(Not So) Bad (Not So) Good Guy

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to pull this off without offending someone and expressing myself just right but like I said in my previous post I do think the conversation about the Masculinity Crisis is of great importance so I'm going to give it a go. 

BE FOREWARNED: If you are easily offended skip this one 😬

First let me go back to where it all started... I was a HUGE fan of the Charlie Rose Show (yes, I know 😼). So when he had Louis CK (LCK) on for the hour I watched and was so delighted by their conversation. It was also around the time he did the bit on Conan about Everything's Amazing and I became an instant fan.

Well let me restate that... a huge fan of his interviews on TV because they were clean and calm and he was more himself. His comedy was quite vulgar and crude so I wasn't always a big fan of that. But when his FX show came out and he would talk about how he wrote, directed and edited it as well as starred in it, I knew he wasn't the schlub he was pretending to be on stage. He's a smarty.

And if you listened to his interview with his best friend of many years Marc Maron you also knew he was a soft and sensitive guy as well.

So that's where my crush came from for those wondering. 

Ok, back to the Theo Von interview and LCK's confession of being a sex addict... the thing that bugged me at first was when he said he was and still is confused about all of it. So below is my attempt to try and explain my understanding of why that might be. And I share this not to defend him but to have a real conversation about what things have changed for both men and women. Because if we don't begin to understand each other things are just going to get more divided and that would be bad for ALL of us. 

Here goes...

Theo brought up that what LCK had done wasn't that bad... well... it wasn't if you compared it to others in the industry:

• Cosby: Serial rapist who drugged women for decades and never admitted any wrongdoing. 
• Woody Allen: Even if you don't believe his daughter Dylan, which I do, he seduced his girlfriend's under-21-daughter who he had been at least a parental figure to. 
• Diddy: Hosted hottest party in the Hamptons and was .. well you know- really bad boy stuff!
• Trump: The man was caught on tape saying proudly he grabs women by the p#ssy and more than a few dozen came forward to say he sexually assaulted them. Not to mention he was best friends with a pedophile he had "wonderful secrets" with AND yet got elected TWICE to the highest office in the land/world. 

So by those measures, asking women if he could masturbate in front of them is minor league. 

Plus I'm sure for some this could also be confusing:

• Sarah Silverman: When they were younger her and her sister would often allow him to masturbate in front of them and she said she wasn't bothered by it and thought it was funny.
• Chelsie Handler: Is applauded as a strong woman while skiing down hills and then posting pictures of herself topless.

Up until the last few years I didn't enjoy either of them because I thought they were too much, and too crude for my tastes as well. But as they've aged and as Chelsie has talked about what she's learned in therapy - which is really profound and deep- I have really enjoyed both of them. And let's face it most of the top female comics for much of my life have had to be bawdy and ballsy to compete in the male dominated world. 

Don't even get me started on the Kardashians. You should know I really dislike what they stand for and it's personal to me. They are only famous because the name was associated with getting the killer of my high school friend, Ron Goldman, off for murder. That Kim was touted as having broken the internet for showing her butt on a magazine cover 😏 and how they took feminism back decades in what young girls think is successful by making BILLIONS modifying their bodies and flaunting sex is disheartening. 

All to say, for LCK and others it might be confusing what is truly bad and what can get you fame, money and an election. 

BUT...

Here is why it was really bad and was not OK for him to go back on the road before he cleaned it up and be flippant while standing in front of the SORRY sign joking about it. 

Sure the apology while decent compared to those denying their offenses was still jerky because he mentioned repeatedly that the women who were cornered admired him and that's why he shouldn't have asked them.

Nope not the reason! 

Many of them didn't admire him, they were just there for a job at their place of work and it was creepy to even ask. Also when a few talked about what had happened they were threatened to be blackballed by his agent. Not cool.

Though here's the main reason it was indeed so bad...

When you get assaulted by a stranger or a creepy uncle or a lech like Harvey Weinstein, it is gross and traumatic and will make a person hyper cautious of men/places that give them the ick. But when the man who they think is their pal or a good guy makes them feel unsafe then you have to be on-guard for every man because now you can't trust your own judgement. 

None of those women were new to seeing a penis- that wasn't the trauma- but to be put in a position that you're not sure if you will be raped or killed or maybe the least of it fired. It takes a person to be super strong or play along for her own safety. That shakes a person. 

