Bill Cammack

Roxanne writes:

I’ve heard both. “Guys go for the pretty girls.” But I’ve also heard that guys think girls fuss way too much over their appearance. Like makeup for example. Most guys really don’t care that much about it? What’s up with this big disconnect?

Wow, Rox… That’s a REALLY good question, which unfortunately calls for a complex answer. The first question is “what is makeup doing on women’s faces in the first place?”…….

In the animal kingdom, dogs, for instance, can tell when other dogs are receptive to sex by perceived cues. It might be a smell… It might be a behavior that coincides with being in the fertile phase of the cycle… It might be how the other dog’s skin looks… I’ve heard of something called “flagging”, but I’m no dog-breeding expert.

Anyway… Humans have bypassed these natural cues by utilizing items such as CLOTHES and DEODORANT. In most cases, whatever one’s natural emissions are are completely masked now. This is why people get compliments on their cologne or whatever it is they used in their hair, because all other smells have been suppressed.

This is where makeup comes in. Makeup FAKES certain skin conditions and basically cheats the guy, biologically, into feeling more attracted to her. For instance, you’ve seen someone become embarrassed, and their face turns red (blushing). Some people have naturally rosy cheeks. Others do not. All they have to do to fake rosy cheeks is paint their cheeks red. Same deal for enhancing lips and eyes and essentially coloring shadows onto a woman’s face to make it appear that her face has curves it really doesn’t have. Same thing with plucking eyebrows. HAHAHAHA I can imagine how many guys had kids with women that they THOUGHT had slim eyebrows, and then the kid came out with some kind of bushy unibrow, hehehe :D but I digress……

Now that we know where the makeup came from, we can look at what guys consider to be “pretty girls”. Obviously, that’s subjective. Everyone has their own idea of what’s attractive and what isn’t. Even though I’ve seen makeup do ABSOLUTE WONDERS for some women….. I’m not a makeup fan. Applied stylishly, it can give a girl a HOT look, except the only time you’re going to see her like that is when she makes herself up like that. The rest of the time, she’s going to look like Plain Jane, and you’d better hope you like her that way. We’ve also seen on television when women go to sleep on their “face” and wake up looking like The Joker after he got caught out in the rain without his umbrella. :/ no good. Having said that, there are some guys that won’t be seen with a woman AT ALL unless she has makeup on and her clothes and hair are proper and she looks ‘right’.

So… Do guys go for the pretty girls? Yes. Definitely! :D However, the path to “pretty” doesn’t go through makeupville. Attractive is Attractive. She could look good in a professional suit-skirt. She could look good in sweats and sneakers after playing frisbee for three hours in Central Park. She could look good with glasses on. She could look good with contacts in. She could look good in a box. She could look good with a fox. She could look tasty like green eggs & ham! ;p~~~~~ um… what point was I making? :/

Anyway… the “too much fuss over appearance” thing is that there isn’t much difference for the guy in whether she wears the green shirt or the red shirt. Whether she wears the Manolo boots or the Payless boots. Whether she wears the skirt 3″ above her knee or 5″ above her knee… what belt she puts on… yadda yadda yadda. If the guy’s into whatever her natural beauty is, all extra preparation she’s doing is useless to him and a waste of time. That can include makeup. So, yes… Guys like pretty girls… Pretty does NOT equal Painted…. and women need to give themselves a break and take a guy’s word for it when he says “you look great… let’s go”. :)

That doesn’t mean to show up all disheveled and looking like a BUM! :/ Just figure out “when to say when”. :D

DatingGenius

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MasamiBillShow 003 – Pictures
Masami, Letitia, Masako & Bill hang out for Masami & Letitia’s last night in New York City. Masami’s on her way to Japan and Letitia’s returning to France. It’s time to take pictures! :D

Bill: hahahaha
Letitia: So funny
All: [Low Voices for the camera] HA HA HA HA HA
Masami: hahaha I ____ so bad.
Bill : hehe
Letitia: Yeah, this one… this one is good
Masami: Work it baby! Work it baby!
Bill: There you go! There you go!
Masami: Work it honey! Work it!
Masako: Oh, that’s nice.
Letitia: Yes… That’s nice.
Masako: What’s that?
Masami: It’s not the picture… talk.
Masako: Really?
Masami: Videotaping.
All except Masako: HAHAHAHAHA :D
Letitia: She looks good!
Bill: What’s that? Stage Fright, right? What’s that? Stage Fright? … “REALLY?”
Masako: What are you doing?
Bill: Nothing. Weren’t you about to sing?
[Masako fakes singing]
Masako: No… I don’t trust. :)
All except Masako: HAHAHA
Bill: … And you shouldn’t. :) hahahaha
Letitia: He was taping you
Masami: Are you taping, or the… do I have to speak low?
Bill: No… You don’t have to speak at all.
Letitia: But you can SMILE!!! :D
Masami: What did she say?
Letitia: You can smile, ohmygod!
All except Letitia: HAHAHA :D
Letitia: I can’t, hahaha
Masami: You were singing!

MasamiBillShow

WOWWWWW!!!

