appealing and sensical. And then it occurred to me that I have about three total interests listed in my profile and conceded that he beats the pants off of me (hey, they’re gonna come off eventually, right?) in this department. Additionally, while I’m not a proponent of fighting, if you’re gonna do it, might as well be for midgets (or the oppressed, whatever…), so I liked that.

Reading on…He’ll try anything once, from skydiving to French cooking classes; he is the proud uncle of a niece who hates McDonalds; and he thinks money and things often get in the way of some truly great living.

Anything once, eh? How about public cereal consumption? Rarely do I find money and/or things getting in its way. And its greatness is true and undeniable.

So we emailed. He asked a lot of questions. I answered and asked some of my own. We exchanged banter. He requested my phone number. I rebuffed. I proposed a Cereal Date. He went to San Diego for the weekend. He returned and suggested Wednesday afternoon. I told him I have a job. He went on a week-long roadtrip. I advised him to avoid buying gas. He returned and confirmed that gas is expensive and Mormons are, well... He proposed cereal and “silly stories” on Saturday. I accepted. He suggested meeting at JuJu Cereal Bar. I marveled at the reappearance of this fine establishment in my dating life and (again) at our cereal compatibility and agreed. And then I squinted my eyes slightly, tapped my right index finger to my lips and wondered just how similar our cereal bar concoctions would be. (You're at the edge of your seat now, aren't you?)

Date #16: Special K Red Berries

2008-03-31T17:10:00.000-07:00

The fellas, they do like them some Special K. Special K Red Berries comes to us from Craigslist, wooing me with this response to my post:

“Hello Cereal Afficionado, I have been waiting for what seems like ages for someone to invite me to a cereal outing. As it happens, I live directly across from the Farmer’s Market/Grove. In case you choose to accept this mission, I am 28 and look conspicuously like the photos attached to this email.”

Well wait no longer my flake-loving friend, I deem this mission possible.

The first of the aforementioned photos depicts Special K Red Berries slouching in a 70s-inspired leather jacket the exact color of now-defunct tan M&Ms. The second is an artsy, mySpacey headshot of him looking longingly over his shoulder into the distance. Kinda like something I could see U.S. Figure Skating champion Johnny “I make my own unitards” Weir posing for, if that means anything to you. (And if it doesn’t, it sure as hell should.) But sure, he looks like someone I’d be willing to eat cereal with.

Interestingly enough, he didn’t really look all that much like those attached photos in person. The resemblance might have been closer if, say, the photos gained fifty pounds on anti-depressants, forgot to shower, and threw on a Tool t-shirt. But that was just my initial reaction. My subsequent reaction was to wonder if Special K Red Berries was gay. Or if even he knew. But hey, that’s just me. And him, of course. And his slight lisp.

I got the impression that Special K Red Berries is pretty smart from the intellectual-sounding books he reads and the fact that he’s a computer/website programmer and casually getting his degree in computer science in his spare time. Not surprisingly, however, this did not translate into scintillating cereal conversation. It was 70 long minutes punctuated with droplets of his sweat, extended bouts of silence, longing gazes at the patrons around us, and, finally, a substantial discussion about the importance of both organization and communication in the workplace. That’s right. Organization. In the workplace.

Special K Red Berries is an introvert, lives alone, and doesn’t have a car. He’s not much of a TV person and enjoys reading the “Missed Connections” postings on Craigslist for entertainment. Nice guy, though.

When I eventually deemed our final, record-breaking conversational lull sufficient reason to break free, he asked if we should keep in contact. Seriously? Because we could barely manage to maintain contact while sharing a table and what many might consider a meal for the past hour. But sure, whatever. Email me.

And because I know you’re perched on the edge of your seat for this bit: nothing new with CASKWBPBACS, but I’ll probably see him next weekend.

Date #15: A Second Helping of Cheerios and Special K with Bananas, Peanut Butter, and Chocolate Syrup

2008-03-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

I have terrible dating endurance. In a chronological twist on the date-night classic, CASKWBPBACS and I went out for a movie and dinner on Saturday evening. Total running time was approximately four-and-a-half hours but even with 109 of those minutes being accounted for by the minimally taxing movie, it was a little much for me. You still have to be “on” for the duration of the date, and I don’t like having to be “on.” I like just having to be. And preferably in my apartment and pajamas.

Either a result of heightened expectations, or a glimpse of reality or, more likely, an utter absence of breakfast foods, our sophomore meeting unsurprisingly fell short of its remarkable predecessor. I don’t know if waxing occurred, but CASKWBPBACS was less hirsute than I remembered. And also, a little more hunchbacked. Our conversation was easy and amusing enough once we got past his lively retelling of the plot of 10,000 B.C. – a movie I will undoubtedly never be watching – but as we rolled past nine p.m. my interest – and stamina - waned.

(And while we’re on the topic of dwindling resources – damn, dating is expensive. I covered dinner after he got the movie and, let me tell you, it’s gonna be back to cereal for me. I prefer to spend what little disposable income I have on trips to Europe and North Africa and the Gap and that shit can’t happen when you’re shelling out twenty bucks for a plateful of bean sprouts and lentils every weekend.)

My organic vegan vegetable lasagna was pretty great, though. The foreign language drama was just alright. And I guess the evening as a whole fell somewhere in between. A half-hearted good, maybe? It was the kind of night that left me not quite sure. I’m pretty sure CASKWBPBACS liked it, though. He’s going “2” kiss me next time, in fact. And I know this because he told me so a half-hour after parting. In a text message.

Well, if nothing else, I appreciate the warning.

It’s not that I don’t want to experience the sweet succor of CASKWBPBACS’s eager lips, it’s just that I don’t know if I want to. And frankly, that’s not enough for me. In the “does he make me want to scream?” litmus test, he’s a cautious “no,” but then again, so is bag-of-crazy Tyra Banks. Doesn’t mean I want to make out with her. (On second thought, after viewing the most recent - or any - episode of ANTM, Tyra does make me want to scream a little bit, but my argument still stands.)

I know, I know...what’s the big deal, right? It’s just one kiss. Ahhh, but it’s not just an isolated lip-lock. In my experience, one kiss leads to many kisses. Which lead to romance and commitment and expectations and me wearing a white dress before twenty of my nearest and dearest on a Hawaiian island coming to terms with the fact that I really don't. (Okay, so maybe that last bit isn’t from experience, but one can deduce.) Yes, it’s a slippery slope, friends, best dealt with now. Operation Rape Kiss Evasion is a go.

But that’s not to say I won’t see him again. Just perhaps in a more time-controlled, budget-friendly, well-lit atmosphere. Yeah, sounds pretty sweet.

(Seriously, what’s wrong with me?)

Lists, Lists, So Many Lists

2008-03-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

Having written for a men’s magazine that was keen on the format, Cheerios and Special K with Bananas, Peanut Butter, and Chocolate Syrup (or CASKWBPBACS, to those of you in the know) is big on tips and lists. Knowing this, I sent him the following email the Wednesday after our Cereal Date:

“10 Things I Learned on Our Date

1. People love lists.

2. You can make a list out of ANYTHING with more than 2 points.

3. Always specify how many rewrites you are willing to do before agreeing to a project.

4. Monkeys and midgets are comedy gold.

5. Juiced is the new Hulu.

6. Always infuse stories/lies with elements of truth.

7. When telling a story/lie, don’t be forthcoming with details, but be prepared with them when questions are asked.

8. Turning 30’s not so bad, but watch out for 27.

9. There’s nothing scary about peanut butter in cereal.

10. While people love a top 10 list, 99 is really where it’s at.”

There. Perhaps you learned something; or perhaps that didn’t make any sense and you should eat some cereal with CASKWBPBACS. Either way, he enjoyed it (“Your email made me laugh. Thanks.” No LOL in sight. Hallelujah. Thank you Jesus. Praise Allah. Auf Weidersehen.) and suggested we work together to write the definitive book on writing lists. Sounds like a major undertaking, I told him. One that might require a list, even.

CASKWBPBACS proposed dinner (I advocated for lunch, it being the natural progression after cereal, but he already had plans) and a movie for the upcoming weekend, and asked if there is anything I don’t eat. Well funny you should bring that up, CASKWBPBACS. In fact, I have somewhat of a list.

“I am what could be classified as an ‘almost vegan’ – meaning I don’t eat meat, fish, or dairy (with the occasional milk chocolate-related exception). That being said, I can usually find a salad or some nutritious, LA Cereal Dater-friendly fare at most places, so don’t get too freaked out by that. Movies, however, I tend to be pretty picky about.”

I followed this with a list of flicks I’d be willing to sit through. ☺

He gamely chose a pre-approved movie and made a restaurant suggestion: Real Food Daily. That would be Los Angeles’s premiere organic vegan restaurant. Oh, CASKWBPBACS, you are one smooth operator.

Date #14: Cheerios and Special K with Bananas, Peanut Butter, and Chocolate Syrup

2008-03-22T14:36:00.001-07:00

Oh, it was good. The date, the cereal bar, my cereal concoction – all of it. It was a nice little package of good. Finally. So let’s get to it…

JuJu Cereal Bar was adorable. Their overwhelming selection includes, I don’t know, 40 or so cereals, from shredded wheat to Fruity Pebbles, toppings from fresh fruit to candy bar crumbles to cake frosting, and at least 7 varieties of milk from various sources with a range of fat content and flavorings. I was supremely satisfied with my choice of Fiber 1 and Cocoa Puffs with strawberries, bananas, yogurt chips, and soy milk, and my date quite enjoyed his combo as well. The peanut butter concept was a hard one for me to get behind, but I’m told it dissolves into the milk, creating a peanut butter-flavored milk-like experience, which I guess makes sense. But the date…

Cheerios and Special K with Bananas, Peanut Butter, and Chocolate Syrup is what I might describe (in fact, have) as a big, hairy Jew. In a good way. He’s not a supermodel (hey, neither am I), but he’s not offensive to look at, either. Methinks that, were he to pluck his threatening unibrow and drop a few LBs, in fact he’d be quite adorable. He’s a little gorillaish, and the kind of guy who probably sweats a lot (though he remained perspiration-free for the duration of our date), but also owns it and uses it for comedic purposes, which I can appreciate.

Cheerios and Special K with Bananas, Peanut Butter, and Chocolate Syrup (which I’ll abbreviate to CASKWBPBACS) is originally from L.A. and went to college on the east coast. He realized that he hated law school on the very first day, but stuck it out and graduated anyway, which is a little incomprehensible to me but respectable nonetheless. He sat for the bar at his parents’ request, which he passed, and then promptly fell into writing. He makes his living in the realm of online journalism, but his preferred writing form is “creative non-fiction” essays akin to David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. In fact, he “accidentally” wrote a book (funny, that’s never accidentally happened to me) which he’s now revising and editing with the help of a literary agent.

CASKWBPBACS is close with his family (his dad, he reports, looks like Winnie the Pooh), and enjoys telling elaborate tales. He is frequently introduced as a liar by his sister because of one notorious story involving him and his father preventing a midget from committing suicide out of the emergency exit on a flight from Dallas to Los Angeles. The incident of a spider monkey stealing his banana daiquiri while he was playing intoxicated, bilingual Scrabble during a rainstorm in Nicaragua, however, is entirely true, he insists. And knowing what I do about sticky-fingered monkeys, I’m inclined to believe him.

CASKWBPBACS is well-traveled, having spent a year between undergrad and law school backpacking around the world, and there’s no where he wouldn’t want to go. Except Florida - it’s too fucked up. (He’s been many times and continues to go, mind you, he just wouldn’t want to.) CASKWBPBACS likes Friends, knows nothing about music, and isn’t frequently inebriated but believes himself to be an “affable drunk.” (Good to know, because if I’m going to have to deal with drunkenness, that’s the kind I’d order.) He's also the self-proclaimed "king of the parenthetical." (Nothing wrong with a good parenthetical. And while we're laying regal claim on grammatical elements, can I be the princess of ellipses? I don't think I'm ready for queendom yet, but I do love me some dot-dot-dots...)

In an unprecedented occurence, 2 ½ hours after meeting, I volunteered my phone number to CASKWBPBACS and we came frighteningly close to a high five upon my admission that I’m really “not much of a phone person” – neither is he. He texted the next day. I do believe I'll be seeing CASKWBPBACS again; I don’t believe cereal will be required.

The Mothership?

2008-03-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

Email number 1 from prospect number 14:

“Not sure if you’ve ever been, but there’s this amazing cereal bar in Westwood. I know it sounds strange at first (paying $6 for cereal), but they have all different kinds of cereal and a crazy amount of toppings. Last time I went, I had eggo waffle cereal with peanut butter. At that moment I knew life was good.”

What?! A cereal bar right here in L.A.? I’m familiar with the cereal bar concept (a selection of cereals, a treasure trove of toppings, a medley of milks - mix and match to your heart's content) and have long desired to patronize one, but they’ve always been in magical, faraway places like Miami and State College, Pennsylvania. During the burgeoning stages of my Cereal Dating, I even conducted an unsuccessful Google search because such a place seemed the ideal location for my rendezvous, but was saddened to find that L.A. hadn’t gotten on board with the idea.

But then in swoops number 14, with his top ten list and his peanut butter in his cereal and the milk-spilling news that Los Angeles, in fact, has boarded this train in the form of JuJu Cereal Bar in nearby Westwood. Interestingly enough, as soon as I made this exciting discovery, my burning, urgent interest seemed to dissipate.

Email number 2:

“Truth be told, it’s been a while since I’ve been to the cereal bar. Though I seldom feel a pressing need to go, I do take comfort knowing that the guy who works there takes a lot of pride in his job. As he was making my second bowl (yeah, it’s that good), he was telling me about all of his cereal experiments. Mostly the experiments had to do with toppings and he had loads to say about the wonders of cake frosting and cereal. I got the sense that he could very well have been working on a more pressing issue like global warming, but that he had simply heard the siren cereal call and just gone for it. A little odd? Yes. But also kind of cool…I know you said the urgency is gone, but if you’re interested, perhaps you’d like to join me for a bowl of cereal one evening. Or, maybe we could just meet for coffee.”

Whoa…coffee? No no. I think it would be foolhardy to turn my back on an opportunity to visit an establishment so clearly suited for my dating goals. Cereal, definitely cereal. And, ya know, it is rather satisfying to know that the cereal bar entrepreneur takes such pride in what he does. And though I admittedly have a tough time swallowing the cake frosting idea, he is the expert (and my perspective on the world is slightly brightened just knowing that such a field of expertise exists).

Email number 3:

“It got mixed reviews on Yelp because some people think the cereal bar concept is a little out there. I would agree that it’s out there, but there are plenty of crazy ideas like $4 coffee and $6 popcorn that most people just go along with. Anyway, it’s also kind of a cute date place.”

Yeah, it's not so "out there"! Why is cereal such a perpetual outcast? Everyone eats it. It’s a way better investment than coffee. Or popcorn. And think of all the choices - the room for creativity. I love creativity! Ohhh, this is very exciting indeed. I'm glad I found someone who seems to delight in all of this as much as I do. I just hope I don’t crumble under the pressure of all the creative decision-making. And that he doesn't turn out to be some sort of schizophrenic, chainsaw-wielding, cereal-loving rapist.

