New Love Systems Pickup Artist Instructors

I was talking earlier about how we had 15 new potential instructors to review at the Super Conference. It was pretty cool, because a lot of them were guys who had been students at the Super Conference in a previous year, so everyone was pretty excited for them. These were the best 15 from the year and each had the backing of at least two senior instructors.

Of the 15 guys who made it this far, it was a pretty tough decision on a couple of them. Our bias is to say no instead of yes and to promote people late instead of early. We don't want to make a mistake. Some of the ones we said "no" to, I hope they keep at it, because they'll get there if they keep working. Some of our best instructors today got a "no" the first time around. It's impressive to me when someone takes the feedback they are given, acts on it, and comes back better. That's definitely living our values, one of which is "We live as well as teach self-improvement".

Anyway, enough rambling. We chose 4 out of the 15. Two of their bios (Pendrixx and Dubbsy) are already on the bios page, and the other two should be up shortly. They'll all be introduced in the LSi at some point.

(To really get into how the process works, check out how to become a Love Systems instructor)

Now it's time to catch up on junior instructor evaluations and then we can turn everyone loose for 2010...fun times

Bonsai on finding compatible women

New Love Systems instructor Bonsai (yay short Asian dudes taking over the world) has a pretty fun article on his blog about Finding Compatible Women.

It's got a bell curve, which I would make fun, except there are a million graphs in the Love Systems Triad.

Sex and the Pickup Artist

Sex...

One thing I get a lot of e-mails about are personal questions on what to do in the bedroom, post-seduction. It's a little strange. I mean, it's an important part of dating, and kind of one of the big reasons to get involved with Love Systems (formerly Mystery Method Corp) to begin with. But sex advice is different from dating or seduction advice.

Now you already know that Love Systems and its instructors can take you the whole way through the seduction process, from an approach that works for you, all the way to the logistics of getting her home, ready and more-than-willing.

BUT - we draw the line at giving nitty-gritty sex advice. Not because we can't -- if there's one thing Love Systems instructors are doing a lot of, it's having sex, often with a decent variety of beautiful women. More because we just...well, we just won't.

See, here's the thing. I can evaluate pick up and teaching skills pretty quickly. I can do surprise visits to bootcamps, talk to other instructors, junior instructors, and so on. We do an awesome job of maintaining instructor quality. We even drum out the lowest performers from time to time, even if they're doing an adequate job.

(Quite frankly - and I know I'm going to get shit for this - Love Systems today is so far above the competition (7 of 12 guys laid at the Playboy Mansion after one day of training? Wow) that the "competition" itself is meaningless. So if we don't want to rest on our laurels, we're going to compete with ourselves.)

But hanging around and evaluating another dude's sexual technique? Um, no. It was bad enough in the old days when we were always sharing rooms and half the time ended up both pulling girls back to the room and having to try to block out the other couple get it on on the bed next to yours while you focus on your girl. This would be worse. Much worse.

So, yeah, since sex performance and technique is an issue for some guys, I've been on the lookout for anything that I think might help out, other than the usual slew of sex guides you can get online.

Anyways while I was in Las Vegas, (where else but Sin City) I had a meeting to see about a new and as yet unreleased product in this field that sounds interesting. Now we don't normally do any 3rd party products, so I'll have to check it out and see what I think... anything if anything gets sorted out, I'll post it in the LSi.

Why the Financial Collapse

Part of it is because like me were in charge. Not me, of course; even Wall Street bankers are sane enough not to actually put ME in charge. But not smart enough to avoid recruiting equally insane classmates who did a better job of hiding it.

Made a few comments about this earlier this month.

Anyway, courtesy of the New York Times is another article that has more than a grain of truth to it.


October 14, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Wall Street Smarts

By CALVIN TRILLIN
“IF you really want to know why the financial system nearly collapsed in the fall of 2008, I can tell you in one simple sentence.”

The statement came from a man sitting three or four stools away from me in a sparsely populated Midtown bar, where I was waiting for a friend. “But I have to buy you a drink to hear it?” I asked.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I can buy my own drinks. My 401(k) is intact. I got out of the market 8 or 10 years ago, when I saw what was happening.”

He did indeed look capable of buying his own drinks — one of which, a dry martini, straight up, was on the bar in front of him. He was a well-preserved, gray-haired man of about retirement age, dressed in the same sort of clothes he must have worn on some Ivy League campus in the late ’50s or early ’60s — a tweed jacket, gray pants, a blue button-down shirt and a club tie that, seen from a distance, seemed adorned with tiny brussels sprouts.

“O.K.,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

“The financial system nearly collapsed,” he said, “because smart guys had started working on Wall Street.” He took a sip of his martini, and stared straight at the row of bottles behind the bar, as if the conversation was now over.

“But weren’t there smart guys on Wall Street in the first place?” I asked.

I reflected on my own college class, of roughly the same era. The top student had been appointed a federal appeals court judge — earning, by Wall Street standards, tip money. A lot of the people with similarly impressive academic records became professors. I could picture the future titans of Wall Street dozing in the back rows of some gut course like Geology 101, popularly known as Rocks for Jocks.

“That actually sounds more or less accurate,” I said.

“Of course it’s accurate,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong: the guys from the lower third of the class who went to Wall Street had a lot of nice qualities. Most of them were pleasant enough. They made a good impression. And now we realize that by the standards that came later, they weren’t really greedy. They just wanted a nice house in Greenwich and maybe a sailboat. A lot of them were from families that had always been on Wall Street, so they were accustomed to nice houses in Greenwich. They didn’t feel the need to leverage the entire business so they could make the sort of money that easily supports the second oceangoing yacht.”

“So what happened?”

“I told you what happened. Smart guys started going to Wall Street.”

“Why?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said, making a practiced gesture with his eyebrows that caused the bartender to get started mixing another martini.

“Two things happened. One is that the amount of money that could be made on Wall Street with hedge fund and private equity operations became just mind-blowing. At the same time, college was getting so expensive that people from reasonably prosperous families were graduating with huge debts. So even the smart guys went to Wall Street, maybe telling themselves that in a few years they’d have so much money they could then become professors or legal-services lawyers or whatever they’d wanted to be in the first place. That’s when you started reading stories about the percentage of the graduating class of Harvard College who planned to go into the financial industry or go to business school so they could then go into the financial industry. That’s when you started reading about these geniuses from M.I.T. and Caltech who instead of going to graduate school in physics went to Wall Street to calculate arbitrage odds.”

“But you still haven’t told me how that brought on the financial crisis.”

“Did you ever hear the word ‘derivatives’?” he said. “Do you think our guys could have invented, say, credit default swaps? Give me a break! They couldn’t have done the math.”

“Why do I get the feeling that there’s one more step in this scenario?” I said.

“Because there is,” he said. “When the smart guys started this business of securitizing things that didn’t even exist in the first place, who was running the firms they worked for? Our guys! The lower third of the class! Guys who didn’t have the foggiest notion of what a credit default swap was. All our guys knew was that they were getting disgustingly rich, and they had gotten to like that. All of that easy money had eaten away at their sense of enoughness.”

“So having smart guys there almost caused Wall Street to collapse.”

“You got it,” he said. “It took you awhile, but you got it.”

The theory sounded too simple to be true, but right offhand I couldn’t find any flaws in it. I found myself contemplating the sort of havoc a horde of smart guys could wreak in other industries. I saw those industries falling one by one, done in by superior intelligence. “I think I need a drink,” I said.

He nodded at my glass and made another one of those eyebrow gestures to the bartender. “Please,” he said. “Allow me.”

