I used to love those commercials as a kid. I’d be watching television, and then this stern voice would come on and say, “It’s 10pm. Do you know where your children are?”

I would always answer him and say, “My children? I haven’t even had sex yet!” So then I’d run upstairs, wake up my Mom and Dad, and say “I’m here, in case you were wondering.”

My Mom would say, “What makes you say that Son?” I’d tell her, “The scary man on Channel 11 always asks ‘It’s 10pm, do you know where your children are,’ so I’m just telling you I’m here.” Then they would thank me and go back to sleep on opposite sides of the bed.

I’ve learned that is a behavior you never want in a relationship. Think about it. “Goodnight Dear.” “What? I can’t hear you all the way over here on the other side of the bed. Oh…goodnight Babe.”

So you might be wondering where I am going with this blog, and why we are all crying like babies. I’m glad you asked, because I was losing track of my mind today.

Have you ever been to a party where every conversation that people are having around you made you feel like you were from another planet? You are wondering why you can’t feel how these people are feeling and why you can’t seem to connect with them.

The reason you feel this way is because you are in monkey chatter mode. Whenever you go to a party and people are talking about things in which you have no interest, what you do is get frustrated.

Instead of listening and enjoying the conversation, and waiting for something about which you do want to talk, you start crying like a baby in your head. You say to yourself, “Waaaaaaaaah, I can’t talk to these people!” or “Waaaaaaaah, I’m socially inept!”

In reality, though, this is one of the best times to grow socially. It gives you the opportunity to listen and to learn.

I guarantee that you’ll be at another party at which the same subject matters will come up in a conversation, except then you’ll have stuff to contribute because at the first party you listened and stopped crying like a baby in your head. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and start realizing that the more you learn, the better conversationalist you will become.

When you go home tonight after a night like this, and you’re laying in bed beating yourself up for not being able to impress anybody with your conversational skills, realize that you just learned things that you didn’t know before now. If you learned something during that evening then that, by itself, made it an amazing night.

so maybe we should change this whole thing to, “It’s 10pm, do you know where your monkey chatter is?” Have a great Saturday, and I’ll see you guys at the monkey cages at the children’s zoo tonight.

What a powerful phrase that it. It’s never good when anybody says those four words to you. Usually when people say “We need to talk,” they do so lurching at you with a frustrated energy, because no one wants to have the talk that follows the announcement that “We need to talk.”

If you think about it, the reason that you have the “We have to talk” talk before you have the real conversation, is because you’re full of anxiety. What you have to talk about is probably something you’ve been thinking about for weeks, but just couldn’t get yourself to raise with the other person.

Because there has been all this buildup, when you do finally bring it up the tone that is taken is unbelievable. It is never a loving tone.

If your boyfriend or girlfriend ever says to you “We need to talk,” you know it is not good news. If it was good news, you would have heard about it already..

Nobody uses the phrase “We need to talk” to tell someone that they love them. When your boss calls you into the office and says, “We need to talk,” it’s never good.

It’s funny, too, because you could have just been in the kitchen with your boyfriend or girlfriend five minutes before talking about breakfast, then all of a sudden you are hearing “We have to talk.” So you say, “Weren’t we just talking?” and they will say “No, we weren’t having the ‘we have to talk’ talk.”

I don’t have a solution for the “We have to talk” problem, but I can tell you one thing. If you have something good to say to someone, you’ll never preface it with “We have to talk.”

Also, no matter what you have to say to someone — whether it’s something great or telling someone they are driving you up the wall — don’t start it off with “We need to talk.” Start it off with something more loving like, “Hey babe, I want to share something with you about the way I’ve been feeling that I think will really be beneficial to our relationship.” Doesn’t that sound much better than “We need to talk?”

Let’s talk about this. There are so many better ways to start a conversation than, “We need to talk.”

What would the theme music be for ‘we need to talk?’ Maybe the theme from The Exorcist? It must be something ominous sounding. Let me know if any of you have suggestions.

My football record stands on its own at 12-1. 12-1 is pretty good I think. The Titans are my only blemish. So, with that, I am going to go out on a limb and tell you which teams I’m picking this week

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The Giants are going to dominate over the high school quarterback led Oakland Raiders. The Vikings will be victorious over the Rams and its equally inept quarterback. Really, the Rams aren’t rams at all; they’re more like goats.

The Ravens will beat the Bengals. I’m not buying all the hype about the Bengals yet.

Here’s another tough pick. The Eagles will beat the Buccaneers. Let me tell you, Jon Gruden is laughing every single day. They fired him? Are you kidding me?

Braylon Edwards will catch a pass and lead the Jets to a victory over the finless Dolphins. The Patriots will win big.

Denver is going down this week. Is that not the worst 4-0 team you’ve ever seen?

Dante Culpepper will wish he was still on the bench after the Steelers destroy him on Sunday. As for the Buffalo vs Cleveland game, really who cares? It’s not even worth predicting.

