Edwin Rebooted:

Edwin Rebooted:

I must admit that I like me. I think I’m very clever and I think I have great taste. Plus I think I’ve grown wiser with the years that have passed and the decisions err mistakes I’ve made. Unfortunately the public consensus will most likely contradict my personal love affair. The facts are in and they aren’t good. First is that I may have less friends now than 10 years ago. Next are all the gray hairs, the extra weight, the dental problems. The fact is I’m getting a bit older. I don’t hold the same appeal I used to have back in the day and the current generation doesn’t get me nor do I get them. My viability and local celebrity have taken a hit. It’s unfortunate because there is still plenty of life in these older bones. There are still plenty of ideas in here and there’s still plenty of money to be made but alas there’s no accounting for taste. The bottom line and the will of the people dictate that a change must happen. We need to improve. So never mind the fact that the current Edwin is awesome. We will downplay Edwin’s cult status with those who know him in lieu of attracting a larger fanbase. We need more Edwin fans!

We need to refresh and repackage me so that I may take what is essentially a good core idea (me) and get it out there all over again for public consumption. We aren’t going to spray Febreze on me and call me fresh. No no, we are going to completely retool and update me to reach a whole new generation of fans. To do this we are going to take a page out of Hollywood’s playbook. Much like the Star Trek series, Superman, Batman and a host of 80’s horror movies and comedies it’s time for a reboot. We are going to carefully attempt to take the original idea and redo it as if I never existed before this moment yet still pay homage to the Edwin of old. It’s a delicate balance but when it’s done right it’s Batman Begins or the Dark Knight but when it’s done wrong it’s The Omen, Amityville Horror, the Karate Kid and Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the 500 upcoming films in production like the new Breakfast Club, Poltergeist, The Warriors, Neverending Story and who knows what else. You know they’ll all suck. Anyway as you might have figured, we’re shooting for Batman.

For you hardcore Edwin fans have no worries, we are going to keep a lot of the core principles of what made me who I am. You have to understand we are certainly trying to get new Edwin fans but at the same time we do not want to alienate the diehard fanbase (after the fact we are rebooting in the first place)… we want to build upon it.

While the final cut of the new Edwin is not finished and the reboot is still in production, I can verify that these things will stay the same: I am still half Puerto Rican. I am still 6’3” tall. I still have a great love for music and sports. Plus I will have had roughly the same childhood and upbringing as those things are not essential to the makeover, but may be very important to the diehards and original fans. That’s why they still remain intact, albeit in the background. We must appease the whiny loyal “Ed-Heads” from way back.

On the other hand we’ve implemented some pretty nifty ideas to enhance the appeal of the new me. We don’t have much of a budget for the reboot so there’s not too much CGI involved but we feel this is to our advantage as many people are getting burnt out on CGI and there’s not enough to annoy you but enough to recognize that this is some awesome modern stuff here. So instead of relying on a bunch of effects, we’ve had to use a lot of thinking and brainstorming to tweak the protagonist. We think some of the changes will really update the Edwin character for the dawn of this new decade and open me up to a much larger audience. Here are some of the “rumored” changes for the rebooted version of me:

-The first is now I have one brown eye and one green eye. We think this will add a mysteriousness, uniqueness and intensity that may have been lacking and that we think will appeal to the Twilight crowd and Bowie fans.

-No more retail for me. The reboot will feature Edwin with a new career as a wisecracking, thick-skinned bartender with a sensitive and charming side that makes me very popular. Of course this job will be a cover or ruse as Edwin will have another job behind the scenes as a conflicted vigilante art thief who is trying to go legit. We think this will appeal to the people who think they are cool but aren’t crowd.

-The new Edwin will be involved in a love triangle and he won’t even know it. It will be tragic. We think this will bring in lovelorn nerds and whatever Twilight people we couldn’t grab with the 2 different colored eyes angle.

