-In two weeks, I will celebrate a major milestone, my twenty-fourth birthday.  Well, maybe “major” isn’t the right word.  You see, I just don’t think turning twenty-four is that big of a deal.  Turning nineteen is an important birthday, that’s your last year as a teenager.  Similarly, twenty, of course, is the first year of your twenties.  And at twenty-one, you become legal.  But from twenty-two to twenty-four, not much happens.  You get into a groove for three years and try not to look ahead.  Then your twenty-fifth birthday comes around and all hell breaks loose, next thing you know you’re married and living in Westchester and going to Crate & Barrel to shop for placemats.  Thankfully, I’m not there yet.  At twenty-three going on twenty-four, I’m still sort of going with the flow.  In fact, if your adolescence can be described as the “Wonder Years,” then I say the ages twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four deserve to get their own name too.  And so I’d like to welcome you to the “Whatever Years.”

-I don’t know what scares me more, the fact that my mom asked me if I want luggage for my birthday, or the fact that I think I do.

-In honor of my birthday, earlier today I decided to write down all of the major things that have happened to me in the last decade of my life.  I only wanted to list the most memorable and life-altering events.  Here’s what I came up with: witnessed Rangers win Stanley Cup, graduated high school, lost virginity, graduated college, perfected left-handed masturbation, published book.  That’s it.  Ten years of living and all I have to show for it is two diplomas, a poster, a paperback, a sore wrist, and a lifetime of frustration.  Why do I even bother?

-Where you live during the Whatever Years is crucial.  I’m getting kind of fed up with my cramped New York apartment.  I long to live in a place that doesn’t require twenty IKEA halogen lamps to light, that has a “living room” not a “common room,” that has a refrigerator with one of those cool ice-cube makers in the door, and that has a bed with a headboard so I can have sex without worrying about flying through temporary plaster wall that separates my room from my roommate’s room.

-I’m not too worried about getting old, though.  There are so many reasons why I still feel like I kid.  For instance, whenever I find out that someone speaks a foreign language, I still ask them how to say “shit” and “fart.”  Most of my t-shirts still say something to effect of “Zeta Beta Tau Toga Party.”  No matter how hard I try, I still don’t understand half the jokes that Dennis Miller or Bill Maher make.  You can still see the hole in my ear even though I haven’t worn an earring in years.  The other day I got yelled at at my fancy gym for throwing around one of those giant bouncy balls.  Oh yeah, and I still went to a pediatrician until like last year.  What?  The nurses there are hot.

-Here’s two ways you can tell that you’re getting old.  When you have a party at your house or apartment, do you close the door of your bedroom so that no one goes in there?  Also, have you started calling your friends by their first names when you’ve only called them by their last names for the past twenty years?  If you answered yes to either of these questions, I recommend you see a pediatrician immediately!

-Since some of my friends are now moving on to their second jobs since leaving college, I’ve been asked a few times to write letters of recommendation for them.  It always goes something like this: “Hey Karo, I was wondering if you could write a letter about me for this new job I’m trying to get.  Here’s the thing, don’t mention anything about that time I almost burned down the fraternity house.  Or punched that cop.  Or stole that car.  Or that I failed Accounting.  Or that I never actually graduated.  Or that I’m functionally illiterate.”  I’m like, sure, no problem, one complete lie coming up!

-Another thing that I think a lot of guys in their Whatever Years experience is the sudden realization that, like it or not, we’re turning into our dads.  First, I started getting a bit of a beer belly.  Then, I started making that subtle sigh that my dad makes when annoyed.  The other day I found myself saying to a friend that signature dad-phrase, “Don’t worry about anyone but yourself.”  Next thing you know I’ll be wearing khaki shorts from Eddie Bauer and a knee brace while sitting in a leather recliner watching “Emeril Live” and munching on Cheese Nips.

-As I near my twenty-fourth birthday, I can’t help but look back and think about all the time I wasted this year.  All the time I wasted in line at CVS waiting for one uninterested clerk to ring up the seven thousand people in front of me.  All the time I waited in line outside overcrowded lounges waiting for one uninterested bouncer to let me in even though I came with seventeen model chicks and had my name on four different VIP lists.  All the time I waited in line for the one bathroom inside the overcrowded lounge while the six chicks jammed into the one stall tried to figure out how to take a piss while wearing a belt that purposely doesn’t go through the loops of their pants.  All the time I waited for my “high-speed cable modem” to load up ESPN.com so I could check the score of the Yankees game that started over four hours ago and is still going.  And all the time I’ve waited for a food delivery only to have the guy come two hours later with half the order wrong, the other half missing, the wrong credit card charged, and a sly grin that says “I can’t understand a word of English so I will be of no help.”  My God, at this rate, by the time I’m twenty-five, I’ll be thirty-two.

-You know what I’m tired of?  People saying, “I’m very disappointed in you.”  When I was a kid and got in trouble, my parents always gave me that same speech: “We’re very disappointed in you.”  In college, when my fraternity got in trouble, we were told by an administrator, “I’m very disappointed in you.”  At work, when I messed up, my bosses said to me, “We’re not your parents and this isn’t college anymore…but we’re very disappointed in you.”  You know what?  Shut the fuck up already.  I’m sick of everyone having such high expectations.  And when do I get to be the one disappointed, huh?

-Quote of the Month.  The Whatever Years are also the first time in your life that you’re actually making some real money.  Too often making the money is the easy part but saving the money is the hard part.  The other day I was sitting around with a bunch of my buddies talking about how much we should put into our 401k (yes, I know that is the most boring conversation of all time).  But it was impossible for any of us to fathom why we should put our beer money away now and then not be able to touch it for over thirty years.  Finally, my frustrated friend just burst out and said, “Honestly guys, if I actually need the money in my 401k by the time I’m old, I’ll just kill myself instead.”

-Speaking of the future, when I get married, there is absolutely no way I’m going to get a joint email address with my wife.  Have you seen this?  I get emails from like janeandbobbywilson@aol.com.  Oh that is so very, very lame.

-For some reason, I think it’s really cool that I was born in 1979.  I meet anyone born after me and I’m like, “Dude, you’re so eighties.  I was born in the seventies man, yeah!”  Right.  For the six months I was alive in the seventies, my life consisted of spitting up on myself and babbling incoherently.  And if you see me at my birthday party in two weeks, you’ll see that not much has changed.

-Living in New York, most weekend nights are dedicated to celebrating people’s birthdays.  Let’s face it, there are about six people that you can really get excited about their birthday, and the rest of the people you just need to “make an appearance” at their party to perpetuate the thinly-veiled fabrication that you actually care.

-There is one thing that will prevent me from attending a birthday party, no matter who it is, and that is if they send me an Evite.  Enough with the fucking Evites already!  It’s always the same drill: a picture of a record player in the background and directions to some bar in the West Village that no one has ever heard of.  Then you have the guest list that is always some abnormally high number like 237 invited guests.  Then you look at the “yes” section in which the first seven responses are the birthday girl’s sister, roommates, cousins, and boyfriend, all with a little comment like “Wouldn’t miss it for the world baby doll!”  Then you have the “maybe” section, also known as the “there’s no fucking way I’m coming but I’m trying to be nice” section.  Finally, there is the “no” section that usually consists of only a few scattered responses from friends in California or Europe who actually have a legitimate reason why they can’t come.  And just to punish the birthday girl for sending an Evite, no matter how detailed it was, the other 217 people who didn’t respond always call up about half an hour before the party and say, “So, what’s the deal for tonight again?”

-No matter where you look, the Whatever Years are filled with signs of a fading childhood and the growing responsibility that adulthood represents.  In two months, I have an engagement party for a close friend (I don’t get it, aren’t we celebrating at the wedding, what the fuck is this party?).  A few months ago, I got an email from classmates.com about my upcoming high school reunion (uh, I graduated in 1997, I think we have a little time to plan guys).  And every time I run into a friend from college, I hear of another former animal of a fraternity brother who’s getting married (from kegs and taps to Crate & Barrel in the blink of an eye!).  I don’t think I’m ready for any of that yet.  Hell, at my last birthday party I stood up on a table while blindingly drunk and was nearly decapitated by a ceiling fan.  And I expect more of the same in two weeks.  Just don’t expect me to send an Evite.  Would I disappoint you like that?

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

-I hate when my friends call me frantically to tell me to turn the TV on because they are behind home plate at the Yankees game or behind the bench at the Nets game.  I know you claim to be waving a giant foam hand right behind George Steinbrenner, but I can’t fucking see you, please stop calling.

-Last week was Memorial Day.  No one ever wants to make plans around Memorial Day.  “Oh that weekend, no, no, can’t do it, it’s Memorial Day weekend, no one will be around.”  Have you ever noticed that everyone says they are going to go away for Memorial Day but no one ever actually goes anywhere?  More people left the city the weekend of the University of Michigan’s graduation than last weekend.

-I think one of the most annoying questions you can ever be asked is “How was your trip?”  You just got back from vacation and now you have to tell the same damn story over and over again to a bunch of people who don’t really care.  And every time you tell the story it gets shorter and shorter.  My friend Kim left last month to travel around the world for a full year.  I feel really bad for her having to come up with an answer to that question for such a long trip.  So when she gets back I’ll just ask her the only question I actually care about: Did you get laid?

-Memo to whoever is in charge of the weather in New York:  hey, just wanted to let you know that the saying is “April showers bring May flowers” not “April showers bring May showers and then more showers in June.”  Where the hell are the flowers?

-I feel like every room I’ve ever lived in has had furniture where there was that one-inch black hole of space between it and the wall.  And you know that eventually something is going to fall back there but you just hope for the best and then one day your American Express slips in the crack and next thing you know you’ve got a flashlight in one hand, a misshapen hanger in the other, and you’re smashing your face against the wall desperately searching the black hole for any sign of life before giving up and canceling your credit card.

-I dread the moment when I get in the elevator of my apartment and press my floor but then another guy jumps in the elevator at the last moment and goes to press his floor, only to realize that it’s already pressed.  Am I obligated to introduce myself to him because he lives on my floor?  Do we really need to make idle conversation about the state of the building’s air conditioning system?  Must I say “Hey” accompanied by a subtle head nod every time I see him in the lobby thereafter?  Sometimes I wish I lived in a walk-up.

-Is it some sort of requirement to have that black and white picture of construction workers having lunch on top of a skyscraper hanging in your apartment?

-When we leave the bathroom and then are immediately introduced to someone and shake their hand, do we really need to say, “Oh, it’s only water” when referring to our wet hand?  Isn’t it safe to assume that if your hand is that wet, it’s water?  Maybe one time just for kicks I’ll say, “Hey, nice to meet you.  I’m Karo, and I just pissed all over myself.”

-I love the game of trying to guess who is calling you when an unfamiliar number comes up on caller ID.  You’ll be sitting around with your buddies and all of a sudden your cell phone rings and you’re like, “Who is this?  Area code 617?  Where’s that?”  Then someone yells out “Miami!”  “Houston!”  “San Diego?” “No dog, that’s Boston!”  “Boston?  Who do I know in Boston?  Who could possibly be calling me from Boston?  Should I pick it up?”  “No, let it go to voicemail.”  “Boston, Boston…shit, it stopped ringing.”  “Who was it?”  “They didn’t leave a message.”  “I guess we’ll never know.”

-I don’t think that it’s possible to eat Cheerios and not have one fall off the table and roll away so you can’t find it.  Now if it falls in the one-inch crack between the table and the wall, then you’re really screwed.

-When it comes to money, I think trance/electronic music fans have to be some of the most illogical people I’ve ever met.  No matter how dire their financial situation, if a big DJ is in town, they will spend exorbitant amounts of money to see him.  My buddy Claudio will be like, “Yeah dude, I’m going to a show tonight, tickets were only eighty bucks!”  And I’ll say, “But you have no money, you haven’t worked in six months, and you haven’t bought your dad a Father’s Day Present yet.”  The response: “Whatever man, it’s Oakenfold!!”

-I saw X-Men 2 the other day.  I thought it was a pretty cool flick.  The only thing I didn’t get was why the mutants were so amazed by the other mutants’ powers.  One guy was like, “Wow, you can shoot fire from your hands?”  I’m like, are you really that impressed?  You can bend metal with your mind!

-Ever notice that you can’t talk about the Matrix without starting to sound like a nerd?  At first you’re like, yeah the fight scenes were ridiculous and that Monica Bellucci chick is hot as hell!  Then you’re like, but what did you think when he went into the mainframe at the end and it turned out that there was just an anomaly in the computer that caused the program to overload even though the encryption code was assimilated to the…whoah…where the fuck did that come from?

-If you’ve been to a movie in the past month or so, you’ve undoubtedly seen countless previews for the new Hulk movie.  I love watching the trailer and then seeing everyone turn to their friend and ask, “Wait, why was the Hulk flying?  Can the Hulk fly now?  And why is he so damn big?  What’s going on?”

-There is no doubt in my mind that having a girlfriend changes your whole mentality.  Last Saturday morning at about 11am, after an all-night rager, I was woken up by my roommate Brian who wanted to know if I wanted to go to brunch with him and his girlfriend.  Brunch?  Are you fucking kidding me?  Brunch?  What happened to the days when we used to get up at 2pm, get bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches and 64-ounce lemon lime Gatorades, watch SportsCenter, and then go back to sleep for three more hours?  Brunch?  Don’t you know that no single guys go to brunch?  Anyway, could you, um, bring me back an omelet?

-What is going on on TV these days?  The other day I saw a commercial that described mascara as “revolutionary” followed by another commercial that described a new television show as “daring.”  But the weird part was that skateboarder Tony Hawk was in both of them!

-Memo to guys wearing those old school mesh baseball caps crooked to the front: holy shit!  Are you Ashton Kutcher?  Wait a minute, you’re not.  So why the hell are you wearing your hat like that?

-Memo to chicks wearing really low-cut shirts or really short skirts or low-rider jeans with your thong all hanging out: you are my reason for living.  However, please stop fidgeting with your clothes.  When you left the house, you knew half your ass was showing, now just let it be.

-Why on a Friday night is there always that one guy who has to hold everyone up because he has to buy cigarettes and go to the ATM before we can get a cab?

-Why is there a sign outside the sauna in the men’s locker room of my gym that says: “Do not use if pregnant.”?

-How my come my computer hasn’t shut down properly in like two years?

-Why are there more personnel at the airport helping people who can’t figure out how to use the “self-service” e-ticket machine than anywhere else?

-And, finally, have you ever brought something into a store that you already bought and then had to convince them that it’s yours?  I was walking back from the gym the other day and I stopped in a deli to get something to eat.  I brought a bottle of water from the gym with me.  I paid for my food and was about to walk out when the cashier noticed the water in my hand.  “Excuse me, sir,” she said, “You have to pay for that.”  I told her that I brought it with me from the gym.  But she said that since they sell the same exact bottle of water at the deli and she didn’t see me come in with it, she had to charge me.  At this point I started to get angry.  I said, “Are you saying that I’m trying to steal this bottle of water?  Why would I do that? It’s two bucks!  And even if I did, why would I just walk out the door so nonchalantly and not try to conceal it?  If I was going to steal it why wouldn’t I just slip it into my backpack, then you would never have seen it and I would have gotten out of here no problem!”  I waited for her response.  “Sir,” the cashier finally said after a long pause, “I’m going to have to search your bag.”  Fuck me.

HOME

-When I was about a year old, my mom left me home with my dad for the whole day for the very first time.  When she came home, she found my dad strangely quiet and me with a devious grin on my fat little face.  Upon closer inspection, my mom discovered that I was covered, head to toe, in a thin layer of white powder.  She interrogated my dad, who broke pretty easily.  After refusing to eat even a morsel of what my dad tried to feed me, I had forced him to give me white powdered donuts for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Thus, even as an infant, I knew my parents’ weaknesses and used them to my advantage.  I think that your family life has a huge effect on who you become.  That’s why I’d like to take you inside the Karo family – a world of relative absurdity.

-After the powdered donut incident, my young life remained fairly calm until that fateful evening in January 1982 when my parents brought home my newborn sister from the hospital.  They carefully unwrapped her blankets, showed me her angelic face, and said, “Aaron, this is your new baby sister, Caryn.”  Upon hearing this, I immediately starting running around her crib yelling at the top of my lungs, “Caryn and Aaron!  Caryn and Aaron!  Caryn and Aaron!”  My parents looked at each other in horror.  Unwittingly, unknowingly, and inexplicably, they had somehow given their only two children rhyming first names.

-So I had to learn to survive in a family with an Aaron, a Caryn, and a cousin named Sharon.  It was harder than you might think.  Imagine being ten years old, playing around with your sister in the basement, and all you hear from upstairs is your mom yelling unintelligibly, “…aaaaaaaaryn, come upstairs!” and having no idea whether she’s calling you or your rhyming name sister.  To avoid confusion, my parents eventually starting calling us by our middle names.  That led to my friends at school noticing that I wouldn’t respond when called Aaron anymore.  Since I never told them my middle name, they started calling me Karo.  And to this day, everyone I have ever met, from girlfriends to doormen, has always called me Karo (pronounced “KAY-ro”).  Except my parents.  They still call me and my sister by our middle names.  Serves them right.

-So let’s take a closer look at my parents.  My mom, an education administrator, is the kind of mom that, no matter where you are in the world, and no matter what is wrong with you, she’s got some shit in her pocketbook that will make it better.  “Mom, I skinned my knee.”  “Don’t worry honey, I have a band-aid in my purse.”  “Mom, I have a headache.”  “Don’t worry honey, I have some Advil in my purse.”  “Mom, we have a flat tire.”  “Don’t worry honey, I have a spare tire in my purse.  I also have a tire jack.  It’s in the pocket with the zipper, next to the sugarless gum.”

-Of course my mom doesn’t know her own cell phone number.  I don’t know why, but moms just don’t know their own cell phone number.  They usually have it written on an index card scotch-taped to the back of the phone.  My mom also doesn’t leave her cell phone on.  She says it’s only for emergencies.  Well how am I supposed to reach you in an emergency if your phone is off and stashed in that giant pocketbook of yours?  And dads are just the opposite.  Dads pick up their cell phone no matter what.  My dad will be like, “Hey son, I’m in the middle of open heart surgery but I saw you on caller ID and just wanted to make sure everything was OK.”  Which is weird, because my dad’s not even a doctor.

