We Need Movie Trailers to Introduce Our Friend's New Significant Other
Fuck a Bumble profile, I need to see your Rotten Tomatoes score.
Now that I’ve been wifed up for nearly two years, I reflect on my time as a single man, and more specifically, a Wednesday night at a Chicago bar called Estereo when a woman issued me two strikes and told me I should be careful for the remainder of the happy hour or else I’d receive a third, so then I got up and walked away. I did this because I was only one pint deep and my personal values/defects permit me to bail on an underwhelming first date under these circumstances. Packed onto the subway and on my way home, I had one of those Single Feelings that you might have if you’re deeply invested in finding your partner. Do I really need to be doing this? Is this really something a person should be doing? I thought as the crush of people around me turned the train’s internal climate into what I could only describe as “an air-conditioned mouth.”
To be clear, these are rhetorical questions where I am concerned. Even if I didn’t think I should be doing this sort of thing—I am of the opinion that life is for the living and that sometimes dumb things are fine—I know very well that I would’ve hated to take a prolonged break from dating even if I wanted to. But being in a fulfilling relationship is apparently the time to think about this, because the stretches of singledom can feel long and inconsequential, and all these humid and insignificant longueurs will naturally make a person wonder whether they maybe should try spending those dreadful date nights caring about something else, and this is true even before the dreary realities of nighttime subway service come into play. I will not pretend that many love remoras don’t have something to do with this existential conundrum, but I believe this feeling to be universal enough to warrant talking about dating success stories.
My girlfriend’s best friend recently became official with an SVP at a global advertising agency who hates eating at diners and, over this past year, allegedly dropped over $20,000 at a designer clothes store called Reigning Champ. One of those purchases involved an $80 shirt with a screenprint of a running hot dog. I am happy for her recent dating triumph, considering she was reeling from a sudden and unexpected breakup with a British guy named James after nine months; to ease her transition from blistering heartbreak to playing the field, her mother mocked him for having multiple sclerosis, which is a bit ignorant and short-sighted because it could be argued that being British is the MS of nationalities. My girlfriend and I have yet to meet this new boyfriend, but when this inevitable double date finally arrives, rest assured, I will be wearing a Reigning Champ hotdog shirt.
Of course, all the hype surrounding this new piece of man candy is slanted by the biases and honeymoon-phase infatuation of my girlfriend’s best friend, so there is no objective source of intel to receive until I meet him in person. I sent him a request to connect on LinkedIn, but as of this writing, it has gone unnoticed. There needs to be some sort of scouting report of incoming significant others before they infiltrate your friend group, and maybe the best way to facilitate this is through a full theatrical trailer.
*Music plays*
This will be an everlasting love. From the creators who brought you “Geoff, Spelled G-E-O-F-F” and “Trainer at Planet Fitness,” comes a new romantic escapade: “Kyle From Work.”
You’ve never heard her talk about Kyle before, but here he is with all of you at the bar. And he brought his cousin who’s only in town for the weekend.
The New York Times calls “Kyle From Work,” “Not exactly HA HA funny, but kind of funny?”
Rolling Stone says, “A lot different from her previous work, but, hey, they’re having fun!”
“Kyle From Work.” Only in theaters for an extremely limited amount of time.
As a follow-up from last year’s box office nightmare, “Brad From Kickball,” you and your friends will have to make sure Kyle makes sense dramaturgically. Once you realize that he doesn’t, you begin to wonder if “Kyle From Work” sounds like it might go straight to DVD.
I didn’t expect to see a country put through a table in this reflection, but I’m very present for it.
I smell an opportunity here. Amazon is aggregating reviews from humans into a sort of generic "what users say" review... maybe this is a useful model here.
Daters say...
"Jill is likely to say she's not this type of girl, but she is"
"John looks pretty rapey but he's a good dude underneath all that, just not relationship type"
etc