Pitying the play, loving the game

Your reading glasses are cute. I see a lot of people wearing them.

Interested? Intrigued? You should be. At least, that is according to renowned pick-up artist Neil Strauss. The opening line of this column is a perfect example of what is known as a "neg." A neg is defined as "neither a compliment nor insult," and is used to "lower a woman's self-esteem while actively displaying a lack of interest in her." When used effectively it can attract the elusive beautiful woman or the even more elusive Friday Chronicle reader.

Last year, Strauss-already a contributor to The New York Times and Rolling Stone-wrote a memoir about his time in the pick-up community. His book, titled simply The Game, details how Strauss evolved from a self-described "formless lump of nerd" to a master pick-up artist.

Yet, before I go any further, I need to remove any sense of objectivity from this column. This isn't an impartial review; it's an ode to the miracle that is Neil Strauss. The Game is my bible. No, seriously. The edition I own looks just like a bible. It comes with a leather cover, gold-tinted pages and a silk page marker. The thing is completely filled with my underlinings and observations. It holds a permanent spot next to my bed.

Anyway, The Game-which debuted at No. 1 on Amaon.com-is not the only sign of the emerging popularity of the pick-up culture. Any Internet search reveals hundreds of online forums where eager men can gather to give advice and trade stories. Even as I write this, a new champion is being crowned on VH1's reality TV show, The Pick-Up Artist. It's easy to see that while the art of picking up women may never have been out of style, its stock is definitely high right now.

As would be expected, The Game is filled with effective opening lines and eloquent strategies on how to get any girl you want. There is also the requisite detailed physical description that one would expect from a book about seducing women. However, what makes The Game so great is its unexpected sense of honesty. Strauss is unafraid to admit how utterly pathetic the past years of his life have been. By the end of the book, picking up women is not some mystical, glorified process. In fact, it's a little creepy. (This is, after all, the field in which a contestant on The Pick-Up Artist can be described as "looking very predatorial"-and it's a compliment.)

Attracting women soon deteriorates into pretending to read palms or telling people blatant truisms about themselves. Strauss finds that women are no longer even viewed as all that attractive, but rather "solely as measuring instruments to give me feedback." Eventually, he looks around at the desperate men he lives with and realizes that "we were all searching outside of ourselves for our missing pieces, and we were all looking in the wrong direction." Following his own advice of "to win the game is to leave it," the book ends with Strauss renouncing the pick-up scene the moment he finds a girl he actually likes.

In fact, the entire pick-up lifestyle seems more dedicated to male friendship than anything else. Strauss notices how "I'd never heard grown men cry as much as I had in the last two years." Similarly, at no point does a character on the TV show The Pick-Up Artist even have sex, but there is more man hugging and tear shedding in one episode than in an entire season of Will and Grace or Friends. After being eliminated, one contestant explains while sobbing how his experience on the show "set me free.. [It] gave me wings." It's hard to believe that any of this was ever just about women.