"Where Is My Spaghetti Bo-lo-knees??" (Guest Starring Jeffy As The Obnoxious American)

So I’ve been in New York for the past few weeks and just recently I’ve arrived in Italy.

It’s great to be here. I’ve been missing Hawaii (and all my friends there) like crazy, but it’s truly amazing and I’m having a blast.

Before I get started on today’s article, I first have to say that the girls in Italy are absolutely incredible.

I can’t figure out if it’s the food or the fashion or some sort of blessed gene pool passed down by the ancient Roman gods -- but it’s like there’s so many hot women out here that being attractive is basically generic.

Like, "Oh, another slim, fit, tanned, natural-breasted girl with a gorgeous face and dressed to the nines… Whatever."

I’ll definitely fill you guys in more about this later…

Anyway, traveling has always been a massive and 100% crucial aspect of my creative process -- and by getting "outside the box" I’m always finding my mind being jolted with epiphanies when I least expect it.

One of the major epiphanies for me recently has been the so-called “slow food” culture in the restaurants out here, which is basically a big slap in the face to your average American...

...typically shifting around in their seats in a state of befuddled vexation about the “bad service” and yelling obnoxiously along the lines of "Where is my Spaghetti Bo-lo-knees?!! Brittney!! Brittneyyy!! Tell them to get my god damned Spaghetti Bo-lo-knees!!"


The Italians, like the French, oftentimes consider us Joe-Blow Americans (or North Americans in my case) to be “vulgar” and somewhat ridiculous.

On the surface this may come across as snobbery on their part, or even “hater-ism” about not yet having achieved the level of raging economic prosperity that we have on the other side of the pond…

Frankly that’s what I’d always thought, as I just didn’t see any other reason for the stereotype.

There’s really more to it than that, however…

Being in Italy really brings into focus the type of ill-ease that we have as North Americans, always trying to "Get to the future" and oftentimes being incapable of enjoying the moment for what it is.

Obviously Italy is still a country of imperfect human beings just like any other, and no country of place on this planet is without flaw.

However for me personally, as a North American, there’s an obvious difference.

The tongue-and-cheek statement "Let’s get to the future" is really what encapsulates the dysfunction and cancerous tumor of "More, more, more..." that exists in Western culture.

(It’s a catch-phrase that you never want to forget… “Let’s get to the future”)


The Fast Food industry is a classic example of our desperate need to get to the future…

You take a time of day that’s supposed to be a time-out to kick back and hang out with your family and friends, ramp it up to warp speed, eat the most processed and devoid-of-nutrition food in the history of mankind…… and you’ve got yourself a classic American Fast Food eating scenario.

The issue here, of course, is that when you’re always moving, moving, moving you ultimately lose touch with what it is that you’re working towards.

It starts with consumer driven culture that tells you the path to happiness and authenticity is through the achievement of the glitzy-glamorous lifestyle that’s pumped into your living room (with a little dose of ego-dysfunction, greed, and paranoia) en masse via the TV.

You then feel ill-at-ease with where you’re at, and feel prodded to either 1) keep moving frantically towards a lifestyle that would make it all feel “OK”, or 2) resign yourself to being a spoke on the wheel, watching life pass you by as a spectator on the sidelines… “cut from a different cloth” than the people actually playing the game.

It is an insane irony that while lifestyle and mortality-rates are at their all time best, self-esteem is oftentimes found to be at its all-time worst.


You see the pattern in full-effect when you’re learning how to be successful with women, and even when you’re on a “day 2” you’re still scanning the room for more girls to check out.

Or when you’re having sex with a girl for the first time and you’re already picturing different girls in your head in order to keep yourself “focused on the goal” of getting off.

It’s also when you feel a desperate need to keep bedding girl after girl (even when you meet a girl who you’re totally happy with… and who you enjoy having sex with *more* than the new girls you’re hooking up with) because you can’t get that feeling of “being in state” without more, more, more…

I know that in my case, I waded through probably the darkest cloud of my entire life, not when I didn’t have what I wanted…… but when I finally *got* it.

It was about a year ago, when everything in my life was finally *perfect*.

I was living in Honolulu, I had a great girlfriend, I was finally out of the massive debt I incurred at Project Hollywood, and the live programs were getting the best reviews of all time.

There was really nothing in my life to be unhappy about… and yet, I didn’t really make any difference whatsoever.

