Happy V-Day sweetheart!

If your special sweety is a hipster residing in the Williamsburg/Greenpoint area, this holiday is especially hard. What can you get them, a pre-order of the Girls: Season 1 box set? Luckily, the Department of Environmental Protection has your back. Raw sewage, anyone?

According to the AP's Big Story Tumblr:

The Department of Environmental Protection is again offering Valentine's Day tours of the Newtown Creek sewage treatment plant in Brooklyn's Greenpoint section.

The DEP says it's offering three tours this year due to "overwhelming demand."

The 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. tours were quickly filled. So another was added at 11 a.m. Thursday.

Highlights include the plant's giant egg-shaped digesters, which break down noxious waste into harmless sludge and gas.

This idea is especially good for any young lady who claims to hate Valentine's Day, uses phrases like "the Hallmark-industrial complex," and has still made you confirm four times that you're going to be around to "hang" on Thursday. This should teach her about managing expectations.

Mr. Matchmaker, won't you make me a match?

A social event for a matchmaker on the day after Valentine’s Day struck Transom as having more than a slight whiff of desperation about it. Or was it hopefulness? We were expecting a shout of “Next year in...”—well, where is it that prototypically happy couples go, anyhow?

Happy coupledom, to us, has always read as shorthand for “excuse to stay home on couch in pajamas reading novels.”  These thoughts were with us as we entered the Upper East Side restaurant Amali. Amali had been described in the invite as “farm-to-table,” which got us thinking metaphorically. Ah, the farm. No matchmaking required there—jump cut to grunts and flying mud. Pity the poor humans and their tables, over which banter must be made.

We’d always wanted to meet a matchmaker, and no sooner had we picked out Richard Easton as the dark-suited fellow with round, owlish glasses, than we employed a strategy that, back in our single days, had helped us to meet men: we made a bee line for him, cornered him, and started asking questions.

One of Mr. Easton’s selling points is that he is the same demographic as his clients. To give you an idea of what that demographic is, he founded his own bank in 1988 and sold it to Merrill Lynch in 1999. He was married for 11 years, is divorced, and has two daughters.

Of late the matchmaking business is good. He expanded his business to Los Angeles in October—“It’s doing extremely well. I’m back and forth on the plane all the time”—and in the fall will open in Miami. Next year, London. He may, he says, branch out into same sex matches but, for the moment, “I have no experience in it, so I stick to what I know.”

His clients range in age from 27 to 63. Most of the men are in their 30s and 40s. Most of the women are in their 20s and 30s. The men are busy. The women are busy, too. The women are “the whole package: beautiful, well-educated, from good families, with good values.” There are 500 women members. He interviews 10 to 20 women a week. He sets up 30 to 40 dates a week. He puts two men a week into relationships. He  charges clients from $10,000 to $100,000 for a contract that lasts a year and a half.

As we spoke, clients came by to chat with him, and he described them to us, sotto voce. One was, he said, looking for a woman who is beautiful, and a rocket scientist. A tough assignment, we said, and asked about his most successful match ever, and he launched into the story of a 42-year-old German man who owns residences in several countries, to whom he introduced a 33-year-old Danish former supermodel. There was an impromptu European sojourn—nights out at restaurants, days lying on the beach, “and now they’re inseparable, engaged!”

We sighed, and asked whether he felt boxed in by the stereotypical image of the woman matchmaker, the yenta of yore. Men, he said, appreciate a man’s perspective. And “a lot of women would rather be matched by a man, because a man knows what a man wants in a woman.”

But what do most people, you know, want? “Women are just as superficial as men when it comes to looks. Society in general believes that women put looks secondary, or third.” Huh. “Men want the girl to be sweet.” Well, there it was. We’d just been disqualified from every possible match, ever. “And women want the guy to make ‘em laugh.”

But don’t, we ventured, don’t men want to laugh too? Don’t they, well, want women to be funny? “Men want that too. It’s just,” he paused, “further down on the list.” We took a drink of our cloying drink. “15 years ago, I felt people were much more focused on religion than they are today,” he went on.  That, we said, Doesn’t bode well for J Date and Christian Mingle, which promises ‘the mate God intended.’ Didn’t his company offer stylists to clients to make them more date-worthy? “A lot of typical men,” he said, “have 15 business suits and stuff to go watch a football game with their buddies, and nothing in between. That’s where a stylist can help, with date clothes.” We asked how he works, and he told us he speaks with clients at length, interviews them, gets to know them…

Wait, something about all of this was starting to sound familiar. Interviews, drawing people out. Matchmaking wasn’t so different from...reporting!

