Untucked shirt

Tucking in your shirt to your jeans makes you look much neater and sharper than letting it hang loose. Tucking it in doesn’t mean you don’t need to look like a school teacher. It is still a fairly laidback look to wear jeans belted low on your hips with a dress shirt tucked in. An untucked shirt shows that you know better than to wear a collarless tee shirt, but you don’t care about the finishing touches. It is even worse to wear a tie with an untucked shirt. Unless you’re going somewhere particularly swanky, you probably shouldn’t be wearing a tie. If you’re going to wear a tie anyway, at least tuck in your shirt and button it up properly.

Black sneakers

Black shoes are a good start, but runners in disguise fool nobody. Wearing black runners means that you will find yourself rejected from many a club. If you manage to find a venue where the person on the door is near-sighted enough to miss your horrible shoes, you will find yourself being judged on your shoes by other patrons. You’ll be that guy sitting in the corner crying into his drink because his shoes are too ugly for anyone to talk to him.

Hoodie

Nothing says “I just came from the gym and I haven’t had time to hit the showers” like a fleecy sweater in a nightclub. It tends to be fairly toasty inside nightclubs, so you don’t need to wear a hoodie. You may want to wear something to keep you warm for the trip there, but ditch it in the cloakroom. Also, you shouldn’t be wearing anything made from fleece when you go out. A leather jacket is much more stylish.

Shorts

Shorts look good on very few men. Unfortunately they’re inevitable in hot weather, but completely avoidable when you go out. Before you leave for a night out, look in the mirror and ask yourself if your pants are pants. If they are, you’re off to a good start. If not, they are quite possibly shorts which should not be worn out to a club. Nobody wants to feel your hairy, sweaty leg brush past them on the dancefloor.

A cap

Hats can make for great accessories- when you’re outdoors. Wearing a cap inside is rude and makes no sense because it’s not about to start raining indoors. At a nightclub, it’s also bound to get stolen by someone who thinks it’s hilarious to grab it. If you’re lucky, a flirt will pluck your hat off your head and put it on, but she’ll probably disappear with it. The next thing you know, you see your hat participating in a sweaty make-out session in the corner without you, and it would just be awkward to retrieve it.

Read our Mobile Site and join the discussion by following our TSB Facebook Page! You should also take part in our 31 Days to Better Game Challenge.

It’s probably no secret that self-proclaimed “nice guys” aren’t as other-oriented as their behavior may seem. Most guys who are nice on the outside are really just using their “niceness” as a manipulation strategy to get what they want: the girl whose ass they’re kissing.

However, this doesn’t mean a guy needs to become a raging douche bag to avoid “niceness.” There’s nothing wrong with being a “good guy” who simply displays characteristics of an attractive guy.

For years, I struggled to unravel this seemingly paradoxical mindset. How can I be a strong, attractive man while simultaneously not compromising who I was at my core? I eventually found my answer when learning how to cold approach women…

For the first two decades of my life, I never dreamed of “approaching” a girl who didn’t seem to “like” me, and I certainly not a girl I didn’t know. Yet, let’s be honest here: the only way the majority of guys are ever going to improve the quality and quantity of their dating life is by learning to approach women.

And I was no different. To date the girls I really wanted, to become the man I was afraid to become. That meant I had to change my mindset so that approaching women was just a part of who I was. After years of approaching women myself, as well as teaching other guys to approach women, I arrived at the attitude I believe ever guys needs to adopt to maximize his dating life.

Face It: You’re a Narcissist

The first thing you need to realize is that by NOT approaching women, you’re being a narcissist. Be honest: the only thing stopping you from approaching attractive women is your fear of rejection. The reason you fear rejection is because you want to control other people’s opinion of you.

I’ve coached hundreds of guys personally, and I know what stops them from approaching hot women is the fear that their family, friends, bystanders, or the girl herself will “judge” them. Essentially these guys value someone else’s opinion of them over what they know they really want to do. Hence why guys turn to booze to help them get over their anxiety. All getting drunk does is help silence our inner narcissist.

