rated R : anyone over 35 not admitted

when i was younger there werent strictly enforced age specifications at singles events. now events are becoming strict with a vengeance. while on principle i agree with it , in practice i cant say that i fully agree. a 50 yr old man should not be able to sneak in to an event for 20's and 30's, but what if you are 41 or 42? you really are just a few years shy of the limit. should you be let in? some events become that strict. now the 42 year old guy or girl isnt who you really want to weed out. its the 60 year olds ( and yes they do crash events) you want to bar. then of course there is the mishigas of one age range for women and another for men. this is silly. just give a straight age range and no man within seven years of the lowest age listed will show up. it will happen naturally. just because the geniuses running these things will let a 37 year old man in to a 35 and under shabbaton and not let a 36 year old woman in doesnt mean they are right...after all....we are experiencing a shidduch crisis.

hatikvah???

life never is exactly what you expect. of course this adage is all one can expect. its always difficult having hopes and dreams that get dashed. its hard to accept life as it comes yet still strive and hope for a better life. its such a challenge to internalize thankfulness for what one does have while stinging from not achieving ones potential.

israeli movie :aviva my love

i recently saw the israeli movie aviva my love. its the story of a woman who is trying to pursue a writing career while trying to support her unemployed, depressed husband and her precocious children. one of the actors from the band's visit was also in this film. this actor, whose name escapes me, certainly has no reason to worry about being typecast. in the band's visit he played a sympathetic divorced arab while in this movie he plays a washed up jewish writer. what is refreshing about this movie is that none of the reviews do it justice nor do they prepare you for the grand performance the movie delivers. this movie is about a woman who really wants to become a published writer and about how corruption in business, even in a creative field can fracture one's dreams. and of course there is a subplot about how no matter how much aviva thinks she mut survive on her own she realizes that she can cope better with her loved one's rallying support. lastly this movie helps us view israeli society as people who have hopes and dreams just like the rest of the world while living with daily threats of terror.

verbal garbage

its hard enough attending a singles event , what makes it worse is stupid people. more specifically stupid divorced people. often when i've started chatting with other singles at a singles event the issue of marital status comes up. often the person says to me 'so you never got married?' and these words ALWAYS emanate from a divorced individual. in which case i want to tell them 'so your marriage bombed? what a loser!!' but of course i never say this. its bad enough married people can be insulting, why must singles insult each others status. its much softer to ask someone if they've ever been married than comment 'oh, so you never got married?' how rude!! its enough to get barbs from shadchanim, but to get them from singles is even worse. why make me feel bad for having never been married. i feel bad enough. and someone who is divorced didnt manage to stay married. so they should really feel worse. unless, they just like to insult single never been marrieds just to make themselves feel better about themselves , which to me is equally rude. verbal garbage directed anyone single or divorced is never acceptable in my book

divorced with children

i think the toughest guy for me to date is the divorced guy with kid(s). the reason i say this is because often divorced guys with kids dote so much over their kids it makes me feel left out. dont get me wrong. i love kids and i would love to have kids of my own. its just that it seems like they have nothing to talk about but their kids, and i have zero to add to that type of conversation . after all i dont have kids. i suppose these fellows speak of their kids so often to make it seem like they are real family guys. and of course i wouldnt be interested in a guy with kids who doesnt spend time with his kids or didnt make them a priority, its just that sometimes i feel like like these guys are talking so much about their kids that i feel like they are set. they have a life and i dont fit in . like i have nothing to add. after all they have kids and this all happened before they got to know me , with some other women. and the more they harp on about their kids the more left out and alone i feel. after all i dont have kids. i have nothing to say. the thing is i dont have a problem getting along with kids in general. kids usually really like me and i really like them. when im dating a divorced guy i want to know if they really want me and like me and that they want to be a part of my life, not just that i want to be a part of their life. i really want to know first if i want to be with this divorced guy himself because if i really want to be with him i will want to then get to know his kids and be a part of their kid's life. but the most important relationship that needs to be explored is the man/woman part because if that isnt yet a solid possibility, nothing else is (not even his kids)until this is determined.

single vs divorced

one thing that i find quite confusing is dating divorced people . now of course after about age thirty most of us opt to date divorced people just to widen the dating pool. of course if you've never been married it becomes quite an interesting experience. after all, you the single never married one arent really coming to the date on even plane with the divorced one. even if you too have experienced heartbreak it will never compare to what the divorced one has seen . and for the never married one this could be good, this could be bad. you are lucky not to have seen what the divorced have seen but then again you havent seen what the divorced one has seen . as one gets older sometimes people think that if you've never been married its a bad thing because you haven't made a commitment. if you're divorced you get the joy of making a bad choice and fearing you'll repeat the same failed marriage.of course if you've never been married you're always thinking the divorced one knows more about marriage than you because they've been there before and this can be intimidating, and if you're divorced you think you've been through it before and it bombed, and that's intimidating. of course i try to say to myself that it shouldnt really matter whether someone has been married before or not because its not only about where we have been its where we are going. having identical pasts isnt necessary. its who the person is that is important. and these thoughts go through my head before i have even met the person!! no wonder im still single!!

definitely ryan reynolds

i saw the movie definitely maybe recently. though corny , i actually really liked it . i'm a real sucker for those cutesy romantic comedies. unfortunately i arrived a tad late to the movie , so i missed the very beginning, which led to a little confusion on my part, but even so i really liked it. the movie was about a single dad telling his daughter how he met her mother and ultimately his finding true love. the part i really liked about it was that it started in pre-clinton '92, during the elections . ryan reynolds went to ny to be part of the campaign. to me that period in time was equal to the modern-day camelot (kennedy era). it was the only time in my lifetime that people were really excited about an election. it had been nice to see people being more positive about politics no matter how short lived it was. of course the movie kind of parallelled the decline and disillusionments of the clinton era to ryan's disappointing love life.
of course, i pay alot of attention to detail and what i really thought was cute was how they showed the progression in cell phone technology. the first phones shown in 1992 were huge, and they gradually shrunk. the movie soundtrack made me want to listen to nirvana again. another cute thing was how they really showcased nyc. i really love when movies do that. its enough years after 9/11 for me that i can just appreciate it without thoughts of reality stabbing me in the side.