The Male Call Advisory Board™ has been busy compiling the clichés and grievances that have piled up on our complaint desk (it’s a pretty big desk!) over the year. Although some of these have been dealt with, we thought it might be a good time to re-cap.
No scammers, no players, no married men, no “nurse or purse.” No drama. Must be honest.
By James Roberts – Ready to impress? Put your best, hopefully realistic but flattering photo up front in your dating profile. This may sound obvious but there’s a story here. Let’s backtrack a bit. There’s an old newspaper maxim for journalists: Don’t bury the lead. (OK, OK, it’s really spe…
By James Roberts – During this lackluster season of un-romantic COVID’ation, want to know what’s filling up the message section of nearly every single woman’s online profile? “Hey,” “Hey!” Heyyy!!” “Hey what’s going?” “Wsup!” “What’s going on?” “Whatcha up to?” Not to let the ladies off the…
By James Roberts – Last April, we talked about photo clichés. It’s time to have a little hair of the dog, so to bark, and turn again to verbal glitches that are making you exactly like everyone else. First off: don’t make your profile sound like you’re a dog…literally. For example: “I’m tru…
By James Roberts – The woman, about 60 I’d say, had quite a tale of tribulation that you may find instructive. (Warning: names and locations have been adjusted for purposes of privacy.) The husband, let’s call him Simon, is a psychiatrist. The woman, let’s call her Simone, had a well-paying…
By James Roberts – The Male Call Advisory Board™ (Linguistics Division) has noticed some disturbing trends in ladies’ dating profiles. We’re not saying that the guys don’t have their own gobbledygook, but from what we hear, the men are more about just outright lying. Here, then, are nine an…
By James Roberts – A guy-pal — let’s call him “Jon” — related an interesting get-to-know-you phone convo that, sadly, ended less than gloriously. Or, perhaps that’s really the point of such conversations. You decide. Backing up. Jon and the woman — let’s call her “Jan” — connected on Tinder…
By James Roberts – There’s no question that the dating industry—and by dating industry we mean both online dating sites as well as coaching services—is big business. According to Judi Schindler, author of Husbands: An Owner’s Manual and the blog, “The Toilet Seat Must Come Down, it’s foreca…
By James Roberts – Last October, we reported a statistical survey — yes, cold, hard facts that we didn’t even have to make up! — on the online cliché terms women use to prove that you like to be as similar to every other woman on the planet as possible. For example: “sense of humor,” […]
By James Roberts – It doesn’t take a Robert Mueller to mull out what happened with your last relationship: All we need to do is look at what your dating profile says you don’t want. What the Male Call Advisory Board™ has discovered, ladies, through extensive, organic, non-GMO research consi…
By James Roberts – What a lovely surprise to find this delightful ditty being crooned outside the Male Call office the other night by a duo calling themselves the ‘Two Loves.’ We can’t say their poetic meter is particularly proficient but it’s at least as good as my dear cousin’s annual hol…
By James Roberts – We are sometimes accused…OK, we admit…that some of the info we provide has no particular basis in reality outside the Male Call Advisory Board’s™ fevered imagination. But this month, we swipe a look at your favorite dating apps and present cold, hard data! First, Bumble, …
By James Roberts – Ladies: We’ve talked before about plagiarizing phrases from other peoples’ 15-year old dating profiles (“looking for a partner in crime,” “looking for my best friend”) and your current obsession with pointless warnings (“no hook-ups,” “must have sense of humor”). Apparentl…
By James Roberts – This month we tackle a subject that is bound to get us in trouble. But that’s how we roll! The question is: What to call adult persons of the “XX” DNA persuasion, also known technically as the homogametic sex or, if you want to go all Jane Austen on us, the […]
By James Roberts – We recently had occasion to hear some surprisingly firm guidelines for you guys from a group of online-dating ladies about “first meetings,” aka, the “meet ‘n greet.” First off, exactly what is a meet ‘n greet (henceforth MNG) and how does it differ from a “date?” The pan…
By James Roberts – The Male Call Advisory Board™ would like to call attention to some avoidable romance-killing waits perpetrated by certain bands, movie moguls and restaurants. Endless dance band codas. OK, so technically a coda is “a concluding musical section that is formally distinct fr…
By James Roberts – All many of us really want for the holiday gifting season is less aggravation. Here are a few empirical guidelines for you singletons. No use of the word “gifting.” Ok, but seriously… No matter how much holiday fun you’re having, don’t plan an extended vacation together un…
By James Roberts – Sorry ladies, but if you’ve got any of these code words in your online dating profile, you’ve officially entered the Cliché Zone. “Drama-free.” Along with “no drama” this is probably the #1 cliché dominating dating sites these days. You rarely hear, “Gosh I wish I had a …
By James Roberts – We went to a Meetup pool party/BBQ the other day and only recognized two people from their profile pix, both of whom we happened to know pretty well. The other 10 were completely unrecognizable. Now, as we understand it, the whole point of a social media site like Meetup is to […]
By James Roberts – Having been pestered by a series of malware alerts on the Male Call computer, we were fascinated by a story recently related by a friend — we’ll call him “Mick” — who is still puzzling about what happened to him, especially the aftermath. We got the story in dribs and drabs […]
By James Roberts – Far be it from us to tell you to bring out your less attractive features on your dating profile, but a provocative TED talk suggests that maybe you should do just that. Now, we’re not talking about how you still live with your mother, how you view every other driver on […]
By James Roberts – A couple months ago we discussed the personal hygiene issue of men’s hair removal (Oct. 2016 Male Call). This month, just in time for V Day (and we’ll let you decide if that stands for Valentine’s, Victory or Vanquished), we consider the opposite side – hair non-removal, t…
