Cru Jones Society

Chivalry is one of those things that’s almost impossible to do right. It’s like trying to teach someone how to drive stick shift. Too much effort, and you make them clam up and shut down. Not enough, and you’re a heartless cretin.

That’s why the Love Lounge is here. We’re here to guide you through all the romantic pitfalls facing everyone making an honest effort to get naked with someone else. Today’s topic is chivalry. No point in wasting time, let’s get started. Continue Reading »

The way I initially planned to open this article included the following construction: “With celebrity gossip dominating the headlines lately…” And then I realized how stupid that sentence is considering it could applied to any week after roughly 2003. Our entire news cycle is peppered with the relationship troubles of celebrities we shouldn’t even give a crap about, but do.

So, since you’ll see them saturating the culture anyway, and since it’s been so long since we’ve done a Love Lounge around here, why not marry the two concepts and skewer some retarded relationship advice? That sounds like a Wednesday, now don’t it? Continue Reading »

Please welcome to the Cru Jones Society, the beautfiul, talented, highly acerbic, Redhead herself, Ms. Erika Napoletano. Please give her lots of love in the comments section, and do yourself a favor by checking out all of her excellent work which she lists at the bottom of this post.

Jesus Christ – is it really Valentine’s Day again?

I hate Valentine’s Day. Haaaaaates it, preeeeecious. In my humble opinion, it’s the most ridiculous pseudo-holiday in existence (right behind Administrative Assistant’s Day… seriously). We clamor for dinner reservations and bitch, whine, moan and complain when our true-love-du-jour fails to deliver the one thing we so desperately wanted (which is inevitably the one thing we never told them we wanted but expected them to read our minds and figure out). In all honesty, V-Day is nothing more than a clearance sale for Christmas under a different name. Sure, the candy’s all heart-shaped, but the wrapping paper is still red. There’s still a chubby superhero mascot, but instead of an old fat guy who likes to play with midgets, it’s a violent cherub toting a bow and arrow. Yeah, yeah, we know “love hurts,” but do you really have to shoot me in the ass each year and remind me?

So guys, sit down. The Redhead speaks. We all know Valentine’s Day is ridiculous. I’m going to give you eight girl-proof tips for avoiding coming off as a total douchebag to your sweetie. Not everyone will approve of my tactics and it’s possible I’m going to pioneer reverse misogyny, but fuck it. I’m tired of the whiny broads that make the rest of us look bad. This one’s for you, guys. Continue Reading »

With Valentine’s Day upon us, there exists no better time of year to return to the Love Lounge. For those of you new here, the Love Lounge is where we dismantle traditional relationship and unmask impostors in favor of real advice and tidbits you can use.

One of our favorite targets is AskMen.com which claims “10 million readers a month.” That thought absolutely gives the terror shivers because 99% of everything you read at AskMen.com is uninspired tripe, misogynistic invective disguised as “wit,” or poorly executed banality. Today’s example fits into that third category as our friends there offer up some “Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas.” Continue Reading »

From the raucous excitement of the road ahead in the CJS Road Trip Mix to the angsty fury of the CJS Punk Rawk Mix, we come now to slow it down and urge you to get close to the one next to you (or to whomever that increasingly attractive person you brought home for the local watering hole earlier this evening is), and cuddle up for a fierce session that if you’re lucky will include some heavy petting. While not quite the makeout session mix requested by CassieB in yesterday’s comments section (Ours would have included “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men and “Baby Baby Baby” by TLC), this is the grown up version.

This is your Love Lounge Mix. This is for when you get back to your place and need a little musical accompaniment for your wine, candles, and flavor-blasted Goldfish crackers (the snack equivalent of Spanish Fly, I’m tellin’ ya). I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine if I’ve made this mix for a friend, and if the mix was successful in scoring said friend any action. Sadly, I was well on the road to engaged by the time I made this, and closing the deal with your long-term girlfriend involves a slightly lower degree of difficulty. Besides, she likes it better when I obnoxiously sing “Everywhere” by Michelle Branch in a comical falsetto anyway, so this mix would have been largely useless.

But for those of you looking to ease into a little action, I guarantee you this mix is as good as any, if not way better than anything you’d come up with on your own. And how could I make such an outlandish claim? Let’s find out, shall we? Continue Reading »

Ahhh, the innocence of youth. The whole world is ahead is of you. You don’t have a job. You don’t pay taxes. You have summers off. And you believe the celebrities you have a crush on might actually like you back someday. We asked you to revisit this idyllic time in your lives and share with us your answer to the question: Who was your childhood celebrity crush?

CJS Staff & Regulars share the first people to put a tingle in their bottom in this week’s Confessional. As always, we have a new question for you to consider this week after this week’s responses. So pull out your cootie catcher and find if the object of your love hearts you back. Continue Reading »

As the Dagger wedding approaches (This Saturday!) and Lady E and I bid adieu to our single lives, I find myself thinking about the beginning. I think about how we initially despised each other the first day of graduate school, but after a couple of rounds of beers we grew not only to not hate each other (Frat boy! Feminist!), but eventually fell in love.

