By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Aug 19, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET  I am a proud Kentuckian.
Proud to be from my beautiful state.
Proud mostly of my people—my fellow Kentuckians.
Who are some of the kindest, wisest, plain-talking, commonsensical, and just downright decent human beings you could ever hope to meet.
One shining example, if you please:
From The Huffington Post:
Whenever Stephen Colbert debuts one of his “People Who Are Destroying America”segments, you know you’re about to meet someone wonderful. It’s the brilliance of “The Colbert Report” that anything labelled as horrible or destructive is actually something that restores your faith in humanity.
Wednesday’s subject of Colbert’s fake ire was no exception. In fact, the story of Mayor Johnny Cummings of Vicco, Ky. and the people of his town is so heartwarming you might want to plan a visit there. If you recall, Vicco made headlines in January for being one of the smallest towns in America to pass a non-discrimination law. Naturally, this development sent chills down the spine of “Stephen Colbert”… not to be confused with Stephen Colbert.
While the segment offers plenty of laughs, we challenge you to watch the last moment without tearing up a little bit.
By Jason Atkinson, on Wed Aug 14, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET
By RP Staff, on Tue Aug 13, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET From World News Views:
 Matchmaker Café, a pop-up cart at the plaza and beer garden outside upscale hotel Andaz Wall Street, has been serving coffee — and connecting couples — since launching two weeks ago.
The shop is an outpost for longtime New York City matchmaker Nancy Slotnick’s virtual concierge dating service of the same name, which she started in November.
“We’re really happy to have an actual spot for people to meet,” Slotnick said.
“We’re trying to help harness that serendipity that naturally happens between two people — and maybe give it a little bit of a push.”
The cafe, which serves coffee from Brooklyn Roasting Company, is part of the city’s new effort to energize the publicly owned private spaces — known as POPs — that run along Water Street. The program, called Water Street Pops!, includes a variety of activities and events through Labor Day, to help reinvigorate the Sandy-hit neighborhood.
At the cafe, as matchmaker-baristas serve up coffee they also try to find out if the customer is single.
“Since we have a huge sign that says Matchmaker Café, people usually ask about it, but sometimes we just let them know what we’re all about,” Slotnick said.
“The idea is to connect local people with each other, get them offline and actually meeting, even if it’s for a quick 20-minute coffee.”
If single customers are interested, Slotnick takes their picture, chats about their dating life and uploads them into her database of New York City singles.
The single guy or gal can then look through the database of photos on Slotnick’s iPad of other people who stopped by the pop-up cafe, to see if anyone piques his or her interest. If so, Slotnick or one of her matchmakers will make the connection between the potential couple.
For this week, making a call to potential dates is still free, but starting next week Slotnick will charge $5 for three calls and $10 for 10 calls. She also offers longer dating advice sessions and subscriptions to her online dating site, which has more than 5,000 members.
New customer Kathleen Christatos, 27, who stopped by the pop-up recently, said she was excited to get offline with dating, and have Slotnick guide her through the process.
“This just feels simple,” said Christatos as Slotnick emailed several young men from the cafe, whom Christatos chose by perusing the database on Slotnick’s iPad. “It makes it feel a little easier and personal.”
The pop-up is a continuation of Drip Café, an Upper West Side coffee shop Slotnick launched in 1996 which was devoted to helping people find relationships during its nine-year run.
At Drip, customers could spend time flipping through binders of hand-written dating profiles, and then Slotnick would help schedule a date at the cafe.
Slotnick, who was featured on “Oprah” thanks to her cafe and dating book, “Turn Your Cablight On,” said hundreds of marriages came out of her Drip days.
Since launching Matchmaker Café’s pop-up, Slotnick said she has collected about 30 profiles and set up a handful of dates.
“We’d like to make this permanent, and have this in neighborhoods across the city,” Slotnick said. “I think the idea of a cafe is [a] very friendly, inviting place — a regular hangout where you can let your guard down, and maybe be open to something more.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Aug 8, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET The paradoxes of our closest friendships.
Friendships are a delicate thing. More important than money, title, and prestige…at least we say that it is. Of course we don’t do as good a job of living as though close friendships were more im…portant than the fleeting worldly things we chase each day. But they are. And we eventually come to realize this, though usually much later in life than we want to admit.