Reminder, for those unaware: 

• 1 in 3 women have been experienced some form of abuse from an intimate partner.
• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women – more than car accidents, muggings and rapes combined.
• Globally as many as 38% of all murders of women are committed by intimate partners.

And the ironic thing is his act is brilliant at explaining EXACTLY this...

So...

Louis, you took their trust in humanity and their judgement away from them. 

That was a very shitty thing to do!! 💩

Now, back to bringing us all together... there is nothing wrong with sex, or skiing naked or letting our friends/dates/pros see us enjoying ourselves. But time, place, permission and reading the room is called for. If in doubt, don't even ask to pull it out!!!

My guess is that LCK is not as confused as he claims, but wisely is again playing a little dense because he's afraid to say our society sends mixed signals when we can be sexual/aggressive and get a pass. As I mentioned in the last post the Masculinity Crisis affects everything. I get why in his asking he thought he was not that horrible and then being hated felt so scary for him. But not for nothing, when he said he didn't feel safe anywhere, that's how many women feel all the time. 

The bear... women chose to be alone with a bear for God's sakes!

So my hope is that this makes people see the other side and the disservice of us living on two sides of the patriarchy. And hopefully we all weed out the true sociopaths and the good guys at heart get another chance to do the work and become DUE Gooders. 

The Hole

Elizabeth "Eat, Pray, Love" Gilbert was on Oprah's book club and was describing her feeling, as a love-addict, as having a deep God-sized hole in her. 

So so descriptive! Even if not a fan, I recommend you watch it because she is very raw and it was a shocking -even by Oprah's standards- interview. It was also the second time in a month I had heard someone describe a profound alone, brokenness in them. 

The other was when I was reading my faux-love, Ivan Lewy Moody's, book of poetry which is almost all about being alone in the world and empty inside 😢

Now I've been sad and depressed at different times of my life but never have I felt like what they were describing. Lucky for me not even close. BUT... I have loved people who have not loved themselves so I know how real and painful and hellacious it can be to live with that. 

And of course I have sympathy for the people that feel that way, I do... and I also find it to be one of the most narcissistic ways to be in the world. [Keep reading I get nicer, this is the tough love part]. To think you are so special that you need to be loved by others and be above the basics of the human condition is ridiculous. And I don't mean that as a kid or young person- that is indeed tragic- but if you're an adult and you've seen how lucky we are to even be alive and you're going to waste this precious life suffering about what you don't have, I BEG you to do yourself and humanity a solid and get therapy (+ meds + a dog 🐶) and heal yourself 🙏

This was also top of mind because I can't stop thinking about what would drive a person to catfish another person, if not for money, and my guess it's the same emptiness about their life. So this was super fresh when... my other parasocial relationship, Louis CK (LCK), pops up in interviews last weekend. 

I had thought I had figured out LCK's deal when he started touring again and even while standing in front of a giant SORRY sign refused to acknowledge just how bad he had fucked up. It pained me to think he was a cold unremorseful asshole and I was still smarting for ever having had crushed on him. Well 🙄  

He was promoting his book on Theo Von's podcast and more than halfway through he brings up how he is a sex-addict and has had the compulsion since he masturbated as a child. And yes, some sociopaths could pull that out as an excuse to rehabilitate their reputation but he takes responsibility in a way I was moved to tears. It was what I had hoped for eight years back. A must watch... (to go to confession part 01:30:00)

I'm writing this post because I feel like it is one of the most important conversations today. If you haven't already heard about it we are living through a huge Masculinity Crisis. Scott Galloway (NYU professor, author, podcaster) describes it as the biggest issue affecting everything from politics to mating. 

When I started to think about how all these stories kept describing a hole, cavern, numbness, emptiness it gave me a flashback to Nathan Sawaya's amazing Lego art piece, Yellow. It is one of my favorite sculptures and I think it's a good way for me to illustrate how this appears to me.

If we start out feeling empty inside we will naturally search out love. But even if we are lucky enough to find some (and feel the joy that comes along with it) if we have a hole in us we won't absorb it, and it will leak right out. And that will make us just feel even more empty, and then unlovable, which will continue the cycle.

