Shell Out

Money can buy the world and sell the soul. But can it also buy happiness?

What is the price of making dreams come true? Can they be bought with money, or do they require something worse?

After spending his childhood living in poverty, Greg decides he’s ready for the American Dream: he’ll furnish his apartment with lavish items, find the perfect girl to share it with, and become a bigger success than his father has ever been. With the right plan, he can make it all happen.

But as Greg enters college, he discovers that life’s nurturing tentacles don’t care about his plans, or his dreams. It just wants his money, all of it, and it will stop at nothing to take everything he owns, even his underwear, if it can help it.

Can Greg survive this financial onslaught? Or will life fry his piggy bank into bacon?

Shell Out is the humorous story of a college student’s battle with those pesky opposing forces that plague us all: life and desire, ambition and contentment, dreams and reality. It’s the story of anyone who’s ever had to fend for himself in the real world but wasn’t sure if he’d ever make it. Greg’s farcical journey to tame his wallet and fulfill his dreams drags him through the common struggles of young adulthood, like figuring out how to survive a Friday night on a ten-dollar bill, taking jobs that only desperate loons would take, and working toward a better life to win the heart of a girl.

The question is, are his efforts worth it, or is he just chasing yesterday’s American Dream?

For those thirty and older who wish to remember their own crazy experiences as a twentysomething, Greg’s strange odyssey of economic survival is a comedy. For those currently living the twentysomething life, or are about to approach it, Greg’s journey is a horror story.

Shell Out is a lot like adulthood: a scary comedy that forces us to question our life’s ambitions.