Calvin Trillin is the author, most recently, of “Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme.”

What do you do about domain squatters

So there's this guy who registered lovesystems.de and is trying to shake us down for thousands of dollars for it. He admitted to me that that was his sole purpose of registering the domain.

Obviously we're not going to pay him a penny, just on principle.

But it's a pain in the ass with it registered in Germany and all. Anyone got any ideas?

The guy's got it registered to a German address, but last seen living in California (Orange County)

Here's the registration info (all public, when you do a /whois on the domain):

Domain holder: MICHAEL BALLASCHK FILMS
Address: Michael Ballaschk
Willischzaweg 49
Postal code: 03096
City: Burg
Country: DE
Administrative contact
The administrative contact (admin-c) is the natural person appointed
by the domain holder to act as his/her authorized representative and
who also has the duty towards DENIC of taking binding decisions in all
matters concerning the domain lovesystems.de.

When I google Michael Ballaschk, I get this:

http://www.michaelballaschk.com/

Here's more of the registration

Name: Michael Ballaschk
Address: Willischzaweg 49
Postal code: 03096
City: Burg
Country: DE
Technical contact
The technical contact (tech-c) supports the domain lovesystems.de with
respect to technical aspects.

Name: Hostmaster STRATO AG Webhosting
Organisation: STRATO AG
Address: Pascalstraße 10
Postal code: 10587
City: Berlin
Country: DE
Phone: +49 30886150
Fax: +49 3088615111
E-mail: hostmaster@strato.de
Zone administrator
The zone administrator (zone-c) supports the name servers of the
domain lovesystems.de.

Name: Zonemaster STRATO AG Webhosting
Organisation: STRATO AG
Address: Pascalstraße 10
Postal code: 10587
City: Berlin
Country: DE
Phone: +49 30886150
Fax: +49 3088615111
E-mail: zonemaster@strato.de
Technical data
Name server: docks01.rzone.de
Name server: shades19.rzone.de

Dating in New York, Dating in London

Sometimes scientists who look at dating are just out to lunch.

Check out a recent Psychology Today article.

It sort of reminds me of my old college roommate, a civil engineering student. He'd get all of these projects to do that usually involved massive, complex formulas to calculate things. The formulas all worked, of course, or at least I assume they do. If they don't, we should all keep our distance from tall buildings that might unexpectedly fall. The problem wasn't with the formulas, it was with the initial measurements, or common sense.

There's no point calculating an angle to 8 decimal places when it's based off a human-with-a-ruler's initial measurement of "about an inch and a half" and so on.

The concept of "I guess that's true, if you abandon common sense" was made for the psychology today article. Especially when you get to the implied conclusion, which is that dating is easier in a place where you have 10 possible mates than where you have an infinite number.

Hands up everyone here who thinks they are more likely to be happy with the potential dating pool in Ames, IA or New York City?

It only makes sense if your goal is to "find the best possible mate out of whatever size dating pool I have, based on some notional and doesn't-exist-in-reality quantitative scale".

In which case, of course it's easier to find the "best possible" if you have 10 people to choose from instead of thousands. Hell, it's easier if you have one person to choose from. But how many people say to themselves:

Gee, I really want a partner. The only thing I care about is how quick it takes me to find the best partner out of a group of potentials. So I'd better make that group of potentials really small, so it'll take me less time to find the best.

I'm kind of beating this horse to death, but bad "scientific" dating articles annoy the hell out of me. You get far better stuff on pick up artist blogs every day.

Man v Journalist

Here’s how journalism works: I want Savoy to say something weird or strange; Savoy wants to promote his business. And here’s what happens in our interview: Savoy wins. (Las Vegas Weekly)

1. Most journalists seem to have that agenda. That's why so many stories about Love Systems begin with "I was going to expose these sons of bitches until I actually showed up at a bootcamp, and..." [See exhibits 1 through 1 million in the Love Systems (formerly Mystery Method Corp) media section]. I've just never seen a journalist admit to it in print.

2. I like winning.

Here's the link to Las Vegas Weekly on Love Systems. I'm not sure what I won here. It's not exactly how I think most people saw the Super Conference - a bit too "remedial" - but we gave him full access and that's his honest perception, so fair enough.

Some previews of Love Systems Mobile in there too. Tentatively scheduled to launch on either Christmas Day or New Year's Eve. Stay tuned.

Are you reading Braddock's Blog?

I highly recommend it. I was just catching up on it on the weekend (Sunday morning's coffee/hangover/breakfast is kind of my blog reading time). It's obvious he puts a lot of work into his posts (not that other LS instructors don't), and the blog itself is exceptionally well-maintained. It's like a mini-Love Systems website, only it doesn't crash.

Check it out:

Braddocks Blog

When the going get tough -- delete the post!

So yesterday I took aim at a common if misguided critique of unmarried men.

Today, the author took the post down. That's her choice, I suppose, since it's her blog. But since I - and others - have gone to the trouble of linking to it and discussing it, getting a 404 Not Found error on the destination page without explanation is kind of lame.

Fortunately, google cache preserves seemingly everything, seemingly forever. Here's the original post that was found on CafeDarkness:

So Easy a Caveman Can Do It

Hi! Me Unmarried Man Over Thirty. Call me UMOT! You pretty lady! I act same way I did 15 years ago. I hang with buddies, drink beer, smoke pot, play video games. Maybe in band? Play music! UMOT no want to grow up! I want to bang on my drum all day!

Sometimes UMOT get sad. UMOT’s friends get married and leave UMOT! This makes UMOT question fundamental lifestyle choices! Maybe UMOT should no have sold all personal belongings to follow Phish for three years/live in Costa Rican Jungle/hike the Appalachian Trail? UMOT do what UMOT want to do. That it! I no like do things I no like doing!

UMOT likes sexy with ladies but UMOT no want commitment. That why I date women who younger than me by 7 years minimum. They no make me feel immature. They no threaten poor decision making skills. I no commit to nothing besides beer, spliff!

I make baby in 10 to 15 years with pretty young lady who make baby easy! No lady my age need apply. You make UMOT uneasy with independence, intelligence. Scares UMOT. I no like lady my age! Go away lady my age! Go away!

Nice to talk to pretty lady! Maybe I text later? Maybe hang at my studio apartment? Make sexy? Okay, me tired now. Me drank PBR, tequila until early morning and must sleep now on second hand mattress. Night, night, pretty lady. UMOT go Dreamland. Me text later.

Unfortunately, only the first 66 comments got indexed, so mine isn't there. Neither is her response, my response to that, or other people jumping in telling her to actually listen to what I have to say.

Alright, enough picking on the poor woman. Actually, I have nothing against her, just the (all too common) attitude she represents. Anyway, now I can adjust my link in the original article and get on with my day...

Inner Game

Some of the recent conversations I've been having have made me think of inner game again. Now, this doesn't come with the expertise and deep research and insight of Mr M and Braddock's Inner Game Seminar. It's just one guy's opinion (unlike, say, the Triad Model, which has been field-tested tens of thousands of times).


1. As soon as you start blaming people, you're missing the point. Focus on you.

2. You are what you do. Look at how you spend your time. Keep a journal if you have to. Don't skip anything. That's you.

3. See anything you want to change? That's where you start.

4. Repeat after me: I didn't make the world; I just live in it.

5. Taking care of yourself on the outside helps on the inside. Take the time to look sharp, invest in a cool haircut, etc. No, don't skip this.

