The Guys

Thank you to these eight men who help provide a male perspective in our His Take columns:

Andrew Condell has been doling out unsolicited advice for as long as anyone can remember. His world-weary platitudes are often met with indifference, annoyance and unsettling silences. Despite Andrew’s advanced age, he has very little life experience from which to draw and has learned almost nothing from his many many mistakes.

 

Art Allen is a straight man nearing his 30s. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, dog, and two cats. Art is an event producer and might have an event happening in your town soon. He has a nearly 1:1 ratio of having his heart broken and having broken others’ hearts. He knows what’s up.

 

Brian Fairbanks has been a working journalist since he landed a job at the Hartford Courant at the age of 15, going on to write for Gawker, Nerve and AOL as a relationships and pop culture writer. After a tenure of working on books by Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac, he created videos that aired on the Daily Show and the Rachel Maddow Show and has just completed his first feature film.

 

Dennis Hong engineers happiness at WordPress.com by day. By night, he is a relationships and comedy writer, which can be redundant or an oxymoron, depending on your perspective. Dennis is the creator of Musings on Life and Love, a group blog for sharing life lessons, and LemonVibe, a relationship advice site for couples. You also can find him on Twitter (he is not the creator of Twitter).

 

Diablo began as a wide-eyed English major with no clue how to care for himself, much less anyone else. He has been an English lecturer, has worked for various small charities, and is now the Grants and Communications Manager for a community foundation in Canada, helping over 150 charities each year to receive funding for community projects. In his spare time, he is a hack songwriter. Any good qualities he has he most likely learned from his wife.

Guy Friday works at a small non-profit as a champion of the indigent, particularly since he’s one of them himself. He’s the guy who, with each piece of advice he gives, tries to live by the guidance of the Old Man in the Legend of Zelda: “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this!” And, of course, he’s the kind of guy who rewrote this bio at least 20 times before submitting it because he didn’t want to sound like an idiot.

Jarek is from Maine. His qualifications for this highly-paid position include being “somewhat out of touch with the dating scene,” according to his wife, and “it’s the sort of advice you take with a grain of salt,” says one friend. He often finds himself asking questions you would expect to hear from your parents, like “What the hell is Snapchat?” and “What does YOLO stand for?” That, coupled with his love for scotch, makes him a 65-year-old man stuck in a 30-year-old’s body.

Matthew Van Colton is a New York and Chicago-based writer & performer. He loves the smell of pine trees, he’ll never turn down peanut butter with chocolate, and he thinks the idea of having his very own stalker is both romantic and flattering. More at www.matthewvancolton.com.

 

Tax Geek is the father of two boys, ages 13 and 9. He is recently divorced and so is trying to figure out this dating/relationships thing again. He has a law degree, but has yet to put it to good use. Instead, he works in marketing in the financial services industry.