-The new Edwin will have crazy tattoos in the form of sleeves on both arms. The tats will consist of angels, devils, Chinese characters and skulls. We think this will appeal to young men, male teens and pro wrestling fans.

-The new and improved Edwin will live in a flat with his loyal dog Bartleby. Bart will be half Husky and half Labrador and will have unique talents like being able to change the channels on the cable remote when Edwin is out of the room and of course he always alerts Edwin at the slightest sign of trouble. We think a loveable and loyal companion will improve Edwin’s standing with the adult women demographic.

-Among other changes featured: He shops exclusively at Whole Foods but never buys anything too overpriced. He’s a master freestyle skateboarder (which will come in handy in the reboot) and he knows a cool blind, homeless bluesman named “Stacks” who often sits on the outside steps of his building. Unlike most homeless people this guy offers sage like advice and seems to be incredibly bright, clean and well put together despite being without a home. Also Stacks never seems to ask for money or anything but rebooted Edwin gives him food and old jazz records all the time. “Stacks” t-shirts are already being planned.

Now that you’ve read the trailer for this new Edwin, we hope this will entice you, pique your interest and bring those who never knew or walked away from Edwin back with renewed enthusiasm in the franchise.

Look for the new Edwin this Spring coming to a coffeeshop near you. Edwin is not yet rated.

10 Ways To Stay Single

Do you love being single? Are you afraid of getting involved? Does the idea of having a girlfriend scare you beyond words? Are you afraid every day that you might slip and end up in a serious meaningful relationship?

Well, I’m here to tell you that you should be afraid. There are many wonderful people out there who would date you today. You are probably compatible with more people than you think. Let’s face it… it’s tough to stay single these days but it’s possible… especially if you listen to me.How can I help you to stay single?

When you’ve been predominantly available for 6 and a half years you can look at it one of two ways. Is the glass half empty or half full? Half full you ask? How can such a period of futility and loneliness be considered a good thing? I’m glad you asked. It can be a great thing when you compile all the things you’ve learned during that time to help others. Helping others… isn’t that what life is really about? It takes a measure of skill, talent and a strong discipline to ward off potential relationships. My extensive and inept work in the dating field has shown me the way. All of these guidelines have been tested and they work! I’m taking everything I’ve learned and offering it to you to help you stay single. So if you want to learn how to be single or if you want to stay single for the foreseeable future empty your cups and prepare to fill them with the science I’m about to drop:

Ed’s 10 Ways to Stay Single (in no particular order):

1. Stay Home – The easiest and best piece of practical stay single advice is to stay home. After all, how can you meet anyone if you don’t SEE anyone? It’s completely obvious that a major key to staying away from potential mates is hiding from them. Now before we get carried away here I know you cannot live your entire life without going out but you can certainly be a lot smarter and go out less. Let’s get started. If you can work a job where you see no one but your co-workers who you’d never consider you are in good shape. This means nothing with customer service or face to face selling, meeting or appointments. You’ll run into too many strangers that way. Okay so you work in a job where you never see anyone but the same work people all the time. That’s a great start. Now if instead of going out to eat you ordered in frequently (I’m afraid there aren’t many attractive pizza delivery girls) you wouldn’t have to worry about running into any people you might hook up with. Do you see how the stay home dynamic can work for you like it has for me? You can do this. So to summarize, get cable TV and find a number of great shows to watch all week long. Plan your day and your life around them. Netflix can come in handy here as well. This will help take the sting away from needing human companionship. Remember, Monk is really your friend.

2. Be nice and polite but NOT friendly - Now while staying home a lot and avoiding human contact for the most part is effective and a great place to start, being single doesn’t mean you have to be a hermit or a jerk- that’s too easy, unrealistic and it generates no sympathy from people who know you. Yes you can be single, but you can be a loveable single whom your friends talk about like this: “I wish he could find someone” instead of someone whom your friends talk about like this: “he might meet someone if he wasn’t such a douche”. You want to go for adorable and lonely not misanthropic and alone. One of the major keys to being single is doing the “bare minimum”. It’s a term we’ll revisit many times throughout these guidelines. When you meet new people, be polite and even nice. You can smile at them and show them all the courtesy and respect one would and should show someone they have just met but, and this is where it gets tricky, you must not do more than that! You must practice the bare minimum. If you are nice and polite, they will think nicely of you but if you do anything more than that you risk attraction especially if you are charming, good looking, funny or any combination of those things. Keep it simple and don’t go in for a closer look. Yes you can be nice and polite but not friendly and yes this will help you to stay single.

