Julieanne Smolinski over at Lemondrop had the pleasure of attending a “Pick-Up Artist” seminar, in which poor saps shelled out nearly $3,000 to be educated by Love Systems Inc. (formerly known as the Mystery Method). The advice was pretty pathetic, and I’m about to save some schmucks a lot of money.

Drop that Aristotle and Dostoevsky immediately. The best part of summer? Cheesy beach books!

You know what sort of books I’m talking about ... those fantastically trashy books that you can’t put down but are ashamed to tell people that you’ve read. Yep, we obsessively read those, too. So stop trudging through War and Peace now and pick up one of these guilty-pleasure beach reads.

Some of you might have heard of or read Neil Strauss’ The Game, a fawning book about a silver tongued Casanova who goes by the mysterious code-name Mystery. Probably many more of you have seen ridiculously dressed beanpole Mystery tutor his homoerotic boy-cult on Vh1’s reality show “The Pick-Up Artist.” Is it just me or does he look like cross between a Las Vegas magician and a Dr. Seuss character? What you don’t know is if you know a guy who’s signed up for a class in picking up women (like New York’s “The Art of Charm”) or sloppily employed the social tools taught in these classes, written about in books, or demonstrated on television shows.

Over the weekend, on “Saturday Night Live”, Don Draper, er, Jon Hamm, did a hilarious sketch with dating advice based on his irresistible “Mad Men” character’s mad skills.  But he’s not the only one with advice on how to lure women to your love shack. ”The Pick Up Artist” is back on VH1 and Season 2 features yet another flock of dudes, including a 45-year-old virgin, who worship the game playin’ guru with guyliner. While women go weak in the knees for Draper’s charms, men seem to think Mystery has the answer to getting into panties. So, let’s compare their tricks of the trade and see how they score!

Move over Mystery, there’s a new dating guru—but instead of a big furry hat over his bald spot, this guy’s got a spiky wig.  And Satoshi Fujita claims it’s that very wig that boosted his confidence, like a woman with breast implants, making him a super stud with three self-help dating books, numerous television appearances, and a cult following. At his Pick Up School For Men Who Can’t Get Any in Japan, Fujita teaches the “science” he’s been researching for 10 years to hundreds of students a month. At $280 bucks a class, he describes his followers as socially awkward geeks who lack a certain je ne sais quoi that gets women in the sack.  Fujita teaches these poor guys how to use “laughter, compliments, and magic tricks,” to seduce women. No seriously, his gag bag literally includes “flaming wallets, talking ferrets, and animated algae balls.”