-My dad, who is a toy company executive by weekday and a golf-playing, golf magazine-reading, golf on TV-watching, golf school-attending fanatic on the weekends, always taught me about the important things in life.  My senior year in high school, my dad attended parent-teacher conferences.  When he met with my biology teacher, he noticed pictures on the wall of everyone in the class at a field trip we had taken a few weeks earlier.  Pictures of everyone except for me.  When he came home, he told me we had to talk.  I was scared out of my mind.  He asked me why I missed the school field trip.  I said to him, “Dad, I have to level with you.  I cut school that day and took the train to the city to watch the Yankees World Series victory parade.”  I’ll never forget his response.  “Son,” he said, “This is the proudest moment of my life.”

-My sister Caryn, a rising senior at Dartmouth, has suffered from the classic second-child disadvantages.  While shelves full of albums and scrapbooks document my early years (including a pouch with some hair from my first haircut), my sister’s history was relegated to a couple of Polaroids and an old coloring book.  Despite this checkered past, my sister will forever remain the Good One in the family.  Though we have both been very successful in our lives, Caryn is sweet, caring, and interested in helping others, whereas I am loud, obnoxious, and selfish.  I just can’t win.

-Quote of the Month.  This is an old classic.  My parents always taught Caryn and I to challenge ourselves and others.  One day in high school, a particularly vociferous and overbearing social studies teacher was lecturing on and on to a class full of demoralized students.  The topic was a foreign country, the teacher boldly proclaimed, that was “more than halfway around the world.”  After a few more minutes of this, my sister calmly raised her hand and said, “But there’s no such thing as more than halfway around the world.  If you have to go more than halfway around the world to get there, you might as well just go the other way.”  For a moment, everyone was stunned.  My sister had spoken out of turn.  But then the teacher and everyone else had to admit it – she’s right.

-I am very lucky to have two grandmas who live in the same old-age home in my hometown on Long Island.  Grandma Babe is 88.  Her hearing is great but she has little idea about what the hell is going on.  Grandma Zelda is 92.  Her memory is great but she can’t hear shit.  So one grandma forgets to take her memory pills and the other can’t understand us when we tell her to turn up her hearing aid.  But as long as they remember to give me money and hear me when I say thank you, I’ll love them just the same.

-I’m happy that my grandmas are in this home.  Not only do they get treated very well, but they’re also close enough to visit regularly.  OK, I’ll be honest, the reason I’m happy they’re in this home is because now I don’t have to eat from that candy dish anymore.  You know that candy dish that your grandparents have in their house that has had the same wrapped candy in it for like twenty-five years?  And by now all the candies that are left are yellow because no one likes the lemon ones?  Good riddance!

-I have more cousins than I know what to do with.  Old cousins, baby cousins, California cousins, Florida cousins.  One of my cousins I refer to as an SUC – sports utility cousin.  SUCs are the cousins that offer to do just about anything you can think of – beat someone up, pick you up at the airport, build a wall unit.  And of course, the SUC always drives a giant SUV.

-My dad loves the duty-free shop.  There’s just something about duty that gets him all worked up.  On every family vacation we took when we were little kids, all I remember is filling up Caryn’s stroller with half-price bottles of Absolut.

-Whenever we go on vacation, my mom gets one “nature day” where we have to see some lame-ass park or stream.  We once went to the Grand Canyon for a week and that put us in the clear for a decade.

-I’m twenty-three years old.  But whenever I fly anywhere, I have to send my parents an itinerary with flight numbers and times.  And I call them as soon as I land.  Even stopovers.

-When I was in high school, I used to borrow the car and blast loud music.  My parents would get pissed when they got in the car and the volume was turned all the way up.  Ironically, now that I’ve toned down a bit on the loud music and my parents are starting to lose their hearing, we both listen at the exact same volume.

-Ever notice that dads carry more in their pockets than any humans on earth?  My dad turns a pair of khaki shorts into an overnight bag.

-My mom has almost superhero-like powers.  You tell her what time a movie is playing, how long it’s been out for, and how many stars it got, and she’ll tell you to the minute when you have to leave the house in order to get to the theater before it sells out.  Then she’ll come with you and make you sit through the entire credits at the end because she wants “to see who that guy with the shirt was.”

-Like any superhero, my mom has weaknesses.  Her kryptonite is cameras.  She’s had the same one for five years and still can’t work it.  Last fall we went to Scotland to visit my sister who was studying abroad.  My dad played St. Andrew’s, the oldest golf course in the world, in the middle of a monsoon.  When he stepped back into the clubhouse he was soaked to the bone and carrying his clubs with tears in his eyes.  My mom was ready for this once-in-a-lifetime shot…and couldn’t figure out to work the flash.  Thankfully, I was prepared for such a scenario and snapped the picture with a disposable.  And that’s what family is all about.

-As you can see, the Karo family is quirky and crazy, but full of love.  Everything I’ve accomplished I owe to them.  In fact, my sister and mom proofread this column every month before I send it out.  Seeing the way my grandparents, parents, and cousins have raised their children has convinced me that I want kids of my own.  I’ve even decided that if my first-born child is a son, like I was, I would like to name him Adam.  Why?  Because nothing rhymes with Adam.

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

-Why do I have a laptop when I have never once moved the thing from my desk?

-Have you noticed that they are getting a lot more lenient with what you can get away with on TV these days?  They let a lot more dirty words go by than they used to.  And I turned on MTV the other night at like 3am and I swear I saw a titty.

-Ever hit the horn in your car by accident and then have to mime to the person in front you that you didn’t mean to?  You put your hand in the air like “my bad” and other person thinks you’re saying, “Fuck you.”

-I’m that guy that doesn’t pull up close enough to the automatic ticket dispenser at tollbooths and parking garages and has to unbuckle his seat belt and lunge out of the car window to reach the ticket.  My mom is that woman that doesn’t pull up close enough either but she’s small so she has to physically open the car door and get halfway out in order to reach the ticket.  It runs in the family I guess.

-I’m also that guy who in high school would come back from winter break and forget my locker combination so the janitor would have to come with the jaws of life and cut open my lock.  Every single year.

-Since I get tons of email every week, I have become pretty adept at quickly discerning the purpose of an email.  I have found that any email that starts with the word “listen” is always going to be bad: “Listen, I don’t think this is working out.”  “Listen, I didn’t know he was your best friend.”  “Listen, I have some kind of rash.”  Listen, I think I’m going to delete this email right now!

-Along with the rest of the nation, I am fucking psyched to see the new Matrix movie.  (Though I will say, people, it’s time to get rid of your Matrix screensavers.)  Anyway, I will tell you this much, if I was Neo, and Morpheus gave me the same choice he gave him, I’d be like, “Yeah, um, I’m gonna have to go with the blue pill on this one.  Red pills kinda give me heartburn you know?  Plus Punk’d is on in like ten minutes and I wanna get home.  Yeah, thanks.  Do I take this with water?  Great.  See ya!”

-Is it weird that when I’m introduced to two people who are going out, the first thing I do is imagine them fucking?

-Why do all punk rock albums have like sixteen tracks but the whole CD is only twenty-two minutes long?

-I’m sick of hearing about “my friend’s band.”  It seems like every weekend someone is saying to me, “Hey, I’m going to see my friend’s band, you should come, they’re really good!”  And they’re always playing in some out of the way shithole and the only people that like them are…their friends.

-The next time I’m in an elevator that keeps making stops and someone jokes, “Hey, must be the local!” I’m gonna punch them in the neck.

-I hate when I ask people at a bar where they’re from and they launch into this whole spiel about how they’re not really sure where they’re from because their family moved around a lot and they went to elementary school here but high school there but now in the summer they live here and…  I’m like, dude, just say Philadelphia or something, because I don’t really care.

-Summer has arrived in New York City – time to put away those Burberry scarves and dig out those Abercrombie shorts!  In a few weeks, the NYU dorms will be emptied of their usual nose ring-clad residents and be filled with investment banking interns from Penn.  The usual summer hotspots, Bowery Bar, Luna Park, and Lemon Bar will be packed from happy hour to closing.  Hell, this fucking fondue place down the block from me is so crowded I can barely walk by – and it’s a fondue place.  The guys will start ordering beers that come with a slice of lemon and the girls, well the girls, wait, is it me…or did all the girls just get really hot all of a sudden?

-I’m even more psyched for the summer because the city’s ban on smoking in bars and restaurants officially went into effect about a month ago.  Of course, a few weeks into the ban, a bouncer threw a bunch of guys out of a bar for smoking illegally and they promptly stabbed the bouncer to death.  While obviously an extreme example, this just goes to show the stupidity and arrogance of New York’s smoking population.  Get the hint smokers, no one likes you!

-Meanwhile, on the East Side, a crisis was narrowly averted when the largest doorman union in the city struck a last minute deal after having threatened to strike.  Thank God too, as chaos surely would have reigned in the streets with no one to accept deliveries, hold elevators, or carry Marc Jacobs shopping bags for the denizens of Third Avenue.  A friend of mine was especially worried about the impending doorman strike.  I was like, are you kidding me, your apartment has automatic doors!

-I love how people not from New York can’t comprehend how loud it is here.  Whenever my agent calls me from Los Angeles and I’m outside, he’s always like, “Karo, where are you man, the core of the earth?”  I’m like, dude, relax, I’m at this fondue place and a fire truck just went by.

-I think I’m giving up on going to the gym.  Why?  Because Madonna is 44, has two kids, and has better triceps than I’ll ever have in my entire life.

-When you’re out with a chick you’ve been hooking up with, the question “How do you two know each other?” is always so awkward.  You both look at each other and giggle and stammer and make up some story about how her roommate knows your fraternity brother even though what really happened was that you were really drunk at 4am at Bowery Bar a few weeks ago and convinced her to come back to your place.  But we can’t just say that, now can we?

-You know what I’ve noticed about this time of year?  Everyone blames everything on allergies.  “My nose is all stuffed up.”  “Must be allergies.”  “My eyes are watering.”  “You probably have allergies.”  “I broke my leg.”  “Wow, you have bad allergies.”  “The stock market is down.”  “Well, it is allergy season.”

-Why do tracking numbers and confirmation numbers have to be all crazy?  I just ordered something online and the confirmation number was like 5802K23-C96S-07DSA.  Why can’t it just be 53B?

-Do you have friends that are e-card whores?  My friend Jen sends me an e-card for every single occasion – my birthday, Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, the autumnal equinox.  It’s wonderful because I know that she really cares.  But I’m sort of frightened by the fact that she’s able to find so many different cards that feature singing bears holding balloons.

-I don’t get it when restaurants and take-out menus have soups and other entrees listed that say they are “homemade.”  Uh…what?  Do you live in the restaurant or something?

-I really don’t understand this show “Fraternity Life” on MTV.  What kind of fraternity would allow a camera crew to follow them around for a semester?  You certainly can’t do most of the things that fraternities are supposed to do if you’re on camera all the time.  Back in my day, if they followed my fraternity around with a video camera, the show would not be called “Fraternity Life,” it’d be called “How to Lose a House in Ten Days.”

-Why do all girls’ bath products smells like some sort of berry?  I took a shower at a friend’s place last week and when I was done I smelled so delicious I wanted to eat myself.

-And, finally, another tale of my inability to function properly in society.  My sister was visiting me in the city a few weeks ago and we were walking down the street.  When we got to a corner, my phone rang, and a person I really didn’t want to talk to popped up on caller ID.  I immediately hit the “ignore” button on my phone and sent it straight to voicemail.  I started telling my sister this funny story about this guy and I was making all kinds of faces and gestures and generally making fun of the kid.  A few blocks later, I checked my voicemail.  The message: “Karo, I called you because I was standing behind you on the street.  Asshole.”  Fuck me.

HOME

-When I stepped down from the podium after delivering a speech at my college graduation, I spotted my parents in the crowd.  I saw the huge smile on my mom’s face and tears coming from my dad’s eyes, and that’s when I knew it was all over.  They would never give me money ever again.  In the weeks that followed, financial independence was thrust upon me.  Credit cards were cut in half, bank accounts were closed, and (gasp!) I even started a 401k, all under the watchful eye and satisfied grin of my father.  Luckily, my cushy Wall Street job helped pay the bills at first.  However, since leaving my job to pursue comedy full-time, I have managed to maintain my gluttonous lifestyle without returning, hat in hand, to my parents.  A wallet full of singles can go surprisingly far in this fair city.  And that, my friends, is the power of ones.

-One thing I never do is budget.  It’s overrated.  Now don’t get me wrong, I have a pretty good idea of what I spend every week, but I have friends that write down every single thing they purchase in an organized spreadsheet.  I did that for a month once.  At the end of the month I calculated that I spent 65% of my money on alcohol, 30% on food and 5% on new heads for my electric toothbrush.  Damn you Oral-B!

-Now that I don’t have a “real” job, my wallet feels kind of empty.  Gone are all those ID cards and lunch cards from the office.  My driver’s license and Amex were getting lonely in the front, so I promoted my CVS and health insurance cards from the inside pocket to the outside slits, leaving my Blockbuster card and gym ID behind.  They were pissed but I told them laminated plastic just can’t cut it in the big leagues.

-ATM fees pose a conundrum for many.  “Wait a minute, I have to pay money just to get money?”  My buddy Claudio is so morally opposed to paying ATM fees that whenever he needs cash he hops on the subway to his bank downtown.  Cost of a one-way subway fare?  $1.50.  ATM fee he is trying to avoid?  $1.50.  Having a friend that’s a fucking idiot?  Priceless.

-The worst is paying for something then later realizing you didn’t have to.  I went to the movies last night, paid ten bucks for a ticket, but when I went to the theater, the guy ripping the tickets wasn’t there!  I just walked right in.  At first it didn’t bother me, but when I looked at the ticket in my hand, mocking me with its intact stub, I was totally distraught.  That’s a whole Amstel Light down the drain!

-I spend way too much money on food.  I can’t help it – I can’t cook and I’m lazy so I order in or take out for every meal.  This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if the restaurants in this city weren’t so damn expensive.  When did everything become pan-Asian, Asian-fusion, or tapas?  What the fuck happened to cheeseburgers?

-Speaking of take-out for a moment, some places really need to employ a spellchecker for their menus.  What always freaks me out is the misplacement of quotation marks at Chinese restaurants.  What does “lunch” special mean?  Why is “lunch” in quotes?  I can understand if maybe “special” was in quotes, but “lunch”?  Fuck it, this place is weird, I’m getting tapas instead.

-I’ve been saying that if my career as a comedian doesn’t work out, I’d want to be a bracketologist, like those guys on ESPN.com.  Now that’s the life, just filling out NCAA Tournament brackets all day long.  In order to test my mettle, I entered the ESPN pool online, hoping to walk away with a cool $10,000 prize.  I just checked and I’m in 557,000th place.  So anyway, a guy walks into a bar and…

-I just made my monthly student loan payment.  I don’t know, for me the idea of paying for college long after I’ve graduated is just plain strange.  Every time I make a payment I think of a class I overslept or a paper I botched.  Why do I have to pay full-price if I only went to class half the time?

-I do all my banking and pay all my bills online.  The only thing I have to write a check for is my exorbitantly high rent.  Whenever I write a check I am faced with the horrifying fact that I have no idea how to write in script anymore.  I’m making up loops as I go along, a squiggle here, a squiggle there.  And there you have it folks, I have an Ivy League education but I failed cursive.

-I love when I buy something and it comes to like $5.01.  There’s always that awkward silence after you pay with a ten-dollar bill when you’re waiting for the cashier to tell you to forget about the one cent.  You’re vainly searching your pockets for change, you’re looking for that little penny jar next to the register, you do that little under-your-breath snicker, and finally the cashier gives you five bucks back and all is good in the world once again.

-I always get nervous when expensive items are priced at round numbers.  Like when you’re in the electronics store and you ask how much a DVD player is and they’re like, “This model is $200.”  You’re like, “Um…what?  You mean $199.95?”  “No sir, it’s $200 even.”  And you say to your friend, “I don’t like the sound of that.  Way too even.  Let’s get the hell out of here!”

-Why in the world does stuff you order over the phone still take six to eight weeks for delivery?  Six to eight weeks?  I can buy shit online that gets here in an hour.  How are you shipping it, Pony Express?

-Some places, especially drugstores, give you way too much buying information.  My roommate Brian and I were in CVS the other day buying toilet paper.  Since we were looking for maximum comfort at minimum cost, we stood there for fifteen minutes calculating and arguing over price per ply, double roll versus single roll, quilted, scented, on sale, 33% more free, family size, etc.  In the end, we just bought the package with the cutest baby on the front.

-There are some things that I spend money on that some people would find absurd.  For instance, I never do my own laundry.  Sorry, just not my thing.  My real problem is not that I can’t do laundry, but that I can’t fold.  I don’t know how you people do it.  When I’m done folding I can’t even tell my underwear and t-shirts apart.  Anyway, for those of you who send your laundry out like me, let me ask you one question – when you get your laundry bag back, is the drawstring tied in the tightest knot ever?  Who do they have doing the laundry down there, Boy Scouts?

-Quote of the Month.  This month’s quote goes to my trusty roommate who I thought spoke volumes about the twentysomething struggle to simultaneously stay in shape while working long hours to earn lots of money and then blow it all on clothes.  “Karo,” Brian said to me the other day, exasperated, “You know what would make me completely happy?  If I could just weigh less than my jeans cost.”  Preach on friend, preach on!

-Luckily, Brian and I grew up on Long Island, where children are taught responsibility by being left at the mall to fend for themselves.  Who can forget their first experiences at the mall?  The candy stores, the silk-screened t-shirt stands, the forbidden lingerie shops and, of course, that fateful day when you found out that Banana Republic and Old Navy are actually the same company.  Oh how young and naive I was…

-I hadn’t been to a mall in a while but when I went last month I was perplexed.  I guess shopping is a more strenuous activity than it used to be and you can really work up a sweat.  At least that’s the only conclusion I could come to as to why all the guys there were wearing wristbands.  Oh wait, is that cool now?

