I recently watched this comedy and was only mildly entertained by it. The more important lesson is that its possible for a shy, nerdy, insecure guy to become confident, social and improve your success with women. So many of the guys who ask me about my coaching programme are infatuated with ONE girl. They miss the point that it is about improving your overall social success with women.

This is one of those few movies like Hitch which can give insecure, lonely or frustrated guys a glimpse of what’s possible. The basic plot of the movie is that Roger, a nerd, played by John Herder from Napoleon Dynamite fame, takes a class with a self-help guru Dr P, played by Billy Bob Thornton. Dr P is a real ass hole and treats all his students with disdain. He has a bad-add enforcer in the form of Lesher, played by the huge Michael Clark Duncan. You can read more detailed reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

What I want to highlight is how stupid this movie ends. Roger basically wins back his girlfriend from Mr P, who turns out to be the biggest liar and a con-man. When you watch a movie like this you have to think about how realistic it is for a character as pathetic as Roger to build enough confidence to do what he does. What I mean is to actually pull it off. This kind of things never happen in the real world. It takes a long time to build up enough muster to challenge an authority figure like Dr P. There are no short cuts and you can throw luck out the window. Fake it till you make it just won’t cut it with women in the long term. If you want to supercharge your social success with women in South Africa, join the South African Seduction Lair and meet guys with more experience. Stop reading books or listening to audio programs from the Internet. Meet guys who can show you what’s possible.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Last weekend I attended the first Fast Break event with Fastdate. This is a weekend away for singles. By the way I detest the word “singles” (it stinks of desperation and I prefer “unmarried”). The idea is simple: a group single people (about 16 men/women) go away for a weekend trip filled with activities. My role was to give a talk on “Dating in the 21st Century” on the Saturday. This talk will shortly be available as an ebook I’m working on called Social or Single.

I decided not to go through on the Friday evening because I was putting the finishing touches on the presentation/talk and instead arrived on the Saturday late morning. Shumba Valley Lodge, where the group was spending the weekend, is a beautiful place. And I highly recommend it. It’s located down the road from the Cradle of Humankind, a very famous World Heritage site in South Africa. This was where things first went wrong as I had prepared my talk for 12 and instead we rushed off to the restaurant The Cradle, that was supposedly closing at 1pm. After the lunch it was suggested we should all rest for a while and my talk would take place at 5pm.

Well it turns out there was some heavy drinking the Friday evening. This type of behaviour is expected but should not be encouraged. People attended this event for a reason: meeting people from the opposite sex and see if there is chemistry. When the organisers are drinking more than the guests, it’s alarming. One of my beliefs is that alcohol abuse comes from deep embarrassment, anger with the world and frustration with your circumstances. How do I know this? My own dad has been an alcoholic most of his life and he is a very bitter and angry man. So this drinking binge may seem acceptable under the circumstances when in fact it does not help anyone overcome fears or social anxiety - which could be seen as the hidden purpose of these singles weekends.

When 5pm arrived half the people where missing or had left including the organisers. They seemed the least interested in what I had to say to their guests who had paid good money to attend this event. And so I was on the verge of leaving when one of the guys persuaded me to stay and give me talk informally. I had my laptop and was planning a presentation but maybe this impromptu speech was better. I shared my ideas with them on what I see as the major challenges in the 21st century in dating and how to improve their success.

Anyway I stayed the evening and we later on had dinner. There was an astronomer who entertained us with informative discussion on the stars, the planets and funny anecdotes. And so we did a bit of star gazing through his telescope. (note to self - buy one of those gadgets) In general the people were good company and I’m sure I’ve made some business contacts with the guys. The one woman I was interested in left earlier on the Saturday.

My overall my impression of these Fastdate events are bad. They are poorly organised. The organised are disinterested in really helping people connect. And they are more interested in their own dating and relations or lack thereof. So be cautioned and avoid them. Instead I recommend you explore SMARTdate, which has much more integrity in their events and services they render.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Just came back from watching the awesome Bourne Ultimatum. Matt Damon really kicks some solid ass in this film like he did in the previous ones. Bourne is tortured by memory loss and is on a mission to find out where it all began.

This got me think about Jason Bourne vs James Bond as a spy but more so as a male role model. It’s been said other than their initials they do not have much in common. Jason Bourne is edgy, vulnerable and tortured while James Bond is smooth, droll, conscience-free. Bourne is stalked by the loss of his girlfriend in the Bourne Supremacy while James Bond is the ultimate player and womaniser. For a brief moment it seemed like Bourne was going to hook-up with Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). But he sent her on her on way as he continued to go for broke trying to find out his origins.

In terms of raw energy Jason Bourne is the more pragmatic of the two spies. James Bond relies so much on gadgets to accomplish what he needs to do. I do accept that Daniel Craig is likely the only actor to play Bond that could be superior in ass kicking than Matt Damon’s Bourne. So while James Bond relies on his charm, Bourne could be enormously attractive to women because of his single minded conviction while showing compassion when you least expect it.