As for Dallas, Tony Romo better start learning that finding the end zone is not as easy as finding one of his celebrity girlfriends. Maybe he should go back and run one of his family’s rib businesses. Tony Romo notwithstanding, Dallas will squeak a win out this week.

What is it about ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends? They seem to somehow know the exact wrong time to text you.

Here you are, about to have sex with your partner, and all of a sudden there it is. You hear that certain beep telling you that you have just received a text message.

You think to yourself, “Oh man, who is texting me? It’s really late. Who is texting me?” You get nervous about those 1:00 a.m. texts that come in.

It’s nerve-racking, because the only one who should be texting you at 1:00 a.m. is the person with whom you are laying in bed at that very moment. So you keep wondering who texted, until you can’t stand it anymore and you instinctively check your phone like Pavlov’s Dog.

At first you are relieved and you think, “Whew! Thank God it’s not me.” Then all of a sudden you notice that it is your partner’s phone that is blinking. You both have the same “beep” for incoming text messages, and the beep that you heard is theirs (not yours).

Now you think to yourself, “Oh man, I know EXACTLY who just texted them. It’s the ex.”

So here you are laying in bed, either just about to have sex or just having had great sex, and you have to have “the ex talk.” You may have already had the ex talk before several times. When that ex intrudes into your personal space at 1:00 a.m., however, that ex talk goes into a whole other dimension.

You will lay there wondering what your partner is thinking and feeling. You will want to know what the emotions are that they are experiencing, and how they are feeling at that moment about their ex.

Ex’s are a very powerful influence in a relationship. Even though you are with somebody new and you are sharing amazing feelings together, you will still wonder what your partner is thinking and feeling about their ex when a text comes in like that.

You tell yourself that you are not going to let your paranoid mind take over. After all, it is you who is laying next to then (and not the ex). You are the one with whom they are now hanging out and sharing feelings.

Regardless, you have that ex talk right there and then at 1:00 a.m. You are wondering about it, and your partner really needs to let out whatever is on their mind about it.

You need to be 100% okay with whatever they say, because the topic needs to come up and your partner needs to get out what is on their mind. Eventually, your partner is going to need to confront the ex issue, because at some point the ex needs to stop holding on to whatever part of that old relationship to which they are clinging.

The key is that your partner needs to feel that there is an open space where they can talk to you no matter what is going on and no matter what they have to say. They need to feel like they can talk to you anytime and about anything, because building a relationship is all about open lines of communication. That is the only way that two people are going to get close.

I am always fine with the ex talk because I like clean slates. Both people need to have clean slates when you’re in a relationship, and sometimes you need to clean those slates together to get there.

You’ve got to deal with things. Relationships are all about supporting one another.

As each of you guys are out there getting ready to spend your Saturdays meeting women, this is something for you to keep in mind…

It’s so funny how men seem to want to overcomplicate just about everything. Think about this for a minute.

When a man gets a brand new gas grill and he’s putting it together, does he usually read the directions or does he try to just “figure it out” on his own? When a man buys a brand new big screen tv, does he read the manual or does he just try 800 different ways to arrange the cords until the tv works? It’s the same answer about the manual that comes with a man’s new car.

How often will a man read the manual that comes with something? Pretty much never! Why, then, do most men believe that women should come with a manual?

When you first talk to a woman, it doesn’t have to be so complicated. The obvious things are the best things to talk about, because it means that you are paying attention to the little things. If you ask any woman what matters most to them, it’s always the little things. It’s all the little things make life so much better.

If you pay attention to the little things, women will feel like you’ve actually connected with them. They’ll think “Wow! This guy actually paid attention. He was actually present. He wasn’t just trying to pick me up with some ridiculous routine.”

It’s the obvious things that make the best conversation starters. You need to start observing and picking up on everything that is obvious. Everyone who has worked with me for a weekend always notices the same thing about me and how I function: My behavior is very natural and almost everything I say to people is very obvious.

The key to my behavior being so natural is that it really IS natural to me. The way it will become natural for you is by repetition (a/k/a PRACTICE). Here is a caution about practice, though, that you want to watch. When most guys hear practice, they add on “with women you’re attracted to” to the end of the sentence. Don’t make that mistake. Practice with all women and, in fact, with every kind of person.

Remember that just because you don’t want to go out with someone, that doesn’t mean they aren’t a great person worth talking to and getting to know. It doesn’t mean that person isn’t someone from whom you can’t learn something. That person may end up being a great friend. It’s all about building up that power and social network.

Another exercise to help you learn to comment on the obvious stuff is to take 20 common every-day words – words like coffee, groceries, furniture, fruit, gasoline, gym or whatever – and write down one thing you would say about each. Create a little story about each.

A great conversation can always be created from one of these kind of stories. The obvious things are the things you already know and about which you can feel comfortable talking. Furthermore, if you start the conversation with a woman about something obvious, then you won’t break the woman’s chain of thought and she won’t wonder why you’re bothering her with some random comment coming out of left field. So stop overcomplicating things when it comes to meeting women, and start getting in touch with the obvious!