It’s my job to get guys in that state without alcohol. To do that, you have to acknowledge your “nice” side, not ignore it. If you truly consider yourself a “good” guy, then you have to concede that you care about the happiness and well being of the girl you want to approach.

As such, if you know that you’re a good guy and yet you’re not approaching women, then you’re letting her down. You’re letting some other loser, who probably isn’t as good of guy as you are, approach and attract her. Because of your narcissism, you’re forcing a beautiful woman to settle for less. Proud of yourself? You shouldn’t be…

Face Your Fear, Narcissist

If this line of thinking doesn’t motivate you, you’re still a narcissist—it’s just that you don’t care about the wellbeing of women that much. If that’s the case, then realize this: no one gives a fuck about you. Go out to a nightclub and see if you can pick out the guys who have gotten “rejected” by women. You can’t. Want to know why? Because you don’t care about a bunch of strangers in a nightclub.

And to everyone whose opinion you value so dear, to them, you’re just a stranger in a nightclub. You’re not some celebrity who has the paparazzi trailing your every move. You’re not some big shot, where people will think you’re less cool if you get rejected. They don’t think you’re cool or uncool…THEY JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU.

Take Control

So why are you giving a fuck about them. In fact, you’re giving such a fuck, you big narcissist you, that you’re putting YOUR life on hold over what a STRANGER thinks about you! Even if it’s your friends—or even family—who opinion you’re trying to “preserve” just always remind yourself of that: you’re not doing something that you want to do—living your life how you want to be living it—because of what someone else MAY think of you.

I always find it hilarious ironic that most guys disregard most of what their friends and family tell them, but when it comes to girls, suddenly their “reputation” is so damn important. Guess what? That’s just a cop-out for being lazy and a coward. If you’re not approaching women, it’s because you’re afraid. Nothing else.

Now that you’ve read those words, you can’t unread them. How many more girls are you going to lose, how many more opportunities are you going to blow, and how many more times are you going to bang your head up against the wall, until you finally just put one foot in front of the other and approach that girl? Man up. Get over yourself. Get girls.

>>>To Learn More From Rob, Check Out “The 4 Elements of Game” where he breaks down game into four simple adjustments.

Read our Mobile Site and join the discussion by following our TSB Facebook Page! You should also take part in our 31 Days to Better Game Challenge.

So today we’re heading over to Men’s Fitness where they have a list of ways to boost your energy. And it’s not just coffee. For example:

Eat Your Magnesium

“Research shows that when the body doesn’t have enough magnesium, a mineral that is found in our bones, tissues, and organs, it has an increased need for oxygen during exercise—in other words, you wear out more easily,” explains Rachel Meltzer Warren, MS, RD, a New York-based nutritionist. “Magnesium is found in foods like spinach, almonds, cashews, and soybeans.” Keep a plethora of nuts on hand for quick energy boosts. Experts have also found that increased magnesium levels help assist chronic sleep problems—another fast track to more energy! For maximum absorption be sure to eat your magnesium-rich foods with a serving of calcium, or take a 500 mg supplement of it.

So get on over there and start purchasing some of these other ways to boost that energy of yours. And then get rid of that groggy feeling and start getting into that energized lifestyle!

Read our Mobile Site and join the discussion by following our TSB Facebook Page! You should also take part in our 31 Days to Better Game Challenge.

Common Dating and Pickup Questions Answered

In this collection of articles from the TSB Archives we answer some of the most common questions that we’ve gotten from our readers over the years.

Phone Game Basics (for when you can’t take):  Rob gives a real good breakdown of how you should handle phone calls for the situations in which texting is not appropriate.

Texting a Girl: A Guide to Text Message Game:  Since we just covered phone game in the above article, lets look back at an article from four years ago on text game.

How to Pickup a Bartender:  This is an article I wrote detailing exactly what you need to do if you want to pick up a bartender.

What to Say to Girls (explained):  The ability to talk is the surest way you’ll get into a girls pants.  This articles highlights what sort of things you need to be saying to her to increase the likelihood she becomes attracted to you.

3 Ways to Kill Any Attraction a Girl Feels Toward You: This article I outline 3 of the ways you can quickly kill any attraction that a girl feels toward you.

