hey, be a man. being a man means many things. i recently took a 65-question "are you a good catch?" quiz from men's health magazine and scored into a healthy 30% percentile -- and that might be a bit generous. you had to answer "yes" or "no" to essential man questions such as "can you row a boat?" "can you fix the fuse in the dark?" "can you chop wood?" "can you make one meal better than anyone else?" "can you unclasp a bra with one hand?" "can you do three pull-ups without struggling?" needless to say, many of these requirements weren't exactly my areas of expertise. there was no "do you sing the hooks to super cheesy love songs at random?" question. otherwise i might have ruined the curve.

aside from establishing james as top tier on this test (he brought the test to our attention, surprise), we found out that the maximum fun could be had by comparing my score against the various girls who took the test. lynn, for example, easily reached first tier status. but she might be a skewed example since she's a michigan girl. and most michigan girls i know are far superior to other girls in terms of rowing boats, fixing fuse boxes, and chopping wood. when queried if she could hang a ceiling light fixture, lynn asked "hardwire?" that's the kind of answer that gets a round of applause from the guys. keep in mind that this is coming from a girl who we had to teach to make spaghetti. michigan girls are a different breed.

if you read over the popular "man rules" that have been around the internet for awhile, you'll touch upon one rule that states: "women who claim they 'love to watch sports' must be treated as spies until they demonstrate knowledge of the game..." it's recently become very cool for women to know sports. guys shamelessly feed this attention grabbing scheme. any time a girl can give you the playoff statistics of jason kidd, or knows more than five football players, she gets an automatic "wow, this chick is cool" nod from the boys. of course, nowadays, a girl saying she likes sports is similar to a guy saying he has a big dick. you gotta see it to believe it.

and many girls fail this "do you know sports" test. they can sit there and provide accurate commentary about asymmetrical sock length and ball player's girlfriends sitting on the sidelines but when it comes down to the actual game itself, they are lost. i have nothing against that. i mean, if you don't understand some (most) of the rules of a sporting event, you can still thoroughly enjoy the experience. i know lots of guys who posture as if they know sports, only to be exposed by a mere "offsides! shaq's offsides! and he's roughing! don't the refs see that?!" comment. members of both sexes pretend to know more about sports than they do. but only girls use it to elevate themselves to a potentially higher dating class. does it work though? um, yes. yes it does.