New Name, Same Great Dates

2008-03-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

The times, they are a-changin’. At the truly exceptional suggestion of my friend, teammate, and the greatest short fielder in all of Santa Monica Coed D-minus league recreational softball, I have decided to completely uproot exactly zero lives by changing my blog title to the very cute and clever Chex and the City. It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for a good (or mediocre) play on words, and I am only too happy to bring myself that much closer to my HBO heroine. Although I do fear outside comparison and ridicule, as I knowlingly fall short of her sexy standard (or maybe it is she who falls short of my chexy standard) and don’t really care to have others to point it out to me, I guess that’s the trade-off for pilfering these three-and-a-half little words. Either way, things shall continue as normal for you: I am still L.A. Cereal Dater and you can still find me here at www.lacerealdater.blogspot.com. If you prefer, however, you can also access the site from www.chexandthecity.com. (Or at least that's what the good robots over here at Blogger tell me.) I like it, it’s a little chexier. Add it to your favorites. Email it around. Use protection. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Cereal with a Side of Hope

2008-03-18T16:52:00.000-07:00

It has been brought to my attention that some readers (well, one reader in particular) might find my blog and the Cereal Dating that fuels it both discouraging and depressing. Admittedly, I see that my tales could paint a somewhat bleak picture of the dating world and understand how, if someone was already reluctant to throw themselves into (or back into) mate hunting, such recounts could either frighten or send them cowering into a corner. This, I assure you, is not my intention. My goal, rather, is to glean from these bizarre, mundane, disastrous, and all-around unsuccessful forays whatever value they might contain – be it entertainment or otherwise.

Additionally, one way (albeit not the fastest way) to find the person you do want is by first finding all the ones you don't. Process of elimination, people. (And haven't you ever heard of the journey...?) It’s a big world out there and half of it is potential suitors (maybe more, if you count those who are considering sex changes. Then again, I guess you’d also have to account for those who are considering them in the opposite direction, so it probably evens out). Either way, my expectation is that I will have to endure far more than 13 dates to make a dent. I remain undaunted by this prospect and hope that all seven of you will continue to accompany me along the way. I mean, it’s one thing to brave each day without a partner by my side, but to face the world without the companionship of a faceless online community…that is a thought that both saddens and scares me.

Now, having said that, I’m optimistic about my latest catch.

From the dating website, his interests include: reading (excellent), watching baseball (not for me, but a good sign of testicles), writing, board games (I love board games!), never arithmetic (I hate arithmetic!), movies, and “does brunch count as an interest?” (I think it does!)

He also writes:

“Things you should know about me. I’ll put it in a list to make for easy reading.

1) I really like bread bowls – you eat the bowl, people!

2) I was rejected from eHarmony.

3) I say what I mean, but I don’t mean everything I say because I tell a lot of jokes.

4) While traveling in Central America a spider monkey stole my drink. It’s a true story that nobody I know believes. I’m sticking with my story.

5) To my knowledge, I invented the game “mean or Eastern European.” The object is to determine if… well, if you can’t figure that out, you should probably stop reading.

6) I walk slow. Not really slow. But slow. I’m pacing myself I guess. Or, I’m just not in a hurry.

7) Ironically, I’m not a big fan of lists.

8) Although I make my living as a writer, I’m not certain that I used the word “ironically” correctly in item #7. However, if being close counts for anything, I think I did better than Alanis Morissette.

9) I’m not so insecure about being a straight guy that I’ll pretend not to know who Alanis Morissette is. I can also admit that I’ve seen “Beaches” dozens of times. But hey, I can say the same thing about “Full Metal Jacket,” so I’m not really sure what any of that means.

10) When I watch a movie with a really graphic scene (especially if it involves eye injury) I need to grab the arm of the person sitting next to me.”

Smart and ironic and can construct an actual sentence with proper punctuation and spelling (he even got Alanis Morissette right – twice!)…I like. Plus he’s traveled, is squeamish around eye injuries, and has – like myself, believe it or not – had first-hand experience with larcenous monkeys (though my observations indicate that Malaysian primates have more expensive taste – or just less of a party attitude).

Let’s see, what else do I know? He describes his body type as “Average” (perhaps a little generously, judging by his posted pictures) and he’s Jewish. Man, those Jews, they are a funny people. Why is that? Does it, like, come with the yarmulke or something? ‘Cause I’ll tell ya what, I’d trade my innate ability to cook the perfect al dente pasta for their joke-telling talents any day of the week. (Well, except maybe Sunday. Sundays are good pasta days.)

So there you have it…prospect number 14 and a bowlful of hope.

Date #13: Captain Optimum

2008-03-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

Not only a captain of the high seas and breakfast foods, but also of mixed messages, Captain Optimum was utterly perplexing. He showed up sans eye patch and parrot, and – if nothing else – delivered in the looks department, resembling Heath Ledger, in fact, but with a fuller chin and jawline than our dearly departed. He countered my handshake with an unsolicited peck on the cheek, then lamented that it seemed foolish to eat our own cereal in a place with so many other options.

Great, this again.

I reassured him that I wasn’t going to force him to eat cereal and, if he preferred, he was free to get something else, but I would be eating my cereal.

“No, I came to eat cereal.”

Okay then.

So down he sat and from his bag he pulled a metal canister full of Optimum, a bowl, a spoon that bordered on ladle, a napkin, a knife, a cutting board, a mango, an apple the size of a softball, a pear, and two pluots.

Okay Captain Uncomfortable, it doesn’t bother me, but there are ways to be a little more discreet about bringing your breakfast to the Farmers Market than by hand-carving your own fruit hybrids. (And on that note, he erroneously referred to these crossbreeds as “plutos.” I didn’t correct him but this always introduces an inner conflict for me – in such a situation, is it best to just let the error pass into oblivion, as I usually do? Or am I denying my intelligence, my own base of knowledge, by ignoring it? Is it preferable to have others think you uninformed, or to be that person who points out meaningless mistakes? It’s a plum-apricot combo, man, not a demoted former planet. Why does my knowing that have to cause me struggle?)

Ironically, Captain Optimum did not bring, in his bottomless bag, any milk – or cash – and had to borrow two bucks to get some. Once adequately dairied, I pulled out Sammy for its inaugural meal and excitedly showcased its many features. Captain Indecipherable looked at me, entirely unimpressed, and asked how many of these dates I’d been on, and if I’d seen any of the guys again.

“Um…a few. And no, but not for their lack of interest.”

And then, with a look of either utter amusement or total condescension – an expression I could not figure out but nonetheless would become very familiar with:

“You’re very proud of your quirks, aren’t you?”

Fuck you.

“It’s only this one thing. I’ll be normal from here out, I promise.”

“No, I’m quirky too.”

What?

Promptly forgetting my single-quirk promise, I asked to photograph our bowls. I seriously thought he might get up and leave. He caved after learning that he didn’t have to be in the picture, then delivered on his quirky declaration by offering me a bite of his cereal.

“Would that be weird?” I asked.

“No. I come from a large family.”

I didn’t realize the two were related, but whatever. I took a bite; it was pretty good.

Captain Contradiction was not terribly conversational, yet it was his voice that filled much of our 90-minute meeting. He was slow to answer questions, but would then provide much more information than I’d sought. For example, when I queried about his interests and what makes him laugh, he wouldn’t answer; when I said I was just “trying to get a picture” of who he was, he made some gesture around his face and said, as though it were an explanation, “I’m right here.”

Yeah, I got that. Thanks.

But then he went on to tell me about his childhood on welfare, his hippie mom and 5 sisters from 3 different dads, and his 24-year old ex-girlfriend and how he can’t really stand to be around people under the age of 25 because they’re too scared to go after what they want. (That’s why they broke up; he figured I was going to ask what happened with the relationship. It hadn’t occurred to me. Frankly, I didn’t much care. More disconcerting was that I couldn’t discern if he was grouping me and my 26 years with that younger sect, or his own.)

Despite a love of kids, dogs, and karaoke bars, and a history of getting paid to dance at bar mitzvahs and sweet 16s, Captain Optimum came off as somewhat cynical and jaded – an attitude I would classify as “benignly bitter.” He came out to LA as an actor, but was turned off of it after seeing the way actors are treated out here. People look down on them. But then again, admittedly, so does he, so he understands. He’ll still take a job, though, when he gets one.

He gave off the distinct impression that he was disinterested or bored, but every time that thought occurred to me, he would coolly say something like, “I’m 31, if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be.”

Ya wanna stop glancing at your watch, then?

He also didn’t ask any questions about me (which I don’t mind, but do find a bit odd). His conversation-halting contributions did include, however, “You have a good name,” (Uh, thanks? I had nothing to do with it, but I like it.) and “You have long fingers” (to which, I assure you, there is no good response. Other than maybe displaying for him my favorite one).

After catching Captain Optimum check the time yet again, I started to wrap things up.

“So you don’t want to go to the beach?”

What? No, not really. Do you?

And then he asked if we would have to eat cereal “next time,” kissed me again, and caressed my arm with an inappropriate amount of affection. What is going on here? Were we on the same date? Did I miss something? He somehow managed to appear simultaneously totally into me and disinterested in me. Passively cocky, if you can imagine. And it felt kind of dirty. It was the first time I left a Cereal Date with a bad taste in my mouth. (Maybe it was that bite of his cereal I took. Perhaps that's what Optimum does to you. Lesson learned.)

Nevertheless, I got an email the next day:

“do you have another cereal date tonight or could I tempt you with an after work sail? xox”

First of all, swimming in satisfaction over here after you so obnoxiously indicated that a guy couldn’t possibly want to see me again after witnessing my excitement over a cereal bowl. And second of all – Yeah, like I’m going to get on a boat with you. Alone. Sounds like a good way to get myself raped, if you ask me.

I declined, citing my tendency to shy away from activities on “school nights.”

Then the next day:

“will I see you again?”

Survey says…

My New Partner in Crime

2008-03-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

Is it possible, in this modern world, for a couple to be together forever? There is a romantic buried somewhere inside me that would like to think so but in light of recent events, I have to wonder. I hesitate to share this, and hope you won’t think less of me, but here goes…

As much as I love my Trader Joe’s plastic yogurt container, and as well as it’s served me to this point, I would be lying if I said that I didn’t find myself fantasizing, on occasion, about a new cereal bowl – a more Date-friendly piece of plasticware: prettier, sleeker, perhaps with features. (I don’t know what kind of features but, yeah, features would be great.) In my not-at-all vivid and lofty daydreams my bowl might even say “Cereal Dater” on it (in pretty black lettering) – to help along those guys who can’t quite make that connection on their own. Shameful, I know, as the yogurt container has been such a loyal companion, but I can’t deny the way I feel. And I can’t help but believe there’s something more out there.

As such, I launched a less than exhaustive search last week that began with an afternoon spent at The Container Store's website and culminated, to my great surprise and delight, the very next day at Target, with my discovery of the utterly peerless Fit & Fresh Fresh Start Breakfast Chiller:

Come on. If ever a product was made for my purposes. Pretty and sleek and full of features – oh! Look at the features! A perfectly-sized bowl to hold my cereal and fruit; another for my cereal wetting agent of choice; a considerate ring to keep my soy milk icy; and even a second back-up bowl (designated by the company for fruit but – I think – the perfect solution for the ill-equipped Cereal Dater) – all in one handy, travel-friendly package. It even comes with its own compact little spoon (though somewhat awkward, it would certainly do in a spoon-related crisis). Match.com should make such a union!

So, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to Sammy (my go-to gender-neutral name for dishware and countless incarnations of the only pet my mom would ever let us have while growing up – goldfish).

Nice, huh? Still working on how to get "Cereal Dater" printed on it somehow - all in due time. But I think we'll be very happy together.

Oh, and yeah, I have absolutely considered the notion that the deprivation of a childhood pet retarded my ability to love and, consequently, have any sort of meaningful relationship. Thanks Mom.

Do Pirates Eat Cereal?

2008-03-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

This next nibble comes from the dating website abyss and in the form of a yacht captain. A very cute yacht captain. (Even sporting an eye patch and gold hoop earring, which he does with aplomb in one of his posted pictures. I’m guessing this is just a costume.) Interests and descriptions all check out, but his unique blend of humor and cheese, as displayed in his emails, gives rise to my own special brand of interest/mild concern. Case in point:

Email #1:

Subject: LOL

No comment.

“Eat cereal together; that’s cute…so are you ☺ Hi.”

Blech. I thanked him, forewarning that cereal is no joke, sailor, and asked if he was adventurous enough. He said he was up for the challenge so I laid out the plan, to which he responded:

Email #4:

Subject: Funny Girl

Huh? Well I’m no Babs, but…

“So for real? You want me to bring my optimum with blue berries to the grove? I’ll need my spy milk too. I do so love to people watch and trash talk though. When are you free? Got any plans tonight? Do you bowl?”

Oh for real, for real. What in my first 3 emails led him to believe that I wasn’t completely and entirely for real? I do like the idea of spy milk, though - and people watching and trash talk. I love people watching and trash talk. As for tonight – not so big on the last minute plans. (Also, don’t The Rules mandate some sort of 3-day window or something? Not that I use that as any sort of romantic guide, but that's one anti-feminist idea I can surely get behind…) And do I bowl? Yeah, sure. I mean, I HAVE bowled. Do I bowl in any sort of active, recurring manner? No. I cereal bowl. I’m guessing he does?

Email #5:

Subject: Re: Funny Girl

Good call. Considering his track record, it probably wasn't going to get any better.

“I can ask the randomest of random questions! No, I’ve just had bowling on the brain today for some reason…Great day of sailing. Did you see the sunset? It was amazing, the sky was on fire!!! So Sunday I have a BBQ in Malibu to go to (yes I try to rhyme as much as possible) so Saturday would be best for me.”

A Malibu BBQ? How Seussian. I do love rhythm in my prose. I rattled off a bunch of appropriately rhyming sentences before giving him the run-down for Saturday. (And no, I didn’t see that fiery sunset; I work in a cave.)

Email #7:

“Wow this plan is so detailed, do you bring all your victims there before you eat them? I’ll be sure to leave a trail of crumbs all the way to the grove. Though historically that hasn’t worked so well has it? This is my first cereal date so go easy on me ok…Here’s my # in case I get lost in lala land. XOX, Captain”

Now why would I eat my victims when I have perfectly good cereal? That would be crazy. Anyways, I'm a vegetarian. Love the thought, though, as well as the nod to Hansel and Gretel. That “XOX,” however, has GOT to go. We are not yet in a place of hugs and kisses (virtual or otherwise) and he is not (to my knowledge): 1) a 12-year old girl, 2) my mom, or 3) inaugurating a new acronym regarding Xerox, xylitol, and/or my roommate’s coworker, Xochitl.

Oh yeah, he also refers to himself as “Captain.”

Fish I Will Not Be Eating Cereal With, Part Two

2008-03-07T16:50:00.000-08:00

Well I figure we all saw this post coming, what with the Part One I posted yesterday and all. So to take it one step further (as that is undeniably the best place to take it, regardless of what “it” may be) I shall now shower you with a selection of emails (or parts thereof) that I have received in response to my online dating profile. Let me know if you think maybe I’m writing off any of these gems a bit too hastily.

Email subject: “Hi, how are you doing?”
Email contents: “…”

Really? You don’t understand the difference between an email subject and an actual email?

After a round of introductory emails:

“Give me two reasons I’d want to get to know you better.”

I’m not going to qualify my awesomeness for you.

“Just wanted to stop in and tell u that I think ur really beautiful. Here let me tell u alittle about myself. Well im 6ft5 with blue eyes, blondish-brown hair, I have my tongue and nipples pierced and 2 tattoo’s plus im a Hopeless Romantic.”