3. Wait for women to come to you - Let’s face it, the rules of dating and courtships haven’t changed much over the years. The majority of the time the guy will approach the girl. Now knowing this, if you went out of your way not to approach women your chance of meeting someone extraordinary and falling in love will drop considerably. If you go out with friends and just stick to hanging out and doing all your socializing with them any interested women will think you either don’t care about meeting someone or are already involved. Plus if you are out with at least one friend this benefits you greatly. A woman is less likely to go against the norm and approach you if you are already with people.

4. Gain weight – Gaining weight is a surefire remedy to the relationship blues, both while being in one and if you are looking to stay out of one. This tried and true method of loneliness impacts nearly every other guideline on this list. Gaining weight will impact how you feel about your appearance so you’ll want to stay home more. The loss of confidence will impact your “game” leading to a point where you will hardly approach desirable females. Plus your sudden and constantly sweaty features will not be something you want to show people. Your new wardrobe will consist of fat clothes and you will have to become less trendy of a dresser by default in that many great pieces of clothing only go up to a certain size. If you work hard enough at it, you can switch to full time jogging pants in no time! Remember, you eat because it makes you happy but you are not truly happy because you eat. Dig into those goodies and watch the dividends add up quickly in your quest for dating solitude.

5. Fight the urge to compliment people – If you are like me and you see a woman with great hair, a fantastic smile or a beautiful dress you’d like to tell her about it. Sometimes it has nothing to do with hitting on her, you just want to be nice the way you’d want someone to be nice to you if they liked how you were dressed or how you smiled. It makes a person feel good. While this is a wonderful gesture and can make a person’s day you have to be very careful with this because sometimes even the most innocent of comments can be taken the wrong way and you could come face to face with attraction. Attraction can be a strong thing and can pull you (get it?) into trouble. If you want to stay single you must fight the urge to compliment the women. They like that sort of thing and if you do it they may end up liking you. Remember, bare minimum. You must endeavor to keep people’s perceptions of you no better than anyone else. You also must keep the expectations of you at a realistic and non-memorable level. So next time you see the prettiest dress you’ve seen in years keep your mouth shut or else risk the consequences.

6. Dress down – Dressing down is an important aspect of staying single. If you can find a job where you can dress like a bum most of the time you are well on your way. It provides added benefits if you walk to work in a rough neighborhood because nobody will want to rob you if you look like your wardrobe cost no more than $30. While dressing down in the workplace is good, working from home is ideal since you can do it in underwear and a t-shirt. Not everyone is so lucky though. When you are out and about dress youthful or poor to chase away your primary demographic. I’m 35 but I probably dress more like 25 so many women my age don’t give me the time of day. Any mature woman will not even look at me when I’m out in a sports jersey and a cheap jacket. It makes me feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he discovered that the mud would conceal him from the Predator. If you can dress down you can enter into even the fiercest mating grounds without fear as cougars will not pick up your scent. This will have an adverse effect on you in the opposite direction as many 24 year olds who think you are younger will be attracted but don’t worry as they will be put off by “dad” dressing young or hip when they find out your real age. They’ll run for the hills in search of someone closer to their age without the teeth, back and knee problems and without so much wear on the spare tire. Dressing down is also dressing very comfortably so you’ll feel great inside those ratty clothes even if the public perception of your style isn’t very good. Remember, bare minimum!

