Clever Table at Emporium Brasil!

At Eight at Eight Dinner Club, we are huge believers in round tables. They are conducive to conversations and flirtatious winking, everyone can see everyone, and it creates the perfect setting for a dinner party. This is the holy grail of table shapes for us, but sometimes, our clever hostesses create an equally enchanting table all on their own!

Can a recession actuall improve the quality of our lives?

A couple of months ago, Time ran a lenthy article entitled "The End of Excess," which suggests that the recession isn't such a bad thing after all. It serves to check the greed and materialism of our society and bring our conception of wealth and happiness into the more moderate portion of the spectrum. Could this be true?

I don't mean to say that we should whistle in the unemployment line and toss away our tanking 401k statements without a care. As a business owner and friend to many who have been affected, I am well aware of the negative impact of the the sliding economy of our homes, our relationships, our wealth. However, the Time piece spurred a line of thought that might be worth pursuing.

One of the alternatives to travel that has emerged in the wake of the economy is the notion of the "staycation," or, put another way, staying close to home for leisure trips. Aside from the savings, there is an added benefit to that. I would wager a guess that few of us out there have thoroughly explored our cities--their museums, their parks, the hole-in-the-wall eateries, the numerous oddball things to do that most of us never try. It has been said that people who take these "staycations" leave with a greater appreciation for the local and near-by. We, as a culture, are addicted to the glitzy and new. Maybe its time we have some new experiences by peeking around a corner we've never bothered exploring.

Similarly, I've attended a lot more small gatherings and dinners with friends lately. Instead of a concert or a movie, we're preparing meals together and dusting off the Monopoly board. These activities don't seem like much, but, in a very real way, they bring our friends closer together. Often, we get stuck in the rut of routine and passivity. The recession has helped me interact with those closest to me more than in the past.

As the owner of a dating service, I'm not suggesting you all cancel your memberships and make s'mores over fire buckets in alleyways. In fact, I think the recession may prove the benefit of our service in that it brings people together. When the chips are down, we need one another in a very real way. We are, at last, social creatures. Perhaps the slide in the market serves to reiterate what is really important. Perhaps, in the oddest of ways, there is an upside to a downturn.

What IS the past tense of Tweet?

I'm not (yet) on board with Twitter. I'll plainly admit it: I'm a Facebook junkie, but I just don't quite "get" twitter. It seems to do the exact same thing as my status update on Facebook, but with none of the cool pictures, videos, etc. Plus, it seems to be increasingly a form of mini-celebrity stalking. And when people like Glenn Beck are on board with Twitter, how "cool" can it really be?

The very funny girls at 2 Birds, 1 Blog have chimed in on Twitter, spelling out our fascination with both famous people and minutae, before ultimately deciding that Twitter is good thing, because it can aid in getting people some loving.

Compelling argument, ladies. However, for the moment I'm going to abstain (pun!) and remain the last guy on my block NOT on Twitter. That's not to say that I won't venture over to the dark side sometime very soon, but, for now, I'm steadfastly in (semi-)opposition. I leave you with a counter example that pretty sums up my feelings on tweeting...

Because its Monday...

Yeah, its Monday. Mondays, by rule, almost always suck. They're slow, they're monotonous, they're filled with tedious tasks like returning all the emails you missed when you dipped out of work two hours early the previous Friday. In essence, nobody likes Mondays, and if you do, please pass the Kool-Aid this way.

Now, in order to combat this "case of the Mondays" of which I am currently suffering, I have decided to pass along a short video clip to brighten your otherwise dreary day. This is a short clip from the 1960s game show "The Newlywed Game." (If any of you ever saw the George Clooney film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, you've seen this little gem before). It is semi-safe-for-work, as an expletive has been bleeped out, but, depending on the vibe of your workplace, you might want to listen with headphones on.

So, without further ado, the best game show response of all time.

Relationship E-cards

If you haven't yet had the pleasure of spending some time at Some E-cards, you are sorely missing out. It is, perhaps, one of the internet's great time wasters. E-cards are free to send to friends, and all feature odd graphics and remarkably dry humor. I've taken the liberty of selecting a few cards that "fit" in with this blog's focus of dating and relationship. Enjoy!

Ladies: see how the other half lives...

It came as a surprise to many of us in the office when we purused a few copies of Men's Health magazine. Expecting wall-to-wall workout posters and ads for protein powder (which were indeed there), we found a remakable amount of Cosmo-like content. For instance, there was no shortage of articles about meeting/seeking/dating/bedding members of the opposite sex. How to rev her engine, how to date a co-worker, how to dress for a first-date: they were all there. What's really interesting is just how eerily reversible these male/female roles are.

Both sexes, it would seem, are concerned with their bedroom performance, making the right impression, or what the proper etiquette is when a few dates reveal no real chemistry. Despite all the outward differences, men and women are really all fighting the same battle of juggling family, friends, careers, and love lives. Sure, the dress code and the perception might be a bit different, but, deep down, everyone is looking for the same thing. Companionship, feeling comfortable with someone, avoiding awkwardness--these all seem to be universals in the dating world.

