-The year 2006 was one of firsts for me.  I touched my first pair of fake breasts.  I used a semicolon correctly for the first time.  I discovered my first gray hair (OK, my second).  During a stand-up show in Orange County, I drank too much beforehand and, for the first time in my career, had to leave the stage mid-set to break the seal.  I guess, as they say, there’s a first for everything.  But perhaps, in a larger sense, these incidents demonstrate that a year in the life of a twentysomething is not marked solely by forward progress.  Every step in the right direction is followed closely by one in the wrong direction.  For every fake breast I touched, a gray hour sprouted.  I figured out how to use semicolons, but I lost bladder control.  Yes, 2006 was a year of give and take, of good and bad, but I hope I came out ahead, if just barely.  This is my Year in Review.

-This year, I really noticed how my generation is, well, growing up.  A while back, two fans met for the first time at an event I hosted and later got married.  This year, they had their first kid (which, inexplicably, they chose not to name Karo).  Also this year, a longtime fan wrote me to say that she’d recently taken to reading my column while breastfeeding.  The fact that I’m even tangentially involved in the upbringing of these two children is an absolutely terrifying thought.  But the fact that at least one chick somewhere out there is reading this with her breasts exposed more than makes up for it.

-Some of my fondest memories of 2006 come from the road.  I’ll never forget headlining the House of Blues in Chicago – the largest, drunkest, and rowdiest crowd I’ve ever performed for.  One chick got so fucked up she vomited in the middle of the show, causing everyone around her to throw up as well, and the bar to temporarily cut off liquor sales.  I love to send my fans home laughing, but I’m happy with simply incapacitated.  

-The older I get, the more I realize that New Year’s Eve fucking sucks – but only because people treat it like an extra-special night, which it really isn’t.  On average, it’s easier for me to hook up with a chick in the middle of a bar at midnight on a normal night than it is on New Year’s, when there’s more pressure.  Nonetheless, planning for New Year’s Eve, which I’ll be spending in Los Angeles for the first time, has begun in earnest.  It’s basically game theory: wait as long as possible to decide on a venue until figuring out where the most girls are going, then pack the place so tight that the open bar is rendered inaccessible, making you wish you went somewhere else instead.  In the past few years, I’ve spent New Year’s in Manhattan, Vegas, Sydney, and even once in the hospital with appendicitis.  Honestly, I’d say it’s a four-way tie for which one was best.