Bill Cammack

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Bill Cammack billcammack.com | @BillCammack

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I’ve always loved the song “Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel. For me, the song has an incredible mix of depression and hope. There’s power and powerlessness in the face of “the game” at the same time. I never get a feeling that one person is going to “win out” over the next person. I never get the feeling that the situation will ever stabilize. To me, it’s a representation of ‘the game’ and how each person comes to the table with their own set of abilities and shortcomings and the chips fall where they may…….

*In researching, I find that there were some offensive/controversial lyrics that were changed to make the song radio-friendly.*

Mercs

I woke up this morning thinking about this song, because for me, it exemplifies the mercenary nature of dating in New York City.

We’re all ‘Mercs’. We have to be, because people throw pretty heavy ‘game’ at us, and if you’re not a shark yourself, you’ll get eaten by the sharks. It’s just plainly not as simple as people lay it out in these fairy tale relationship stories where some guy in the sticks marries his high school sweetheart or the girl he met when he went to the General Store to buy cereal and gasoline at the same location.

The ‘problem’ is that we all want something, and we’re willing to play hardball to get it. It’s honestly like a war-time scenario. I’m not proud of that or happy about it, but that’s how it is. You just have to know that when you step to a chick and introduce yourself, you’re about to get whatever she wants to give you that will further her own agenda. It’s not “the truth”. It’s not “who she really is”. It’s what she’s willing to present to you in order to get you to do what she wants you to do.

Women have to be that way, because men are that way towards them. Obviously, guys are going to say or do whatever they need to in order to get laid, which is the bottom line. All this jockeying for position is a constant quest for CONTROL of the other person, usually for two different reasons…

Control

Control is a fallacy… a fantasy… it doesn’t exist. The only person you control is yourself…… maybe. Read the rest of this entry »

So, this morning, I decided to Google Bill to see how I was doing. I’ve been struggling recently, because of the Stimulus Bill, which had displaced me to about #12 out of 438,000,000 but I knew this was a flash in the pan and would be old news in a second, and I’d be back in stellar form.

Now, what I didn’t expect was to be page 01, number 01:

This is no big deal, because Google’s been customizing its search results for some time now, so I expect them to know that I’m the one (because I’m logged in to Google) asking who’s the top dog amongst the “Bill”s of the planet and to appease me by saying “Thou art the fairest of them all”.

I got this result from Firefox, so I decided to go for a second opinion and try Safari 3.2.1: Read the rest of this entry »

Louis Vuitton Building, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

An actual Louis Vuitton building! hahahahahahaha :D

Bill & Masami, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill & Masami @ Big Apple Circus in Lincoln Center, NYC

REP-RE-SENT!, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Masami @ Trump Tower, NYC

Apple Store, NYC, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Masami @ the Apple store in New York City

Reader “Ford” left a comment on my “Women’s Guide to NYC Dating” and pointed out an interesting article by Jonathan Soma which talks about why there aren’t really 210,820 more single women than men in NYC.

I think Jonathan’s interactive map is fascinating and his article is well-written. I’d like to talk about a few of the points he makes.

oh… This isn’t going to be funny. This is going to be technical. If you’re looking for your daily email simpleton joke, click the “back” button on your browser, now. :D

JS: Take those 210k ladies and spread them over the entire NYC-New Jersey-Nothern PA area and what’ve you got? Answer: not that much! Your odds of meeting a single woman in the general population is 10% better in Ashville, NC.

This may or may not be true. I have no actual opinion, because I’ve never been to Ashville, NC. I’ve been to quite a few hic towns, though, and you’re much better off having way more women spread out over a vast area than a few women concentrated in a bumpkin area. ( lol, for all I know, Ashville, NC is a sprawling metropolis, hahaha :D )

The reason for this is “flow”. In NYC, all the women that are spread out all over creation have to come to certain places to do certain things. Because of this, all you have to do is go to a popular shopping area or a section of town that employs a lot of attractive women, and they bring themselves to you. You actually end up with more women and a better variety in the same amount of space. This is why construction workers have a field day with catcalling in this town.