6. Unless you're unaccountably a major religious who follows my blog (why?), you are not the moral conscience of the world. No one cares about your strongly-held negative opinions of the guy down the street. Less so someone on the internet. Drop it and try to do something positive with your day.

7. Borrowing from Mr M and Braddock's Social Circle Mastery program, you are in some ways the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with. Negativity breeds negativity.

8. No, negativity isn't sexy, or a rational response to the world. You're closer to death one day at a time. Enjoy your time - it's the one resource (unlike money, etc.) that is not replenishable.

9. While we're at it, quit your whining. If you have the time and means to read this blog, you're ahead of most of the human population.

10. Be wary of simple answers to complex problems, like this list. If you get something out of it, great. Now remember point #2. Stop surfing the net and go do something great.

Hmm, I didn't to inner game as it relates to dating advice at all. Maybe another post.

Love Systems on iTunes

Love Systems has the beginning of an iTunes channel now. Check out:

Love Systems on iTunes.

Right now it's focused on getting the first ten minutes of each volume of the interview series up and available for download. The full versions are available on the interview series catalogue or subscription.

All of those topics we announced last week and the suggestions in the comment box will end up there, as well.

Then we'll get to fun stuff like podcasts, audiobooks, and so on.

Things are starting to click around here. I like it.

Women Who Just Don't Get It

Despite lots of leading questions from journalists, Love Systems isn't a men's movement. Still less anti-woman. For all that you can make fun of female dating behavior and decisions in the 21st century, you can do the same for guys, etc., etc., etc.

OK, disclaimer done.

There is a segment of women who are just out to lunch. These are the women who start from a position of moral superiority and an unshakeable starting point that they are desirable and deserving of a made-to-order man.

Here's an article that takes the cake:

http://cafedarkness.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/me-tarzan-you-jane/

[Edit, October 27th. The author took this post down. For a while anyway, here's the google cached version. I also copied it to this later post on my blog for reference]

I thought at first it was satire. I'll spare you the authors' attempts to be witty and just say that the (unchallenged) premise in the article is that there's something wrong with a man who doesn't get married before he's 30.

Among the "problems" wish such men is that they date younger women and live life on their own terms.

So?

To the authors (I linked a comment from their site over to here): You're free not to date them, of course. And while you're criticizing an entire age/gender cohort for choosing not to want to be a serious relationship with you, let me ask you...what was it YOU have been doing your whole life, when you failed to catch any man's attention for long enough for him to decide to settle down with you?

I'm too lazy to look at statistics (must be all that beer and sleeping on second-hand mattresses, or the pot having fried my brain), but I'd guess that more than half of Americans over the age of 30 have been married. Significantly more. And since there's one woman involved in almost all of those marriages (leaving gay marriages aside here), more than half of women have gotten the commitment you're complaining about not having. Dealing with the same men and the same society as you.

Your solution - blame the men who are left.

A better approach - the men that do commit and who women want...what are the women they are with doing differently? Maybe there's something to learn there.

Now that I'm writing this, this all reminds me of starting Love Systems way back when. Guys used to just complain about women. Hate and resent desirable women actually. Well, lots of guys still do, because as much as I'd love to believe that Love Systems is taking over the world, if you asked 100 people on the street, no one would have heard of us. But there are also lots of guys - the ones who have heard of us - who have stepped back, realized that beautiful "unattainable" women must be dating someone, so it's time to figure out who they are, what they have in common, and what we can learn from them.

It's a huge oversimplification, but it's not completely inaccurate to say that Love Systems is based on reverse-engineering the behaviors of men who high-quality women respond to. Seems like the same thing could be done by looking at the women who are with the most-desirable men.

(Oh, you don't want to "play that game"? Think the perfect guy should instantly see all you have to offer - more than other women, apparently - and you shouldn't have to work for it? Hmmm. I've met a few guys who said they don't want to play that game either. That women should flock to them because they are nice, and sweet, etc. No points for guessing how that's working out. It's not about "nice", it's about how the world is. Don't blame me. I didn't make the world; I just live in it.)

Sounds like the authors of that piece could use a bit of Love Systems for Women...

Hmm, that's not a bad idea.

-NS

P.S. Don't worry. If you want to date younger men yourselves, we'll be giving them the tools next February. When we talk about MILFs.

Later Edit: And some women do "get it" (obviously). Here's one: http://ardenleigh.typepad.com/blog/2009/09/female-entitlement.html

How to join Love Systems

I get a LOT of unsolicited emails about this. People wanting to be instructors or people wanting to work for us.

I suspect these people aren't regular blog readers, but I don't know where else to put this, so here goes:

1) We're not hiring employees, period.

2) To become an instructor - well, it takes a while. There's a draft page up, we haven't integrated it into the main site yet and there are a few changes to come, but here it is on how to become a Love Systems (formerly Mystery Method Corp) PUA instructor.

3) To intern with us or with an instructor, check out the intern board on the Attraction Forums.

One guy who interned for us a bit last summer got offered a full-time position, took advantage of that to get tons of Love Systems training, and just last week made it through the hurdles to become an official Love Systems instructor. You'll be hearing more about him in the LSi. However, this is not the norm.

Public service announcement over. I think we need to update the Love Systems FAQ page.

A Year full of the Interview Series

In an LSi (Love Systems insider) a while ago, I asked guys for input on what topics we should be doing next. Here's what subscribers have to look forward to:

November 2009 - Starlight and Vercetti on "Last Minute Resistance"

Last minute resistance is what happens when you bring her home but she doesn't want to escalate as far that night. No always means no. Sometimes she wants you to help her change from "no" to "yes" and that's what this interview is about.

December 2009 - Keychain and Mr M on Overcoming Physical Obstacles

I was trying to think of a better title for this. Basically, this is about if you're short, disabled, not great-looking, etc. Keychain kicked ass at the last Super Conference and I think this is his first shot at the Interview Series.

January 2010 - Sheriff and 5.0 on "No More Mr. Nice Guy"

Pretty self-explanatory title. This one is going to be a huge hit.

February 2010 - Cajun and Calabrese on MILFs

You asked for it, you got it.

March 2010 - The Don and Daxx on Pre-selection

The Don is a Love Systems veteran - hell, he was around when it was Mystery Method Corp. Daxx is another guy who kicked ass at the Super Conference, so I was pretty excited to hear what he had to say. Pre-selection. by the way, is the idea that women are attracted to guys who other women are visibly attracted to. This is one of those counter-intuitive things that women will often say "would never work on them," but it does, and The Don and Daxx explain how and why.

April 2010 - Future and TBD on Gaming on Public Transport

I really wanted to call this one Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Well, maybe Planes, Trains, Subways and Buses. Either way, this is something there were huge #s of requests for. I might pop into this one for a minute to talk about "elevator game"

May 2010 - Braddock and TBD on Retail Clerk Game

Another huge request...

June 2010 - Vercetti and TBD on Voice and Tonality

I am REALLY excited about this one. Vercetti is a elite stage actor in London and also has great pick up skills. His presentation and exercises at the Super Conference were many people's favorite session. The actor training really helps to break down piece-by-piece how different elements of HOW you say or do something convey emotion and personality.

July 2010 - "That One Special Girl"

August 2010 - "The Triad Model: Physical Progression"

otherwise (and inaccurately) known as "kino". The Triad Model is here.

September 2010 - Callback Humor

----

I'm sure that there will be at least one change along the way. Hopefully we got the most popular topics in there; if we missed one let us know.

So instead of paying $40 for each interview when it comes out, sign up now to subscribe and get them for $24.99/month. No obligation, cancel anytime, bleh bleh bleh....

