The Social

"Sometimes you just want to go out immediately, with reckless abandon."

So says the front page of CrazyBlindDate.com, which aims to get people together on sporadic blind dates with very little notice. The site--whose creators also are responsible for OKCupid.com--was soft-launched in Austin awhile back and officially entered a beta phase on Tuesday with new urban centers in New York, Boston, and San Francisco. The interface is sleek, and the concept is cool, but with this kind of thing it's really all about the people who use it.

Short version: You fill out a bunch of forms, get alerted, and then go on a date with someone whose photo you've never seen. (Eek!)

Longer version: CrazyBlindDate is pretty methodical. You select your city, tell the site whether you'd like to go on a solo date or double date and narrow down the times and neighborhoods that work for you. The site then asks you how much notice you need pre-date. I live in New York, and CrazyBlindDate was even courteous enough to ask me if I were an NYU or Columbia student who wanted to be set up with a fellow student. (They require a university e-mail address to confirm.)

Then you get to be picky, selecting preferred age ranges, ethnicities, heights, body types, and education levels (Grey's Anatomy freaks, you can choose to go on a date with someone who has a med school degree!) If you're too picky, a little alert box will pop up and say you might want to loosen up. But come on, really, I wasn't being that finicky by requesting an athletic guy under 35 who's over 6'1", has a graduate degree, and could meet me in Tribeca, right?

Let's face it: This site is going to get used by a whole lot of lonely people who want to get some tail (and by Grey's fans who want to go on dates with cute doctors).

Fortunately for CrazyBlindDate, there are a whole lot of people who fit that description. I smell a successful dot-com brewing.

Looks like I spoke too soon when I made fun of the nascent phenomenon of dotcoms throwing parties at the Whole Foods Bowery supermarket. Last month, it was a new hyperlocal social network; this month, it's urban uberblog Gothamist. And it's not just any party--it's "Check Out," described as "a delicious event for delicious singles."

I should stress once again the absurdity of it all: the historically edgy gangland of the Bowery, now home to a massive upscale supermarket that hosts singles mixers in conjunction with urban blog networks.

(Credit: Gothamist)

It's almost ironically appropriate, as it's common wisdom around town that Whole Foods is a notorious pick-up spot for "the young, wealthy, and healthy" (thanks, Gawker). But if you find it a little too daring to approach that cutie with the yoga bag to tell her that you're into Organic Cow 2-percent milk, too, well, maybe a pre-organized mixer is your ticket to yuppie dating nirvana.

(Credit: Axe)

Axe body spray is just about the nastiest stuff on the planet--trust me, guys, don't wear it, it's girl repellent and is really only good for covering up scents that might make the cops come a'knocking--but they did come out with a particularly clever ad campaign. It's not often that ads me laugh out loud for real, but these did.

A series of photographs show visual tableaux of young fellows who clearly have spent too much time doing somewhat pointless things (training frogs to jump, occupying all ten high-score spots on an arcade video game, building a life-size Egyptian sarcophagus out of Legos) and accompanying them with the simple message of "Get a girlfriend."

(Credit: Axe)

However, the message remains lame, as one fellow CNET writer (who will remain anonymous) put it: "I just cant stand the blatant claim: 'spray our compressed chemicals all over your body and women will instantly want to (expletive) you.'" Well put, buddy.

(I Believe In Advertising via Notcot)