The Style Section

I care not a whit about fashion, but "Style" is my favorite section of the Sunday "New York Times."

There's a ridiculous article in this week's paper about two women who invented a drumming workout. What they obviously do best is network and get publicity. I know this is true because there's a mention of a man who hounded me to hype him in my newsletter and deleted his e-mail address in a huff when I wouldn't. There are hustlers and there are...

Hustling. Isn't that how you get a relationship? By kissing a bunch of frogs?

That's why I read the "Style" section. For the weddings.

And "Modern Love."

Every week someone tells a relationship story. That's "Modern Love." And sometimes it's about parents and sometimes it's a bad writer but usually, there are some nuggets you can connect with. This week, the story's about dating on vacation.

Long time readers will know that I love Dido's "Life For Rent" album. I know, I know, she's cute and Eminem utilized "Thank You" from her first album for his hit "Stan" and ultimately her song got heavy rotation on MTV and I saw the video, but it slid right off of me. Then I heard "White Flag" on the radio in my mother's car, when I was home in Connecticut cleaning my stuff out of the family home before she moved into an apartment. I was enraptured. When I got back to California, I searched the house for the CD, found it, played it, and loved it. My favorite song is "Sand In My Shoes."

"Two weeks away feels like the whole world should have changed
But I'm home now
And things still look the same"

Isn't that amazing. You leave for weeks, you get home and you ask your friends what you've missed...NOTHING!

"Tomorrow's back to work and down to sanity
Should run a bath and then clear up the mess I made before I left here
Try to remind myself that I was happy here
Before I knew that I could get on the plane and fly away"

Isn't it amazing how you rush to leave and then you get home and it's exactly how you left it? You sigh, you thought your apartment would magically be clean!

Anyway, Dido laments leaving her vacation paramour behind, but in today's "Modern Love," Eve Fairbanks likes exactly this. The fact that vacation relationships are brief. And her writing is far from spectacular, until she nails it...

"The makers of Persian rugs know that an imperfection makes a beautiful carpet more winsome. We are drawn to cracks in a wall, the cake with the slight droop, because these are what make something - or someone - individual. We indulge our natural attraction to imperfection more freely on vacation."

Eureka! That's it! You're lying at home, mad that you're too fat or your nose is crooked or your hair is unmanageable, but that's exactly what we love you for, your imperfections. I'm not saying you should not try to look you best, but that you should accept that not everyone will love you, but those who do will because of all the quirks that make you you. Don't change them, don't fix them, embrace them!

But even though I thought Ms. Fairbanks nailed it, I wasn't planning on opening the lid of my laptop and firing off a missive. No, it wasn't until I got to the story of Heather Zeller's wedding that I was inspired.

You see she works for Pandora. She's a senior manager of sales development at the company. And I hate Pandora, and isn't it interesting how it's going to be devastated by Apple's new service, hell, Pandora's stock already cratered upon last week's news, but most people believe a combination of music and tech would get you laid.

It appears not.

Oh, believe me, in the old days the rock life was a guarantee of sex. And it's still a social business. But you bring yourself everywhere. You won't get laid at an orgy if you're uptight about removing your clothes and even if you're smart, attractive and seen in the right places that does not mean you'll have a satisfying relationship, not if you don't know how.

Maybe you're too picky. Maybe you're barking up the wrong tree, looking for perfection. Heather Zeller looks attractive in the photo, but I don't know her, she could be a first class bitch. Or a bit of a mouse.

But she got married last night. This Cornell graduate's dream came true at the cusp of her eligibility, she's 39, she hadn't had a relationship in a decade, it's hard to do work and love. And how did this all happen?

A MATCHMAKER!

You've watched that TV show, right? With Patti Stanger, "The Millionaire Matchmaker"? It's great fun. Because she's so ridiculous and so are the daters. She's brassy and offensive but her clients are caught up in a dreamland, looking for something that doesn't exist.

But Heather Zeller was open, and she found what she was looking for. Hell, she refinanced her mortgage to pay for the matchmaker's services! That's how bad she wanted it. Kind of like how you want a music career.

Heather Zeller bought a ticket and went to the show. And the resulting story is intriguing because it's honest, it's real life, it's not boastful like a rap lyric or filled with platitudes or falsehoods like so many pop lyrics. That's real life. You're not perfect, you feel inadequate in a world where everybody keeps telling you how great they are, you're looking for a way to make it through, a thread you can follow.

You used to get tips in records. Hell, I learned a lot about relationships from Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne.

Now you're better off cracking the pages of the "Style" section. The women's sports pages.

But men can read 'em too!

"Heather Zeller/Simon Olenick": http://nyti.ms/P2rXBy

"Romance, the Quirky Souvenir": http://nyti.ms/Q36RET

"Sand In My Shoes": http://bit.ly/ZSoh7


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