-NS

2009 Super Conference Photos & Feedback Forms

On the Super Conference page.

Super Conference Instructor Gossip

At the last two Super Conferences, we've been testing a system to manage and measure instructors. We give every attendee a few "tokens" when they sign up. Whenever someone wants to reward an instructor, he can give them any or all of his tokens.

This can be for anything -- seeing a great pickup live, useful infield tips, something powerful during a presentation, feedback during live exercises/drills in the breakout room, even informal 1-1 coaching or Q&A outside the session, etc. We leave it entirely up to each client. Clients know best what is most valuable for them. They can distribute their tokens however they want -- spread them around or give them all to one instructor.

There are so few objective, quantitative ways to measure dating coaches. We used to do this with feedback forms, but everyone got so close to 10 out of 10 that it was meaningless. Data has to have variation to be meaningful.

Alright, enough preamble. Let's get to the gossip.

We started this at the 2008 Super Conference. We only kept track of the top vote getters and at the end there were two guys well ahead of the pack. Cajun and Soul.

Cajun wasn't a surprise. He's always been a crowd favorite. Check out this mid-2008 poll of our then-lead instructors. People love him on Keys to the VIP. He's so damn funny and borderline obnoxious but totally pulls it off. And guys realize that if you can do that well without a wingman in 3-minute sets with the pressure of cameras everywhere and it about to go on national TV, he'd probably off the hook when he can game on his own terms. And they're right. There's another part of his appeal too, being like 5'4 and stuff. It's really tough to point at Cajun and say - well maybe he can do that, but I can't. That's pretty inspiring.

Of course, fame won't get you anywhere at Super Conference. If you're not helping clients, you're not getting tokens. But every time I looked around, I saw Cajun with a client here, Cajun having lunch with some guys there, etc. It's obvious he was contributing value beyond the amazing presentations and infield demos and coaching he was doing.

Soul surprised me a bit more. Partly because I didn't know him that well. I met him a couple of times on trips to London (Love Systems doesn't make anyone an instructor until I meet them personally and put them through all kinds of torture - learned that lesson), and he seemed decent, but I didn't know much about him.

(Kind of funny now - Soul's bio page and Soul's blog are both packed with stuff. People who take his Day Game workshop know exactly what they're getting into with him. I think that's great.)

In the end, Soul won. So we invited him up on stage to give the closing remarks. After all, he's the one people learned most from, so let's give them more of what they want. Client comes first, right? What we didn't expect is how much of a benefit that would be to him. The "Soul Explosion" of 2009 (he's probably been our most prominent instructor) is in part due to people wanting to see more of the guy who was the best of the best.

So coming into this year's Super Conference, there was a lot of anticipation about tokens. We expanded the system:

* Everyone plays. If you got no tokens, you couldn't say you weren't playing. Everyone is accountable.

* Some junior instructors were making the case that they should be given more responsibility. This was their chance to prove that clients would benefit from that.

* There was about 15 potential new instructors ("workshop assistants" or "approach coaches"). They'd already been nominated by two senior instructors and were in Vegas for me to evaluate them. I told them that they are playing too. Think you're as good as our current instructors? Prove it.

The system did exactly what we wanted it to. Every Love Systems instructor is an instructor because they're passionate about what we do, was themselves a former client and knows how much Love Systems helps, and wants to give back. But let's be honest; everyone wants to be recognized among their peers for their contributions. Instead of doing a great, we all wanted to do the absolute best possible job.

We had about 35+ instructors and assistants there, so we'll skip straight to the top 6.

#6. Braddock (42 tokens). Did a killer presentation on boundaries and disqualification. Amazing infield and is so experienced as a senior instructor that there's nothing he hasn't seen before, question he can't answer, or student he can't help. Anyway, you guys know Braddock. Moving on...

#5 Daxx (43 tokens). Daxx? Really? I love the guy, but before Super Conference I thought of him as a good, solid, junior instructor with potential. He hasn't been on many interview series (which is where guys usually get known) because he's been traveling so much. I didn't even give him a speaking slot on the main stage, which makes his showing all the more powerful. He damn well will have one next year. Or more. Clearly the world wants more Daxx and over the next year we're going to find ways of doing just that. (Start with his blog)

#4 Cajun (47 tokens) . Yeah. Him again.

#3 Keychain (59 tokens). Are you fucking kidding me? I mean, I know who Keychain is, but you probably didn't. Unless you read his most excellent blog or have been on a bootcamp where he was one of the junior instructors, you probably haven't met him. Or heard of him. Seriously. The guy's a junior instructor, coming into Super Conference with all the big boys and almost won the whole damn thing. From the feedback I got from students, it sounded like he was the second coming. When I left Vegas, I told him, "we have a lot to talk about." I'm not sure what exactly that is, but like Daxx, the world needs more Keychain. His breakthroughs, especially on rapid sexual escalation, need to be shared.

#2 Soul (66 votes). I had a little betting pool going and I picked Soul to win. There's no rule you can't win two years in a row - we have a similar competition among instructors to create the most value on The Lounge and the same person seems to win month after month - and I thought he had. We were counting backstage and Soul was tied with another guy at 65. Then someone came in and said "I forgot my last token." I looked at it: Soul. I was about to go onstage and announce when one of the staff said wait, we're doing a recount. (We should have got the instructors in to observe and try to disqualify hanging chads). And then the winner was..

#1 Future (69 votes). Future's been on one hell of a journey. I was his instructor back when it was Mystery Method Corp and he took his bootcamp - and will never forget his reaction when I taught him about vocal projection. His fingerprints are all over some of the best and most influential interview series. He co-created Breakthrough Comfort. From scratch. Some of his writings have turned into major classics of the field, like Kill Beatrice. Even today I get notes from people telling me to thank the guy who wrote Kill Beatrice.

And then he quit.

It's easy to get burned out in this field. These days we enforce rest on instructors who are showing the signs (you can't do this job to the standards we expect if it's just a job -- you have to be passionate and dedicated even when things are going wrong). And Future got burned out. For about a year and a half.

Last summer, we were privileged to have him rejoin Love Systems, starting with the Advanced Bootcamp at the Playboy Mansion. Led by Savoy & Future, we had 12 clients with us (full). 8 of them went home with Playboy girls.

5 years ago, it was a big deal for anyone to get a Playboy girl, and it took work. 5 years later, more than half of clients go home with one on the first night. If they have the chance to work with Future, that is.

Future is also a far more interesting writer than I am, so why not follow me over to Future's blog now and congratulate him.

The Complete Model to Understand Pickup

For a lot of guys, the problem isn't getting information -- there are over half a million posts on the men's dating advice Attraction Forums, for example -- it's knowing what to do with it.

When I was starting out, I used to keep notes in emails, notebooks, bookmarked stuff online, etc. All that it had in common was it was next to impossible to use. An opener here, a body language tip there, stuff about getting her phone number somewhere else. One day I tried to group stuff together on my computer and got to about 57 cross-referenced categories before I gave up.

That's why I'm so proud of the Love Systems Triad Model - which is finally in a normal webpage instead of an attachment.

(Yeah, free too. I love releasing free stuff because I can usually count on some competitor I've never heard of to complain.)

The basics can be explained in about 30 seconds. But each level goes deeper and deeper, so it works regardless of your knowledge and skill level. It's not going to get you the girl by itself. You still have to DO all of the things it talks about. But with the Triad you always know what to do and it's all in the model.

Best of all, at any given time, there are only three things you have to keep in mind.

Seduction simplified. Have fun.

Love Systems Sverige. In Swedish.