We both carried baggage from our previous relationships, as everyone does, and backed into our eventual courtship like two Roman soldiers holding a massive shield with our spears drawn only to not realize our backs were vulnerable to an attack from behind. As we bumped into each other, we quickly spun around with daggers drawn (pardon the pun) and were forced to start fresh with each other. Our détente took a significant amount of time to achieve, but once we got there, we quickly realized there was no one else in the world for us.

But one thing we didn’t have to overcome was the persistent and annoying presence of ex-lovers lurking about under the guise of “friendship,” which brings us to today’s subject. Continue Reading »

Since it’s the day after Labor Day, you’re all likely in a slightly better mood than a normal Tuesday. And why shouldn’t you be? The triumphant CSU Rams saved everyone from Boulder from buying additional carbon offsets by shutting their giant, organic wheatgrass-smelling mouths that bloviated all week about how much they were going to kick our asses. How’d that work out for you? Enjoy your crow and rest happy in the knowledge that you’ve prevented the additional propagation of harmful greenhouse gases, and the world thanks you.

In the spirit of those good feelings, we’ll take a trip to the Love Lounge on the lighter side. I didn’t find anything worthy of moral outrage in this article, but I found its basic premise to be the lame little litter sister to tired old hacky standup bit “Black guys eat like this. White guys eat like this.” Continue Reading »

As promised last week, here is the eagerly awaited response from Jennifer Ginsberg’s husband about her oh-so-fun and insightful column “5 Things I Hate About Marriage.” Will Jennifer’s husband set the record straight? Does he get to give up the ghost on Jennifer’s annoying habits? Is he anything more than a mealy-mouthed little manservant to her? All those answers and more are but a click away. Continue Reading »

Time for another installment of the Love Lounge. We’ve got more crap from Your Tango.com inside and this article is truly awful. Your Tango’s tagline is “Smart Talk About Love” which would be the most unintentionally hilarious thing ever written if it didn’t make me boil with anger. They should change their tag line to “bitter hedgehogs write ugly tripe about relationships.” What am I talking about? Come on in! Continue Reading »

Welcome back to the Cru Jones Love Lounge. It’s been a long, long time since we’ve gotten together, and I must say I’ve missed you all. For those of you new to the party, here’s how the Love Lounge works:

Dating/relationship/love advice is shit. All of it. The only piece of advice you ever need to listen to is “Pay attention.” In the 2^nd edition of the Love Lounge I wrote this:

“The only advice I’ve found works in every situation is to pay attention. If everyone paid closer attention to the needs, likes, dislikes, and favorite sexual positions of their partners, relationships would either be happier and more fulfilling; or would end much more quickly and with less agony – a more fulfilling ending either way.”

This advice still works and will always work because just like fucking snowflakes, we’re all different. And only by paying attention do we even make a good faith to connect with another person. Yet dating advice continues to spring up all over the web. And that’s why I’m here to help you navigate the sea of idiotic tripe designed to “help” your relationship. Continue Reading »

With the Dagger wedding almost fully planned and looming on the horizon, and since the wedding I’ll actually have differs drastically from the wedding I envisioned in college, I thought it appropriate to share with the CJS faithful the wedding I dreamt up there.

So, if you’re female, be prepared to be horrified and sit in wonderment at what crazy voodoo spell I put on Lady E to convince her to marry my goofy ass. And if you’re male, be prepared for a fantasy thrill ride putting every wedding you’ve ever been to to shame and sit in jealousy wondering, “Fuck, that’s great. Why didn’t I think of that?” If you’re not married, there’s still time. Feel free to poach any one of these ideas, run them by your lady, and if she says yes to any of them, propose on the spot. Trust me. If a woman agrees to any of the ridiculous bullshit I’ve concocted here, stop your search for a soul mate because you’ve found her. The odds of a woman liking anything I’ve written below hover somewhere between 1,000-1 and 8 zillion-1. In other words, Vegas no longer has these odds on the board. Continue Reading »

Monday’s here, so let’s go to the Confessional. This week we asked you in honor of PrideFest: Who would you go gay for and why? This question usually comes up after several beers, so we hope those of you who sent in were good and liquored up before you sent in your responses. For those of you who didn’t, the Cru Jones Society advises you to drink more. Not only do you get to participate in fun ass ridiculous shit like this, it certainly beats the alternative: Not drinking. Stay tuned at the end for next week’s Confessional topic. Continue Reading »

What happened, dear CJS readers? Did our question cut a little too close to home for everyone? A bit too personal? Or are all of our readers such Lotharios that there are no bad dates to be had among the lot of you? I’m guessing your dates were either so bad you’re ashamed to share them with the worldwide web where it will reside in perpetuity, or they were so painfully banal, you could barely muster up the creative energy required to re-tell the tale.