How to Pickup a Stripper and other advice:  Darren provides some excellent advice on what it takes to pull a stripper and get her out on a date with you. He also answers a few more questions about same night lays and students struggling to improve.

3 Questions about “Dance Floor Game”:  I had a chance to interview my friend Ryan who teaches “dance floor game.”  For those of you looking to score girls in clubs, this is a must read article.

How to Write Your Online Dating Profile:  Dave M. tackles one of the biggest questions guys have about creating an online dating profile.. what the hell do I write?

Outgoing with Friend? Shy on Dates?:  Here’s a question I answered from a guy who faced a similiar problem that I used to face.  He is normal and fun with his friends, but turns into a boring dork on a date.

How to Handle “Whisky Dick”:  Here’s another question I get a lot.

Read our Mobile Site and join the discussion by following our TSB Facebook Page! You should also take part in our 31 Days to Better Game Challenge.

I suppose other cities besides Santa Fe might evoke those thoughts in my head, but that’s the one I remember emblazoned on trains that screeched past the downtown of my childhood, between me and the Mississippi or vice versa. Maybe because it ran through a populated area or maybe my youthful imagination amplified my opinion of my speed, but it seemed like jumping on a train might be one of those easy things like hitting the broadside of a barn or dumping out a boot full of water with instructions written on the heel. It seemed like Santa Fe would be the end of that adventure, and though I never rode the rails, I still wonder about that city. Now, I got an idea of five interesting things to do there, once I pull into the station.

Check out the history of chocolate at the Museum of International Folk Art

Through December of 2013, the Museum of International Folk Art hosts an exhibit on the history of chocolate and how it traveled to Europe. In their permanent collections there are things like ceramic sculptures of the Last Supper, hats of Cameroon, pelican puppets, toy cars and walrus masks. I’m not sure if I completely understand what folk art it, but that list makes me know I like it.

Hike around Pecos National Historic Park

Looking at the “Things to Do” page of Pecos National Historic Park, my eyes lit up at the sight of the hikes mentioned there. There’s a 1.25-mile hike through the mission ruins, but the longer and more exciting one is a Civil War Battlefield Trail that lasts 2.3 miles.

See what’s showing at The Screen

The Screen sounds like a great place to see movies with fellow movie lovers. The documentary “The Iran Job” coming in June, sounds fascinating as it follows an American playing profession basketball in Iran including time during the events of the Arab Spring.

Find a stream and go fly-fishing

As soon as I saw the pictures on the Land of Enchantment Guides webpage, I knew that it had been too long since I’ve been fly-fishing. My heart jumped at the sight of brown, rainbow and brook trout, with the reflective surfaces of streams and creeks behind them.

Go to Cowgirl Karaoke at Cowgirl Santa Fe

Every Monday at the Cowgirl Santa Fe, there’s Cowgirl Karaoke. To get your courage up to belt out your favorite song, the taproom features beers from several regional breweries and includes Odell’s Lugene Chocolate Milk Stout, La Cumbre Elevation IPA and Santa Fe Brewing Company Nut Brown Ale.

Any suggestions for things that I missed? Any additional recommendations for the area? Just let me know in the comments.

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I’ve done four GORUCK events, so I’ll give you a little insight on how it works and why it’s cool.

What Is It?

Firstly, GORUCK is very much a products company, with their core product being a kickass, extremely durable backpack called the GR1. They sell packs in various sizes and colors and also sell a bunch of accessories, related gear, and clothing. The calling card on the GORUCK packs are their excellent design and incredible toughness. They are manufactured in the US, in Bozeman, Montana, which lends itself to a bit of steep price tag.

The other side of the business is the events side, where they host GORUCK Challenges virtually every weekend in some part of the world. The Challenge is usually a group of people between 20 – 30 in size, and the class is lead by a former or current Special Forces instructor, called a cadre. To put it mildly, the cadre are total badass dudes.