Check out Love Systems Sweden. Well, it's kind of pointless unless you read Swedish. Still lots more to come; we're going to turn it into a authentic local pick up website as opposed to a Swedish translation, but it's still fun stuff.

More countries and languages coming.

Savoy Celebrates His Birthday in the Dark

2009 Super Conference was at the same time as my birthday. (It'll be the week after, for the 2010 Super Conference). So on the Sunday night we took all of the instructors and platinum-level students, joined by various hotties, to celebrate at Body English.

Starlight got the Happy Birthday on video. Except it looks like we're celebrating in the dark. It's almost spooky.



And the cake? They brought it out and then it away again. I guess Body English is too cool for people to actually eat cake in, and they thought it was weird that we wanted to.

Keychain video interview

So I have a massive Super Conference update to come. This was by far the best dating event I've ever been to or heard about. Read some of the 2009 Love Systems Super Conference Reviews for a taste of what I'm talking about.

Anyway, while I procrastinate that, I wanted to talk about one the Love Systems rising stars, Keychain. (This is connected to Super Conference...I'll explain why soon).

He just did a video interview that he posted on his blog, that has a couple of frequently asked questions like:

* How to meet women if you have a busy schedule
* How to meet women during the day
* What's it like to be a Love Systems instructor

Go to his blog to check out Keychain's video interview.

At Super Conference

Probably not going to be any blog posts for a few days. Follow us on twitter over the weekend - LS_Savoy or #SuperConference

Sinn must wear a wig, part 4 of 18

Despite scoring 113 points last week (take out Berrian and Bennett, add in Bowe), Sinn got 131 or something. So we're 2-2

There's no way that keeps up. Meanwhile, after some bad RB matchups/byes this week, and Peyton sitting next week, it looks like pretty clear sailing for the good guys. We got Berrian finally stepping up, Gonzalez will be back, Bowe is recovering, and it's all good.





In other news, I'm tired of being a San Diego Chargers fan. Well, I've stuck with them since 1982 so I'm not about to stop now, but at least I won't have to think about them anymore. Sinn and I have decided that we're going to be passionate Jacksonville fans.

• No one else is, so we may as well
• If we were ever in Jacksonville, we'd have no trouble getting tickets to a game
• Because any team whose coach puts an ax and some chopping wood in the locker room and then loses a player for the year because he gashes his leg needs all the help they can get.
• See above, noting also that the coach inexplicably has not yet been fired
• A "Jaguar" has absolutely nothing to do with Jacksonville
• Because they have no history or accomplishments, it's much easier getting up to speed on being a Jacksonville fan than say, the Detroit Lions, whose best players played in the 1950s.
• Because the front page of their website advertises local college football jerseys, which is what local residents actually watch. They need us.
• I called and asked what time the next Jacksonville home game starts. There was a long pause, lots of muffled dialogue, and then a manager got on the phone and asked what time we could make it.

Go Jags.

Eight Thoughts for the Day

I don't feel like writing an organized post. So I'll use bullet points.


1. I can't wait to get old. I'm going to pretend to be senile a good two or three years before it actually happens and see what I can get away with. Also, I will buy a rural property with a porch and equip with a rocking chair, bottle of Jim Bean, and a shotgun. Every time there's a noise I will scream 'you kids get off my property' and shoot at shadows. I've told my girlfriend this. She isn't enthusiastic but she'll come around.

2. Every cabdriver in Las Vegas tells you they have a "system" for winning at some casino game. Given any meaningful definition of the words "cabdriver", "system", "winning", and "casino", that's so self-evidently wrong it's almost a self-parody. Who makes them do this? The casinos? Homeland Security? Or is this a cabbie betting pool on who can make tourists believe the stupidest shit?

3. Because I went to a big finance school, some people ask me what I think should be done with the financial system now. But it's the type of people who I went to school with caused all of this. Every finance class began with "assume the efficient market hypothesis." OK. Based on that assumption, none of this actually happened. Feel better now?

4. Drama nearly always comes from insecurity. If you know this, and people know you know this, you get a lot less of it.

5. "Just saying" has to be the most annoying expression in the English language. Oh you were saying? I thought those noises from your mouth were part of your digestion process. Like a cow.

6. At some point in my life, I am going to own a real, working, cannon.

7. Braddock and Mr M's phone and text game book is amazing. There's literally nothing that isn't covered there. I can't wait to get this out the door after Super Conference. I used to hate or avoid phone game as much as possible. Now it's going to be fun again.

8. Whenever I tell someone what I do, chances are they will tell me they're really good with women. Not that I care, but all that tells me is that you're not, and you're kind of insecure about it.

The next time some douche does this, I'm flipping the script. Oh, you're an accountant? Haha (creepy smile). I'm actually really good at math. I don't need your help, haha.. Hey, you should hire me. I could show you a thing or two. On Spring Break fifteen fucking gazillion years ago I solved a really sweet math problem and now I'm going to make up a few stories because I can't tell that your eyes have glazed over and you are trying to stop breathing so you can pass out and avoid the rest of the conversation. Yeah I would never pay for accounting help, but maybe sometime we could hang out, and I can watch you do some accounting.

Sinn must wear a wig, part 3 of 18

So as I've been posting every Tuesday, Sinn and I play an odd sort of Fantasy Football game. We didn't actually get organized to play in the same league, so my team from my league informally plays against his team from his league every week. The stakes are that the loser has to grow and document the facial hair of the other's choice. Though if I win, I'm pretty sure I'm going to make him look for an exact replica of Matador's wig.

The story so far...

Week 1: Sinn 94 -> Savoy 67 (plenty of trash talking from Sinn) [Savoy 0-1]

Week 2: Savoy 89 -> Sinn 84 (less trash talking from Sinn) [Savoy 1-1]

And now to introduce week three results:

Week 3: Savoy 111 -> Sinn 70something??? (When you don't even add up your final score, it's so bad you don't trash talk at all) [Savoy 2-1]

My team below...deduct 5 points because we only play 2 WRs and I benched Berrian.


Outlook: Tune in same time next week to celebrate going 3-1.

If you're wondering why I think I deserve to win anything more than a ham sandwhich with Berrian and Manningham as starting WRs, I'm with you. I'm skeptical whether Berrian even deserves to play on his own team, let alone mine. I also to have to dump Green Bay's defense. After you yell the things that I yelled at them watching them play on my TV last Sunday, you can't go back. That relationship is destroyed - too much bad history between us now.

Fortunately, Sinn is equally screwed. I have no idea who his backups are, but I know he starts a lot of Chargers. They play in Pittsburgh this week and have a bye next week.

Sinn, 1-4 just called. Says it's looking forward to meeting you.

Why Women Have Sex

Big spashy article in The Guardian that reveals what Love Systems has known all along...and posted about over two years ago:

http://therealsavoy.blogspot.com/2007/08/237-reasons-to-have-sex-aka-women-fuck.html

Thank you Guardian. Your place on the Love Systems bandwagon is ready.

Do you know anything about statistics?

I don't.

So how do you test for statistical significance, when you have three different populations?

Let's say I'm trying to solve the debate of which city has the most douchebags: New York, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas. I survey a thousand people in each city and count the number of douchebags. How do I tell if my answer is statistically significant?

I know how to do it with just two populations (e.g. New York and LA), but I don't think you can just do the same if you've got three (e.g., ignore the Vegas data and pretend all you're doing is testing New York vs LA when you want to compare the two). Or can you?

Please email me if you know - thanks!

Update 9/26 - The Love Systems community sure knows statistics. A whole boatload of emails. I think I got it now. Thanks!

