Today's Date is...

My friend Mark Miller has been writing columns about his dating life for several years now.  And he's put them together in actual book form, 500 Dates:  Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Online Dating Wars.  Lest you think that 500 dates thing is a joke for the sake of a good title, it's not.  Mark has dated more relentlessly than anyone I know.  Half the fun of going to Writers Guild screenings was to see if Mark was showing up with a new female person.  He usually was.  Three screenings in a row with the same woman was the equivalent of a common law marriage.

Truth in advertising.  I haven't read the book yet.  (It's not officially published until February 3.)  But I've lived through many of the stories in real-time -- and read many of the original articles that comprise the book.  His stories are often otherworldy.  I never quite know who's at fault for all the relationships not working out, though his most recent debacle he told me about was most definitely not his fault.  I believe it had something to do with him offering to drive to her neighborhood for dinner, and her getting offended at that and calling it off.  If I have the details slightly wrong, that's because the tale was so convoluted and funny -- peppered through with me repeating the phrase, "Say what??"

Here's what I posted for Mark on his website --

I’d write more nice things about Mark Miller if he had offered to pay me something, but he didn’t, and as Samuel Johnson said, “No one except a blockhead writes except for money.” So, I’m stuck with keeping it brief and uncompensated and just say that I’m glad I don’t have to buy his book because he’s already told me about his 500 dates, so I know all the funny stories. And despite what other might say, I was laughing with him, not at him. I’ll just add that as an outside observer, I’m glad that the dates didn’t work out because I was the happy recipient of the stories. And now you’ve lucked out, as well. And even better, you get the stories in one wonderful, contained book, and not dragged out for years… But I do hope the next date works out, just on general principal and the law of averages.

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For thems interested, you can find the book here on Amazon.