-I’ve decided that I want to be ensconced in Burberry.  That’s right.  Burberry shoes, Burberry socks, Burberry underwear, Burberry pants, Burberry shirt, Burberry jacket, Burberry hat.  I’ll bathe with Burberry soap and cook with Burberry butter and wear Burberry-colored contact lenses.  And even if I manage to do all that, I still won’t be able to compete with people I see on Fifth Avenue every day.  Enough with the fucking Burberry already!  You know, when I was a little baby I had Burberry pajamas.  Except back then we called it plaid.

-In a Burberry-clad city where even the Mayor is a billionaire, a lot of people have a skewed outlook on money.  But while the rich are getting richer, the twentysomething crowd is marked by inertia.  Whether via Wall Street or comedy or bracketology, the money we earn is quickly consumed by ATM fees, student loan payments, toilet paper, and tapas, leaving us with just a few crinkled dollars for a domestic draft beer.  They say money can’t buy happiness, but I spent all mine and I couldn’t be happier!

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

-I think the bathroom is a time warp.  When you go to the bathroom, you never really think about how long you’ve been in there.  But when you come out and your friend is waiting there, he always says either, “Wow, you went and came back that fast?” or the ever-popular “What, did you fall in?”  Just once I’d like to come out of the bathroom and have my friend say, “Karo, that took exactly the amount time I thought it would.”

-I think it’s funny when sluts get boyfriends.  You know, you’ll be sitting around with your buddies and someone will say, “You know that chick Lisa Johnson?”  And everyone will nod and laugh.  “I heard she’s dating that guy Jack from my office.”  Then everyone will think to themselves, “Wow, I wonder if he knows that she fucked…everybody.”

-I love when you offer someone a sip of soda and they lift up the lid slightly and drink out of the cup instead of through the straw.  What, you don’t think germs can swim?

-You know what I would like to see?  A television commercial that does not say at the bottom in small print “Professional on closed course.  Do not attempt.”  How dumb can we be?  There’s even a disclaimer in the latest IHOP ad.  They sell fucking pancakes.  Is nothing sacred anymore?

-Talk about an over-litigious society.  I’m not making this up – the back of the air freshener in my bathroom says, “Keep out of reach of children and teens.”  And teens?  Teens?  “Listen Jimmy, I know you’re nineteen and old enough to drive, join the army, and go to college, but I don’t want you touching that Glade.  Potpourri can be dangerous you know!”

-Sometimes I think that I think too much.  Here are my latest ponderings.  Has my doorman ever been upstairs in my building?  Why do I close and lock the bathroom door when I’m alone in my apartment?  Why is my airline “e-ticket” printed on a piece of paper?  What ever happened to Coolio?  Why is my cable modem slower than dial-up?  Why does everything you cook in the George Foreman grill smell the same?  What the hell are those crunchy circular vegetable discs that come in Chinese food?  Why are haircuts always so traumatic for girls?  Why bother playing two-hand touch football when it always turns into tackle anyway?  Why do different shapes of pasta taste differently?  What exactly does a subwoofer actually do?  Why does just putting a band-aid on a cut make it feel better?  Are there any movies out that don’t have Colin Farrell in it?  Why do I still get nervous around cops when I’m drunk even though I haven’t done anything wrong?  How is it possible for concerts and sporting events to sell out in only two minutes?  And, of course, why do all weathermen and dentists have funny nicknames like Dr. G?

-I have one good reason why the war in Iraq must stop immediately: so we don’t have to listen to Aaron Brown every night on CNN.  I’ve never heard anyone say “um” more than this guy.  The fool stutters more than a dyslexic at a spelling bee.  “Um, we’re, uh, going to go, um, to the, uh, Pentagon now, um to…”  And, I already switched to NBC.

-Many people are confounded by the wave of anti-Americanism that is sweeping the world.  I’m not really too surprised.  Listen to the radio or watch TV.  Kid Rock is singing country music, Joe Millionaire is selling KFC, and Stifler is in a kung-fu movie.  Hell, I hate us too!

-When you go to take a shower, and there’s no hot water, don’t you think to yourself, “Of all the times I’ve ever bathed in my entire life, I’ve never wanted hot water more than I do right now?”

-A little trick I use to find out if a chick is interested in me is to listen very carefully to what she says when you are talking to her on the phone, and someone on her end asks who she’s talking to.  It’s all girl code.  If she says “a friend of mine” without mentioning you by name, that’s not a good sign.  If she says “my friend Karo” that’s usually a positive sign.  If she says  “oh just a wrong number,” I’d say you’re not doing too well.

-I love listening to my girl friends talk about the new guy they are hooking up with.  They’ll be like, “Oh my God, this boy is so cute.  We talk on the phone for like four hours every night!”  What?  Who the fuck has time to talk on the phone for that long?  And who has that much to say?  Guys, whoever is out there doing this, please stop.  You’re ruining everything for the rest of us.

-I am always introducing people.  As you know from reading this column, I detest awkward moments – and there is nothing more awkward then not being introduced.  I hate it when, by coincidence, I introduce two people that already know each other.  They always make such a sarcastic show of it: “Do I know Erica?  DO I know Erica?  Well very nice to meet you Erica!  Karo, of course I know Erica, we went to school together!”  Oh, sorry for being polite and thanks for making me feel so…well, awkward.

-It boggles my mind when a magazine reviews something using a star system but then doesn’t tell you how many stars it’s out of.

-Another awkward moment: when you are walking down the street and the only other person on the sidewalk is walking toward you.  I never know whether to look at them or pretend not to look at them or really not look at them but inevitably at about ten feet you both look up, make eye contact, quickly avert your eyes, speed up, and pass each other.

-Here’s a new list of people that irk, annoy, or otherwise piss me off.  People who wear cell phone earpieces so big it looks like they’re working for air traffic control.  People who scrape half the cream cheese off the bagel before they eat it.  People born in Manhattan who never learned to drive.  People who peel the label off their beer bottle while drinking.  People who bring cheap beer to parties then drink the expensive stuff that other people brought.  People who use the abbreviations “ttyl,” “lol,” “btw,” or “omg” in their emails.  People who don’t save their documents regularly and lose all their work every time their computer crashes.  People who stand in the middle of the escalator without leaving a lane for passing.  People who forget their glasses when they go to the movies.  People who use an initial for their first name.  People who fill up their water bottle at the water fountain at the gym while ten sweaty dehydrated people are dying in line behind them.  People who use the word “queue” instead of “line.”  People who lock their cell phones in the gym locker room but leave them on, forcing everyone to listen to their stupid “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” ring tone fifteen times.  People who sing really loudly to themselves while walking down the street.  People who leave the crust over.  And, the all-time worst, people who give you their fist instead of a handshake.

-As much as I make fun of people, there are also a lot of people I feel bad for.  Like the models who pose for the ads in the subway and then have penises drawn all over their faces.  I feel bad for them.  And what about the guy who has to drive the blimp over a football game at a domed stadium?  That must suck.  Do you think he has a little TV up there so he can watch the game?  These things keep me up at night.

-The other night I went to a psychedelic trance show.  As you can imagine, that’s not really my scene, but one of my boys is a DJ and this was his first big show, so I went out to support him.  It was actually pretty cool.  The place was bumping, the music was much better than I expected, and the crowd was into it.  I will tell you this much, though, I was definitely the only person there wearing Banana Republic socks.

-The day after the rave I went to the Matisse/Picasso exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.  Again, not really my scene (what the hell is my scene?) but my friend really wanted to go so I tagged along.  Besides, I could use some culture.  It was actually pretty cool as well, though the crowd couldn’t have been more different than the rave crowd.  I think for some reason if you like art you have to either wear glasses, use a cane, wear bad sweaters, or carry a handkerchief.

-I wish med school kids wouldn’t show off so much.  The other day a bunch of my friends were hanging out and someone farted.  We all laughed but then the med student of the bunch said, “Guys, that was just a natural mixture of carbon dioxide, formed from chemical reactions between stomach acid and intestinal fluid, as well as hydrogen and methane.”  Well that kind of took the fun out of it.

-I love watching people dab the top of a slice of pizza with a napkin to try to soak up some of the grease.  Good job, big guy.  Now it’s just like eating a rice cake.

-And, finally, I recently realized how little I actually use my kitchen.  Because we both always eat out, the only thing resembling food that me and my roommate ever keep in the apartment is a Brita pitcher.  The other day I went into the refrigerator to pour myself a glass of water and I noticed that there was some turkey in a package on the shelf under the Brita.  I was pretty pissed off.  When Brian came home I was like, “I can’t believe you’re hiding food from me, I was starving the other day and I didn’t think there was anything to eat!”  Brian just stood there for a moment, looked at me quizzically, and then said, “So let me get this straight Karo, are you actually accusing me of hiding food from you… in the refrigerator?”  Fuck me.

HOME

-It’s been almost two years since I moved to Manhattan following graduation.  While I grew up on Long Island and therefore the city has always been close to me both in spirit and proximity, you never get to know the true meaning of Gotham until you’ve lived here for a while.  While the rent is high, the drinks expensive, the winters freezing, the summers sweltering, the cabbies rude, the women uninviting, the streets dirty, the bars smoky, and the subway confusing, New York is somehow still the best damn town in the world.  How is this possible?  Let’s, once again, examine life in the big city.

-You can’t survive in Manhattan without a cell phone, at least on the weekends.  It’s all a game of meeting up, getting together, going out, and getting smashed.  Since the bars don’t close until the wee hours of the morning, the next day I find myself hungover and confused.  I’ve found that by examining the outgoing and incoming call logs on my cell phone, I’m able to piece together where I was and who I was with between the hours of 10pm and 5am.  It’s kind of like CSI: New York.

-Back in college, you used to worry about hallcest, or hooking up with someone on the same floor as you in your dorm and then running into them awkwardly all the time.  In the city it’s even worse.  We have buildingcest, whereby if you hook up with someone who lives in the same apartment building, you run the risk of uncomfortable elevator rides for the rest of your lease.  And it gets worse.  We’re so on top of each other here that I’ve even experienced windowcest.  This girl I hooked up with lives in the building across the street and we can see in each other’s bedrooms.  Now I have to walk around with the blinds closed all the time.

-Of course, everything being so close to each other does have its advantages.  The other night I was at the bar, felt the urge, told my buddies I had to make a phone call, ran down the block, went up to my apartment, took a dump, and was back before anyone even knew the difference.  I love New York!

-The fire trucks that blaze by my window each night are so loud that they actually set off all the car alarms on the street, creating a symphony of sirens so lovely I can’t sleep without them.

-I recently moved to a new apartment.  Moving within the city is a fate I would not wish upon my worst enemy.  I only moved four blocks up the same street.  My roommate Brian and I calculated that we moved about a thousand feet door to door.  Where else in the world can you move a thousand feet, have it cost you a thousand dollars, and still be able to see into the bedroom of the last chick you hooked up with?

-Brian and I decided to live together again when we moved apartments.  It was definitely the right move.  He’s one of my oldest friends and we get along very well.  You can never underestimate the importance of a great roommate in a cramped apartment.  I’ve only got one pet peeve.  Brian inexplicably puts enormous bottles in our tiny bathroom garbage can.  He’ll finish an economy size shampoo that his mom bought him at Price Club and jam it into our blue miniature IKEA garbage can, leaving no room for any other trash.  And I can’t convince him that what he’s doing is wrong.  It’s like he’s missing that part of the brain or something.

-Three signs that you are a true New Yorker: 1) When you first moved here, you took cabs to get around.  Then you figured out the subway and used that every day.  Then you started taking the bus.  Now, you’re like, fuck it, I’m taking a cab.  2) You never look up anymore.  Skyscrapers and hotels are erected around you and you don’t even notice until an out-of-towner points them out.  3) No matter how often you used to go there, the moment a store on your block goes out of business, you instantaneously forget what was ever there.

-Three signs that you are not a true New Yorker: 1) Your cell phone number’s area code is still from New Jersey where you grew up.  2) You still buy CDs at the Virgin Megastore instead of from the guys in the street near NYU.  3) You actually yell “Taxi!” when trying to get a cab because you haven’t yet realized that the cabbies can’t hear you, they’re all talking on their cell phone earpieces.

-There is a place near my new apartment that sells ice cream that is “all natural, low calorie, kosher, low fat, sugar free, lactose free, low sodium, and cholesterol free.”  Not surprisingly, it is also taste-free.  However, the place is always packed!  Yeah, it’s filled with emaciated brunettes wearing Burberry scarves wrapped seventeen times around their frail necks.  Ladies, you could use a calorie or two!

-Since September 11th, New York has been on high alert against the threat of terrorism.  Everywhere you go, new measures have been put in place to prevent possible attacks and weed out suspects.  Sometimes I wonder if anyone has put any thought into these measures.  For instance, a few weeks ago I went to the dentist’s office and, unlike any previous visit, I had to sign in at the front desk.  I had to print my name, then sign it, then write the floor I was visiting.  Woah, take it easy there!  You need my name AND signature?  Wow, this must have Al-Qaeda shaking in their boots.  Hey look, Osama’s got an appointment on twelve, get him!

-I never realized how many people lived in Manhattan until I got the Yellow Pages.  The thing’s so big we use it as extra seating when guests come over.

-I’m pretty sure the manufacturers of laundry machines for apartment buildings in the city are from Neptune.  How else can you explain why you need like twelve quarters for one spin cycle?  That’s why everyone in New York is constantly searching for quarters.  “Quarters?  Can I get change for this?  Do you have any Quarters?  Quarters!!”  I asked my doorman about the muttering homeless guy constantly walking the street in front our building.  Apparently he does have a home, he’s just looking for someone to break a five.

-I love when friends try to explain to me the layout of their new apartment.  They’re like, “You walk in and there is a little vestibule and a closet on your left.  If you keep going, the kitchen is in front of you, there’s a little dining area off to the side, and the living room is to the right.  Then, if you turn right…”  I’m like, stop right there dude, you lost me at “You walk in.”

-Quote of the Month.  This, if anything, defines the absurdity of being a twentysomething in New York City.  I went to this new lounge on the west side.  Pretty swanky place, but nothing unusual for the area.  I sat down on a velvet stool (standard lounge seating) and motioned for the waitress.  She came over wearing a scowl that sent shivers down my spine and a mini-skirt that sent shivers up my leg.  I ordered a beer.  Again, nothing crazy.  Imported.  Bottle.  The waitress came back about six minutes later and placed the open beer on a small, white square napkin on the table in front me and said these words: “Nine dollars please.”  Nine dollars for a beer.  That’s right, kids, say it with me, “Nine dollars for a beer.”  I gave the waitress a two-dollar tip because I was afraid she might eviscerate me with one of her stiletto heels if I didn’t.  An eleven-dollar beer.  I’m never leaving my apartment ever again.

-When I was looking for a new apartment this time around, I knew exactly what part of the city I wanted to live in.  It made me think back to when I first moved here and barely knew the distinction between the upper west side and the lower east side.  You are basically at the mercy of the apartment broker.  He takes you to an area, you look around a bit and say, “Looks nice, people seem nice, the price is right, I’ll take it.”  I wonder if that’s how the Midwest first got settled.  Immigrants got off the boat at Ellis Island and there were brokers there to greet them.  The immigrants didn’t know any better so the brokers took them off to Kansas.  When they got there they said, “Well, it looks nice, the people seem nice, the price is right, I’ll take it!”

-The recent blizzards in New York didn’t have the exact effect on the city that most people outside of the Northeast thought it did.  The streets are clean and clear.  Driving isn’t a problem.  Walking is.  What the city does is plow all the snow from the streets into ten-foot high mountains on the sidewalks, leaving about six-inch wide slush-gaps at each intersection for pedestrian passage.  I feel like fucking Lewis and Clark out there!

-The night that the massive blizzard hit must have been the ultimate boon to Blockbuster, because there was nothing else to do but watch movies.  After scaling the sidewalk snow-mountains on my street, I made it to the store, but soon realized that I didn’t have a Blockbuster card.  My roommate, for all his giant shampoo bottle shortcomings, was always the one who got the videos.  Now I don’t know if any of you have applied for a Blockbuster card recently, but it’s more difficult than getting into college.  They want credit card numbers and addresses and blood types.  It’s a ridiculous and highly intrusive effort all for a piece of laminated cardboard that allows you to rent a five-dollar DVD.  But after I passed the test and was leaving the store with Zoolander in hand, I had an epiphany.  That’s the way to catch the terrorists!  Make everyone apply for a Blockbuster card!

-In the end, New York City is not for everyone.  It’s fast-paced and expensive and the incense they sell in the street really stinks.  But if you’re a young and single twentysomething like me, there’s no better place on earth.  I’m going out now to brave the latest blizzard.  I have to return some videos, pick up some CDs down by NYU, and get some miniature shampoos for my roommate.  Life, in the big city, is good.

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

-I’ve noticed an evolution in my generation’s answering machine messages.  When I first got my own phone line, I left a funny message with a song playing in the background.  When I got my first cell phone, it was something casual like, “What’s up, it’s Karo.  Leave a message.  Peace.”  When we all graduated and got real jobs, we became serious: “Hello, you’ve reached the voicemail of Aaron Karo, please leave a message, thanks.”  Oh how I long for simpler days.

-I don’t know, maybe this is because I’m from Long Island, but I really don’t think it’s right to order a bagel with cream cheese and they give you a bagel and a packet of cream cheese with a plastic knife.  That’s like sacrilege.

-It is amazing to me how much marketing really fools me sometimes.  Have you seen Vitamin Water?  It’s this health drink thing that comes in flavors like Rescue and Balance.  I have to admit, it actually tastes pretty good.  But I can’t believe I find myself standing in front of the refrigerator in the cafe at my gym thinking, hmm do I need Focus or Perseverance right now?

-Being friends with triplets is really getting to be a pain in the ass.  We can’t go anywhere if they all come.  If me and my roommate call them, it’s five guys already and they won’t let us into the club.  Why couldn’t they just be sisters?

-Why are the taxes on my cell phone bill more than the bill itself?

-In my palm pilot, under the date February 14th, 2003, I have written down “The End of the Age of Innocence.”  On that date, the unthinkable happened.  My first friend got engaged.  And not just any friend.  A close friend.  A girl that I grew up with.  They already have a wedding date.  I have to get a tux.  Buy them a present.  Throw them a housewarming party.  Baby-sit their kids.  Celebrate their tenth anniversary.  OK, maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself.  But I’m scared.  Very, very scared.