Business and wealth-building

Love Systems definitely does NOT teach wealth-building. If you saw what my stock portfolio did the last few years, you'd know why. Stick to what you know, and if you don't know, shut up. (That's part of the LS culture..probably should get added to our values).

But a lot of the same people who are interested in self-improvement through Love Systems are also interested in self-improvement through wealth creation.

You can see this in Project Rockstar, which Mr M created and leads. This is an intense 6-week program based in London where 6 guys (chosen out of 500 or so) get trained every day...mostly on Love Systems, but they also get experts in nutrition, fitness, business, fashion, and so on to come and share their skills and secrets.

(Oddly, Project Rockstar is free. It was free last year too.)

Since the Super Conference is part of the Rockstars' training, they'll be in Vegas. So Mr M has organized a wealth-building seminar with a couple of well-known guru at the top-floor celebrity suite of the Hard Rock, on Wednesday October 7. (Two days before Super Conference starts)

Details here:

http://www.theattractionforums.com/discussion/105347-special-treat-project-rockstar-worlds-hidden-masters-las-vegas.html

Contact Mr M if you'd like to attend.

Live Q&As on The Attraction Forums

Tenmagnet (one of the original Love Systems stars, phone, dates, and lifestyle expert, brilliant instructor (he mentored Cajun after all) has a live Q&A going on The Attraction Forums. Since people pay thousands of dollars a day for 1-1s with him, this is great opportunity.

(Tenmagnet's talk at the Super Conference is "From Phone Numbers to Dates". It builds on a lot of his breakthroughs on preventing flaking, phone game, date strategies, and lifestyle. It's an all-new mini-seminar that puts it all together into one process...so when you get her phone number you KNOW you will be seeing her again)

Vercetti (great body language and subcommunication expert) is doing a Q&A on...body language and subcommunication. And voice. And tonality. And presence. As a (successful) trained actor who worked and trained with Love Systems in London for two years, he's in a great place to provide a lot of new insight to this area.

(He's also more than earned his first invitation to the Super Conference. Check out Vercetti's Classic Writings section to learn more about another Love Systems success story)

Fantasy Football Update

So I have a bet with Sinn. We each take our fantasy teams (which are playing in different leagues, which themselves have both different rules and different scoring systems, which makes things odd) and play the other player every week of the season.

Loser has to grow, and document, the other's choice of facial hair. I'm pretty sure that if I win, I'm going to try to bend the rules to include wigs. Then Sinn can wear an exact replica of the wig worn by his bull-fighting and bull-shitting hero.

He demolished me in week one. I have to give him credit. It didn't help that Anthony Gonzalez got injured and scored 0 points. Week two, as far as I can tell, I won 89-84. So we're 1-1.

Super-cheap rooms at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino end September 23

Just heard from the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino - site of the Super Conference October 9-11 2009.

Turns out that with the Super Conference nearly sold out (Platinum is gone, a couple gold and a few silver spots left) that they've sold more rooms at "below market" then they wanted to and are going to have to cut it off Wednesday, September 23.

(This would normally be the place where I make a bunch of sarcastic comments covering such subjects as "if you didn't want to sell rooms so cheap, why did you agree to it in the contract?" and "you realize that letting people come for like $79/night was one of the reason we chose your hotel over the Venetian, right?", etc. We'll skip that today.)

So...public service announcement done. Enjoy the rest of your day.

-NS

Update September 21: The Hard Rock has extended this to Monday September 28th for us. See the Super Conference FAQ.

Booking link here:

https://resweb.passkey.com/go/lovesystemssuperconference2009

Man rules

I think I'm going to have make a set of rules for my guy friends. I'm not talking about the guys I went to school with or grew up with; they know better....I think it's an LA thing. There's something in the water here...

1. If you have a personal problem or are upset about something in your life, I will take you for a beer. Or two. Maximum three. If we haven't finished talking about it after three beers, it had better involve the death or illness of a family member.

2. If you ask what I'm up to this weekend and I say I'm going to be at such-and-such a club and feel free to drop by, and I've provided reasonable location information (address, website, etc.), the rest is up to you. Do not ask me for directions from your house, how long it will take to get there, the parking situation, etc. You're a grown man; figure it out.

3. If you have an occasional pickup or dating question, go ahead and ask. If that's all you want to talk about, you're a client and will be billed accordingly. Nor is pickup and dating the only possible topic of conversation.

4. No, I'm not driving your ass to the airport.

I think I'm going to have to break up with a few friends.... :) What are the rules on "friend breakups?"

-NS

Alright, Sinn. You're on

So Sinn has been calling me out in his blog for our little fantasy challenge. Incessantly. To anyone who will listen.

Kind of reminds me of Omar calling out Marlo Stanfield in season 5 of The Wire.

(I wonder what happened to Omar in the end)

It's only fair that I give Sinn a bit of an advantage. He picked his team in a 10 team league. I got mine picking last in a 12 team one. Here's what I got:

QB Peyton Manning
RB Stephen Jackson
RB Kevin Smith
WR Anthony Gonzalez
WR Dwayne Bowe
WR DeSean Jackson
TE Chris Cooley
DST San Diego (picked for their week 1 matchup)
K Nate Kaeding (see above)

Somehow I managed not to notice my league requires me to start 3 WRs (partly because the commissioner told me during the draft that we only start 2...ahem) so all I've got on the bench is Bernard Berrian. Before Sunday Sinn and I need to sort out who is starting so we can align our leagues. If we're going with the more normal 2 WRs, 2 RBs, I'm sitting Bowe this week. Hell I'm sitting Bowe anyway if Berrian can go against Cleveland.

Bench:

WR Bernard Berrian
RB Jonathan Stewart
RB Chester Taylor (to annoy/trade with whoever got AP)
RB Glen Coffee (for when Gore gets injured or to annoy/trade with his owner)
QB Eli Manning (picked solely because he plays the Saints "defense" in Peyton's bye week)

---

Let's see who he's got --

QB Tom Brady

RB DeAngelo "I fell to number 10 in Sinn's draft which is ridiculous" Williams

RB Pierre "The season hasn't started and I'm already injured" Thomas

RB Willis McGahee

WR Terrell "I have a crappy QB, my coach fired my offensive coordinator out of the blue a week ago, I play home gains in the wind and cold against some decent defenses, the offensive line is a disaster and will never give me time to run routes, and I'm going to sulk and go into the tank when we're 0-5" Owens

WR Vincent "I'm going to have big year unless I get another DUI and get suspended" Jackson

TE Antonio "Norv Turner forgets about me for weeks at a time" Gates

D/ST Patriots

K Ryan "I'm going to get lots of points behind the explosive Favre-led offense" Longwell

Super Conference Agenda is up!

Downloadable on the Super Conference page

Social Proof

5.0 - the oddly-named Love Systems instructor who literally teaches rock stars how to pick up women on British TV has also won a main stage slot at the 2009 Super Conference.

I just noticed his blog has a good post on what do you do when you run out of things to say. This shouldn't be a problem once you get going with Love Systems for a couple months, but can be annoying before you get the right reflexes burned into your brain.

Of course, the Love Systems Routines Manual has hundreds of pages of things to say or do for every situation. (And you can get Volume 1 and Volume 2 together at a discount now on the Routines Manual page).

Picking up women on airplanes

Did a long interview with Esquire about picking up women on airplanes. Of course, they cut all of the really fun tactics out and boiled it down to one quote.