The GORUCK Challenge is not a race. It’s specifically a team event, where everyone starts and finishes together. Each person carries a pack with 30-40 pounds of weight and the group walks, jogs, and runs throughout the Challenge. This is called rucking. The event usually lasts about 12 hours and distances covered can be well over 20 miles. The longest Challenge I’ve done lasted 14 hours and we covered about 28 miles on foot. The cadre will also hit the class with various exercises (pushups, flutter kicks, etc) and other physical challenges, such as crab walking a short distance with the pack on your lap, or buddy carrying a teammate up a flight of stairs or even doing situps in the ocean. Think training during a long day at boot camp and you’re got the idea.

Physically, it’s extremely tough. I’m usually wrecked for a couple of days afterwards and the exertion during the Challenge is up there.

Why is this fun and cool?

The first time I did GORUCK, it was freakin’ brutal, and I hated it, and I swore up and down I’d never do another one. The second, third, and fourth were a blast. It’s an extremely tough physical challenge, and if you’re into sports and fitness like me, it will appeal to you. GORUCK will push you physically and totally reset your mental boundaries. After I completed my first Challenge I turned my nose on typical 5K road races. Too easy.

There are many hours during a Challenge were you’re rucking along and shooting the breeze with your teammates and enjoying the sights, and that makes the discomfort totally worth it. You’re basically doing a tour on foot of an American city and that’s cool. It’s a distinct, unique experience.

Afterwards, many of the teammates will go out for beers and party it up, and that’s a total blast also. If you’re into adventure sports or looking for the next big test for your fitness, dial up a GORUCK Challenge. It’s hard as hell but it’s the next level.

Read our Mobile Site and join the discussion by following our TSB Facebook Page! You should also take part in our 31 Days to Better Game Challenge.

Waffle House was also the product of entrepreneurs, specifically Tom Forkner and Joe Rogers, Sr., who opened the first location of what would become a vital franchise in 1955. As you may have guessed, they are this week’s Self Made Men.

Joe Rogers Sr. was born in Tennessee, but got into the restaurant business in New Haven, CT, working as a short-order cook at the Toddle House. He worked his way up to regional manager and was transferred to Atlanta, where he met Tom Forkner, who was working as a realtor at the time.

Forkner was the fifth of seven children and a WWII veteran who took over his father’s real estate firm after the war, working in Avondale Estates, Georgia, where Rogers was buying a house. Their partnership began when they first met, which is such adorable timing that it could have been the start of a romantic comedy.

Theirs was a platonic, all-business relationship, however. Rogers was keen to open a sit-down dining version of McDonalds, whose assembly-line speed was still a novelty in the 1950s, that was open 24 hours. Forkner was hesitant about the idea at first, but Rogers’ confidence won him over; “You build a restaurant,” Forkner recalls Rogers telling him, “and I’ll show you how to run it.”

Forkner secured the location and found a builder, and also suggested naming the restaurant Waffle House, since waffles were the most profitable (and expensive) item on their menu, and also because waffles guaranteed a dine-in experience. Anyone who has ever tried to eat waffles in a car will know exactly what I mean.

There were originally no plans to expand Waffle House beyond its original location, but the restaurant did so well that they had to, and by 1960 they were offering franchises. The combination of their core concept (short-order, sit-down service at literally any hour of the day), Rogers’ dynamism and unshakable confidence, and Forkner’s patient, consistent work ethic is ultimately what made them successful with what GTA Alumni calls “a cult following that runs from cops and truck drivers to barflies and over-caffeinated college students.”

And like any cult following worth that description, people have written songs about Waffle House. I’ll leave you with this one by Colt Ford.

Read our Mobile Site and join the discussion by following our TSB Facebook Page! You should also take part in our 31 Days to Better Game Challenge.

It turns out that Judge is also a really interesting guy. Born in Ecuador, he was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and became an engineer, working for a defense subcontractor that handled the F/A-18 aircraft, as well as software for the systems on aircraft carriers that worked with it. That’s not exactly the background one expects for the guy behind Cornholio.

Judge is also a bassist, and has played with Doyle Bramhall and Anson Funderburgh, among others.