Popularity: 17% [?]

This book is a must read for any man living in the world today. And for any mother who wants to know what to do with her son, most especially if she is raising him as a single mother. This strikes a real cord with me because I grew up with a single mother ? and I lacked a strong male role model for most of my teenager years. And the result? A lot of confusion, a lot of self-doubt and this with a combination of other factors led directly to a nervous breakdown when I hit 25. You could say that I was never prepared to deal with the harsh reality of the adult world or you could say that I was to immature and the pace of my life was so fast I could not acclimatise quickly enough.

Yes, I have a father and we have not been close for most of my of my life especially after he remarried. Now his 2nd wide has passed away 8 years ago and my half-brother is almost 21. There is a divide that is deep and sometimes painful. And since I grew up with my mother I have a much closer relationship to her and my 19 year old half-sister. How have I dealt with this in the past? With anger, with frustration for being deprived from growing up in a ?normal? family unit. This led to more self-loathing then anything else so I turned outward to find my own role models, especially masculine, in the great books of history. I studied the classics from the West and the East. And I eventually reached a point where the simplest advice turned out to best for me: accept everything as it is. Thank God I never spent years of therapy trying to figure this out, which in retrospect seems like the kind of common sense my mother always claimed I didn’t have when I was a teenager.

Anyway Iron John is a mythical story of a boy’s journey with the Wild Man and his separation from his mother and his father. The basic element that we find missing in the modern world is that of male initiation. Now living in South Africa I know all about male initiation, especially among the Xhosa people. There has been growing resistance from the government to close down these initiation schools because of the lack of medical expertise where the boys end up suffering injuries. Could it be that more and more of the ancient knowledge or know-how of how to best conduct these rituals have been lost? I think we have reached a critical point, post the feminism revolution, the decline of fatherhood, and the rise of single parent (mother) families, which causes a severe imbalance in the male/female polarity that is needed. When the Yin/Yang balance is distorted to this extent we find that weak men are all that’s left.

There is so many analogies from this book, which has been brought to my attention via other sources, most notably the seduction community, because is an attempt to restore the balance. How many times have you observed in a Hollywood film, a sitcom, or a cartoon the idiot man with his intelligent wife/girlfriend who point him in the right direction. How many times have you met men, who are unable to articulate themselves, who do not live with a passion or a purpose. They become like zombies living lives of quit desperation. How can the modern man meet the wild man inside him? He can push himself to do something of extraordinary courage and learn from it. Maybe climb Kilimanjaro or run the Comrades or stop denying your father, your masculine, because you need to draw from there the energy that can sustain you through your life. This book is an excellent big picture of the current problem men are facing and for specific help on how to overcome these problems I highly recommend The Way Of The Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Woman, Work, and Sexual Desire

If you live in South Africa you should purchase Iron John by Robert Bly from Kalahari.net

Popularity: 18% [?]

The Triangle is a miniseries originally broadcast on the Sci-Fi channel and now available on DVD. I rented the DVD over this weekend because it’s about 255 minutes of running time broken into 3 episodes. This is a very original take on the Bermuda Triangle and time travel discrepancies.

You will enjoy this DVD if you enjoy other current science fiction series like The 4400 or Heroes. The producers include Bryan Singer, director of first two X-Men films and Superman Returns as well as Dean Devlin, producer of Stargate and Independence Day. The cast is exceptional with Eric Stoltz, Sam Neill, Lou Diamond Phillips, Catherine Bell, Bruce Davidson (twice in X-Men as Senator Robert Kelly), and Michael E. Rodgers. There is also two South African actors in the series with brief roles: Marius Weyers, still with a thick South African accent after all these years and Hakeem Kae-Kazim, originally from Nigeria but primarily based in South Africa. I’ve met Hakeem a few times and he has awesome energy about him.

The plot is simple - it seems. A very rich shipping magnate Eric Benirall (Sam Neill) recruits a group of misfits that include a journalist for a tabloid, a deep ocean resource engineer, a man with genuine psychic abilities and Meteorology professor. They band together in desperate times as they find weird coincidences or as Freud called them uncanny happenings. On the surface it seems straightforward, Benirall’s company controls about 1/5th of all ships on the sea at any given time through his cargo company and has lost 6 ships in a short space of time. Later on more deeper reasons emerge as it turns out Benirall lost a brother in the Bermuda Triangle. Each one of the main cast have personal circumstances which adds depth to their characters. The navy it turns out is building a huge machine to counter the effects of the infamous Philadelphia Experiment, in which a ship allegedly disappeared in a scientific experiment in 1943. It has been an integral part of many conspiracy theories over the decades.