And close friendships are, after all, worldly things, too. But they are much harder to make sense of, figure out, plan for, or predict than other worldly things. We don’t collect them like objects and categorize them into neat and sensible patterns.
Psychologists and sociologists have tried to find common traits we have with our closest friends and they have had some success at intellectually explaining aspects of the friendship process. But we still understand the whys and hows of friendship less than we do most other important matters of our daily life.
We can talk about our closest friends in generalities much easier than specifics. They touch something sacred in us that is uncomfortable to talk about. Maybe they see us as we really are. And see us as we want to be. And see us as we have been. And accept—perhaps even celebrate– all three.
Surely there is something transactional about our closest friendships. But try to describe it in 3 sentences. Or 33 sentences. Tough.
And so….and so….and so… I suppose our closest friendships– like the other most valuable things in our lives tend also to be– are better to be savored than rationalized. Better to be appreciated than analyzed into a pseudo-scientific formula. Better to be enjoyed more than explained.
I mention this because I was taken aback moments ago by the beautiful background in the Facebook profile of the wife of probably my dearest friend in this life. If I died tomorrow and had to fill out a form for the afterlife summarizing my life here, under “Name of Best Friend” I would probably write in John Bell.
John Bell and I have the same first name and a lot of quirky personal traits in common. But on paper we’d be hard pressed to make the second round in a Friendship Match.com System. John Bell doesn’t care much for politics and didn’t go to law or business school. He’s a licensed social worker and a darned good one along with many other talents and gifts –most of which deviate from mine. He doesn’t love to write and doesn’t care for public speaking. We like some of the same books and movies and music…but only a few.
In the picture above, John Bell is captured with a full beard standing in front of a glorious background in Patagonia, Chile where he went mountain climbing for several weeks last summer. John Bell knows me well enough to never bother to invite me on his annual mountain climbing treks. He knows me better than that. I don’t know what I was doing while John Bell was scaling mountain tops in Chile…but I can assure you it involved air conditioning, wifi, a laptop and nearby coffee shops. If I discussed Chile at all during those couple of weeks last summer it was the political economy of the country and pointing out how Chile is an example of free market principles flourishing in South America. Mountain climbing was not part of my conversations. I can’t even grow a full beard. Only small patches. John Bell and I are different like that too.
John showed me a few pictures from his Chile trip and I was awed. I showed him the chapter I wrote for a book recently and suspect he read it. He said he did and liked it–and I believe whatever he tells me. But those avocational interests in our lives aren’t what bind us together as friends either–any more than our vocational interests.
We met in high school and went through adolescence together…holding on to each other when our worlds were turning upside down and helping each other realize that neither was crazy. We were just teenagers. And we got through our 20s as friends. And 30s and 40s and soon both of us will be 50. And in all that time we hardly ever have discussed the worlds we work in or our most time consuming avocations, like mountain-climbing and politics.
We mostly talk about real stuff that goes deep. “How you doin’?” means much more coming from a close friend than a colleague at work. Answering that question alone may take an hour or more. And doesn’t leave time for the less substantial stuff like revenue projections or new client growth or even discussing where we are planning our next family vacation. That stuff just doesn’t seem that important by comparison. And not nearly as interesting as what we do discuss when we talk for a few moments here and a few moments there each week or two in our busy lives. But it’s talk that matters and is honest and inarticulate and from the heart and the gut– rather than fact-filled and goal oriented. It is subjective and personal and without an agenda or “action items.” It’s much more than words to communicate a task or simply information. Probably just the opposite, if there is such a thing.
And then we turn away from each other– after a brief hug—and return to our very different lives. But we keep coming back to that sacred place we have in common–called friendship.
By RP Staff, on Tue Aug 6, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET From Glamour magazine:
When I heard there was a pop-up cafe in NYC intended to serve up great coffee and matchmaking services, it was obviously my responsibility as your dutiful dating blogger to check it out and report back. (Lindy requested I bring back a round of blonds, as in a coffee and a man.)
Here’s a little background: Nancy Slotnick, the mastermind behind the pop-up, is a life coach who specializes in dating and marriage issues. Back in the late ’90s, before online dating was the Thing with a capital T it is today, she founded a dating cafe called Drip on the Upper West Side of NYC. Now, she’s launched a matchmaking site on Facebook called Matchmaker Café; hence, the pop-up shop of the same name (serving Brooklyn Roasting Company coffee, yum).