Judge’s real claim to fame—his cartoons—started in high school, where he was a semi-outcast who loved sketch comedy and had a gift for impressions. Thinking he’d never get anywhere pursuing sketch comedy, he recorded some voices and comedy material with his cassette four track and made some crude, visually simple cartoons to go with them.

Those cartoons got sent out to animation festivals, and a couple of them hit. Most famously, the Beavis and Butthead characters were developed for a short called Frog Baseball, which he made for MTV’s animation showcase Liquid Television. That short was so popular that a show was developed from it, and I know I don’t have to explain that show’s legacy to any of TSB’s readers.

After that wrapped up, Judge got to work on King of the Hill, whose naturalistic and sometimes mundane humor (which I mean as a compliment here) were a stark departure from Beavis and Butthead, even if Hank Hill was very similar to the cranky, half-senile Tom Anderson character. King of the Hill has become the source of much Internet trolling and meme-crafting over the years, and sometimes it’s not clear whether the show’s slow-paced, middle class idiom is being mocked or celebrated.

Judge has worked on a lot of things over the years—too much to list here—but his sparse visual style and flawless, subtle voice acting are consistent throughout his work. The visuals come from Judge’s feeling that he doesn’t draw well, and also from his drive to keep things simple, providing the information that viewers need so they pay attention to the right things. It’s similar to what Charles Schultz did throughout his career, and Judge’s phenomenal voice acting comes from his childhood obsession with Monty Python and Second City, and from doing impressions of his teachers to amuse his high school classmates.

I’ll end with this video of Mike Judge delivering the 2009 commencement address at UC San Diego; it’s a fun speech, and he gets all his classic voices in.

Read our Mobile Site and join the discussion by following our TSB Facebook Page! You should also take part in our 31 Days to Better Game Challenge.

Since we’ve been old enough to like girls, we’ve all wondered how to talk to them. You too have probably wondered if you should talk dirty or sweet, if it’s better to be playful or distant, or maybe you didn’t even know where to start. If so, then listen up. You’re about to get a crash course in talking to beautiful girls.

Before we get into the conversational specifics, it’s important to explain “attractive communication.” In other words, let me decipher the age-old mystery: what do women want? Contrary to popular belief, women don’t necessarily want a “badboy” or a “nice guy” or anything in between. Women only want ONE thing from a man, which is…

Emotions!

That means, if you can get a woman to experience strong emotions, you understand how to talk to girls. Just imagine a beautiful woman having these sorts of emotional responses:

• Doubled over and laughing hysterically at a joke
• Playfully punching a man in the arm after he teased her about something
• Smiling devilishly as she “competes” with a man in some fun challenge (like a thumb war)

If you picture any of those scenarios, you probably picture a girl who’s attracted to the man who’s causing her to have those types of reactions. Women love to flirt because flirting gives them a rush of emotions.

So, as men, we need to make sure that when we talk to a girl that we’re appealing to her emotional side, and not her logical side. In fact, if you get too logical with a woman, she’ll think you’re boring, nerdy, and someone she sees as “just a friend.”

So let’s make sure you NEVER let that happen again by explaining how to talk to girls!

Principle 1: The Fastest Way to a Woman’s Heart is Through Her Laughter

Every time there’s a poll, and women are asked what they’re looking for in a man, it’s always the same response: HUMOR. Not looks. Not status. Not even money. Humor. Every time.

That’s because laughter is the ultimate rush of emotions…she’s literally so overcome with good feelings, she has a physical reaction to it (laughter)! Thus, obviously, being funny is crucial when learning how to talk to women.

That’s easier said than done, however. Most guys confuse “being funny” with “being a comedian” or telling jokes. Humor that’s attractive to women is not the same as performing a stand-up monologue or even reciting jokes. It’s a different type of humor…

…a brand of humor I like to call “social humor.”

Unlike traditional humor, social humor is much simpler…so anyone can do it. (That’s good news for all you guys out there who are convinced you’re “not funny.”) To develop your social humor, simply look for opportunities to do the unexpected. For example:

• Say no when she expects you to say yes
• Act proud when she thinks you’re going to be embarrassed
• Draw attention to things that most guys would pretend didn’t happen

A perfect example is whenever a girl says something like, “Do you say that to all the girls?” Most guys would panic and immediately deny it. “No!” they’d stammer, “I only just said that to you!”