For some reason, I never really saw multiple piercing and tats going hand-in-hand with hopeless romanticism, but what do I know? Your tongue and nipple rings are such a strong part of your identity that you feel it necessary to lead with them, though? Not interested.

“HI! I’m 33 Italian Calif 5’8’’ 140 pounds. What is the latest and greatest? Do you have any tattoo? Do you smoke? Can you cook? Do you like your feet rubbed? I like to rub woman feet? I have no kids that I know of lol. No I have no kids. Hopes hear from you soon much love”

Are my potential tattoos really the most pressing question you have about me? Are you not sure if you like to rub a woman’s feet? Do you want to know how I feel about LOLs? Do you want to know how I feel about LOLs that immediately follow a decidedly unfunny remark?

“Now I have been told that I work way too much, but then old significant others or ex girlfriends were not electrical superintendents either so there is no level plane of understanding.”

There are so many things wrong with this string of words. First of all, admitting that you work way too much is honest but maybe not something you want to mention in your first go 'round; second, don’t introduce exes into the equation at all – ever; and third, an electrical superintendent? Nothing wrong with that but complaining about how previous partners were put off by the inordinate amount of time you spent flipping circuit breakers – or whatever an electrical superintendent does – is not going to win me over. Neither is the prestige of the gig.

“[LA Cereal Dater] sucha lovly name for an even lovlier ladie. its nice to meet your aqauintance [LA Cereal Dater] ~shakes and kisses hand~ Do you know your name means solitary (sidenote: it does not), is this true…are you alone? I must say im luckier then a man who walked upon a field of four leaf clovers to be talking to a girl as beautiful as you are”

I’m not even going to begin to address the surplus of sins contained in those four little sentences; I’m tired from my last list.

Favorite Films: Serendipity, Road to Perdition

Seriously? I mean, I can certainly appreciate Serendipity – who doesn’t love John Cusack in a perpetual state of heartache? – but in the entire cinematic tome that is one of your two favorites? After telling me that your favorite bands are Tool, Korn, The Cure, and Depeche Mode? (Before you jump all over me for this one, this is, admittedly, by far the least egregious of offences, but the rest of his email provided ample evidence of inadequacy.)

Email closing: “May the Lord bless you and keep you,”

Because I hate the Lord.

“P.S. like yourself im looking for a possible FWB arrangment. Something casual fun and drama free.”

FWB. That would be “friends with benefits.” Nowhere in my profile did I even slightly indicate such an interest. This actually caused me to guffaw at my computer screen. (So maybe props are due for initiating the first legitimate LOL of this entire charade.)

I also will not be won over with a picture of the naked northern half of your body standing in the shower, hands locked behind your head, bedroom eyes ablaze. In case you were thinking of trying that.

Fish I Will Not Be Eating Cereal With, Part One

2008-03-06T18:06:00.000-08:00

Oh dating website, with your dense pool of swimmers, you are so ripe with blogging material. As a direct result of the surplus of emails I’ve received from completely unacceptable suitors and in hopes of slightly honing the field of prospects, I recently updated my profile with two small additions:

1. I love David Sedaris and Bill Bryson.
2. Bonus points to guys who know the difference between “their” and “there,” or “your” and “you’re.”

I’m thinking these qualifiers can only help but until I see any results, I shall share some selections from the profiles of a few fellas who, apparently, thought we might get on well. Keep in mind, these are all guys that (presumably) read my profile then contacted me - I'm not picking on any "innocent victims" here. (The online profile page of this particular website allows you to choose pre-written answers in response to Do You Drink?, Marital Status, Do You Want Children?, Do You Do Drugs?, and Do You Have Children? and has write-in boxes for Interests, About Me, and First Date.)

Marital Status: Not Single/Not Looking

And why are you on a dating website?

Do You Have Children?: Prefer Not To Say

Prefer not to know.

Height: 5'0
Weight: 100lbs

And you're a guy? Now I'm 5'5 and don't have any strong body type specifications, but 5 feet and 100 pounds? I mean at some point it just starts to feel like pedophilia.

Interests: “clubing”, going to bars, “parting,” money, cults, Paganism, scotch, drinking games

What would ever make you think we’re compatible? How about you look at my profile for half a second before emailing me next time.

About Me: A poem you wrote about what girls and guys are really looking for in each other that concludes with the glowing the line, “While you get off you hear her go: ‘you’re the one for me, for always.’”

Rumi who?

About Me: Some people think Im cocky, other say Im selfish. You decide.

As much as I'd really rather not, I kind of already have.

About Me: Social: I have a great deal of friends ranging the full gamut of sobriety, and professionalism.

You measure your friends on a sobriety continuum?

About Me: i am a 33 year old man that knows what he wants in life , im blunt and straight to the point if you cant handle that keep ur ass moving…………..

Not a problem.

About Me: I am very outgoing. I like to go out on the weekends too the movies, beach, clubs, parties or bars. Or just chill with the homies and have some beers..if u like this any of this things i just mentioned then u will like me. Trust me.

I don’t. I won’t. Unlikely.

About Me: IM A REAL PERSON WHO DOES REAL THINGS..I VERY PERSONABLE PERSON I WILL TALK TO JUST ABOUT ANY ONE FROM 1 YRS OLD TO 90YRS OLD AND THEY TEND TO TALK BACK…I DONT NEED A CROWD OF PEOPLE ROUND ME TO HAVE A GOOD TIME…JUST LAST WEEK I WEEK OUT BY MY SELF AND DID THE d*mn THANG IF YOU KOW WHAT I MEAN…MY MOTTO IS DONT sh*tNONE WONT BE NO SHIT…IF UR INTERESTED GET AT ME…”

I…there are no…I just…can’t.

First Date: Before I talk about any dates, just want to add that I love my daughter more than anything in this world… okay, we can talk about dating now…

Can, maybe – but certainly will not.

The site also allows for one to post photographs, which is where I came across the wholly attractive image of a gentleman giving the middle finger to the camera. Fortunately, he included the following explanation:

“Reason is Im really skeptical about this site. I also do tend to have a dark sense of humor “sometimes”, not always. I figure if this site really does work the girls on here may look past those somewhat vulgarish images.”

One, flipping someone off is not a sign of your “dark sense of humor” (unless you're doing it at night, or in a closet, or something). Two, “Sometimes” is not a word that needs to be contained in quotation marks, Joey Tribbiani. Three, what does a girl looking past your “somewhat vulgarish image” have to do with the site “working”? And four, why would you want a girl to “look past” your moronic self expression if that's a true revelation of your “dark sense of humor”? Don’t you want someone who actually finds that appealing? Which I do. A lot. Ooh, thank God you posted that picture.

Date #12: Raisin Bran

2008-03-04T17:12:00.000-08:00

I’ll admit, it makes me happier than it should when Cereal Daters latch on to the whole individually-packaged single cereal serving concept. I don’t know why – maybe because it’s such an obvious match for a Cereal Date and I find it promising when my date has, at the very least, figured that out. Or maybe it’s because, after a jading 12 dates, it’s happened a mere two times, and I’ll take what I can get. (And what I can get, evidently, is 9.625 ounces of Raisin Bran.) Interestingly enough (or not) the only other illuminato to crack this code also enjoyed a version of Raisin Bran. Must be all the antioxidants in those raisins – nature’s candy is real brain food. But the date…

Sadly, the variety pack staple was the high note for this Boy Scout, who came prepared with his mini box of cereal, carton of milk, paper bowl, spoon, and napkin. And Raisin Bran is a 30-year old Boy Scout. As a lad, he skipped right past those amateurish Cub Scouts and joined the manish ranks of his dad’s Boy Scout troop. Now, over two decades later, he’s a proud Scout Master alongside his legendary father (the oldest and longest-running Scout Master in all the land). Now, I’m not saying that Boy Scouts aren’t cool but, when I was growing up, there were only two brothers in my neighborhood that participated in all that: they had an 8 o’clock bedtime in the summer and were the kids who frequently ran home crying. Our parents didn’t even mandate niceties with them. So that’s my frame of reference.

But Raisin Bran will not be defined by his scouting alone – though the rest of his life pretty much completes this Norman Rockwell. He’s about as all-American as you get. Except he’s Danish. Well, his people are. And he looks, no doubt, like he should be swigging a Carlsberg and gnawing at a hunk of Havarti while stacking Legos and reciting “The Little Mermaid.” (Don't worry, I've now exhausted my Dane references.)

He lives alone in his grandparents’ house (they have since moved back to Denmark). A house that is, naturally, next door to his parents’; they are his landlords. He works for the Chamber of Commerce, where he has to wear a shirt and tie everyday. And in his free time he’s a volunteer park ranger. What year is it? Am I still in Los Angeles? He enjoys camping and hiking and his family eats Sunday dinner together every week. He even knows where he wants to retire and it’s a small, old-fashioned town in northern California with flags on every house and an ice cream parlor with pink walls. Very “apple pie America.” (His words, not mine.)

All well and good, but I want to eat my apple pie, not retire in it. (And I don’t want it served to me by a waitress named Dottie.) Despite his diverse taste in comedy (anything from Monty Python to America’s Mexican to Jackie Chan/Owen Wilson action-buddy-comedies – none of which I find especially funny, by the way), I’m thinking the Jolie-Pitt-esque family I’ve envisioned for my future might not quite mesh with his American dream. And, the way I see it, if he really wants to find “the girl next door” (again, his words), he’s gonna have to move – because wouldn’t that be his sister? (Or his mom?) I guess “she” could ostensibly be his neighbor on the other side, but still…unless that house is transported to a modern-day metropolis where scouting is done for locations, monochromatic jumpsuits are (albeit, inexplicably) for runway models only, and Christmas dinner with your family once a year is more than enough, it ain’t gonna be me.

Date #11: Jambalaya (a.k.a. The Cereal Hater)

2008-02-29T16:07:00.000-08:00

Jambalaya. That would be the favored fare for a Cereal Hater on a Cereal Date. Black tea with a shot of sugar-free vanilla syrup and a grapefruit. That would be the favored non-Creole fare for a Cereal Dater on a Cereal Date with a Cereal Hater. (Well, actually, cereal would still be my preference, but this was my considerate selection. If my date hated something like…say…Nazis, I’m not gonna bring along my friend Adolf. That’s the same, right? Oh how I miss cereal. Everything’s so much easier with cereal.) But moving on…

At first glance, Jambalaya is Asian, has very large, very dry lips (a result of his excessive mouth-breathing, I would quickly understand), and is about 16 years old.

Me: So what do you do?

Jambalaya: I’m in school.

God, I hope he means college.

Me: What are you studying?

Jambalaya: Medicine.

Phew.

Me: Oh, what year are you?

Jambalaya: Third.

Okay, a junior. Mental math. That makes him…what?...twenty? Twenty-one? Alright.

Me: Where do you go to school?

Jambalaya: Loma Linda, but I did my undergrad at Berkeley.

Whoa, wait a sec. You’re in Med School, Doogie? (Oh, and Berkeley? Very impressive.)

Me: How old are you?

Jambalaya: Twenty-six.

Jesus. What, was he bottle-fed green tea or something?

Me: Oh. You look young.

Jambalaya went into medicine because he wants to help people. Actually, he went into medicine because he couldn’t cut it in engineering. It turns out, “You have to be really, really smart to be an engineer.” Yeah, it’s a good thing that’s not required in the field of medicine. He seems like a bright enough guy, though. I guess just not Berkeley engineering bright. But that’s okay, ‘cause those guys are weird. They can actually commit murder and get away with it on the defense that they’re just “like that.” Or so that’s what the wunderkind tells me.

He also likes cartoons.

Me: Like…anime?

Jambalaya: No, like kids’ cartoons.

Huh.

Me: Cool. Do you have any favorites?

Jambalaya: Disney’s got some good stuff.

From the mouth of babes.

Me: So…do you eat much jambalaya?

Jambalaya: I had it a couple times in New Orleans.

Me: Oh, you’ve been? Do you travel much?

Jackpot. The manchild TOOK OFF. I barely had to string together a sentence after that. He’s traveled a lot. Like, rivals me. Almost every place either of us mentioned, the other had been to. South Africa? Yep. Japan? Yep. Romania? Well, I haven’t been there – but he has! And there’s pretty much no where he wouldn’t like to go, too. But he needs more adventurous travel mates, he thinks.

Me: What kinds of adventurous things do you like to do when you’re traveling?

Jambalaya: I like to see how people live outside of the cities. I really like to get out to see the countryside.

It’s not shark cage diving, but I dig it.

Jambalaya: I’d love to just pick some random two-named city in Montana or Wyoming or something and just go there for a weekend and see what it’s like.

Love it! Sounds like my travel fantasy of going to the airport and buying a ticket for whatever the next flight is – wherever it’s going. I tell him as much. He loves it. He’s on a roll…

Jambalaya: And one of the times I was in Japan, I really wanted to go check out this waste plant –

Wait, what?

Blowing past the fascination with international sewage, we briefly paused on the fried bugs he ate in South Korea and the pizza (and ice cream) I sampled in every port of my Semester at Sea (back in those dairy-filled days – ha! I laughed in the face of foreign milk products!) before wrapping up an hour and forty-five in. Enjoyable though it was, however, I don’t think cereal and Jambalaya go together – in a romantic kind of way. I think he would be a great travel buddy for me (Great Falls, here we come!), and I wouldn’t mind catching Horton Hears a Who! with him, either. But as for kissing those puffy chapped lips of his? While the thought doesn’t quite make me scream, I can think of at least three varieties of cacti I’d sooner bear-hug.

Cereal Hater

2008-02-27T18:17:00.000-08:00

The number 4 came through for me again. Is there no end to the generosity of this digit? So loving…so reliable…if only I could eat cereal with 4… Following my trio of bang-up Craigslist suitors I was delivered a little ray of hope in email form. In response to my most recent “Who Doesn’t Love Cereal?” post, my fourth prospect wrote:

“i don’t. i don’t like how it’s so sweet. i don’t like it mixed with milk. no, sam i am. but, your plan of meeting up is great. it sounds interesting and fun. as cool as saying, “let’s meet in prague”. and I think i wouldn’t mind meeting you. it bothers me seeing people with deformities. and i’m glad you have no brain damage. i also enjoy travel, writing (though i suck now, cause i haven’t written. i can’t write a coherent sentence. not really coherent. more, can’t write anything powerful, evoking emotion). i don’t like project runway. or, don’t watch it. i watch kids’ cartoons. and i’m sarcastic. but i don’t like it when someone is always sarcastic. it’s sort of mean then. and i also don’t like all the things you like! i refused to go to a club in nashville, though my friend wanted me to (we were there together. he didn’t want to go alone. so we sat in the car for half an hour, stalemated. i won though, cause i simply didn’t budget). i don’t drink. i don’t like close-minded people, or even average americans who know nothing else about other cultures or othr world perspectives. and small-talk. but i guess small talk is necessary. but too much is annoying. can we do something else cool and random that doesn’t involve cereal?”

Okay, so we’re not off to an entirely auspicious start, but if Cereal Dates 1 through 10 taught us anything, it’s that – no matter how much I might wish this to be different – not everybody is going to eat cereal with me. At least he’s upfront about it. And I’ll tell ya what, though a professed disdain for cereal both confuses and saddens me, I much prefer it to some pansy-ass cop-out of an excuse because you’re actually too embarrassed to eat cereal outside of your kitchen.