Hey! What about the all the boozy late night relationship advice we’d doled out over the years? What about the ghostwritten text messages that had earned us, in our own eyes at least, the moniker “Sarahno De  Bergerac?” We could do this. Then again, maybe not. We were pretty sure we didn’t know what qualified as date clothes. Also, we weren’t clear on what it meant to be “sweet.” Outside Amali, the air was thick with the noxious fumes of unrequited love, heavy with the lingering fog of bad dates. Or? No. It was only taxi exhaust.

sdouglas@observer.com

Arianne Cohen knows 1500 people's weird sexual secrets. That they told her. (Image courtesy the author)

In The Observer's all-day mission to provide solace to the Valentine-less, we give you this: The bitter and the undersexed can now binge on the voyeuristic delights (or is it the anthropological horrors?) of New York magazine's weekly online Sex Diaries. The concept has been expanded beyond the five boroughs in a book, The Sex Diaries Project,  published by John Wiley & Sons. With the contextualizing essays by former New York sex diaries editor Arianne Cohen, we might even figure out how we got to this sad state in the first place--or why it's not so bad after all.

Ms. Cohen first collected sex diaries as a freelancer for the magazine’s Love and Sex issue in April 2007. When journals left over from the issue performed well online, Sex Diaries became a weekly web column, which Ms. Cohen edited until 2010. The book has no affiliation with the magazine and draws from all new diaries—1,500 of them, penned by North Americans ages 18-94.

Though Ms. Cohen enjoyed her time with New York’s archetypal 27 year-old professional who is spreading her sexual wings (among other things), she saw a more thoughtful end for all that data. In 2010, she struck out on her own, collecting British and Italian sex diaries and publishing volumes in those countries.

Ms. Cohen was willing to indulge in a little comparative sexuality, with the caveat that there are many exceptions to these broad generalizations.

Italians, for instance, are physically flirtatious but “exceedingly conservative” when it comes to defining a relationship.

“To a heterosexual Italian, a relationship is a man and a woman who are going to get married,” she explained. “They spend a lot of time trying to squeeze themselves into that box.”

Brits are wordy, with diaries coming in at twice the length of their American counterparts.

“They like to explain very basic sex acts in eighteen to twenty-two words,” she said. On the other hand, they’re also much more florid in their fantasy lives than Americans, who tend to stick to a porno-realist script.

“Americans take their power in their relationships very seriously,” she said.

What about the local specimen?

“New Yorkers are very transactional,” she said, due to their busy schedules. “They do a lot of rating, like ‘I would give last night a B+.’”

The American volume differs from the New York magazine column in that it’s not strict surveillance. There’s a lot of analysis in there too.

“You’re getting a snapshot of how Americans connect and disconnect,” she said, “how Americans do relationships.”

The finding that blew Ms. Cohen’s mind and actually changed her life is this:

"Although we think of a 'relationship' as a stable term, there are three completely different types of couples. Readers can determine which they're in, and the pros and cons of each. Bonus: you'll understand all your previous and future relationships.”

According to The Sex Diaries Project, there are the lovers, who want a deep emotional, intellectual, and physical connection; the partners, who want to cook each other dinner, greet each other at the door and plan camping trips; and the aspirers; who want “three kids, $100,000 per year, and sex twice a week.”

Ms. Cohen—though she has previously been in a partnership—said she and fiancé Nate are definitely lovers.

“He is very tolerant of me saying, ‘Do you wanna do this thing that I just read about in a diary?’”

For the truly unimaginative, it gets even easier. The project has been adapted for television by Ms. Cohen, with the help of Left/Right Productions (which worked on This American Life’s television series) and four sex diarists equipped with Flip Cams.

Buzzfeed's latest hire, Mystic (Jamie Urso)

In their latest effort to make the rest of the world feel jealous for not working for Jonah Peretti, Buzzfeed introduced a new friend to the office this morning: Mystic the miniature horse.

Politics reporter Zeke Miller was one of the first to tweet out the Valentine's Day surprise from Buzzfeed's HQ:

Smart move on new EIC Ben Smith's part, as a small horse is apparently a great way to motivate employees to come to work:

As of the time of this writing, Mystic has apparently already left the building. And while The New York Observer would never stoop to such obvious ploys for attention as broadcasting photos a live animal in our offices, let's just say that Kaplan the Unicorn remains the best reason to come to work everyday.

Update: According to an email from Managing Editor Scott Lamb, the horsie was a gift from president Jon Steinberg for passing over 25 million unique views in December.

