The Weinblog

One year ago I was hanging out with a female friend in Manhattan, and later in the night we met up with three of her other friends. We were strolling down the sidewalk, when two sailors happened to cross paths with us as they walked in the opposite direction. The girls I was with stopped them as if they were hailing a cab, and instantly struck them up in conversation.

Within five minutes — possibly less — two of the girls were making out with the sailors.

And that was during Fleet Week.

It is now one year later, and members of our United States Navy are once again flocking the New York City area and stealing women away from us less-brave, lazier, non-uniformed folk, and it is a travesty.

There are three perspectives to Fleet Week: The girl, the sailor and the average guy like me who chooses to not spend his days on the high seas with a boat full of other men.

The first one is the women. The old cliché is that women love dudes in uniform. Girls may deny it, but this is clearly evidenced during Fleet Week. Take a semi-decent looking guy, put him in front of a girl, and watch as she shrugs him off. Take that same guy, shave his head, dress him in a white Navy uniform, and watch her swoon.

Are girls really that hopeless? Are they that predictable? I understand that when you’re 9-years-old, you watch fairy tales about how the strong, capable man climbs to the top of the tower and rescues the damsel in distress and the two fall in love. As a result, you were raised to believe that one day you would be swooped off your feet by some masculine, heroic prince.

But now you are in your mid-to-late 20s, and nothing has changed. It’s sad and pathetic. It shows that every single female out there still, deep down, is a hopeless romantic who thinks that their Prince Charming is out their waiting for them. A random Navy man, who they know they will probably never see again, draped in his uniform, is the closest any of them will come to ever attaining that.

And why is that? It’s because the real thing does not exist. If you’re waiting for Prince Charming, well, you’ll be waiting for as long as I’ll be for Taylor Swift to come knocking on my door. If you want, we can wait together.

It’s pathetic because I can probably walk around in a uniform this week and hook up with several girls this weekend. Whereas if I wear normal clothes, I’d probably strike out. What does that say about females?

And that’s a good segue into another perspective, the average Joe. For us, it is hard enough to go out and score chicks. For some, it’s a slight bit easier, and when I’m on one of my “hot stretches,” then I can do pretty well. However, if I am competing for the same girl with a goddamn member of the Navy, I’m not even going to try.

And the most infuriating part of it is we can’t even complain about it. In fact, it is un-American if we were to complain about it. I mean, what am I supposed to say? “Hey you, sailor, who risks his life to defend my freedom, take your hands off that women so that I — someone who runs away and hides at the mere threat of an altercation — can have her. Thanks bro.”

Compared to a sailor, I will never feel like less of a man. My most gripping tale I can tell from my life is the time I got lost in a mirror-maze at a carnival when I was six. A sailor’s most gripping tale is that time they got shot at by a cannon during a thunderstorm in the middle of the ocean.

But seriously, is it really even that cool to be a sailor anymore? Who wages war on water these days? It’s 2012. War is fought in the air and through machines. Life is no longer like The Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean, I know that Somalian pirates are pretty bad ass, but join a real branch of the armed forces, man.

But that brings me to the final perspective — the sailor. I can’t even begin to imagine how much these guys must look forward to Fleet Week. Firstly, it brings them away from any imminent danger, secondly, it brings them to New York City, the best city in the world and one of which many sailors may have never even been to before. And finally, they know — trust me, they know — that they will hook up with dozens of chicks. AND THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE TO TRY.

All they have to do is enter a bar, make sure they are wearing their uniform, order a drink, and then just stand and wait. Those white little caps they don will draw girls like a moth to a flame. I hate them. Yet I envy them.

But how can you blame them? For one week, they are living the freaking life. They probably don’t even need to book hotel rooms because they know that every night they will stay at some random chick’s place.

Again, I can’t hate on the Navy. For many reasons. But I assure you that I will not shed any tears when Fleet Week is over.

On that note, Happy Memorial Day everybody, and particularly to those who protect our freedom! Just stay the hell away from the fine women of New York City, so that my chances with them can increase from 0.0% to 0.4%. Thanks.

Before I depart for the extended weekend, which will be totally awesome, I must bring to light something I discovered thanks to a friend of mine.

