The time has come for New Year’s resolutions. You probably have a list in your head right now. Shed a little weight, take that vacation, finally start getting organized, etc. All noble, reasonable goals. But why be reasonable? Most people abandon their resolutions by mid-March anyway. If you’re gonna make a list of things you probably won’t do, you might as well make the list fun and irresponsibly wild. Like, say, one full of clichés from action movies. You might end up in prison if you actually follow through on some of them, sure. But you might end up in prison anyway if you snap during your diet and just go full T-Rex in the cookie aisle at Wegmans. At least this way, you’ll have a cool story.
Some suggestions:
• Pay for something — anything — by placing a briefcase on the table, clicking it open, and silently spinning it around to reveal stacks and stacks of neatly wrapped bills.
• Fire a flaming arrow into a squadron of your enemy’s forces.
• Get suspended from your job for being a loose cannon and when your boss asks you what you have to say for yourself, shout “I get results, dammit!”
• Commit a crime that you spent years planning out in meticulous detail, but get caught by a detective who lulls you into a sense of security by appearing simple and schlubby, only to reveal himself as a brilliant sleuth as he arrests you.
• Get in a high speed chase through the streets of Prague, preferably set to a techno song from the late 1990s.
• Get picked up on the street by one of your enemy’s henchman and taken to his scenic compound, where you are escorted to a luxurious but prison-like suite with a closet full of formal attire in exactly your size.
• Pull an old dusty copy of Beowulf off a bookshelf and have the whole wall spin around to reveal a secret passage and/or a room filled with treasure.
• Get punched in the face hard enough to put out a normal person’s light for an hour, but remain standing and slowly wipe the blood off your bottom lip while saying “That all you got?”
• Start a lengthy monologue with, “You know, we’re not so different, you and I.”
• Call someone into your office but remain facing away from the door as that person walks in (preferably looking out a window facing the ocean, or one with a stunning view of the city skyline), then begin talking and wait until the middle of your speech to slowly spin around in your chair to face them.
• Save a hostage by shooting a bullet that whizzes past their eyes and hits their captor in the forehead, but only after saying “Do you trust me?” or reminding them of something in the past that will be their code to duck.
• Retire from your job and move to the woods to live a simple life, but get recruited to come back by someone who flew in on a helicopter and insisted that you’re the only person who can do the job because you were “the best there ever was.”
• Land an airplane after the pilot becomes incapacitated, even though you’ve never flown before.
• Get shot in the chest but survive because of a small book or knick knack you keep in your breast pocket.
• Cause a huge explosion at the docks by flicking a lit cigarette into a trail of gasoline that leads to 55-gallon drums full of oil.
• Eat dinner alone with a mysterious billionaire at opposite ends of an extremely long dinner table inside his dining hall.
• Represent yourself in a trial and win, but only after getting held in contempt for your courtroom shenanigans.
• Meet a mysterious and legendary new associate who pulls up on a motorcycle and reveals herself to be a beautiful woman by removing her black, tinted helmet and shaking out her long flowing blond hair. (Brown hair if she’s evil.)
• Come across the dead body of a trusted friend and close his eyes by sliding your hand down his face.
• Blow up one of your enemy’s henchmen’s speeding cars by hitting the gas tank with a bullet at 500 yards.
• Survive a shootout and exchange witty dialogue with your coworkers afterward while sitting in the back of ambulance with an “FBI” jacket draped over your shoulders.
• Tell someone something so shocking that they say “My God…” and drop their cigar in slow-motion.
Okay, that’s a good start. And don’t worry if you leave some of them undone. Gotta save something for the sequel.
