When Courteney Cox is banking her post-Friends career on a show titled Cougar Town, you know the trend of older women dating younger men has reached its tipping point. The term cougar isn't just a punchline anymore. And why should it be? As Demi Moore might say, "what's wrong with women asserting their sexual needs and romantic desires with younger partners?"

If cougars are here to stay, where better to gain insight into their mating habits than the National Single Cougars Convention? The gathering, held in Palo Alto, California, brought together over 250 cougars and "cubs" (younger, presumably nubile men). While the good folks from the Society of Professional Singles have been holding local cougar parties for several years, the cougar convention was the first to take the event national (and even international; cougars flew in from as far away as the UK to attend). 5 Reasons Being A Cougar Rocks

Despite my wife's blessing, I was slightly nervous as I said goodbye to her and our kids and drove to the event. While I felt OK about my prospects as cougar bait (I'm 34, reasonably tall and good-looking, with a charm that never fails, at least on schoolmarms and grandmas), I had a nagging fear that I'd end up an aging wallflower in a sea of hot, young twentysomethings.

When I arrived at the hotel where the convention was being held, I was glad I'd booked my tickets weeks in advance—the event was sold out. The only people, male or female, the bouncers were letting through without tickets were the abjectly, overtly desperate. 

"The magic number seems to be two and a half hours," said a handsome brunette in a red dress. "I only drove down from San Francisco, so I'm out of luck."

"So what are you going to do?" I asked.

"My friend and I met two guys who also got rejected," she said. They gave us their numbers, and we're going out for drinks." She winked. "Maybe I'll have a good story for you tomorrow."

As it turned out, I wasn't the only one who had been dispatched to cover the gathering. Everywhere I turned, there were reporters, photographers, and cameramen chatting up cougars and cubs. I spoke with a pair of young reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle, who were parked at a table at the edge of the action. One lamented having collected some great quotes that unfortunately would be unprintable.

"This one guy told me, 'There are women here who are so hot that I'd let them take a dump on me.' I asked him for something more G-rated, and he said, 'Okay, I'd let them piss on me too,' then walked away," the reporter said.

I turned to Twitter to see if the online comments would be more dignified:

Video journalist Brian King (@bkbkbk) wrote: "I think Google's entire workforce is here. #cougarconvention"

One of the hotel's employees (@antcruz) provided an insider view via his Twitter account: "cougar convention should have been called the douchebag convention. There was a sea of Ed Hardy t shirts out there." 21 Twitter Pick-Up Lines (er, Tweets)