-You have to love these ads for Michelob Ultra, the new low-carb beer.  They show hot chicks and ripped dudes exercising and shit.  So I took some beer with me to the gym instead of my usual Vitamin Water.  Talk about false advertising.  After an hour of working out, the only six-packs in the gym were the Michelobs.

-How come I can never fill out forms properly the first time?  You know, you put the city and state in the “city” box and the zip code in the “state” box and then you get to the “zip code” box and realize that you’re a fucking idiot.

-Was it just me who wandered around for hours the other day wondering why everyone’s faces were dirty until I realized it was Ash Wednesday?

-I think that all sports teams should just make that black memorial stripe on the left side of their jerseys a permanent thing.  That would prevent me from having to say every year, “Hey, who died on the Yankees?”

-My buddy has been showing off his new Sprint phone that has a camera in it.  He snapped a picture of us and then emailed it to me.  The image looked like someone took a picture through a piece of saran wrap.  The wonders of modern technology.

-I just spent the wildest of weekends in Mardi Gras.  Here’s my take.  Mardi Gras is proof to me that mankind as a society and a species has not evolved one bit in the past few thousand years.  I have taken classes in negotiation at the world’s most prestigious business school.  But as soon as I hit Bourbon Street, I found myself ankle-deep in mud, beer, vomit, and trash, bartering with skanky women for a titty flash in exchange for a novelty necklace.  For 48 hours straight.  By the end of the weekend, I collapsed on a side street in exhaustion, partially asphyxiated under a crush of plastic beads lit only by the dim glow of a passing Girls Gone Wild camera crew.  I did learn one thing, though.  Any trip where you have to throw away your pants at the end is a good one.

-Memo to girls wearing Avril Lavigne-style socks on your forearms: you’re not a skater girl.  You live in a building with a doorman for God’s sake.

-Memo to guys wearing chains that connect their wallet to their jeans: uh, that wasn’t even cool when it WAS cool… in 1996.

-Memo to anyone wearing those berets from Salt Lake City: yeah, um, the Olympics was like a year ago.  And you look ridiculous.

-One of my best friend’s names is Marcia.  Just about every other time I introduce her, someone will say, “Oh, like Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!”  Are you kidding me?  The girl is twenty-three years old.  You don’t think she’s ever heard that before?  I think that beret is on too tight, dumbass.

-Have you ever seen a female food delivery person?

-So 50 Cent’s new album sold one of the highest totals in its first week in the history of music.  Should have guessed it when I heard “In Da Club” playing on four different radio stations…simultaneously.  As for the music itself, it’s pretty good.  But it’s the only album I’ve ever listened to where I thought the rapper was actually going to kill ME.

-I finally figured out what T.A.T.U. stands for.  One hit wonder.

-Of course, maybe I shouldn’t be commenting on music.  Considering some chick I never even heard of just won every single fucking Grammy!

-I’ll admit it, though, I’m thinking about getting the Norah Jones CD, but only because I don’t have any good hooking up music.  I get a girl back to my place and I’m like, uh, would you rather hear Big Pun or Bone Thugs?

-I love reading the automatic disclaimers that come at the end of emails coming from major corporations these days.  It’s always something like, “Nothing in this email can be construed as an offer to buy or sell anything.  The person sending this email cannot and will not be trusted.  We make no guarantee that we even know the person sending this email.  We make no guarantee that the person who this email is from is even the person who wrote this email, but either way, we do not know him, her, it, or them.  We are not responsible for anything that has happened in the past, is happening now, might happen, or will happen anywhere in the universe until the end of time.  If this message was sent to you in error, please destroy your computer and kill everyone around you.  Thank you.”

-Here’s a little tip to those of you new to the Internet.  When choosing your email address, such as on Yahoo or Hotmail, don’t use an underscore.  Underscores are stupid.  Half the people don’t even know what an underscore is.  And God forbid your email address ever gets underlined, well so much for that underscore!  Thank_you.

-I bet that the last time you traveled anywhere, you forgot either your belt or your cell phone charger.

-When you are staying in a hotel room by yourself, don’t you use like a different towel to dry every single part of your body?

-Why do remote controls in hotel rooms require you to use fifty pounds of pressure per inch just to press the buttons?

-And, finally, as they say, New York is not just a state, but a state of mind.  Especially when it comes to driving, New Yorkers think they are God’s greatest gift.  For example, a few months ago I was driving up north with a buddy and I got stuck behind some jerk who was only doing 80 mph.  To no one in particular I yelled out, “Hey asshole, go back to Vermont!”  To which my friend leaned over and said, “Karo, we’re in Vermont.”  Fuck me.

HOME

-In my last column, I wrote that I have been single (and loving it) for almost three years, but recently felt it was time to settle down with a girlfriend.  An unintended consequence of this revelation was the onslaught of emails I received from potential suitors.  While I would rarely if ever date someone who I met solely via email, the experience of having so many single and willing women thrust before me has made me doubt my initial inclination.  Perhaps being single in New York isn’t so bad!  Then again, having a stable partner-in-crime doesn’t sound uninviting either.  The girlfriend vs. single debate is as old as man (or in my case, frat boy) itself.   Pondering this question has left me vexed, confused, and exhausted.  To settle down or saddle up – that is the ultimate question, that is the bind of the harried man.

-Here’s one argument for settling down.  A few weeks ago, I went out and got drunker than a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live.  I met a cute brunette and at the end of the night we went back to my apartment.  As things were getting hot and heavy, she remarked that she thought my bedroom looked familiar.  I said that I thought that she herself looked familiar.  Then we both realized it.  We had actually gotten together over a year ago, but both of us were too drunk to remember it.  That’s right, folks.  I’m hooking up in reruns.

-Here’s an argument for playing the field.  I never want to be that guy who brings his girlfriend to the Super Bowl like my buddy did.  That is like the ultimate man-sin.  I had to spend most of the first half fielding inane questions from this chick like, “Um, is the punt returner on offense or defense?”  Darling, it’s called special teams, now will you please get out of the way of the TV!  To make matters worse, my buddy bought his girlfriend boxes in our pool.  Of course she won the first three quarters.  When the Bucs scored that meaningless touchdown with two seconds left, preventing her from winning all the money, it was the most exciting moment of the entire day.

-Fortunately, I have a large support network of good guy friends to offer advice when I run into girl trouble.  Unfortunately, I’m starting to think their advice might not be too helpful after all.  One of my buddies is twenty-nine, which to me, as a twenty-three-year-old, is old and wise.  He usually pushes the relationship side of the argument.  He believes that the stability and security of a girlfriend far outweighs the debauchery of the single life.  Then I found out that he’s been engaged twice but never married.  That’s just great, I’m getting dating advice from a fool who’s got more rings than Warren Sapp!

-Then I turned to an old high school buddy who is currently in a pretty solid relationship.  Or so I thought.  The kid is so neurotic about his girlfriend that when she came over unexpectedly one night, he literally dove across the room to hide a porno magazine in his gym bag.  I’m like, dude, relax, I’m pretty sure she knows you beat off occasionally.  Of course, he forgot that post-9/11 his office searches everyone coming into the building.  The next day the security guard pulled the magazine out of his bag in front of all of his co-workers.  Idiot.

-One of the first obstacles in the New York dating scene is determining who is actually single.  About the only people we can safely eliminate are the engaged and married chicks, who are distinguished by their rings (and, coincidently shouldn’t even be out in the first place).  For every other girl, it’s a crapshoot.  For instance, the other day I met this really cute girl who just moved in down the hall from me.  I have absolutely no idea if she has boyfriend or not and I certainly can’t flat-out ask.  That’s why I am proposing a new convention – the Single Ring.  That’s right, all single w men simply wear a silver ring on their right pinky, thereby signaling availability.  Now wouldn’t that make life a whole lot easier?  (By the way, to the blonde in 5G, if you’re reading this and are single, stop by and say hello!)

-Recently I’ve been running into a perplexing breed – girls still dating their boyfriends from college.  You know how this generally works: they’ve been dating on again off again since sophomore year, he cheated on her, she takes him back, they took some time off after graduation but now they’re back together because she can’t be alone, it’ll never work out long-term but it’s convenient for now, blah, blah, blah.  Ladies, guys, it’s time to move on – free up some ass for the rest of us.

-OK, time to ask some more friends for advice.  One of my close friends recently got out of the Israeli Army.  He’s been to hell and back.  I figure, of all my buddies, this guy has had some real life experience, he definitely knows what’s what.  We went out for a few drinks the other night.  He gave me some really great perspective on things.  When we left the bar, I thought, you know, this guy really has his head on his shoulders.  Then we realized his car was gone.  The spot where he parked was actually marked “NYPD parking only” and he didn’t see it.  He got towed.  And this is a guy who used to drive a tank.  Maybe I should talk to someone else…

-I’ve never seen it happen except on TV, but for some reason, I have this feeling that I’m going to get a drink thrown in my face one of these days.  You can only be single for so long without pissing some crazy chick off.  I think my luck is running out.

-So I’ve been studying all of my friends who are in relationships.  I’ve found that they usually occur in extremes.  Some I always see with their significant other.  Others I rarely see together.  According to my research, it is the latter group that seems to get along much better.  I’m not sure if these couples actually spend less time together or if they just spend less time together with other people.  In either case, clearly less is more.  I’ve also discovered that if you have pictures of you and your girlfriend squeezed into a mall photo booth, it’s a sure sign of impending disaster.

-And nothing is more of a deterrent to getting into a relationship than seeing my friends’ relationships with their ex-girlfriends.  Actually, most of my friends are not allowed to speak to or come within a thousand yards of their ex-girlfriends.  It makes things a lot less messy.  Of course, there is nothing an ex-boyfriend wants to know more than how miserable his ex is doing.  The other day I told my buddy that I saw his ex-girlfriend at the bar the night before.  He was like, “Really?  How did she look?  Was she fat?  I heard she was fat.  Please tell me she was fat.  That fucking whore.”  I was like, “Well, compared to that picture of you guys in the mall photo booth, she actually looked pretty good!”  He was not pleased by that comment.

-One thing I learned from my last relationship is the axiom that girlfriends and video games are mutually exclusive.  It’s true.  You just can’t spend that much time playing video games if you have a girlfriend.  That’s because when your girlfriend calls and asks what you’re doing and you respond “playing Vice City,” all she hears is “nothing honey, why don’t you come over and hang out?”

-Another strain of female I have learned to be wary of is the girl who has no girl friends.  Advantages: tends to party harder than your standard chick, more likely to let you spend time doing guy things (i.e. playing video games and watching PTI on ESPN).  Disadvantages: doesn’t bring out other hot chicks for your friends, more likely to be surrounded by dudes at all times.  Conclusion: definitely a keeper, just watch out for that old college boyfriend of hers.

-So far, the only definite things I know about women is that they are always cold, their feet hurt, and they spend most of their time at work emailing each other and checking their horoscope online.  That’s about as far as I’ve gotten.  Sometimes, I turn to my own girl friends for advice.  I’ll usually call my best friend first.  However, she’s the kind of friend that goes on and on and on and I just listen and say “uh-uh” every seven to ten seconds.  The last time I tried to talk to her she told me that she had been going to a psychic to discuss her own relationship problems.  And I’m wondering why she doesn’t have any girl friends.

-I also have a buddy from my old job, Rob, who is always trying to set me up.  At first I thought he was one of those guys whose judgment you could definitely trust.  But the first date he set me up on was a bust.  The second chick he suggested was even worse.  I’ve now downgraded him to “secondary confirmation status.”  I need at least one other trustworthy guy to see the girl before he sets me up with her.

-Which brings me to the single women who email me each week.  Believe me, I am very flattered, it’s just a problem of asymmetry of information.  AaronKaro.com features a full biography of me, several color pictures, and pages and pages of my deepest thoughts.  Chicks email me and all they say is, “Hey, I live in New York too, wanna go out?”  Now that’s just not fair.

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

-How come every time I go to book a flight online, I find the flight I want and say, you know what, I’ll just book this tomorrow – then I go back the next day and the price has gone up by about $900!?

-When did the dentist stop giving you a choice of what flavor toothpaste you want?  I went the other day and he automatically gave me that “industrial mint” paste.  What happened to pina colada and bubble gum flavor?  And I love when the dentist asks you to move your mouth and then commends you for doing it.  He’ll be like, “Just open your mouth a little wider.  Excellent!”  I always just want to say, “Well, you know, I’ve been practicing at home.”

-Is there anything more annoying than a computer mouse that doesn’t work well?  You know, you have to drag the thing the entire length of your desk just to move the cursor an inch?  I’m doing that right now…and it’s pissing me off!

-I have absolutely no idea when to use the word “whom.”  Hell, I’m a published author and it’s still just a shot in the dark for me.  Not even Microsoft Word knows the proper usage.  When I type the word “who” I always get that green squiggly line underneath.  When I right click it says, “We have no fucking clue either.”

-A few days ago, I finally got what I have been saving up for for a while – LASIK eye surgery.  Here’s the deal.  First you go in there and they show you a video about the procedure.  It shows a guy being operated on and the next thing you know he’s jet skiing.  I said, “Sign me up!”  Then a nurse asked me a few questions such as “Do you drink alcohol never, occasionally, or a lot?”  I was like, “Um, how about occasionally I drink a lot?”  The procedure itself lasts all of six minutes.  They sit you in a chair and tape your eyelids open Clockwork Orange-style.  When the laser is actually cutting your eye, you don’t really feel a thing, but it sort of smells.  My eyeballs happened to smell mesquite.  After the procedure, the same nurse told me to take prescription eye drops at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and before bed.  I said, “So 2pm, 5pm, 9pm and 3am?”  She replied, “Why don’t you just do it every four hours.  Wiseass.”  Almost immediately after the surgery I had better than perfect vision.  It’s truly amazing.  The best part was that I charged the whole operation on my American Express Membership Rewards card, so I got my eyes fixed and got tons of points toward that new optical mouse I’ve been wanting to get!

-I love watching these guys in the gym that feel the need to attach unnecessary amounts of weight to themselves while doing normal exercises.  Like the guy that wears wrist weights, ankle weights, and a belt around his waist with a forty-five pound plate hanging from it just to do chin-ups.  Then he can only do like two reps and he gets all pissed off.  Dude, lighten up.  Literally.

-Have you ever been working on the computer and a little warning box pops up when you do something?  Usually under the warning there is a box you can check that says, “Never show me this message again.”  I always think to myself – never?  Never?  I don’t know, that’s a pretty big commitment to make.  I’ll think I’ll keep it around just in case.

-Quote of the Month.  The more I hang out with med school kids, the more they scare the hell out of me.  One of my oldest and closet friends is a cancer survivor.  She stared Death in the eye and kicked him square in the nuts.  Now she’s in a really competitive medical school and while she is not shy about discussing her battle with the Big C, not everyone there knows about it.  A few weeks ago her class started their oncology unit.  When one of my friend’s classmates found out that she had been sick, he said, “You know, that’s really not fair, she knows all of this already.”  Wow man, you need to take it easy.  Start watching less “ER” and more “Scrubs.”

-Ever notice that no matter what he’s wearing, whenever you see a co-worker outside of the office in casual clothes, he always looks just a little off?

-So it looks like Sierra Mist soda is making a pretty big marketing push.  Too bad I’ve been drinking it for years.  It’s called Sprite.

-Sam Adams Light.  Bad commercials.  Worse beer.  Please, just give up now.

-You’re telling me they can transmit my voice as little bits of data through the air, across the country, from one cell phone to another, but they can’t get rid of that fucking green number 3 that’s stuck on the top right corner of my TV?

-I really think rap music is getting a little too violent lately.  In the past month, I’ve pulled over literally five times because I thought there was a cop behind me when it was actually siren sounds coming from the radio.

-I try to eat pretty healthy, but when I’m in a rush, occasionally I have to settle for McDonald’s.  What drives me crazy about Mickey D’s are the people that stand bewildered at the front of the line trying to decide what to order.  Dude, the menu hasn’t changed in thirty-five years, just get a #4 and get the fuck out of the way!

-I think the only thing worse than guys who wear those silly one-strap backpacks are guys who actually put their cell phone in that little pouch on the front of their one-strap backpack.

-New York is all about location.  Some people have not figured this out yet.  It cracks me up when a friend moves into an awesome new apartment in an out-of-the-way part of the city.  There’s just no point.  My buddy will be like, “Yo Karo, I just got this huge two-bedroom in the financial district, you have to come over to pre-game one night.”  I usually just say flat-out, “Listen man, that’s great, but I guarantee you that between now and when you move out, I will not see your apartment once.”

-I was at the bar the other night and while I was waiting for a drink, I started to shoot the shit with the guy standing next to me.  Big mistake.  He told me that he used to live in New York but had since moved away and was just visiting.  I asked him when it was that he lived here.  He was like, “Oh, from ’83 to ’87, 1989, 1992, and from ’95 to ’98.”  What?  The fool sounded like the back of a baseball card.

-Now that I have perfect vision, I have a lot of great eye material that I won’t be able to use anymore.  I won’t dump it on you all at once though, so here’s one good story.  A few months ago I went out to a club uptown and was having a grand old time when one of my contacts fell out.  Since I was too far away from home to go get another, I had to struggle with just one for the rest of the night.  If I looked through my bad eye, all the girls looked good, but when I opened my good eye, I saw the ugly reality.  So you could say instead of beer goggles, I had a beer monocle!  (I know, I know, I bet it’s jokes like these that make you glad I got eye surgery!)

-I’m concerned that Americans are getting way too lazy.  The other day I saw combination peanut butter and jelly in a jar.  Then I saw a commercial for no-rub contact lens solution (I had contacts for a decade and believe me, rubbing was the least of my concerns).  Now Hanes is promoting their “tagless t’s.”  Good thing, because all that tag ripping was making me too tired to spread both peanut butter AND jelly.  Finally, the other night my buddy Chi made the age-old mistake of opening a tab at the bar and then forgetting his credit card there.  Instead of going back the next day, he just cancelled it instead.  God help us all.

-How come whenever I am introduced to people who are supposedly “so like me” I hate them?