7. Fear - Be afraid, be very afraid. Look down, look away. Confidence is a virtue and many women find it downright sexy. If you and a woman catch each other’s glances look away immediately. Stay locked in any longer and we may get a smile or some form of warmth which is a one way ticket to Couplesville if not Datetown. If you want to stay single you can’t risk your status no matter how much you enjoyed her face. You must get those eyes out of there once her eyes catch yours. Some of us who are firmly entrenched in my staying single program do this automatically due to shyness or lack of self confidence, but for those who do not have to worry about such things or are new to this program do yourself a favor and look down, look away, look anywhere else. If you do this quickly and forcefully the female may wonder whether you didn’t like what you saw or if you are just shy. Either way the worst thing you can do here is to look again. If you feel like you need to look at her again because she is attractive and you want a second helping of her beauty to dream about at a later date make sure to do it when there is practically zero chance she’d look at you or catch you looking. If you return too soon to get another eyeful this may be misconstrued as a double take. A double or triple take is a sure sign of approval or amazement and unless she has 2 noses and a thick mustache she’s going to think you are interested. Do not tempt fate people, look down and look away or you’ll look interested.

8. Utilize awkwardness – Does she think you’re weird? If she does that puts you out of the potential boyfriend category and into the wacky friend one. Generally women don’t date weird. Awkwardness is the single person’s best friend. When you happen to make the acquaintance of someone you are attracted to you inevitably start to wonder about dating them. However, she may not return your feelings for her if she thinks you are too strange and not compatible for a relationship. Your awkwardness can slide you headlong into friend territory and take any sexual tension out of the way. It’s time to utilize it and get her thinking that kissing you would “be weird”. Once you are past this point with the woman, you can be friends with hardly a problem. However there is one caveat with this. Unfortunately there is a danger with awkwardness. Sometimes women think it is cute and if you accidently cross over into “mysterious” territory, she might find you even more attractive. You must be very careful not to be Johnny Depp while being unconventional. So as a good rule of thumb aim for Don Knotts, not Don Juan. Mysterious is sexy but strange, weird and awkward… not so much.

9. Be unrealistic and extremely picky – If you asked me who my dream girl is I’d tell you Zooey Deschanel, Emmy Rossum, or Shakira when she has her dark and wavy hair. This is without even knowing them at all. It’s based solely on their looks and their art... okay mostly looks. Those are my dream girls. Guess what? I’m not going to meet them, let alone end up with any of them. The point is if you set the bar incredibly high only someone utterly incredible will give you pause. This is a great rule of thumb when trying to stay single, only go after the Megan Fox, not the Angela Bassett (dog). This way many wonderful people who lack supermodel looks will slip through your fingers and you’ll be left wondering when you’ll meet someone special. Keeping your standards super high will seem disciplined and admirable to some. They’ll say “look, he won’t settle for less than what he wants, I really respect that’. Of course your friends who say that will be involved in great relationships and will secretly think you are an idiot. Now if you meet Heidi Klum and she just happened to have divorced Seal and is going through a vulnerable period where she needs someone and you just happen to be it, you’ll get the last laugh and that would blow this plan out of the water, but do you know what the odds are on that? Exactly, so obviously you should stick to your guns and reach for the stars. It may only be a pipedream, but it’s your pipedream which makes it awesome. This leads me to:

10. Dreamers - Generally women dislike dreamers. Don’t tell me what you plan to do, go do it. Simply, most women prefer doers. They’d rather be with a guy who is out there in the real world rather than someone staring out the window at it. If you sit around a lot, process life and the meaning and beauty of things this “inactivity” will turn some women off. If you also add a lot of crazy creative ideas that you will never accomplish or even try 95% of the time, now you are just wasting time and will turn off an even larger demographic. If you can add a frosting of excuses and reasons not to even try to your cake of dreams, you will have crafted a magnificently dreamy dish. Sitting around all day thinking about what could be and not doing anything about it will chase away even the sweetest of the sweet. The bottom line is if you wanna stay single, keep dreaming.