I've decided, as I sit watching great cinema revolving around Jason Behr and werewolves that life has already provided all the key markers to delineate between good guys and bad guys. For years I've been looking to date the bad guys, thinking maybe, deep, deep down inside, they're really looking to save a puppy or two, but actually if someone possesses one or all of the following signs its time to give up the dream.

Top Ten Ways to Tell a Good Guy From a Bad Guy

10. Hotness

From the one liners that make you think "well, maybe" to the heartfelt, emotionally broken longing in their gaze as they tell you they're really, really sorry before they kill you, bad guys are just, in general, hotter. It ranks at #10 because good guys are often very, very hot too, but as we all know the hottest good guys used to be bad guys.

9. Ability to find showdown appropriate buildings

It happens in T2, it happens in Skinwalkers, it happens in almost every bad guy chases good guy into showdown at the end of the movie scenario. No matter where the good guy crashes his/her car, forest, highway, mountain cliff in Alaska, there is a factory, house, building, circle of infinite power within running distance that allows the good guy to have that little extra edge needed to win the day. I figure I'm destined to die since the only thing I can find on short notice is a bookstore.

8. Sexual Reservation

Good guys kiss you all hot like, but then pull away because they can't. It isn't right; they're unsure. They want to *gasp* wait. Bad guys take your pants off, and even though you totally thank them for it later when they kill you for the demonspawn sired in your moment of lust, immediate sexual gratification is always a sign of a bad guy.

7. Fighting Skill

If the good guys were better shots many, many stories would end much quicker with far fewer deaths. In some cases the good guys suffer from lack of numbers, but in a lot of movies the bad guys just seem to get more head shots. Yeah, the good guys win in the end, but how many times do they hit the shoulder, the leg, or the gut before finally killing the bad guy in some massive, elaborate showdown that ends, always slightly anti-climactically, with something like falling on the bad guy, or the bad guy falling off something? Go to the shooting range hero. More of your friends will live that way.

6. Emo-ness a.k.a. Brooding

The bad guy doesn't sit in the corner and sulk. Did Angelus stare longingly into his glass of blood and think about what he had done? No. He went out and killed someone cause he was bored. Maybe, with the really hot bad guys, there's sorrow, regret, or anger, but only the good guys sit and whine about how guilty they are or how much some girl broke their heart. The bad guys just kill the girl. Hot.

5. Facial Hair

You will never, ever, ever see a good guy with a soul patch or goatee. Magnum P.I. had a moustache, but the shorts sort of off-set whatever possible sinisterness the facial hair might have denoted. Good guys are also rarely scruffy for longer than the time it takes them to find their way back to the bathroom after rescuing you.

4. Mode of Transportation

A bad guys isn't stupid, shallow, or tasteless. That's why he doesn't drive a truck plastered with a confederate flag that screams, "my genetic pool is only one foot deep." He will also never ride any motorcycle called "crotch-rocket" unless he is some sort of henchmen destined to die early. Transportation won't tell you if he's good or bad, but it will tell you if he's a douchebag--another important piece of information.

3. Length of Hair

How many heroes do you know that have short hair? How many bad guys are bald or have long hair? That's what I thought.

2. Smoking

In the 1950's the saying went, "if she smokes she pokes." I think that holds true for bad guys too. See #8. If he smokes he pokes and then you're impregnated with demonspawn. Thoroughly unpleasant.

1. Name

Good guys are named Tom, Bob, or something from the Bible like Caleb or Jonas. Bad guys are named Varek, Vlad, or Voldemort. Look for names starting with "V" and anything that seems an impossibility for a mother to actually name a son unless she willingly birthed said demonspawn. Probably you aren't going to meet a bad guy named "John." I'm just saying it's unlikely.