Another reason is “turnover”. There are always new chicks in this town. If you exhaust the number of chicks in one area, you start hanging out in a different area. If you hang out in Times Square, there are tons of new foreign tourists every day as well as bumpkins imported from all over the USA to come see The Capital Of The World, NYC. :D

Another reason is that New Yorkers WALK… A LOT! People that live in the country DRIVE a lot, so while they’re technically in a smaller area than what we have here, they NEVER meet each other… only passing by each other like the proverbial “ships in the night”.

So I’ll take a bunch of chicks scattered around… There’s another problem with “the sticks”. People tend to know each other. If you date like eight chicks, you can’t get away from them, because they never move from that town and they work at the general store where you have to go to buy your gasoline. In NYC, you get to start over every single night. Every night, you meet someone new and potentially exciting that you’d like to get to know more about or spend some fun times with. You don’t even have to THINK about chicks you met yesterday or last week, because there are always more for today and tomorrow. That’s one of the reasons I have the luxury of writing this blog. It doesn’t matter. No matter how many women read DatingGenius and sit there thinking “Ewwwww… I would NEVER date HIM!!! :( “, it doesn’t matter. There are always more chicks that have never heard of me, so I can do whatever I want. :D

JS: I’m going to be honest, I’m not too into dating someone 40 years older than me. Overly selective, I know, but a common enough thought that we come to the second problem with the original map: It counted all singles between the ages of 20-64.

hehehehehe Yes, this is a TREMENDOUS flaw! :D Totally agreed that a “map of singles” should make a range available to the viewer that’s relevant to that viewer’s dating tastes.

Having said that, let’s not discount the older sistaz that are keepin’ it PROPPAH and still having the fellaz tryinna TAP THAT! :D Guys like to talk a lot of yang about older women they wouldn’t kick it with, but when they meet one that’s still pretty and in tremendous physical shape… OH, and with a nice personality, intelligence & common sense!!! (winks at Grace, Jen & Annie ;) ) … All that “thinking” seems to go out the window, doesn’t it?

JS: Ladies: After your mid 40′s, you will be fighting tooth and nail for the nine or ten single men.

Gents: Single men become a rare commodity later in life, and we all know what happens then. They don’t call it Perfectly Inelastic Supply for nothing!

I think it was Rodney Dangerfield who said “I love college women. I keep getting older, they stay the same age! :D “. This is one of the problems for women. Guys in general like younger women, so the older a guy gets, the more women he finds acceptable to date or screw or whatever. The older a woman gets, the FEWER options she has as far as companionship.

Again, however, age isn’t the most important factor here. A chick could be 23, and if she falls off, physically, she’s going to have way fewer suitors than she did when she was HAWT.

JS: Gals: Do single young girls exist? Not according to math! Fact: around 1/3 of 20-24 year old women are married. Only 70% are single!

This doesn’t really matter. The word “single” just implies “available for sex”. This means that the survey is only going to show the number of women who DECLARED themselves available for sex. Just because a chick has a boyfriend or is married doesn’t mean she’s not gonna give it up, so the number of females OVERALL in an area is more important than the number who were willing to declare themselves “single” for a survey.

This is another reason why it’s better to be in NYC than in the sticks. More women = More opportunity. Period.

JS: The switchover from extra men to extra women starts at 35-39 for most big East Coast cities, but doesn’t hit New York until 40-44.

This is a very interesting statistic. I can see how the “singles map” would be misleading if it were heavily weighted with “singles” between 40 and 62 years of age. So, yes, overall, very interesting breakdown of the singles map, and “nice job”, Jonathan Soma. :D

Now… Let’s talk about reality

The fact of the matter is that numbers or no numbers, whether there are 210,820 extra single females or 15 extra single females, if you’re in the trenches and on the streets of NYC, you will see with your own eyes that there are literally PACKS of women roaming the streets with NO MEN and nothing to do with their lives other than work, shop and eat.