Last night I was meeting some friends in the neighborhood, so it seemed like the perfect time to drop by. Unfortunately Nancy was out of town, but the two ladies working the coffee stand were delightful to chat with and might be my new best friends. (CALL ME, YOU GUYS!) They set up a profile for me right then and there, snapping some pics on their iPad and entering my basic information. While it’s a little weird to be posing for a profile pic in the middle of a crowded beer garden (the pop-up cafe is sort of in the middle of one), it totally helps that the girls were all like, “You’re beautiful!” and encouraging and helpfully shouted out “This is for professional research, people!” when I mentioned I was kind of embarrassed to be doing this in public.
Now I’m tasked with searching through the database of profiles they’ve collected, and the team said they’d definitely want to follow up to help me set up an awesome date. The idea of the Matchmaker Café is to get people offline and onto real dates, so hopefully you’ll be hearing about that in the future. In the meantime, if you’re in NYC you should totally stop by for fun! It combined all my great loves: delicious iced coffee, potentially getting dates, and oversharing my entire life story with strangers.
Has anyone else checked this place out? Would you? It’s outside of the Andazs hotel on Wall Street, if you’re interested!
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jul 31, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET  How to be special. And be able to prove it.
I just realized, according to a popular idiom, that are very few individuals out there who can be considered special.
How did I come to this inevitable conclusion?
Yesterday I used the phrase in describing two well known public figures I had met many years ago in my childhood as two men who, “Put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us.” Therefore, my friend and I agreed that since that was the case, it was surely true that these two public personalities were “just like us” in all the important ways. That they were just normal and ordinary, after all.
But that got me to thinking, “Does that mean that everyone—every single person—who puts their pants on one leg at a time is basically an ordinary person?” I mean, that’s the whole point of the phrase, right? “He (or she) puts his (or her) pants on one leg at a time.” Ergo, they aren’t special. It’s the great equalizer. Pants putting on, that is.
In other words, anyone who puts their pants on one leg at a time instantly moves from the category of “special” (if they possess some rare talent or skill) to the category of “ordinary.”
So, how to we find truly special people? It means we should really ask–for the sake of efficiency —who DOES NOT put their pants on one leg at a time. Since that is a small group, presumably, we will quickly limit all the possible candidates for being a special person. Once we have this tiny group of people who, for whatever reason, pass the “ordinariness” threshold test by putting their pant on in some way other than one leg at a time, we are ready for the critical next step.
Of these individuals in the “non-one leg at a time pants putting on routine when getting dressed,” which ones also have some rare talent or gift? Once we identify those individuals–given we have eliminated the great equalizer test in the pants department, we will, technically speaking, have a list of the only truly “special” people in this world. Just like that!
Isn’t logic a a wonderful tool enabling us to reach correct conclusions?! It sure is!
Oh by the way, I’m trying to teach myself to put my pants on over my head like a pull over shirt. It’s slow-going so far… but I am determined. To be special, that is.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jul 30, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET We’ve all struggled with trying to stop behaviors we know aren’t good for us, and I imagine most of us have some embarrassing episodes in our past. So far be it from me to cast the first stone against politicians whose foibles are played out in the glare of public awareness. None of us would want to be a candidate for office, trying to defend ourselves against a surreptitious youTube video of us telling an off-color joke (or singing karaoke badly). My younger son claims he has photos of me sneaking Reese’s out of his Halloween candy several years in a row, and let’s just say I’m glad that the internet and cell phone cameras didn’t exist that time my college roommates and I went to Martha’s Vineyard.
However, the subject seems to be different when the bad behavior is sexual, and engaged in by elected leaders. (Which should give you a clue that my Martha’s Vineyard escapade was pretty benign, and didn’t actually involve anyone important or anything worth photographing . . . . ) Part of it is often the hypocrisy factor (see Gingrich, Newt). And part of it is the “you’re kidding, right?” disbelief at how stupid some people can be (see Danger, Carlos, or all the comments about how Bill Clinton could have had just about any gorgeous liberal starlet or international political figure instead of cheating on Hilary with a frumpy, not particularly brilliant intern). But the larger concern is that these are people who are telling us to trust them, with our laws& our tax money. Therefore, when they engage in clandestine activities, it isn’t just between them and their cheated-upon partner.
