As much as I try to fight it, the future just gets closer and closer. For some that means lots of excitement but for me it means weddings. Many, many weddings. Look, I gave it my all, I really did, but there’s simply no getting around it anymore. I’ve sent in my RSVPs, tried on my suit (it needs to be altered) and spent some time online perusing the registries of the couples who will be tying their knots this summer. As I browsed these lists of china, glasses, cutlery and other assorted and overpriced crap, I was suddenly filled with tremendous anxiety. What is an appropriate gift for my friend of twenty-three years? What about a friend of five years to whom I professionally owe a great deal? Exactly how many champagne flutes make a set? Why would anyone want a dish they can’t ever use for fear of breaking it?

Midnight screenings of blockbusters are a weird phenomena, if not for the dedicated and exorbitant fan frenzy that abruptly appears as every person aged 17-35 sidles out of the woodworks to buy tickets weeks ahead of time, edging out the majority of the general population who were too slow punching in their credit card numbers online, but for the somewhat insane efforts put into being the first in line for the theater of said blockbuster film. This couldn’t be more true for the latest installment in the Batman series “The Dark Knight.” Having purchased my ticket two weeks in advance from Fandango, I confess that I am one of the eager beavers whose love for ‘the Batman’ is nearly unmatched thus constituting attendance at the first possible showing; it would not have been tolerable to see it at any other time.  When it comes to Batman, I always find myself becoming irrationally determined to be at the theater before everyone else with my pre-paid ticket. Luckily for me, my roommate Lucy and friend Scott were obsessive equals when it came to seeing this film. Days of suspense finally came to a halt, and on July 17 we trotted a few blocks from our apartment to the theater, skipping giddily and engaging in Batman trivia.

As the staff here at Steve’s Word progresses from being a group of fun-loving, socially jilted men in their mid-twenties to fun-loving, socially jilted men in their early-late-twenties our concerns have shifted a bit. All of our friends are either married or are getting married. Thankfully, none of us are yet, but the topic is constantly in our realm of existence and it needs to be mocked. I’ve put together a list of the ten worst ways you can propose to your sweetheart because, if nothing else, we’re here to help.

I was at a movie the other day when a woman sat down next to me five minutes before the film ended. Five minutes. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she then started talking. To me. She leaned in close to me and in a loud whisper asked me how long ago it had started. So I told her, “an hour and forty-five minutes ago” barely able to hide my disgust and anger. She could only muster a weak “Oh” in return and then I went in for the kill. “Yes,” I told her, “I hope you enjoy the end credits.” Then she told me I was a rude young man and the guy behind me asked me to quiet down. And I spent the last five minutes of the movie wondering why there aren’t enough 19 year-old kids to monitor the halls so people can’t just wander in and out of theaters at their leisure.

Editors Note: This is a real and actual letter that Jeff wrote out of anger to the Health Valley corporation. We all found it so hilarious that we thought it would be a great way to begin “The Week of Jeff”. Enjoy.

Dear Health Valley,

I have one question for you. Do you feel guilty when you label a box you’ve filled with mostly rice-crispies with a few measly bits of oats, “granola?” Well, I for one feel pretty damned duped by your marketing ploy.

Don’t ever say I don’t go all out for you. Believe it or not, I gave up a large portion of my Saturday night so that I could see Sex and the City in a theater full of women. Usually, I hate seeing a movie in its opening weekend; actually I have a lot of problems just seeing a movie at all these days, but that’s for another time. The truth is, Sex and the City had to be seen in a jam-packed theater, because the movie itself is only part of the fact that this is one of the most important events to ever happen to all of NYC’s female population.

I wish that I had been able to get tickets to a sold out show in a gigantic theater, like at the AMC Theater in Times Square for example, but that didn’t happen, by the time I got around to buying my tickets, every Friday night show in Manhattan was sold out. I really wanted to see the throngs myself, be able to bear witness to the masses that came out to see this. You see, I was much more interested in seeing how the women who love the show and can’t wait to see the movie would react to it than to the film itself. In other words, I was hoping people would talk all the way through it because I just had to know what they thought. But instead, I ended up at an early Saturday night show at BAM in the Ft. Greene area of Brooklyn. I thought this would ruin my experience, since SATC is so inherently Manhattan-centric and one doesn’t generally think of BK as the land of Manolos and Cosmos. And that’s where I had a major realization.

Now that I’m in my mid-late to late twenties, it seems that everyone around me wants to be very adult. I’m not just talking about not drinking away a Sunday starting at noon and I’m not just talking about all my buddies being engaged and getting hitched before the calendar year is up, though both of those things are certainly true. Well, maybe I am talking about the whole wedding thing, but not in that way, and not because I’m going to three consecutive weddings next August and feel as though that month has been utterly stolen from me. Rather, now that people consider themselves adults and they are getting married, there have to be a lot of parties, extra to the wedding. Lots of engagement parties, announcements, showers, that sort of thing. These parties are very formal affairs and, in accordance with being adult, all those parties require invitations, which require RSVPs, those social prison sentences disguised as a guarantee of attendance.

My ten-year high school reunion is coming up and I can’t wrap my head around it. Maybe that’s because I don’t want to grow up and maybe that’s because I simply can’t grow up. Either way, in preparation for making my final decision to attend or not, I’ve decided to take stock of what I’ve done with the last ten years, what I’ve done with, what is ostensibly, my life. Ten years isn’t a very long time in the grand scheme of things, but it is a long time to waste and so I will proceed to cull from the past decade everything that I might use as ammunition to validate my life to a bunch of people I don’t really care about that much. Or that’s what I keep telling myself.

It’s tough trying to navigate the harsh winter that is the dating scene in whatever city you live in. And since we here at Steve’s Word are nothing if not helpful, we’ve put together a little list of some dating dealbreakers. These are some habits, attributes, or actions that should let you know that maybe it’s not such a good idea to approach that hot stranger on the subway or that the guy or gal you’ve been casually seeing isn’t worth your time. Because we all know how busy and important you are.

Porn stars have been doing it forever. So have strippers. It’s a requirement for the faux-amateur sluts on the internet. But, now that pop starlets and movie ingénues have taken to giving their nether regions the old Yul Brenner treatment, I can stay silent no more. Someone must stand up and speak in the name of pubic hair and it seems that person must be me. I take my mantle with pride as I charge, ahem, into the breach.