-And, finally, I think one of the reasons for my success is that I am a tireless self-promoter.  I am constantly calling and emailing people about my book, my column, and, hopefully, my future sitcom.  Sometimes, though, I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut.  The other day I called a radio station to see if I could get them to interview me.  They kept me on hold for like ten minutes.  When the guy finally got back on the line, I joked, “You know, you should really change your hold music, it’s absolutely terrible.”  The guy replied, “Actually, that was the radio station you were just listening to.”  Click.  Fuck me!

HOME

-During this holiday season, I have been getting emails from readers around the world who are visiting New York for the first time.  It seems as if I am considered a connoisseur of nightlife in the city because I frequently write about my nocturnal exploits.  The one question I get most often from out-of-towners is this: “Karo, what’s a good bar to go to?”  And after a few minutes of stammering and racking my brain, I usually respond, “You know what, man, I have no fucking clue.”  The thing is, the bar scene in this town is more inconsistent than a Giants long snapper.  Sometimes I get so frustrated I just want to take a wrecking ball to some of the spots around here.  In that spirit, I present you with my official guide to “razing the bar.”

-They say it’s not enough to know what you don’t like, you need to know what it is that you do like.  Fuck that.  Here are five bars to avoid: any place that has more bouncers outside than people on line, any place that plays the songs “Jesse’s Girl” or “Love Shack,” any place where the coat check costs more than a Coor’s Light, any place where glow sticks can be found, and, finally, any place where you can shout “Ooh ooh” in that annoying high-pitched voice and people respond “Ooh ooh!”

-If you’re gonna go out in New York, you have to talk the talk.  Terms you need to know: Cover, Promoter, Comped, Guest List, VIP, and Reduced.  “Cover” is the charge you pay at the door just to get in the club.  In business school terms, the purpose of the cover is to increase customer switching costs, i.e. once you pay twenty bucks to get in somewhere, you’re less likely to leave and go somewhere else.  “Promoter,” also known as “Clipboard Guy”, is hired by the club to tell everyone they know about a party that night and then stand outside and not let anyone in.  “Comped” means the promoter told you that you would get in for free, but when you get there you’re not on the “Guest List” he has on his clipboard and you have to pay anyway.  “VIP” and “Reduced” mean the same thing…absolutely nothing!

-Remember in college how the beer was free-flowing and you could drink half a Natty Light, say the rest was “ass” and then toss it?  Well welcome to NYC baby, that Amstel in your hand cost eight bucks, you better drink every last drop!

-When it rains on a Saturday night, where the fuck is everybody?  The bars are like ghost towns.  Now I know all the couples are snuggling up at home watching “Notting Hill” on DVD, but where are the single people?  This is our time to shine!  Throw on those North Faces and get out here!

-On March 30th, a glorious and long-overdue change will take place in New York.  Smoking will officially be banned in all bars and restaurants!  Finally, my hair won’t smell like smoke for three days after going out.  I won’t come home night after night with centimeter-sized circular holes in my jacket.  And I won’t have to change my contact lenses halfway through the night because they’ve dried into my eyeballs.  Score one for the Mayor!

-Let me get back to my point that it is impossible to find a consistently fun bar or club.  Like the “Lion King,” bars undergo the Circle of Life.  To illustrate my point, I am going to use the real world example of a place in New York called Spread.  Spread, a spot in the east 20s, is sort of halfway between a bar and a club, which New Yorkers call a “lounge.”  (On a side note, lounges are only allowed to have monosyllabic names, I think the Mayor also came up with that one.)  Spread opened up right about the time I moved to the city.  Since it’s less than a block away from my apartment, I went there often and loved it.  It was a chill spot with good music in a great area and the drink prices were only mildly offensive.  I was welcomed there with open arms every weekend.  Then, about six months later, I was about to walk in when I felt the telltale sign that things were changing – a velvet rope had hit me in the abdomen.  About six different bouncers told me to wait in line until I could be interrogated by, you guessed it, the Clipboard Guy.  Spread was now being “promoted.”  For the next six months I avoided the place like the plague, mostly because I couldn’t get in.  Then, one day, I noticed the velvet ropes were gone.  I walked in and the place was practically empty.  The Circle of Life had continued – the promoters had fled to the next hot spot and took with them all the customers.  About six months after that, I walked by and noticed that Spread was hopping again.  Curious, I went inside but didn’t recognize anyone.  Then it hit me – this was the “Shecky’s crowd.”  See, there’s about a year lag between when a bar opens and when it gets listed in the new Shecky’s and Zagat guides, at which point it becomes swarmed with tourists and B&Ters.  The last time I was at Spread, they played Jesse’s Girl and I spotted a dude with glow sticks – surefire signs that the End was near.  In a few months, Spread will probably be razed and replaced with some new lounge with no sign out front.  And we’ll all flock like lemmings as the Circle of Life continues.

-The other day I felt like I was in camp or something.  I had to write my name on the tag in my jacket before I went out.  Every night I go out, I put my jacket on an empty chair and then return four hours later to find twenty identical jackets piled on top of mine.  It’s like the fucking lost and found at a J.Crew convention.

-Next time one of your buddies suggests an out-of-the-blue bar to go to one night, ask him if he got laid the last time he went there.  As a rule, anyplace you go and get laid warrants a return visit, no matter how bad the place actually was.

-What are these chicks thinking when they order glasses of white wine at frat bars?

-OK ladies, in exchange for the cheap shot I just took, I’ll give you an inside tip.  If you see a cute guy drinking a Yuengling beer, approach him and ask if he’s from Philly or went to school there.  I guarantee success.  There, we’re even.

-I’ll even give you another one.  Ladies, if you spot two guys, one in front of the other, taking casual sips from their beers and walking slowly in a clockwise fashion around the dance floor, approach us.  We’re doing what’s known as “taking a lap,” and if we don’t find anything we like soon, we’re outta there.

-I’ve got a new hypothesis.  It’s called the “Balls Theory” and it’s a corollary to the Dude/Chick Ratio I introduced in Ruminations #31.  The Balls Theory goes like this: when going out with a group of guys to an exclusive club, your chances of getting in are inversely proportional to the amount of testicles present.  If it’s just me, I’ve got a 2:1 shot.  If it’s me and a friend, we’ve got a 4:1 shot.  Four guys?  8:1 shot, and so on.  I’m going to continue testing this one out and get back to you, though.

-In order to party most effectively, you need to know four important things: the Art of the Nap, the Art of the Pre-Game, the Art of the Drunk Dial, and the Art of Late-Night Eating.

-The Art of the Nap.  Naptime in New York is generally from 8-9pm.  When you wake up, you are required to say things like, “Oh, I feel horrible” or  “Man, I could easily go right back to sleep for the whole night.”  Fight through it.  You’ll need that nap to get all the way to late-night eating.

-The Art of the Pre-Game.  Pre-gaming is a money-saving skill I learned in my fraternity days.  Some people have evidently not picked up on it.  When I go to the supermarket after my nap to pick up some beers for pre-gaming, I always find dudes standing mesmerized in front of the cold beer section.  If you’re confused as to what to get, use my simple rule: Coors Light if the pre-game consists of all dudes or a large number of people, Amstel Light if girls are involved or if you’re celebrating something.  There, problem solved.

-The Art of the Drunk Dial.  The proliferation of cell phones in recent years has made the drunk dial an almost unavoidable occurrence.  Drunk dials usually take place in the vestibule of the bar, after you walk in the front door, but before you enter the actual bar area.  This is the only place that is not either loud or freezing, making it a perfect breeding ground for the three varieties of drunk dial.  First, you have your Boys Call, which consists of you calling everyone in your phone book to tell them how drunk you are even though neither of you can hear a thing.  Then you have the Booty Call, which usually goes something like this, “Hey, it’s about um…let’s see…4:45am…wanna hang out?”  Then you have the Boner Call, which is the dumbass message you leave on your ex-girlfriend’s or parent’s machine.  You usually hear about those the next day.

-The Art of Late-Night Eating.  It happens like this: you get up from your nap like, “Shit, I’m kinda hungry right now.”  You start pre-gaming and say, “Dude, I’m not eating late-night again tonight.”  You get to the bar like, “Well, if I take a girl home tonight, I won’t be able to eat.”  Next you thing you know you’re leaving a message on your ex-girlfriend’s voicemail and saying to the cashier, “I’ll have two pepperonis and a white slice to go please.”

-It seems as my last issue, Ruminations #33, may have brought the first appearance of the “Ruminations jinx.”  You may recall that I spoke very highly of my good friend who was following his dreams by attending culinary school.  The day after the issue went out, he slipped on a puddle and broke his elbow.  He’s now in a cast from shoulder to wrist.  And since it’s his slicing arm, he had to take a leave of absence from school.  He also told me never to write about him again.

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

-Who are these people who sit in Starbucks all day staring out the window and scribbling in little notebooks?

-Sometimes don’t you just want to open your car door in the middle of traffic and clothesline that dude on the motorcycle that is driving between the lanes?

-I was in the kitchen in my apartment the other day (a rare occurrence) and I noticed something very strange.  Almost every single plastic souvenir cup I have has Charles Barkley on it!  It’s amazing.  The man has been retired for five years and he’s still got new cups coming out!

-My good friends the Triplets went on a cruise with their family in December.  They had a great time.  Good for them.  Except that they made “cruise friends” and it is the most annoying thing ever.  It’s like the twentysomething version of “camp friends.”  The Triplets are always talking to them on the phone and meeting them out at the bar and exchanging pictures and making plans and shit.  Dudes, grow up, color war is over!

-Have you ever used the restroom in a restaurant and it’s sort of out of the way in the basement and when you come out of the bathroom you’re all disoriented and you don’t know how to get back and you end up like walking into the kitchen by accident or opening the wrong door and setting off the fire alarm and when you finally find the stairs and make it back to the dining area you’ve been gone for half an hour and you just wish you had held it in until you got home?

-When you see a brand store (like a Diesel store or a New Balance store) and you’re wearing that brand, don’t you sort of walk in there like you own the place?  And what do you do?  You go right for the article of clothing that you currently have on and hold it up like a badge of honor or something.  “Yes, that’s right people, I’m actually wearing this right now!”

-So Joe Millionaire has filled the place in my heart that has been left unoccupied since the great Temptation Island craze of early 2001.  I have two comments about the show.  First, have you noticed that the girls look terrible one moment and then ridiculously hot the next?  They show a girl and I’m like, “Get rid of her Evan!” and then they show her again and I’m like, “Oh my God, give her all the sapphires!”  Second, is Evan not the largest human being you have ever seen?  The man is gargantuan.  He makes Yao Ming look like Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

-My roommate and I have been arguing for months about getting something new for our apartment.  We want something really cool so people will want to come over and chill more often.  Some ideas have been a huge flat-screen TV, or a fish tank, or XBOX, but those are all kind of boring.  Then I heard what some of my buddies at Stony Brook Med School out on Long Island got: a stripper pole.  That’s right, they actually bought and installed a stripper pole and regularly pay to put it to use.  You know what I say to that?  God fucking bless America.

-Quote of the Month.  Now I know that I haven’t had a Quote of the Month lately, but I am going to try to bring it back.  This month the honor go to Captain Forrester of US Airways who, on my flight to Vegas for New Year’s actually said, “Attention ladies and gentlemen, please lower the shades on your windows during the flight.  This will reduce the glare on your fellow passengers’ TV screens as well as make the flight attendants appear more attractive.”  Ay ay Captain!

-Do you ever feel kind of guilty when you blind CC someone on an email, like you’re tricking the people you didn’t BCC?

-My grandma cracks my shit up.  She is 92 years old and lives in a senior home on Long Island.  Once a week, a kid from the local high school comes and gives a lesson about using the Internet.  My grandma is really getting the hang of it…well, sort of.  The first time she emailed me, it came from 435OrioleBlvdMargateFL33063@yahoo.com.  I asked my mom what the hell was going on.  She told me that when the kid asked my grandma to pick an address, she gave her old street address in Florida.  The last time I visited Grandma, I found her standing, a little bewildered, in the mailroom with a handful of letters.  She said, “I’m still trying to figure out how the computer knew my mailbox was full!”

-My sister Caryn is turning twenty-one in just a few short days and I am going to visit her to celebrate the occasion.  For me, it’s a bittersweet moment.  I still remember the look on her face when I got her her first fake ID (“Aaron, a hundred bucks for this piece of shit?”).  On the other hand, now we can get shitbombed together without fear of reprisal (my parents are thrilled at this prospect).  Regardless, I’m psyched for the moment I can buy my little sis the nastiest shot at the bar and say, “Caryn, on this day you are a woman!  Now kick it back!”

-Is it just me or is Ja Rule everywhere?  Besides the fact that he performs at every concert, halftime show, and Foot Locker grand opening in the country, I think he sings the chorus of every song on the radio.  And does he ever go anywhere without Ashanti?  And how come Ashanti is nominated for like 900 different awards but you can’t name the title of even one of her songs?  Next thing you know they’ll be in a 1-800 Collect commercial together.

-I love when chicks tell me that they still have their dad’s gold card in their wallet “just for emergencies.”  What kind of emergency could necessitate a $50,000 limit, a sale at Steve Madden?

-Who are these guys that shave their sideburns like two inches above their ear line?  My God, that’s worse than the mullet!

-Ever notice that guys like to know the “source” of traffic?  It’s not enough to be stuck in traffic, we need to figure out its origins: “Wow, this is definitely Giants Stadium traffic.”  “No dude, it’s rush hour.”  “I think it’s holiday shopping traffic.”  “Must be an accident.”  “Should we listen to the traffic report on the radio?”  “Nah, it’s more fun to argue about it.”

-Have you ever gone to the gym and done that half-ass workout?  You know, you’re tired, you’re hungover, but you know if you physically go to the gym, you’ll feel a little bit better about yourself, so you just go there and attempt to convince yourself that you already worked out that day?  You’re like, well, I did lift that box earlier this morning, so that’s pecs.  And I had to stick my arm out forever to get a cab, so that’s triceps.  And my gym bag is so heavy, so that’s biceps.  Great, all I need to do is bend over to pick up that towel, that’ll be my abs workout, and I’m outta here!

-So it’s been almost three years since my last serious relationship.  I know, that’s a long time.  But my single years have treated me very well and during that time I really had no interest in having a girlfriend.  But I think the times are changing.  I can’t really pinpoint it exactly.  Maybe it’s when I realized that all of my friends have had a minimum of three girlfriends in this time period.  Or maybe it’s when I heard P. Diddy’s “I Need a Girl” the other night and I started to get upset.  So, I have an announcement to make.  Yes, it’s hard to believe, but I, Aaron Karo, am in the market for a girlfriend!  I am officially declaring myself eligible for the draft.  This could get ugly.

-And, finally, the past three years have also been a time for introspection.  You see, I’m not your average guy, I’m a lot to handle.  In fact, I’ve made a list of some of my foibles, quirks, and idiosyncrasies that any potential girlfriend will have to deal with.  Here goes.  I have one pair of jeans that I wear almost every day and rarely wash.  I regularly watch the same exact episode of SportsCenter twice in a row.  I have unusually large calf muscles.  I’m the only one I’ve ever met who likes orange juice with lots of pulp.  I turn my master lock to zero before I leave the gym locker room like that is going to foil would-be thieves.  I love sushi so much that every time I go out for sushi I order way too much, eat it all, and then get a stomachache.  I’m not really a morning person or a night person.  I have trouble pronouncing the word “continuity.”  When I move, I label almost every box “misc.” thereby defeating the purpose of labeling at all.  I get my important news from the top right corner of Yahoo.  I regularly settle important disputes with rock, paper, scissors (best two of three).  I’m completely lost in any part of the city where the streets have names instead of numbers.  I know all the words to Young MC’s “Bust a Move.”  I just found out that my whole life I’ve been snapping incorrectly (I use my thumb and index finger).  Sometimes when someone is running to catch an elevator I’ll pretend to hit “door open” but actually hit “door close.”  And, last but not least, I write down and make fun of all the intimate details of everyone I’ve ever met in an email column I share with thousands of people around the world.  In short, fuck me!

HOME

-In this column I have often written about the awkward situations I find myself in, and the strange thoughts I find myself having.  But nothing compares to the inspiration I receive from observing people as they go about their daily routines.  From the guy on the corner who magically appears selling umbrellas the second it starts raining, to my roommate Brian who claims he can tell the difference between 1% and 2% milk just on sight, New York’s cast of characters is both diverse and hilarious.  And I’ve been taking notes.  So here’s my official “Who’s Who” guide to my friends and foes…

-Five of my closest friends are in medical school.  Here’s all you need to know about med school kids.  They disappear for six to eight weeks at a time.  During that time, the only human contact they have is with lab partners, Domino’s deliverymen, and cadavers.  When med school kids reappear, it is without notice.  They just randomly show up at the bar one night, get drunker then everyone else, then pass out and disappear again.  Med school kids also have no concept of money.  However, I don’t really blame them.  If you’re already close to a quarter of a million dollars in debt by the time you’re twenty-three, I guess it’s OK if your mom pays your cable bill.

-Three of my best friends are fraternal triplets.  I’ve known them for most of my life and even went to Penn with two out of the three (hey, nobody’s perfect right?).  I think one of the best parts about being a triplet is that you have built-in wingmen.  All you have to do is go out with your brothers and you’ve already got two accomplices to help reel in the ladies.  Since they don’t look extremely similar, many times when I go out with all three of them people don’t believe me when I tell them that they’re triplets.  I never understood this.  What do you think I’ve got some sort of racket going where I go from bar to bar with three unrelated kids and pretend that they’re brothers?

-I am fascinated by bathroom attendants.  To me, this is a sign that the economy is so bad we’ve been reduced to just making up jobs.  Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that I really do need baby powder, condoms, six varieties of mints, and twenty different kinds of cologne every time I use the bathroom.  I certainly don’t need all that stuff handed to me.  And I definitely don’t want to tip this guy every time I take a piss.  It’s like a urinal tollbooth in there.

-I belong to a New York subculture that I have coined the “Big Ten.”  The Big Ten consists of everyone in Manhattan between the ages of 22 and 26 who went to Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Penn, Cornell, GW, Florida, Emory, Binghamton or Syracuse.  Whenever you go to a bar in Big Ten territory (roughly 15th to 50th on the east side), each member of the Big Ten must send a representative.  It’s sort of like the Olympics.  We even have our own uniforms.  For guys, it’s Diesel jeans with the classic blue button down shirt, untucked with the sleeves rolled up slightly.  For girls, it’s those pointy-toed elf shoes, a little shoulder bag tucked snugly under the left armpit, and, if it’s raining, one of those stupid caps with the small brim.  We even have our own holiday, Thanksgiving Eve, which, for the Big Ten, is the second biggest night of the year behind New Year’s.

