As we near four in the morning, the end of December, I find myself in the same frame of mind that greets me this time every year. Taking stock not of the things done but the things not yet accomplished. The things I keep meaning to do when I have the time or the money or enough connections in law enforcement. Every year, I'm surprised to find yet another ambition I've almost completely forgotten about, as if I'm failing even to retain my dreams, much less attain them.
The attrition stops here. This year, I'm going to start a list, and I plan to add to it annually, so there's a record of everything I've meant to do, whether done or undone. Please feel free to use the comments section to share some of your ambitions for the coming year (and years) and to suggest some goals for me as well, and I'll be happy to include them in a follow-up post.
Things I Want to Do When I Grow Up:
I want to spend an entire day in single entendre.I want to send massive Christmas gift packages from Omaha Steak to vegetarian families to let them know there's nowhere to hide.
I want to be appointed National Breast Examiner and be given a badge and perpetually warm hands.
I want to go to the deli and order some genoa salami, and when the slicer lady asks me, "How thin do you want that cut, sir?" I'll hold up my finger and thumb about two inches apart, and when she slices it and hands it to me, I'll say, "MEAT PUCK" and stick the whole thing in my mouth.
I would like to slamdance with gleeful abandon, teased hair and sexless joy like a 1980s girl pop singer, celebrating how, despite misunderstandings between my parents and myself, I still had a great day.
I want to have Milos Forman film me having sex in a way that is not filthy but both beautiful and authentic for the period, so that I can take the tape to my ex-girlfriends and say, "Yes, I got much better at it."
If challenged, I want license to be able to prove this.
I want to swim in a kidney-shaped pool, only the difference is that the pool will be made not of poured concrete but fused polymer-preserved kidneys of various species, including human.
I want to break into their record company and change the master recordings of every one of Radiohead's post-OK Computer albums to OK Computer.
I want to become the next Zach Braff and create a film filled with songs by bands named [Artice]+[Plural Noun], crotch-height perspective and a large geographical metaphor for myself.
I want to fake the deaths of a role-playing gamer nerd's family, and before he can ask any questions, I'll hand him an Amazon Kindle and make him read 15 straight pages of bullshit about the land he came from and what his dad's name was and what street he lives on. And when he tries to grab the phone and call the police, I'll slap it right out of the bitch's hand and say, "YOU DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH GOLD TO PAY TO SPEAK TO A JUSTICE WIZARD." Then I'll take him out to a garage filled with a shitload of empty cardboard boxes, and arm him with an Xacto Blade, and tell him, "PERHAPS THERE IS GOLD IN THESE BLOCKS. USE YOUR SWORD TO DESTROY THE BLOCKS AND ACCUMULATE WEALTH." When he has the money, I will tell him that the goblin in whose lair we're standing doesn't trust his using the phone and, to demonstrate his fealty, he must pay a tribute of raking the leaves in the backyard. And when he's just starting to realize that he's losing weight and still hasn't avenged the death of his family, I'll say, "I BET YOU WISH YOU HAD A START BUTTON AND A BIGASS GUN AND WERE JUST SHOOTING THE BEJESUS OUT OF ALL KINDS OF SHIT RIGHT NOW, DONT YOU, YOU ELF-FONDLING DUMBASS?"
I want to counterfeit 1000 quarters that feature a picture of myself winking and doing the Fonzie snap-point and put them into circulation.
I want to heckle a pope. I don't even care if he's one of the good ones or not.
I want to have kids, a messy divorce and at least one child in the foster care system and then spend a weekend listening to Lou Reed's Berlin on a loop.
I wanna take a swing at one of those beefeater dudes because their gin sucks so bad and they think they're so hot.
I want to invent a device that claims to translate what your dog's thinking, and the only three things it'll say are, "Pay attention to me," "I'm hungry," and, "I can smell your butthole," and I'm willing to bet I can get away with it for at least a full day.
I want to become the next Zach Braff and create a film filled with songs by bands named [Artice]+[Plural Noun], crotch-height perspective and a large geographical metaphor for myself.
I want to fake the deaths of a role-playing gamer nerd's family, and before he can ask any questions, I'll hand him an Amazon Kindle and make him read 15 straight pages of bullshit about the land he came from and what his dad's name was and what street he lives on. And when he tries to grab the phone and call the police, I'll slap it right out of the bitch's hand and say, "YOU DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH GOLD TO PAY TO SPEAK TO A JUSTICE WIZARD." Then I'll take him out to a garage filled with a shitload of empty cardboard boxes, and arm him with an Xacto Blade, and tell him, "PERHAPS THERE IS GOLD IN THESE BLOCKS. USE YOUR SWORD TO DESTROY THE BLOCKS AND ACCUMULATE WEALTH." When he has the money, I will tell him that the goblin in whose lair we're standing doesn't trust his using the phone and, to demonstrate his fealty, he must pay a tribute of raking the leaves in the backyard. And when he's just starting to realize that he's losing weight and still hasn't avenged the death of his family, I'll say, "I BET YOU WISH YOU HAD A START BUTTON AND A BIGASS GUN AND WERE JUST SHOOTING THE BEJESUS OUT OF ALL KINDS OF SHIT RIGHT NOW, DONT YOU, YOU ELF-FONDLING DUMBASS?"
I want to counterfeit 1000 quarters that feature a picture of myself winking and doing the Fonzie snap-point and put them into circulation.
I want to heckle a pope. I don't even care if he's one of the good ones or not.
