Wing It

Wing and a prayer:Honestly, the bar scene is getting monotonous for the hot babes of the Dallas Observer. Night after night, it's the same old lines: "Please bear my children," "I can't imagine my life without you," "Can I buy you a drink?" Sadly, they're usually only good for one Jack on the rocks before we decide that listening to another inane SMU frat story isn't worth it.

UNT grad Neil Lemons understands both our plight and that of the nice guys we'd be better off dating, which is why he started HotBarBuddy.com. Lemons' "wing-woman" service pairs up shy guys with attractive girls who use their marketing wiles to get other women to chat with the men.

Hot bar buddies also look great on a guy's arm, which Lemons believes adds to a dude's cool points.

"When one guy walks in with three hot women, the other women [in the bar] want to know what's going on with this guy," he says. Of course, what's going on is that he's paid between $50 and $135 per hour for bar buddies to hang out with him. The wing women have 20 minutes to prove that they can promote him to potential dates, or he gets a refund.

"I only actively recruit women that have marketing or modeling experience," Lemons says. The goal of his service is absolutely 100 percent only to provide a "wing woman" and not an escort.(For escorts, may we suggest that you visit the--snort--"actual photo" section in the back of this paper.)

Of the wing women's tactics, Lemons says: "She'll say, 'Hey, that's a nice shirt you're wearing.'" Then the buddy will bring in the client casually and back off if things start clicking. Lemons says his clients are usually in their 30s and possibly divorced, trying to get used to the bar scene again.

Lemons, who is aware of the potential creepy factor in his business, plans to implement a mandatory background check and doesn't allow clients to choose their buddies.

"That's too 'Pick your product,'" says Lemons, who believes he can select the right girl for a guy's needs. "We've got one girl with tattoos...if someone was interested in meeting rocker girls. If there's a girl that's more prone to wearing Wranglers, then maybe you'd go to Fort Worth and pick up a cowboy." Um, or girl.