Sad Fall Of The Pick-Up Line

What is going on with romantic discourse in our society today?

Recently I was walking through New York's Port Authority bus terminal when a very attractive young woman appeared in the distance walking toward me. As she approached, a young man in front of me saw her and shouted, "yo, yo, yo, hold up, lemme holla at chuh girl, lemme holla at chuh girl. Just one sec, you fine, lemme holla at chuh, girl."

I was at once amazed and disgusted at his behavior, but not nearly as amazed as I was with the woman's reaction. She actually smiled and stopped. Apparently she was in the mood to be "holla'd" at by a very brash and grammatically challenged stranger.

I walked on, figuring I had just witnessed that one-in-a-thousand chance when pure desperation comes off as endearing, or maybe she was hearing impaired and thought his lemming had been hauled to Chu's Grill.

Then I caught the recent two-hour episode of ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff featuring an unlikely Amy Brenneman career revival. Dr. Addison Sheppard escapes dreary Seattle (and a string of staid plot lines that lay out like a game of sexual connect the dots) only to find herself in a midlife crisis in a stairwell with a doctor she just met who says, "I'm going to kiss you ... with tongue." And he does. And she likes it.

I used to spend a lot of time thinking of just the right words to say to get a kiss from a woman, and the results were mixed at best. But I never would've resorted to "I'm going to kiss you with tongue." If that line works, and hollering to women about wanting to holler more to them works, then what doesn't work these days? What does it take to break the deal? I have some suggestions. Feel free to use the lines below and please share the results with the rest of us: