-I’ve always been a pretty technology-savvy kind of guy.  In high school, I was the first in my Spanish class to figure out that I could just type my assignments in English and then translate them into Spanish online (Lo siento, Senora Bauer).  In college, I was the guy chicks often turned to when their computers died in the middle of writing an important paper (my usual advice: “Plug it in”).  Soon after I graduated and moved to Manhattan, I discovered that my new cell phone had this great feature that let me quickly turn my outgoing caller ID off – very useful when you’re calling girls wasted at 4am (I called it my “booty call button”).  And now that I live in Los Angeles, I’m employing every technology and digital device I can find to get a leg up on the competition, with increasingly positive results.  Though I’m only twenty-six, I’m technically peaking.

-When I first moved to LA, I bought a new cell phone that had two great features.  One was Bluetooth capability, so I could drive around talking on a wireless earpiece and fit in with the rest of the Hollywood douchebags.  The other was the ability to send the same text message to multiple people.  Now, late on a Saturday night, I can text “what are u up to?” to ten girls at once.  Let’s say I get six responses back, four are promising, two girls I actually meet up with, and one I take home – I’d have to use my old booty call button every five minutes for a week to achieve that kind of return.  In fact, I believe text messaging has made the booty call completely obsolete, joining the ranks of buying flowers, going out to dinner, writing letters, and engaging in actual conversation as artifacts in the annals of hook-up history.

-Like most people in big cities, I use Citysearch to look up restaurants and bars.  What always bothers me about the negative user reviews is that they’re often written by someone who only went to a bar once, couldn’t get in, and is really pissed off about it.  You don’t see a lot of truly candid, positive user reviews.  Probably because they’d sound something like this: “I never heard of this bar, but this chick I text messaged told me to meet her there.  I was real fucked up so I don’t really remember what the place looked like.  I threw up in a urinal in the bathroom and I lost my credit card.  The girl I texted ended up negging me but I went home with some other girl whose name I did not know and she touched my penis.  This bar rocks and I’d go back again if I could find it.”

-In the late ‘90s, Bill Gates famously underestimated the power of the Internet and had to struggle to catch up.  In the mid-2000s, I almost made a similar mistake.  People kept telling me there were women galore on MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster, but I was dating Girlfriend at the time and ignored their pleas.  But now that I’m single, I’ve seen the light.  Here’s my take.  Friendster seems to be much more of a Northeast thing and is slightly boring.  Facebook’s general purpose is to gently remind its members that there are hotter chicks at every other college in the country besides yours.  And MySpace, well, that’s where shit just gets freaky.  MySpace is where you go if you want to see pictures of a lithe blonde with no morals one minute and then get messaged by a strange goth dude the next.  In other words, the girl you try to take home from the bar and the guy who can’t get in who later writes an unnecessarily derogatory review on Citysearch.

-In the end, I think that recent advances in technology have made the world a better place.  And by “the world” I mean “my world.”  And by “better” I mean “the ability to hit on chicks without risk of face-to-face rejection.”  Technically speaking, though, I don’t believe I’m truly technically peaking.  There will always be something new and mind-blowing to enhance my life.  And if time travel is ever invented, I’m heading straight back to high school to complete my Spanish assignments the right way, sin duda.

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

-I just opened an account with Bank of America.  All my checks say “Valued Customer Since 2005.”  I just think that’s a weird thing to print on a check.  I’m concerned anyone I pay will see it and be like, “2005, huh?  That’s now.  What, did your piggy bank break?”

-A month after I moved from New York to LA, my buddy Triplet #2 moved from New York to London.  We both returned for the first time last week, to a party filled with friends we are equally close with.  Yet he got a louder greeting than I did.  Even though he moved farther, I’ve been gone longer – shouldn’t that count more?  Man, my friends are fucking idiots.  I can’t believe those assholes didn’t miss me as much as I thought.

-I want to meet the guy who decides the ratio of sizes in an assorted package of band-aids.

-I love the show “House,” though it’s a bit formulaic.  In every episode, someone gets sick in the beginning and dramatically collapses into a free-standing shelving unit filled with glass and other assorted fragile items.  Where does one even find furniture like that?  God forbid I ever fell violently ill in my apartment, the best I could do would be to break a couple of shotglasses while crumpling awkwardly onto a pleather loveseat.

-My buddy Big Dave visited me in LA a few weeks ago.  We were at breakfast with a bunch of people and everyone ordered coffee or orange juice to drink.  Big Dave ordered chocolate milk.  Everyone started oohing and aahing.  “Chocolate milk,” we all said, “What a great idea!  I never think to order chocolate milk, but I really should more often!”  And so we all did.  He is an inspiration to us all.

-When I visited New York City last week, I crashed at my buddy Chi’s place (though due to the miracle of multiple text messaging, I never actually slept there).  What I always find disturbing about staying at a male friend’s apartment is noticing objects that are clearly masturbatory aids.  For instance, a box of tissues only reachable from the bed, a bottle of moisturizing lotion on the nightstand, or a lone, crusty sock on the floor.  Chi actually has a garbage can next to his bed that is so tiny its only conceivable use is tissue disposal.  Listen, I know every man has his needs, but Chi, you gotta get a bigger garbage can, dude.  At least maintain the illusion you’re not a dirty bastard.

-And, finally, I’ve recently realized that by embracing technology, I’m not only helping myself, but helping my friends as well.  It seems that some of my buddies have taken to surfing through my profiles on MySpace and Facebook, identifying hot chicks, and then messaging them under the auspices of “Hey, you like Karo?  Well I cheated in high school Spanish with him.  We should probably bang.”  Surprisingly, it sometimes works.  And so it seems that, quite inadvertently, I’ve created a secondary ass market for my friends.  Let’s call their technique “Karospacing.”  And don’t worry guys, no need to thank me.  I just want to be missed more than anyone else next time I visit.  After all, I have been a valued friend since 1979.  You know what?  Maybe I should get that printed on my checks.  Fuck me.

HOME

-Normally, I’m obsessive-compulsive about my cell phone address book.  Everyone is listed with the first letter of both their first and last name capitalized.  No nicknames or exceptions.  That is, until I became single again this summer.  Now my phone is strewn with the malformed remnants of hook-ups past: girls with no last name, girls with no first name, and of course, girls with no name at all who are instead represented by a brief, superficial physical description.  But I think the disarray evident in my address book is merely representative of the chaotic sexual experience of my generation.  Since being released back into the wild, I have been observing firsthand the mating rituals of my single peers.  While prior generations were driven by an innate, and somewhat tidy, desire to procreate, today’s twentysomethings have a far different agenda – total anarchy.  For us, it’s hook up, get off, and then break the hell out.

-One of the first rules of taking girls home from the bar is…actually take them home from the bar.  My buddy Triplet #1 was making out with this chick once when he decided the next logical move would be to try to take her pants off.  When the girl stopped him, explaining that they were indeed still at the bar, Trip 1 uttered the classic response, “So?”

-Another common guy tactic: lie to girls.  Not always such a smart move.  I’ll never forget when my buddy Shermdog excitedly told me he’d just met two hot European blondes at the bar and told them we were from Quebec.  I said, “Good work, Sherm.  But next time you lie and say we’re Canadian, I’d avoid the one French-speaking province.”

-Probably the best book I read all year was “The Game,” a true story about the author, Neil Strauss, joining a secret society of pickup artists and transforming himself into the world’s greatest womanizer.  The book was inspiring to someone like me who’s basically used the same two lines his entire life: “I’m in this fraternity, wanna go upstairs?” and “I’m the guy who writes those funny emails, wanna go upstairs?”  I mean, let’s face it, if I ever move to a first-floor apartment, I’m fucked.

-I love hooking up with SBs (pronounced “sibs” and short for “surprise body”).  There’s nothing like taking a girl’s J.Crew rollneck off and discovering that underneath all that wool was a six-pack and two cannons.  My first reaction (that is, after exclaiming “Yahtzee!”) is to suck in my own stomach, which suddenly doesn’t look so hot in comparison.  Often times, a SB is also a “wideclops” – a girl whose eyes are too far apart.  You can tell you’re talking to a wideclops when you can only look her in the eye one at a time.  This is of course very distracting – which is why later their bodies are such a surprise.

-I’ve always been partial to brunettes in wife-beaters.  That’s just my perfect girl.  Ideally, she’d also be a Yankees fan, enjoy cheap beer, possess a knowledge of finance and/or computers, and not make me dance with her.  But, hey, if she owns a white undershirt, I’ll take it.

-In the end, I believe that hooking up is like saving someone from a burning building.  You want to get in and out as quickly as possible and then, maybe, you call a few days later to make sure everyone’s OK.  With that in mind, and on behalf of twentysomethings everywhere, I am hereby setting the next morning at noon as the absolute latest you are allowed stay in someone else’s bed after hooking up.  Anything longer than that should be declared a crime: sexual loitering.

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

-While taking the shuttle bus at LAX recently, I overheard the bus driver’s radio crackle, “Eagle Alpha, please stop at the Delta terminal.”  I just think it’s hilarious that they nicknamed the shuttle “Eagle Alpha.”  Is that really necessary?  This is the airport parking lot, not Top Gun flight school.  “Bus One” would probably suffice.

-I bet the Black Eyed Peas were sitting around one day and Fergie said, “Hey, I bet if we put out the dumbest song ever, people are so stupid that they’ll play it and buy it anyway!”  And the rest of the Peas went, “Yeah, let’s call it My Humps!”

-I could not be more excited to return to New York City next week for the first time since I moved to Los Angeles this summer.  It’s gonna be nine straight days of hangin’ with the fam and drinkin’ with the boys.  I’m especially stoked (that’s LA-speak for “excited”) for Thanksgiving Eve – NYC’s drunkest night of the year.  Only problem is, that usually means that Thanksgiving Day is the most hungover day of the year.  My family is still upset about the time I threw up right in front of my cousin Daniel before we even got to the cranberry sauce.  I keep saying it’s a double standard, though.  After all, Daniel threw up too.  Of course, he was four months old.

-I’m also excited to chill with my ex-roommate Brian, who now goes to Columbia Business School.  You know Columbia’s career services department is doing a bang-up job when Brian asks me, a comedian who hasn’t worked on Wall Street in over three years, to help him with his resume.  My first piece of advice?  Take out the section entitled “hobbies.”  I said, “Brian, you’re twenty-six.  Unless you’ve been building a soap box derby racer that I don’t know about, you don’t have any hobbies.”

-I just realized that I can’t shit and chew gum at the same time.  Apparently, I have some sort of physiological disorder that makes it very difficult to thrust and chew simultaneously.  It’s weird, because I can do other things on the can.  I read David McCullough’s Revolutionary War tome “1776” in the bathroom in about two weeks.  But throw a piece of Wrigley’s in the mix and I’m backed up from here to Lexington and Concord.

-Have you even been talking with a girl, either on the phone or via email, and the conversation is flirtatious yet also a little adversarial, and so you start to think that there’s a lot of sexual tension between the two of you and that, quite possibly, the next time you see each other, all that sexual tension is going to bubble over and you guys are just gonna get it over with and fuck, but then it turns out it was all in your head and she was being kind of snippy not to be flirty but because she actually genuinely dislikes you?

-And, finally, in “The Game,” the author contends that being truthful to women is part of the pickup artist philosophy.  Of course, he also operates under a pseudonym and occasionally wears wigs and fake piercings.  Personally, I’ve found that being completely candid works best in the hook-up game.  I’ll tell a girl, “Listen, I’m not really from Quebec.  In fact, I couldn’t even point it out on a map.”  If I encounter a SB, I’ll say, “You should never wear a sweater ever again.  Seriously.”  You see, women appreciate honesty.  They don’t appreciate you trying to take their pants off at the bar, snoring in their bed until 3pm, or listing them in your cell phone as Wideclops.  But despite knowing all this, I’m sure the next time I spot a tight brunette in a wife-beater I’ll resort to the tried and true “Wanna go upstairs?”  And if she responds, “We’re already upstairs,” I’ll say with a shrug, “So?”  Fuck me.

HOME

-The past century’s epidemics, revolutions, and catastrophes have, in most instances, demonstrated the resilience of the human spirit.  This refusal to give up is evidenced throughout our great nation.  For instance, in recent years, Cornell University’s annual sloshfest known as Slope Day has been significantly curtailed.  Outside liquor is no longer allowed and purchasing beer at the event is a deliberate pain in the ass.  In response, the students have taken to sneaking onto the slope under the cover of nightfall and burying booze deep in the ground and in sewers.  A few days later, they return for Slope Day and clandestinely excavate (then chug) the contraband.  This will likely escalate to the school lining the slope with land mines, at which point the students will probably resort to dropping bottles of Jack tethered to miniature parachutes from model airplanes flying overhead.  In my travels across the country, I’ve learned that the human spirit to get wasted cannot be defeated.  High school proms may be canceled, frat rows may be turned into ghost towns, and bars may close early, but someway, somehow, somewhere, we will get fucked up anyway.  America is vainly fighting a battle it cannot win – the war on alcohol.

-The principal of a high school near my hometown on Long Island canceled this year’s prom in part because last year’s seniors attempted to rent a ridiculous, $20,000 house in the Hamptons for a post-prom blowout.  There’s talk, of course, of putting on the prom anyway, without involving that pesky principal at all.  There’s also talk of renaming the school “Best High School Ever!”

-Whenever I perform on campus, I always take notice of how many frat houses are boarded up or converted into other buildings.  Unfortunately, the number is steadily creeping up.  I was never quite sure what throwing a frat off campus was supposed to accomplish.  Perhaps scare the shit out of the new tenants?  Even my frat house at Penn is now temporarily a dorm.  To whoever is living in Room 16 – those handcuffs were chained to the radiator when I got there, I swear.

-Here in Los Angeles, the bars close at 2am, with last call at 1:30.  Now I know I’m new here, so I don’t want to complain too much…but I can’t understand how anyone would ever voluntarily live in a city with such a system.  I just moved from New York where the bars are open until 4am.  There’s plenty of time to eat, nap, shower, pre-game, go out, meet chicks, get home, and throw up.  Plus, everyone knows that 2:30 – 3:30am is magic hour – when women are most agreeable to my inappropriate advances.  In LA, everything is condensed – magic hour starts at about 11:15pm.  In other words, while I’m in LA trying to take a girl home, my buddies in New York, even with the time difference, aren’t even drunk enough to talk to one yet.

-If anything is going to stop us from getting hammered all the time, it’s not going to be our principal or college or government.  It’s gonna be that guy with the downstairs bathroom that always gets all fucked up when you have a party.  I always feel bad for downstairs bathroom guy as I’m pissing on his toilet seat and rifling through his year-old copies of FHM.  Strangely enough, though, the next morning I forget all about him.

-In the end, the war on alcohol will never be won because there’s too much to gain from booze.  The beer companies make money.  Sports teams get sponsored by beer companies.  And I watch sports while drinking beer, then boot in the parking lot on a patch of grass that, now fertilized, will eventually grow up to be a tree.  So to me, what the principal of that high school is basically saying is, “Trees are bad.”  And, frankly, I won’t stand for that.

-OK, I’ve got a great drinking game for you guys.  This week, watch “I Love the 80s 3-D” on VH1.  Every time you see me make a joke, you take a shot.  I can’t promise how drunk you’ll get, though.  I did my best to make witty comments about the 80s, but then again, I was born in 1979.  If that’s not enough Karo fix for you, you can always pick up Penthouse magazine, which is now running my new advice column.  And yes, guys, I know – now you have an excuse to buy Penthouse.  Nice try, but my dad already used that joke.

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

-I’m excited for my first Halloween in LA.  My costume is my old high school soccer jersey.  If I hook up, I’m gonna keep the jersey on.  I’d like to score at least once while wearing that thing.

-I realized two things while watching the Yankees play the Angels in the playoffs this year.  One, A-Rod is a fucking choke artist.  And two, in my mind at least, I’m still very much living in New York.  After one of the games, my friend asked me why I wasn’t going out.  I was like, “Didn’t you see the game?  It’s rainy and disgusting.”  He was like, “Dude, the Yankees were home.”

-What is it about barbers that makes them beyond reproach?  Whenever I see myself getting butchered in the mirror, I can’t bring myself to say anything.  I share my deepest thoughts with the entire world in this column.  Yet I have a problem telling some guy with a thumb ring that my sideburns are crooked.

-I had this photo shoot recently and the stylist straightened my hair with some sort of device he called a straightening iron.  I couldn’t get over how it looked.  I mean, I’ve had curly Brillo pad hair my whole life.  When the shoot was over, the stylist was like, you know, you could do this yourself, it only takes like five minutes.  I was like, let’s not get carried away, chief.  Once you’re plugging something into a socket, you’ve already more than bypassed my threshold for hair care.  I draw the line at gel.

-This summer, I experienced a seminal moment in the life of a twentysomething male.  I discovered my first gray hair, nestled in my right sideburn.  I actually recorded the date in my Palm Pilot – August 18th, 2005.  Thankfully, there haven’t been any more gray sightings since then.  Then again, thanks to my last visit to the barber, I don’t have a right sideburn anymore either.

-It took a little while, but I finally figured out how to order everything I need in LA online – that way I can avoid speaking to humans, which I hate.  Sometimes I’ll go weeks without seeing anyone except deliverymen.  In fact, I bet them all on the Yankees/Angels series, which turned out to be a big mistake.  Not because I lost, but because I don’t like the feeling of knowing I owe the FedEx guy money.  I feel like if he comes to deliver something and I’m not home, he’s gonna think I’m avoiding paying up.  I can only imagine the day when I open up a package from drugstore.com and find a 12-pack of Charmin and a severed horse’s head.

-And, finally, I will admit my fight against the war on alcohol is taking its toll on my body.  First, there was the gray hair.  Then, I threw up from drinking for the very first time since moving to LA (pretty good color, but didn’t get great distance on it).  Finally, a few weeks ago, I had to change planes in Cleveland on my way home from a gig when I found myself too hungover to walk another step.  Luckily, I flagged down one of those carts with the flashing lights and the guy drove me to my gate.  Next thing I knew, I was landing in LAX.  I awoke with a startle, looked at my watch, and then slumped back in my seat.  I had flown backward through four time zones yet still missed magic hour.  Fuck me.

HOME

-Like all mammals, I instinctively react to dire circumstances and suddenly develop abilities I do not normally possess.  For instance, during Mardi Gras 2003, after a three-day liquid diet and taking a stray bead toss to the jugular, I found myself alone, lying on the floor of my cousin’s house in New Orleans, unable to move.  Suddenly, my survival instincts kicked in.  I knew that I needed to eat solid food, and quickly, or I would soon die a lonely and breastless death.  I struggled to my feet, willed open a cabinet, and made myself a bowl of pasta wheels.  It was the first time I’d ever made pasta, boiled water, used a stove, or touched a pot.  But, alas, this flash of domesticity was short-lived as I soon reverted back to getting take-out and laundry delivered right to the door of my apartment in New York City.  Since moving to Los Angeles this summer, though, I’ve been forced to fend for myself like never before.  Still, put me near a stove, washing machine, or vacuum cleaner, and things get ugly quickly.  You might even call it domestic abuse.

-I’m renting a furnished apartment in LA and I knew that if I was going to actually use the kitchen, everything would have to be thoroughly disinfected first.  I also knew that, as a bachelor, and a skinny one at that, I wouldn’t need much.  So I carefully soaped up, scrubbed, and left to dry two spoons, two forks, two knives, two bowls, two plates – two of everything.  You should have seen my countertop.  It was like the Noah’s Ark of flatware.

-But let me assure you I have not gotten soft by any measure.  There is still no fucking way I’m doing laundry.  Just like in New York, I send my laundry out.  Except in New York, it’s called “laundry.”  In Los Angeles, it’s referred to as “fluff & fold.”  What the hell does that mean?  It sounds like something you’d get from an obsessive-compulsive porn star.

-Of course, just in case the fluff & fold place is closed, I have an emergency supply of JC Penney boxers I can resort to when the going gets tough.  They’re so old that they sometimes fall behind my dresser drawers as if they’re trying to escape to freedom.  I don’t mind wearing them once in a while, but the elastic waistbands are so loose I have to fold them over like a slutty chick’s shorts at summer camp.

-I’m a clean freak, but I won’t clean.  I’ll never forget when I was still living in New York and the cleaning woman told my roommate Brian and I that our vacuum needed to be fixed.  After an epic, eleven-all rock-paper-scissors stalemate, we both walked the vacuum cleaner half a block to the repair shop.  When Brian and I returned a few days later, sans receipt stub, the clerk told us to just grab our vacuum.  Only problem was, neither of us could remember what it looked like.  The guy started trotting out vacuum after vacuum while we stared and made comments like, “Could you turn it to the left?” and “No, I’m pretty sure ours was mauve.”  It was like a Dirt Devil police lineup.

-In the end, after a long holdout, I finally broke down and started going grocery shopping in LA (to get supplies for the three things I now know how to make in a microwave).  Eventually, in order to get all my groceries and fluff & fold from my car to my apartment, I had to get one of those foldable laundry carts on wheels.  So next time you’re in Los Angeles and think you see a victim of domestic abuse, don’t hurry past.  That sorry figure in tattered underwear pushing a plastic cart full of cans?  It’s me.

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

-I cringe when I go to a restaurant for the first time and the waiter asks if I’ve eaten there before.  Because I know that if I answer truthfully, I’ll then be subjected to a ten-minute instructional lecture on the intricate aspects of ordering tapas.  Listen, if your menu is so complicated that living on earth for twenty-six years doesn’t give me enough knowledge to properly order from it, I’m probably not going to like any of this weird-ass food anyway.

-I often panic when they offer me freshly ground pepper in a restaurant.  They always stick that long, wooden pepper mill right in my face and totally put me on the spot.  It’s a pretty tough decision, too.  Pepper or no pepper?  What do I do?  Everyone else seems to be getting pepper, but I’m drawing a blank!  Do I want it?  That giant fucking pepper shaker is right in my face and I’m freakin’ out!  And that’s when I wonder if there was anything in the instructional lecture I lied to avoid that covered pepper panic attacks.

-I hate receiving gratitude for actions I have not yet refrained from doing.  For instance, in the last hotel I stayed in, there was a placard in the bathroom that read “Thank you for not taking the bath towels to the pool.”  Well, fuck you!  Don’t thank me for something I haven’t not done yet!  I didn’t think of it before, but maybe I will take those bath towels to the pool, just for spite.  Take that, you presumptuous placard!

-Well, the countdown is on.  Brian is getting married in ten months.  I can’t wait to serve as the Best Man at this fucking thing.  First, Brian suggested to his fiancee that they put an email address on their wedding invitations in order to save money by not using reply cards.  The idea was met by quiet sobbing and quickly quashed.  A few weeks later, Brian attended his college buddy’s wedding and uttered the faux pas of the year in the closing line of his own Best Man speech.  He said, “Jeff, you chose the breast bride possible.”  Brian called me from the bathroom of the wedding hall right after the toast to tell me what happened.  I asked him if he really wanted to get married next summer.  He said yes.  I said, “Then, for the love of God shut your mouth and don’t say another word for the next ten months!”

-My buddy Scotty has been trying to get me to go hiking with him in LA.  I’m always like, “Hiking really isn’t my thing.”  And he’s like, “How do you know if you’ve never even tried?”  I say, “Dude, I’ve been outside before.  I get the gist.”

-And, finally, I believe that the real differentiating factor in life – between mere children and actual responsible adults – is that adults eat dinner at a table.  They don’t sit hunched over their coffee table shoveling heartburn-inducing food into their mouth as fast as possible like most twentysomethings and the rest of the animal kingdom.  How do the apes at the zoo eat bananas?  Hunched over.  The amoebas that emerged from primordial ooze?  You can’t tell without a microscope, but they were eating hunched over, too.  For the first time in my life, my apartment actually has a dinner table I can eat off of.  The hunch is gone.  As I sit, back straight and heartburn-free, and survey my new surroundings in Los Angeles, I realize how much I’ve grown and how many new things I’ve learned to do on my own.  And then, with my underwear waistband folded over twice, I dig into a hearty bowl of pasta wheels.  Fuck me!

HOME

-To me, entering into a relationship is like hiking into the dense jungle.  At first, it seems like a great idea.  That is, until you get disoriented and lose your bearings.  You start freaking out, but eventually realize there’s no place else to go.  You’re stuck.  So you figure you might as well just settle down.  Then you discover that everything you really need – nourishment and warmth – is freely available to you all the time.  Things actually start to seem pretty damn good.  You adapt to your new surroundings and begin to forget what the outside world is like.  By the time you’re rescued, you’re actually sad to leave.  But now it’s time to rejoin society – a journey I have just begun.  This is my return to singilization.

-Girlfriend and I have broken up after dating for a year and a half.  Some would say it was inevitable.  After all, we were doing long distance with a twist.  Not only did I recently move from New York to Los Angeles, but at almost the exact same time, Girlfriend moved from New York to Atlanta for advertising school.  But long distance didn’t cause our problems, it merely brought them to the surface quicker.  For instance, in hindsight, when Girlfriend once asked me if I loved Derek Jeter more than her, I probably should not have responded, “Well, I’ve known him longer.”

-The one thing I’m sure of is that we tried everything possible to make it work.  I even bought webcams for each of us, which was great.  Turns out arguing over a grainy, choppy Internet connection is just as good as arguing in person!

-My relationship with Girlfriend was eerily similar to the one with my college girlfriend, in that the first six months were bliss, the second six months were a little rocky, and the last six months were spent trying not to punch me in the face.

-Our final break-up was sad, but very much amicable and mutual.  Tears were shed on both ends, I think – with the webcams it was hard to tell if the other person was sobbing or choking on a pretzel.  Still, Girlfriend praised me for being “very mature” about the break-up.  In fact, we both agreed that the break-up was probably the most cordial we’d been to each other in a while.  Hell, if we could date as well as we could break up, we really coulda been something!

-The first order of business after a break-up is, of course, telling your friends (and for me, tens of thousands of other people) what happened.  I’ve found that guys and girls have very different reactions to the news.  Girls are like, “Oh, that’s so sad. Are you OK?”  Guys are like, “Yes!!  Congratulations, Karo.”  It’s actually kind of annoying to have to tell everyone I know.  I’m even tempted to send people one of those irritating Plaxo emails where you exchange your new contact information.  I’d write, “My fax number is the same, but now I can bang your cousin.”

-There are many other administrative and logistical tasks that come with a break-up as well.  There were pictures to take off the wall.  I had to update my Facebook and MySpace accounts to say “single.”  I had to re-train myself to leave the toilet seat up as well as resume regular grooming of the groin area.  As my return to singilization continues, I’m feeling a bit rusty but my male instincts are definitely coming back.  And right now those instincts are telling me that if I ever want to get laid again, I should probably lose the webcam and Derek Jeter jersey.

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

-I like to work out before I start my day.  On the treadmill in the gym in my building, you have to enter your weight before the machine will start.  There’s no way around it.  Let me tell you, there’s nothing like lying to yourself first thing in the morning.

-Why don’t spammers use real names in the junk mail they send me?  At least try to fool me.  I mean, what are the odds I’m going to open an email from a Mr. Balls McLicken?

-Memo to the men of America: if you meet a chick at a bar named Katrina, whatever you do, don’t bring up her name – pretend it has no significance to you whatsoever.  She’s probably so sick of hearing it that if you ignore it instead you just might get ass.

-I hate when I call customer service and the recording says, “Due to overwhelming demand for our products, you will experience longer than usual wait times.”  That’s funny, I was thinking it’s the incredible shittiness of your products that usually makes people call tech support.  And you ever have the customer service rep put you on hold while they check on an order for you?  Why?  Do they not want me to hear them typing or something?  Are they getting up to go somewhere?  And remember when 10,000 Maniacs was a huge band?  You think back then they ever imagined their heart-wrenching ballads would one day serve as the hold muzak that thousands of disgruntled customers would listen to as they barely choke back their blinding rage?  Iffy.

-“Prison Break” and “Lost” are my two favorite dramas.  They are also the two most illogical shows on television.  For some reason, I’ll let “Lost” slide, but not “Prison Break.”  On “Lost,” there are dinosaurs and polar bears and absurd coincidences and I’m fine with all of it.  But on an episode of “Prison Break,” one of the prisoners had his hair all done up in this cool mini-mohawk.  And I was just sitting there thinking, come on, there’s no way they have access to Redken pomade in prison, this is ridiculous!  I haven’t had my intelligence so insulted since I got a spam email from a Mrs. Van Gina.

-And, finally, I would just like to say that I would not trade the last year and half for anything.  Ex-Girlfriend is an amazing person who taught me a lot and who I love very much.  If you guys remember from Ruminations #50, Ex-Girlfriend is actually a textbook Serial Monogamist – the type of girl that somehow goes from boyfriend to boyfriend without ever really dating in between.  I just got lucky.  I have no doubt she’ll soon be dating someone who’s less funny but better looking than me, while I’m probably destined to hook up randomly for the next ten years.  I’ve even come to believe that, in a way, serious relationships and random hook-ups are not that different.  They’re both all about timing.  If you meet a girl when you are about to move across the country, you’re much less likely to successfully date than if you meet the same girl when you are ready to settle in one spot.  Just like if you meet a chick at a bar at 10pm when you’re sober, you’re much less likely to get head than if you meet the same chick at 3am when you’re both shitcanned.  So, ladies, I’m back in business.  And due to underwhelming demand, there’s no wait at all.  Fuck me.

HOME

-I’ve done something I never thought I’d do.  The unthinkable.  The unconscionable.  The unfathomable.  Something that I fought against with every fiber of my being.  I’ve entered uncharted territory, summoned by fate and destiny, and been brought to a world unlike anything I’ve ever known.  I’ve joined the Dark Side.  It all happened so fast.  But it happened.  I moved…… to Los Angeles.  Holy fucking shit.  Welcome to the City of Angles.

-I was born and raised on Long Island.  I went to college in Philadelphia.  And I spent the last four years carousing in the streets of Manhattan.  I’m pale-skinned, neurotic, obnoxious, and a die-hard Yankees fan.  In other words, I’m pretty much as East Coast as you can get.  But here I am, writing this from my one-bedroom in West Hollywood.  My first week here, I walked outside to get something to eat.  There was nothing – no bodegas, no delis, just blocks and blocks of stores selling lighting fixtures.  Wonderful.  I move 3,000 miles across the country to a new city and somehow end up in the lamp district.

-So what’s my first impression of the people of Los Angeles?  Whorish?  Vacuous?  Fake?  No.  Nice.  That’s right, nice.  I can’t believe how many people have introduced themselves to me in my building.  If someone even asked me my name in my building in New York, I’d be tempted to punch them in the neck and run the other way lest they dare even think about looking in my direction again.  Cordiality – what a concept!

-You ask, what the fuck am I doing here in the first place?  Well, quite simply, I’m continuing to pursue my sitcom and stand-up dreams.  Only problem is, so is everyone else here.  What kind of sucks is that if I’m in a bar in New York and mention I’m an author/comedian, I get an excited response, and maybe even a hand job in the bathroom.  In LA, when I mention I’m an author/comedian, I get an uninterested response.  Then I get asked if I have an agent or a deal.  I say yes and then I get the hand job.  It’s that extra step that’s killing me.

-And to the women of New York, you know you will always be my first love.  But after careful empirical analysis, I have to say the chicks in LA are, on average, much hotter.  Whether gourmet LA girls are approachable or not, well, that’s another story.  In fact, my buddy Ryan even makes the laughable but logical case that the girls out here are actually TOO hot.  Which prompts me to pose an important philosophical question – if a perfect ten walks in the door but no one can talk to her…does she exist?

-I must say, though, I’m surprised at how quickly I’ve adapted to life out here.  I even bought an SUV to drive two blocks to the supermarket.  My main problem is parking.  I can find places OK (I just Google Map everything), but once I get there I can’t park and end up driving in radiating concentric circles until I find a spot a mile away from my initial destination.  And parallel parking, forget about it.  I’ve never driven a truck before so I’m always scared and unsure about how much space I need.  I swear I park like a gangly adolescent girl self-conscious about her developing new body.

-I’m not going to lie, though.  I miss New York.  I miss falling asleep to the sound of indiscriminate screaming on Third Avenue.  I miss ordering Chinese food and having it arrive at my door seven minutes later.  But most of all, I miss my friends back East.  While I’ve got a great crew of hooligans here in LA, it’s hard to compare to the childhood friends I’ve been kickin’ it with for the past twenty years.  Oh God, did I just say “kickin’ it”?  See, that’s what happens here!  You start talking weird…and dressing funny…and eating organic food.  LA, man.  It’s a trip.  There are no angels here, but everyone’s got a different angle on how to make it big.  Nothing is what it seems and perception is everything.  It’s the City of Angles.  And it’s home.

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

-For some reason, people never understand me when I say my first name.  I used to say it’s “Aaron, like Hank Aaron.”  In LA, I still get a puzzled look.  Then I say, “Aaron, like Aaron Spelling” and everyone understands.

-I ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese in LA.  It took half an hour and came on a baguette.

-I pay the same rent in LA as I did in New York and my apartment is three times the size.  I’m like an institutionalized parakeet that’s been let out of its cage for the first time.  There’s almost too much space – in fact, my second day here I accidentally walked directly into my coffee table and smashed it to pieces.  I had to call the guy I’m renting from and tell him.  He was like, “Were you drunk?”  I was like, “Actually, no, I’m just not used to walking more than four steps in any one direction.”

-One of the main thoroughfares in LA is Wilshire Boulevard.  Turns out it’s pronounced “will-sure” not “will-SHIRE” like the Hobbits from “Lord of the Rings.”  That was an embarrassing two weeks.

-I have car insurance for the first time ever.  So I was pretty shocked when I was told I had a deductible.  I thought I could just drive around and smash into everything for free.  But apparently my policy doesn’t cover demolition derby.  Fucking Allstate.

-I’m the kind of guy who needs to be completely “settled” in a new place before I can do anything at all.  My agent calls me up the other day to ask how a script is coming and I’m like, “Whoah, whoah, whoah.  Script?  Take it easy man!  I don’t even have a new coffee table yet.  Script?  I’m not settled!  I need a coffee table and one of those things that holds the paper towel roll and then maybe I can work on this script you speak of.”

-And, finally, as a writer and performer, change is always good.  When you’re too comfortable, material doesn’t flow as easily.  Fear and insecurity – that’s where the gold comes from.  So when I realized I was too comfortable in Manhattan, that’s when I knew it was time to move to LA.  It was a Saturday night in June and I was stumbling down Second Avenue going from one party to another with a beer in my hand.  Mind you this was not a can of beer in a brown bag, this was not an opaque keg cup, this was a clear glass filled to the brim with Bud Light.  What the fuck did I care?  This is my city, what’s gonna happen?  Until I walked right past a cop.  Apparently, he cared.  I tried to reason with him as he wrote up a ticket, but he wouldn’t have it.  I didn’t think I was even that drunk, and I told him so.  The cop actually seemed to feel bad and even said, as he handed me my court summons, “Sorry man, but it’s the end of the month and we have to meet our quota.”  I begrudgingly thanked him for his surprising candor and, as I made my way to the second party to refill my glass, decided it was time to get out of New York.  I also thought how strange it was that the cop would actually tell me he was filling his end of the month quota.  Then I glanced at my watch and that’s when I realized how wasted I was.  It was only June 4th.  Fuck me.

