This Week: We Tip Our Hats

Dudes!

Come over here for a minute. Let's have a chat. We know we sometimes playfully chide you for your fashion indiscretions--cough, sports sandals and hemp necklaces, cough--but there are a few of you out there who are doing things right.

We here at Shmitten Kitten headquarters want to give you guys a high-five, a thumbs up and a pat on the back all at the same time. We want to tip our hats to you, if you will.

So that's what we're gonna do. This is a new feature where we will raise our glasses to the boys who make us wanna flip ours, all Dwayne Wayne style.

Are there any types of dudes you'd like to see us give props to? Drop a line to tips@shmittenkitten.com and nominate your faves. We'll lovingly create a tribute to the most worthy suggestions. Boys, we salute you!

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Tip Our Hats: The Hot Professor

As Van Halen sang, I am "Hot for Teacher." I brought my pennnncilllllll!

There's nothing better than having a hot dude as your professor. Everyone wins in this situation. You attend every class because you want to see what he's wearing. You do really well on your homework because you want to impress him with your quick wit and creativity. He even makes you kick your wardrobe up a notch and smear on some eyeliner, the better to bat your eyelashes with.

The Hot Professor can make those long hours of class just float by on a daydream cloud. You doodle his name on your notebook as he dusts chalk off his Dockers. The best is when he dresses the part; knitted scarves--when seasonally appropriate--and leather patches on the elbows of his corduroy blazers. He makes academia foxy!

If you are feeling especially ballsy, you might even swing by his office hours because you are curious to see how his office is decorated (and if there are any pictures of his wife around). Spoiler Alert: his office is always a mess and he has a wacky coffee mug.

At the end of the semester, you playfully invite him out to grab drinks with the rest of your class and it's always a score when he says yes. All the girls angle to sit near him, but it's great when you are the one he chooses to sit with.

Bro'ing down in some low-scene campus bar, you disclose your summer plans to him and he talks about finally carving out time to work on the novel he's been meaning to write. After two beers, he tells you that he's always liked your writing and thinks that you should pursue it. It's awesome!

But, like Prince tells us, "Life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last." If you tried to hook up with this guy, it would be a disaster. It's best to savor his hotness, appreciate it, and move on. Besides, you'll need him as a reference when you look for a job after graduation.

We tip our hats to you, Hot Professor. We'd rate you a whopping four chili peppers on ratemyprofessor.com any day of the week!

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Tip Our Hats: The Merch Dude

The Merch Dude is the unsung hero of the music world. He is the warm, smiling face stationed behind your favorite band's merch booth. He can toss a balled up t-shirt across the room like Zeus tossing a lightning bolt from the sky. He is usually bored out of his mind and texts his friends back home non-stop, but if he's in the mood to be social, flashing a smile at him can usually get you either a free pin or a sticker. If you sign the band's mailing list and crack a few jokes, you can maybe even swing both!

He isn't in the band, but since he has to make small talk with the fans all night, he knows where the best after-parties are. On average, he scores about 40% of the tail the guys in the band get, which isn't bad because all he has to do is load the truck, compute basic math when making change, and keep track of how many youth large t-shirts are left.

He's also really good at pointing at the cardboard sign listing all the prices when you have a question about how much something costs. Seriously, he's an A+ pointer.

The Merch Dude is the guy who drives the van across three states while everyone else sleeps. He can be the voice of reason or the source of insanity when it comes to partying. He is the only guy you could share a 3' x 6' space with for a month and not hate him at the end of it. He's an all-around solid guy, and he always gets props in the liner notes.

He is also severely malnourished, as he's subsisted on gas station snacks and veggie delite subs from Subway for the past three weeks. If the band stays over at your place, he is usually the one to sleep in the van and watch the equipment. He seems to run on adrenaline, coffee, and good vibes.

If you guys hit it off, he will also be a superb pen pal and might even send you postcards from the road. I've made a few lifelong friends just from shooting the shit with the Merch Dude and keeping in touch randomly over the years. In fact, I became friends with a Merch Dude at a punk show in high school and we hung out a few summers ago when he breezed through town!

And for that, we tip our hat to you, Merch Dude. Your positive attitude and happy-go-lucky demeanor is a ray of sunshine in the dingy, smoky club your friends' band is playing in.

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Tip Our Hats: Former Metalheads

We'd like to honor the oft-mocked and under-loved breed of dude: the Former Metalhead.

If you express just a slight interest in their metal background, they are quick to unearth their jean jackets from 6th grade with their favorite bands written on the back in Sharpie scrawl. Or, if they were more advanced/obsessed in their formative metal years, the jacket will have the band patches crudely sewn on.