-I have a lot of friends in law school.  Here’s what I know about law school kids.  For some reason I feel immature around law school kids who are my age.  I don’t know why, maybe it’s because the guys wear loafers and the girls have Palm Pilots.  I do know this, though, law school kids bitch and moan more than any other grad students (“Oh my God, I have so much Contracts reading to do!”).  Also, for some reason, I’ve noticed that law school guys are more likely to have those wooden things that you put inside your shoes to keep their shape.  Don’t ask me why, but it’s true.

-A bunch of people I know aren’t in grad school, they just like taking entrance exams.  First they took the GREs, then the GMATs, now they’re on to the LSATs.  They’re like professional test-takers.  These people also happen to live in the nicest apartments, even though they don’t have jobs.  I wonder how they swing that.

-I rely on the deli down the block from me for many of my meals.  It is usually the same guy who serves me every time.  This guy makes a great sandwich but he does have one very strange trait.  He doesn’t understand modifiers.  So if I say, “No ketchup, lightly salted, extra bacon,” all he hears is, “Ketchup, salt, bacon.”  It’s the weirdest thing.  You know how hard it is to order a sandwich without using modifiers?  It’s a grammatical nightmare.

-I’ve noticed a lot people wear headphones all day long, no matter what they are doing.  I’ve even seen two people walking, both listening to headphones, and having a conversation with each other at the same time.  This must take a lot of skill.  I don’t know how they do it.  I can barely ride an elevator and listen to my Discman at the same time.

-It seems like everyone I know that isn’t in grad school or a professional test-taker, is an investment banker.  If you’ve never worked in an investment bank, as I have, you may be fooled into thinking this is a glamorous and difficult job to do.  It’s not.  I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  If you’re under twenty-five and work as a banker, this is what you do all day: copy and paste numbers from one Excel spreadsheet to another, proofread, spell check and page number documents, and fudge expense reports to enable you and your friends to eat as much free food as possible.  That’s it.  Bankers are also notorious liars.  For instance, first-year bankers will say, “Sure, the hours are tough, but I love my job and I’m learning a lot.”  Liar.  Second-year bankers will say, “Oh man, I am definitely not going to stay a third year.  No way.”  Liar.  Third-year bankers will say, “I just stayed so I that I could take my GMATs, besides I love my job and I’m learning a lot.”  Liar.  But hey, they do get a BlackBerry and I can’t compete with that.

-An important term to learn if you live in New York is “B&T.”  B&T, short for “bridge and tunnel,” is a derogatory term used by people in Manhattan to describe people from New Jersey, Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island who come to Manhattan (via bridge or tunnel) to party on the weekends.  Used in a sentence, someone in the Big Ten might say, “Oh God, this bar is sooo B&T.”  You might wonder how we can tell if someone is a B&Ter or not.  You’ll just have to trust me, we can tell.  The Big Ten vs. The B&T crowd is a vicious rivalry.  However, being that I am originally from Long Island, I am a former B&Ter myself, so I tend to cut these guys some slack.

-Here are some people that irk, annoy, or otherwise piss me off.  People who write on wide-ruled paper.  People who change their answering machine message when they go on vacation but then forget to change it back for a month after they return.  People who order dressing on the side.  People who try to bum cigarettes off of me even though I don’t smoke.  Smokers who complain about other smokers bumming cigarettes off of them.  People who set the treadmill to a really high speed but then hang on to the bar for dear life as they try to keep up.  Thirty-year-old chicks with belly button rings.  Guys who blow-dry their hair.  People who call you to ask for a phone number but then don’t have a pen ready when you give it to them.  People who carry both cell phones and beepers.  Cab drivers and deliverymen who claim they don’t have change for a twenty.  People who brag about how few books they’ve read.  People who prefer Raisinets over Goobers.  People who wear sneakers to work then change into shoes when they get there.  Pitchers who can’t hit for shit.  People who act like they’re having an epileptic seizure when they win a radio contest.  People who set their watches to beep every hour.  And finally, people who hide the kitchen garbage can in the cabinet below the sink.  What can I say, I’m a difficult man to please.

-One of my friends keeps telling me I should try taking a spinning class at the gym.  I’m always like, come on, I’m lifting weights here, spinning is for chicks.  The other day I was at the gym and I saw a bunch of pretty cute girls go into the spinning room, so I decided to take the class.  Hey, I played high school soccer, how tough could this be?  There, at the front of the room, was the man who would become my arch nemesis: Stefan, the spinning instructor from hell.  Wearing a headset microphone, he could only be described at a stationary bike televangelist, barking orders from his pulpit as Acapulco-style trance music blasted from the stereo.  With a thick German accent, he yelled things like, “And 8, and 5, and 3, 2, 1, out of the saddle, now break away!” and started pedaling furiously.  Meanwhile I’m thinking, oh God, fuck me, fuck me, help, my quads are exploding, make it stop, why aren’t any of these chicks hyperventilating like me?  By the end of the 45-minute session my body had reached the dew point – I was saturated with sweat.  But I’ll be back Stefan, oh yes, I’ll be back.  Maybe.

-You can’t miss the guys running around the city with the straps of their overstuffed black leather laptop bags clinging desperately to the shoulder pads of their suit jackets.  While their origin may vary, most likely these dudes have the unfortunate distinction of being in sales or IT.  They can usually be spotted leaving Wendy’s while simultaneously talking on their cell phone earpieces and hailing a cab.  Approach with caution.

-One of my good friends is in culinary school.  Now there is a noble vocation.  The only time I use a kitchen utensil is to stir a mixed drink, so I am completely awed by what he learns.  And he doesn’t disappear for months on end like med schools kids, bitch and moan like law school kids, or lie to himself like investment bankers.  There’s no standardized entrance exam, no laptop bags, just funny chef hats and damn good food.  Now that, my friends, is living.

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

-I get really frustrated when I call someone’s cell phone but they’re sleeping and don’t wake up.  You kind of want to yell when their voicemail picks up even though you know they can’t hear you.  So you just hope it beeps really loud.

-Do you think that if I wear that deodorant body spray chicks will really ravage me in the elevator like in that commercial?

-I was at my parent’s house in Long Island a few weeks ago.  As I was getting the mail, I accidentally dropped an envelope and it fluttered into the living room.  As I went to go get it, I was paralyzed with fear.  You see, when I was growing up, I wasn’t allowed in the living room, especially after it had been cleaned.  When I saw the fresh vacuum lines in the rug I had a flashback to being yelled at as a little kid for making footprints on the carpet.  I think I’m scarred for life.

-How come every deli or fast food joint in New York has at least one word spelled wrong in the window?

-Three things I’ve been pondering about the gym.  First, why are there sometimes arbitrary numbers on the weights in the machines instead of the amount of pounds?  Is this so you can never join a different gym because you’ll have to learn a whole new system?  Second, when I joined my gym, they gave me a free t-shirt.  Are you allowed to work out wearing a shirt with the gym logo on it or is that like wearing the t-shirt of the band when you go to their concert?  Third, why are the dudes who walk around naked in the locker room always the nastiest and hairiest guys in there?

-For some reason, people get very offended when I tell them I don’t know how to drive stick.  I’ve never understood this obsession with manual transmissions.  Why would I ever want to drive stick?  No one can ever explain to me the advantage.  They just always say, “Well, you have more control over the car.”  More control?  You’re telling me you have more control over the car by shifting gears when it “feels” right than a sophisticated computer that adjusts automatically?  Now that doesn’t make any sense at all.

-People who leave their cars on the street with tape covering their broken windows are obviously too trusting.  I mean, when your car did have glass for a window, someone broke into it.  How is tape any more of a deterrent?  What are the thieves going to say?  “Ooh, that like looks like duct tape, we can’t beat that.  Let’s look for one with scotch or masking.”

-Who do you think will win the contest for most albums released without actually recording any new songs, Tupac or Aerosmith?

-How come they never have my size in the pair of sneakers I want?  Whenever I finally pick out the style I like, I tell the guy I want to try on a ten and a half.  Inevitably, the guy will come back like ten minutes later and say, “Well, I only have an eight or a fourteen in the pair you want, or I do have a ten and a half, but they’re purple and gold.  Do you want to try those?”  Uh, no thanks.

-I just got a new pair of jeans.  This is my first pair of button-fly jeans.  It is definitely going to take some getting used to.  I mean, I have to take my whole package out just to take a piss.  It’s bad enough the bathroom attendant is looking at me, now I have to deal with this, too?  And you if don’t do the buttons right, you can’t just make a quick adjustment like you could if you forgot to zipper your fly, you need to completely unbutton and start over.  Boy, I sure do miss the zip.

-Overall, 2002 has been a banner year for me.  A new career.  A hit book.  Good times with friends and family.  Trips to Rio, Glasgow, and South Beach.  More booze and chicks than I could handle or remember.  Since I spent last New Year’s in the hospital getting my appendix out, I figured I deserve to close out this year with a bang.  So I’m going to Las Vegas.  When I tell people that I am going to Vegas for New Year’s and that I’ve never been there before, the response is always the same, “Oh man Karo, you’re gonna lose your mind dude!”  I hope so.  All I know is whenever I talk to my roommate about the trip, all we keep saying over and over again is, “Vegas baby, Vegas!”

-I think the way you can tell if a guy and girl are in a serious relationship is whether or not they have black and white pictures of themselves together.  That’s the real test.  Because it takes effort to get nice black and white photos.  If you’ve gone that far, there’s no turning back.

-Here’s another little trick I picked up.  You can tell how nice an area you’re in is by how much “fast cash” the ATM offers you.  The ATMs at the bank down the street from me offer $100 fast cash.  At college, it was $60.  Last month I was in a seedy part of Los Angeles, and the ATM offered only $35 fast cash.  I took my money and got the hell out of there!

-This Thanksgiving I decided to do something that I’ve never done before.  I shut my cell phone off and left it home all day.  I was thinking, well, it’s the holidays and I don’t want to be bothered.  You know what happened?  I kept hearing my phone ring and feeling it vibrate all day even though it wasn’t with me.  It was like when people lose a limb but get that phantom feeling of still having it.  I must have checked my pocket like twenty times.  It was actually worse that taking my phone with me.

-Isn’t it amazing how fast the snow turns brown as soon as it hits the ground in New York?

-Have you ever been watching a new episode of Saturday Night Live and thought to yourself, wait a minute, what the fuck am I doing home right now?

-I am fortunate enough to still be really close with all of my boys from high school.  We are the most competitive bunch of kids I have ever met.  Everything is a bet, contest, or argument.  Here’s something we’ve been arguing about since eleventh grade.  One of my friends, Eric, made a bet that Brian couldn’t break 1400 on his SATs.  Brian ended up getting exactly 1400.  Eric claims that getting 1400 is technically not “breaking 1400,” and that a 1410 was needed to win the bet.  This has become a point of contentious debate for over six years now, with no resolution in sight.  I personally believe that getting 1400 is breaking 1400.  What do you think?

-My college buddies are obsessed with fantasy sports to the point that I’m actually worried about them.  Here’s an example.  My friend Jeremy was at this club and bumped into Kurt Thomas of the Knicks.  Now if I met Kurt Thomas, I’d be getting his autograph, taking pictures with him, etc., but not Jeremy.  Here is their conversation.  Jeremy: Hey, you’re Kurt Thomas!  Thomas: Yeah.  Jeremy: It’s great to meet you.  Thomas: Thanks dog.  Jeremy: You know, I have you on my fantasy basketball team.  Thomas: Word?  Jeremy: Yeah, listen, I was wondering if I could ask you a favor.  Thomas: What?  Jeremy: I’m in second place, and I could really use some more blocks from you.  Thomas: More blocks?  No doubt, I’ll see what I can do.  Jeremy: Thanks man, have a good night.  That’s a true story.  A few days later, Thomas had the most in blocks in one game of his career.  He must have done it all for Jeremy.

-How come I am completely unable to operate the doors of other people’s apartments?  You know, when you go to leave and you turn the knob that you’re not supposed to touch and then turn the other knob the wrong way and then you lock yourself in even more and you can’t remember which way you turned what and you end up yanking helplessly at the door until your friend mercifully comes to your rescue and lets you out.

-The “unplug decision” is one of the more difficult decisions that you must make in your life.  This occurs when you crash at a friend’s place and you have to decide which of his appliances you are going to unplug because you need to charge your phone and all of the outlets are full.  I tend to look for something that doesn’t need resetting or recalibration.  Definitely stay away from VCRs and alarm clocks.  Halogen lights and toasters are always a popular choice.  Of course, once you choose your victim you need to play that little game where you try to trace the plug from the back of the appliance all the way to the surge protector.  This usually involves diving behind entertainment centers and doing the “wiggle test” where you shake the plug from the top and then see which one moves at the bottom.  These are all technical terms of course.

-And, finally, here is a prime example of why I feel strongly that you should never lie to chicks about your age.  Triplet #1 and I were at this dive bar downtown that is frequented by NYU chicks.  While I was distracted by a game of Golden Tee, Triplet #1 approached a bunch of girls and asked them if they went to NYU.  They said they were first-years.  Not wanting to intimidate a bunch of freshmen by telling them we were twenty-three, Trip 1 lied and said we were juniors at NYU.  When I joined the conversation, I was then forced to continue the charade.  As I talked to one of the girls, I realized that something was terribly wrong.  These chicks weren’t freshmen at NYU, they were first-years at NYU Med.  We had just lied ourselves younger than them.  Fuck me!

HOME

-I know all too well the stress of working.  As a Wall Street drone I had my share of endless meetings, bad coffee, and hungover Fridays.  Since I left Wall Street this summer, I’ve discovered a whole new world – the world of the unemployed.  I noticed an interesting thing the other day as I strolled down Third Avenue at 2pm on a Wednesday.  There was a hell of a lot of people outside!  And these were not investment bankers on a lunch break or job hunters going to an interview.  These people were straight-up unemployed and get this…they looked happy.  In these trying times, my generation is only interesting in two things: trying to get laid and trying not to get laid off.  Of course, with no real job to get laid off from, I’m only interested in one thing.  Welcome to a day in the life…

-I like to start my day off at the gym.  I belong to a really nice gym, I don’t know, maybe even a little too nice.  The first time I went in there this dude took me on a tour of the place.  He was all perky like, “Here is the spa, next to it is the aerobics center, and over there is the double-paned, temperature-controlled, soundproof yoga facility!”  I was like, dude, can you show me some weights or something, cause I’m starting to feel a little uncomfortable.

-I’ve noticed that, when working out, people always wear shorts or a t-shirt from the last organized league they played in.  The huge guy doing squats has his college lacrosse shorts on.  I’m there with a shirt from my high school soccer team.  And the fat dude in the corner with his middle school tennis shirt on, well, you know he hasn’t worked out in a while.

-The gym is full of people pretending to look in the mirror.  Guys are taking a drink from the water fountain, sneaking a peak at their abs, picking up a towel, checking out their biceps.  Everyone is pretending to look.  I say we screw all this pretend nonsense.  We’re all in the gym so that we look better in the mirror, so why is looking in the mirror at the gym such a bad thing?  Hell I’m full-out flexing and I’m the smallest dude there.

-How come I can run three miles on the treadmill no problem but if later in the day I run up three flights of stairs I think I’m gonna have a heart attack?

-Sometimes I’ll watch TV while running the treadmill and see a commercial for a gym where there are tons of hot chicks running the treadmill and I’ll look around at the ugly dudes next to me and think, am I in the wrong gym?

-After working out, it’s time to grab something to eat.  As I said in Ruminations #28, I have no idea how to cook.  Even in elementary school, when on the holidays every kid baked cupcakes or something, I always volunteered to bring in napkins.

-Ever notice that when the waiter brings your food over and says “Be careful the plate is hot,” the first thing you do is touch the plate?

-I hate waiters who attempt to memorize your order.  Don’t try to impress me, just write that shit down.

-Every New Yorker has them.  In a drawer, on a table, in the closet.  Menus.  Hundreds of them, most left by furtive delivery men who jam them under your door.  And we all have the same stack: 400 menu – one deli, one pizza place, one Chinese place and 397 Japanese restaurants, including Yeah Sushi, Yo Sushi, Go Sushi and Ho Sushi.  And they all suck.

-Hey ladies, I know you’re trying your best, but if you drench every morsel of food with gobs of that Butter Spray crap, you’re sort of defeating the purpose.  Thanks.

-When I was growing up on Long Island, there was one cardinal rule when it came to food: no really sweet cereal.  This was the mid-80s, there was lead paint on the walls, asbestos in the schools, but sugary cereal, that was what my parents deemed the real danger.  If I was really good I would get Honey Nut Cheerios instead of regular Cheerios.  Now that I can eat whatever I want, I go nuts, mixing like Frosted Flakes and Cinnamon Toast Crunch together in the same bowl.  I still remember the first time I had Lucky Charms.  I mean, I had never seen marshmallows in a box before, it was unbelievable!

-After eating I’ll usually run a couple of errands.  The other day I had to pick up a piece of nice fake art for my apartment.  In case you didn’t know, it is required for former frat boys living in New York to have fake Picassos and shit hanging in our common rooms.  It makes us look distinguished.

-My next errand is usually to hit up the local bookstores, grab a bunch of copies of my book from the humor section, and put them all on the table in the front of the store, next to the Pulitzer Prize winning hardcovers about Vietnam.  That should help move a few more copies.  By the way, I’ve been getting a ton of emails from fans of my book who’ve told me they’ve shared their copy with their whole office, frat house, or family.  OK, listen up, new rule: NO LENDING.  Make everyone buy their own, otherwise I won’t make enough to support my current life of sloth.  Thanks!

-On my way to the bookstore I passed a GAP store.  In the window was a big sign that said “The Black Pant is Back!”  They must be pretty desperate if they are trying to bring back the scourge of society that is black pants.  I’m sorry, but I think the GAP has lost all privileges to tell us what is cool and what is not.  I mean, the last time I went in there the jeans were so tapered they made my ankles sweat.