HOME

-It was a brisk day in 1996 when my father, a veteran toy company executive, was transporting the very first Tickle Me Elmo prototype through Hong Kong International Airport.  Because the toy’s internal mechanism looked like a bomb in the X-Ray machine, my mom and dad were quickly hustled into a small room filled with armed guards and asked to dismantle the device.  My dad tried, but instead inadvertently tickled Elmo, who first began to shake uncontrollably and then burst into his trademark high-pitched giggle.  The guards actually began to giggle too, as did my mom, who was so amused by the scene she cried with laughter for a good 48 hours straight.  But my dad remembers one very serious-looking guard in the back who never took his hand off his gun or his eye off of Elmo.  Thankfully, my parents were eventually released and the rest is red, furry history.  I recount this story because I’ve always tried to figure out how I got the way I am today – eccentric, prone to cause a scene, and, well, just a little off.  The answer, of course, is my family.  Because in the equation of what creates us, blood counts.

-My mom, like me, is a worrier.  If I tell my mom offhand that something is bothering me, she consoles me.  Then later she starts to think about my problem, and then she worries about me.  About a week later, when I don’t even care anymore, she calls me up offering advice she found on the Internet, reference books she took out from the public library, and the phone number of a cousin I don’t even know who suffered from a similar problem in the late ‘80s.  My mom tries to solve all of my problems, yet, strangely enough, she can’t figure out how to email pictures from her digital camera that aren’t each three megs big and crash my hard drive every single time.

-My dad has a different way of tackling my problems: by spouting one-line dad-isms.  When I lament the Yankees’ current second-place status, my dad comfortingly grunts, “That’s why they play all the games.”  When I told him I was planning on driving home through the night after a stand-up gig, he simply warned, “Don’t be a hero.”  I’m not even sure what that means…but I checked right into a hotel anyway.

-My rhyming-name sister Caryn is the only person who gets to see my columns before I send them out because she proofreads them.  You ever have someone edit something you wrote with “track changes” turned on in Word?  It inserts these jagged red lines wherever there’s an edit.  Except Caryn’s edits aren’t limited to grammar and punctuation.  She also likes to insert little comments like “This is stupid,” or “You’re an idiot.”  Caryn just got her Master’s from UCLA.  Yet she still found it necessary to insert “You smell” right after this joke.

-Well, I’ve reached the age of twenty-six and it’s official: I now sound exactly like my father.  The deal was sealed a few weeks ago when Girlfriend accidentally called my parent’s house and had a five-minute conversation with my dad without realizing it wasn’t me on the phone.  She finally figured it out when she told “me” that she was switching to a new birth control and my dad responded, “Don’t be a hero.”

-In the end, blood is thicker than water…but that doesn’t stop us twentysomethings from going ballistic on our families.  For instance, my mom actually called me the other day and said, “I spoke to Uncle Larry before, he thinks you should try to get on Leno.”  Really mom?  Really??  Uncle Larry thinks I should get on Leno?  Well, I never thought of that before but if Uncle Larry thinks so why don’t I just call Jay’s direct line right now?  I’m sure he can bump Jessica Simpson and squeeze me right in, especially if Uncle Larry says so!  Of course, I know mom was only trying to help.  So if I ever do get on Leno, I’ll make sure to tell him Uncle Larry says hello.  It might take a while, but hey, that’s why they play all the games.

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

-I recently flew United, and they make a big deal about how if you tune to channel nine on your armrest, you can actually hear the chatter between the pilots and air traffic control.  So about halfway through the flight, I decided to check it out.  I scrolled past about four country western stations before getting to channel nine.  And what did I hear?  Nothing.  The channel was out of service.  I immediately thought, now what was I supposed to use as a flotation device again?

-Last week I was served gazpacho, or cold soup, at a wedding.  Every time I eat gazpacho I think the same thing: this is pretty good, but it’d be better if it wasn’t cold.

-What’s worse than falling down the stairs?  Thinking there’s one more step but there really isn’t.  You end up doing that awkward lunge where your foot hits the floor unexpectedly and your kidneys fly up into your brain – which clearly wasn’t being used in the first place.

-You know you’re wasted when you’re standing in the elevator for ten minutes, wondering why nothing’s happening, before you realize you never pressed any buttons.

-I keep all the jokes I’ve written (nearly 4,000 of them) in a giant Excel spreadsheet organized by category.  The other day, for the first time in years, I added a new category: Weddings.  I lost yet another soldier last month when my buddy Triplet #3 got engaged.  I’m not too excited about the impending avalanche of friends’ weddings, though.  Because you know what more weddings means – more gazpacho.

-I’m going to be the Best Man at my old roommate Brian’s wedding next year.  And that’s pretty cool because when we start arguing about who had the better SAT II scores, I can always interrupt and say, “Wait, wait…what kind of man am I?  What kind of man?  That’s right, the Best Man.  You said it yourself, the Best!”  Come to think of it, I better look into whether you can be fired from the wedding party…

-And, finally, my grandmother has always told me that, as the last male Karo, it’s up to me to have four boys to carry on the family name.  (This was an especially daunting task to be given when I was six and very much a virgin and, ironically, is even more daunting now that I’m twenty-six and very much not one).  But then, fate intervened.  I got an email a few weeks ago from one Zac Karo, a fellow twentysomething who graduated from Oklahoma State the same year I graduated from Penn.  A little research ensued and, what do you know, it turns out our great-grandfathers were brothers.  There are more male Karos after all!  Sure it’s distant, but blood counts.  It was like a great weight was lifted from my shoulders (and my groin).  I told my dad the news but added that, even though I should be absolved from Grandma’s request, I’d do my best to have four boys anyway.  His response?  “Don’t be a hero.”  Fuck me.

HOME

-The other day, I saw a commercial for a special on popcorn shrimp at Red Lobster.   And at the very end of the ad, in tiny type at the bottom of the screen, were the words “Prices higher in Honolulu and Times Square.”  I found it both amusing and telling that the only two places in the country that couldn’t comply were a remote island in the Pacific Ocean…and the heart of Manhattan.  But that’s New York City for you – a riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma, then fried with batter and served with tangy dipping sauce.

-A few weeks ago, I was having a drink at some dive bar on the West Side with my buddy Brian when we were approached by a reasonably attractive chick who was running a promotion for Miller Lite.  She gave us each free beers then asked if we wanted to enter a sweepstakes.  The prize?  Miller Lite will come to your apartment and build a fully stocked bar.  We both looked at her in shock and instantly knew that the suits up at Miller Lite corporate hadn’t quite thought this idea through.  “Do you know how small my apartment is?” I asked.  “Yeah,” Brian chimed in, “If you build me a bar, where am I gonna sleep?  In the bathroom?”

-Earlier in the day, Brian and I had walked passed a Chinese restaurant called Noodles on 28 that, oddly enough, is located on 28th Street.  We walked a bit further and were surprised to notice that Noodles on 28 was opening a second location – about 100 feet down the block.  Brian commented on what that boardroom discussion must have been like: “Well, the Noodles on 28 business is booming and it’s time for us to expand.  But where?  Rome?  Paris?  Tokyo?  Wait…I got it.  29th Street!”

-People like to argue and talk shit in New York about why their neighborhood is better and yours sucks.  I find this to be an exercise in futility.  Honestly, the way some folks go on and on, just being born in this town doesn’t even earn you street cred anymore – you have to be spawned from the seed of a hippie and a beatnik and emerge immaculately from a manhole in the Lower East Side.  Who the fuck cares which neighborhood is “better”?  I pay thousands of dollars a month for an apartment where I can see the refrigerator from my bed.  We’re all in this together.

