My Fuck-It List
1. I am not going to talk any more about patenting my idea to have windshield wipers
automatically sync to the beat of the music on car stereos. It’s a great idea. But there’s just too much paperwork involved. And the lawyers at work won’t even help me. Also, even though I know this can be done, I have no idea how to do it.
2. And my other auto-enhancement idea? The Braggadocio Motorcycle Muffler that turns loud engine revs into loud phrases like, “How! You! Like! Me! Nooooowwwwwww!” and “Born To Be WIIIIILLLDDDD!—I’m not going to talk about launching that either. Look, I’m just not going to be auto-accessories magnate. I’ll just be content keeping my day job as a paralegal until I finish my screenplay.
3. Running the New York Marathon? I talk about this every November, like clockwork. All that chafing, and with these knees? Not going to happen. Fuck it.
4. Speaking of running, I’m done with the gym. FOREVER! It’s just a hot zone of germs and egotism. I’m not going to get ripped, I don’t have the patience. Nobody’s tombstone says: “Here lies Tony Abs, he had a real six-pack.” I’d rather work on my screenplay.
5. That plan where I arrange for my asshole stepfather to achieve his dream of climbing Mt Kilimanjaro—and then ruin his summit by showing up in a helicopter? Nah. The whole thing would cost about 20 grand,. I have the dough. But why ruin the other climbers’ triumph for my dick-move moment of glory?
6. My Kickstarter idea to fund the greatest supergroup of all-time-Steve Perry, Michael Bolton, Tony DeFranco and Billy Joel—you know, The Sound Gods? Ixnay on that ever happening. Like anybody’s really going to help me raise ten million dollars. Nobody wanted to invest a penny in my windshield wiper idea.
7. You know how garbage trucks and idiots with giant car stereos often wake you up early during that critical hangover recovery zone from 6-9 a.m.? Birds are even worse. They’re up tweeting and cawing at six in morning every day—unlike the garbage trucks, which only rumble down my block three times a week. And birds don’t just drive away after waking you up. No, they stay in their frigging nests making a racket! So, relocating to the peace and quiet of the country? How about never!
8. I’m junking my novel. That thing has been distracting me from my screenplay, which is really amazing. I don’t even know what I was thinking with that book—a coming-of-age story about a teen who invents things and has an asshole stepfather who mocks his creations, including a portable plastic finger to help little kids tie their shoelaces. The finger is attached to an adjustable wire bracelet that fits around the toe of your shoe and extends to the top of your laces, where, if you angle it right, the finger can hold down the laces while a little kid can make a bow. It’s really a great invention, even though everyone eventually learns how to tie shoelaces without itAnyway, one day, our hero comes home from school and finds this stepfather having a heart attack. Being a good Boy Scout, he administers CPR and saves the old man. Then, when his stepdad recovers and is still an asshole, the protagonist is more miserable than ever. But then he meets a girl, an exchange student from Sweden, and falls in love, until the girl develops a fatal disease. Anyway, now it has a really happy ending—it’s in my trash folder and I feel effing great!
9. I am not going to talk about my screenplay anymore until it's done. Fuck it! I'll recap it here and then, cone of silence! It’s about a paralegal who falls in love with a Russian stripper in Brooklyn. To get her attention, he gets a fake ear from a mail-order prosthetics website and puts a bandage around his head. When he gives her the ear, she sees his bandaged head and thinks he’s Van Goghed himself. She freaks out, screaming. The paralegal pulls off his bandage, to show her he was just kidding. But she’s even more freaked out by that. Meanwhile, the Russian mobsters at the club are totally impressed. They think the paralegal is a badass, ear-carving motherfucker. So they give him an assignment from Putin—to deliver a human ear to Robert Mueller. When the paralegal goes to apologize to the stripper—he brings her flowers this time—she confesses she’s a double agent, who is really working for the CIA to infiltrate the Russian mob. Right now I’m almost at the part where the paralegal and the stripper have a night of unbelievable spy sex, which has to happen to set up the third act, when the paralegal eventually has to choose between saving the woman he loves or America but manages to do both in the end. Anyway, it’s a very complicated story, but very timely. I’m not going to mention it anymore, because I just want to write it, especially while Russia is in the news, and get it sold and into production.
10. I’m eighty-sixing any more rants detonated by shitty subway service that end up with me swearing to leave New York and buy an underpriced chateau in some French town that looks so French, you think it’s a movie set and not actually France. I still love this idea. But it’s stupid, too, since I still don’t speak any French other than these two words: Merde and Fini.