In situations like that, you have a great chance to apply some “social humor.” Imagine if you smirked and replied, “Not ALL the girls…only the hot ones.” This is certainly NOT the response a girl would expect…yet she can’t get upset (I mean, you did acknowledge that she’s hot!).

Unfortunately we can’t examine EVERY example of social humor in this article, yet you can learn a lot just by examining your friends with a great sense of humor. Pay attention to their timing and delivery, and see how it relates to the most important principle of social humor: saying the unexpected.

Principle 2: Teasing is like Verbal Foreplay

I don’t mean to sound crude, but teasing a woman really is like verbal foreplay. It drives women crazy with passion and gets them wildly attracted to you. And all from something you probably mastered when you were pulling girls’ hair in kindergarten!

Now, that’s not to say you can apply the exact same strategies you used on little Susie back on the playground with women today. Adult teasing requires a little more finesse…but only a little!

For starters, focus on “gender differences” for great teasing material. Even saying something as simple as, “You’re such a girl” after she makes a comment can work wonders.

If you want a more “sophisticated tease,” joke about something that is stereotypically girly. For instance, whenever a girl tells me she went for drinks with her friends, I’ll tease her, “Oh my God, was this like a girl’s night out thing where you sit around, drink fruity drinks, and gossip about dudes? Damn, I feel like I’m talking to a character right out of Sex and the City!” This isn’t comedy genius, but it will certainly get some flirty banter going so make sure to try it!

Principle 3: Challenging a Girl is Sexy

Most women not only like a challenge, they actually respect it. In other words, if you don’t want to be a woman’s doormat—a guy she thinks she can walk all over—then you better challenge her!

Luckily, challenging a woman is also a great way to get her emotional. What woman doesn’t love a little friendly competition? Whether it’s challenging her sense of adventurousness or just inviting her to partake in a friendly “thumb war,” girls get excited when there’s a little competition.

I once I sparked a flirty dialogue with a girl I worked with by simply challenging her to a game of tic-tack-toe in the break room. After 2 or 3 games, we made a “friendly” wager: loser has to buy the winner a round a drinks. Before either of us knew it, we were setting up a date…and all from a game of tic-tack-toe!

Keep the idea of “challenging” women on the tip of your tongue whenever you’re conversing with women and you’ll have an unlikely seduction tactic at your disposal.

Pulling It All Together: How to Talk to Girls

If you apply these 3 principles to your conversations with women, you’ll always know “how to talk to girls” to get them to feel excited, attracted, and happy to be spending time with you. Answering the age-old question, “How do I talk to girls?” isn’t answered with lines, but instead with ideas.

With just these 3 “ideas” you have an unlimited repertoire of conversation topics that will keep you from being just another boring guy she’s forced to talk to. Rather, you’re going to become exactly what she’s looking for: a guy who can excite her emotions! So happy chatting!

>>>To Learn More From Rob, Check Out “The 4 Elements of Game” where he breaks down game into four simple adjustments.

Read our Mobile Site and join the discussion by following our TSB Facebook Page! You should also take part in our 31 Days to Better Game Challenge.

That is, if you get the right ones. If you wear stupid sunglasses, well, then you’re better off just not going outside at all. So today we’re heading to Men’s Health, where they have a primer on what kinds of sunglasses you should be wearing. Among their selections include this amazing pair:

Mosley Tribes

The square frames make these old-school metal aviators ideal for round face shapes, while the tasteful top bar and comfortable temple tips will make you want them, regardless.

Photo: Mosley Tribes ($245, mosleytribes.com)

And also these:

Moscot

You might want to avoid these severe square frames if you already have an angular face. But if you have an oval face shape—and unshakable confidence—this shape is for you.

Photo: Moscot sunglasses ($275, moscot.com)

The entire thing is worth giving a shot to see what pair best fits your face. And then get on out there and keep your eyes away from the sun.

Read our Mobile Site and join the discussion by following our TSB Facebook Page! You should also take part in our 31 Days to Better Game Challenge.