-Ah, New York City nightlife.  The clubs, the bars, the lounges, the beautiful women, the puddles of vomit.  What’s not to love?  Being in your early twenties, single, and living in Manhattan is a unique experience.  There are millions of interesting people in the city.  Unfortunately, most of them are waiting on line for the club you want to get in to.  Nevertheless, every night out brings a new adventure, along with a killer hangover, an empty back account and, of course, nipple stickers…

-I’m convinced that the only thing I spend my money on is alcohol.  I get my credit card bill back and it breaks down all my charges by category.  I usually only have one category listed: “Food & Drink.”  The thing reads like a Zagat guide to New York bars.

-The worst part about the bar is putting down a tab.  Tabs kill me.  Because once I put that credit card down, all of a sudden I become, “The most generous man who has ever lived!”  “You guys want a drink?  On my tab.  You guys?  Shots?  On my tab.  Ladies? Just put that on my tab, it’s under Karo.  You?  Tab.  You?  Tab.  Tab!  Tab!  Tab!  Barkeep, bring me a round of your finest spirits, on my tab!”  Then at the end of the night I get the bill and I’m like, “OK, who had a Miller Lite? You owe me three bucks. Seriously, pay up.”

-Ever notice that you’re all polite when you bump into someone in a bar?  “Oh, sorry dude.”  But if you turn around and realize it’s your buddy you bumped into, you’re like, “Oh it’s you, now I wish I wasn’t so polite.”

-After giving birth, some women develop emotional problems.  This is called “post-partum depression.”  I think I suffer from what I call “post-party depression.”  After a long night of boozing, the next day my hormones are so out of whack I sometimes get depressed.  One Sunday afternoon I was sitting on the couch watching Forrest Gump and I swear I almost broke down in tears.  I think I need help.

-How come when you hear the Nelly song “Hot in Here” on the radio you’re like “Oh man, I’m so sick of this song,” but when it comes on in the bar you go wild?

-How come the nicer the bar, the shittier you can dress?  I went to this sports bar down the block and they made me take my hat off.  Another night I went to this posh club and there were dudes in visors and wife-beaters.  Did I miss something?

-Ever try to go somewhere “different”?  You know, you try to go to a bar you haven’t been to before and one that won’t be filled with your friends so you can meet new people.  But what do you do when you get there?  You strain your neck looking around the bar for someone you know.

-I hate dudes wearing suits in bars.  Listen buddy, it’s a hundred degrees in here and no one is impressed that you’re a fucking banker.

-Kids who just graduated from college are now making the same transition to the real world that I made a year ago.  I’ll just go ahead and tell you all what to expect.  Toward the end of college, you got bored with doing the same old thing with the same old people every night.  You were excited to graduate and move on to new things in the city.  Strangely, though, you decided to live with someone who you lived with in college.  For the next three to six months, you will go to the same five bars every night where every single person there went to college with you.  The guys will evolve from going out wearing jeans and a t-shirt to wearing jeans and an untucked, long-sleeve, button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up slightly.  The girls who used to wear black pants every night now wear, well, black pants every night.  And after a few bouts of post-party depression you’ll realize, shit, not much has changed!

-Several of my friends have serious girlfriends.  I am single.  I think my friends that have girlfriends have forgotten what it is like to be single.  Their whole incentive system is off.  We’ll be at a bar and they’ll want to stay and I’ll want to leave.  They’ll be like, “Yeah, this is a great bar, I got my girl and I’ve got my buddies, what more can you ask for?”  I’ll be like, “Dude, I’m glad you’re having such a great time but your girlfriend is the only chick in here and I’m trying to get laid.  See ya.”

-Last week I was at a bar talking to a girl.  I made a joke and she laughed really hard.  I thought to myself, “Good work Karo, nice joke.”  Then the chick said, “Oh, I laugh at everything.”  That’s great, way to shatter me.

-You gotta love the pre-emptive cheek kiss.  You know, like at the end of the night at the bar or at the end of a date at the girl’s door?  She wants to make clear she has no intentions of hooking up so she squeaks “Good night!” and jams her cheek in your face so you have no chance whatsoever of making lip contact.  It’s a move guys have yet to come up with a defense for.

