I have a lot of friends who have read or are currently reading Neil Strauss' The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (Personally, I'm not interested in anything that involves the word penetrating and a society of guys, but that's just me). The NYTimes bestselling book chronicles the two years that Strauss, a New York Times writer, spent immersed in the "seduction community," under the pseudonym Styles, and while autobiographical in nature, it has become something of a how-to guide for those wishing to learn how to "spit better game" (spitting game, for all you non-Generation-Y readers, refers to hitting on a girl).

With everyone so well read and at the top of their game (pun... intended), a night at the bar turns into one big "spitting" contest for all of my single friends (not to be confused with actual spitting contests, which can be seen on ESPN 8, The Ocho). I love watching one of my buddies try to hit on (or for my minority cohort: holler) at a cute girl at the bar. When he is successful, I revel in his triumph; when he crashes and burns, I laugh long and hard in his dejected face, like only a true friend can. Either way, it's free entertainment.

However, watching my buddies, and guys in general, hit on girls at the bar, has alerted me to a strange phenomenon: that while everyone has their own unique style of spitting game, there are recurring style-patterns or "characters" as I have come to call them, each one in competition with the next. So last night at the bar, rum and coke in hand, I leaned back, and took a look around in an effort to identify some of these characters for you all. I'm only listing the ones where I found more than 3 people who fit the same bill:

The Close Talker
If you watch Seinfeld you know exactly what I'm talking about. The Close Talker is the guy who gets uncomfortably close to the girl he's talking to while telling a story or spitting game. You can usually find a Close Talker leaning in, huddled over, talking directly into the ear of some poor girl who got trapped with her back to the wall. I have a friend who is the consummate Close Talker: hand on her shoulder, talking into her ear...it works for him though, he pulls it off. I just wonder how he's never been maced.

The By The Numbers Guy
The By The Numbers Guy plays his odds. He hedges his bets. He talks to e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e. Any girl that the By The Numbers Guy finds remotely attractive will be spoken to, because after all, the more girls he hits on, the better his odds that one of them will find him charming. To quote Seth Rogen in the 40 Year Old Virgin, "When I was growing pot, I realized that the more seeds I planted, the more pot I could ultimately smoke." This philosophy, it seems, is put into use in terms of females, when it comes to the By The Numbers Guy.

The Bottom Feeder
The Bottom Feeder has no standards. If it has two legs and walks, he'll hit on it (Actually, she doesn't even need both legs). You have to hand it to the Bottom Feeder though, he's a man with a plan. That plan? To hit on the what he perceives to be the ugliest, fattest or drunkest girls at the bar. Why? Because no one else is. The Bottom Feeder, by hitting on these girls from the get-go, ensures he faces little to no competition in the evening's spitting contest.

The Sniper
A Sniper will stand at the end of the bar and choose the girl he wants to talk to carefully even if it takes all night. One pickup line, one kill. That is his motto. He spots her on the dance floor, dancing amongst a group of friends (hostiles). The sniper works his way up to her, camouflaged as someone looking for a friend of his or acting as if he's heading to the bar. He chooses his moment carefully. She's dancing...she's dancing....she's—the Sniper goes for the kill "Hey there..." Target down. Not everyone can be a Sniper, it takes incredible patience, and even better game.

The Drunken Master
This guy is a belligerent ass. He's inappropriate. He's slurring. He's 3 car-bombs and a shot of Jose passed smashed. A spectator to the evening's spitting contest might look at the Drunken Master, and think he's headed straight for the floor. Unh-unh. He's headed straight for the cutie in the corner to try his luck. The Drunken Master isn't intimidated, he isn't nervous, he has no verbal filter, after all he won't even remember this tomorrow. This wild-man approach, if you can pull it off, works wonders. I don't know why. Some girls just love drunken fools. They think its charming or something (Note: This isn't to be confused with Drunken Asshole, the guy about to get himself kicked out of the bar for groping some girl. There's a reason they are a Master).

The Suburb
Find a group of hot girls clustered together (they might even have a platonic male friend or two there to scare off pickup artists), and you're sure to find a Suburb. It's like this: you've got a metropolitan center of hotness, and around that center of hotness, you've got a guy hovering around the outskirts. The Suburb will try to chime in, make his presence known, maybe even try to act like he fits in with the busy center. In reality, everyone knows he doesn't. It's like saying you're from Philly when you live in Cherry Hill. But he tries, and sometimes, if he's lucky, he's just close enough to pull it off.

So there you have it. Those aremy observations on spitting game at the bar, based on a night out in good 'ole CP. If you happen to be one of my female readers, I hope this made you crack up laughing due to it's accuracy. If you happen to be one of my male readers, tonight, when you're at the bar, fully engaged in the evening's spitting contest, try and make yourself stand out. Do your own thing. Maybe even try something crazy, like offering to buy a girl a drink. If that doesn't work, take 3 shots of 151, and be a Bottom Feeder.

-Adam