As a party trick, they will whip out their high school yearbook pictures where they have flowing, long hair (before Nirvana made it passe). As they stare at the picture, they will let out a heavy sigh and say that they kinda miss the way it felt to bang their head with a full, unruly mane.

They still have their ticket stubs to the '89 Motley Crue/Guns 'n' Roses stadium concert and they think about framing it every few months but just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. They also still have their raggedy tour shirts from said concerts even though they reek of pot, armpits and mothballs; a toxic combo, if you ask us. Former Metalheads have very strong opinions about Metallica's discography and can argue at length about it for at least 30 minutes or two beers, whichever comes first.

Speaking of beers, you can find ex-metalheads drinking on pretty much any barstool at your local dive bar. It's a strange phenomenon: They are either totally irresponsible and never got their shit together or they are super-responsible and now have real jobs and pay their bills on time.

Former Metalheads, we tip our hat to you! Keep on rocking out in your cubicle desk jobs and telling us how "bands today just don't matter like they did back then."

[Editor's note from Shannon: I just have to stop and tip, no flip, my hat to the kid who was playing sick metal on WKDU at 7am this morning. Any kid metal enough to drag his bony butt out of bed to play Helloween that early gets a gold upside-down star in my book. I tip my hat to you, good sir! When and if the rarity occurs that I deviate from my morning NPR routine again, I hope you'll be slaying it on the air as I roam the dials. Keep up the good work!]

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Tip Our Hats: The Belle and Sebastian Nerd

This guy single-handedly keeps record stores and the cardigan section of thrift stores in business. He is shy, soft-spoken and is what they call an "indoor kid." He might belong to a kickball team, but that's pretty much the only athletic activity he's ever participated in. Mathletes doesn't count.

He is socially awkward, not very good at making conversation, and doesn't really party. The only time he does anything close to partying is when he attends Philebrity's Annual Belle and Sebastian Dance Party, where he really lets loose. It's kind of cute, really. He dresses like he's a perpetual sophomore, which means that he has constant bed head, wears cool sneakers and rocks brown cords. We're willing to bet $10 that this guy had a radio show in college.

Good luck trying to make this duder your boyfriend. He is intimidated easily so to be his lady you're gonna have to be a frail, librarian-type who likes to knit mittens and bake meringue cookies. That's about as much woman as he can handle.

When he gets nervous or feels put on the spot, he basically shuts down all social capabilities. You can't just approach him at a bar and try to strike up a conversation. If you do, you can practically hear the "Error! Error!" message playing on repeat in his head as steam bellows out of his ears. It's best to just walk away slowly if that happens. Oh, and if this Belle and Sebastian Nerd were a cartoon, he'd be Milhouse!

We tip our hat to you, B & S Nerd, for being so reliably adorable. We are in the minority who find your social ineptitude kinda charming. Nice job!

See him in all of his meek, slouch-shouldered glory below:

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Tip Our Hats: Mallpunks

This is gonna sound borderline creepy, but I, Anna, love mallpunks. I mean, I LOVE them! There, I said it.

With their jagged bangs in their face, with their smudged guyliner and their constant brooding: Hook me up! I love when they wear hoodies with the hoods up and shove their hands into the front pockets. They hate bands that sell out but seem to be at the mall every weekend. That's alright, I'll look the other way at their hypocrisy.

They aren't particularly nice people unless you are in a cool band or know someone in a cool band, but I kinda love how they mope around and take everything all seriously. But, how seriously can you take a 5'6 dude in girls' jeans? I just wanna pinch their little cheeks!

I'm gonna get flamed for this, but their music rocks too. Saosin, My Chemical Romance, Coheed and Cambria, Alkaline Trio, Motion City Soundtrack, Paramore, Cobra Starship, We The Kings and Fall Out Boy; the list goes on and on. Oh, and adding either The Misfits, Black Sabbath and/or the Descendants to their favorite bands section of their MySpace page shows me that they know what's up and that they can keep it real. Nice.

I tip my hat to you, mallpunks. One day, I hope to be the inspiration for the continual status updates on your carefully curated online profile and that you will put:

Status: Kinda pumped about this tall, rad girl I met at Warped Tour
Mood: Ninja

and have it be about me! Keep wallowing in your first world problems and applying makeup with an unsteady hand. Your angst looks very, very good on you.

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Pics and Vids: This Clip of Mascot Bloopers Made Us Laugh So Hard That We Cried

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Press play. You won't regret it! That is, unless you hate fun.