So I’m willing to overlook his hate of cereal and, apparently, capitalization because otherwise he seems like a good guy. (Or maybe that’s the desperation talking.) I don’t know if he’s ever been to Prague, but the fact that meeting up there sounds cool to him is promising. As is his enjoyment of measured amounts of sarcasm. The inability-to-write-a-coherent-sentence thing was a bit of a hurdle for me (was that parenthetical comprehensible to anyone?), but waylaid by his otherwise clear message. And – I have to admit – the Nashville club stand-off sounds like a scene in which I, myself, might play a main role. (Albeit, I would attribute any victory to my unyielding obstinance, as I am excellent with a budget.)

Now…how to slyly work cereal into this date somehow? Thinking…thinking…ah-ha!

“I know this sounds weird, but since cereal is usually my ‘thing,’ I always tell guys they’ll know me because I’ll be the girl with the box of Kashi GoLean. And since I don’t know what I’ll be wearing tomorrow, and can’t think of anything else quite so distinctive to tell you, I’m just gonna bring my box of Kashi so you can find me. Not to worry, though – I’ll stash it in an appropriately-sized bag once we’ve found each other.”

Brilliant.

“ha ha. you’re hilarious. you don’t know what you’re going to be wearing, but you can make sure you’ll carry your box of cereal with you. so, you pick up a lot of guys with your cereal? and how’d you know I know kashi? remember? i don’t like cereal. see you tomorrow.”

Hilarious, is that? Not, I don’t know…crazy? Excellent. In a preliminary evaluation under the Cereal Dating ranking system, a Cereal Hater, it seems, is far better than an Anti-Cereal Dater.

Craigslist Strikeout

2008-02-25T15:40:00.000-08:00

An evaluation of my first decade (yes, that can be used to refer to a set of 10 anything, not just years) of Cereal Dates reveals the online dating website to be an excellent source for nice guys who bore me. And I’m bored of boredom. Craigslist, on the other hand (let’s call it the left hand, because I like the left hand better), is the place to go for the more interesting (albeit crazier) characters. It is also, you may recall, where I attracted the 1 (count it, 1) gent I would actually consider meeting again (although to this point he has expressed no such interest). So with an itch for adventure, I reposted my ever-evolving ad on Craigslist towards the end of last week. Are ya ready?

The very first response I got was from a 26-year old guy who indicated his interest and included a link to his own post, which he’d just published.

“Basically, I love music and writing. I’m a mellow, low-key person who enjoys travel and new experiences. If I’m not working, then I’m usually home or at a concert. My career is in the field of writing.”

So far so good.

“I live in Los Angeles, so my preference is to find somebody in the area. She must be intelligent, loyal, mentally stable, and able to understand my somewhat dry sense of humor among other things.

Concerned about the need to request mental stability, but perhaps that’s just part of his somewhat dry sense of humor. I love somewhat dry humor. Not sure what “other things” are – maybe cereal?

“Also need a woman who will wear pantyhose for me. It’s a very strong fetish.”

Hold the phone.

“Some may not understand, but it’s very important to me."

I’d venture to include myself in that "some" you reference. And it’s not just important, but very important?

“It doesn’t have to be 24/7. I’m fair.”

Well at least he’s fair. Click.

Respondent numero dos, a Fruity Pebbles fan, called my post “an excellent piece of literature” (I can get on board with that), and was looking “to meet new people, perhaps people with depth and a good head on their shoulders (that’s not really necessary, but it would be nice! ☺)”

A guy who equates my writing with literature and doesn’t have a fetish-inspired dress code? Great, let’s set a date. But not so fast, it seems…

“Tell me a little about yourself so at least we’re not total strangers. What do you do for a living? Do you like to paint for fun? And most importantly, do you like rainbow ice cream?”

Excellent questions. Cereal-friendly topics for sure. Now let me just check out that MySpace link you attached. Huh, it includes the word “dicktator.” Hmmm. Oh, look at that…your general interests include (and this is an exact quote):

“porn stars, porn movies, porn books, porn heroes, porn stars, porn movies, porn books, porn heroes, porn stars, porn movies, porn books, porn heroes, porn stars, porn movies, porn books, porn heroes, porn stars, porn movies, porn books, porn heroes, porn stars, porn movies, porn books, porn heroes, porn stars, porn movies, porn books, porn heroes”

Huh. How ‘bout that? So I guess MySpace can be useful for something. You can guess what filled the “Movies,” “Books,” and “Heroes,” sections of his profile, although he does have slightly broader tastes in music and television. (Beauty and the Geek, anyone?) And…delete.

0 for 2, but I’m feelin’ lucky…

“Hi, I was perusing the craigslist personals (fruitlessly as usual) in between spurts of looking at drums for sale, when I came across your ad which piqued my interest. You seemed to be an exceptional find for the quagmire of personals that craigslist can be at times. Anyways, enough with the eloquent blah blah blah…From what I can tell we’d fit well together, and look good doing it. I’m a cool laid back guy whos not a total bum and generally has something interesting to say. Also i’m tall! If you think you’d be interested, you should totally write me back.”

Oooh, I like. The proper use of multi-syllabic words and, apparently, he’s tall (!). MySpace check…

Oooh, he’s cute! And he likes Scrubs and David Sedaris. I really like! How’s this weekend?

“i hate to be this guy, but do you have any pictures or anything? I’d like to have at least an idea of what you look like ☺”

“Well that certainly takes the mysterious adventure out of it all, but I can understand. I’ve attached a picture of myself – now if I never hear from you again I’ll judge you accordingly ☺”

I never heard back from him. Strike three.

Good thing in the sport of Cereal Dating (where I invent all the rules) strikes are good – like in bowling. Because they are the stuff of entertainment and blithe commentary that masks overwhelming disappointment and rejection. Go ahead, feast on my misery.

Double Digits – the Numbers Game

2008-02-21T18:13:00.000-08:00

Well I hit the double-digit milestone with my most recent Cereal Date and what’s the point of doing something 10 times if not to yield some scientifically questionable data? So without further ado, and allowing for an error margin of plus or minus 10, here’s a mess of inconsequential Cereal Dating statistics:

7 out of 10 Cereal Daters are not originally from Los Angeles.

2 out of 10 Cereal Daters are foreign born.

5 out of 10 Cereal Daters have lived in the same place (either the same apartment or a different unit in the same building) since moving to Los Angeles.

4 out of 10 Cereal Daters have a moderately impressive educational background

9 out of 10 Cereal Daters claim to be interested in travel.

4 out of 10 Cereal Daters have actually gone somewhere that requires a passport.

2 out of 10 Cereal Daters have served or tried to serve in the Armed Forces.

7 out of 10 Cereal Daters are artists, musicians, or writers or fancy themselves artists, musicians, or writers. (I suspect this to be an L.A.-specific statistic.)

4 out of 10 Cereal Daters are excellent over email.

3 out of 10 Cereal Daters fail to live up to their emails in person.

1 out of 10 Cereal Daters request a phone number outright before meeting.

2 out of 10 Cereal Daters request a phone number outright after meeting.

5 out of 10 Cereal Daters give their phone number up unprompted.

3 out of 10 Cereal Daters give their website up unprompted.

3 out of 10 Cereal Daters resemble a gaunt, hirsute, or otherwise homely version of a celebrity.

4 out of 10 Cereal Daters would prefer coffee to cereal on a first date (I suspect this number to be higher).

3 out of 10 Cereal Daters, despite all claims to the contrary, will not eat cereal in public.

2 out of 10 Cereal Daters get the Cereal Date pun without explanation.

5 out of 10 Cereal Daters show up at least 10 minutes late for said Cereal Date.

1 out of 10 Cereal Daters recognizes the suitability of individually packaged servings of cereal for Cereal Dating.

4 out of 10 Cereal Daters bring a proper bowl to a Cereal Date.

1 out of 10 Cereal Daters brings a proper bowl that specifically enjoys traveling to a Cereal Date.

3 out of 10 Cereal Daters prefer a dairy alternative in their cereal.

2 out of 10 Cereal Daters equate cereal choices with personality quizzes.

3 out of 10 Cereal Daters are conspicuously interested in the cereal choices of previous dates.

6 out of 10 Cereal Daters are unnerved, unsettled, or otherwise wigged out when one takes a picture of their cereal.

4 out of 10 Cereal Daters have noticeable trouble balancing cereal consumption with conversation.

3 out of 10 Cereal Daters attempt to stretch a Cereal Date to an uncomfortable length.

1 out of 10 Cereal Daters would cut a Cereal Date off before I would.

4 out of 10 Cereal Daters like to “hug it out” at the end of a Cereal Date.

1 out of 10 Cereal Daters likes to “hug it out” at the beginning of a Cereal Date.

8 out of 10 Cereal Daters send a post-Cereal Date email.

6 out of 10 Cereal Daters directly ask for or propose a second – cerealless – date.

1 out of 10 Cereal Daters is someone I would have any interest in seeing again – cereal or not.

I’m not especially surprised, discouraged, frustrated, concerned, or bothered by my lack of fireworks thus far. The way I see it, it’s all just a numbers game – the more people you meet, the more likely you are to find someone you click with. I mean, think of all the thousands of people I must have met throughout my 20-something years. And how many of them have I actually, genuinely liked (as a person, friend, inamorato, hot lover, whatever). Like what? 3, maybe? Kidding, obviously, but proportionally, we’re talking a very small number. And so onward we press - let’s see what kind of figures the next 10 can generate.

Date #10: Raisin Bran Crunch

2008-02-19T15:32:00.000-08:00

I have to admit, I had higher hopes for my entrée into the double digits of Cereal Dating - but what good is a hope if not dashed? Raisin Bran Crunch started out on a high enough note: he figured out the whole individually packaged cereal concept which, for some reason I can’t quite wrap my head around, has eluded all of my previous dates. So points for that. (Maybe, like, 2 points? 2 points seems fair.) He then lost one of those points by absent-mindedly picking at the container’s peel long after the contents had been consumed and we were entrenched in get-to-know-you repartee. But he quickly realized he was doing it and pushed the bowl away and for that I would like to give him a half-point back. Except I don’t really want to get into fractions and decimals and I’m feeling kind of generous because I just enjoyed a delicious free lunch so I’m reinstating the full point. Lucky you, Raisin Bran Crunch!

So we’ve got 2 points for the Texan music composer who’s never so much as put on a pair of cowboy boots. (Didn’t realize that was legal in Texas, but I’ll throw another point his way for it.) Of course, he doesn’t actually earn his living composing music – for that he works for a major fashion label. (Huh, another point.) In payroll. (Take it back – although I did get to hear some exciting W2-related stories.) He likes a lot of classic TV shows (me too! Point.), but also American Idol (subtract 2 – why would a musician/composer subject himself to that?). And he’s interested in travel. (4 points – because of my undying love for both travel and the number 4.) He’d like to go to western Europe, specifically Germany, and – and this is where he warned me I was going to think him crazy – China. China?! You mean the home of lo mein, fantastic (dare I say, Great, even) walls, and the next Summer Olympic Games? Shut your mouth! 1 point for China, minus 2 for thinking it so inconceivably adventurous.

Despite reporting that I look different from the picture I have posted in my dating website profile and not indicating that he is wholly thrilled with the reality before him (minus a point), Raisin Bran Crunch and I were chatting away at a comfortable pace when, one hour in, he threw an unexpected curveball. He started to wrap things up. Now I wasn’t especially invested or interested, but I could’ve gone a bit longer, so this caught me a bit by surprise. Was he not finding me as delightfully charming as so many before him, who stretched (or tried to stretch) our meetings long into the night? He seemed like he was still enjoying himself, so I silently applauded his ability to get out before things took a downward turn and promptly awarded him 3 more points. And then, before we parted ways, he mentioned that his mom married a guy she met online and suggested that “we should do something different next time.” Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s get something straight here, Raisin Bran Crunch. You and I…we’re not a “we.” And “next time”? Who said anything about a “next time”? Minus 5 points.

And that brings us back to 2 points. Out of a thousand. Good cereal choice, though.

Date #9: Dr. Cookies 'n Cream

2008-02-15T14:13:00.000-08:00

Dr. Cookies ‘n Cream, in addition to being a Vietnamese-born, NYU-educated, Lakers-loving cereal rejecter, is a dentist. Okay, more important than the date - since when am I old enough to date a guy with his own dental practice? How did that happen? Because – as I discovered while watching the Grammys this week – in my mind, I’m the same age as Carrie Underwood. Turns out reality has a different perspective. How ‘bout that.

But legitimate and established career path aside, things are not looking good for Dr. Cookies ‘n Cream. Dr. Cookies ‘n Cream is working with a lot of obstacles. Not even touching upon his insolent cereallessness (he just didn’t bring any – thought about stopping at 7-Eleven for some, but didn’t. Huh. Not winning any fans that way, Crest.) we’ve got two major problems:

1. He was nearly a half-hour late for our very important date. Not great. In his defense, he probably would have called to forewarn me, had I not denied him my phone number prior to meeting, but still. If you know you can’t contact the person you’re supposed to meet, maybe make the effort to get there on the better side of an episode of Who’s the Boss? Or at least before her eye has time to wander to the geriatric gumming his oatmeal at the next table over.

Now, admittedly, his delay could be a fluke and certainly forgivable, were it not related to a much bigger issue:

2. He lives in Orange County. I do not. I live in Los Angeles County. For those of you unfamiliar with the geography of Southern California, that’s far. My sister just went to Kansas City to be with her boyfriend. I would not go to Studio City. Studio City is in the Valley. I am not. The Valley is much closer than Orange County. Unless you are George Clooney or Matthew Perry, I am not looking for an inter-county relationship. (Had he set my Kashi – or loins – aflame, I would perhaps be more open to this, but Dr. Cookies ‘n Cream made no such burning case for any trips down the 405.) Props to him for making the trek for cereal, though.

Incidentally, the first thing he asked me post ice cream procurement was if I had a bad experience giving out my number. No...not yet. Maybe because I don’t give it out to strangers. It’s a good number; I like it; I don’t want to have to change it. So I keep it to myself or – if I really just want to end an encounter – give out the number of a childhood frenemy, along with my fake name (Jennifer, although I’m thinking of changing it). I've found it a satisfactory solution for going on a decade now (bet Carrie Underwood couldn't say the same). It doesn’t always work, though; for example, at the end of my date with Dr. Cookies ‘n Cream, when he asked if now I’d like to exchange numbers. I couldn’t think of a way to say “no” without indirectly calling him a psychopath (and, more importantly, I didn't peg him as the type to abuse it), so I reluctantly gave it up. Can't promise that I'll answer, though, should he use it.

Back in the Saddle

2008-02-13T12:49:00.000-08:00

First of all, the writers’ strike is over! Hooray! The internet is lucrative, the Academy Awards are saved, everyone has to shave again, and the townspeople rejoice! So it’s back to work for everyone in Hollywood (well, except the gang over at 24 – sorry fans, you’ll have to wait till ‘09 for your next installment of the wholly realistic Jack Bauer saga) and I, again, am a desk jockey. Now, I can already sense your fear rising but fret not, devoted fan base, for the Cereal Dating shall continue. And you know why? Because Cereal Dating isn’t something you do just when you’re unemployed and in need of activities to fill your endless days, soldier. It’s a calling and a commitment and it won’t be denied. (At least for the time being – give me another week or so.) So onward we push.