-You know what’s great about living by myself?  Looking at the air freshener spray in my bathroom and knowing I never have to use it if I don’t want to.

-You can’t buy liquor and beer at the same store in Manhattan.  Why?  Is this supposed to defer people from getting too fucked up?  The liquor store is fifteen feet away from the beer store anyway.  And didn’t anybody tell the Mayor that “beer before liquor, never been sicker” is an old wives tale?

-NYC really is an enigma.  I mean, what other city has one Red Lobster, one 7-Eleven, one Hooters, and 45,000 dry cleaners?  When New York was in the running for the 2012 Olympics, the chief concern was that the city couldn’t handle the influx of people.  But at least everyone would have had a pressed shirt.  This week marks the four-year anniversary of my move to Manhattan after graduation and I still haven’t quite figured this place out.  Is it possible to love a city unconditionally?  It just might be.  Perhaps I’ll mull that thought over some hot and sour soup at Noodles on 28.  Uh, no…the other one.

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

-Sometimes, if I’m in J.Crew and the person ringing me up asks if anyone helped me with my purchase, I’ll pick a salesperson at random and say, “Yeah, he did” even though no one really assisted me.  That’s just the kind of guy I am.

-You should always be wary of products made by companies that don’t specialize in them.  For instance, my friend has a DVD player made by Polaroid and a Kenneth Cole watch.  They’re both just a little off.  Of course, I didn’t even follow my own advice and bought sneakers made by Lacoste last week.  They rubbed my ankles raw to the point where I’m limping around in them.  Sure they look pretty pimp with the little green alligator on the side, but I walk like Kevin Spacey in “Usual Suspects.”

-My friend Kim makes jewelry and has these parties where a bunch of girls come to an apartment, drink wine, and buy up her jewelry.  And she makes a good amount of money from this!  I can’t imagine a similar scenario with males.  What could possibly motivate a bunch of guys to get together, drink beer, and buy stuff?  Maybe unopened porn?

-I just read this awesome book called “The Tipping Point” which is basically about the point where small fads become huge trends.  Now I find myself constantly bringing up the book when I’m out at the bar.  Not surprisingly, no one seems to be interested.  My friends’ idea of the tipping point is taking one more shot then falling over.

-I don’t think I should have to request water at a restaurant.  The waiter should just bring water.  Just bring water!  Bring water before you even bring the menus.  And don’t just bring one person water because they’re the only one who specifically requested it.  It should be assumed that everyone wants water.  Just bring water – no, no, not bottled, not sparkling, just regular fucking water.  If you don’t, I’ll calculate the tip on the bill before tax, which is what you’re really supposed to do anyway.

-Ever get an email from a friend that’s so long you almost wish they never wrote it in the first place because now you have to reply with a lengthy email of your own?

-I bought some Healthy Choice microwaveable meals.  They’re healthy, which is good.  But I eat two of them at a time, which is bad.

-Watching the Tour de France makes me really tired and not want to ride a bike ever again.  Which I’m sure is the opposite effect they were going for.

-And, finally, the biggest drawback to living in Manhattan is that the city that never sleeps is also the city that’s never cheap.  Just sitting down in any lounge in town will easily set you back about 300 bucks, because sitting down requires buying a bottle of liquor.  That’s right, real estate is so hot here, even your ass pays a premium.  I was at this hotel bar in the Meatpacking District recently and beers were like $14.  And everyone was just lapping it up.  Though only slightly tipsy, I was forced to bail after dropping about half my 401k.  But I did learn a valuable lesson: You can’t reach the tipping point in New York without getting taken to the cleaners – which is why there’s so many of them.  Fuck me.

HOME

-Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, which makes me wonder – were whores the first summer interns?  I can just imagine the young and eager interns spending the bulk of their June and July doing mindless busywork like answering the pimp’s phone and putting everyone’s blood test results into a big spreadsheet.  This summer, the tradition continues (I’m talking about interns now, not whores, though I’m sure there’s another joke in there somewhere).  Millions of impressionable college students have descended upon the globe’s major cities in the hopes of adding a bullet point to their resumes and will leave in August with nothing more than the experience of dialing “9” and wearing an undershirt for the first time in their lives.  The summer is a soap opera and I love to watch…as the world interns.

-Tradition dictates that the summer intern gets the worst seat in the office, that is, the seat where everybody else can see your computer screen.  This blows of course because now that asshole sitting behind you who brings tuna salad in a Tupperware container for lunch every day can clearly see that you’re reading my column right now instead of doing work.  When they sense someone coming up behind them while they’re jerking around on the Internet, most summer interns will quickly alt-tab to another document.  I’ve found this to be a rookie mistake because it implies guilt.  If tuna salad-man rolls up on you while you’re half an hour deep into collegehumor.com, hold your ground.  Most likely you won’t be questioned.  If you are, explain that you’re doing research into targeting highly coveted demographics and ask where he got that marvelous Tupperware from.

-One really fun game that you and your fellow interns can play during downtime (i.e. always) is something I like to call “Guess Who’s Fucking!”  Each intern picks two people in the office who might be doing the nasty.  Whoever guesses correctly (confirmation can be discreetly obtained from the assistants who know everything), gets free beers all night from the other interns.  Bonus points for extra-marital.  For added fun, once drunk, yell, “Guess…Who’s…Fucking!” out loud very slowly and with extra emphasis on the last word – just like the announcer from “Wheel of Fortune.”

-After celebrating your victory in “Guess Who’s Fucking!” with about fifteen Sam Adams Summer Ales, you’ll be hungover in the office the next day and want to nap.  I suggest utilizing a two-man spotter system.  When tired at my old job, I’d call out a number to my buddy Chi in the next cube.  That number would be the amount of minutes I wanted him to let me sleep before throwing a stress ball at my head to wake me up.  And of course, I’d do the same for him.  Only problem was, I tended to forget to wake Chi up.  He has really tall, spiky hair and also kept a shitload of Post-it notes stuck to his computer screen.  When he slept for more than eight minutes, his face would lean in toward his monitor and his hair would knock the Post-it notes off.  I’d usually remember to wake him up when I found him passed out on the keyboard and his cubicle filled with tiny scraps of paper swirling in the air like a deleted scene from “Edward Scissorhands.”

-I’ve had my fair share of internships, from my dad’s company (fell asleep in front of his boss), to a consulting firm in London (got drunk at lunch, then spilled entire glass of water on copy machine, not sure if it broke because I ran away), to a huge firm in New York (threw up in subway station at 8am, turned around and took subway back home).  But in all instances, I got rave reviews from my employers by August and so can you.  I did it with a little discretion and a lot of luck.  After all, your bosses this summer are totally stressed, don’t have time to follow your every move and, in some ways, are quite similar to the earliest prostitutes.  The only difference is, now you have to guess which one is getting fucked.

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

-Last week I could not get my lock to open at the gym.  I started to get really nervous like in middle school when I’d come back from winter break and forget my combination and have to call the janitor to get the bolt cutters to chop my lock off in front of everybody.  Thankfully, I eventually got my gym locker open.  Which was good because my He-Man lunchbox was in there.

-There’s actually an ad for McDonald’s in my gym.  I’m dead serious.  That’s like having an AA meeting sponsored by Heineken.