-A few of the places I have been to lately have TVs all over the bar.  By midnight, there’s not really any sports on anymore so all they show is ESPN’s SportsCenter.  This just doesn’t work for me.  I can’t concentrate on talking to girls when there are baseball highlights on, it’s just not fair.  You see all the dudes standing next to each other completely mesmerized by Plays of the Week.  The chicks don’t even need to use the pre-emptive kiss because we’re not paying attention anyway!

-I love how guys will lie to chicks about what their plans are for the night.  I’ll be sitting around with my buddies and we’ll know exactly what bars we are going to hit up, who we are going to meet up with, and when we are going to go out.  And then a girl calls and my friend is like, “Um, I’m not really sure what I’m up to tonight, can I give you a call at like 2am?”

-I was at this bar the other night and there was a company there promoting their new product: nipple stickers for chicks.  I’m not kidding.  Apparently there are enough chicks out there who want to wear see-through shirts without bras that someone came up with the idea of putting stickers on their nipples so they don’t show.  I quickly found the creator of the product.  I took her aside and told her she was the greatest inventor since Einstein and professed my love.  What did I get in return?  Nothing but cheek.

-Forgive me for venting here for a second.  I fucking hate smokers.  I hate smokers even more because they all whine about is how a pack of cigarettes costs eight bucks in New York now.  Listen, no one wants to hear you bitch.  I’m tired of smokers making lame-ass excuses of why they don’t quit.  “Oh, I’m just a social smoker.”  “Dude, I had such a stressful day, I need a cigarette.”  “I only smoke when I’m drunk.”  Hey, I only throw up on myself when I’m drunk, but you don’t see me getting any Camel bucks for that do you?  How dumb are you?  You are fucking addicted!  My clothes stink, my eyes sting, and the streets are dirty because of you.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

-What is with the wearing of the belt not in the loops?  Who the hell is coming up with this shit?  I feel bad for chicks sometimes.  They have to hobble around in high heels, belt all dangling off, stickers on their nipples, it’s like a fucking circus out there.

-I have to be honest, with all the distractions at bars these days – SportsCenter on TV, chicks with see-through shirts –  I find it very difficult to pay attention to any conversation I’m having.  The worst is when I’m talking to a girl and I realize that I’m actually interested in her, but that I didn’t listen when she told me her name or occupation.  So I have to try to play Twenty Questions.  I’m like, “So how do you spell your name again?”  She’s like “Um… L-I-S-A.”  Shit.

-Similarly, I hate when I run into someone that I know I know, but I don’t know how I know them.  Because at this stage in my life they could be from high school, college, work, someone I see at the gym, my roommate’s friend, etc.  Eventually you have to ask the question, “So where do I know you from again?”  And the answer is always something embarrassing like “Karo, we dated for six months.”

-Next week I am leaving New York for an epic vacation to Rio de Janeiro and Miami.  Somehow I think the nightlife in those two locales will be slightly different than it is here.  I’ve heard that money will take me a long way in Rio but won’t get me anywhere in Miami.  All I know is, I really hope they don’t have SportsCenter in Brazil!

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-Isn’t it awkward when you’re taking a picture with a bunch of friends and someone who you don’t want in the picture steps in?  You’re like, “Yeah, um, sure, hop in.  Just move all the way over to the end.  Like, all the way.”

-You know when you are standing with a bunch of people and someone’s cell phone rings?  I hate the guy who pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and checks it even though it clearly isn’t his phone ringing.  What are you showing off that you have a phone or something?

-There just needs to be a better way.  Whenever I pick up a magazine, I am immediately besieged by those little subscription cards that fall out everywhere.  And you always try to stick them in the back of the magazine thinking you’ll never get that far but when you do they start falling out in clumps and next thing you know they’re all over the floor and you think to yourself, hmm, maybe I should just subscribe…

-What is going on with the new female pop singers?  It can’t be a coincidence that they are all so hot.  The record companies must just find chicks with a pretty face and a decent voice and then lock them in a room and force them to do 10,000 crunches a day.  I’m watching MTV and it’s like an “Abs of Titanium” video.

-I really wish radio stations would stop telling me how “commercial-free” they are.  “Commercial-free!  Commercial-free!  Next up, an hour of commercial-free requests!”  Man, it’s more like “music-free.”

-Do you get nervous when you go to buy something at a store and they actually watch you sign the receipt to see if it matches the signature on your credit card?  I’m always like, “Oh shit, I forgot exactly how I loop my ‘K,’ I hope she doesn’t notice!”

-Do you have shirts that wrinkle instantaneously upon putting them on?  I get the shirt back from the dry cleaners, take it out of the plastic, put it on, sit down, get up, and it already has to be ironed again.

-You know when you’re walking with a friend and your friend bumps into someone in the street that he knows and starts to have a conversation with them but doesn’t introduce you?  You have to do that little “awkward hover” where you stand one foot behind and to the right of your friend.  And you feel like an idiot so you take your cell phone out of your pocket to check it even though it clearly didn’t ring.

-Ever notice that some people just have a perpetual pile of stuff in the back seat of their car?  It’s always clothes they don’t wear, books they don’t read, food they’ve already eaten.  But it never goes anywhere, it just shifts positions.  And the response is always the same: “Oh just throw that stuff on the floor.”

-Walking into a crowded elevator when you are in the middle of a conversation is always interesting.  You try to continue your conversation and talk a little softer but you know everyone in the elevator is still listening to what you are saying.  So then you start to talk in “elevator code” and swap all proper nouns for pronouns.  You whisper, “So then I said to her, I can’t believe you went there with him and did that without telling them.”  And everyone else in the elevator is thinking, are they talking about grocery shopping or sex?

-I am very confused about the price of underwear.  Do you realize that a pair of brand-name underwear is like nine bucks?  I don’t get it.  How do people wear Polo underwear every day?  Either they do laundry every three days or they’ve spent several hundred dollars on underwear.  Either one is pretty weird in my book.

-I feel like the “push” and “pull” signs on doors are the most ignored instructions in the world.  How many times have you almost gone face first into a door because you pushed when you should have pulled?

-I saw a beautiful New York City moment the other day.  There was a truck that was blocking the street while it was being unloaded and a whole line of cars that couldn’t get by.  First, one car honked, followed by a second, and then a third.  Soon, the whole block was filled with the cacophonous sounds of angry cab drivers.  Finally, the truck driver walked out into the middle of the street to see what all the commotion was about.  Upon seeing the rage filling the street, he did the only thing he could: he calmly lifted his hand and proceeded to give everyone the finger.  I love New York!

-How come every time I walk down the street and get hit with water dripping from an air conditioner does it still confuse the shit out of me?

-I am running out of things to say to the doormen in my apartment when I come and go every day.  “How are you?”  “Take it easy.”  “Catch you later.”  The other day I actually said, “How’s it hanging?”  What the fuck is that?

-I recently went to my cousin’s one-year birthday party.  With all the babies and grandparents there it was a very weird crowd.  Most of the guests were either younger than two or older than eighty-two.  There were strollers and walkers everywhere.  And everyone wore diapers.

-I find it very strange that my grandma doesn’t know when her real birthday is.  I think she lost her birth certificate like fifty years ago and never bothered to get a new one.  She says that it was some time after the Civil War and before the Great Depression, but after that her memory gets a little hazy.

-Ever meet someone new, become friends with them, and then find out later that everyone else hates them?  All of a sudden you’re like, “Yeah, now that I think of it, he is kind of annoying…”

-I feel bad for Boston Red Sox fans.  I really do.  Because, in their heart of hearts, they actually believe they have a shot at beating the Yankees this year.  They’re like innocent little children who haven’t realized that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.  You don’t want to tell them the truth because they seem so happy in their little dream world.  Dream on Boston, dream on!

-I don’t understand people who have to hold their nose manually when they jump in the pool.  This isn’t rocket science people, we’re just holding our breath here.

-And, finally, I think that the people who build malls are very smart.  First, they build very big stores, like Macy’s, that you have to walk through to get to the rest of the mall.  I’m told these are called “anchor stores.”  No one is actually shopping in the anchor stores.  All the people there are just wandering around looking for the mall entrance.  But the anchor stores are like casinos.  There are no windows, no clocks, no signs.  I’m stumbling about in the lingerie section, the perfume lady sprays me with something, I’m disoriented, and next I know I stumble out of Macy’s with twenty pairs of expensive underwear.  Fuck me!

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