I don’t watch Saturday Night Live regularly anymore, but apparently there is a new cast member named Taran Killiam. He, along with the help of some cast members, recently filmed a video (it is not an actual sketch) of him in the writer’s room mimicking the choreography to the song “Call Your Girlfriend” by Robyn. Here it is:

When I first watched it, I’ll admit that I was unimpressed. Mainly because I had nothing to compare it to. But then I watched the actual Robyn music video and thought differently:

And then, finally, I watched a mash-up video of the two videos side-by-side, with the music, and my mind was officially blown.

It very well may possibly be the best thing I have ever seen, and from the video I am convinced that Taran Killiam will be the next rising star of SNL. Also, the actual song has now been stuck in my head for 24 hours. And to be honest, I don’t mind too much. In fact, it may become the official anthem of my Memorial Day weekend.

Maybe if I sing it to a girl at a bar, she will make out with me.

Unless a fucking sailor beats me to it.

Nothing is more important in this world than your Facebook profile picture. Everybody knows that.

That being said, equally as important is ensuring that your Facebook photo never goes stale. If you leave the same photo for over a year, or longer, well that’s the equivalent of keeping the same exact haircut for years at a time. You become boring and irrelevant.

You have to keep your Facebook photo fresh. By doing so, you prove to people you’re not a “one hit wonder,” meaning that you didn’t just happen to have one specific photo that you looked good in, and not one else. You want to prove that you look good in different contexts, angles and situations. Nobody wants to be the Facebook profile photo version of Natalie Imbruglia.

The Timeline has given people a little more leeway when it comes to this. Because now you have two photos that you have to update — your profile picture and your cover picture. Thus, the shelf life of each photo has expanded a tiny bit. In the past, I’d say that you wanted to change your profile picture about every three to four months. By changing it, you lure people to your page and maintain relevance in other people’s lives.

But now, with the addition of the cover photo, I’d say that the shelf life has elongated to about five or six months. But you have to change your cover photo before that. By doing so it’ll take away people’s attention from your lack-of-change and redundant profile photo.

There have certainly been times in my life when I’ve said, “Man, it’s been a while since I had a good new option for a Facebook profile picture, let me manipulate one.” I’m sure others think the same.

However, I think one of the biggest cardinal sins of this philosophy is changing your profile picture back to a picture that you previously had as your profile picture in the past.

When in doubt, just keep the same picture. A new one will come along. It’ll happen when you least expect it.

But returning to an old picture is dull, unoriginal and basically translates to waving a white flag and saying, “I looked better then than I do now.” Or in other words, “I’m ugly.”

I will be the first to admit that I have done this before. I have gone through stretches where no good pictures were taken of me for a lengthy time period, so I resorted to changing my profile picture to an older one. I will never make this mistake again.

Just imagine a company that designs shoes. They made a great design, but since then, over the next two years, have hit a lull and have not been able to match the same success. So instead of trying to be creative and innovative, they release the same exact design from two years ago in hopes that they can reciprocate the same success they previously had.

That would not happen. Fashion is about evolving and trying to set trends, and not about living in the past. Releasing an old design is basically just admitting that you are not as good as you used to be.

And it works the same way with your Facebook profile picture. When you reuse an older photo, it could not be a bigger cop-out. It’s your own subconscious admitting defeat that you looked better in the past than you do right now, and you are informing the public of it. Whenever I see people do it, it is exactly what I think.

Like always, I’m just trying to help, because I don’t think that people realize this. If you do indeed have that once-in-a-lifetime great photo that makes yourself look like you have the face of Marion Cotillard, the playful glow of Marilyn Monroe and the body of Catherine Zeta Jones during the filming of Entrapment, then keep it for a while. Shelf lives become extended for those rare golden pictures.

But someday you have to retire it, and retire it for good. It’ll always be there in your archived photos and other people will see it. As much as we all want to, we cannot relive the glory days.

The only thing you can do is keep hanging out with people who take a lot of pictures. And then you wait.

But do not, DO NOT, revert to old photos. It’s weak and you’re better than that.

So speaking of Facebook, how did Mark Zuckerberg’s wedding go so unreported? Why was there no giant buzz surrounding this? And who even knew he was engaged?

In my opinion, this wedding should have garnered as much publicity as the Royal Wedding did. Prince William’s accomplishments are nothing to compared to Zuckerberg. All he had do was… be born.

It could have been called “The Zuckerwedding.”

At the very least, the wedding should have been streamed live over Facebook, and millions of people could have “liked” it. Also, I wonder if the two of them met by poking each other?

I think I’m going to now spend the next ten minutes poking every girl who I know. Actually, that would probably only take two minutes.