Mystery Sucks (Or At Least The VH1 Guy Who Calls Himself That)

Posted at 4:00 PM Oct 10, 2008

By Kenny Herzog

Normally, that headline would be a statement I'd find a bit odd to utter. I quite like a good dose of ambiguity, and don't particularly like things to be revealed on the surface. But of course, I'm not speaking of the great art of tactful deceit or the spiritually enigmatic.

I am of course speaking about the preternaturally douchebaggy host of VH1's The Pickup Artist, a new season of which premieres this week.

This guy actually manages to besmirch the goodwill of several variants of the male species by combining a homo-goth aesthetic with a fratboy mentality about sex and relationships. He might actually be some Satanic apotheosis of Cro-Magnon man's unholy convergence with the evolved alpha male of the future.

But mostly, he sucks because he wears hats that even the guy from Jamiroquai wouldn't sport in public, fur coats that look like they were bought at an Oriental rug store and has a propensity for having all manner of goggles meshed in to the fabric of the aforementioned hats.

At the end of the day, you can bequeath all the shithead advice you want (note to Mystery and his legion, er, fingerful, of fans: all those seemingly foolproof tactics are filtered through the incredibly subjective universe of nightmare dance clubs where transparently vapid, faux-charismatic pickup techniques are generally favored over a more substantive approach that would be appropriate for the show's participants). And you can vomit up absurd soundbites in the Season 2 teaser about how they'll teach your Zen tactics to their children one day. But as long as you keep outfitting yourself like a deep-sea diver on his way to a Disturbed concert, you will suck in unutterable magnitudes.