Gotta take the bull by the horns

I was at the Hangout with the Friar, L, my cousin, and (for a short while) that wealthy layabout who's always got young strippers hanging off his arm, Paris.

Cousin, in town from California for the week, was drooling over the college girls on display (he is, deep down, a shallow person), and concocted a method of approaching a tableful of beauties. He went up and told them he'd buy a drink for the first one to tell him the capital of Afghanistan. They appeared to confer, but when they looked it up on their Blackberries. Cousin said that was "cheating," and gave them a new question. When they didn't know that one off the top of their heads, they asked him a capital. He told them the correct answer, and said, "I think you owe me a drink!" Then he left them.

Like Maddening Angel said to me later, "What a smooth approach to the ladies, eh?" Now, he has a girlfriend back in California, and he wasn't really trying to pick them up. His ham-fisted flirting was, as he said, "just practice." But if that's his game, he sucks at it.

Meanwhile. L and Friar and I regaled ourselves for over an hour, laughing uproariously at our own bon mots as we thought up a string of bovine-related puns one might work into a conversation. The goal would be to work in as many as possible before your interlocutor (ideally, a single girl at the bar) susses out what you're doing. "Hi, I'm Chuck. I don't mean to horn in here, and I don't know what you might have heard, but are you Patty? Let's move over here. Would you like a beer? Because I could drink a whole stein, myself. I mean I am outstanding in that field. So are you from this burg, or...? Well, it behooves me to say, although I don't have a stake in this or anything, you are a cut above, baby. I mean, you're choice. I veal like you're nowhere near pasture prime. I've got a sandwich here; would you like half, or...?"

Well, it was gut-bustingly funny at 1:30 a.m.