It took me into my late 40's to realize one can't love another unless they truly love themself. And the key is no matter how much love someone has for you or pours into you, wholeness and love is an inside job.

So if you have kids, especially boys, show them how you love yourself and others in a healthy way. Because you deserve that! Therapy, 12-step program SLAA, God, this book, duct tape... whatever it takes heal that hole in you so you feel the love that is available in this world. 

I wrote the above poem to express what it feels like to love someone who's hole won't let them feel it. It's its own kind of torture. But I also know it's possible to heal in life and I hope this image and these words will allow anyone who needs it to fill the hole with wholeness and JOY 

                                                                                 ❤️‍🩹

MOODY LOVE: AI Will Break Our Hearts

A few months ago I began a project on Good Capitalism but with all things these days there is entwinement of topics so find my latest share over there. 

Finding Joy is going to get more layered and tricky with the advancements in      AI 🤖 which means you'll see cross-posting so you can follow along 😉

Good Capitalism: What The World Needs NOW!

Where can Pope Leo, Bill Maher and me all agree? 

That AI 🤖 is coming and we have some BIG decisions to make!

The above project is something I've been working on for a while but sped up getting it out because of the urgency I've seen in the last few months. You can read more about how that came about HERE 

Don't worry-worry but if you know someone who knows someone please pass it along or put me in touch. Carry on 🤞 😉

Theme 2025

If you know me, you know I love a theme! I mean I've been doing this start of the year ritual since 2009. But for 2025 all I could think of was I see nothing! Meaning I can't see or even get a feeling what the year ahead is to hold or even what I want to create for it.

I had sort of checked out the end of 2024 after the election and was numb after so many of our fellow citizens voted him back in. And then just before Thanksgiving I had fallen down my stairs and fractured my ankle so bad I need surgery. So I missed Christmas with my family in Florida and with my friends to ring in the new year. I've been just sitting around healing my heel.

Having several more weeks off my feet I have been trying to embrace the quiet and calm. And when I said I think NOTHING is going to be my theme for 2025 my bestie Vickie reminded me of her husband Bill's favorite Landmark teaching of: coming from nothing. It rang so true I knew that was what I wanted for myself and for you if you'd like to join me as well.

NOTHING: intentionally setting aside all pre-existing beliefs, identities and limitations to create a space for transformation, essentially starting fresh and taking full responsibility for shaping your life without relying on past narratives or self-imposed restrictions. 

So imagine you have all your past experiences, traumas, opinions and stories all filling a chalkboard and instead of working with them to build a narrative of how you want the year to go you erase everything and start with a blank slate and create possibilities from scratch.

No have-tos, obligations, needs, upsets, anger, disappointments. Basically, creating from a place of anything is possible!  And, nothing is already determined!

I would enjoy being employed so I don't deplete my savings but I have enough to sustain me if I'm not. I would enjoy being healthy and well but this injury has reminded me how lucky I am to be in even a casted leg. I would enjoy finding love but maybe they're not ready for me yet so better to wait. Who knows?!

I have NOTHING to stress and worry about, nothing to force, nothing to drag me down. 
I can create anything that is possible for me when I feel ready for it and on my own terms. 

What do I have to lose? NOTHING! 

Happy New Year! I wish you nothing but NOTHING & JOY 💗

SomeBODY Wants YOU 👀

My Mother passed away on the afternoon of November 14th, 2014. And as my siblings and I sat there exhausted from being at her bedside for the last 10 hours waiting for her final moments, a nurse came in and gently asked if we would be open to allowing her eyes to be donated. I looked at her and questioned would they really be able to use this not so healthy smoker's corneas in someone else? She said: absolutely! 

As soon as the nurse left my sister and I looked at each other and laughingly burst into tears.

You see my Mother loved, loved, loved Rick Steves, the PBS travel guy who would do wonderful shows beautifully shot of his trips all over Europe. She would occasionally even make a pledge to the local PBS channel so she could get the latest DVD of his adventures. 

The idea that my Mother might get to see more of the world (even if just more of Chicagoland) that she didn't get to see in life filled us with happiness. Besides, she always thought her eyes were one of her best features 😉

My point is... some BODY got to benefit from this big loss of ours. 

Please discuss your wishes with your family and sign up to become an organ donor today so on your last day you will live on and you'll be some other family's hero too  🦸🏻‍♂️

GAME PLAN: Good Guys Guide to Getting Laid & Loved

I believe in love and humanity ♥️

A friend called me recently to tell me about a great date she had and I could tell in her voice she was hopeful. And sure that's not all there is to life but come on that's a great reason we must not give up on love. Because certainly we can all live without a romantic connection but it makes our lives so much sweeter if we can experience that joy!

In the last few years, since Covid, I had begun my own search for my next love and it's been rough. I have matched and at a minimum texted with over 200 men. And let me share that it has been to say the least: underwhelming. When my dating adventures began I would share the dates with my friend Vickie and she would say: oh you must keep a journal of these stories - they're too good! I didn't know what I would do with this information but then I decided she was right, let me put on my curiosity cap 🕵️‍♀️ and see if I could figure out what's happening in this new world I was exploring.

Cookie Theory 🍪

First let me share the theory I have on how we as a society got to the point where men and women are not connecting like we yearn for. It starts with cookies...

When I was in my 20's and thrilled to be working at a job I loved I remember making cookies a few times a year as goodies to bring into the office. I'd make my cookies and put them in a decorative tin and then be delighted if they went before I came to collect it. Now things were different back then- only the women in the office brought in snacks and we would set them up then clean up the mess when the day was done. The men would be the first in line and some would voice appreciation for the buffet of deliciousness in front of them but that was about it. 

I hadn't thought about this for a long time until recently when I was trying to explain how I never really knew how ingrained the patriarchy was until I got it on the cookie level. See most women love to nurture people in their lives. And lots of women around my age and older won't even get why the above story is related to dating. But today it is a subtle but real example of how women treat* men but haven't had the reciprocal-replenishment we need to keep that going. 

                                                                                                                                                  * (pun intended) 

Picking A Path

Now as I see it we have two paths into our new awakening of mens' roles in our world. 

We can shame them for not being evolved, "woke" or feminist-supporting-enough ... or... 

we can share with them the recipe of how to create that for themselves and those they engage with and then reward and rejoice in the ones who get things cooking 🔥

Yes, of course not all men are stuck in the good ol' days but a not-small percentage of single ones are or a new version of it; look at the work of NYU professor Scott Galloway and his warnings of the crisis of isolated young men. And sure some still won't meet up with the times but I'd like to at least invite them all to join in. 

Afterall, we as a collective society trained men to show up and grab cookies and we would be happy to make more and of course clean up after them. Women made things comfy and now we expect them to catch up and pick up on all the nuance and clues in social and dating situations and shame them when they don’t. Not at all our fault per se, but we (their mothers, sisters, coworkers and friends) did contribute to feeding into that dynamic. 

Keys and Porn 

This is in addition to other big changes in the last few decades- we went from latchkey kids to helicopter parenting. Participation trophies and micro-parenting took over. I assure you my Dad had no idea who my teacher was or even where my schools were located. Nor did most dads make doctors appointments or keep track of fieldtrip slips. There was a reason Mr. Mom was such a hysterical and timely movie when it came out. 

Fast forward to today and we went from modest homes to McMansions, to curated childhoods shown off on social media. Don't do without because we have easy-put-it-on-credit-lifestyles. Teens now are bombarded with images of filtered perfection on their phone of their own classmates, where we would have to wait to see models in the monthly copy of Seventeen magazine to judge ourselves. Needless to say we've ALL had a spin-y change in expectations and societal pressures. 

And that's before we even get to the most monumental transformation in dating and mating: 

online-on-demand porn! 

Sure they had nudie magazines years ago and if you were an adult you could go behind the velevet curtain at the video store and rent a porno. But most teens saw a first glimpse of it through the squiggly scrambled lines of cable's naughty channels. There was not porn coming into our home without our approval and a high price tag. 

Today porn is free and not just flowing into young people's pockets but it's the most diverse graphic degrading porn there has ever been. Seeing a pair of boobs in Playboy was enough of a thrill but now many men have so numbed themselves that.. well you know how far it's gotten. In the olden days of 800-lines you would at least still need to use your imagination but now you can Only-fans your way into a woman performing fantasies in front of your very eyes.  

Men don't need to get to the gym, go meet people, ask women out and shine their shoes to go on actual dates. They can get pseudo-gratification 24-hours a day from their La-Z-boys with no limit on what they can search for. 

