The Golden Ticket: The Search for the Perfect Woman
Let’s be clear on this: the guys involved with Barstool Sports like women. A lot. A whole heck of a lot.
Last week the ‘Stool’s first annual March Madness Chick Contest set off a mini online protest which declared that the paper is sexist. (If you missed it don’t feel bad; you’re not alone.) In the words of the great Carl Spackler, “I have to laugh.” First, the Chick Contest brackets are populated by actresses, models and TV reality sluts. Am I really supposed to feel guilty for ogling a picture of swimsuit model (and West bracket #3 seed) Ali Landry modeling a swimsuit? That’s how the woman pays her bills fercryinoutloud.
Second, this is the same mentality that pressured most of the big chain stores into taking men’s magazines like Maxim and FHM off their shelves. Meanwhile, I can’t buy a gallon of milk without Cosmo’s 500th consecutive “Bigger Orgasms and Smaller Thighs Issue” staring me and my kids in the face. (Incidentally, is any publication on Earth more full of crap than Cosmo? I like to peruse it once in a while because it’s the enemy code book, and how is it that everyone they interview in that rag is a 24 year-old flight attendant named Gabrielle? Where are the quotes from “Dottie, age 68, a school cafeteria worker”? But I digress.)
Obviously there’s a difference between eyeballing pictures of the insanely good-looking women in the Chick Contest and relating to real women. Most guys figure that out at about age 15. And sometime after that you realize that just because a woman is hot enough to melt your face, she’s not necessarily going to make you happy. Does Brad Pitt look at all happy shuffling along after Angelina Jolie (#1 seed, East bracket) and lugging her kids around in some Third World hellhole? No way. He looks like a guy holding dresses outside the changing room in some boutique, just wanting his misery to end.
Golf legend Lee Trevino once made possibly the most brilliant statement ever. He was having beers at the 19th hole when one of his buddies pointed out a woman at the bar who was at least a 91/2. So Trevino said, “You know what’s twisted? Somewhere out there, there’s a guy who’s sick of her.”
Trevino was right. Life is all about the search for someone you won’t get sick of. And like the white “Hitch,“ I’m going to explain how you do it. How would I know? Because I’m a guy with almost no traits a woman would find desirable in a husband, but still I’ve been married longer than Tim Wakefield’s been a Red Sox. That would be enough to qualify me as an expert witness in a court of law.
As Trevino and I know, and Pitt is finding out the hard way, looks count for a lot, but finding the right woman is all about looking for the Total Package. The Full Complement. The Consummate Professional. You need to find the Golden Ticket.
The Golden Ticket is the woman that’s going to throw satisfaction at you from so many different directions, you won’t know what hit you. If the Golden Ticket was a ballplayer, she’d be Albert Pujols, a Five-Tool Player.
In order to spot the Golden Ticket, you have to listen up. She’s the one in your office who says things like “Monday night is my boyfriend’s poker night” without a trace of bitterness in her voice. The Golden Ticket is the one who gives her husband a golf trip for his birthday. I once knew a legal secretary whose office attire was miniskirts and fishnet stockings who told me how she liked to bake bread from scratch for her husband. When she left the room, the whole office sat there in stunned silence. Of course, these are bad examples because the women are all taken, but you get the idea. Here are some clues to help you find one for yourself:
The Golden Ticket Passes All Your Pop Culture Tests. Put your potential Golden Ticket through rigorous testing without her knowledge by exposing her to your favorite movies, music and TV. If she doesn’t have the same tastes as you, plan your exit strategy. My benchmarks were “This is Spinal Tap” and the original “The Producers.” If my then-girlfriend didn‘t think they were funny, I would have broken it off with her. Later, without checking with me, she added “Patton” and “The Godfather” to her video collection. The next day, I went ring shopping.
The Golden Ticket Is Interested in Your Interests. TV sports babe Leann Tweeden (#3, East Bracket) likes to say that guys like hanging out with her because she knows a lot about sports. Wrong. Guys like her because she’s hotter than a Dallas sidewalk. No guy needs a woman to be Chris Berman, just to have a healthy respect for the fact that he likes what he likes. (At 7AM the morning after our wedding, I woke up and turned on the Ryder Cup, with my wife’s blessing.) If they know most of the Red Sox roster, that’s a bonus. But the first time she thinks it’s stupid that you spend two full days filling out your NCAA brackets, you should bail.
The Golden Ticket Has Interests That Don’t Involve You. This is critical. It can be anything; community theater, taking a class, teaching a class, Irish step dancing, anything short of Fetish Night at Man Ray. If she’s not involved in her own interests, you’ll never get out of the house on your own without slipping her a Mickey.
The Golden Ticket Understands When You Test the Leash. Every once in a while a guy has to stay out too late or drink too much just see how much irresponsibility he can get away with. It’s like a dog who’s chained to a tree; he’s got to run across the yard until the leash chokes him, just to know how far it‘ll go. Most recently, my leash stretched far enough to pull off the Barstool March Madness party and a St. Patrick’s Day bender on consecutive days without so much as a discouraging word. (Thanks for that, my Irish rose.)
The Golden Ticket is Compatible With You in the Sack. I won’t get into your personal life except to say that sex is like vanilla ice cream: it‘s good all by itself. Everybody likes vanilla. And most people like other flavors too. Or you can put toppings on it to make it better. But if you like butterscotch and chocolate jimmies and she wants nacho cheese and fiberglass insulation, I’d consider dating others.
The Golden Ticket Will Change You a Little Bit. Not a massive overhaul, just enough to bring you into the civilized world. Everyone knows at least one guy who married a shrill, unloving shrew who proceeded to wear his penis on a chain around her neck. Not that. But there’s no way I wanted to go through life like I did with my roommates; entire weeks spent without toilet paper and so much hair in the shower that the drain looked like William Shatner’s toupee.
The last one is self-explanatory. The Golden Ticket Likes the Fact That You Read a Bi-Weekly Sports Paper That Features Pictures of Scantily Clad Hot Chicks. Happy hunting.