OK… So I just spent an hour recording my lines for my first episode of “The Lab”. I’m an editor, not an actor. I had the incorrect notion that what I was about to do was more like talking than acting. It was really something I’ve never experienced before……

That was an amazing trip. I wanted to blog it now, while I’m still feeling it.

There’s a journey that you take when you try to record something quasi-theatrical. I’m even more sensitive to it since I’m an editor. I’m more aware of what I can and can’t use.

What I mean by record is when YOU’RE the on-air talent. There’s so much to think about, but then you can’t actually afford to think about it because you have to deliver the lines… that is… IF you scripted your lines ahead of time, and preferably studied them. I did neither, since I’m not an actor. I had no idea it was going to be so hard to pull at least three directions together and then do the right thing with what you receive to deliver the goods. I have no idea whether I have a show or not. If I don’t, that’s fine. I’ve slated my release of episode 1 of “The Lab” for Friday. I still have tonight and all of tomorrow to do it over if I don’t have what I need.

The first thing I noticed was that I had to stop myself from wanting to deliver the lines in a stoic fashion, just to get them out. Then, I realized things would have been way better if I had scripted the lines and practiced them instead of trying to make stuff up on the fly. I had a couple of cues that I had figured out, but the problem was that by the time I was on the spot, doing the do… I had seen the scenes so many times that I wasn’t naturally affected anymore by watching them, and there was no natural launch into what I wanted to say about the section. I had to fake the launch and then make sure I wasn’t stiff delivering the actual lines that I had just decided upon and hadn’t practiced, ever. :/

The obvious question is why not pause the process until I made something up? :D The problem with that is that I needed to shoot the whole thing in one session so there was no chance of the camera moving from where it was. I decided to run the video from the monitors live instead of greenscreening them or matting out the screens and shrinking and distorting the video. I knew I was in it for the long haul as soon as I pressed the button, so I went for it and now I have whatever I have… if anything! :D

I can’t really feel the effects from the journey at this point, but I remember hearing the click that indicated that the camera had shut off and that there wasn’t anything more I could do about getting the show on tape. I remember this feeling of… ?relief? and a return to ?reality?… I’ll definitely be doing way more pre-production for my next episode, but this time, I was so glad to get the set done that I just had to try to make it happen. Actually, when I was completely ready, I wasn’t INTERESTED in filming the show right then. That was the first battle… actually getting myself to start in the first place. It was only after I was in the process that I realized how important a script is that you’ve practiced over and over.

There’s more to being on-air-talent than meets the eye… I mean if you’re going to do a decent job at it… and I’m not saying that *I* did a decent job! :D It’s that there are things you have to remember, and while you’re remembering them, you have to forget them so you can seem authentic or natural. You have to internalize them and then live with them and “act as if”. I guess this is why some actors *coughnicholascagecough* always seem to be portraying the exact same character. Their expression is the same in different movies, so you get the same effect when you watch the actor’s performance.

Another thing that’s tough is that you’re not talking to anybody! :D I mean, you know the audience is “inside” that little lens, but there’s really nobody there, so you have to pretend you’re talking to someone. Depending on the person or people that you imagine yourself talking to, you’re going to deliver differently. You’re going to sound different. You’re going to use different words. I’m sure my performance suffered from “identity crisis”, but I’ll just fix that in the edit. :D

Just about the only thing that I learned along the way that helped me was in order to get over the fact that I was no longer highly amused by the scenes, having seen them multiple times while I was selecting them, what I DID find amusing was how ‘lost’ I was and unable to recreate my surprise and interest in the shot. Fortunately… I found that realization so funny, that I ended up laughing at how ridiculous it was and realize that that was my out. Whenever I needed a laugh, I got a laugh off of the fact that I couldn’t laugh because the scene wasn’t funny to me anymore. :D WHAT LUCK! :D

So, yes… More scripting… More practicing (more like ANY practicing, since I didn’t practice at all, having no script, just some outline notes). I didn’t want to script it, but that’s because I didn’t know there were so many other things to worry about when you’re trying to make it happen from in front of the camera instead of behind it. About 1/3 of the way through, I decided to get over the fact that I was talking to a lens. :D It wasn’t so tough after that, but that was only one of several ‘issues’ that I was having.

I decided I was going to play some music to see if I wanted to use any of it to get me in or out of the piece. Unfortunately, the way the camera was set up, I had the choices of holding the guitar at a ridiculous angle to play it or play naturally, and the guitar wasn’t in the shot at all. Since I decided on using a single shot for the whole episode, I just had to miss out on the appearance of the guitar. I’ll have to see if anything can be done with that in post.