I had a very exciting and inciting moment at the Farmers Market this weekend. Whilst awaiting the arrival of my egregiously tardy date, I had the opportunity to indulge in a little barefaced people watching – the true breakfast of champions (and Italians). And once I was able to tear my eyes away from the young family of four who devoured half a New York style pizza, bookended by Bob’s donuts and Bennett’s ice cream (no lie), I was treated to a sight I couldn’t have conjured in my wildest dreams. For at the very next table there sat a gentleman, enjoying equally his Sunday morning paper and an obviously brought-from-home mason jar of oatmeal. (And another of fresh fruit!) My heart leapt. Could it be, that there is another being out there so perfectly matched for my Cereal Dating soul?

Had he not been so enthralled by the week’s news and his daily serving of whole grains, and had I not been expecting my own (albeit now overtly inferior) cereal eating companion, I might have just pulled up a chair and asked to join him. If only. But alas, he was so enthralled and I was so expecting and, as such, the world shall never know what miracles might have sprung from the introduction of L.A. Cereal Dater and Oatmeal in Mason Jar. But it’s nice to know he’s out there. And, lest you doubt me, I did, in fact, steal a picture. Those cell phone cams sure are sneaky.

Date #8: Cocoa Pebbles

2008-02-11T20:55:00.000-08:00

Cocoa Pebbles came to me from the dating website. He came to Los Angeles, however, from Memphis, Tennessee. I had previously viewed his profile and recalled the gist of it being something like, “I’m just on here seeing if there’s anything interesting. Don’t bother contacting me – if I think you’re worthwhile I’ll get in touch.” Sure, I have standards, but what girl wouldn’t just swoon when she, in fact, discovered herself “interesting” and “worthwhile” enough to elicit an email from this white knight inquiring as to her ladyship's cereal preference? Not me, that’s for sure!

In reality, Cocoa Pebbles’s profile was slightly less severe than I had remembered. For the scores of you dying to know, it reads,

"I’m just looking. Browsing. I’ll see what there is to see, and maybe pick something off the shelf. I’m not impressed by people who need to be impressed. I believe that girls who “deserve better”…usually don’t – and they don’t know what “better” is…Be a person first, then be a female person.”

Huh. Well I do love any instance in which I can be compared to household cleanser or dress socks... In actuality, his listed profession - “International Man of Mystery” - and interests ranging from travel to jewelry making and starting businesses baited me. Yeah, yeah, save your judgment for jury duty – he amused me enough over our brief exchanges (odd tendency to insert Rs into the decidedly R-less "hmm" aside):

Cocoa Pebbles: If I’m going to eat cereal, might as well make it fun. I’d go for…hrm…Cocoa Pebbles, I think. I could probably hang with anything other than grape nuts or those fake little sugar-ball marshmallows.

Me: So you think you might want to meet up for some non-Grape Nut, fake little sugar-ball marshmallow-less cereal eating, or is that too much for ya?

Cocoa Pebbles: Hrm, sharing cereal. I think I can handle that…as long as we make sure to pick out our “safe words” beforehand. You know. Just in case. I’m not available Thursdays…it’s my regularly-scheduled “guys’ night out.”

Me: Have fun playing poker and grunting and smashing beer cans against your forehead (that’s what you do at “guys’ night out,” right?)

Cocoa Pebbles: Ahh, yes. Crushing beer cans and all that…is supposed to be a secret. Just like when you girls make smores, have topless pillow fights, and explore your secret feelings. That’s what you do when we’re not looking, right? ;)

I reminded him about the hair braiding, of course, then we set a meeting time.

And those are pretty much the highlights. Turns out this was the first time he’d eaten cereal in years (What? Who goes years without cereal? The box of Pebbles, thankfully, was brand new); his career in International Mystery is supported by his day job in e-commerce; his interest in travel has yet to take him across any actual borders; he has since abandoned jewelry making, as it didn’t prove as profitable as he’d hoped; and his latest business venture is a website (as they all are) fashioned after the illustrious “Hot or Not.” Only for animals. Called “Cute or Shoot.” Nice. Also, he’s a little bit of a Trekkie. TRT: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Date #7: GoLean Crunch!

2008-02-08T15:53:00.000-08:00

Oh, it was awkward. New record: one hour.

GoLean Crunch! is a Spanish, monkeyish Jude Law with unruly jet black eyebrows. I wish we had gotten on as well as our cereals but trouble was apparent when, with introductions made and complementary boxes at the ready, GoLean Crunch! grew eerily still.

“Oh, do you need a bowl?” (I just happen to have a spare.)

No, no – GoLean Crunch! pulls a massive bowl from his bag. Then, following an uncomfortably long battle with his unopened cereal bag, ultimately necessitating keys and stabbing, he again is still.

“Do you need milk?”

Nope. Brand new box of soy milk emerges from magical black European bag. (And I start to wonder if he’s got a Trader Joe’s stuffed in there.) Milk is poured, ready to roll, and…again with the not moving.

“Spoon?”

Of course not. But now we're really ready.

“So, GoLean Crunch!, tell me about yourself. What’s your story?”

At this point GoLean Crunch! inserts a gigantic spoonful of cereal in his mouth. We look at each other, smiling awkwardly as he chews, then stare into our bowls. Forever. Until finally, swallowing is within striking distance and:

“The flaw with your plan,” he explains, “is the chewing.” Or maybe it’s your gargantuan bites and glacial mastication. Or your…

“I’m from Barcelona. I moved here 5 years ago.”

“What brought you here?”

…timing. Another mammoth bite. More sluggish chewing. I think you can see where this is going.

In the brief moments between bites I learned that GoLean Crunch! doesn’t have to work so he takes extended trips around the U.S. to decide where he’d like to settle (the Oregon coast and Maine are top contenders) and, along with a penchant for Kashi and soy products he, like me, is a vegetarian. Well, he doesn’t eat “mammals or birds,” he does like fish.

(That actually makes him a pescetarian, by the way, which can be frustrating to a true vegetarian like myself, because these masqueraders cause the omnivorous among us to assume that I – a real vegetarian – eat fish, which I don’t. Or chicken. If you eat chicken you are by NO DEFINITION a vegetarian, so stop kidding yourself. And if you consider yourself a vegetarian because you try to “avoid red meat,” I hate you. That is not vegetarianism. That is not anything. That is just HOW YOU EAT. Please stop making it harder for me to live in this world.)

But back to GoLean Crunch!, the pescetarian. He sometimes gets frustrated with people’s tendency to bring conversations down to a basic level when they hear his accent, so I made every effort not to do that, which I think he appreciated because an hour later – cereal now gone but stilted conversation still very much present – he asked if I’d like to join him for a coffee.

I couldn’t imagine what else I might possibly say to him. Instead we exchanged an appropriately uncomfortable European double kiss, heightened because it was I (being the worldly gal that I am) who went for the second cheek and he (presumably acclimated to American customs), who did not. So, yeah…

Number 14

2008-02-07T15:13:00.000-08:00

There is a single gem buried in my “How to Not Score a Cereal Date” list with a story worthy of its own post, and that gem would be a little guy I like to call Number 14: the dazzling, the memorable, the soon-to-be classic, “Standing up my roommate (or me, or any female) on the first date and then proceeding to tell her that you LOVE her via text message 4 hours later.” Now that’s a story you’re dying to hear – am I right?

Well, it all began three weeks ago… a simpler time, indeed. I had just made the fateful decision to sign up with the online dating website when, intrigued by its mythic man-producing powers, my roommate (henceforth referred to as Grape Nuts on the Fridge), announced that she, too, had enlisted with the site. Her first meeting with one of these guys (well two, actually – turns out she’s kind of slutty, but that is neither here nor there) was this Saturday.

So imagine my surprise when, come Saturday, Grape Nuts on the Fridge returned home before sundown – stood up, it turns out, by her second date (who I shall now refer to as No Cereal for You). She arrived, she waited, she texted, she left. No biggie (her first date, as it were, lasted a marathon 4 hours). Dinner was made and all was forgotten.

Until 11:05pm when, in the midst of roommate television viewing, Grape Nuts on the Fridge’s cell phone beeped with a text message.

“Hi i thought we were supposed to meet today?”

Now, I’m normally pretty world-weary and apathetic but, for some reason, this ignited a feistiness in me that does make itself present from time to time. I very much wanted to speak to this boy and, with impassioned encouragement from roommates number 3 and 4, Grape Nuts on the Fridge handed over her phone.

“Hi, No Cereal for You,” I said. “My name is L.A. Cereal Dater (not my real name) and I’m Grape Nuts on the Fridge’s roommate. Why did you stand her up for your date today?”

He tried to explain, in his slight Middle Eastern accent, that he was at his apartment waiting for Grape Nuts on the Fridge to call.

“But when you make a date with someone, you’re supposed to be there at the designated time. She was there. She texted you.”

But he was at his apartment, waiting for her to call.

We did about four rounds of this before I let him go. The night, however, was young and soon to be showered with text message alerts.

11:24pm: the gods truth…i thought u were gonna call me when u get there…so I thought u flaked on me! I am extremely sorry and I feel horrible. I do like u and i wanna see u happy all the time. I do like u and u are a real queen! Love you!

Witness the birth of Number 14.

11:39pm: I cant sleep tonite if i don clear things up? I never broke any one’s heart and i wanna make sure u don think it was my fault. Plz plz plz.

11:47pm: Can i invite u for dinner…I will come and pick u up so it wont be any misunderstanding!

Wow, you sound awesome and not at all psychopathic. Sign me up. Grape Nuts on the Fridge – perhaps a gentler soul than me – emailed No Cereal for You, accepting his apology and making it clear she would contact him if and when she wanted to meet, to which he couldn’t help but respond:

“I am available to take you out for dinner 27/7 just lemme know hen u are free i will stay in touch as well and don be shy gimme a call plz i wanna hear your voice (Mind you, they’ve never spoken before) cheers (smiley icon holding a banner that reads I (heart) you)”

But we’re not done yet, friends. No Cereal for You loves to text, you see, and was very concerned about the quality of Grape Nuts on the Fridge’s sleep, her general well-being, and that not enough people were calling her “hun” on a regular basis. The messages arrived like little cellular bullets straight through to Monday afternoon when, gloriously, they ceased.

I’m sure, at this point, you can imagine the eruption that occurred in my apartment on Monday night, then, when I received this email:

“wasup cutie pie (smiley icon with throbbing hearts for eyes)”

from the only person who could make this story worth telling, the blissfully oblivious No Cereal for You. Same dating website, same pool of applicants.

I drafted the following email:

“My name is L.A. Cereal Dater. My roommate is Grape Nuts on the Fridge. We spoke on the phone Saturday night.”

I decided not to send it, though, justifiably fearful of the email and text onslaught it would actuate. He later notified Grape Nuts on the Fridge that, though he would date other people, she would remain his first choice.

How to Not Score a Cereal Date

2008-02-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

Just a few methods that have proven unsuccessful so far:

1. Addressing me as "sexy," "hottie," "beautiful," "baby," or, God help me, "mama/moma." (Ever - but especially in your first correspondence.)

2. Sending an email with no capitalization and/or punctuation and a pathological substitution of numbers or letters for actual words (i.e. “4,” “u,” or “r” to replace “for,” “you,” or “are,” respectively).

3. Posting or sending a picture of yourself wearing a muscle shirt, flexing your bicep, doing pull-ups, or otherwise engaging in any activity inside of a gym.

4. Pursuing me despite your knowledge that you decidedly fall outside of my not unreasonable age range of 21-34.

5. Sending a page-long introduction of yourself and life history. (Especially if you share exactly zero of my interests and/or the highlights include your love of “playing around with alternative fuels” and fishing.)

6. Implying that people who avoid processed foods and white sugar are “metro, quasi-fags.”

7. Including a link to your MySpace page, which reveals your nickname to be Osama bin Laden.

8. Using the word “whimsical” interchangeably with “musical.”

9. Stating in your profile that you “only buy dinner for hot chicks.”

10. Posting or sending a picture of the tattoo across your torso depicting a naked woman whose right nipple has been replaced by a smoking gun.

11. Stating in your ideal First Date box, “Since it’s damn near impossible to get a response from anybody on this site, nothing I guess.”

12. Posting or sending a photograph of yourself that elicits the response, “Is that a human?”

13. Telling me that “Cimmonion toast crunch” would be your “choise” of cereal.

14. Standing up my roommate (or me, or any female) on the first date and then proceeding to tell her that you LOVE her via text message, 4 hours later.

15. Sending me a link to your website, which requires me to download a Chinese language pack for proper viewing.

16. Responding to “I hope you had a good weekend” with an hour-by-hour recount of the past two days, including anecdotes about your friend Mike, the contents of your grocery cart, and the information that you got behind the wheel of a car after consuming multiple alcoholic beverages. (Even if it was only because Mike was way too wasted to drive.)

17. Condescendingly asking if I realize that an invitation to eat cereal together might be misinterpreted as an invitation to eat cereal together after conjugal relations.

18. Indicating that, if an invitation to eat cereal together were, in fact, an invitation to eat cereal together after conjugal relations, then you might be interested.

19. Sending an email entitled “THE MAN OF YOUR DREAMS,” followed by the message, “hey sexy how r u”.

20. Suggesting that, instead of cereal, we get some “stake and eggs lol”. (I’d like to put a stake through your LOL, dumbass motherfucker.)

I’m just sayin’.

Date #6: The Cereal Moocher

2008-02-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

Another grave disappointment in the land of Cereal Dating this weekend. The Cereal Moocher (this pun really works on so many levels) showed up for our date this weekend, as you may well guess, sans cereal. Is this such an impossible concept to wrap your head around? It’s cereal; 5-year olds across America figure it out every Saturday morning. But he somehow misunderstood, nonetheless, thinking he could get cereal at the Farmers Market. Not so much, my friend. What kind of operation do you think this is? He apologized profusely and agonized not a little bit over his failure of this “personality test,” (indicating significantly more about his personality than any cereal choice might have) so I shared my Kashi and the extra salsa container of a bowl I bring with me "just in case." I wasn’t a boy scout for nothing. (Okay, I wasn’t a boy scout, but being prepared is just good sense.)

Now for a little insight into the psyche of this Cereal Dater: among the things that I hate most in this world (right up there with packing – I freaking hate packing) are bars and clubs. They’re too loud. I don’t like loud. If I want to legitimately meet someone, I want to be able to talk to them, not scream into their ear and smile and nod, all the while pretending to understand a syllable of what they just screamed in mine. I hate it. It fills me with rage. I don’t do it. I’m also not in love with big crowds of intoxicated people. They annoy me. So imagine my thrill to discover that this very weekend was Mardi Gras at the Farmers Market. Hooray! Within moments of dousing our (well, my) cereal with milk, bead-throwing began and an authentic Cajun band started what was apparently their second set a mere ten feet from The Cereal Moocher and me. Verbal paralysis and wild discomfort ensued and I immediately put in to action my strategic Cereal Date emergency exit: inhale cereal and flee for the grassy knoll at the Grove. Turns out I should've made a solo escape, though, 'cause 15 minutes in, I wanted to be done with this guy.