So when still MORE revelations came out this week about Weiner’s continued sexting after he’d insisted he had turned over a new leaf, the general reaction was “enough already, just go away.” (I don’t know about anyone else, but that famous original grainy shot of his bulging underwear continues to give me nightmares.) But he’s not alone – Bob Filner now acknowledges that as Mayor of San Diego, he engaged in a plethora of unsavory behavior, from the now infamous “Filner headlock” which he used to express sweet nothings to his employees, to groping constituents and telling his staff they’d work better if they weren’t wearing underpants. However, he keeps insisting that these acts were just evidence of a problem he has, not actual sexual harassment. (Which begs the question, what WOULD he consider sexual harassment? I guess it’s okay as long as he didn’t insist on women giving him lap dances as a condition of keeping their jobs?) And on top of everything else, both Weiner and Filner have extremely bright, attractive wives – sort of like our horror that if Halle Berry’s husband cheated on her, the rest of us are screwed. (But I digress . . . .
Honesty is a big factor, but I have to go back to the “how stupid can you be?” question. (Like how Eliot Spitzer claims to be a brilliant fiscal manager, after shelling out thousands of dollars for overpriced hookers, not to mention the weird thing he had about keeping his socks on . . .) These are people who seek public attention, so you’d think they’d be a little more careful about their public behavior. But the unsavory details continue to emerge, and the middle-school-level jokes keep popping up (the NY Daily News is having a field day with headlines about Weiner, as one might imagine from the newspaper which once announced “headless body found in topless bar,” which is the first headline I saw when I moved to New York). Even my teenage son has seen the Weiner memes, with every possible variation on ‘pulling out’ or ‘sticking out’ you could imagine.
As a feminist, a registered Democrat and a former New Yorker, of course I hope Spitzer & Weiner withdraw from the race so voters can refocus on the important issues facing the city, and as a Californian, I hope Filner resigns once he realizes that 2 weeks of rehab may not be sufficient after years of thinking the way to reach out to a constituent is to grab her buttocks. But as a comedian, these guys are the gift that keeps on giving – I thought after last week’s song, the subject would be passe, but I guess they all could still use a little musical advice to “Zip It Up!”
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jul 30, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET  Imagine Paris (“That’s hot”) Hilton commenting, “That’s so luke warm.”
A middle-aged friend finalized his divorce recently and I tried my hand, feebly, at matchmaking.
In describing him to a divorcee woman I work with I tried to buikd him up to her.
She asked half-jokingly with a smirk, “So, is he hot?”
That caught me off guard and I recovered with this failed response.
“I wouldn’t say hot in the conventional sense of the word.. but a more middle aged kinda hot. Like something that you made to eat two days ago that gets heated up and you are pleasantly surpried to find it is still edible. Sooo, kind of hot but in the warmed-over sense. Which can be good. Like pizza.”
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Jul 30, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET My 8-year-old son wrote me the card pictured above: “Love is the best thing a family can share.” Somebody call Hallmark—I think they have a future employee. But it got me thinking- how do we share love with family? And that got me sad. Because sometimes we put our best foot forwards when we are in the company of strangers and we save the worst for family.
What kind of love do we share with family? Insults, criticism, unbridled emotion, long boring stories, unreasonable expectations.
When people say on the street: “Give me some love,” I don’t think that’s what they’re referring to.
So I’m going to respectfully disagree with my son. Or at least I’m going to ask him to clarify to what subset of the noun “love” he is referring. Luckily my boy is wicked smart so he will know what the heck I am asking.
 Ok, I conferred with my boy genius and he said that he was referring to “Fun with the family”, so that I will definitely support!
How many people can say to themselves“I had too much fun this year?” I don’t even think there is such a thing. So I will show you the Shrinky Dink charm bracelet that was my gift that went along with the card.
And, with that, I am off to go have fun on my birthday, which includes not being bogged down with blogging unless it is fun. Which this was. Off to ice skating!
And to save you Recovering Politician staffers the trouble of asking me—Yes, I did get the copyright permission from my son to reprint his card. J
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jul 29, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET  The Dan and their fans do The ‘Ville!
The moment of truth was when Donald Fagen strode onto stage. It was more of a cautious shuffle than a swaggering stride, but it was “him.” Sunglasses and all—and it was a hip-looking cautious shuffle. And it was on!