I was very glad when I heard the click indicating it was all over. It was a weight off, for sure. I learned A LOT about the process, and I’ll be ready for it next time. I’ll also be habituated to certain elements, so those won’t be issues for me. Depending on how it works, I might have to rethink my shooting style as well, or maybe shoot it twice.. once as a practice so I can see how everything works together and then a second time as the real deal. Another issue was that I was sitting in approximately the same place the whole time, so I said approximately the same thing again, closer to the camera…. that is, from what I could remember that I said, since I had no script! :/

Anyway… anyone preparing to do this for the first time, beware! hahahaha :D This is one of those situations where you have to learn by on-the-job training, because you’re not going to feel like this in any normal situation. Even having a normal conversation and having someone tape you isn’t the same as trying to deliver lines that you HOPE are going to connect scene A to scene B, while relating to the audience in an effective and preferably consistent manner. It doesn’t prepare you for talking to a lens and convincing yourself you’re talking to a person or people. It’s not as easy as it looks! :D

Actually, I started doing better (IMO) when I stopped caring if it was good or not. :)

re: http://www.sexerati.com/2007/01/08/how-to-be-friends-with-your-ex/

You’re absolutely right that “let’s just be friends” means that he’s
not interested in hitting it anymore. The reasons aren’t important.
It may be because your body has changed and he’s not physically
attracted to you anymore, or he’s met someone that turns him on a lot
more than you do so that sex with you would be hehe anti-climactic. :)

It’s entirely possible to be friends with someone after your
“relationship” has gone south. First of all, it’s not the
relationship that went south, it’s his desire to have sex with you.
That has nothing to do with whether he likes you as a person or would
spend time with you like any other person he’s met in life and likes
personality-wise. Second… It all depends on whether the two of you
were ever friends in the first place.

As the saying goes, women give sex to get relationships and men give
relationships to get sex. When they’re no longer interested in the
sex, there’s no reason for the guy to fake being in a relationship
with you. Or, if you don’t like the term “faking”, the only thing
that was causing him to consider you as “special” is now gone, and he
becomes either a free agent or has a new “special someone” that he’s
devoting his physcial time to. That doesn’t mean he won’t hang out
with you or talk to you on the phone or check out a movie with you IF
he feels friendly towards you without the impetus of ‘getting on’.

There are lots of reasons people declare that they’re in a
relationship with someone, including loneliness, horniness, and the
fact that they just can’t get anyone else to have sex with them. If
that’s why he was with you, you’re short. If he liked you as a
person and felt that you were worthwhile to hang out with regardless
of whether he’s having sex with you, he’s going to have just as much
respect and esteem for you “after the fact” as he did when it was on.

It’s funny how you often don’t find out what’s really going on in a
relationship until it’s over. :D

~ response to Penelope Trunk’s post ~

PT: “For example, The Economist reports that men overestimate how attracted women are to them, and women underestimate how interested men are. This research comes from an article in Evolution and Human Behavior, and the conclusion is that the poor estimating is actually good for evolution, because men don’t miss opportunities to spread their DNA, and women make sure to mate with someone who will stick around.”

hahaha Biology aside, in most cases, I find both situations to be true as far as men overestimating and women underestimating. IMO that’s because of what men and women (stereotypically) approach “relationships” for in the first place. I’m not sure who said this, but I read somewhere that “men give relationships to get sex and women give sex to get relationships”. :D That pretty much sums it up.

Not that this never happens, but I don’t know ANY guys (who had a choice, that is) that chose their SO without being sexually attracted to her. ‘Matter of fact, I don’t know ANY guys that have ever even dated women that they weren’t sexually attracted to for one reason or another. I’m not saying these women were “hot”, but just that there was something about them that made that guy interested in having sex with her, and that’s what made her a candidate for dating, a relationship, becoming a girlfriend or a wife.

OTOH, women date men all the time that they’re not sexually attracted to. Women date men that they’re not even sure are attracted to women. Again, “stereotypically”, that’s not what they’re ‘in it’ for. They’re in it for the way they relate to him and how it is to spend time with him.

I think the over- and under-estimation is based on projection. Guys know that the main reason they would talk to a woman is that they’re attracted to her, so they project that onto her and figure she’s attracted to them BECAUSE she’s talking to them, or accepting their rap. Meanwhile, women talk to guys they like because they like their personalities and ways of being, so they project that onto the guy, and think he has a platonic interest in her… or, perhaps that he chose her based on what she said or has accomplished in life vs how she looks and how turned on he is by her.

PT: “Here’s another relationship study that makes me think of work: A good relationship hinges more on expressing joy from someone else’s good news than about how you react to their bad news. Benedict Carey writes in The New York Times that a slew of studies find that your reaction to someone’s good news is an opportunity to strengthen the relationship. So don’t brush off your spouse when she has a good day at work, and the same goes for your co-worker’s good news — express enthusisam. (Thanks, Mercedes)”

hmm. I don’t know that the two are different… responding to good news or bad news. I would think the important part would be the quality and value of the response instead of which format the information was received in.

Let’s say the good news was “I got a promotion” and the bad news was “you look fat in that dress” :D The quality of her response to either one can strengthen or weaken a relationship. As far as “how the day was @ work”… Women are notorious for telling men things they never asked about. :D It’s tough to fake interest in and enthusiasm for something you didn’t want to hear in the first place. OTOH, your advice is on-point. FAKING that interest and enthusiasm is better for your relationship than telling her to get out from in front of the television because they’re about to kick off for the second half! :D