At that point I started to feel truly insane…


I started reading up on all sorts of environmental and human-rights disasters in the world, which while I now believe are tremendously important, also served a dysfunctional role of making me feel “normal” at the time.

In reading and studying this stuff with such intensity, I could feel that it was “OK” to be so screwed up.

I could say to myself "Of course I’m ill at ease with the world… Look at everything that’s going on!! Anyone who could be happy in this world is probably more screwed up than me!!"

(On the positive side I picked up a new passion in life, and one that I hope to pursue in my thirties and forties if I manage to make it that far… I’ve already traveled South America this year and I’ll be doing Africa in 2009).

Anyway, I can’t tell you what an off-balance feeling it is to be walking down the street on yet another perfect morning in Honolulu, knowing that everything in my life is perfect...

...and yet still feeling barely any more gratitude for it than the average schmo back where I come from in Canada -- trudging through a snow-bank on his way back from a job that he hates to a girlfriend who he doesn’t love.

I actually got to a point where I started experiencing a sort of weird vague paranoid that I was going to die (I thought about this a lot when I was traveling on planes… probably due to a nightmarish bout of air turbulence I went through on a puddle-jumper few years back) and on some level I felt like if I didn’t appreciate my life that I didn’t deserve to live.

It was like I’d been given everything, and instead of appreciating it I was just spitting back in the face of all that had been offered to me.


Even knowing this, I wasn’t really competent to change it at the time -- and I kept pushing harder and harder with my career and various skill-sets in the belief that I’d eventually arrive at some set of circumstances that would make the world a different place to exist.

Oftentimes I imagine what it’s like to be a rap star like “The Game” or “50 Cent” living in a preposterous mansion with all the cars and women and money and yes-men you could ever want… totally alone and confused at the emptiness of it all.

If you’ve ever seen the end to movie version of the awesome anime series “Neon Genesis” (where the main character is sitting beside the limp girl) -- that’s how I would imagine it.

At least when there’s still a "future" to get to there’s still a reason to keep going. It’s when you realize that you ARE in the future and you feel the EXACT SAME that you go truly insane.

I often see those guys in interviews looking very, very rattled and I recognize exactly what they’re going through.

There's an interview with 50 Cent on MTV recently, and you can see that his core sense of self (which is based around achieving the highest sales in hip-hop rather than the quality of his music) is about to be annihilated when Kanye West likely blows past him on the same release-date this September.

(Here's the link... http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1567100/20070814/50_cent.jhtml)

You can see that he knows it… And even though he’s achieved more in life than most will ever dream of, the self-esteem he has right now might as well be on the same level as a kid shoved into a locker back in high school.


Will it be the best thing that’s every happened to him -- as it starts a chain-reaction towards the burning up of ego and the achievement of self-esteem… or will he just bury himself deeper into a deluded reality??

Time will tell……

I know that in my case it was only when I escaped the deeply engrained pattern of ego-dysfunction (to the much more moderate version that I fluctuate in and out of now) that I finally started appreciating what I had in life.

I’m out here in Italy right now, and I’m actually starting to appreciate how much progress I’ve made.

I see the American tourists, pissed off at every inconvenience of being removed from their usual comfy environment… Rushing from destination to destination… Totally unconscious to what’s actually going on around them.

The classic example is how tourists will spend more time trying to get the perfect “MySpace” picture to show their friends than actually *experiencing* the trip itself.

I mean, how bitterly ironic is that??

You’re on the trip that’s supposedly what you’ve “worked towards” in all your financial endeavors -- and yet you’re more wrapped up in projecting some sort of “exciting lifestyle” to people who (in many cases) you don’t even genuinely like via your “*MY* Space” and checking it off your “tick list” of trendy exotic locals you can say you’ve visited…… than actually *enjoying* the experience of being somewhere beautiful and cultural and entirely new.

Can you look at Michelangelo’s “David” or “Sistine Chapel” and actually soak in the powerful experience that it is… or is it all about the social-proof behind it and saying to yourself and the world that you’ve been there??


Are you able to shut your mouth (and incessant thinking, judging, comparing, and interpreting) and actually *experience* it, or are you stuck in your head thinking about the next project and how to get to the “next thing”??

What I’m talking about is the difference between being an “authentic human being” versus a “shell of a man”.

Having just released “Transformations” (which thanks to you guys has been a big hit) I’ve also seen the odd guy who fails to “get” what the program is all about.

It’s that “What’s next?? What’s next??” tendency in Western Culture that spawns and breeds the worldview that the next “tactic” or “routine” will be the missing-piece and cure-all to being a chode with women......

