#38. Do stand-up comedy- Completed 8/5/10

Public speaking is the number one fear for most people alive today.

That is precisely why I had performing stand-up as one of my list items. I guess I also fancy myself as a funny person. The first thing I had to do was to find locations that had an open mic night. This is when they allow newcomers to get about 5 minutes of stage time at a bar.

I found a place near Nashville by the name of Rusty Nail. I know, it sounds like a rough place.

They, generally, have this event on Thursday nights. I signed up and invited a bunch of my friends and family. If I was going down I wanted everyone to at least be able to laugh at how atrocious my set was.

The next thing I had to do before the big night was to get together some original jokes. This proved to be an easier task than I realized. It was only 5 minutes. It wasn’t as if I was doing an hour long special on Comedy Central. I would write down the jokes to get the wording correct and then I would say them aloud.

A couple of them were quite a bit funnier in my head than when they were said out loud. I read everything I could online about how to prepare and making sure my jokes tied in smoothly.

The big night finally came. There was about 45 people at the bar this particular night, half of which came to see me. I couldn’t let everyone down.

I signed up and was about the 15^th comic to come onstage. When my time came I went up there with the light shining in my eyes and did fairly well for my first time trying it. I can now say from experience what it feels like to stand on a stage and make an entire room laugh. (not sure if they were laughing at me or with me)

Sample joke from my set that night:

Identity thieves are getting really smart these days. They are everywhere too. I picture them like a loan officer screening possible clients. They wouldn’t want my identity though. They would be going through the stack.

 “Yeah hers is good. He has a good one. Definitely take his.”

 Then they get to mine.

“What is this? I can’t buy a tote-the-note ’86 Bronco with this.”

 I am so broke and in debt I wish they would steal me an identity.

 At least somebody with food stamps, so I could eat something other than Ramen for dinner…..and lunch….sometimes breakfast.

Not my funniest joke, but defintiely the cleanest, so I felt it was most appropriate to post.

#48. Give $100 to random stranger-Completed 4/20/10

I decided to do this while $100 was still a lot of money to me. My thinking was I would remember it better and it would have more of an effect on me now, rather than waiting until I was forty and a multi-millionaire (Me being ambitious).

So one cold, dreary night my girlfriend and I decided to eat dinner at Cracker Barrel. I decided upon my usual, lemon-peppered trout with turnip greens, apple sauce, and macaroni cheese. I do not exactly remember what my girlfriend had. It was most likely a vegetable plate or something really girly.

I can’t remember our server’s name, but I can describe her pretty good. She was an older lady with long hair, which was in the middle stages of it turning gray. She was really nice, but she seemed to me as if she had had a bad day.

She took really good care of us and kept my drink full, which can be a job in itself because I love sweet tea and you quickly realize this when I have it in front of me.

We got the bill and at Cracker Barrel you have to go to the front to pay it. I went up front and gave the lady my bank card to pay for the meal. She ran it and gave me the slip to sign.

The bill was $19.83. On the tip line, I put 100.00. It hurt me so much to put that number down in that particular spot. I gave it back to the cashier and she looked up at me in surprise. I said it is right and turned to leave out the door.

My girlfriend asked what I had tipped her. I said that “I painfully regret to inform her that the $100 dollars to a random stranger can be checked off.”

My thought about it meaning more when I was/am broke was true. I am sure that the lady needed the money or she would not have been at work. I also hope that it helped to make her day just a little bit better.

#46. Get in a pool at the mall- Completed 4/6/10

This is the first item that I completed on my list. I completely realize that it is ridiculous to have this as an item to complete before dying, but it always seemed like it would be fun.

There was an expo at the mall that is located near my house. A couple of my friends and I decided to go. Once there we walked around and acted extremely immature as males do when they are together without a female presence.

I had told my friends about this list that I had started and a couple of them had looked at it. It puts things into perspective when you have to think that all of us will die someday and there just happen to be some stuff that we all dream/aspire to accomplish.

Well, we were at this expo and one of them mentioned that one of my items listed was to jump into the pool at the mall. It is actually a fountain, but I intended to swim a little while I was in there, so I called it a pool.

As I prepared myself to make the leap of faith, it required me to remove my shoes. I was wearing slippers at the time and I did not want to lose them with the perfect 10 olympic style dive that I was about to do into the fountain.

I looked around to make sure I knew where the security guards and exits were because I did not want to go to jail so early on in my completion of list items. If you check the list you will see that spending a night in jail is one of the items, however I was not in the "kill two birds with one stone mood." Historically speaking, I am an underachiever, and I like things that are constant.

After removing my slippers, looking for security guards and exits, it was time to make the dive. I began running toward the fountain and as I got there instead of jumping I ran around it.

Everyone with me thought that I had backed out at the last possible second, not the case. You cannot jump into bodies of water with a wallet and phone with the expectation of it all coming out dry. I subsequently gave all of my personal belongings to a friend. Afterward, he became embarassed because he realized everyone saw him talking to me and I was about to cause quite a scene.