-I’m sure by now you’ve seen the ads that Citibank has plastered across the country with slogans that basically say there’s more to life than money.  For instance, one billboard says, “Hugs are at a 52-week high.”  I’m sorry, but that’s the very last message I want my bank to be sending.  They should run ads that say, “We will kill a man for a nickel.”  That’s the kind of bank I’d like to have a checking account with.

-I say we put the Sprint PCS guy and the Verizon Wireless guy in a ring and have them fight to the death.

-The other day, my remote control died.  I grabbed some new batteries, opened the remote, took out the old batteries, then looked down at the pile of four batteries in front of me – two new, two old – and had no idea which was which.  I think the shock of how dumb I felt was enough to power the remote.

-To do a little research for my earlier joke involving Sam Adams, I went to samueladams.com.  It asked me to enter my birth date before viewing the site.  Same thing when I went to heineken.com – I couldn’t enter unless I put in a birthday older than twenty-one.  That struck me as the lamest security system I’ve ever seen.  Then, just for kicks, I went to budlight.com and discovered the highest age you can even enter is seventy.  Presumably anyone older than that either can’t use the Internet or has already succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver.

-A few of my buddies went camping over the long weekend.  They asked me if I wanted to come along.  I asked them if there’s a more negative word than “No.”

-And, finally, over the years I’ve gotten many requests from fans inquiring if I’m hiring interns.  While writing today’s column, I got to thinking about what my requirements for an intern would actually be.  A hot chick, obviously.  A good copyeditor.  Hard drinker preferred.  An aversion to Tupperware definitely a plus.  But, alas, the summer is almost half over and I don’t really have the need for an intern anyway.  It would have been a sweet gig, though.  I mean, how hard could it be to wake me up from a nap?  Of course, I just realized that my buddy Chi in the next cubicle asked me to wake him in “four”…and that was four years ago!  Fuck me.

HOME

-I turned twenty-six over the weekend.  And while you can argue that being twenty-five was technically mid-twenties or late-twenties or whatever, the fact is this: halftime is now over.  The buzzer has sounded, the locker rooms are emptying, and the players are re-taking the field.  For some reason, I feel like I’m on the team that’s getting slaughtered, the coach just made an inspirational speech that I didn’t buy, and, well, we’re looking kinda old out there.  But there’s no turning back and the stakes are raised.  In the game of twentysomething life, the second half has now begun.

-I don’t quite fit the profile of a mature twenty-six-year-old.  Most days I eat take-out for every meal and dress like a slob.  When I enter my apartment building in parachute pants carrying a plastic bag full of burritos, the doormen often assume I’m a deliveryman.

-My buddy Triplet #1 doesn’t turn twenty-six for another few months.  Which is probably good because he enjoys his women, how should I say this…quite young.  A few weekends ago, he was with an underage lady friend when he called me to ask if the bar I was at was carding hard at the door.  I made fun of him for ten minutes for even asking such a question then recommended a daycare center down the block that looked pretty bumpin’.

-I’ve noticed a return to snail mail among my friends as we get older.  In the past month, at least three buddies have asked me for my mailing address.  Who the hell sends actual mail?  It must mean that thank you cards or engagement party invitations are on the way.  In the past four years, no one’s had use for my actual address save for the occasional pre-game at my apartment that resulted in twenty drunken calls from friends asking, “Yo Karo, where the fuck do you live again?”

-Of course, some things never change.  At my last pre-game, my friends found a “To Do” list of mine in the kitchen.  The next morning, I noticed that after “fix screen door” they had added “buy K-Y Jelly and double-headed dildo.”

-Recently, I joined my friends at this great sushi place on 20th Street where they bang a giant gong every time you take a sake bomb (so in our case they banged it every fifteen seconds).  After about a dozen rounds, my friend Dr. Shermdog raised his glass and yelled, “If I ever get too old for this, kill me!”  I toasted to that and kicked another one back, but then said, “You know, I don’t really feel too drunk.”  To which Triplet #2 leaned over and whispered, “That’s ‘cause you haven’t stood up yet.”

-When it comes to birthdays, some people are known as bad gift-givers.  They don’t put any thought into the present, they don’t wrap it nicely, or they forget to give something at all.  I’m actually a bad gift-receiver.  I don’t like being surprised, yet I don’t usually know what I want.  And I don’t make too much of an effort to feign delight after opening a sub-par present, either.  Yeah, it’s a real joy to know me.

-So I’ve only been twenty-six for 48 hours and it’s already gotten confusing.  In the week leading up to my birthday, my friend Brian asked me to be in his wedding party and my sister Caryn finished grad school.  So now I’m the Best Man among my peers yet my little sister is my Master.  What the fuck?  Yet somehow I think I’ll get used to the second half of my twenties.  Even embrace them.  After all, there’s still a lot of drinking to do, and I haven’t even stood up yet.

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

-I spoke at my old high school a couple of weeks ago.  I had a great time and I think the kids enjoyed it and actually learned a thing or two.  Of course the seniors were getting excited about prom, which made me think back to mine.  We snuck a bunch of alcohol into the limo and the driver busted us about halfway to the party.  To this day, I haven’t forgotten his reaction.  He wasn’t pissed off – more like shocked.  He was literally shocked that prom kids would try to drink alcohol.  I remember thinking, either it’s this guy’s first day on the job or he’s the most naive motherfucker on the planet.

-The chick whose face is on mail.yahoo.com has to be the most famous person ever.  Do you think teenage boys come up to her on the street and are like, “Oh my God, I log on to your picture every night!”

-My buddy Chi just turned me on to this reality show on the Discovery Channel called “Deadliest Catch.”  It’s about Alaskan king crab fishermen in the Bering Sea.  Sounds weird, right?  Well, in the first two episodes, four people died.  That’s right.  Died.  Imagine if Donald Trump was like, “You’re fired.  And you, well, you’re dead.”

-I hate when short-sleeve t-shirts have “wings.”  You know, when the sleeves don’t rest snugly on the sides of your biceps, but instead kind of stand up on their own?  Thanks but I don’t really need any help making my arms look skinnier than they already are.

-There seems to be an exorbitant amount of farting going on at my gym.  It’s odd, because no one can hear anything with their headphones on and I think that feeling of isolation has made people forget that they’re actually in public.  But don’t think you can pump away on that elliptical machine and pretend like nothing happened – I’ve got my eyes (and nose) on all of you.  What I don’t understand is why people can’t save their farts until they’re in bed with their girlfriend, like I do.

-OK, I’m changing positions on one of my key issues.  I used to rail against the use of emoticons.  I hated them.  Check out Ruminations #14 – my position is clear.  But, I’m changing my tune.  They’re actually not that bad.  Sometimes, one little smiley face can take the place of a whole paragraph.  And I’m getting too old to write out exactly what I’m feeling all the time.  So :), LOL, 😉 and if you don’t like it, well :p

-And, finally, as I embark on the second half of my twenties, I’ve begun to realize that getting older and growing older are two very different things.  Getting older is physiological and involuntary.  For instance, I can barely tailgate anymore because then I have to piss every inning, whereas back in the prom limo I don’t think I felt the urge to go once.  But growing older is a more intangible and voluntary show of maturity.  For instance, I should probably admit…it’s been me farting at the gym.  Either way, there’s a lot to look forward to and I’m excited about what lies ahead.  The “To Do” list for my second half is lengthy and – wait, goddamn it! – who the hell added “buy edible underwear” to this list?  Fuck me.

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