It's not good! It's made a big chunk of men unmotivated and apathetic to dating let alone proper romantic courting. It's made them turn to porn instead of real life women. That and their exes and bad experiences have often wounded and hurt them making them give up on the search for true intimacy at all.

If you're a male who has lived through #MeToo, a woman boss, and hopefully the first female president*, you've experienced the most dramatic male expectations transformation ever!

GAME PLAN

This all leads back to my project. I had gotten so annoyed with the poor app profiles and ghosting and sucky communication with possible matches and just in general the apathy coming at me daily that I was disheartened! Then a wave of empathy hit me and I realized men have whiplash 🫨 They went from being handed cookies to being expected to evolve into a new non-toxic-masculinity way of being without much guidance or many role-models.

So I could either continue to be deeply disappointed or I could share what I thought might help. This is my attempt at a solution with what I know and mapped out (you know that's my gift) before sex-robots are readily available and we stop getting together as a species at all 😜

With deep sincerity I leave this as an offering because I love men and I still have hope that LOVE & JOY finds us all 🥰

Bears, Men and the Roman Empire

I have been deep in love with three men in my life, adore my Father, am close to my Uncle and since childhood have always had at least one or two best guy pals. 

                                I ❤️ MEN!

And, last week I had a reminder of why they're also hard to navigate and maddening to sometimes communicate with. Let me try and dive in...

There was a social media meme going around last winter about women asking men how often they think of the Roman Empire and shockingly, to women at least, it's a lot. Not every and probably not even most but many think of it a couple times a week, with some thinking of it daily. 

A friend was explaining the concept to her husband and she said it's roughly equivalent to about how often women think about their personal safety. He didn't totally get what she meant, so she went on to explain the average woman thinks about if she's safe all the time. At night, in a dark parking lot, when approached by a random man, when a repair person comes into her home- and then he got it. 

Most men rarely have to think about their safety and if they do it's usually in a situation where maybe even a cop or buff bodybuilder would too. Sketchy neighborhood, angry yahoos with guns, bar fights when they're not as young as the use to be- but not daily or even weekly.

Then a take-off meme appeared a few weeks ago where women were asking their guys about which would they choose to leave their daughter with alone in a forrest: a bear or a man? Then asked: bear or woman? Most men had to pause on man/bear but not on woman/bear. And then it turned to people asking the women directly. Lots of reasons but this sums it up pretty well: 

In bears' defense: there are only 40 people killed by bears each year in the US according to the National Parks Service. More are killed by bee stings. 

Ok, now back to me and the reason for this post... 

I was chatting with a guy I matched with on Hinge and he was cute but the reason I liked him was because he had two dad jokes on his profile that were pretty funny. Sweet and playful I thought and we got right to flirting. And there was a few days of fun banter but then it went off the rails when he suggested if we were going to meet up he'd like a blowjob. I thought we were still joking and then he got mad and claimed I was a tease. 

Now there are plenty of sites to go on if you are looking for easy sex connections but going on a dating site implies (at least to me) you are there to at a minimum casually date. 

I thought maybe I had made him defensive because we had indeed gotten pretty flirty but I write this to share that even if you're a good guy just looking for some fun sex- it's scary out there for women:

• 1 in 3 women have been experienced some form of abuse from an intimate partner.
• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women – more than car accidents, muggings and rapes combined.
• Globally as many as 38% of all murders of women are committed by intimate partners.
• Many of us grew up when the #1 sitcom dad in America later turned out to be a serial rapist. 

But I get it if you're not a violent person why would you think of safety as women's top concern? I can see how that would make a non-violent guy defensive like I would be offended if someone assumed something about me and saw my playful banter then assertion of boundaries as a red flag to them. 

Listen my brother-in-law is one of the most decent guys I know- in the family we tease him about being the favorite and inline for sainthood. I mean he literally volunteers at a foodbank to feed the hungry. So I know there are amazing, kind, considerate men everywhere I look! 

The problem for women is it's not always clear which is which  🤔

Even the ones we think are good guys, sometimes aren't the people you're safe in a room with. And I'll just leave this here because he's a dad of two daughters, one of the most beloved comedians, and he is (ironically 🙄 ) brilliant enough to sum it all up together...