Steely Dan was and is the smartest smoothest jazz rock pop band of my generation. At first sight Donald Fagen could have been confused for theowner of beachfront condo rental properties in South Florida about to address an audience. And we in the audience could have been confused for an AARP gathering to discuss time-share investment opportunities. We in the audience weren’t dressed to impress each other. But dressed with an understated hipness that included a tacit agreement that “I’ll pretend you look as hip, if you pretend I look hip.” But none of us were there primarily for a social event. We were there for the music.
And the music began. Instantly Donald Fagen seemed to morph from middling condo realtor into a bleached out Caucasian version of Ray Charles. And with whom, like Ray Charles, it is clear from the first note that the audience is in the presence of a musical maestro —who can do things musically (almost as an afterthought) that others would never even imagine attempting.
The concert opened with a middling performance of Green Earing but was followed with the epic Aja—which set the tone for the rest of the evening. The young drummer wasn’t Steve Gadd….but had moments that were Gadd-esque and by the close of Aja the audience had tapped into their inner Steely Dan.
Walter Becker reminisced with the audience during Hey Nineteen about a night involving Cuervo Gold and made us all feel like we had attended the same high school as he reminded us, “You all remember what it is was like. You know what it’s like now. And that is that and will always be that way.” We were peers more than fans.
Donald Fagen introduced “King of the World” from the album Coundown to Ecstasy saying it is a “new song for the band” that they hadn’t played since the 70’s and was “from a different life.” Adding to the audience, “You all can relate to that, right?” Although King of the World started clumsily The Dan found their bearings and finished elegantly. It was an inspired and inspirational moment. In addition to reveling in the music the audience was reminded that sometimes we, too, are still capably of conjuring up our creative energies and elegantly reprising something we did in the 70’s –and doing it almost as well as we did back then.
The audience began to bond with each other as we remembered that one of the things we liked about being Dan fans is that it made us feel a little superior to everyone else. Steely Dan is known for their smarty pants lyrics that take the listener to places other bands have never heard of (or if they have heard of it, wouldn’t know that it’s a chic place to go). We secretly suspect that our Dan audiences have a higher percentage of MENSA members than most other concerts. A few in the audience stood and tried dancing the entire concert, which also reminded us that Steely Dan fans weren’t always the coolest kids in high school—just the ones with the best taste in music. It’s hard to dance to Steely Dan anyway. They were always more about the music than the concert experience. In fact, for yeas they refused to even play concerts preferring instead to create flawless sounds from the studio with some of the best back-up musicians in the industry.
The highlight of the night was Bodhisattva about midway through the concert. They brought down the house with a riveting rendition of the band’s most rockin’ song. Which is fitting. A Bodhisattva, after all, is an Eastern religion enlightened being who compassionately refrains from entering Nirvana in order to save others. I think Steely Dan serves that role musically in their own Western way. And we are the beneficiaries.
As the band played on our reaction as an audience reminded me less of a typical frenzied and interactive rock concert audience and more like an audience that simultaneously followed Timothy Leary’s admonition to “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” That’s what Dan fans tend to do. When they turn on their music anyway. We behave well in concerts. Many in the audience may have had a cool buzz but no one passed out. Although nearing the end of the concert a handful of us had nodded off since it was well past our bedtime. More of a personal intermission power nap than falling asleep. We wanted to be alert for the encore.
And we weren’t disappointed when they chose to cue up Kid Charlemagne for the finale. At least that was the last song I heard. We left a little early to beat the crowd. Sure, we Dan fans love our music but we are also practical and a little self-absorbed, too, and hate being stuck in traffic.
As the Palace doors opened into the streets we talked freely to one another like we were in the same high school but just hadn’t spoken before. We all seemed to leave a little happier than we arrived. And feeling a little better about ourselves and the world we live in—and the world we lived in when we first discovered our band.
Earlier in the evening Walter Becker spoke to us not as a faceless audience but as casual peers as if we were at the house of a mutual friend and we were all just standing around downstairs listening to him and his friend Donald Fagen play the party. He reminded us that back in the day we were good. And hadn’t changed all that much. We liked hearing that and even applauded. But more importantly, as we walked back into our individual worlds after this brief escape, the performance had put us back in touch with a part of our best selves. The music helped us remember our better selves—perhaps even remembering ourselves better than we really were.
And we felt for the first time in a long time like maybe we really were that good after all— and, like Steely Dan, could still be again.
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