The Cereal Moocher is from the online dating website, so I had some preliminary knowledge about him from his profile. For example, he’s a filmmaker. He doesn’t get paid for it (for that he does grunt work at E!), but that’s what he calls himself. Other things he calls himself: a poet and a romantic. His interests, aside from movies, include thinking, feeling, and standing in the rain. I kid you not. He also enjoys “romanticizing” and would like a woman who “is soft yet firm enough for this hard world.” Well if that’s not me… Through all my gagging, I couldn’t pull an interesting conversation out of this guy. Perhaps he had already done all his “thinking” and “feeling” for the day, because all I managed was industry talk, politics, and meaningless nothingness. The Cereal Moocher was tall, dark, and handsome (despite what I learned are Norwegian roots), sweet, and gentlemanly, but our hour and forty-five minute date lasted about an hour and a half longer than I would’ve liked.

Had it not been for the devastating misunderstanding, the Cereal Moocher reports that he would’ve brought his new favorite cereal, Honey Bunches of Oats – “whole heartedly.”

Date #5: Corn Flakes in a Traveling Blue Bowl

2008-02-01T19:09:00.000-08:00

Corn Flakes, baby – no backpack, no Starbucks, no fear. And a nice blue bowl. Corn Flakes in a Traveling Blue Bowl fucking brought it last night. And I don’t mean the cereal. We unsheathed a cache of surprising similarities and quirky commonalities that carried us through the date. Total running time: approximately 2 hours.

Corn Flakes in a Traveling Blue Bowl is an aspiring television/screenwriter who went to college on a full Kodak film and animation scholarship, appeared as a “dead guy” in Dogma, and once watched a full season of Two and a Half Men in a week and knocked out a spec script in 8 hours (regardless of quality and forgiving him this choice of shows, that is massively impressive). But much more significant than all that is the fact that Corn Flakes in a Traveling Blue Bowl pays his bills by working at a major studio; and one of the feathers in his professional cap just happens to be head of security for a little show called Gilmore Girls, which just happens to be, in my opinion, one of the greatest shows to ever grace the small screen. And, much to my delight, Corn Flakes in a Traveling Blue Bowl was more than happy to dish out generous helpings of GG gossip, which I ravenously devoured like my final meal. (My actual final meal, incidentally, would be vegetable pizza directly from Rome and a colossal slice of the greatest chocolate cake in the world from Lido Bakery in Manhattan Beach, California. And some soy milk for the cake.)

Suffice to say, anyone who can hang in Stars Hollow can eat cereal at my table, and we eventually moved on to the reality of hobbies and interests, friends, and living situations.

“I have a roommate.” He offered. “I don’t really know where he came from, he just kind of appeared in college and has stuck with me since then.”

“Are you sure he’s real?”

“Yeah, pretty sure.”

This roommate – who answers to the nickname “Twink” – doesn’t do anything but play Scrabble. Like, crazy hard-core competitive Scrabble. He holes up in his room and plays against himself for hours (right brain vs. left brain, of course). His bathroom is wallpapered with lists of words and he sits in there and studies. He’s read the Scrabble dictionary cover-to-cover and knows every 7-letter word in it, but couldn’t define a single one.

“Does he work?” I asked.

Only enough to earn unemployment, which he then lives off of while playing endless games of Scrabble. Except the kicker – the psychotic brilliance of it all – is that he doesn’t actually compete, and won’t – won’t go to tournaments, won’t get “on the circuit” - until he’s sure he can win. So until that ego boost arrives, he’s literally just a guy who plays Scrabble with himself. And Corn Flakes in a Traveling Blue Bowl lives with him. And while all of this is wildly bizarre and sickly entertaining, it is doubly so to me because the very night before this Cereal Date, less than 24 hours earlier, I watched the documentary Word Wars, which follows America’s top Scrabble players to the National Championships. It’s uncanny.

Corn Flakes in a Traveling Blue Bowl has not yet seen Word Wars, but he, also, enjoys a good documentary. He loved The King of Kong and Cocaine Cowboys, but the one that really shone for me was Helvetica. It’s a full-length doc about the history of the font (like, on your Microsoft Word) Helvetica. (No shit.) I looked it up on IMDb and the sole review/comment calls it a “Typography Tour de Force.” I can’t imagine. Corn Flakes in a Traveling Blue Bowl was only able to endure 20 minutes of it, but I thank him for it.

I’m just scratching the surface here, but it was a good time. No sparks; no physical attraction; no burning lust for Corn Flakes, but definitely solid friend potential. As for the cute and charming Traveling Blue Bowl, however…time will tell.

Farmers Market Cereal Killer?

2008-01-31T20:33:00.000-08:00

From his emails, my next Cereal Date sounds promising, though I’m hesitant to actually believe that because experience has so far taught me that a prospective Cereal Dater’s level of wit and humor over email is directly related to the extent of his social abnormality in person. Regardless, I press on, and next will meet the guy who responded to my most recent Craigslist post with the following:

“I’ve never responded to one of these before (most frequently typed words on Craigslist next to ‘or best offer’, I’m sure), but cereal with a complete stranger sounds really good. Maybe I’m just hungry…Now about me: 28 year old male, minimal brain damage. Loves travel, writing, attempting (and failing) to learn languages and movies. Even lame ones. I also dislike clubs and close-mindedness. Small-talk? I’ll take mine exclusively with meaning…As long as you’re not the famous Farmers Market cereal killer, this seems like it’ll be fun.”

So a guy with similar interests, who has the ability to construct and punctuate a sentence (including a relevant pun, no less), all with a mindful eye on his safety. I like it. I reassured him that I am not the famous Farmers Market cereal killer, to which he admitted his suspicion that if I were, I wouldn’t tell him. This is probably correct. To his credit, he’s willing to risk it, though, and asked – as many do – if he should bring a bowl with him, as he has “a nice blue one” that “enjoys traveling.” A bowl that enjoys traveling?! What a wildly appropriate and useful piece of dishware! How does one know, I wonder, that his bowl has such a fondness? Something we surely will discuss. I look forward to meeting this guy and, from what I hear, he and his bowl are looking forward to meeting me as well!

Date #4: Mr. Trader Joe's Blend with Mango, Kiwi, Pears, and Almonds

2008-01-30T18:50:00.000-08:00

4 is – far and away, without contest – my very favorite number. I love 4. I revel in 4. When asked to pick a number between 1 and 100, I will always pick 4. If asked again, I will again pick 4. 4, to me, is perfection. And with my devoted history to 4, you could imagine the high hopes I had for this fourth Cereal Date of mine. I even donned my “Lucky Number 4” shirt for the occassion – I mean, if ever a situation merited it. Yep…with 4 on my side, I had no doubt that this was gonna be some good cereal dating.

So dressed to the nines (or fours), I made my way through the Farmers Market yesterday and immediately spotted one Mr. Trader Joe’s Blend with Mango, Kiwi, Pears, and Almonds, holding in his hands a truly mammoth bowl of breakfast. (It begged the question: what in God's name is being compensated for?) Appearing as though he just stepped out of the Almost Famous wardrobe trailer, he somehow managed, at once, to look both exactly and nothing at all like the picture he had sent. I don’t know how that is. Actually, he looked a bit like John Lennon, donning bug-eye glasses with yellow lenses.

And so we met, and we sat, and we examined our bowls. His impressively contained not only an assortment of flakes and twigs, but also 2 fruits I have never before even considered for cereal. (Though I think it goes without saying, I’m referring to the mango and kiwi here.) And then I requested “permission to photograph” and Mr. Trader Joe’s Blend with Mango, Kiwi, Pears, and Almonds reacted in a way that I would classify distinctly as the polar opposite of the Anti-Cereal Dater, though equally odd and disturbing. He loved it. He jumped out of his chair. He helped me line up the shot. He marveled. He asked me to send him a copy. I think he would’ve encouraged more (Now solo! Now together! Just the spoons!), if we hadn’t already poured our milk.

“Cool! Are you posting it on a blog or something?”

Shit.

“Uhh…no?”

Fuck, I hate lying. (Swearing…on the other hand…I love swearing.)

“Oh, well you should.”

Huh. How ‘bout that?

I spent 2 hours with Mr. Trader Joe’s Blend with Mango, Kiwi, Pears, and Almonds (I would’ve been good with 1 ½, but 2 was fine), and I recall three things:

Mr. Trader Joe’s Blend with Mango, Kiwi, Pears, and Almonds is a musician – bass player - replete with all the sensitivity and emotional baggage that might imply. He practices 4-5 hours a night but isn’t currently in a band and, as such, has an equally small bank account and social circle. Thus, he trolls Craigslist for gigs, and girls to eat mistimed meals with. He has toured around the world and played on the Grammy-nominated album of some obscure Japanese artist. (On a timely aside, due to the way internet downloads have raped the music industry, he earned $168 for that. Fight that good fight, writers!) I don’t know how old Mr. Trader Joe’s Blend with Mango, Kiwi, Pears, and Almonds is, but if he falls within my designated age range of 21-34, he’s definitely pushing the upper end.

Mr. Trader Joe’s Blend with Mango, Kiwi, Pears, and Almonds can’t smell. Never could. He had an epiphanal moment at the age of fifteen when his mother asked him to smell a pot roast and he realized that meat doesn’t smell like air. Fifteen. Fifteen. How is that possible? When he was studying the five senses in grade school did it not occur to him to say, “Hey, what’s that one with the nose? And the wavy lines over the pile of garbage?” And, as my friend pointed out, by fifteen you would surely have encountered a scratch-and-sniff sticker. Scratch? Check. But what of the sniff? Now, all of this would have utterly blown my mind if it weren't for the fact that my own roommate, in fact, suffers from this very impairment. Oh, the kismet! Mr. Trader Joe’s Blend with Mango, Kiwi, Pears, and Almonds has only ever met one other person who couldn’t smell. My roommate has met none. They are both very excited to make contact. Perhaps this was meant to be - think of the copious amount of pot-smoking their children could get away with.

And finally, Mr. Trader Joe’s Blend with Mango, Kiwi, Pears, and Almonds was inordinately interested in my previous cereal dates. We spent a significant amount of time deconstructing and analyzing their personalities and cereal choices. I found it a bit disconcerting, quite frankly, and amplified by the email I received just hours after our meeting requesting the picture of our bowls and, also, those of the other guys’ bowls, too. “Call it a comparison of manhood if you like or just a creepy fascination,” he offered, but he’d like to see them. I shall refer to it as the latter and will not be including them in our next correspondence.

Needless to say, my romantic future with Mr. Trader Joe’s Blend with Mango, Kiwi, Pears, and Almonds looks bleak. My affection for the number 4, however, remains unscathed. Some love is just deep enough to weather the storm.

Cracking Craigslist

2008-01-29T15:21:00.000-08:00

Heeding the impassioned advice of friend, blog reader, and experienced Craigslister, Just the Clusters, I published my latest post (now titled “Who Doesn’t Love Cereal?”) in the “women looking for men” section of Craigslist, rather than “strictly platonic.” I received one email containing the simple message “I don’t” (only one!) but, otherwise, have discovered that cereal consumption pregnant with relationship potential is, apparently, far more appealing than its platonic counterpart.

The first email that piqued my interest began with the respondent’s description of his “technique” of blending 5 to 6 of Trader Joe’s finest and concluded with his acknowledgement that he sounded “super dry and boring” but in actuality is “a blast to be around.” A blast, you say? I like a blast. And, I scrolled to find, he included a picture of himself. The description Super Fly Carrot Top comes to mind, if your brain can conjure such an image. Finally! Someone who’s taking this seriously!

Now this cereal eater is of the ilk that likes to break down emails and respond to each line individually, which can make for a somewhat disjointed communication and retelling, but the content of our subsequent emails progressed, more or less, like this:

Me: I too love a good mix – nothing like a custom breakfast blend.

Him: Custom blends are my thing. The key is to not put too much of any one type in the bowl too early or you’ll have no room left. Another tip I can offer is this: NEVER answer the phone after the milk! You’ll either have a brick waiting for you or wet pajamas. I think an orange (seedless…ask me how I know) added to the bowl would be nice. Do you add fruit? I just about always add some. Nuts? I always have a bag of raw almonds I’m working on too. There’s supposed to be some health benefit with raw nuts so I’m doing my part for the cereal industry to ensure I’ll be around a long time to buy more product.

Me: You provide some excellent insight regarding cereal eating – it seems you may be somewhat of an expert, even…As for my add-ins, I’m huge on fruit. I daresay that, barring particularly desperate scenarios, I ALWAYS enjoy my cereal with fruit. My favorite is mixed berries and bananas, but I love all kinds.

Him: Still a student but I quest towards excellence every time I fill my tummy with goodness. Berries and bananas are staples. Staples are not berries and bananas, they are made of metal. This is still somewhat of a riddle to me. I just discovered mangoes in my fridge last night…they will not live to see the sun set again.

Me: Oranges are one combo that never even occurred to me. (Maybe a holdover from some childhood rule about not mixing citrus and dairy?) Perhaps I’ll give it a go, though, if I’m ever feeling especially adventurous.

Him: As I introduced my orange (citrus) to my milk (dairy) yesterday, I looked skyward and beat both fists on my chest and commissioned the gods to allow human insight into the reason why this combination works as I too have been conditioned to believe it shouldn’t…(actually, it kinda doesn’t but I do it anyway). Adventure breeds discovery, breeds book deals, breeds movie deals, breeds Paris’s entry of your number into her blackberry, breeds scandal. Be very careful.

Me: How did that mango work out for you?

Him: Nicely. I like cutting them up so they look like a little dinosaur before I devour it.

How’s that for some verbal foreplay? (And before breakfast, even.) So our meet-and-eat is set and I hope he’s not all talk because I’m very much looking forward to getting a peek of his elaborately fruity, nutty, Mesozoicly-shaped blend. And maybe more…

Date #3: The Anti-Cereal Dater

2008-01-28T11:12:00.000-08:00

I know it’s been a long, fretful weekend for many but you can sigh in relief as the purity of the Cereal Dater pun – so recently threatened – remains intact. As planned, the Anti-Cereal dater and I met for our agreed-upon beverages on Friday but, once we emerged from Starbucks’s judging eye into the safety of the devil-may-care Farmers Market, I very deftly offered an unassuming granola bar as companion to his security blanket of a coffee (well tea, actually) and, to my great pleasure, he indulged. Apparently rectangularly pre-packaged cereal can be publicly consumed without fear of social castigation. The victory – deliciously satisfying though it was – was short-lived, however, as the Anti-Cereal Dater’s raging discomfort began a-simmering with my request to photographically preserve the moment. He endured it, though, and I like to think he’s a stronger man for it.

All of that took about ten minutes and constituted, I would argue, the most exciting ninth of the date. (For those of you not wanting to do the math, we spent a wild hour-and-a-half together.) The Anti-Cereal Dater is a good guy. He is undeniably the most normal, respectable, and attractive of the lot so far – easy-going, comfortable, confident, and…well…unremarkable. Simple. A little boring. Plain Cheerios, maybe. With 2% milk. And such was our date.

The Anti-Cereal Dater grew up in suburban New Jersey with a businessman father, a math teacher mother, and an older sister. He went to public school. He’s admittedly not a big fan of change and has lived in the same studio apartment since he moved to LA over five years ago. He loves stability. He saves his money. He would love to have a nine-to-five job, if only he could find one he liked. He did study drama at NYU and is an aspiring voiceover artist, which is interesting – kind of fun, kind of cool, kind of different and exciting. But that deep, scary movie trailer voice he boasts? Oh, that’s right… Won’t do it on command. Or in public. Shocker.