Go to the stores, and who’s working there? Women. Go to the colleges, and who’s studying there? Women. Walk down the street, Hang out in the Park, Get on the subway or bus, Go to Brooklyn where the hippies live…. Anywhere you go, there are just TONS of women. You literally can’t throw a rock in NYC without hitting a chick. :D

Women have no leverage in this town, because they’re expendable merely by available numbers. I took a walk this morning and passed an attractive female and told her “good morning”. She returned a begrudging “good morning” and we both went about our business. I may see her again in life and I may not. Does it matter? No. Why not? Because there are another thousand of her roaming around this town somewhere. She wasn’t unique in her attractiveness and I didn’t know anything about her as a person, so nobody cares.

This is why my “Women’s Guide to NYC Dating” is relevant regardless of the validity of that map I linked to. It’s nearly IMPOSSIBLE for a woman here to distinguish herself as unique in the normal ways that women get men all over the country and the world. There’s a girl on the next block who’s prettier than you. There’s a girl on the next block that has a better ass than you. There’s a girl on the next block that has fewer kids than you. There’s a girl on the next block that makes more money than you or dresses better than you or is better at sex than you etc etc etc.

The only way a woman’s going to stand out amongst the myriad attractive female residents of and visitors to this town is going to be by her stellar personality, so, my advice to women stands:

1) Be a nice person
2) Have interesting things to say
3) Eat when you go out to a restaurant
4) Be athletic
5) LOOK GOOD!

Thanks for the comment and the information about that post, “Ford”. Cheers! :D

~Bill

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Tale Of Two Cities, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Tale Of Two Cities
Chicago Transit Card & New York City MetroCard

Thanks to my friend Annie Boccio, I found out that I’m in the New York Times! :D

Bill Cammack & Annie Boccio

Slideshow (when the timer reads 1:03) => [link]

Article (which has nothing to do with The Kid, but a bunch of my friends are featured) => [link]

You Know How We DO!!! … Like Father, Like Son! :D => Link to “Bill Cammack” in the New York Times

Lindz from NNN / Tumblr joins me for a conversation about the ifs and whens of guys being friends with girls…..

B: So… Every Day, there’s some chick that’s completely confused as to whether some guy that she knows wants to be “friends” with her.

This happens in both directions… There are chicks that WANT to date guys, but they can’t tell if that guy’s physically attracted to them… And there are chicks that DON’T want to date guys, but they can’t tell whether those guys are NOT just tryinna get in their pants.

I’ll start off with the high percentage answer to whether a guy wants to be friends with a chick……

This means that if a chick wants to give him some, he’ll most likely take it, regardless of what he told you when you asked him directly. Does that mean you’re in a “relationship” with him? No. Does that mean he’s going to iChat you tomorrow? No. All it means is that he finds you physically attractive, and under the correct circumstances, he’d be very glad to “tap that, sunnnnnn”.

L: You see, though, if she’s hot and you know that she’s outta your league, or maybe she’s the plain Jane next door that still won’t get with you, even though you’re the hottest guy to ever talk to her, don’t get discouraged. You can totally use this in your favor. One word: Wingwoman.

B: As with every rule, there are exceptions. Here they are:

1) He’s not physically attracted to you.

B: If he’s not tryinna hit that, it’s easy to be friends with you, because there’s no pressure. No sexual tension. There’s nothing for him to gain or lose by not pressing up on you. Hanging out with you is the exact same thing as hanging out with any other chick, or a guy.  *yawn*

L: True. Very true. However, a girls attractability (is this a word? I think so) can grow depending on her personality. She can be a total goon and then you get to know her and all of a sudden she’s a supermodel knockout. Ok maybe I went too far, but you get the point.

B: Excellent point, Lindz… This is actually something chicks have to look out for that I wasn’t thinking about. That’s when there’s a changeover from not-hittable to hittable and what gets really confusing to chicks, when a guy that never paid them any physical attention’s suddenly talkin’ ’bout “Say… I lost the directions to my house… Can I borrow yours? :D “.

2) He’s not physically attracted to you. Read the rest of this entry »