The cast of Love Monkey: Just like you and your friends, except for that black guy.

Remember a few years ago when the laddie lit genre exploded ? Three books came out about dudes chasing snatch, the Times did a big thing, and we never heard about it again. One of the books, Kyle Smith's Love Monkey, has been made into a TV show. It s about friends in New York doing "New York things" like standing in front of CBGBs and playing pick-up basketball games in which the two Canadian guys can somehow dunk. Smith had a viewing party for the series premiere, so we sent Gawker correspondent Noelle Hancock and photo ho Jennifer Snow over to fuck with people. Urban cougars, marriage-phobic men, and room-clearing farts after the jump

The screening is held at Stone Creek bar on 27th street in Murray Hell, with its highest percentage of "first year out of the Ivy League" kids, most of whom equate bottle service with love — wait, let's stop here. So we have this theory that every bar with a name involving water automatically becomes a douchequake of investment bankers coming to reminisce about taking elephant walks and tea-bagging their brothers back in Zeta Psi. Are we alone on this? Case in point: Mad River, Tracy J s Watering Hole, Whiskey River, Riviera (close enough), Reservoir, Turtle Bay. Let s call it the Watering (Ass)holes Theory . So needless to say, we arrive expecting pick-up lines about love monkeys or our personal favorite, "Let's fuck it out, bitch!"

Classic sitcom pose. In the alternate photo Cavanagh points at Priestley, jerk-style with his thumb, making an expression like, Why do I put up with this guy?!

Man in Background Closes His Eyes Again

Kyle Smith prepares to take the "Nestea plunge." (If you get this reference, television was your babysitter in the 80s.)

Somewhere there's a dog owner unable to pick up a turd.

Glenn was used to the soft, pink skin of his crepuscular reveries being eaten alive by the flesh-eating bacteria of reality.

That's funny. She said she'd "be right back."

Kyle Smith reenacts the "shadow man" photo from imdb.com.

Finally, the show starts and we understand everything: It's targeted at guys with commitment problems and any woman who s forced a man into their Cage of Love only to have him throw his feces everywhere(see how we went with it?). Tom Cavanagh (the guy from Ed) plays a music exec who gets fired by his boss, dumped by his girlfriend, and takes an ill-advised turn in a "mandora." The show also stars perpetual sidekick Judy Greer, a decent actress who will forever be relegated to the friend roles because she s already skinny and can t do the whole "drop a bunch of weight until they give me a leading role just to get me to stop" thing. Jason Priestley is also alive and acting, but has apparently donated his sideburns to Locks of Love. There s a blond playing Priestley s wife. She s supposed to be pregnant although her collarbone is sticking out so far it could be used as a weapon against the Nazis in Call of Duty 2. Oh, and Larenz Tate will be your Token Negro for this series. He will "axe" questions like "You trippin'?" and say things like "She straight up playin' you, dawg!"

In case you weren't sure, yes, CBGB's jumped the shark, landed in the tank, got eaten, vomited up again, eaten again and then shot by Roy Scheider.

Jason Priestley provides the Voice of Reason despite having kicked off the most retarded trend in hair since the rattail.

Sorry, this subway station does not accept tokens.

Striped Shirt Guy (the mascot of Murray Hill) has requested in his will that he be embalmed with Red Bull.

"Well, she's done my nails so many times, I just decided to see if she wanted to come out with us. Don't worry, she doesn't speak English."

Wally and a beav.

So what does Kyle Smith think of the show? "I actually think the show is better than the book. I wish I d written it. People don t really want their comedy in a book these days — it s too much work," he says as his editor looks on in horror. We forget our next question in large part because we didn't bother to come up with any more. So we ask the standard — does he read his Amazon.com reviews? "I had an enemy on amazon who was planting hate bombs against me. We had to wipe 20 of them off that were coming from the same computer and being filed under the names of colleagues and people I knew."

At least three people in this picture own one of those "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!" t-shirts.

Let's go, Cougars, let's go!

The glasses say she's smart, the pink says she's girly, the beer says she's a guy's girl, and her ex-boyfriend says she does anal. Draw your own conclusions.

About halfway into the screening...there's no sugarcoating it: Someone farts and it s bad, y all. People actually start backing out of the room. Secondhand fart will do that. Meanwhile, firsthand fart is actually kind of appealing. Admit it, you ve even gone so far as to trap first-hand fart under the covers to try and make it last longer. And don t even act like you don t know what we're talking about.

Man refuses woman's card, vagina.

This man has definitely screamed "Do you know who I am!!!??" at someone at some point in his life.

"Ma'am, may I take your big furry weird-ass hat with the evil red eye staring out from it?"

Ten minutes later the phantom farter strikes again and we overhear the following exchange.
Man #1: "I m no stranger to the smell of [pause] corruption."
Man #2: "Well, I work at the Times."

Between the stench and the shameless honesty, we're done for the night. Smell ya later!