The Anti-Cereal Dater likes movies, but not passionately; and sports, but not obsessively. Not big on travel, either, though he’s been to London and would like to visit the very exotic destinations of Ireland and Australia. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Ireland and Australia, but what? Canada’s got too many elk? Too much snow? Too much French?) He did talk about a trip he took to visit a friend in Salt Lake City, recently. It came up more than a few times, actually. I don’t know if they got a couple hookers there, or what, but whatever they did made for a memorable trip. He might even consider living there one day, in fact. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Salt Lake’s for me and when we simultaneously reached for our cell phones to check the time, we mutually understood that the best was behind us.

I emailed the Anti-Cereal Dater over the weekend, though. I couldn’t help myself and asked him to humor me because I had to know: if we were to have met for cereal, instead of coffee, what would have been his cereal of choice? His response:

“Hmmmmm…well I’d say it’d be a close call. As I mentioned, I love Kashi…Heart to Heart is my daily starter for the day. But perhaps my old school favorite, gotta be Fruity Pebbles, lol. They’re just really good. Not very healthy, but extremely tasty. So one of those two, maybe I’d have to bring both because it’d be too hard to decide, haha.”

Huh. I think the Anti-Cereal Dater really wants to be Fruity Pebbles. Maybe his “LOL”s and “haha”s are even indication of the couple inner Pebbles mixed in with all the Kashi. But when it comes down to it, I think the Anti-Cereal Dater is really just a reliable, solid Heart to Heart kind of guy who doesn’t laugh out loud in conversation and doesn’t eat cereal at the Farmers Market.

The Anti-Cereal Dater

2008-01-25T19:09:00.000-08:00

Heartbreaking though this news may be, I – the inventor of the Cereal Date, Cereal Dater herself – have committed to a Cereal Date with someone who (gasp!) refuses to eat cereal. I know, I know. I suspected this date might come (I mean really, who are we kidding here?), but when I signed up with my chosen internet dating site I had, perhaps naively, dared to dream that I might be able to avoid this inconceivable horror of horrors. Along with the requisite fill-in-the-blanks and generic chemistry assessment quiz on said site, you see, I was afforded the opportunity to further personalize my profile within the confines of two empty boxes: the aptly named “About Me” box, where one can (in fact, must) include the obvious, and the far more exciting, the thrillingly appropriate “First Date” box. Surmise for yourself the expectation.

With the mission forefront on my mind, I carefully crafted the contents of my personal “First Date” box to read:

“My first date: meeting somewhere like the LA Farmers Market or Larchmont or similar open-air, lively place and getting to know each other over a bowl of cereal. (See what each other brings to the table, if you will…) Kind of quirky, I know, but I’m looking for someone who can see the fun in that."

Pretty straightforward, right? If you don’t want to eat cereal with me, don’t come a-knockin’. Foolproof, I figured. Not so, it turns out.

FADE IN: On a strikingly beautiful and incomparably charismatic young woman sitting down at her computer to check her email and…

Enter Anti-Cereal Dater (disguised, as it were, as Enthusiastic Cereal Dater).

Anti-Cereal Dater initially appealed to me with his likable pictures and NYU degree and he won me over in subsequent emails by revealing that he is a voiceover artist who can, on command, break out a good “deep scary trailer voice.” Excellent. Plus, he loves the Farmers Market – especially the French Crepe Co. Brilliant. How do you not like a guy who likes crepes? (Unless he’s French, of course. ‘Cause we hate the French.) And he’s an admitted “cereal kind of guy…usually 5 days a week.” (He likes to mix it up on the weekends.) Winning. So I eagerly proposed a date and, to my shock and immeasurable disappointment, received the following response:

“I was wondering…would it be okay if we just meet for coffee? I know…this is very boring and cliché compared to doing cereal, lol. But in all honesty I think I might feel more comfortable doing that if it’s okay with you! Hope you don’t feel insulted that I’m going against the cereal idea, lol.”

What’s up with that, Anti-Cereal Dater? The multiple “lol”s aside (which is a whole other issue onto itself), you might feel “more comfortable” with coffee? As in, eating cereal (at least at the Farmers Market) makes you uncomfortable? I realize it’s a little odd and, if I weren’t so tied to the pun myself (which, in all fairness, you know nothing about) it probably wouldn’t be my first choice, but it doesn’t cause me unbearable levels of discomfort. Can I not change your mind with my feminine wiles? Will you not be convinced with my prodigious persuasive powers? Well, you do have a deep, scary trailer voice in your repertoire. And, uptight, inflexible nature aside, you seem like a decent guy. Perhaps I could forgive you this one egregious misstep.

"Alright, I suppose I can surrender the cereal eating and agree to Starbucks. Maybe we can even wander into the Farmers Market with our cliché coffee and find some sort of breakfast-like compromise.”

His amenability to this (and palpable relief) was delivered in a “cell phone sandwich” of sorts, via an email including an “lol,” his cell number, a request for no middle-of-the-night prank calls, and one final “lol.” So my Anti-Cereal Cereal Date is set, though I’m determined to sneak some in there somehow. I hope he proves himself worthy of the total abandonment of the best pun this side of Sunset Blvd.

More Rice Chex with Almond Milk

2008-01-24T14:33:00.000-08:00

Rice Chex with Almond Milk is proving to be quite the wellspring for me, which I appreciate. Remember when I said I had a delightful meeting with him but, thankfully, no phone numbers were requested or exchanged upon parting? (Date #1: Not Exactly Love at First Bite) Well it appears the window for that is still open (huh, I thought I shut that last night when it started raining…), as Rice Chex with Almond Milk opted to follow up his last bipolar email with the following:

"Now, I am going to give you my phone number.”

And there it is. He listed those 10 magical digits and continued:

“And rest assured, strictly platonic is fine (though, on a philosophical note, that type of relationship would be better off being called Aristotelian as he talks much more of it than Plato). There is a display at the Getty I am interested in seeing next weekend (along with the Getty itself). And if you don’t want to call or email, that is alright, too. I’ve got Rick Steves and [PBS] to keep me company.”

Oh Rice Chex with Almond Milk. While I think an offer to join him at the Getty was implied, no invitation was actually extended and, as such, I wished him a good time and told him to “feel free to keep me in [his] email rolodex.”

On a related aside, in this most recent email Rice Chex with Almond Milk also apologized for his poor email communication skills, lamenting:

“Talking is easy, to the point, clear, but email I just don’t do well, especially attempts at wit, as witty as I am.”

Which I find not a little ironic because it was our witty email banter that opened the door to my heart, and his “easy, to the point, clear” talking (amongst other things – though none quite as memorable as the talking) that ever-so-swiftly slammed it shut. How you endear yourself to me, Rich Chex with Almond Milk.

And on an unrelated aside, a stack of back-dated unemployment checks arrived in the mail this week. Thank you state of California! Now I can fend of homelessness for another beautiful month.

Date #2: Special K Vanilla Almond

2008-01-23T15:34:00.000-08:00

Kind of a girly choice for this tall, hulking gent, I thought, but I guess you gotta respect a guy secure enough in his masculinity to eat Special K in mixed company. (I later learned that he’s also secure enough in his masculinity to have the soundtrack of “Rent” on his iPod without feeling the need to justify it. Fair enough.) What struck me most about Special K Vanilla Almond right off the bat was the striking resemblance he bore to my brother. (If my brother’s physique more closely mimicked that of a teddy bear’s than a heroin addict’s, he grew a tuft of hair on his chin, and he had perhaps made a few different life choices, that is. But I digress…)

Special K Vanilla Almond and his large backpack (containing, as it were, only his apparently embarrassing Tupperware bowl full of breakfasty goodness) met me and my box of Kashi at the LA Farmers Market Monday afternoon and, after a few minutes of chaotic hunting and gathering (milk for him, blueberries for me), Cereal Date number 2 commenced. The sog-factor, thankfully, didn’t prove to be quite so much of an issue this time around, which is good because, as much as I love a cereal that could crack your teeth or pave your driveway, I’m not yet ready to make the Grape-Nuts switch.

Special K Vanilla Almond spent 8 years in the U.S. Air Force training people in crisis management (he’s the guy you’d want to have around, he informed me, “when shit hits the fan”), followed by an illustrious 4 years at Sport Chalet where he was that “pain-in-the-ass guy” who would not bother to look at the schedule if it wasn’t put out on time. Awesome. We discussed politics (his college major), family (he loves his family. He loves his brother and his sister and his late mother. He really loves his four nieces. His dad, his ex-stepmom, the whole gang…), and other unequivocally un-small-talk-like topics for the better part of an hour, until he suggested we stroll on over to Barnes and Noble. Sure. Who doesn’t love a good book store? (Well, illiterate people, I guess. And bibliophobes. But aside from them…)

This proved a clever maneuver as, after procuring himself a cup of tea – and then some ice cubes, due to his “tender palate” – he deftly guided us to the travel section (our sole common interest, I had by now come to realize), where we discussed his two favorite locales: London and Dubai. In our new environs I noticed that Special K Vanilla Almond is a bit of a loud-talker with significant decibel increases proportionate to his interest in/passion about a subject. Not something you’d necessarily pick up on in the ruckus of the Farmers Market, but pretty evident inside a bookstore. If only he’d been spewing expletives or racist jokes, that might’ve livened things up, but alas, his booming commentary was entirely benign.

After a quick stop in the religion section where we were most pleased to find the title, I’m Fine with God…It’s Christians I Can’t Stand, we were closing in on about 2 hours, which I think is a generous stretch for a first meeting. Not a view shared by Special K Vanilla Almond, apparently, as on what I thought was the return trip to our cars he indicated he would be up for catching a movie if I was. Whoa, whoa. It’s a first date, buddy, give it some time. You wanna follow that with a trip to the chapel? Shortly thereafter we parted ways with a hug.

I returned home to an email (those BlackBerries sure are something, huh?) saying he had a great time and hoped to see me again soon. I anticipate a movie invite is on its way. Special K Vanilla Almond is cute and likeable, but it seems our common enjoyment of travel and willingness to snack on cereal at the Farmers Market are not the igniters of burning passion (like a shared love of “Project Runway” or David Sedaris would obviously be). And if I’m being completely forthright I have to admit that, while no value can be placed on the security of feeling that you’re in the company of sanity, I think I may actually have enjoyed my date with Rice Chex with Almond Milk more. Now maybe that’s because my inner monologue shouted, “this will be so good to write about!” with every sentence he uttered, but still…at least I was interested.

This Thing's Got Legs, Baby

2008-01-22T18:16:00.000-08:00

The dating website route seems to have been a fruitful one as, within moments of clicking the “submit application” button not so many days ago, I received a message from a potential suitor. Okay, truth be told, I received a few messages, but only one of them from someone I’d actually entertain meeting (“hey whatz up how r u doin 2day beautiful???” does not elicit a response). But this particular suitor seemed normal and the pictures in his profile made it appear as though his interests fell closer to winter sports than assault with a deadly weapon, so I felt relatively safe in responding.

We emailed back and forth over the weekend (things move quickly on said dating website – people, it seems, are very serious when it comes to finding internet love) and I found myself chained to my computer Sunday night, trapped in a web of instant messaging conversations with not just him but also another Cereal Date prospect. I’m quite the internet Cereal Dating player.

Aforementioned gentleman caller (or IMer, if you will) was texting from his Blackberry, he claimed, as his 3-month old niece slept on his chest. Sweet. I immediately accused him of using that line to woo the ladies and he promptly emailed me a picture of the babe (though suspiciously awake now). I chose to believe him. He asked if I had MLK Day off, to which I responded that I currently have the distinct pleasure of having every day off (thanks WGA and AMPTP!) and the idea of celebrating together over a bowl of cereal was proposed.

The next day, after my morning celebrations of Martin Luther King had concluded and I hadn’t heard anything, I sent an email to my baby-exploiting match saying that I was thinking of snacking on a bowl of cereal around 4pm and would be happy for company, if he was interested. It seems, in the world of Cereal Dating, I’m also quite aggressive. He was interested, it turned out, and that is the story of how Cereal Date number 2 was made. Magical, huh?

MLK's Not the Only One with a Dream

2008-01-21T15:54:00.000-08:00

When Rice Chex with Almond Milk and I parted company last week, he said he'd email me "if he had something to say" and over the weekend I was treated to a message in my inbox with the apt subject line "something to say." Imagine that.

Indeed that's what he had, and dove right in with, "A couple of things actually...I better not see that picture of my cereal on any of these cheap websites, at least not without getting some money..."

Shit.

He also warned me that, should he see one of his screenplay ideas on television anytime in the near future, "[my] ass will be in front of a judge quicker than [I] can say Kashi."

Jesus, is he psychic or something? (About the picture, not the story.) There's no way he could have seen it. I mean, I haven't given the website address to anyone besides my roommates yet, but still... What are the chances he would, like, Google the exact text of the emails he sent me? Slim, right? Because, that whole Zen Buddhist thing aside, he did kind of seem like the sort of guy that, provoked in just the right way, might possibly go off on, like, a violent, bloody rampage or a mid-sized school shooting or something. Possibly.

So I thought it best to step away from the email for a couple days. (Ignoring a problem, I find, is a perfectly productive way of dealing with it.)

Prudent decision making I think because, upon re-visitation, I read the email (for better or worse) as ripe with all the glorious subtle humor I'd so enjoyed in Rice Chex with Almond Milk's previous emails, rather than a psychotic threat and, as such, replied with a nonchalant "Not sure which cheap cereal-picture-mongering websites you mean, but that's probably for the best. I'll be sure to give you a cut of any profits I make off that highly sought-after photographic prize, though. And your [story] is safe with me, though I'll warn you, I can say "Kashi" pretty quickly)." Ha ha.

See, all in good fun. Like Russian roulette. Possible horrific, early death averted. For today. I hope.

Maybe enough to scare away the casual cereal dater but, alas, some dreams die hard (especially those of one who could be classified as a habitual dreamer) so this weekend, disheartened by the surprisingly small pool of Craigslist readers who find public cereal consumption with strangers and appealing notion, I joined what I'm reassured is hundreds of thousands of young and fabulous desperately-seekings in the world of online dating. The (free) website that I've chosen to enlist with promises that there's an abundance (dare I say gobs) of gilled, scaled, fin-sporting creatures in that proverbial expanse of water. And while that's all very promising for your average online dater, I do have to wonder how much fish enjoy cereal.

Date #1: Not Exactly Love at First Bite

2008-01-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

With no personal details proffered, Rice Chex with Almond Milk was shrouded in a cape of enticing mystery until our final correspondence Wednesday night, which established our meeting place and revealed that Rice Chex with Almond Milk teaches at night and has “brown hair and a James Spader-like mien, according to those who know these things.” So around 11:30 yesterday morning I made my way to the Jamba Juice on Larchmont to meet the sexy, James Spader-like professor of my newly-born fantasy. I had hoped he’d be there when I arrived so I could get a peek first and decide to flee if he looked like a psychopath, but no such luck, so I settled into a chair and pulled out my box of Kashi Golean and my intense vulnerability as a possible female target.

A couple minutes later a man well-equipped for cereal eating emerged from Jamba Juice. (He toted a container of the requisite Rice Chex, another of the Almond Milk, a third of frozen mixed berries, and a final one of water, with which to dilute the apparently overpowering Almond Milk. And a bowl. A second trip was necessary for napkins and utensils. And there were lots of plastic bags for some reason - all I remember is plastic bags. They were everywhere.) I chose not to dwell on why he may have been inside Jamba Juice. (Had he been in there watching me? I mean, I was sitting there for a little while; he could have been just watching me. Best not to think about it.) He did, in fact, look like James Spader, though. If James Spader lost, like, 40 pounds because of, say, an addiction to painkillers. We greeted and before he sat down I was treated to a complete etymological explanation of his decidedly Anglo name. And off we went.