I want to have kids, a messy divorce and at least one child in the foster care system and then spend a weekend listening to Lou Reed's Berlin on a loop.
I wanna take a swing at one of those beefeater dudes because their gin sucks so bad and they think they're so hot.
I want to invent a device that claims to translate what your dog's thinking, and the only three things it'll say are, "Pay attention to me," "I'm hungry," and, "I can smell your butthole," and I'm willing to bet I can get away with it for at least a full day.
I want to belch in front of a group of people and have the A Current Affair sound effect come out of my mouth.
I want to move to a garret apartment in New York City and live with a woman and drink heavily for a month before grabbing my hair and shrieking, "I cannot CREATE! You are CHOKING ME!" and fling my manuscript out the window and to the streets blow, yelling, "SHIT! SHIT! IT'S SHIIIIIIIIT," and then it will turn out that all 250 pages of it were just the Wikipedia entry for "Shit" printed over and over and over.
I want to be slowly making my way to my seat at a baseball game and tilt my hand too far to one side or the other and accidentally drop an entire mustard-smeared footlong hot dog into the cleavage of a city councilwoman.
I want to do a massive bong-rip of frankincense in front of a community center nativity scene while wearing a giant black shirt that reads, "Lil John 3:16, SMOKE MYRRH EVERY DAY."
I want to move to a garret apartment in New York City and live with a woman and drink heavily for a month before grabbing my hair and shrieking, "I cannot CREATE! You are CHOKING ME!" and fling my manuscript out the window and to the streets blow, yelling, "SHIT! SHIT! IT'S SHIIIIIIIIT," and then it will turn out that all 250 pages of it were just the Wikipedia entry for "Shit" printed over and over and over.
I want to be slowly making my way to my seat at a baseball game and tilt my hand too far to one side or the other and accidentally drop an entire mustard-smeared footlong hot dog into the cleavage of a city councilwoman.
I want to do a massive bong-rip of frankincense in front of a community center nativity scene while wearing a giant black shirt that reads, "Lil John 3:16, SMOKE MYRRH EVERY DAY."
I want to film an old-west standoff that's decided by a DDR contest.
I want to park a semi truck in someone's front yard, and when they open the back of the truck, a clown car will come out, and when they Jaws of Life the car open, they'll find a safe that they'll have to crack to reveal a set of Russian nesting dolls and inside the very last one will be a tiny iPod whose only content is a video of me FUCKING SHREDDING.
I want to paint an enormous flaming penis on the underside of the world's largest commercial jetliner.
I want to go to a restaurant that sells a $100-or-if-you-eat-it-all-it's-free gargantuan novelty hamburger and conspicuously fill up on bread before it even gets to my table.
I want to park a semi truck in someone's front yard, and when they open the back of the truck, a clown car will come out, and when they Jaws of Life the car open, they'll find a safe that they'll have to crack to reveal a set of Russian nesting dolls and inside the very last one will be a tiny iPod whose only content is a video of me FUCKING SHREDDING.
I want to paint an enormous flaming penis on the underside of the world's largest commercial jetliner.
I want to go to a restaurant that sells a $100-or-if-you-eat-it-all-it's-free gargantuan novelty hamburger and conspicuously fill up on bread before it even gets to my table.
I want to go on a blind date with a woman, and while in my 1984 primer-coated Buick Skylark, apropos of nothing, slide a pair of semicircular quasi-metal mirror shades onto my face, boldly say, "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads," and violently drop the tranny right out of the sonofabitch.
I want to right at least one wrong of grave-robbing by committing a random act of grave-donating.
I want to own a cheap sedan and dig a shallow trench in my backyard so I can thoroughly practice what I would do in case my car ever wound up teetering on a precipice.
I'll have to do some advance prep work the night before to set this up, but I want to show up at a friend's house spontaneously one morning and take him out on the Gulf of Mexico for a day of drinking and deep-sea fishing while some sunburned leathery sea-dog pilots the boat around and then suddenly shatters our boozy reverie by yelling, "There's something on the sonar! And it's big! I think it's metal!" Then he'll throw a hook overboard and down 150 feet or something and pull up this giant antique chest, and we'll put it on the deck. And before we open it, I'll explain the law of salvage and say that whatever we find, we should split it three ways, to be fair, and that we'll all be partners, and I'll shake the pilot and my friend's hands solemnly. And then I'll let my friend do the honors of opening up the chest, and he'll get out the crowbar and bust it wide open, only to discover there's a shark in it.
I want to right at least one wrong of grave-robbing by committing a random act of grave-donating.
I want to own a cheap sedan and dig a shallow trench in my backyard so I can thoroughly practice what I would do in case my car ever wound up teetering on a precipice.
I'll have to do some advance prep work the night before to set this up, but I want to show up at a friend's house spontaneously one morning and take him out on the Gulf of Mexico for a day of drinking and deep-sea fishing while some sunburned leathery sea-dog pilots the boat around and then suddenly shatters our boozy reverie by yelling, "There's something on the sonar! And it's big! I think it's metal!" Then he'll throw a hook overboard and down 150 feet or something and pull up this giant antique chest, and we'll put it on the deck. And before we open it, I'll explain the law of salvage and say that whatever we find, we should split it three ways, to be fair, and that we'll all be partners, and I'll shake the pilot and my friend's hands solemnly. And then I'll let my friend do the honors of opening up the chest, and he'll get out the crowbar and bust it wide open, only to discover there's a shark in it.