By James Roberts – We have a modest proposal for a holiday gift exchange with your snuggle partner. But first, let’s consider the unsnuggling process. Despite everyone’s belief (and by “everyone” we mean “many people we know”) that about half of marriages end in divorce, it seems that the di…
By James Roberts – I had a chance to talk to a female dating advice writer the other day and guess what? You guys “of a certain age” need to do a couple things if you don’t want to spend the rest of your days in solitary confinement watching golf and fishing on cable TV. […]
A common theme in American democracy is the threat to move to Canada if candidate A, B or C gets elected. Now “Maple Match” wants to rescue you from Trump: “Maple Match makes it easy for Americans to find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump preside…
By James Roberts – One of the continuing annoyances on social media sites like Meetup is people’s aggravating insistence on either not including a photo or using a completely pointless shot of a flower or favorite beastie. Of course the whole point of social media is to make social friends a…
By James Roberts – As tax time rolls around we begin to think about make-believe as we try to convince the TurboTax software that our home office really takes up the entire family room and patio spa. So we thought it might be a good time for an antidote of reality with a round of […]
By James Roberts – Online dating is a now $2.1 billion industry with more than 1,500 websites ranging from mainstream services like Match.com with 96 million registered users (as of 2010, but apparently only 1.4M to 4.3M active users), eHarmony and OkCupid (5.6M) to more specialized dating…
By James Roberts – Among the most current and popular dating clichés which gets our dander up (which is mostly wishful thinking these days) is the concept of “serial dating” – as in “No serial daters!” According to everything I’ve ever heard, the word “serial” should mean: “something that ta…
By James Roberts – Having apparently fought the good fight about bad selfies on your Internet dating profile…and failed miserably…we have a new cause to champion. And we’re pretty sure we’re on track here. We’re talking about posting photos sideways. Really, people. Don’t you ever bother to…
By James Roberts – What’s the best way of turning down a suitor, male or female – whether that suitor is an Internet dating correspondent, someone who asks you to dance or someone you just met at an event who wants your phone number? Of course there’s Seinfeld’s Elaine character in Season 9…
By James Roberts – It’s time to put on our urban anthropologist hats and examine that peculiar American institution – the Female Catch Up. By all accounts these meetings involve bonding, gossip, photo exchange and the intimate process of generally finding out what the bestie has been up to …
By James Roberts – Now that Valentine’s Day is forthwith, impending and anon, we thought it might be a good time to check out the American Psychiatric Association’s latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) to see what sort of emotional disorders are about to befall the lovelorn. Ala…
By James Roberts – What is Santa without a beard? That’s like a leprechaun without a green suit. Or a Scottsdale lady without blonde hair and highlights. All right, all right…as an old Arabian saying goes: “Guys who live in bald houses shouldn’t roust their camels for a caravan raid.” (We m…
By James Roberts – We have to fess up to a guilty pleasure: Naked and Afraid. Nooo…not the Male Call Advisory Board on a skinny dipping expedition. We’re talking about a cable TV reality show where two strangers â a man and a woman â have to take off their clothes and survive in a […]
By James Roberts – A couple of weeks ago I was hanging with my peeps at the Kona Grill when a question came up about the Toby Keith’s next door. I pulled out my device and started looking up the info. A neighboring peepette called shenanigans on me for being “one of those people who […]
By James Roberts – As the junk mail envelope might say (if direct marketers sent relationship advice instead of funeral home solicitations and Publishers Clearinghouse coupons): You may already be a cheater! Now, you’d think you of all people would know if you were doing the deed. But it see…
By James Roberts – A saddened reader reports: “The thing is, my own authentic old school self-portrait collection is now rendered not only uninteresting, but even mildly annoying.” What she’s talking about are “selfies” â a word I introduced to the language, though the Oxford dictionary li…
By James Roberts – How ya doing with those New Year’s resolutions, gentle reader? Totally busted already, right? That’s one reason I don’t even bother. Even when I set the bar pretty low â no more citizen’s arrests, humming the theme from “Green Acres” or attempting to move small objects w…
By James Roberts – You didn’t know you had one, right? But it’s sort of like IQ, LDL or BMI â everybody’s got one and it’s sometimes helpful to know where you fit in. Now, the lesser-known GTL™ stands for Guilt Tolerance Level, which, continuing a long-standing Male Call holiday season tra…
By James Roberts – It used to be everyone knew what a “date” is. The guy comes by the gal’s house, picks her up at the door and drives her to wherever they’re going. Afterwards, he drives her home, walks her to her door and perhaps collects a kiss. Or, perhaps, she invites him in […]
By James Roberts – There’s a big difference between spying, eavesdropping and simply overhearing things. It goes like this: He or she spies, you eavesdrop, I overhear. We like to call it being an “urban anthropologist” (a term we just made up). Thus it was that the Male Call Advisory Board™ …
By James Roberts – With The Days of Unrelenting Heat descending on The Valley of the Unrelenting Sun, it’s time to think cool thoughts. And by “cool” of course we mean things like savoir faire and grace under pressure, not things like sneaking up to a girl and dumping ice cubes down her shir…
By James Roberts – The Male Call Advisory Board™ has been attending a lot of MeetUps – you know…where you go to broaden your network of friends and relationships but run into the same people and have pointless conversations about the weather and half the registrants play hooky…just like high…
How Dating Is Like Learning A New Computer Operating System By James Roberts – The Male Call Advisory Board™ finally broke down and bought a new laptop. We had been limping along with the kindly offered services of a borrowed computer, having had our electronic life stolen in an Egyptian air…