-My next stop is the barber to get a little trim.  There is something really strange about my barbershop.  There are porn magazines in the waiting area.  The thing is, it’s just one of those rules of being a guy that if there’s porn, you have to look at it (just like if there are chicks making out, you have to stare).  Of course when anyone walks in, I immediately put down the Penthouse and pick up Car & Driver.  The porn sat there between me and this guy, who was giving me a weird look.  Finally I said, “It’s OK dude, I already checked it out, it’s all yours.”

-After the barber/porn shop, I started on my way home.  I passed a cute chick with a dog so I stopped to pet it.  I have never in my life guessed the correct sex of a dog.  If I say, “Oh, he’s really friendly,” the owner will say with a scowl, “Actually it’s a she.”  If later I spot a dog and say, “Oh, she’s really friendly,” the owner will hiss, “Actually it’s a he.”  Oh yeah, well if you’re so smart why are you picking up dog shit off the street?

-After my canine tribulations, it’s back to my apartment.  Make any comment about a person’s apartment, good or bad, and you’ll always be met with the same response: “Oh, I’m never home anyway.”  “I’m never here.”  “I’m never home, never!”  Apparently no one actually lives in their apartments.  All those menus and fake art are going to waste because no one is ever home!  Except me.  I’m always home.  I have nothing to do.  Call me, I’ll be here.

-On a side note, my apartment has central air.  And I when I say central air, I mean the entire apartment building is on the same system.  One day in October the management board of the apartment meets and decides when to switch the whole building from A/C to heat.  That seems a little Communist to me, don’t you think?

-Then it’s time to make plans to head out for the night and chase some tail.  Do you have friends that live with people that you are not friends with?  When you call their apartment phone you hope the roommate doesn’t pick up because then you are forced to have an awkward conversation about what you are doing that night even though they’re not coming out with you and ask stupid questions about their day even though you don’t really care and it’s five minutes of your life that you will never get back and next time you think you’ll just call your friend’s cell phone instead.

-I’m really pissed because this chick I’m into is a textbook Serial Monogamist.  That’s right, she just goes from boyfriend to boyfriend without ever dating in between.  I don’t know how that’s physically possible.  I’m gonna wait for an opening though and get back to you on this one.

-If, by about 2am, none of my leads are panning out, I’ll start scrolling through the trusty  cell phone address book to see what girls I can hit up late night.  I use the latest technology in this endeavor.  My phone has this great feature that let’s me turn off my outgoing caller ID so that my number won’t show up when I call someone that late (so if they don’t pick up, my identity won’t be revealed in the missed call).  I call it the “booty call button.”

-On November 1st I had to do that once-a-year tradition: the Halloween Walk of Shame.  I woke up somewhere on the upper east side and had to get home dressed as a soccer player, complete with cleats, shin guards, shorts, and my old jersey.  It was freezing cold, I had no jacket and I couldn’t see shit because I took my contacts out.  It was not a pretty sight but I managed to stumble back to my apartment, throw some sneakers on and, still wearing my soccer shirt of course, head out to the gym where it was time to start another day in the life…

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

-Can I ask a stupid question?  What the fuck do you do with all your hangers?  I get all this dry cleaning back and the amount of hangers I have accumulated is enormous.  I literally have a closet full of hundreds of hangers.  Help!

-Pet peeve: soft toilet seats.  Ugh, the worst.  No matter what they always have that warm feeling like someone was just there and they make that “pfsssst” when you sit down.  No thanks, I’ll just hold it in.

-My buddy Claudio has one of those toilet seats that won’t stay up.  He’s so lazy, that instead of holding the seat up he actually sits down when he has to take a piss.

-Since I only use a cell phone and don’t even have a landline, I’ve started to experience the strange phenomenon of getting telemarketing calls on my cell phone.  I don’t know, for some reason I feel kind of bad telling salesmen I can’t talk because I just got out of the shower when they can clearly hear the piercing sirens and cursing cabbies as I walk down 23rd Street.

-How many times do I have to say this?  When I call your cell phone and leave a message and then you call me back and get my voicemail, there’s no reason to leave your number.  I already have it.  I called you first, remember?

-Recently I returned for my second Homecoming at the University of Pennsylvania.  Your second Homecoming is definitely a lot different than your first.  By this time you’re considerably older and fatter.  I pulled my groin playing beer pong for god’s sake.  It was a very stressful time for me though because there were so many people there of different ages, from pre-frosh to alumni.  And since I have earned a sort of quasi-minor celebrity status on campus because of my book, everyone knows who I am but I have no fucking clue who anyone else is.  In a drunken stupor I must have asked ten different chicks if they were freshmen.  They’re all like, “Karo, you asked me that already.  Twice.  And I’m older than you are.  Asshole.”  Oops, my bad.  Do you still want me to sign your book?

-Did you know that it was Columbus Day a few weeks ago?  Yeah, neither did I.  I think the only people that have off on Columbus Day are fifth graders and people in Los Angeles.

-Speaking of holidays, did they move Christmas up or something this year?  It seems like the holidays are starting earlier and earlier.  Stores have Christmas trees up before they even get rid of the pumpkins from Halloween.  I’m just waiting for the sign at the GAP to say: “Christmas is now December 1st!”

-Can stores please make their automatic doors open up when you’re a little bit farther away so I don’t have to do that awkward pause right in front of the doorway because the doors haven’t opened yet and I’m only two inches away and starting to think the door is broken?  That or put some handles on those motherfuckers.

-Will someone please tell me why they still make umbrellas with pointy spokes on them?  You would think it’s common sense that anything wielded at eye-level with limited visibility should be rounded at the ends.

-OK, I’m gonna rip into myself for once.  I’m that guy who, when we are watching a movie together and I’ve seen it already, keeps saying, “Oh, this next part is hilarious” or “I love this scene, watch what he does now.”  I realize that that is very annoying and I dutifully apologize.

-Why does the bank close early?  What makes the bank so damn special that it thinks it can do whatever it wants and check out at four in the afternoon while everyone else is still hard at work?  Well, everyone except for me I guess.

-How come the more reckless, dangerous, and unpredictable the vehicle, the less likely I am to wear a seat belt?  Driving in the suburbs in a Volvo?  I’m all buckled up, safe and secure.  Careening school bus?  Maniacal taxi?  No thanks, I’ll just hold on real tight while you speed and swerve.  What the fuck is wrong with me?

-Speaking of cabs, I find that when I’m just standing on a corner waiting for someone, cabs will pull up as if they think I need one, even though I haven’t hailed one nor do I want one.  Do I just have that look or something?  Do I look like someone who really needs a ride?  Is that bad?  How come I can’t get a cab when I actually do need one?

-Why do cab drivers get so upset when you hit traffic?  It’s not like they’re getting out.

-It really bothers me when bartenders give me back all singles.  Listen, I understand the purpose is to encourage me to tip you, but giving me a wad of 13 bills is not what I call good service.

-I feel bad for people who are not from a major city or a well-known place.  These are the people who pick the biggest city closest to where they were born and then tell people they’re from “near” there.  Like people who say they’re from “North of Boston” or “Near Phoenix” when in reality they’re from like two hours away and everyone just assumes they’re from Boston or Phoenix anyway.

-Why are all car commercials exactly the same?  It’s all just a car coming over a hill while the announcer says they’re offering 0% APR.  Well here’s a question, what the fuck is APR?

-I think we can all agree that Coors Light has the greatest commercials on TV right now.  Those twins, football, food, partying, those twins again.  I mean, come on, it’s great.  Those twins, man I love ‘em.  I can honestly say I have increased my purchasing of Coors Light since I started seeing those commercials.  Thank you twins, thank you so very much.

-If I see one more Orbitz pop-up ad on the Internet I’m gonna fucking kill someone.

-Why am I constantly being bombarded with mass emails containing “new contact info” from people I never contact in the first place?

-And, finally, the other day I had to do something I haven’t done in years.  I actually wrote a letter and mailed something.  I mean, I pay all my bills online.  When the woman on the phone gave me the street address I didn’t even know what to do.  What do you mean there’s no web site?  So I started to type the letter on Word and then that fucking paper clippy thing popped up and said, “It looks like you are typing a letter, would you like help?”  Yeah, I’m actually out of envelopes, can you pick some up for me jerk-off?  Then my roommate said my letter seemed a little heavy so I should put some more stamps on it.  What are you some kind of new superhero that can magically calculate postage?  Screw you and screw Mr. Clippy over there, I can do this myself!  Then I went ahead and licked all the stamps and stuck them to the envelope.  On the top left corner.  Fuck me.

HOME

-Ah, October.  Autumn in the city.  It’s getting a little chilly, a bit more overcast.  The Yankees are out, but alas, life goes on.  The tourists are taking a reprieve until Christmas.  The girls are taking off those big sunglasses that make them look like mosquitoes and packing away those stupid open-toe sandals that cut their feet all summer.  The guys, well, the guys are still up to their usual shenanigans.  And I’m no exception.  I go about my daily routine as usual, no matter what the weather: Sleep, Eat, Drink, Hit on Chicks, repeat as necessary.  And I’m not the only one.  Hoards of recent college grads across the city share my routine.  We are, after all, twentysomething.

-What is twentysomething?  Twentysomething means you’re out of college, you’ve gone through your phase where you wished you still were in college, but now you’re done with that too.  You’re a “real person.”  But not quite.  As of today, none of my friends are engaged, none have kids, and none are within three years of either.  We are the gap between college and marriage, between zero responsibility and total responsibility.  And we fucking love it.  This is our story.

-My apartment is furnished by a well-known foreign designer.  His name is IKEA.  I bought a funky, comfortable chair at IKEA.  I thought it was different.  I have so far seen the same chair in at least six different twentysomething’s apartments.  I didn’t realize it came in so many different colors.  This IKEA guy must be making a fortune.

-The Mayor says we’re not supposed to recycle glass anymore.  I still haven’t figured this one out.  My apartment has a trash chute on each floor.  I live on the eleventh.  I walked to the chute the other day and dropped down an empty handle of SKYY, two bottles of Stoli, and twelve Coors Light longnecks.  The shattering explosion of glass as it ricocheted down eleven floors was deafening.  A woman came out of an apartment down the hall nursing her baby and gave me a dirty look.  “It’s not me, it’s the Mayor,” I said.  She didn’t buy it.

-For some reason my friends feel the need to lie about their age when hitting on girls who are older than us.  So even if I don’t want to, I have to become an accomplice to their lies, otherwise I’ll blow up their spot.  So my buddy runs over to me like, “Karo, see those chicks over there?  Yeah, I know they’re hot, but listen, I told them we’re 28.  So whatever you do, don’t let them know hold old we are, thanks!  Oh, by the way, I also told them my name is Rodrigo and I’m a masseuse, cool?”  So one of the girls comes up to me and now I have to fabricate seven years of my life since college, which I have a really hard time doing.  I’m like, “Yeah, um, well I graduated from Penn in 2001…um…I mean Penn Med, yeah, that’s it, Penn Medical School.  Yup, so I became a doctor and then I got married, um, no, divorced, well…widowed, yeah, that’s it.  She’s dead.  Really, really dead.  Uh, could you hold on a second, I have go to talk to my friend Seth, er, Rodrigo.  Later!”

-My buddy Chi is a black belt.  I think that’s the coolest thing in the world.  Whenever we go out and he gets really liquored up, I try to get him to kick someone’s ass.  Not just anyone mind you, only people who deserve it, like bouncers and investment bankers.  So far I’ve only gotten him to jump-kick a lamppost.  The lamppost won.  What a pussy.

-That’s the irony of being a twentysomething, though.  The power is not in physical strength, but rather, in the clipboard.  That’s right, the clipboard.  The guy or girl who stands in front of the bar holding a clipboard with people’s names on it has the ultimate power to ruin your night.  It’s funny, because one of my best friends, Claudio, recently got a job as one of those clipboard people.  Claudio will stand in front of clubs and decisively, if not arbitrarily, turn away or let people in.  I’ve known Claudio my whole life, but now I am forced to rely on him to get me in places.  Once I found myself among a group of people on line saying proudly, “Oh, I knew Claudio way before he had a clipboard.  Step aside.”  What a jackass I am.

-Let’s face it.  There were cliques in high school, cliques in college, and now there are cliques in New York.  They’re even bigger now.  Being in a clique means walking into a bar and knowing 75% of all the people in there.  Because they were the same people you hung out with last weekend.  My clique is so big it includes people I don’t even know.  Do you ever get that feeling like yours is the only clique?  I sometimes wonder, if I’m here, and my whole clique is here, then where is everyone else?  Do other cliques even exist?  Somehow I think all the other cliques are thinking the same thing…

-It’s so awkward when you run into someone that you went to high school with but haven’t kept in touch with.  Your conversations are always so outdated.  I’m like, “Um, so, are you still going out with Jim?”  “Actually, we broke up five years ago.”  “Oh, well, uh, remember Rachel’s Bar Mitzvah?  That’s was so much fun.”  “Yeah, it was.  Um, I’m gonna go get a drink.”  “Yeah, me too, see ya around…I guess.”

-Sometimes us twentysomethings have to beware of imposters.  About a month ago I was at a bar having a conversation with this chick that I thought was pretty cute.  She was a few years older than me but I refused to lie about my age.  Surprisingly, she seemed interested.  Then she scratched her face.  A glare caught me right in the eye.  And then I saw it.  A diamond ring.  Frightened, I said, “What the fuck is that?”  “Oh this?  I just got engaged last week.”  “Engaged?  What the hell are you doing here then?”  “Oh, well my fiance is meeting me here later.”  And that’s when I realized that from now on I have to Look for the Ring.  This sucks.  All I know is, someone should tell the guy with the clipboard not to let married people in.

-One of my girl friends called me up the other day really excited.  It seemed that she met one of the guys from “Real World Las Vegas” at the bar.  First of all, who gives a fuck?  I’ve met bigger celebrities at the grand opening of Staples down the block.  Second of all, there’s a Real World Las Vegas?  I didn’t even know that new shows were still on.  What’s next, Real World and Road Rules vs. Batman and Superman?

-When guys tell stories about girls to other guys, there is always going to be a certain amount of embellishment.  After all, it’s guy talk and it’s expected that every story should make the guy look like a king and the girl like a whore.  Every once in a while I’ll be listening to a friend tell a story that will be so outlandish I have to call him on it. You know, my friend will be like, “So all this chick wanted to do was have sex with me and I was like, no way bitch, get the fuck out of there, SportsCenter is on.”  And I’ll be like, “Dude, there is no fucking way you actually said anything close to that.”

-I think everyone has that friend who no one knows what he does for a living.  You ask someone and they’ll be like, “Yeah, he was dabbling a bit here and there and then he got this new job but the company went out of business, so then he went to work for his dad but he quit that, and now he’s doing a little thing on the side while he studies for his LSATs.”  Figures.  You know what I call taking the LSATs?  The get-out-of-life-free card.

-I love going out to dinner with the guys.  My frat buddies and I get together for a big steak dinner every once in a while.  It’s a fucking blast.  We all tell ridiculous stories about chicks and then get called out for over-exaggerating.  The worst, though, is when the check comes.  We always get into the argument over whether to itemize the bill or split it evenly.  It’s all game theory.  If you think that the bill is going to be split evenly at the end, you go into the meal ordering extravagantly, but hope everyone doesn’t do the same.  If you think you’re gonna itemize at the end, then you order conservatively but hope you don’t have to contribute when your friend orders Grey Goose on the rocks with extra Grey Goose.  Somehow, though, I always get stuck with a $100 tab when all I ate was a salad.

-All guys know that the most important attribute when determining whether or not to stay at a bar is the dude/chick ratio.  This can be determined upon entering a bar, scanning the crowd, and taking count:  “OK, let’s see.  Dude, chick, dude, dude, dude, chick, dude, chick, dude, dude, chick, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude.  Dude, let’s get the fuck out of there!”

-I think that bars need to differentiate a little bit better between the male and female bathrooms.  Quit trying to be so damn fancy.  I walk over to the bathrooms at this bar the other night and look at the illustrations on the two doors.  One is like a cat with a top hat on and the other is a turtle in a tuxedo.  Which one is fucking male?  I chose poorly.

-Like most people my age, the complete fulfillment of all my wildest desires and fantasies is held back by one thing.  Money.  Our economy has evolved infinitely since the days of the subsistence farmers who made just enough to survive.  Yet how come I don’t save one dollar I earn?  All my money goes to rent, food, booze, and IKEA.  It’s like a zero-sum game.  Maybe its because my saving is so erratic.  Like how come I regularly use my expired college ID to get a dollar off my meal at Subway, but refuse to get a CVS extra-value card?  I also think my wallet is bulimic.  I binge all week, saving up and not spending much, and then on the weekend I purge, throwing away fistfuls of cash at a time in exchange for tons of watered down drinks and imported beer.  By the end of the weekend I’m broke and cleaning up my own puke.

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

-Last weekend I bought a case of beer and polished it off with some friends.  I was about to throw the empty box down the trash chute when, at the very bottom of the box, I spotted a little card that was my entry for a big sweepstakes the beer company was having.  It said “no purchase necessary.”  Now how the fuck am I supposed to know that without buying and drinking all that beer?

-Have you noticed that in all the stores now you swipe your own credit or debit card?  What genius came up with this idea?  Whatever time it is supposed to save by freeing up the cashier to do other things is more than lost when I bumble about trying to read the hieroglyphics on the machine that tells me which way to swipe my card.

-Blockbuster now let’s you keep a movie for a full seven days.  I hope you all realize it’s a scam.  When was the last time you didn’t watch a rented movie within 24 hours of picking it up?  Never!  The seven-day promotion doesn’t give you more time to watch the movie, it gives you more time to put off returning it, increasing the chances you are going to forget about it, and thereby driving up Blockbuster’s late fees.  You can’t fool me!

-Next time I see one of my friends use his middle initial on a business card or email signature, I’m gonna kick his ass.  What are you, forty years old?

-Why do people slow down when they see a cop on the side of the road giving someone else a ticket?  I don’t think the cop is gonna jump back in his car to chase you down you idiot!

