Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm a geeked-out troll who can't get a date, it's just that I'd become ... disillusioned with the process. Too many bad evenings with bad women and bad conversation, or dull evenings with people who bore you to tears from the moment the date starts... It gets to you after a while and you take a break. I'll tell you about the last date I went on, the one that pushed me over the brink.

I'd met her at a wedding. That should have been my first clue -- nobody you ever meet at a wedding is good dating material. For singles, weddings are like the places where elephants go to die, where there's this overwhelming sense of failure and desperation. Couples are everywhere, the newlyweds are giddy, commitment is in the air, and anybody over the age of 25 who's not wearing a ring has the charnel smell of death about them. Wedding pick-ups rarely work out; it's just too weird a scene. But I met Angela there and I asked her out anyway. She seemed nice enough, she was cute, she had great legs. I figured what the hell?

She was looking pretty good the night of the date, better even than at the wedding, and we were hitting it off okay. We had a drink, then headed to a restaurant where my friend Jon was celebrating his birthday.

Driving to the restaurant, she shocked the hell out of me. Another car cut me off and I got a little hot and said something insulting about how immigrants should learn to speak English before they can drive. Angela apparently thought she'd found a kindred soul, a partner in bigotry. Before I could take it back and explain that I'm not some redneck right-winger, she was off and running.

As I sat there gawping at her, she went down a laundry list of prejudices and racist comments and pejoratives, leaving no minority group unscathed. She generally threw the "Best Behavior On A First Date" theory out the window and displayed an utter lack of functional societal intelligence. And that was just the beginning of the date.

Among the 12 or so people at the dinner were two haughty counter girls from Bullock's who made it clear that this dinner was their good deed for the day, an ex-con comic who was regaling us with bad off-color jokes in a booming voice, a Hungarian phone-installer with a thick accent, and an 11-year old kid. Under other circumstances, with a different date, it might have been an interesting and entertaining evening. But not with Angela. No, she had something to say about everyone, none of it good. The comic was a jerk, the counter girls were bitches, the Hungarian was greasy. The confidential asides went on and on. And these people were my friends!

The last straw was the comment about Jon's new girlfriend, Stephanie. I'd never met her before, and I liked her. But Angela had a problem with Stephanie, who is black, and Jon, who is white, being together. I won't go into detail about what she said, but it wasn't flattering – and I think you get the idea. I kept my cool and held my tongue and made the best of it. And I never called her again.

It's this kind of date that made me swear off the scene for awhile. Like the Chicago song says (and I can't believe I'm quoting Chicago), "Everybody needs a little time away." I needed some time to regroup and remember that for every three bad dates you have, you're going to have a good one. I've done that, and I'm back. But take my advice: don't pick your dates at weddings. I'm your doctor; let me make your mistakes for you.

SINGLES GROUP OF THE WEEK
You've done the bar scene, you've done the dance club scene (similar, but marginally different from the bar scene), you've cruised the produce section at the supermarket and you still can't seem to meet people. Have you tried skiing?

Meeting people when you're skiing is one of the easiest things you'll ever do, because everybody's so friendly up there on the mountains. If you're too shy to strike up a conversation in the lift line you can stage a spectacular spill on your way back down the mountain and make a friend of whoever brings your lost skis down to you. There's something about the altitude and the exercise and the sheer fun of blazing down a sheet of ice with two boards strapped to your feet that brings out the best in people. They'll go out of their way to pick up the "yard sale" you leave behind when you slide 50 yards on your face, they'll offer pointers on your technique, some folks will even volunteer to show you around the mountain. And if you don't ski, there's always the lodge...

A ski slope is a far friendlier place than a bar or a nightclub, and if you don't meet anyone you'll have a good time anyway. Try saying that about the produce section!

Your good Doctor of Dating isn't immune to matters of the heart. After recovering from the Angela Episode, I re-met someone from my past: my high school sweetheart. We lost touch with one another when she moved to Switzerland right after graduation, but I saw her again at my 10-year high school reunion in October, and it seems that some of the old sparks are still there.

I picked her up Thursday at LAX on a flight from Switzerland. She's here for a week and we're going to see if those sparks are still real. Come back next week and I'll tell you more about it...