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This Week: The Wake 'n' Cringe

The wake and cringe happens to the best of us. The scenario goes something like this: You had one too many Philly specials last night. Really, just having one Philly special is one too many if you ask me, but I digress.

Groaning, you sit up in bed and wipe last night's smeared mascara from under your eyes. For a second you feel like Courtney Love as you stagger to the bathroom for a cup of water. You gulp it down in an effort to relieve your severe case of cottonmouth. As you inspect your reflection in the mirror, you see a handful of unexplained scrapes and bumps scattered across your body.

Hey, where'd that creepy bruise on your thigh come from? Oh right, you fell off the stage dancing to Girl Talk. Twice. Slowly the mist of your hangover begins to clear and then the awfulness of last night's antics come flooding back to you in what can only be described as a cringestorm.

Did you really say those things to your ex last night? Oh yes, you did. Your stomach flip-flops as you check your text message outbox. What were you thinking? You acted a fool and everyone knows it. Oh, Christ. Who hasn't done the wake 'n' cringe?

The following are a few tales of our own bouts with the wake 'n' cringe. Enjoy and feel free to submit your own cringe-filled morning stories in all their glory to us at tips@shmittenkitten.com.

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Wake 'n' Cringe: The Hammock Request -SHOT DOWN!

There are have been way too many incidences where I have engaged in the wake 'n' cringe. For handy cringestorming, they're usually right in my text message outbox; my sloppy, late-night "great" ideas recorded for me to slap my forehead over come daybreak. Recounting all of my wake 'n' cringe moments would take an entire army of blogs and I'd have to hire assistants to type it all out. Since I don't have that kind of time or cash to throw around, I'll just relay my most recent instance of the wake 'n' cringe.

I was at a house party in Fishtown the other week. Upon arrival, the host--let's call him MC Hammock--gave me a tour of his new house and lead me out to the patio so we could catch up a bit. I used to smooch this guy a bit last year, so we have a eensy teensy tiny bit of history between us. No big whoop.

As I surveyed the backyard, I noticed a hammock perched precariously between two trees. I blurted out that we should go snuggle in the hammock together and raised my eyebrows to really drive the point home.

He gave me this look that was part-confusion and part-wtf. I don't even think he said anything; he just straight-up walked away. Crickets chirped and tumbleweeds rolled around in his backyard. Things got very quiet. I looked over at the superfun netted-contraption. It swung in the breeze ever so slightly, as if to mock me and my total crash and burn.

So, I pretended like nothing happened and nonchalantly walked back into the party. In fact, I totally erased the entire exchange from my memory as soon as it happened. It was like the Men in Black themselves swooped in and wiped my memory clean.

Until the morning. Over breakfast, Jenna playfully chided me about how I propositioned the dude. Apparently, I was all, "Stop! Hammock time!" and he was all "U Can't Touch This." I cringed so hard I wanted roll up into a ball and roll myself into a neighboring county. *heavy sigh*

Awww, man. I made a snuggle request and was denied! That was stone cold. I felt just like when Wayne wanted to play "Stairway to Heaven" at the guitar store and the store clerk just pointed to the "No Stairway to Heaven" sign on the wall. "No Stairway? DENIED!"

Well, some day, when I get a house with my own backyard, I'm going to erect the most amazing tricked out hammock with fluffy pillows, drink holders and a boomin' sound system embedded in the ropes. I'll swing in it all day long, sippin' fancy drinks. And, I'll throw my own hammock snuggle parties and invite all the hottest guys in the neighborhood. We will swing and snuggle until the sun comes up. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

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About

Welcome to the world of Shmitten Kitten! *pretend I just did a sweeping gesture like how a wizard would make* My name is Anna Goldfarb and this is a humor site about relationships. If it were a college course, it'd be called "The Sociology of Dudes." If I were the professor of this course, I'd probably give you an A just for reading this "about" section since that shows initiative on your part. Well done.

I started this site in January 2008 because I didn't see many blogs talk about dating the way that I do when I'm with my friends: I bust on guys just as much as I fawn over them. So reading Shmitten Kitten should feel like you're hanging out with your buddies.

About me: I live in Philadelphia with my husband and our three-legged cat, Eleanor. I love soft serve vanilla ice cream, spicy shrimp tacos, and free drinks. I wrote a book about mi vida loca called Clearly, I Didn't Think This Through, (Berkley Books, Penguin) and you can buy it anywhere books are sold. Hooray!

You can direct all general correspondence to hi@ShmittenKitten.com. Thanks for reading and enjoy!

-Anna Goldfarb

Publisher/ Kitten-in-Chief