-Did I miss the poof revolution?  Since when did it become mandatory for all girls to use one of those poofy things in the shower?  I was crashing at a girl friend’s place and all she had was a poof and liquid soap.  Guys were just not meant to use a poof in the shower.  It’s too rough in places it should be gentle and too gentle when it should be rough.  I feel uncomfortable just writing about it.

-Doesn’t it seem like there’s more scaffolding than sky in New York these days?

-Pop quiz: How many construction workers does it take to repair an important roadway? Answer?  Twenty-five.  One to operate the crane, one to get coffee, and twenty-three to stand around watching.

-You’re telling me they can’t make a battery that lasts more than three hours before dying?  I took a band-aid off literally two weeks ago, and that sticky stuff is still on my ankle.  I can’t get it off.  I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed.  I even used a poof!  It lasts forever!  The scientists who invented that shit should start working on batteries, contact lenses, and condoms right away.

-People have to calm down.  When you’re in a crowded subway and you pull in to a stop, don’t people start to freak out and push to get out of the doors in time?  Have you ever actually seen someone not make it out?  No.  Same with elevators.  Ever see someone get into an elevator and then realize it’s going up but they wanted to go down?  They have a fucking panic attack.  Chill out dude, I don’t think the elevator is going very far.

-Why must people ask me what part of the book I’m up to when they see me reading?  “Hey, are you up to the part where they find out that the doctor is really a spy?”  Well I am now, asshole!

-So I just got back from Los Angeles where I was meeting with a bunch of Hollywood types about some television projects I’m working on.  It went really well and I’ll keep you all updated.  I’d actually never been to LA before so as you can imagine I have plenty of ruminating to do about it.  But I’ve decided to save that for another issue.  Just one quick thing, though.  Some people in LA say that shit is “gnarly.”  Gnarly?  What the fuck is that?  Does that mean good or bad?  You sound like a fucking Ninja Turtle.

-Every time I meet someone from New Jersey I ask them what town they are from.  And every time they tell me I just stare at them blankly.  You know why?  Because I don’t know any fucking towns in New Jersey!  I guess the same thing happens to me when I tell people I am from Long Island.  People ask me what town in Long Island, I tell them Plainview, they stare at me blankly, and then say, “Oh, is that near such and such?”  And I say, “Yeah, sure, it’s 15-20 minutes away.”  But here’s a little secret I’ll let you in on – everything is 15-20 minutes away on Long Island!

-Ever realize that when the light turns red and you are still in the middle of the street and you do that little hybrid jog/skip/walk where you flail your arms about like an idiot, you are actually moving at the same speed as if you just plain walked instead?

-A bunch of my friends have been skydiving.  They make me watch their videos.  They’re always the exact same thing.  My friend getting harnessed up and looking all nervous.  My friend still looking really nervous but giving the thumbs up sign as he is about to jump out.  My friend flying through the air with his cheeks flapping, giving the thumbs up sign again.  For three minutes straight.  To the Top Gun soundtrack.  Boring!

-I get the feeling that deep down, no matter how close they say they are, all girls secretly hate each other.  Some girls reading this right now are like, no way, I love my best friend!  Oh yeah, but what happened to your best friend before her?

-I love my mom.  She is a caring, nurturing woman.  She rarely gets upset.  But God forbid I call her during The West Wing.  My God!  She acts like I just killed her first-born.  And I’m her first-born!

-Some of my friends from college were what you might term “slackers.”  They did no work for four years.  I was having a drink with some of them the other night and I asked one of them if he wished he had studied harder at Penn.  His answer was a vehement “No.”  He said, “Karo, what would doing more work have done for me?  Maybe I would have learned more hard facts, but I wouldn’t have learned more about applicating those facts, which is really more important.”  I replied, “Dude, applicating isn’t even a fucking word.”

-Sometimes people ask me for my cell phone number.  So I give them my cell phone number.  Then they call my cell phone and say, “Hey, is Karo there?”  Who the fuck do you think answers this phone, my secretary?

-The other day I tried to call a friend’s cell phone.  A recording told me that all circuits were busy.  ALL circuits?  You’re telling me that ALL circuits are busy?  Every single, last circuit?  You know how many circuits there are?  That seems a little fishy to me.

-I was watching the news and there was a story about a convicted felon whose sentence was reduced from five years to two years because of good behavior.  What the fuck is good behavior in prison?  Not killing anyone else?

-You know what really ruins a meal for me?  Unforeseen pits.  I’ll be chomping merrily away at my salad and come to one of my favorites: an olive.  I’ll start to chew, and then I realize it has pits.  Why would anyone ever put an olive with a pit in it in a salad?  It becomes a whole production.  I’m moving all the food over to one side of my mouth so I can chew the olive with the other side.  I’m trying to casually spit the pit into a napkin.  I’ll tell you this, pits can’t be spat out naturally.  It’s a veritable debacle.

-And, finally, I think that fast food restaurants are out to get me.  Have you noticed that they don’t put napkins out anymore?  Is this some sort of cost-cutting measure?  And they give you like one single-ply napkin for the messiest meal ever.  So they make you go back to the counter to beg like a fucking orphan.  “Excuse me, sir, could I get another napkin please?”  And how about this.  The other day I ordered at Subway (using my college ID for a nifty discount of course).  The guy asked me if I wanted it to stay or to go.  I said to stay.  Then he asked me if I wanted a small, medium, or large drink.  I said large.  Then I went to the fountain to fill up and I noticed a sign that said “Free Refills.”  I’d been robbed!  If I knew there were free refills, I obviously would have gotten a small cup.  Fuck me!

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-Taking vacations used to be so easy.  As a kid, you’d go to Disneyland or the Grand Canyon.  It was fun and relaxing.  Then came college and Spring Break madness.  You’d be on a liquid diet for seven days and not remember a thing.  But still, there were thousands of Spring Breakers there with you.  None of those experiences could prepare me for the mind-bending vacation I just took to Rio de Janeiro and South Beach.  For ten days my buddies and I took our bodies to the limits of alcohol, sun, and chicas.  I think my roommate and fellow traveler Brian said it best when he remarked, “It’s not a vacation, it’s a war.”

-Let me just set the scene for you.  It is dead winter in Rio right now, meaning it is 82 degrees and balmy every day.  The national uniform is a thong bikini.  Beers costs less than a dollar American.  They don’t speak a lick of English.  And every person we talked to before we left said it was the greatest place on earth.  I was at the bank the day before we left getting some traveler’s cheques and the teller was going on and on about how he got double-teamed in Rio.  In the middle of the bank!  Later I went to CVS to get some last minute items – suntan lotion and condoms.  You always know it’s going to be a great trip when those are the last two things you need to get before you leave.

-I found it very amusing that when you’re on vacation, everything is really cheap except for the things that the locals know only Americans will do.  For instance, in Rio, a beer is like a buck, a blow job is only 20 bucks, and hang gliding is like 700 dollars.  I’m like, um, I’ll just take a beer.

-The language barrier when traveling abroad is also a very difficult barrier to overcome.  We spoke English and a little bit of Spanish.  Brazilians speak Portuguese and a little bit of Spanish.  When you are having a conversation that goes from English to Spanish to Portuguese and back, you can bet most everything will get lost in translation.  The best is when you have a whole conversation and you think the other person is understanding you and you go on and on and finally ask them how they feel about something and they’re like, “Um, yes.”

-Ever notice that when you are staying in a hotel and you call to get a wake-up call you are so nice about it?  “Excuse me, can we get a wake-up call in room 1912 for 9am?  Thanks so much, have a great night.”  But when the phone rings the next morning at 9am when you’ve only been in bed for two hours you pick up like, “Who the fuck are you and how dare you call me so goddamn early!”

-Every once in a while we would run into girls at a club that spoke a little bit of English.  Thinking we were very creative Americans, whenever we encountered this but wanted to talk about the girls without them understanding, we simply talked like Jay-Z or Snoop, that way the locals wouldn’t understand us.  I was like, “Hey Brian, dizyou thiznink thizose hizzoes izare hiznot?”  And Brian would say, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

-I traveled with five other guys and we brought six cameras wherever we went.  So then we had to ask someone to stand there and take pictures of the six of us with all of the cameras.  It’s funny because when you’re standing there, all you really care about is that the picture taken with your camera comes out.  For all the other ones you’re making funny faces and punching the other guys in the balls.

-One guy had the most annoying camera.  You know that camera that flashes once but then doesn’t take the actual picture until like ten seconds later?  Everyone starts to leave and then the second flash goes off and you’re like “Ohhh, I wasn’t even looking!”

-I got a fake tattoo on the beach in Rio.  The woman said it was Chinese for the letter “K.”  I’m pretty sure it was Portuguese for “I just hosed you.”

-Surprisingly, my friends and I, being the drunken former frat boys that we are, did fairly well with the local women.  Well, it took us a few days.  You see, “What’s up” in Portuguese is “Tudo bem.”  Since Brazilian chicks are infinitely nicer that New York chicks, if you say what’s up to them they are generally responsive.  Unfortunately, for the first couple of days we were mistakenly saying “Todo bang,” which translates roughly into “Let’s all fuck.”

-There are a lot of nude beaches in Rio, which was very very nice.  The only thing is, it’s kind of hard to kick game to a girl on a nude beach.  That’s because, for guys, our two primary goals – getting a girl naked and lying down – are already accomplished before we’ve even said anything.  You have to start all the way at step three, i.e. “todo bang.”  Needless to say, after a while we went back to the regular beach.

-After night after night of trying to communicate in broken Spanish, you start to forget some people speak English.  One day I needed a pen so I asked Brian, “Tiene una pluma?” and made the international sign for writing.  He was like, “I speak English you fuck!”  Oh, yeah, forgot about that.

-In the end, I think we changed Rio for the better.  One night at a bar I took a particularly nasty tequila shot and proceeded to boot all over the floor.  I lift my head and literally the entire bar was staring at me, laughing and cheering.  I guess they don’t have fraternities in Brazil.  Also, in the hotel we stayed in, the staff eventually got used to us barging in to the 6am breakfast buffet straight from the bar.  By the last night the hotel had manned the buffet with a bartender, security guard, and janitor with mop and bucket, just for us.  Needless to say, they were all needed!

-I’ve noticed that airport security coming into the United States is a lot tougher than when leaving it.  When I came back to the US they asked me a million questions and searched my bags.  When I left the US they were like, “Are you a bad guy?  No?  Good.”

-And everyone always make such a big deal about the duty-free shop.  “We have to go to the duty-free shop, we just gotta!  There’s no duty!”  Since when was duty such a problem?  I never noticed duty before.  I don’t pick up a pair of jeans at the mall and say “Oh wow, there’s way too much duty on this!”  I guess they can get you to believe anything when you’re trapped in an airport all day.

-As if Rio wasn’t enough, instead of coming home to New York, we flew from Brazil to Miami to spend a few more days on vacation in South Beach.  We stayed at a hotel called the Delano, which I didn’t know beforehand was THE hot hotel in South Beach.  It was fucking ridiculous.  You needed to be on a list to get a chair at the pool!  There was a bouncer there with a clipboard and everything, even though we were guests at the hotel!  The bouncer asked if we knew anyone so I dropped my own name.  It didn’t work.

-When we finally made it to the pool, I can honestly say it was one of the most ridiculous scenes I have ever seen.  Money being thrown everywhere.  Topless fake breasts everywhere.  I swear it was right out of a P. Diddy video.  It was awesome.

-Speaking of P. Diddy, I was thinking the other day that the way he dresses now is kind of like the way I dressed in 7th grade.  You know, he’s got the hat that’s too big, t-shirt that’s too long, old school Nikes.  Yeah, just like me, um, except for the twelve Lamborghinis.

-So all in all, it was a vacation to remember.  The kind of vacation where the guy at the photo shop gives you a smirk when he gives you your pictures back.  The kind of vacation where you only tell your parents half of what really happened.  The kind of vacation where you need a vacation when you come back.  And the kind of vacation that you’ll never forget… but you can’t remember a thing!

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

-When you walk into an apartment, don’t you immediately assess whether or not it is nicer than yours and then say, “Um, if you don’t mind me asking, how much do you pay?”

-I hate bar soap.  There’s just something about bar soap.  You know when you’re in a bathroom and you’re washing up and you’re looking for the liquid soap and you just can’t find it but then you look to the left and spot the dish?  The dish with the slimy bar soap just marinating there?  First you have to pick it up and wash off the slime and the last person’s grime.  Then you have to somehow manage to lather up your hands without that slippery sucker flying out of control.  And finally you have to try to put it back in the dish without making a mess all over the sink.  Bar soap is a disaster waiting to happen!

-This week would have been my first week back at school.  Oh college, how I miss you!  I’ve found that college kids assume that anyone who looks remotely like they are between sixteen and twenty-five years old is also in college.  I was visiting my sister at school and her friend asked me what college I go to.  I was like, “Well, I graduated two years ago from Penn.”  He was like “Oh, sorry to hear that.”  Like I died or something!

-Do any other recent alumni out there get the feeling that if they applied to their alma mater now they would get rejected in a heartbeat?

-I don’t think there is any more dramatic change than from your senior year in college to your first year of work.  I really feel for all of you out there who just graduated and are now relegated to a cubicle of doom.  But don’t worry, “grabbing a drink after work” is just as fun as “let’s throw a ten-keg jam.”  Yeah right, suckers!

-Some people I know say that they get way more hungover now than when they did in college.  That’s because you have to get up at 7am to go to work!  Remember 7am in college?  You got up, took a piss, took three Tylenol and went back to sleep for ten hours!

-But look on the bright side.  At least now that you’re working you have something to take a break from when the weekend comes along.  In college you were like, “Ah, Friday, thank God!  Now I can take a break from…um…partying?”

-Ever notice that whenever there is an empty space in a room or house, a college kid will always say, “Hey, let’s put a bar there!”

-College kids have such a warped sense of morality.  I love hearing college kids complain about how much college sucks now compared to when I went.  They’re like, “Yeah, it sucks because they won’t let freshman into the bars anymore and they arrested that guy who makes fake IDs and the liquor store won’t sell beer if you’re underage!”  I’m like, um, you do realize that all of those things are illegal, right?

-Sometimes I wish I went to a bigger school than Penn.  Because I’ve pretty much met all the cute girls that I went to school with.  My buddy Claudio went to Michigan and now he runs into hot chicks in New York that he graduated with but had never even heard of before!  Damn, I’m completely tapped out!

-Now that my sister is happily a junior at Dartmouth, I can relay a funny story about us.  When she was applying to a different school, I drove her to an interview at some alum’s house and then waited in the den.  A young woman came in, only a few years older than me, and started to chat.  Since the alumni interviewer was fairly old, I asked her if she was his daughter.  She responded, “No, actually, I’m his girlfriend.”  Can you guess if my sister got in?

-Have you ever gone to your local deli or pizza place and the owner of the place is there that day and all of a sudden the workers aren’t as talkative and they give you less food?

-You know in some fast food restaurants they have those tiny cups that you squeeze the ketchup in to?  Can you tell me why they can’t make the cups a little bigger?  Now I have to fill up ten of the cups just to get enough and then carry them to the table by sticking each of my fingertips into the ketchup.  There’s got to be a better way!

-My mom is always “finishing the roll.”  Her camera has twenty-seven pictures, she’s only taken fifteen of them, but she really wants to get them developed, so she’s snapping pictures of me in the kitchen, the front door of our house, the lawn, our neighbors’ car.  In all of our family albums, half the pictures are of us and the other half are of inanimate objects that she finished the roll with.

-Does anyone ever get through without being told “All representatives are currently assisting other callers”?  What about the very first guy who calls at the beginning of the day?

-I just got a new pair of sneakers.  One problem, though.  The laces are way too long.  It seems like the last five pairs of sneakers I bought have about two feet too much lace on each side.  I can’t make a normal human bow with these things!  I think they give you just enough laces to tie your sneakers so that you have enough left over to hang yourself after you keep tripping all over the place.

-I fight a daily struggle.  I battle in the morning and I fight again at night.  It is my own personal war to keep the top of the toothpaste tube clean.  You know when you get a new tube you make that sort of silent promise to yourself that you are going to keep it clean this time?  But sure enough, two weeks later you’re just screwing the cap right back on to the overflow so that it squirts everywhere.  Damn you Crest, damn you!

-Do you have that really cool white shirt that you wear a lot less than you want to?  That’s because when you put it on to go out, you know that no matter what, you’re gonna have to get it dry cleaned.  I have this great white shirt, but the morning after I wear it, I always find it on my floor with like a red splotch on the front and a tread mark on the back.

-OK, this is a subtle one.  Have you ever put your arm around someone or held someone’s hand and then it becomes sort of awkward to let go?  You kind of pretend like you need the hand for something else and kind of let go real quick?

-Ever notice that in every news story about the stock market plummeting they show a picture of a trader on the floor of the NYSE holding his hand on this head and looking all dismayed?  Is this supposed to paint an accurate picture of how the market as a whole is feeling?  I always think, for God’s sake, the guy in the picture could just really have to take a crap or something!

-This is a public service announcement for the makers of Skyy Blue, Bacardi Silver, etc.: what the fuck where you thinking?  Did you even do any test marketing?  Did you really think the young urban male market of which I am a part would even so much as try your product?  Look at your commercials.  Sure, if I was at a beach party where there were chicks in bikinis around a bonfire and the only thing to drink was your product, then, yeah, I guess I might have a couple.  But that never happens!  Do yourself a favor, go back to the drawing board, and then come back with the same product, only target it to a different audience.  And definitely change the name.  How about this?  “Chick Drink.”

-You know who pisses me off?  People playing pool at crowded bars.  They always give you that dirty look when they’re trying to shoot because you’re standing behind them.  Listen buddy, I came to drink, not watch you play your girlfriend in pool which you suck at anyway.  Hey, want a Skyy Blue?

-And, finally, I just enrolled in a new health insurance plan.  They make you choose a primary care physician.  How do they expect you to make this important choice?  From a list of literally thousands of doctors in New York, listing only name, location, and medical school they graduated from.  How the fuck am I supposed to choose a doctor from this?  So first I eliminated everyone who graduated from the Barbados School of Medicine and anything like that.  Then I just looked for the female doctor in my neighborhood with the cutest sounding name.  I chose Dr. Jamie Simpson from Duke Med.  Turns out it was an old man.  Fuck me!

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