...and so even in watching a masterpiece like Tim’s segment (where we’ve essentially *captured* the genuine “presence” and “vibe” of an individual who’s achieved total mastery with this stuff) –- it’s still being interpreted, judged, and compared through a noisy filter of "How is this going to get me to the future?? Where is the missing routine?? Where is my missing piece??"

(Even though they haven't even internalized all the other pieces that they've *already* gotten via various other sources...)

See, it’s when you’re able to evolve past all this, and move out of egoic-dysfunction and towards real self-esteem that real changes occur.


Changes in your life, of course…

But also changes in the results you get with women.

Gone are issues like “Approach Anxiety” or having to pump the girls with high-octane material to make them act attracted to you so that you can “get into state” and have a decent night.

Gone are issues like doing well with the girl on the day1, but then being nervous that you’re not the same “cool guy” on the telephone or the day 2.

Gone are issues like having to use a “routine” or a “technique” just to get unstifled and speak with confidence, humor, and conviction.

In its place comes real, bona fide “transformation”… As in “Deep, Identity Level Change”.

Of course, all this points towards a *new* paradigm of what it means to be a so-called “Pick Up Artist” in this day and age.

You might wonder "But... But... If I was already internally validated then *why* would I keep going out and learning to become successful with girls??"

It's a good question... and there's an equally good answer.

There’s probably 3 main reasons that come to mind for why most people go out and chat up girls...:

1- External validation.

2- Endorphins and emotional health from experiencing physical connection with women.

3- The knowledge that you’ve been successful in one of your BASE LINE and FUNDAMENTAL callings as a man, which is to have women like you “just for you”.

As you can probably figure, the first reason is dysfunctional while the second and third reasons are very healthy and positive and good.

I mean, this is ultimately a change in your MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGY here.

If you’ve been driven by egoic-dysfunction and the need for “more, more, more…” up until now, and you suddenly realize its unhealthy, does that really mean that there’s nothing left??

Of course not!!

It’s when you move past those old hand-cuffs that the world really OPENS UP to you.

You’re not only far, far more lethal “in the field” because you’ve moved past “outcome dependence” and your skills with women become dangerously sharp…


You can also actually ENJOY the fruits of your effort and parlay them into bigger and better things.

With the whole “New RSD” we’re seeing a lot of guys who had previously QUIT and RETIRED from the whole “game” (because they were sick of that old deadlocked pattern of going out to a nightclub and “value-scanning” and “trying to get validated” and “looking to the environment to derive state”) suddenly finding a NEW and RE-INVIGORATED interest in this awesome and fascinating area.

We’re talking about guys who had utterly renounced the game and believed that “the only way to win the game is to leave it”... and they're now finding a whole new, more profound dimension of value in it.

They’re going out and engaging in the enjoyment of OFFERING VALUE and DERIVING YOUR STATE FROM WITHIN AND NOT YOUR ENVIRONMENT… and suddenly going out is becoming an EXPRESSION of that inner self-esteem and success.

It’s really a beautiful thing when you can meet a woman and be with her and just enjoy that self-esteem together.

You’re together, and you naturally don’t find yourself in any of those ridiculous bad habits like “qualifying yourself” or “feeling spikes and lulls in your state” or “acting low-value”… and the buildup towards sex as a way to blow off all the chemistry that’s built up is just a natural and inevitable thing.

Just by "being in the moment" with her (minus all the pathetic self-seeking and drive for her validation), you’re opening her up to a hotter, more exciting experience than she probably ever knew was possible.

So yeah, duhhhh, she's going to be very receptive to it.

And you know what??

It all comes back to that simple, and yet so often overlooked ability to just sit down and enjoy a meal.

Because if you can’t do EVEN THAT… if you can’t be with people and enjoy the moment without being in your head self-monitoring and seeing yourself through the eyes of others... then there’s really not much chance that the “next thing” is going to be your missing piece.

Anyway, I’m about to go out with the crew and enjoy a plate of Spaghetti Bolognese...

Seriously, I’m not even kidding. The pasta out here is phenomenal. Maybe I’ll have some Ravioli instead, I don’t know.

I suppose I’ll have to wait a bit longer to get served than back in America…

Hopefully though, I’ll enjoy my friend’s company and the music and the great food… And maybe I’ll even focus more on the experience than getting that great shot for my MySpace.

Sorry for the delays on the blog lately, and thanks for reading!!



Tyler