I should do an article about this someday. Airplane game is how I met the Persian Gulf princess, an experience which probably should have gotten me deported or castrated. And I wasn't even sitting anywhere near her.

Hmm, another day.

Air Conditioning Watch: Day 11
29 Days to Super Conference

Tyra Banks interview

It's a little late, but I realize I never linked to an interview I did with eSeduce about the Tyra Banks episode. Including what training we really gave the guy, the effect of the cameras when he was meeting women, and why went on the show in the first place.

If you missed the episode, check out Love Systems on Tyra Banks here.

Braddock on approaching mixed groups

Hey guys, Braddock just wrote an article on how to open mixed groups. A lot of guys avoid opening mixed groups because they think that it's "harder". It's really not -- and because it's more uncommon, you usually points in the woman's mind for going for it. And usually your logistics will be better -- groups of women will often come together and leave together. Mixed groups are more often to meet up at the venue.

Check out Braddock's article on Approaching Mixed Groups.

Today in idiocy

Love Systems makes a point of providing a ton of free information. The Attraction Forums, especially the classic posts sections. The first ten minutes of every single audio guide. Free chapters from Magic Bullets, the Love Systems Routines Manual, and the Love Systems Routines Manual 2. Not to mention all the instructor blogs.

Every once in a while, I get some well-meaning email saying we should charge for all of this. And some company will come in and turn Love Systems into every other PUA-sellout full of sales letters and marketing scams. Fortunately, we're doing quite well and don't need to abandon our values just yet...

So it was pretty funny when I saw this study on publishers who started charging for stuff that's always been free.

The Newport Daily News, for one. They started charging for their website content. People stopped coming to their site.

This is when any normal person would realize that this was a bad idea. But no. The publisher said that the goal of charging was to “drive people back to the printed paper”. Since website traffic was down 30% percent, they feel they are on the right track.

My conclusion - they same guys who run the newspaper also have the contract to service the air conditioning in my condo.

Love Systems Instructor Daxx speaks in Hollywood

Love Systems Expert Daxx will be doing a killer talk on sexualization and sexual transitioning the weekend of September 26-27. It's part of something called the "PUA Summit" - basically, a bunch of guys each come and give a talk about some of their techniques. It's not run by us, but we contribute anyway, and the Love Systems speaker is usually the highlight of the event. (I listed some of the other speakers for this year's event below).

Daxx is another great instructor who comes from the Mr M (and Soul and Sheriff) training factory in London that has produced great instructors like 5.0, Keychain, and Vercetti, all of whom won main stage speaking slots at Super Conference.

(Come to think of it, that's actually a pretty good reference for Mr. M, and Soul and Sheriff to consistently train guys to be this good).

Anyway, if you've ever seen Daxx at a club, it's amazing how quicky, but subtly, he can get a hot girl from hi, how are you, to let's get out of here. Check out Daxx's reviews here.

Check out Daxx's blog for his perspective on attracting beautiful women.

Or - Vince Kelvin (a great guy and an organizer of the event) also did a pretty cool interview with Daxx. Download is free, here:

Daxx interview

Here are some other speakers who will be there:

* Badboy
* Lance Mason
* Vince Kelvin
* David Wygant (who also won a Super Conference invite this year. Way to go)
* Daniel Rose
* Brad P
* Johnny Wolf
* Adonis
* Speer
* Brian Begin & Robbie Kramer of Inner Confidence

Get more info and your ticket at http://www.daxxterity.com/pua-summit-2009

No-nonsense guide to Day Game

I linked to this on twitter yesterday. (follow me on twitter - LS_Savoy)

One of our rising stars, Keychain, had put together a great Day Game primer on his blog. It's really good, no-frills information that you can tell is by someone who walks the walk.

It's pretty commonly recognized that Soul is the world's top expert on Day Game....but if Keychain keeps this up, Mr Soul might have a bit of competition.

A couple of things I really like about Keychain's guide:

* Explains "soft qualification" - makes it easy to create powerful qualification routines that don't sound weird or out of place.

* Shows how anyone can be good at Day Game, and can do with their own identity and voice. You don't have to slavishly copy Soul or Keychain to do it.

Both of them will of course be at Super Conference. We'll see about fitting in a Day Game panel.

Why even go into work when I can bash my head against the wall at home?

aka the tragedy of Savoy's air conditioning system

I don't know how someone who spent seemingly half of his life bouncing around Egypt, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates got to be such a wimp about the heat in Los Angeles. But I am, and that's life.

I love air conditioning. I love everything about it. I love that artificial, sharp, air conditioning cold. I love the white noise the machines make. I love typing 65 degrees onto the panel, and lo and behold, the room becomes 65 degrees.

I think if there is a God, and that if He concerned Himself with the weather in Los Angeles on a daily basis, that's how He does it too. He's probably got His little panel for every area of His planet and just keys in the temperature He wants. Unfortunately, He has been keying in 100 degrees for Los Angeles every day for the past week. I suppose in my own little way, my air conditioning agenda is defying God.

This week, God has had His revenge. (Again assuming that the same God who created the world and guides heaven and earth also takes an interest in the temperature in one Nick Savoy's condo).

Saturday - temperature won't get below 85. Call maintenance.

Sunday - maintenance comes (while I'm at my girlfriend's escaping the heat...HER a/c works just fine, grumble grumble).

Later Sunday - I get home, it's still 80 degrees. I call maintenance. Maintenance tells me everything is working fine. I beg to differ. They say he'll come back Monday.

Monday am - Maintenance guy comes when I'm at work. I found out from building office that air conditioning unit is working perfectly because it's 49 degrees inside the A/C unit. I start tearing my hair out. I tell maintenance guy to come back when I'm there.

Monday pm - Visit #3. This time AC guy notices that the air filter needs to be changed and that the battery on the thermostat is dead. Changes both, declares victory. Temperature still above 80.

Tuesday am - I complain to building office. They tell me that of course the problem isn't solved because the person who has been coming by is a maintenance person not an AC person but that an AC person will come today. Savoy practices deep breathing and calming exercises at this point.

Tuesday pm - AC guy arrives. Finds that 3 of the 4 vents are broken. Replaces them. Calls me and tells me that he is going to check whether the AC unit is even powerful enough for the size of my condo. I tell him to go for it and call me back. He tells me more details about this checking he's going to do. Great, call me when it's done. Yeah, this check is really important, he says. Awesome, let me know how it goes. What he's going to do is compare the specifications of the AC unit to the square footage of the condo. Got it. Call me when done. Right, he says, so here's what I'm going to do. 10 minutes of this before I get him to agree to stop talking about what he's going to do and actually do it. Of course, he doesn't call back.

Wednesday - Call the building office again. Get told that the AC unit is functioning at 100% capacity but that it's hot out so it might not be as effective. I explain that, actually, when it's hot is mostly when I'm going to need the AC. Get told that AC appears to be working as hard as it can so case is closed. I take a moment to recognize the effort, gallantry, and determination of the poor AC unit but suggest that perhaps it's not up to the task at hand. The sarcasm seems to baffle her, so I patiently (well, not really) explain to her that I don't care if they need a new AC unit or if they tow a fucking iceberg into my bathtub, but one way or another they are going to cool down my condo.

At 2:57pm on Thursday, the score remains:

God 1, Savoy 0

Some Norweigian girl is writing a master's thesis on Love Systems

Hat tip to Starlight for this:

http://sandyeyecandy.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/field-report-part-1/

I'm getting the feeling Starlight is someone we're going to be hearing a lot more from. One of the original Rockstars he became a junior instructor late last year and has been tearing it up ever since.

Check out his blog.