Ms. Kandyba was recently dumped. (image via Vogue.com)

Today DNAinfo generously served up the names, ages, and photographs of fashion week imports who are really disillusioned by the whole Valentine's Day thing.

Take Mariza Veer, who's been a model for four years. She says that "though all people deserve to get nice things on Valentine's Day," she was really surprised her boyfriend got her a lame blender one year, "given her occupation."

"I won't say that beauty has nothing to do with love, and that definitely factors into how people are treated," Ms. Veer told DNAinfo.

Single guys with a savior complex may want to hit the tents and track down 20 year-old Ella Kandyba, who is not expecting even the most predictable chocolates or a movie, seeing as her boyfriend dumped her recently.

"I have no boyfriend this Valentine's Day. It's very sad," Ms. Kandyba said. "He broke up with me because I'm crazy."

For the past four years, the Times Square Alliance has tapped celebrated architects to create giant Valentines for Father Duffy Square (site of the giant TKTS amphitheater). Entries have included glowing hearts and icy ones. This year, the alliance tapped one of the BIGgest firms in town, Bjarke Ingels Group, to create its installation.

The Dainish firm is using 400 special LED-filled tubes to create a heart cube that will react to the environment around it: "The transparent tubes refract the lights of Times Square, creating a cluster of lights around the heart. The hovering heart will appear to pulsate as its tubes sway in the wind.   When people touch a heart-shaped sensor, the heart will glow brighter as the energy from their hands is converted into more light."

The installation opens today and will be on display through the end of the month.

Update: We've added some photos of the installation from our intrepid intern Michael Ewing.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The poem comes with a message to the group's supporters, urging them to contact State Senate Majority Leader Skelos and other members of the State Senate to express support for gay marriage.

This specific push may be a result of Cuomo's statement last week that he would try to put marriage equality legislation to another vote within the next few months. Gay marriage efforts have passed in the State Assembly, but not in the State Senate- the most recent attempt to pass legislation on the issue failed by a sizable margin in 2009. According to polls, more New Yorkers than ever before support the legalization of same-sex marriage, which may account for the issue's recent resurgence in popularity.

New York isn't the only city seeing a push for this issue today, however. ABC reports that marriage equality advocates nationwide are celebrating Valentine's Day by campaigning for gay marriage rights. Freedom to Marry, a New York City-based group, is kicking off a $10 million public education campaign called "Why Marriage Matters" with a nationwide television ad that will run on CNN. Other groups across the nation are organizing their own efforts to support the cause.

"As we cheer on our heterosexual fellow citizens who are able to marry on this wonderful day of love," Molly McKay of advocacy group Marriage Equality U.S.A. said in a press statement, "we will remind the world that falling in love and the desire to marry the person you love is a universal sentiment and that all citizens should have the freedom to marry the one they love."

If gay marriage can- as the Times recently postulated- positively impact state budgets, legislators maybe inclined to take another look. Here's the poem in its full form:

A Valentine's Day Poem in Support of All of New York's Families

Republicans are red,

Democrats are blue,

But love transcends political parties,

We know this is true.

So on this Valentine's Day,

Tell the state we don't care who's straight or gay.

It's time for the Senate to finally act,

To allow all of New York's couples to enter the marriage pact.

Marriage fairness is about love,

Family, and children, too.

It's about dignity and equality,

And discrimination we must undo.

So send a quick note to the reps of our state,

And tell them everyone should be able to marry their soul mate.

The Senate must correct its archaic world view,

For fair marriage laws are long over-due.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Wishing you a wonderful Valentine's Day,

From the NYCLU!

As the dreaded day approaches, I can feel the skin on my forehead gradually tighten, bridging the gap between my eyebrows. Great--togetherness. And now I look even less covetable. Good job, squishy-face. Always setting yourself up for a win!

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. Valentine's Day sucks, and you know it does. You've always known it--from that time you didn't get as many candygrams as the blonde girl next to you in Mrs. Wadzuk's fifth grade class to that time your college boyfriend got you a blowpop to this year when you're single, and the only planned date you have is with Netflix and a bottle of Pepe Lopez. Actually, this year doesn't sound too bad.

Here's an idea: How about we scrap the whole thing?

Admittedly, abolishing Valentine's Day isn't a new idea--it's actually a pretty popular search item on Google--but here it comes again to ruin our lives. Why? Why not just pretend it doesn't exist? It's not like we get the day off from work, so already it's not a real holiday. Indeed, the case for wiping Valentine's Day from the calendar is so compelling, I actually had to leave out a few lesser reasons for time's sake (like the fact that the day is clearly a fire hazard).