Whatever. We have 6 hilarious god-awful male/female courtship tales to tell you, so what we lack in volume, we make up for in depth. Next week’s Confessional topic should be much easier to answer and a lot more fun for most of you. One more announcement before we jump into this week’s Confessions.

Remember Food, Sex or Cars? last November and how we promised our winners the chance to write their own CJS column? Well, it’s two and a half months later, and they’re finally ready to go! That’s right, Keithage and R have penned their columns and they’ll debut next week. So look alive for that! But now, onto matters at hand. We asked you last week: In honor of the red and pink Valentine menace, what was your worst date experience of all-time? As always, staff responses ahead, reader confessions below. Enjoy the free schadenfreude. Continue Reading »

Welcome back to the Cru Jones Love Lounge, where honesty is king, and dating columns get shredded. By me. Distributing mass dating and/or relationship advice is a lot like trying to give out tips on how to fix someone’s car. Only by “someone” we of course mean “everyone” when everyone has a different car and no two problems are even alike. It just doesn’t work.

Relationships are like snowflakes – each one individual, each one beautiful at first, each one ending in an annoying puddle on the windshield of your car. And that’s the focus here today. Let’s take a look at how CNN advises you on how not to be a “bad ex.” Continue Reading »

In the pantheon of shitty advice sites, iVillage is just ahead of AskMen.com in terms of sheer stupidity, and just below your local, painfully banal and outdated Dear Abby column in terms of sage wisdom. The difference between iVillage and AskMen (which are sister sites by the way), is that whereas AskMen is moronic, misdirected, sometimes offensive, reductionistic, blowhard, chauvinistic drivel, iVillage seems to at least have its heart in the right place. Sometimes they’ll fire off a colossal miscalculation like this offensive gem we all remember,  but mostly, they seem like good gals.

So, in the spirit of Gregg Easterbrook’s Christmas Creep Watch,  I’m here to poke fun at some of iVillage’s suggested gifts for guys this holiday season. As usual, their heart’s in the right place, and also as usual, this column seems to be written mostly by women who have only seen men from afar. My comments are in italics. Let’s see what Lady Santa has in her sack this year… Continue Reading »

It’s Thursday which means you’re damn close to the weekend. Couple days off from work… a few beers… and confusing the hell out of your lady with your monkeynuts behavior. At least, that’s what the ladies at Cosmo think. They have a number of behaviors that the fellas do which apparently confuses the hell out of them, so they put ‘em in an article, asked a few “experts” to solve these mysteries, and showed off the results on their website for all to see. I realize this ain’t Monday, and that it’s been more than 3 months since I wrote a Love Lounge piece, but hey, sometimes it just feels right. And I’m definitely feelin’ right. And God knows if I spend anymore time thinking about the financial meltdown/the presidential election/Colorado’s bloated ballot/Dakota Fanning re-entering the public consciousness, there’s a good chance my head will explode. I don’t want that. Ergo, let’s make fun of pop psychology! Continue Reading »

Remember when Maxim magazine hit the scene about 10 years ago? I was in high school and my friends and I used to pore over each issue to find the best jokes and the coolest new toys. Maxim was the new definition of cool and made the square pegs at Esquire, GQ, and Men’s Health look even more like the pretentious douche nozzles they were. If you read any of these magazines now, there’s a definite Maxim influence in tone among all of them and it’s because of the late 90s male bible.

Cosmopolitan serves as the female counterpart of Maxim. Elle Woods refers to it as the bible when she brings it to hot ass Ali Larter in jail, and I’ve heard many women say the same thing (whether it’s a direct result of that movie or not is debatable). Given this iconic cultural status, and Maxim’s subsequent demise through three horseshit editors and its current status as second rate website, I thought it important to see what kind of dating advice they were doling out. Maxim is irrelevant while Cosmo still maintains a strong readership despite the ever-declining sales of print magazines. Let’s peek inside and see what they have to say, shall we? Continue Reading »

Welcome back to the Cru Jones Love Lounge. Haven’t had any Rad-related pictures up here in a while, felt like we were past due. E Dagger here to guide you through the dating and relationship minefield. Senor Limon will drop in Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday with his unique perspective on things, and I’ll make another appearance on Thursday with some yet-to-be-determined goodness. In the meantime, it’s time to dissect more advice. Pull up your favorite easy chair, pour yourself a glass of cognac and settle in for another addition of the Cru Jones Love Lounge. (If you’re at the office substitute “easy chair” for “adjustable desk chair;” “cognac” for “mild/shitty coffee;” and “settle in” for “double check for boss passing by office/cubicle.”) Continue Reading »

It’s Monday, which means you’re back at work – or if you’re Lee S. Hart, you’re starting a brand new non-retail job – and pretending to check your email all morning while waiting for the dreary afternoon weekly staff meeting. Mondays are tough, no doubt. But fear not, E Dagger is here to make fun of yet another dating advice column for your amusement and betterment. Want good relationship advice? Ask your significant other. Want to laugh at trite pop psychology thinking it knows you better than you know yourself? Come on in… Continue Reading »