In summary this is a great action packed, sci-fi thriller. It’s also reminiscent of the X-Files in many ways and pays homage to mixing hard core scientists, with sceptics, with soothsayers. This is a highly recommended DVD to all those who enjoy suspense, unusual events mixed with great science fiction and excellent performances by the cast. Just a final note - I was really chuffed this mini series was shoot mostly in Cape Town.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Review of Men Are Clams, Woman Are Crowbars by Dr David Clarke, Ph.D.

When I picked up this book I wanted to learn more about these differences between men and women that I find fascinating in a never ending sort of way. And the analogy works well in the book explaining how men and women communicate and deal with stress in their relationships. What I did not expect was the typical “holier than though” attitude so typical of conservative Christian writers. And this spoils a book with some good practical advice. Overall this book must be aimed at a very small market of people and because of the bias of the author may be unappealing to everyone else. The last thing you want in a self-help book is a preaching tone.

As Dr John Demartini says, the moment you become infatuated with a person or subject yourself to an authority figure e.g. The Pope or Jesus Christ you import their values onto your own and this becomes a miserable failure.

The other disappointing thing about this book is that it almost exclusively focussed on couples in a marriage. And I don’t know if this Christian psychologist, as David Clarke, calls himself, lives in the real world. Expecting people to stay married, forever and ever. Dynamics in the world has changed, so there are a lot more unmarried people then ever before. People who could be married, but don’t for very valid and practical reasons. I also agree with the views of the radical American talk radio DJ, Tom Leykis, there is no benefit for a man, as it stands legally getting married. If you are curious just do a search for “Leykis 101” and you will get an education in manhood you may have missed out on.

This book is written mostly for women, and offers very little help for men. And I suppose that’s always been the target market of the author. Even as a man, I really do not appreciate his tone, talking down, toward men. So this author is what they call pussy whipped.

• You can purchase Men are Clams, Women are Crowbars from Take2

Popularity: 14% [?]

The first chapter of Make Every Man Want You: How to be so damn irresistible you’ll barely keep from dating yourself, is a revised edition of a previous ebook by Marie Forleo. The book title alone is more irresistible then most books of this nature.and suggests a very upbeat author. Yes, Marie happens to be a life coach, dance instructor and choreographer for MTV, VH1 and so forth.

Her writing style is really sharp, crystal clear, to the point, no B.S. that I wish more self-help authors would embrace. Don’t go around the long (wrong) way when you can cut through the forest and get to the other side quicker, and with more learning.

The first chapter, Irresistibility 101, reads like sage advice from the Tao Te Ching. Most adults, men and women, seem to loose the child-like-ness when we grow up. And being like a child is sometimes irresistible. Just think about how some children can just get what they want, or how they can get out of trouble by being cute, cuddly and of course irresistible. There is a lesson here to be learned. Let go and be in the now is the sage advice also found in Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now.

One thing I like about Marie is how direct she is in her advice. And one thing I’ve heard her say in a previous interview and I fully agree with, and emphasise in my own discussions of relationships is this: You are likely operating on false information. For me one of the greatest sources of dating/relationship problems stems from divorced parents. In my own situation my mother and father divorced when I was maybe two years old. My dad remarried and my mother had a long term relationship. My dad’s 2nd wife passed away and his been alone since; while my mother’s long term relationship ended when she got pregnant with my sister. After years of frustration I just realised these two are NOT good role models for how to create and maintain, sustain a healthy, loving and fun long term relationship with a woman.

The “Time-Tested Truths” from Chapter 3 almost read like the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism. Just kidding they are solid and I’m listing them here to let them speak for themselves:

1. A Relationship Will Not Save You
2. Relationships Are Spiritual Opportunities, Not a Needs Exchange
3. Life Is Now: This Is It!
4. Men Are As-Is Merchandise or Love ‘Em or Leave ‘Em, Baby!
5. If You Want Guarantees In Love, You Don’t Want Love

In the next chapter one of the most honest, and funniest lines I’ve ever read in a book like this, and said by a woman: “Here’s a tip: If you think you look fat in a particular outfit, you probably do. This whole chapter is the perfect blue print for a woman to know what NOT to do. And Marie’s chapter titles are as spunky and funny as the book title.

All in all there are plenty of gems in this book. And will become my bible for advice to the female species So many books go on and on without getting to the point. Marie just knows how to make the point with enough irresistibility you can’t put this book down once you start reading it. I have female friend, Leonora or Leo for short who does all these things without knowing it. She is a magnet for irresistible attention from men. And has some amazing girlfriends. So unlike those really attractive women who are hated by others, Leo is able to project her irresistible nature to the world. And therefore draws constant attention which she directs which ever way suits her best. And the outcome or result? Well happiness or rather inner joy. Because I learned a while ago that happiness is what you expect other people to “give” you but joy is what you have inside. And nobody can take that away from you.

Popularity: 10% [?]