So, for your amusement, we've included a twelve-question quiz from the Men's Health website to demonstrate just how much in common their bathroom reading has with that of women. Guys: take the quiz and see how you do. Women readers should give it a shot as well, just to see what the other side of the dating game looks and feels like. Go ahead, waste a little company time!

The Men's Health "Master the First Date" Quiz

Eight at Eight ups the ante with its newest venture, One-on-One Matchmaking

Eight at Eight Dinner Club has been a remarkable success over the past 10 years, beginning in Atlanta and now having expanded to six cities nationwide. Now the matchmakers from Eight at Eight are launching their newest venture, One-on-One Matchmaking!

One-on-One departs from our group dating concept to provide an unprecedented level of individualized attention. You tell us the type of person you're looking for and we track he or she down and set you up. Looking for an outdoors-y movie buff who has an advanced degree and enjoys travel? No problem. Seeking a tall tennis fanatic who is anything but an attorney? We can handle it.

One-on-One provides the type of face-time that other dating services cannot match. Anybody can set you up, but One-on-One coaches you up. We can coordinate wardrobe overhauls and personal style consultations. We can even provide you with a personal trainer to help you carry out those New Year's Resolutions. We do more than just help find your ideal partner, we help you find the ideal You!

We announced ourselves with an ultra-exclusive singles-only party. Check out our Flckr album for the photos from the kickoff of One-on-One Matchmaking.

There is no such thing as a free lunch

We're a dating service, so we're up-to-speed on the various ways singles meet other singles. We know about blind dates, online matchmakers, speed dating, the bar scene, the singles cruises, etc. We are also aware of the dating wasteland known as Craig's List.

We at Eight at Eight are supicious of online dating in general. It is far too easy to manipulate profiles and pictures to make one appear something other than s/he is. It's the classic bait-and-switch. Craig's List compounds this inherent weakness by being available for free. I know, it sounds harsh, but hear me out on this one. Hold the thought on Craig's List and allow me to illustrate my point.

I recently went to Washington, D.C. for an Eight at Eight event. While there, I decided to do a little sight-seeing. I visited the Holocaust museum (free of charge) and was overwhelmed by the swarm of mostly apathetic pre-teens milling about. They're idly texting, sitting on the floor, doing that odd adolescent mating ritual where they tap one another and giggle. But, overwhelmingly, what they are doing is getting in my way.

After about 45 minutes of mind-numbing annoyance, I left the Holocaust museum without having seen even a modest portion of the exhibits. I walked over to the NEWSeum, the recently-opened museum of American journalism. NEWSeum charges a $20 fee for entry. The result: the place is practically kid-free. No throngs of disinterested juveniles, no busloads of hormonal timebombs. No zit creme, no bubble gum, no teenage games of grab-ass. What I got was a more enjoyable experience. The $20, which at first glance seems a rip-off when so many other museums offer free entry, was a blessing in disguise.

The point I'm getting at is that a sufficient fee keeps the riff-raff out. Sounds painfully elitist, I know. Yet, at the end of the day, you get what you pay for. Let's return to Craig's List, that egalitarian no-frills bulletin board. Who seeks love here? Oh, charming men seeking anonymous lunch hour sex, gold-digging pariahs, World of Warcraft fetishists, and guys like this. I think its safe to say that if CL charged a minuscule fee of, say, $5 a month, the number of posts would drop by half. That's because people aren't there for love, they are there to play. With no barrier of entry into the sandbox, everyone enters at once. The result is an impossible-to-navigate, cliche-filled wasteland of indecipherable abbreviations (DD-Free, NSA, HWP??) and artificiality. Your time and effort to sort through this monotony is worth more than your saving by going the free route.

Eight at Eight costs money. We've been in busy for ten years and we have expanded into 6 markets over that time. We've managed to do so because our service offers value. Your grandfather likely told you "there's no such thing as a free lunch," but he was wrong. There are free lunches, but who would want to eat it?

Texting takes all the fun out of dating

A recent blog post by Niki Payne of the LA Examiner poses a fascinating question: what place (if any) does the text message have in the early phases of getting to know someone? Payne suggests that the when a woman gives a man her phone number, she expects a call and not a text. She further claims that the text indicates a desire for a "casual encounter" more than an actual relationship.

To be honest, I'd never thought about this one. In my personal life, I use the text message as a quick way to not interrupt someone else's life. If I call you, you may have to stop what you're doing to answer. The text allows you to get back to me when its convenient. However, I'm begining to see where Ms. Payne is coming from. I've railed about the alienation that technology has created in our lives before, so perhaps this is another example of the de-humanizing effects of our Crackberries and email accounts.

Moral of the story: take the time for a phone call. Moreover, take the time for a hand-written note instead of an email. Drop by to see someone and bypass the phone call. Heck, volunteer for a charity one afternoon instead of just writing a check. I'd suggest we might benefit from a bit more human interaction and a little less ones and zeros.