On your mark, get set, ...

DATE!

Okay, that's not exactly how it went, but speed dating was certainly quite the event.

Brooke is tall and thin and gorgeous, and despite this list of logical reasons to hate her, she's awesome. She wore a gray baby doll night shirt with leggings and heels. I opted for a bright pink silky camisole with black polka dots, black yoga pants, and a light weight black cardigan with my sock monkey slippers. We walked in to the bar to see young hipsters and pseudo-professionals in various levels of pajamas. Before we could make our way to coat check I spotted a young women wearing tights, boots, and a pair of Valentine's themed boxer shorts with the waist-band rolled down to reveal the word "Quixotic" tattooed on her lower back. This is the most hipster tramp stamp I've ever seen. I made a mental notes to rudely bump into her later when I was drunk.

Moving through the front lounge area and back into the larger event space, we worked our way to the name tag table, where a woman asked us if we wanted to serve as judges in the male lap-dancer contest. I immediately signed us up. After all, we were here on a mission, and that mission was not to find love or even lust, it was to get a really, really good story. Brooke was taken out of the action early on, however, because before we could even get drinks in our hands, a tall, dark and handsome gentleman decided Brooke was the one for him and spent the rest of the evening with his arm draped around her. It was awkward when I had to speed-date him after he pried himself away from Brooke's table, so we just spent our time talking about how to organize his closet.

Overall, I will say I like the concept of speed dating. Talking to guys in bars is tedious. If you have to actively seek out someone for conversation, you then feel a certain sense of pressure to force a conversation, and then if they're lame ending the conversation is equally tiresome. With this rapid date format, you sit at a table, and the men come to you. You only have to pretend to be interested for the length of one song, and then, beautifully, they go away.

A few of the guys were fine. Some of them were desperately dorky. No love matches were made, but I did learn two very important things:
1. Drinking in yoga pants is awesome. I want to wear my pajamas out all the time.
2. If you're going to lie, know you're subject. For example, if you're going to tell someone that, aside from being a graduate student and researcher, you're trying to go pro with your bowling; you've been training since you were 7, you come from a bowling family, and a tournament in Canada next month is going to determine your future - if this is your lie, know the basics, like what a good bowling score is. (I now know a 300 is perfect). When asked my score, I gave a cute and falsely modest shrug, saying I didn't like to brag. I like this lie; I'm going to develop it more.

After the speed-dating had ended, I actually started talking to a nice guy. He was from Sweden, and I asked him how he felt about his country's most famous company filling up landfills with crappy furniture and allen wrenches. He said he'd think about it while I fulfilled my duty as a judge in the lap-dancing contest. The young man who had the pleasure of gyrating over my lap was one of the guys from the speed dating. We'll call him Chin Strap, and he looked like an Amish kid on his Rumspringa. I believe they video taped the competition, and if that footage ever surfaces I'm pretty sure I've lost all hopes of ever being a tenured professor.

Unfortunately, the cute Swede is moving to Houston, TX, next week (he didn't know it was a single's event, his friends dragged him), so for the time being there will be no tiny meatballs, loganberry sauce, and cheap, modern home decor in my dating future, sadly. I had fun talking to him, though, and it's nice every now and then to be reassured there are normal guys out there.

In the meantime, I'm going to tune into the Olympics and see what I can learn about curling, because I think there's a fantastic "conversation enhancer" waiting to be developed here.