Let's start with the obvious. Valentine's Day is a set-up, and the outcome is repeated dissatisfaction. There is no freaking way anyone, not even your best friend-slash-lover of God-knows-how-many-years, could, in this one particular 24-hour time period, demonstrate his or her appreciation in just precisely the way you want to be appreciated. Can't happen.

Why can't it happen? Because, frankly, you expect too much. You fantasize about rose petals and multiple candles. You anticipate a well-lit restaurant and a really handsome but unobtrusive waiter. You build up expectations and don't vocalize them until they haven't been met, which leaves one party feeling inadequate and the other unloved. This leads into that inevitable day-after Valentine's relationship hangover in which you contemplate every life decision you've ever made. All because of Feb. 14.

And come on, even if you do manage to have a decent time, it will make your friends all the more miserable, which will kill your romantic buzz like a bee in a blender. Your boyfriend could be as romantic and dreamy as Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, and your best friend would still call you and cry about how her boyfriend left a suggestive comment on another girl's Facebook page--something about "banana cream pie." And maybe it would have been fine on any other day but why'd he have to do it today? It's Valentine's Day, for chrisssakes.

Now her sadness is yours, and you can't even tell her about how your boo knelt down and recited e.e. cummings' "I Carry Your Heart with Me" with flawless intonation because you'd just feel guilty.

To add insult to injury, Valentine's Day is exclusionary. And I'm not saying this because I'm single--it excludes most average couples too. Valentine's Day is only for people who have just met. They have just met, and are so completely head-over-heels, balls-deep drowning in blissful infatuation that there is literally nothing the other person could do to upset them. He could take her to see a Nets game at the Prudential Center in New Jersey and she'd think, How cute! How gritty and unconventional!

Surely all this has you wondering just who concocted this illegitimate mess of a holiday. Well guess what--no one knows. There are a few theories, however. Some think the day began as an ancient Greek festival celebrating the matrimony of Zeus and Hera. Aah, Zeus! The portrait of fidelity! Others are quite positive the love-fest didn't originate until Feb. 14, 1400, when a court was established in Paris specifically to deal with trials of the heart--divorce, adultery, domestic violence, etc. How romantic! And History dot com thinks the whole thing had to do with a Roman priest named Valentine who secretly performed marriage ceremonies for soldiers who were not allowed to be married. So, you know, there's that.

But hey, at least we have St. Valentine, the patron saint of...what again? Yeah, no one really knows about that either. Doesn't matter though. Everyone's pretty sure the holiday is pagan in origin, anyway. The B.C. Romans, according to many sources, celebrated fertility on the 15th of February. They did this by killing goats, using their skin to make whips and then running around spanking the bums of young women in order to improve the likelihood that they'd conceive. If that doesn't scream "Edible Arrangements" to you then I don't know what would.

Since then, Valentine's Day has been packaged and corporatized (so, in fact, has complaining about it), but that's fine by me. I love commercialized holidays. Christmas? Awesome.  The fact that Christmas is so commercialized means that I, as a Jew, can celebrate it just because it's fun. I love it--there are gifts and good food and warm fireplaces, chocolate and champagne, and lots of drunk-hugging.

The problem here is not that Valentine's Day is a commercial. No--the problem is that it's cheap. At least on Christmas, we get iPads and leather boots. But because it's all about loooove, the general consensus is that V-day's not about the money. Excuse me, but how does it make any sense to have a wholesale holiday based on the idea that "love don't cost a thing"? Honey, my love costs more than a stuffed puppy and a vanilla bean candle. Oh God, wait, maybe this is why I'm single.

Whatever. Forlorn or fused, I think we can all agree that this holiday is just a pain. A surging, piercing, this-is-definitely-infected kind of pain. So let's at least entertain the idea of abolishing it--maybe this Monday? Over a bottle of Pepe?

1. Shutter Island: $40.2 million ($40.2 million total)

For the team of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, the fourth time was a charm. The duo each set career highs with the opening of Shutter Island, as it topped the starts by The Departed (for Mr. Scorsese) and Catch Me If You Can (for Mr. DiCaprio). While we're sure Mr. Scorsese is excited—the back-to-back financial successes of The Departed and now Shutter Island probably mean the director will have carte blanche to make whichever of the ten projects he's attached to in the near future—it's Mr. DiCaprio who should be doing somersaults. Despite his great reputation, the star has been something of a box office pariah since 2006. Shutter Island has already grossed more than Revolutionary Road and Body of Lies and will pass Blood Diamond next weekend, no matter how much it drops from shaky word of mouth. Combine that with the sure-fire success of the upcoming summer blockbuster Inception, and 2010 is already shaping up as the best year of Mr. DiCaprio's post-Titanic career.

