The Life List: 175 Things A Man Should Do Before He Dies

1. Date an older woman.
2. Lose your virginity to an older woman.
3. Have your young and tender heart carved into bite-sized pieces, lightly salted, and chewed by an older woman.
4. Stand up to a bully.
5. Fly in a Learjet.
6. Jump out of a Cessna.
7. Talk to God.
8. Vote in anger.
9. Run for office.
10. Feel the recoil of a warm Kalashnikov.
11. Save a life.
12. Lend a hand, especially as concerns those hard-to-reach areas.
13. Shave a woman’s legs.
14. Take a schvitz.
15. Go around the world.
16. Watch scrambled porn.
17. Unplug your TV for a month.
18. Climb a mountain–not Everest–without the slightest urge to write a book about it.
19. Sail alone the ocean blue without the slightest urge to write a book about it.
20. Write a brief autobiography without the slightest urge to publish it.
21. Read the last book your wife read, unless it was by Maya Angelou. Discuss.
22. Read all the books on your “Books to read before I die” list.
23. Circumnavigate Corsica on a bright-red Ducati.
24. Learn a useless language: Dutch, say.
25. Have a hero.
26. Meet your hero.
27. Be a hero.
28. Gobble a meat-loaf sandwich at Graceland.
29. Ride a burro through the agave fields of Oaxaca.
30. Take a Greyhound from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine–and if you think your ass hurts, imagine the suffering of the guy who’s driving.
31. Work for food.
32. Assemble a rock band. Be the lead singer. Pleasure the groupies.
33. Get booed (by the audience, not the groupies).
34. Trash a hotel room, maybe one that belongs to Ian Schrager.
35. Get fired, especially (but not limited to) when you’re getting fired because you want to get fired.
36. Quit a job, loudly and righteously and with great streams of triumphant profanity.
37. Build a valuable business. Sell it. Enjoy.
38. Buy one spectacular loser of a stock–and never, ever forget it.
39. Dye your hair.
40. Change your haircut. (Not to a mullet. Nor to a caesar.)
41. Shave your head.
42. Grow a long and flowing beard.
43. Live under an assumed name, someplace far away, like the Jordanian desert, which, incidentally, is not a bad place to have a long and flowing beard. 44. Audition for something.
45. Write a poem. A haiku will suffice. Here’s one to get you started: Doggy got the mange / Biscuits rise all by theirselves / In the valley: Woo!
46. Wear a little black dress in public. (Once. And only once.)
47. Pay for sex. (Once, and only once–and don’t bargain-shop.)
48. Get paid for sex.
49. Have sex in public.
50. Sew on a button.
51. Catch a fish.
52. Read Moby Dick.
53. Fast for a week.
54. Get yourself into the best shape of your life.
55. Get fat as a house, and feel no regrets.
56. Tend bar in Nashville.
57. Wait tables in Reno.
58. Drive a cab in Boston.
59. Spend a night in the Odessa, Texas, jail.
60. Settle down.
61. Take a vow of silence for a week.
62. Leave something behind.
63. Bet everything on the trifecta at Sportsman’s Park.
64. Convene a game of Scrabble between yourself, Ivan Boesky, Stephen Hawking, and Prince. Call Prince “Prince.” (What’s he gonna do, slap you?)
65. Hit a home run.
66. Test-drive a car you can’t really afford; take up the salesman’s day with lots of questions; and, after a goodly amount of time, in class-action payback for all car buyers against all salesmen everywhere, say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
67. Go up to the hottest woman at the party (the Laetitia Casta look-alike), not the third hottest (the Illeana Douglas look-alike ), the way you usually do.
68. Assist a blind man.
69. Look a mobster in the eye.
70. Cross a police line.
71. Learn the identity of Deep Throat and whether Oswald acted alone, and take these secrets to your grave.
72. Get married.
73. Surf.
74. Buy a National guitar; learn to play it.
75. Let someone else take all the credit.
76. Get your due.
77. Blame a completely innocent bystander.
78. Take the rap.
79. Learn to sing.
80. Dance to Tito Puente.
81. Do a puzzle with a five-year-old.
82. Pay off your Visa.
83. Design a house.
84. Build the house.
85. Failing that, someday, stop renting and buy a house, say, a small wood-frame job in Asheville, North Carolina.
86. Take a year to live with the monks of Tibet.
87. Take a year to live with the girls of Voyeurdorm.com.
88. Tell the truth when you’d be better off lying.
89. Avoid lying for one whole day.
90. Take a job that involves a shovel or a hammer.
91. Drive an 18-wheeler.
92. Replace the carburetor on a small-block straight six.
93. Surpass your father at his greatest skill.
94. Make love to a woman from a foreign country. And her friend. (Simultaneously, should the opportunity arise.)
95. Become a true connoisseur of just one thing, exotic lettuces, for example. This thing–enjoy it quietly, all by yourself.
