-Normally, I’m obsessive-compulsive about my cell phone address book.  Everyone is listed with the first letter of both their first and last name capitalized.  No nicknames or exceptions.  That is, until I became single again this summer.  Now my phone is strewn with the malformed remnants of hook-ups past: girls with no last name, girls with no first name, and of course, girls with no name at all who are instead represented by a brief, superficial physical description.  But I think the disarray evident in my address book is merely representative of the chaotic sexual experience of my generation.  Since being released back into the wild, I have been observing firsthand the mating rituals of my single peers.  While prior generations were driven by an innate, and somewhat tidy, desire to procreate, today’s twentysomethings have a far different agenda – total anarchy.  For us, it’s hook up, get off, and then break the hell out.

-One of the first rules of taking girls home from the bar is…actually take them home from the bar.  My buddy Triplet #1 was making out with this chick once when he decided the next logical move would be to try to take her pants off.  When the girl stopped him, explaining that they were indeed still at the bar, Trip 1 uttered the classic response, “So?”

-Another common guy tactic: lie to girls.  Not always such a smart move.  I’ll never forget when my buddy Shermdog excitedly told me he’d just met two hot European blondes at the bar and told them we were from Quebec.  I said, “Good work, Sherm.  But next time you lie and say we’re Canadian, I’d avoid the one French-speaking province.”

-Probably the best book I read all year was “The Game,” a true story about the author, Neil Strauss, joining a secret society of pickup artists and transforming himself into the world’s greatest womanizer.  The book was inspiring to someone like me who’s basically used the same two lines his entire life: “I’m in this fraternity, wanna go upstairs?” and “I’m the guy who writes those funny emails, wanna go upstairs?”  I mean, let’s face it, if I ever move to a first-floor apartment, I’m fucked.

-I love hooking up with SBs (pronounced “sibs” and short for “surprise body”).  There’s nothing like taking a girl’s J.Crew rollneck off and discovering that underneath all that wool was a six-pack and two cannons.  My first reaction (that is, after exclaiming “Yahtzee!”) is to suck in my own stomach, which suddenly doesn’t look so hot in comparison.  Often times, a SB is also a “wideclops” – a girl whose eyes are too far apart.  You can tell you’re talking to a wideclops when you can only look her in the eye one at a time.  This is of course very distracting – which is why later their bodies are such a surprise.

-I’ve always been partial to brunettes in wife-beaters.  That’s just my perfect girl.  Ideally, she’d also be a Yankees fan, enjoy cheap beer, possess a knowledge of finance and/or computers, and not make me dance with her.  But, hey, if she owns a white undershirt, I’ll take it.

-In the end, I believe that hooking up is like saving someone from a burning building.  You want to get in and out as quickly as possible and then, maybe, you call a few days later to make sure everyone’s OK.  With that in mind, and on behalf of twentysomethings everywhere, I am hereby setting the next morning at noon as the absolute latest you are allowed stay in someone else’s bed after hooking up.  Anything longer than that should be declared a crime: sexual loitering.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-While taking the shuttle bus at LAX recently, I overheard the bus driver’s radio crackle, “Eagle Alpha, please stop at the Delta terminal.”  I just think it’s hilarious that they nicknamed the shuttle “Eagle Alpha.”  Is that really necessary?  This is the airport parking lot, not Top Gun flight school.  “Bus One” would probably suffice.

-I bet the Black Eyed Peas were sitting around one day and Fergie said, “Hey, I bet if we put out the dumbest song ever, people are so stupid that they’ll play it and buy it anyway!”  And the rest of the Peas went, “Yeah, let’s call it My Humps!”

-I could not be more excited to return to New York City next week for the first time since I moved to Los Angeles this summer.  It’s gonna be nine straight days of hangin’ with the fam and drinkin’ with the boys.  I’m especially stoked (that’s LA-speak for “excited”) for Thanksgiving Eve – NYC’s drunkest night of the year.  Only problem is, that usually means that Thanksgiving Day is the most hungover day of the year.  My family is still upset about the time I threw up right in front of my cousin Daniel before we even got to the cranberry sauce.  I keep saying it’s a double standard, though.  After all, Daniel threw up too.  Of course, he was four months old.

-I’m also excited to chill with my ex-roommate Brian, who now goes to Columbia Business School.  You know Columbia’s career services department is doing a bang-up job when Brian asks me, a comedian who hasn’t worked on Wall Street in over three years, to help him with his resume.  My first piece of advice?  Take out the section entitled “hobbies.”  I said, “Brian, you’re twenty-six.  Unless you’ve been building a soap box derby racer that I don’t know about, you don’t have any hobbies.”

-I just realized that I can’t shit and chew gum at the same time.  Apparently, I have some sort of physiological disorder that makes it very difficult to thrust and chew simultaneously.  It’s weird, because I can do other things on the can.  I read David McCullough’s Revolutionary War tome “1776” in the bathroom in about two weeks.  But throw a piece of Wrigley’s in the mix and I’m backed up from here to Lexington and Concord.

-Have you even been talking with a girl, either on the phone or via email, and the conversation is flirtatious yet also a little adversarial, and so you start to think that there’s a lot of sexual tension between the two of you and that, quite possibly, the next time you see each other, all that sexual tension is going to bubble over and you guys are just gonna get it over with and fuck, but then it turns out it was all in your head and she was being kind of snippy not to be flirty but because she actually genuinely dislikes you?

-And, finally, in “The Game,” the author contends that being truthful to women is part of the pickup artist philosophy.  Of course, he also operates under a pseudonym and occasionally wears wigs and fake piercings.  Personally, I’ve found that being completely candid works best in the hook-up game.  I’ll tell a girl, “Listen, I’m not really from Quebec.  In fact, I couldn’t even point it out on a map.”  If I encounter a SB, I’ll say, “You should never wear a sweater ever again.  Seriously.”  You see, women appreciate honesty.  They don’t appreciate you trying to take their pants off at the bar, snoring in their bed until 3pm, or listing them in your cell phone as Wideclops.  But despite knowing all this, I’m sure the next time I spot a tight brunette in a wife-beater I’ll resort to the tried and true “Wanna go upstairs?”  And if she responds, “We’re already upstairs,” I’ll say with a shrug, “So?”  Fuck me.

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