-Like many twentysomethings, I get a little depressed around the end of the year.  I look back and think, shit, what the hell have I been doing with myself for the past twelve months?  I feel like I sat down to watch the Super Bowl, drank fifteen beers, and next thing I knew it was July 4th.  The fireworks were sub-par, I drank another fifteen beers, and woke up on Thanksgiving.  I think that the best way to combat my depression (besides another fifteen beers) is to take a light-hearted look back at 2005.  This is my Year in Review.

-The year started ominously enough with a gig at the Ft. Lauderdale Improv in which a guy in the first row walked out right in the middle.  Actually, he didn’t walk out.  He rolled out.  In a motorized wheelchair.  Because he was eighty years old.  Apparently he was offended by my joke about experimenting with progressively thinner condoms until finding a brand so thin it carried the warning label: “Not for use with cock.”

-I did notice one particularly salient trend in my travels – people tend to get blindingly drunk at my shows.  For example, the guy in the audience at Emory who, when I asked him what his zodiac sign was, responded, “I don't even know what's going on right now.”  But that doesn’t compare to the chick who got so housed at my show at the New York Improv that, after being asked to leave by the club manager, turned around and clocked the manager in the face.  Four cops arrived on the scene, arrested her, cuffed her, and took her away in a police car as the crowd cheered her removal.  Only one word could describe my reaction to someone getting that fucked up: Impressed.

-One of my favorite parts about writing this column is hearing funny stories from the friends I frequently mention in it.  Like in Ruminations #73 when I wrote that my buddy Triplet #1 prefers hooking up with younger girls.  The Triplets’ dad read the column, called up one of his sons and asked accusingly, “Are you Triplet #1?”  And his son responded, “Dad, I’m Triplet #2, have you not realized it’s in birth order?”