The list ends up becoming an obsession for Blank, who breaks off his engagement in order to work his way through the list. Then three very strange characters in a very white room, named Alpha, Beta and Fred (Oswalt), tell Blank that there's a machine that they've nicknamed "Oracle" that sends out random e-mails to people, telling them the list of people they're going to bed or giving them the date of their death.

Blank goes through the amazing list of conquests, including a best-selling self-help author (Fisher), an 88-year-old leper grandmother, a pair of lesbian Internet starlets nicknamed Bambi and Thumper and a busload of virgin Catholic girls and their bus driver. He tries to break the list's predictability when he falls in love with Dr. Miranda, a veterinarian, who doesn't want to have sex with him. Along the way, Blank is assisted by his well-meaning comical secretary (Cohn), his best friend (Mihok) and his only friend with a wife and family (Flynn).

Meanwhile, a female serial killer nicknamed Death Nell (Ryder) is putting men into comas after having sex with them. She finds victims who have been abusive toward women and writes lines of poetry in paint on the walls above her victims.

Blank soon realizes that the last name on his list is the real name of the killer.

Doing it until you die

Baker is completely charming as the stud who buries "the list" under a tulip in his backyard and then digs it up when it becomes his obsession. He makes the absurdity of the situation seem grounded and realistic despite the very strange twists and turns that the list leads him toward. When his strange guides try to help him break the inevitability of the list, one says, "Tarot cards, psychics, coming attractions that give away the whole movie, why do you all have to know everything?"

The kind of girls on the list vary in size, beauty, intelligence and age. One of the girls is a nude centerfold, another is a waitress at one of his stores, and one is so cute that Blank's best friend forces his turtle to get diarrhea so he can go meet a sexy animal doctor. (And yes, as Blank rampages through the list, there is one drunken New Year's party where he meets Esther Fenchel, but it's Terry Fenchel on his list, and that turns out to be her husband. Blank says, "Just raise the bottle," and he shrugs and moves on.)

Cohn (the irrepressible Natalie from The Facts of Life) almost steals the show as Blank's lesbian secretary. She's funny, sympathetic, crude and likable in a role that could be too corny or too over-the-top to be credible.

Oswalt (who's the voice of Remy, the lead rat in the Oscar-winning animated film Ratatouille) is the biggest disappointment as the real-life irritating Fred, who's one of the mysterious guides who work behind a green door and try to help Blank because they take a liking to him.