2009 Super Conference Main Stage - First Look

This is clearly going to be the best Super Conference ever...check out these topics. I'm not supposed to release them yet, but I'm pretty psyched about it, so I will anyway.

These are for the main stage of the Super Conference. 12-7pm Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. (October 9-11). See main stage video from 2008 here.

Of course, at the same time, there will be the breakout room also running sessions from 12-7pm Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Those are focused on live exercises with instructors, so it's a place you can drop in and do a routine stack, work on approaching, body language, tonality, AMOGing, shit tests, and so on. (Schedule coming)

And just to clarify - this is just the daytime portion of the Super Conference. Friday and Saturday night you go with instructors to VIP clubs in Las Vegas and use what you've learned with an instructor coaching, correcting, winging, and demonstrating the whole way.

Alright, enough preamble. Here's the topic list - each of these are 45-60 minutes. We have 3-4 slots left we're debating -- if you're coming and there's something you're dying to see on the main stage, email me.

Fundamentals

* Banish Approach Anxiety Forever
* Frames, Framing, and Re-framing
* Qualification Demystified
* Turning Phone numbers into dates
* What you MUST know about Rapport / Comfort
* Physical escalation (aka "kino")
* The 10 biggest myths of pickup

Exclusive Love Systems 2.0 Sessions

* Seduction within Comfort (aka Cajun's Question Game Routine)
* Advanced Social Dynamics
* Boundaries and Disqualification (in Attraction)
* The top 10 routines for same-night encounters
* High end club game
* Rapid physical escalation

Bonus sessions from Super Conference guests

* Be the selector not the chaser - David Wygant
* Lifestyle - Speer
* Qualifying for long-term potential - Dr Paul

Why so much of the academic literature about attraction is crap...

...well the easiest answer to this is that university professors are often older, married, and, most importantly, not given to field-testing their own conclusions.

The other day I read this article about psychology, risk-taking, and sexual attraction.

The basic idea? They set up in a park which had two bridges. One is high and shaky and would appeal to risk-takers. The other is low and stable. On the bridge, subjects would meet a female interviewer and the test was which men which ask her on a date.

Turns out, surprise, surprise, that the adventerous risk-taking guys who take the high bridge are the ones more likely to ask the researcher out.

So far so good, right?

The lame conclusion from this? "When it comes to desire and attraction, a little unpredictability goes a long way: It spikes the brain’s natural amphetamines, dopamine and norepinephrine, which play a big role in sexual arousal." I.e., that something about taking the high, dangerous, bridge causes the men to ask the women out.

In other words, you don't have to read Magic Bullets or the Love Systems Routines Manual anymore; just learn how to bungee jump...

..except, you're dealing with two obviously self-selecting groups. The researchers didn't tell men what bridge they had to take. They let the guys choose. So:

* People who are risk-takers are more likely to take the high bridge AND more likely to ask a woman out. That's what risk takers do. That's why Brad P and I did a whole interview on taking chances, which is one of our most popular. But if you'd closed the high bridge that day, the same guys would have taken the low bridge and been just as happy to ask the girl out.

* People on the low, stable bridge might be disproportionately older, or men with families (having a wife and kids depending on you doesn't make most men want to go jump off a high bridge...umm, that came out wrong)

"Research" like this is as useful as me saying that people who go to bars are more likely to be alcoholics - that it's the act of going into a bar that makes someone want to drink. Sure that's a little bit true, but most social alcoholics I know spend a lot more time deciding to go to bars than they do eating milk & cookies at home.

Read what researchers say about attraction and dating; we sure do. But like anything, take it with a grain of salt...

It's just a matter of time before Love Systems comes to Japan

...with stuff like this:

"According to a government survey, more than a quarter of unmarried men . . . between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan said they were not “going out with anybody.”

How NOT to use Facebook

Brett Favre - again

Brett Favre is like the girl from the club who doesn't seem to want to leave the next day. She keeps saying she's going. Lots of tearful goodbyes. She makes a show of packing up her stuff. She gets on her phone and makes plans. You call your buddies Tavaris and Sage (who are admittedly pretty lame themselves) and make plans. But you look over at the clock and it's 4pm and she's still there. Someone managing to be the center of attention.

And here we are.

Or maybe all this Favre-as-Hamlet is just an act, and the guy really, really, really doesn't like offseason workouts.

Hmmm.

Or Brett Favre can come work for Love Systems.

Playboy Mansion

Playboy Mansion Advanced Bootcamp was unreal. More than half of the guys took a girl home.

Umm, that came out wrong.

More than half of the guys took (different) girls home. One per guy though. We didn't cover threesomes until Sunday.

I'll have more to say about all of this later but right now I'm catching up on sleep.... :)

PUA Media and Pickup lines

We turn down most media requests unless we feel there's something to contribute. (Or it's a chance to meet Tyra Banks. Or the guy is hilarious kook armed with a Rubik's Cube and hidden camera).

Usually it's someone asking for the 10 guaranteed pick up lines that will get any girl into bed. Or something equally lame. So we just say no, because it isn't worth it to explain for the 1000th time that there's no magical set of words that if you string them in the right order cause a woman to go to bed with you. Yes, there are great openers in the Love Systems (formerly Mystery Method) Routines Manual - well great word-for-word scripts from Approaching to Seduction, but even those aren't magic secret shortcuts. If all you needed was one line, our bootcamps would take place over about 50 seconds instead of 50 hours.

You guys know all of this of course, so moving on...

Last week I got an interesting email from someone who claimed to be a journalist but would not tell us the name of the publication, the overall subject of the story, or when it would be published, but definitely needed -- urgently -- a time-sensitive "private lesson" for research into the story.

Really?

Or a while back Penn & Teller's people called me. They wanted us on their show, called "Bullshit!" I like Penn & Teller. It's a fun TV show. But it's hardly fair. It's really easy to make someone look stupid with selective editing and cutting them off with snarky voiceovers. But it's a humor show, so it works. No one expects (or should expect) The Daily Show to be fair either.

The producer said that Penn strongly feels that every guy ends up with the girl he should be with, and that's it. If you're not happy, settle. Hmmm. I'm not sure he'd feel that way if he weren't a multimillionaire celebrity, but anyway...

I started to point out to the producer that I might not be the smartest tack in the drawer, but that I wasn't sure about going on a show 1) Known for selective editing, 2) Where the host had a pre-existing and strongly negative opinion, and 3) called "A Fair and Objective Look Bullshit!".

He told me that they do in fact keep a very open mind and that sometimes they admit that whoever it is they brought on the show has a point so they cut out the voiceovers and cheap editing.

Hmmm. Can you give me an example of an episode where that happened, I asked.

The producer corrected himself. Apparently this is something that "might happen".

Sometimes I think I'm in my very own "Really?!?" sketch.

So Penny Arcade is actually a big deal, huh?

I'd actually never heard of Penny Arcade before this week. Turns out that it, like Ron Burgundy, is kind of a big deal.

This week's Penny Arcade vs Love Systems debate has started spilling over -- another 182 comments here and more traffic to the Love Systems website from Penny Arcade than game during the first week after Keys to the VIP came out.

Future is of course the Love Systems instructor discussed in the thread. You can see his follow-up comments here.

Tenmagnet also writes a great blog. I love all PUA blogs, but his is really one of the best if you want useful, bite-sized, "news you can use tonight" tips (as opposed to random gossip, field reports, or other nonsense that this blog occasionally falls into). Anyway, he just wrote about this too, today.

Alright, I'm off to learn more about what Penny Arcade actually is and does.