I'm guessing Rice Chex with Almond Milk is in his early 30s, but he's "lived many lives." He was self-described “freak” of a child who befriended a deadhead in high school and fell in love with Zeppelin and rock and roll and eventually became an aspiring concert pianist. As it turns out, he had little actual musical talent, so that didn’t really pan out. After getting his master’s in Philosophy he enlisted in basic training for the U.S. Air Force, just to see if he could do it. (He couldn’t – not surprising since he’s the kind of guy who looks like he has a very close relationship with his allergist – and got out by claiming that it was “making him crazy.” My hero...) He’s been a playwrite, a Zen Buddhist, hit by a drunk driver, and an aspiring screenwriter. Something inside me wants to add pathological liar to that list, but something else kind of doesn't think so. He’s just a really passionate, socially awkward kind of guy. Who has a vein in the bag under his right eye that bulges when he goes on twenty-minute discourses about Arthurian literature and Julius Caesar. Also, he loves the snow. Like, “if there’s anything to that Seasonal Affective Disorder,” he has it in the summer. And in a few years – you know, after he sells the 6 screenplays that he wants to write – he’d like to retire in Chamonix, France. Yeah, me too.

But all this sounds mean and that’s not my intention because I had a good time, actually. We sat and ate soggy cereal (well, mine was a little soggy; his was decidedly gruel-like) for over 2 hours and it never got awkward or quiet or boring. He was not at all the witty, fun guy I had imagined from his emails but he was smart. And nice. He’s just that guy, you know? When I told him it had been a delightful meeting he seemed genuinely surprised. (Either he found me not nearly so delightful or he’s not used to hearing that from female company. I know what I’m going to think.) No phone numbers were exchanged – thankfully, none were requested – but I'll admit that, in faceless print, from a safe distance, I did find him to be most charming. Mrs. Rice Chex with Almond Milk I will not be, however. (And Craigslist posting number 3 has been published.)

Cereal Dating Lesson Number One

2008-01-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

It is perhaps possible that there is a reason Cereal Dating is not commonplace outside of it not occurring to the masses. And it is possible that reason may be that when two people meet in a date-like manner, conversation typically ensues. And when conversation engages, food is infrequently consumed. And when cereal is not consumed in a timely manner, it gets soggy. Just a logistical obstacle I met yesterday. Now because my first date was a talker, I fared decently, but I’m thinking a switch to the delightfully gravelly Grape-Nuts might be worth considering.

Starting Tomorrow, A Cereal Dater I Shall Be

2008-01-16T14:54:00.000-08:00

A week in coming, date number one is set for tomorrow. Very exciting, indeed. Everything got a-rollin’ yesterday afternoon with the following email from Rice Chex with Almond Milk:

“Well my schedule isn't flexible, at least in the afternoons and evenings, but mornings (preferably late mornings) are quite good. And, while cereal is good any time of day, mornings are best, wouldn't you agree? Although, I don't work on Fridays so, later in the day on Friday is good, too. My favorite times would be 11:00am or 12:00pm or even 1pm but not 2pm and definitely not 3pm. But 10am is a possibility though I like 11am better and 9am is a sure no go. 8am? It will be a cold day in Arizona before I get up at 8 unless I have to. And 7am? Isn't it still dark at 7am?”

Amused by his musings, I replied with my own preference breakdown:

“I like late mornings. How do you feel about 11:30am? It is late, though still decisively in morning territory. Or do you prefer on-the-hour cereal eating? As for days, well Thursdays are my favorite. Man, I love Thursdays. But Wednesdays are also very good. And Fridays? Fridays are nice (I mean, who doesn't love Fridays?), just not as nice as Thursdays and Wednesdays. But still good for cereal consumption, if it came down to it. But I would really love to eat cereal around 11:30am on Thursday. Or Wednesday.”

And then I heard nothing. For the rest of the night. I even logged in first thing this morning (which I hate to do – whilst unemployed I prefer to spend the first 30 to 60 minutes of my day lounging in bed with either a book or Tivo’s latest offerings) only to find my inbox visited exclusively by Oprah and her daily inspirational message. Dammit, Oprah. It wasn’t even that inspiring.

Now I have to admit, I got a little nervous at this point. Albeit we’ve only exchanged a handful of emails, Rice Chex with Almond Milk seems like a relatively spontaneous cereal eater. And me? Well, I love spontaneity as much as the next girl, but I also like to know how my day is going to play out. (So maybe I don’t love spontaneity as much as the next girl, if the next girl really loves it.) Was I going to get an email at the last minute, confirming our cereal date? Would I have enough time to get ready and get there? Should I eat breakfast? I’d like to have at least an hour’s notice. At least. And I was hungry. I really wanted to eat breakfast. At about 10am I caved to the growlings of my stomach, and all concern was dispelled around 11:15 when, still, I had heard nothing.

Come lunchtime, I sidled up to my geriatric laptop with my standard bowl of vegetable goodness (today, Italian style) in hand and, finally, found the message I’d been awaiting:

“Well, I suppose Thursday is the best option as it appears I got your message a little late for Wednesday as today is Wednesday and it appears that I didn't check my e-mail last night which makes sense because my inflexible schedule leaves me very tired at night, including last night, when it appears I went to bed upon returning to my apartment. So it seems I have eaten my Rice Chex for the day and can plan on an 11:30 eating of cereal tomorrow. 11:30 is very good. At Larchmont? I will go to work today at 2:30 and will be sure to check my mailbox for any apparent messages.”

Typical Rice Chex with Almond Milk. So tomorrow it is. And my first order of business will be finding out exactly what mysterious, inflexible, exhausting job Rice Chex with Almond Milk has. (Rapists don’t have set hours, right? Like, they don’t go into the office around 2:30 and check their email, do they?) If, 24 hours from now, I’m still alive, I shall be happy and will consider this whole thing a success. Gotta go to Trader Joe’s now, to buy some cereal!

Rice Chex with Almond Milk

2008-01-15T10:55:00.000-08:00

Saturday was full of promise in the land of cereal dating; in the wake of excitement from the “Seinfeld” fan, I also received the following email:

“I like Rice Chex. And Almond Milk. So what do you think of that? I am going to get some Rice Chex and then go to the Sunday Farmer’s Market on Larchmont. And I’m going to eat my bowl of cereal with or without you. But I might wait until I get home if we don’t meet, I don’t want any kids or dogs sneezing on my Rice Chex.”

Despite the fact that Rice Chex with Almond Milk totally hijacked my post, even changing the meeting location (though still nearby), I was won over by the mysterious and adventurous tone of the email and responded quickly with:

“Intriguing. I’ve never been to the Larchmont Farmers Market – is it conducive to cereal eating with strangers? What time might you be eating your Rice Chex with Almond Milk? Do you have a specific location in mind? I believe I could be up for some Kashi GoLean tomorrow (maybe even with some berries), but I would probably have to eat it earlier rather than later, seeing as that I have non-cereal-related obligations in Santa Monica at 11:30. Let me know if that might mesh with your plans.”

At this point it was getting pretty late, so I headed off to bed with dreams of cereal dating in my head and awoke the next morning to be greeted by this response:

“I would venture that with its family atmosphere, New Englandesque design, and various places to sit, that the Larchmont Farmers Market (Larchmont Boulevard to be specific, with or without farmers) is as fine a place to eat cereal as any other, outside of one’s own kitchen/living room/bed. I prefer the latter but the former is much better for strangers. I’ve had Kashi before…but when it comes down to it, I still prefer to mix my own cereal and add a frozen berry medley – one of the rare occasions when I prefer frozen over fresh. But seeing as how I have just gotten home and will probably not go to bed for another hour, I think it better to reschedule any social cereal eating as I won’t even be waking up until around 11:30. Larchmont may be better during the week as the Farmers Market does make it a bit over-crowed on Sundays.”

So sadly, my first cereal date didn’t take place this Sunday, as hoped, but maybe sometime this week. I like Rice Chex with Almond Milk. Rice Chex with Almond Milk is amusing . And loquacious. And shares my affinity for New Englandesque charm and custom-blend cereals. I hope Rice Chex with Almond Milk isn’t a serial killer who preys on New England-loving, custom-blending girls such as myself.

Calling All Cereal Lovers, Take Two

2008-01-14T15:19:00.000-08:00

Discouraged by the lack of response from my original Craiglist post, and knowing I probably wouldn’t get any new eyes to it anyway, I re-posted my request over the weekend, with a few small changes. Mainly, re-titling it “Who Doesn’t Love Cereal (ages 21-34)” and calling this a “creative project to meet some new people…”

Again, my inbox wasn’t flooded, but I got one email likening my proposal to a “Seinfeld” skit then going into a Seinfeldian riff:

"I mean cereal? I don't mind cereal. The problem is, all the good cereals are so
freaking unhealthy. I wish I could chow down on Cinnamon Toast Crunch or other
sugary delights..."

Being only a casual "Seinfeld" viewer, I don't know if that's a quote from the show or his
personal musing (if you happen to know, leave me a comment), but I appreciated it nonetheless
and responded, reassuring him that I am not trying to recreate mediocre moments in Must See
TV history (although I'm considering exploiting that in my next posting now) and telling of my
friend Pete's solution in which he mixes healthy Kashi with Cookie Crisp and chocolate-covered
raisins. A nice compromise, I find.

He also asked for my screenname and a picture, which I find takes the mysterious thrill out of this venture, but I gave it up anyways. This is a start-up idea here and beggars can't be choosers, my friend. Cereal slut or not, we had a delightful hour-long conversation over IM last night; although he's an "LOL"er, which I loathe. (I mean, seriously, who is sitting there, laughing at their computer screen like a psych patient? So either he finds me disproportionately hilarious, or he's a liar.) But excessive LOLing aside, I learned that his favorites are Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms, and Basic 4. No cereal date has yet been established.

One Lonely Email

2008-01-12T20:36:00.000-08:00

Sometime early yesterday evening – perhaps the fourth time I’d checked my email since lunch, certainly no less – I was greeted by one lonely but hopeful response to my Craigslist post. Let me tell you, after getting used to the sight of no new messages in my inbox, the satisfaction and excitement I got from it was the sort usually reserved for your pothead brother’s high school graduation or the wedding of that socially awkward, almost-retarded second cousin everyone in your family kind of ignores. It seems I’m more into this project than I thought.

After performing the requisite happy wiggle (I’m not much for dancing), I learned that an unnamed 34-year old European gentleman is interested in seeing how a change in environment and time-of-day might affect all his previously held notions about cereal consumption. Great! I’m game. (Although I’ll admit I’m skeptical as to whether he’s actually 34 or if he’s just saying that to slide in to my specifications. And also not a little perplexed by his apparently strongly-held notions surrounding cereal consumption.)

He’s living it up in Austin right now but will be back next week, when our cereal soiree will, hopefully, take place. So maybe we’re not off to a rousing, gangbusters start with this experiment of mine, but it’s a start nonetheless. That’s better than a stop. Or an explosion of some sort.

Oh, and on a sidenote, after literally weeks of unsuccessfully trying to get ahold of some sort of human being at the Unemployment Office, they actually called me yesterday. Supremely and sublimely strange. Having a phone rocks. Maybe an employee will hand-deliver my first check. (Oh how I do hope that day comes.)

Calling All Cereal Lovers

2008-01-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

So, after some roommate discussion regarding how best to classify my exciting new venture, I posted this under the "Strictly Platonic" category of Craigslist Los Angeles:

“Wanna Meet for a Bowl of Cereal?

Seriously. I’m currently unemployed due to the writers’ strike and looking for a creative way to meet someone new and have an interesting conversation or two. Dinner’s too formal and I’m not one for “drinks,” and who doesn’t love a good bowl of cereal? It doesn’t have to be in the morning – cereal is good any time – so if you’re interested, I’m thinking the LA Farmers Market (Third and Fairfax). Bring your cereal of choice; I’ll have soymilk to share or feel free to bring your preferred cereal-wetting agent as well. No commitment longer than one breakfast-length conversation. It could be fun.

About me:
26-year old female, no brain damage or physical deformities
Enjoys travel, writing, “Project Runway”, and sarcasm
Dislikes bars and clubs, close-mindedness, meaningless small-talk
This is a fun opportunity for a little adventure and the chance to possibly make a new friend (between the ages of 21 and 34). Please don't respond if you're looking for anything else."

Sadly (though not surprisingly), my inbox has not yet been inundated with eager responses. And I checked. A few times. More than I would have expected, actually. Patience, it seems, is perhaps not my greatest virtue. (That, also, is not entirely unsurprising). Whatever. I know it's a weird, quirky idea but I'm excited about it - it's different, and fun, and something to look forward to, and I'll admit that I'm a little disappointed that my fellow Angelenos don’t quite share my enthusiasm about this breakfast food rendez-vous. I’m still hopeful, though. Because when I do find someone that's game...man will it be awesome. Or totally scary. Eh, either way.

Backstory's a Bitch

2008-01-09T20:56:00.000-08:00

Introductions are tough so please bear with me.

I'm not a blogger. I don't even MySpace. In fact, I've shunned it until now because, for the most part, I like to keep my personal business just that. But I am a writer, if only by my own definition, and a writer writes. (Right?) So I have to do something.

I lost my job as a result of this writers' strike in Hollywood and with both feet now firmly planted in 2008 and no end in sight, it turns out it's hard to face unemployment with quite the same sense of whimsy as six weeks ago. I'm not quite ready to put an application in at Starbucks (they do offer good benefits...), but I can't just sit around for the next who-knows-how-many months either so, in recent days, I started asking myself (silently) some questions (about life and happiness and all that relevent soul-searching stuff) and have discovered:

1. I could use some new friends - and possibly a boyfriend.

I have three great roommates but, otherwise, my incredible friends - not unlike my past - are spread around the world and I don't get to see them or even talk to them nearly as much as I'd like. Which sucks - and, honestly, can get a little lonely sometimes. So some friends with the same area code as me would be great. And a boyfriend might be nice, too - since I don't already have one of those. I'm just saying, if it happens, I'm open to it.

2. The people I'd most like to emulate are the ones who go out and create the life they want for themselves.

In the wake of New Years' resolutions and inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert's remarkable Eat, Pray, Love, as well as people like Julie Powell (Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment), Kyle MacDonald (http://www.oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/), and Matt I-Don't-Know-Your-Last-Name (http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/), I have been feeling a burning surge (not a medical concern, my doctor reassures me) to really make something (if not income) of this stretch of joblessness.

So I got this idea in that mysterious lightbulb moment with which so many brilliant, crazy ideas are obtained (I'll start a blog about serial dating. Only we'll eat cereal together, so cereal dating! Who doesn't love a good grammatical joke?) and I don't know what's going to happen but man it's exciting to do something while I endure another day without communication from the unemployment department. Ideally, I'd like to have something fun to look forward to, maybe find a friend - or a best friend - or a boyfriend - or a soulmate - move to an incredible house on the beach together, travel to faraway lands, have wildly successful careers, adopt two children from third-world countries...

Or maybe just the bowl of cereal for now. And a little adventure. Either way, the Craigslist ad is posted, so we'll see what happens.