Ah, the end of yet another year. As usual, it’s time for me to reflect on how I want to live the next set of 12 months. Over the past few years, I have written some resolutions – promises of things to do in order to change the world, or at least a small part of it. If you’d like to refresh yourself on my past unfulfilled commitments, they can be found on my “columns” page. But be forewarned, you won’t find check marks next to any items.
True, I rarely come through on these resolutions. But that’s the good, old-fashioned American way. If it were fashionable to stick to these things, we wouldn’t be the fattest country in the universe. If you’re reading this eating Oreos while your dog naps on your rusty treadmill, I’m talking to you. But since you’re reading, here you go….
Things to do in 2006…
- Ask every professional sports league to fine any player $1,000 each time he says, “You know what I’m sayin’?” during an interview and reward any reporter who answers, “No.”
- Recognizing that reverse psychology may be the obvious solution to our border issues, convince thousands of Americans to sneak into Mexico.
- Realizing my tendency to gullibly follow trendy scares, rent out the underground bunker I built for the Y2K crisis, and stock it with the canned food I bought waiting for a mad cow pandemic.
- Prepare for the Avian Flu pandemic.
- Become the last American under the age of 35 to sign up on My Space.
- Figure out what to feed this British penguin I got for Christmas.
- Lobby for a law that requires the National Anthem to either be sung in its traditional manner, or if altered, sung under three minutes. People are tuning in to watch a sporting event, not to listen to some pompous, self-absorbed Grammy winner butcher Francis Scott Key’s masterpiece.
- Break my distance record of 33 feet on an interstate run-away truck ramp.
- Put spinner hubcaps my Saturn station wagon to confuse people on whether they should laugh, or laugh really hard.
- Sell cheaper, bootleg concessions inside movie theatres.
- Whenever music begins to play on the Starbucks in-store radio, stop telling people, “I fucking love this song!”
- Stop telling my nephews that Harry Potter is a terrorist.
- Get philosophy professors to switch out the chicken-or-the-egg debate for the more updated question: “Did recording labels and concert organizers price gouge fans after the popularity of file sharing to compensate for lost income, or did the popularity of file sharing surge after fans became fed up with being price gouged?”
- Buy an X-Box. Solve for X.
- Identify the parents of all those sick children who send out mass emails across the country. Politely suggest that they ask for something besides greeting cards to break a world record. Rather, get them to pursue a feat that will garner more attention. For example, a mouthful of cigarettes or a beard of bees.
- Punch George Steinbrenner right between the eyes or on the middle of his three sixes, whichever is more accessible.
- Take dance lessons from an i-Pod shadow.
- Donate to charity without displaying the need to wear a colorful bracelet, a.k.a. a self-issued, public pat on the back.
- Write to the Washington Post to express my disappointment that their “Deep Throat” source was a man.
- Never use steroids. Period. Never.
- Write a screenplay for lesbian cowgirls. Title it Arched-Back Mountain.
- Program Tivo to record “Reality TV that doesn’t suck”. Take bets on the over/under time of that recording… 2 minutes.
- Write the family of Ray Charles, expressing my pleasure in the movie portraying his life as a grieving sibling and struggling artist turned superstar turned drug addict with a crumbling marriage who’s able to turn his ways around. Write the family of Johnny Cash with a note saying “See letter to the Ray Charles family.”
As you can see, there’s plenty to keep me busy in 2006, so I better get cracking. The upcoming year is going to be an exciting one. Thanks for following my career via this website. I hope you continue to do so. Now go dust off that treadmill. And don’t step on the dog, fatty.
On a serious note… here’s to 2006… the year of the Mets and the mighty Commodores. May all of you have success, however you personally define it (unless you’re al Qaeda or the University of Tennessee). All the best for a kick-ass, banner year, everybody!!!