James Dean, baby

In my mind there's nothing worse than a quitter. Ok, a rapist perhaps. Or a mass murderer. Those are pretty bad. Especially ones that have quit said raping and murdering, because like I said, quitters are the worst.

Anyway I'm telling you this to set the groundwork for my big announcement. 2019 will be coming soon, and along with it all sorts of New Years resolutions. And what's the worst thing about resolutions? That's right, the rapists and mass murderers who quit them, and others who quit them too, I guess.

This is why I will be using 2019 as a planning year for perhaps the greatest New Years resolution streak of all time. I'm calling it, "2020 Vision." (I know, I am literally the only person to make the connection between the upcoming year 2020 and the concept of 'vision.' So don't steal it, because I already called it.)

"2020 Vision" means that in 2019 I will need to take up all sorts of bad habits, that I will in turn quit, starting at 12:00 a.m. on January 1st, 2020.

Bear in mind some of these habits will be easier than others to start. Take robbing from the poor for example. Consider it done. All you have to do is dress like Santa and ring a bell on a street corner with a bucket at Christmas time. Du'h. Another easy example might be faking a limp to use handicap facilities. Piece of cake. I'm sitting in a handicap bathroom stall this very moment as I write this. An increasingly impatient old man with a cane is standing just outside the door. I can see his shoes, which are pretty cool actually and look to be about my size...

Of course not all bad habits are so easily started, and the one that concerns me the most is the granddaddy of them all: smoking.

Now, if there's one thing 80 years of medical research has taught us, it's that smoking looks cool. Consider cool smoking legends such as George Harrison, Rosemary Clooney, and even Walt Disney. Go ask them how hard it was to achieve super cool smoker status and I personally guaranty they can't even tell you how they did it. (As they are all now dead from lung cancer.)

Now I don't have to tell you there's a lot of pressure in our image conscious society to get the right 'look.' I mean nobody wants to be one of those idiots jogging around town looking healthy in their stretch pants. Instead these days we all want to be like Paul Newman* in Cool Hand Luke. Sticking it to the man one loosely hanging cigarette at a time, baby.

*Sadly, Paul Newman passed away from lung cancer in 2008.

This gets me to my main point, getting that ultimate 'smoker' look. For me, the ultimate smoker look is never more iconic than having someone catch the image of a silhouette of your body encased in smoke against a street light, preferably in an alley, and preferably the light would be colored, and preferably Bob Seger's, Turn the Page would be playing in the background, (preferably during the saxophone part.) -Also, a nice touch would be to have your back turned and then pop your collar and turn half way with a James Dean smirk as a you take a drag.*

*Sadly, notorious chain-smoker James Dean was taken from us in a fatal car accident before he could be taken from us by cancer.

Now all of this sounds easy to accomplish, but let me tell you it is not. First of all, you have to time it just right. Say for example you see a group of acquaintances walking down the street. So then you have to run to the nearest alley before they pass and get a cigarette lit up real quick. But you are flippin' out of breath when you get to the alley because of all the practice smoking you've been doing. Also, there's usually poop in alleyways and it gets on your new shoes you just stole from a handicapped man. Then, there's the homeless people there always asking to 'bum' a smoke. -And you get in a verbal confrontation with them about using the word 'bum' because it makes you feel like a 'bum,' and you're not the 'bum,' they're the 'bum.' So the homeless guy starts pushing you around and beating you up and trying to take your James Dean jacket, (which is really just a red t-shirt you drew on with a magic marker to look like a James Dean jacket.) So you're wrestling with the homeless guy and he's winning because again of all your smoking and plus homeless guys have strong backs from sleeping on cement all the time, and anyway you finally get on top of him when the acquaintances pass by and you hear:

"Is that that looser from math class trying to rape and murder a bum?"

So you think fast, throw the nearest cigarette shaped object in your mouth (which is usually the bum's dirty finger), crane your neck with your best nonchalant smirk, and hum the saxophone part from Bob Seger's Turn the Page.

No, it's James Dean, baby, nice to meet you. "What dooh, whaaa, dooh whaa.." (That's the saxophone part.)

It's going to be an uphill battle, I know that going in. But hopefully, possibly, one day I could be looked at as someone who never quit in their pursuit of being called, "That weirdo from high school who died of lung cancer. And why was he always hanging out alone in alleyways moaning incoherently on top of bums? Was he like a rapist or a murderer or something?"