96. Sell Women’s Shoes
97. Arm-wrestle a stranger in a bar. Win.
98. Deliver a eulogy (the later in life the better).
99. Sit courtside, ringside, on the fifty, or front-row center, and then, afterward, find yourself in the locker room, backstage, in the dressing room, or at the cast party.
100. Make a toast at a wedding–a short, funny, thoughtful toast.
101. Do a spit take. (Not during the wedding toast.)
102. Once, watch yourself on television, so that you know what you look like on television. Then stop.
103. Sleep with someone you work with. In the boss’s office. Then stop.
104. Get an HIV test.
105. Change careers.
106. Change diapers.
107. Get in touch with a long-lost friend.
108. Call the person you think you’ve most wronged. Apologize.
109. Call Brown & Williamson (800-578-7453) just to hear the outgoing message, which contains this sentiment: “We’re a giant corporation, and you make us feel like a little kitten.”
110. Canoodle with an Icon
111. When appropriate, return a bottle to the sommelier. (But only when appropriate.)
112. Refuse to pay for a lousy meal.
113. Dine and dash at Brasserie Lipp. (It is owned by Frenchmen. They deserve it.)
114. Stiff a bad waiter.
115. Give a panhandler a hundred bucks.
116. Take a vacation without a camera.
117. Take a vacation without making reservations.
118. Take a vacation without a guidebook.
119. Let her drive.
120. Roast a pig.
121. Learn to play the accordion. (At your house, windows closed.)
122. Take a blond to the fights at the Garden.
123. Throw a punch.
124. Take a punch.
125. Break up a row.
126. Be the most charismatic man in the room. (Somewhere other than McSorley’s, where such a thing can be achieved most every day.)
127. Patent something.
128. In the hanging valleys of Glacier National Park, suck in great, greedy drafts of Montana air.
129. Sail, among the seals and orcas, through Alaska’s Prince William Sound from Valdez to Whittier before it’s too late.
130. See Aerosmith before it’s too late.
131. Call in to Firing Line and argue William F. Buckley Jr. into a corner, the bastard.
132. Kiss your dad.
133. Have a suit custom-made.
134. Have shoes custom-made.
135. Failing that, at least buy a really nice suit and pair of shoes.
136. Make a million dollars.
137. Pass down your favorite cuff links to your son.
138. Drink Bordeaux in Bordeaux, champagne in Champagne, and Champale from a paper bag on a park bench.
139. Fight a slash-and-burn fire in the Peruvian rain forest.
140. Hike the Grand Canyon.
141. Eat food you’ve grown.
142. Eat food your neighbor has grown, without his permission, at night, and let the juice dribble down your chin.
143. Eat psilocybin mushrooms.
144. Pass up an opportunity to attend the Burning Man festival.
145. Join a picket line.
146. Volunteer at a soup kitchen.
147. Write a sensuous letter to a prison inmate. (Use somebody else’s name. And return address.)
148. Swim beyond the breakers.
149. Free ball.
150. Cook chateaubriand for twenty.
151. Perfect the mixing of a killer cocktail. Make this your signature drink.
152. Kill something bigger than you. (Not that guy at work.)
153. Sign over a full paycheck to the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
154. Call an old girlfriend, the tough one you promised yourself you’d never speak to again.
155. Fake an orgasm.
156. Contribute to the production of a woman’s orgasm, repeatedly, and make this a higher priority than your own.
157. Repair a toaster.
158. Coach a team.
159. Break up with a woman without another in the wings.
160. Pick the music for your funeral.
161. Commit an act of civil disobedience.
162. Commit a prank.
163. Buy a hat.
164. Cheat death.
165. When you get home from work and your kid wants to play ball, play ball.
166. Help a stranger.
167. Get a shave, in a barbershop, with hot lather.
168. Read a dirty magazine while getting a haircut in a barbershop.
169. Learn the names of birds, trees, flowers, insects, topographical features, and constellations. Impart this knowledge to children.
170. Entertain the possibility that there is, indeed, a heaven and a hell, and treat people accordingly.
171. If you’ve already treated people poorly, prepare for what’s coming to you.
172. Feel no pressure to do a long list of things before you kick just because you read it in a magazine.
173. Except this: One last time with your first girlfriend.
174. And this: Live large.

175. And, finally, this: Repeat.