2. Valentine's Day: $17.1 million ($87.4 million total)

Look out below! With the actual Valentine's Day nothing but a distant memory, Valentine's Day tumbled nearly 70 percent to fall into second place at the box office. Frankly, there is no silver lining here except to say that the Garry Marshall film has already made back its mid-range budget (which doesn't include the cost of the huge marketing campaign). Still, after a record-setting bow, that Valentine's Day will only barely scrap past $100 million feels like a loss.

3. Avatar: $16.1 million ($687.8 million total)

As it becomes increasingly clear that Avatar is going to get shut out next month at the Academy Awards (with wins this weekend at the WGA and BAFTA, The Hurt Locker seems like a Slumdog Millionaire-type lock for Best Picture), James Cameron will just have to settle for being incredibly wealthy. In weekend ten, Avatar dipped just 32 percent—shocking considering the other options now available at the multiplex—and its on course to top $700 million domestic. For those keeping score at home that means it'll eclipse Titanic's seemingly unsinkable record by over $100 million.

4. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief: $15.3 million ($58.7 million total)

You have to wonder how much Avatar has hurt Percy Jackson. The fantasy kids film seems squarely aimed at the same demographic that is still lining up around the block to visit Pandora. As a result, Percy Jackson doesn't look like it'll wind up being the franchise starter 20th Century Fox had hoped for... a pain we're sure the piles of money the studio reaped from Avatar will sate.

5. The Wolfman: $9.8 million ($50.3 million total)

The good news is that The Wolfman didn't shed as much of its audience as Valentine's Day did. The bad news, however, is that it still crashed nearly 69 percent and can now safely be certified as a bust. Something about Universal Pictures reminds us of the New York Mets: they're bad 2009 is slowly turning into a bad 2010, and there really isn't anything on the horizon to stop the freefall.

1. Valentine's Day: $52.4 million ($52.4 million total)

If a movie called Valentine's Day didn't open at number one on Valentine's Day weekend, we're pretty sure the world would have stopped spinning on its axis. The definition of critic-proof—seriously, the Garry Marshall film had some of the worst reviews of the year, and that's saying something—Valentine's Day bowed to the third biggest February opening on record and just missed passing Sex and the City's romantic comedy opening benchmark of $57 million. Any bets on how much Valentine's Day crumbles next weekend? Throw us down for a 75 percent drop. 

2. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief: $31.1 million ($31.1 million total)

And if a movie with Olympians didn't open at number two on the first weekend of the Winter Olympics... well, you get the idea. Not a juggernaut like Harry Potter or even The Chronicles of Narnia, the Chris Columbus-directed fantasy adaptation still performed quite well and should be a decent money returner for 20th Century Fox (The Lightning Thief was reportedly budgeted at $95 million). The film to keep in mind here is Bridge to Terabithia, which opened on this weekend three years ago with $22.5 million and wound up with $82 million. Should The Lightning Thief follow a similar path, it could wind up with somewhere around $120 million in total grosses.

3. The Wolfman: $30.6 million ($30.6 million total)

About the best thing we could say about the opening for The Wolfman was that it wasn't nearly the disaster many had anticipated. After nearly 18 months of delays, scoring an opening weekend north of $30 million feels like a major victory for the sputtering Universal. Of course, considering The Wolfman reportedly cost $150 million (and that doesn't include the massive marketing campaign), champagne corks probably aren't being popped on the studio lot today.

4. Avatar: $22 million ($659.6 million total)

Yawn. If we were to tell you that Avatar broke the record for the biggest ninth weekend on record (surpassing Titanic once again), would you even bat an eyelash? We didn't think so. That said: as boring as Avatar's runaway success has become, that it only dropped 4 percent this weekend is worth mentioning. People are clearly still rabid to see Pandora in all its 3-D glory over two months after the initial release.

5. Dear John: $15.3 million ($53.1 million total)

With the whirlwind that was Valentine's Day sucking up all the romantic comedy dollars a big drop from Dear John was certainly expected. The tear jerking weepy dipped 49 percent but still had no problem holding off The Tooth Fairy ($5.6 million/$41.5 million total) for fifth place and should end its run with $75 million. Considering other high profile films like The Lovely Bones and Nine couldn't even come close to a gross that large, this certainly qualifies as good news.