For guys, first dates can operate on the same one-and-done principal as a job interview. Say, wear or do a single wrong thing, and you're out of the running.
Think leather pants, novelty neckties and any reference to "Girls Gone Wild."
Yet, grown adult males persist in the delusion that it's cool to drive a car with a lightning bolt painted on the side, or that quoting from Jedi lore makes them appear deep.
Anne Coyle and Ellen Rakieten want to educate the legions of clueless, self-sabotaging men. They penned a book, "Undateable: 311 Things Guys Do That Guarantee They Won't Be Dating or Having Sex" (Villard; $15). It lists fashion mistakes, stupid slang expressions and boorish behavior that will turn a girl off in less time than it takes to say the title of the book.
Do you show up on a date wearing a short-sleeve dress shirt with a tie? See ya.
Own a reptile? Ick!
Admit to playing Dungeons & Dragons? Move out of your mother's basement.
Tactful it's not. But Coyle, who owns an interior design firm, says guys need to hear it straight. Too many dating manuals instruct women how to get a guy, and not vice versa, she says. She says "Undateable" isn't man-bashing, but contains constructive tips for guys who may wonder why they never get a second date.
"It might seem a little harsh initially, but the tone we tried to take is, what if you had a great older sister who would sit you down and tell you the truth?" Coyle says.
Coyle wishes someone had done that with one of her blind dates. Arranged by a friend, "he seemed great on paper," she says. But her potential soulmate had a soul patch, a small tuft of fur on his chin.
"I couldn't get past it," she says.
When friends said she could always give him a makeover, she replied, "I can make him shave it off, but I can't shave off the part of his brain that thought growing it was a good idea.'"
Co-author Rakieten worked for 23 years on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," where single female co-workers would share horror stories about dating encounters of the third kind. She and Coyle, former neighbors, began to compile a list of dating don'ts. They include wearing camouflage jackets, vanity license plates and using "Soprano-speak" like "fuhgeddaboutit!"
"It was pretty easy, and actually a little bit depressing at how easy it was, " says Coyle, who is in her 40s.
She says getting back into the dating game after her divorce made her realize that adults, after aging out of their peer groups from college or their early 20s, develop their own idiosyncrasies.
"I feel if you date when you're younger, you seem to have more in common," she says. "As people get older, they start going off on their own beaten paths. I think it's a little more difficult to date when you're older. People are just unabashedly themselves, which can be good, and which can also be horrifying."
Yoga instructor Hedy Krenn has been married 16 years to Jim Krenn, comedian and co-host of the Morning Show on WDVE-FM. But she can still remember some first dates that went no further.
"Big ego, that's definitely been a deal breaker for me," she says.
Other turn-offs: bad breath, dirty fingernails and a fake, orange-tinted tan.
"You don't want an Oompa Loompa tan," she says.
First date flubs can include talking too much about yourself or taking cell-phone calls at dinner, says Julie Novotny, director of operations for It's Just Lunch, a professional matchmaking service with an office in Pittsburgh.
Other rare, but real, occurrences reported by the service's female clientele include one guy who asked a woman her age. When she told him, he replied "Oh, so you can't have children." Another asked the woman if she'd "had work done." Another said he couldn't stay long because he planned to go salsa dancing with another woman later that night.
"We don't necessarily coach our clients as to what they need to wear for the first date," Novotny says. "But we do talk to them about making a great first impression."
That means not hitting on your waitress. Yes, Novotny says, a guy did that, too.
A blazer with a pocket crest. Unless you're a baron or attend Hogwarts, this is pretentious.
"Feeling the love." This pestilential phrase is everywhere, as in "Tom Brady just isn't feeling the love from the New England fans." We hate it.
Under Armour. It's great at the gym, on the hiking trail or when competing in a triathlon. Let's keep it there. Ditto for any workout clothes made of that shiny, petroleum-based "wicking" material.
Compensation hair. We're sorry you're bald on top. But that pony tail or ring of fur on the lower slopes of your skull needs some major manscaping.
A beret. Albert Camus could pull it off. You may think you project existential angst. We're thinking Keebler elf.
~Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
