back on the horse, jump off the horse.

Definite, universally acknowledged signs you're on a date that's headed south:

1. His opener is an anecdote about how he cooks meat for his dog in a slow-cooker and leaves the pot for his cleaning lady to worry about.

1a. Other than that, he doesn't cook much.

2. He describes, at length, his ex-wife's very expensive tastes.

3. He tells an actually pretty funny story about discovering that the house he bought (and then tore to the ground to build his dream home; people actually do this, apparently) had a grow op in the basement, and does not seem in the least excited about finding free pot in there.

4. He gleefully admits to having football-shaped lights in the W.C. adjacent to his "sports room" (people actually have these, apparently).

5. Bizarre occasions of mild racism couched under the banner of political correctness, ie. getting really quiet and whispering the word "Asian" while in a Vietnamese restaurant.

6. He does not like Christmas, and once bought a Christmas tree for his wife to spite her (the details of this one are not even worth going into; please fill in using your own fertile imagination).

7. After you spend the longest hour of your life eating Thai Tom Yum soup as fast as you possibly can in an attempt to get out of there, he completely misreads your body language and swoops in for a kiss, and then says "I hope that was the right thing to do." No, sir, no, it was not.

I'm pretty sure there's a lesson here. Let's start with this: Guys, I now know of a really great Vietnamese restaurant nearby!

Antidote: Drive home super duper fast, listening to Titus Andronicus playing super duper loud, and feel incredibly grateful for your own glorious independence.

You had me at Criterion Collection.

So I cracked the spine on Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem today. In the process I realized I can't keep from confusing Jonathan Lethem and Jonathan Franzen, partly because of their very similar names and partly because I find them somewhat dickish and annoying. Anyway, once I figured out that Lethem is the one I hate a little less, I decided to give Chronic City a go. Within about thirty seconds I knew I was going to love it, based solely on one completely lame occurrence: the mention of the Criterion Collection on page one. I am nothing if not a sucker for semi-obscure cultural references. Seriously, as pretentious and annoying as they inevitably are, references to institutions and events that I like to pretend no one knows about but me are SO the way to my literary heart.

At that point I put down the book, already satisfied I could give it a glowing review founded on two paragraphs' worth of reading, and started thinking about the other things that hook me without question. Here's a list, minus the one listed above.

1. Career women in the 1950s (see: The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe). Ah, for the days when girls were either typists or struggling actresses and the only way to get a good meal was to con one of the men you worked for into taking you for a nice steak dinner.

2. Teenage girls in the 1990s (see: Girl by Blake Nelson). I talk about Girl way too much but there's just something so gloriously familiar about that universe of bad all-ages shows and ill-fitting vintage clothes and clumsy sex.

3. Precocious children (see: The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews). When a writer can get to the heart of the fundamental weirdness of a smart kid it is so, so priceless. Sadly, most writers can't. Furthermore, most kids are not really worth dissecting on the page. There, I said it.

4. Tortured teenage boys (see: Blankets by Craig Thompson, Someday this Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron, and many, many more). Bonus points for sexual confusion as a plot point (see: Boy Toy by Barry Lyga, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn). They're my emotional kryptonite. Catharsis!

5. Teens in Dystopia (see: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden). As a rule, I totally hate any kind of sci fi or fantasy that isn't Harry Potter, but populate a creepy and sadistic future hell-world with teenagers and I am ON BOARD.

But enough about me. What's on your Win list?