Round two: this time i take off running and as I approach the fountain/pool I let out a barbaric scream that causes everyone to look at me as I land into the water. My reasoning was that I wanted everyone to enjoy this moment just as much as me.

After swimming around for a couple moments and watching the security guards converge upon me, I got out of the water and made my way to an exit that I had scouted before getting wet.

The security guards chased me all the way out into the parking lot, but were unsuccessful in catching the mall pool diving bandit. MUAAAHHHH!!!

Lovely and refreshing start toward me having a successfull life.

My Before I Croak List

Before I Croak List

These items are in no particular order.

1.       Visit all 50 states and their capitals.

2.       Scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef.

3.       Visit all 7 continents.

4.       Start a business.

5.       Go skydiving.

6.       Swim with dolphins.

7.       Go down into a shark cage.

8.       Learn to surf and surf a big wave.

9.       Buy my parents a house.

10.   Become a millionaire.

11.   Publish a book.

12.   Learn Spanish.

13.   Learn to play piano.

14.   Get escorted out of a mall.

15.   Go to the Olympics.

16.   Be an extra in a movie.

17.   Watch all 100 of the AMC top movies.

18.   Climb Mt. Everest.

19.   White water raft a class 5 rapid.

20.   Go base jumping.

21.   Backpack across Europe.

22.   Go on a submarine.

23.   Help a make-a-wish dream come true.

24.   Hike in the Amazon rainforest.

25.   Ride a horse on the beach.

26.   Ride an Ostrich/Elephant/Bull/Giraffe.

27.   NYC for New Years Eve.

28.   Las Vegas for New Years Eve.

29.   Run a marathon.

30.   Give money to a single mother in need.

31.   Start a charity.

32.   Ride in a hot air balloon.

33.   Send a message in a bottle.

34.   Get my pilot’s license.

35.   Type 50 words a minute.

36.   Teach a college course.

37.   Make someone else a millionaire.

38.   Do stand-up comedy. 8/5/10

39.   Learn sign language.

40.   Take dance lessons in several forms of dance.

41.   Fly a helicopter.

42.   Experience weightlessness.

43.   Visit the new 7 wonders of the world and what is left of the old.

44.   Hike down the Grand Canyon.

45.   Go on a cruise.

46.   Get in a pool at the mall. 4/6/10

47.   Give more than I can afford to a charity.

48.   Give $100 to random stranger. 4/20/10

49.   Buy a stranger a meal at a restaurant.

50.   Learn a martial art.

51.   Run for a political office.

52.   Fly first-class in an airplane.

53.   Spend a night in jail.

54.   Donate blood.

55.   See Old Faithful geyser erupt.

56.   Go to a restaurant eat only bread and drink water and tip server big.

57.   Get a pedicure/manicure/massage.

58.   Be vegetarian for a year.

59.   Stay in a 5 star hotel.

60.   Go bungee jumping.

61.   Go skinny dipping.

62.   Shower in a waterfall.

63.   Learn to juggle.

64.   Give a speech to over 25,000.

65.   Start film production company and make a film.

66.   Be homeless for a night.

67.   Learn to say hello in over 20 languages.

68.   Make parents dreams come true.

69.   Visit cancer patients.

70.   Put a homeless person up in a room for a night.

71.   Get my parents to stop smoking.

72.   Take a poor family to Disney World.

73.   Witness a live birth.

74.   See a volcano and flowing lava.

75.   Win a photography competition.

76.   Swim in all the Oceans.

77.   Eat dinner with a random Italian family.

78.   Walk across America-coast to coast

79.   Go to a haunted house-Ghost hunting trip.

80.   Witness/chase a tornado.

81.   Complete an iron man race.

82.   Backpack in the Rockies.

83.   Ride a tandem bike.

84.   Spend a night in a cave.

85.   Ride a motorcycle across America.

86.   Learn to sail.

87.   Coach a youth football team.

88.   Take my dad fishing somewhere he hasn’t been.

89.   Catch a large game fish 500lb.

90.   Own a restaurant/club.

91.   Help Jessie start a Fashion company.

92.   Be on cover of a magazine.

93.   Take at least one class at an Ivy League school.

94.   Start my own Hedge Fund.

95.   Take and pass all of my financial certifications.

96.   Win an academic prize Pulitzer/Nobel.

97.   Attend all major championships for sports.

98.   Go entire length of the 5 biggest rivers.

99.   Crowd dive.

100.  Swim with a whale shark.

101.  Plant a tree.

102. Get in the Guinness Book of World Records.

103.  Apply for The Amazing Race.

104. Become a friend with someone in jail.

105.  Put a video on Youtube and get 100,000 views.

106.  Walk on hot coal.

This is my first post. This blog will be about my life. It will be a way of me trying to quantify whether or not I have given back, while also consuming my fair share. I will be constantly updating my before I croak list as I am able to cross things off and maybe even think of new items.