-While in Columbus, Ohio for a show earlier this year, I went into a 7-Eleven in the middle of the afternoon and tried to buy one beer.  The clerk looked at me like I had three heads and told me I had to buy the whole six-pack.  I tried to explain to him that in New York City you can buy as few beers as you want in the local delis.  He wouldn’t have it.  I think he might have even muttered “cheap bastard” as I walked out, six-pack in hand.  But the fact is, budgeting is a survival skill that all twentysomethings must master.  That’s why we show up five minutes early for open bars and collect dimes and quarters in an empty forty sitting on the coffee table.  Without our parents’ dole anymore, times are tight.  Those coins are more than just a future six-pack – they’re winds of change.

-If you’ve just graduated college, by now you’ve begun wrangling with the landlord of your shitty-ass off-campus apartment to give you back your security deposit.  I’ll never forget the invoice my nine housemates and I received the summer after graduation.  It listed as damages left behind: “holes the size of people” and “bags full of piss and beer.”  We got 200 bucks back.  Total.

-I hypothesize that the amount of money that chicks spend on clothes, waxing, shoes, and handbags is roughly equivalent to the amount of money that dudes spend on chicks.  If guys were actually into shopping, it’d throw off the whole balance.  But we’re definitely not.  Case in point: at the airport on the way to Columbus, I showed my driver’s license with a photo of me taken in 1996 at the checkpoint.  I looked down and realized I was wearing the exact same shirt I was wearing in the picture.

-Everyone’s got the figure-out-the-check guy in their group of friends.  As soon as the check comes after a big dinner, I immediately pass it to either Brian or Triplet #2.  It is their sacred responsibility to divide up the bill among a dozen drunken idiots who all either only have twenties or want to pay with a credit card.  And without fail, after all the money is counted, figure-out-the-check guy will have to yell out, “OK, who didn’t pay?  Hello?  Yo!  Guys!  Who the fuck didn’t pay!?”