Lost Journal

Humor Column
by Tim Mollen
January 9, 2009

New Year’s Resolutions for 1990

Journal Entry:  January 1, 1990 (age 20)

There’s only 10 years left in the Millennium, so I need to make some big strides to prepare my soul for either the Rapture or a major uptick in music royalties for Prince.  Here’s my game plan:

• Definitely start a petition to urge Dustin Hoffman to share his Academy Award for Rain Man with Judge Wapner.  Definitely.
  

• Bet heavily on Pete Rose’s reinstatement to Major League Baseball.
  

• Try to erase from my memory the sights and smells of working in a SUNY Oswego cafeteria “slop room.”  Monte Cristos and rice pudding should never be allowed to come into contact with each other.
  

• Write to NBC, urging them not to cancel the ratings-starved sitcom, Seinfeld.
  

• Celebrate the exit of the defeated Soviet army from Afghanistan by becoming pen pals with one of America’s staunch allies in the Mujahideen.
  

• As the Cold War winds down, begin to research our nation’s next great enemy – the British Columbians.  Are they Canadian?  British?  Colombian?  In any case, their loyalties are too opaque for them to be seen as safe neighbors.
  

• Marry my feminine ideal, Jennifer Connelly.  (But first sign a pre-nup specifying that she will never lose weight and become “scary-skinny.”)
  

• Resolve a long-running dispute with my college roommate, Dan Walker, over what is the cheapest case of beer in most convenience stores – by agreeing to buy 2 six-packs each of Piels and Milwaukee’s Best.
  

• Send a hefty charitable donation to the family of British newborn Daniel Radcliffe, who was born with a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead.
  

• Arrive a year late for Samuel Beckett’s funeral, accompanied by my friend Chuck Godot.
  

• Heavily re-invest in American financial institutions, confident in the knowledge that the end of the 1980s savings-and-loan crisis has made the investment industry more conscientious and risk-averse.
  

• Commemorate the 200^th anniversary of North Carolina’s statehood by openly snubbing the Miss America contestants from the barely 100-year-old states of North and South Dakota.
  

• Demand that Tony Danza reveal to the national television audience whether Judith Light or Katherine Helmond is, in fact, the boss.
  

• Design a line of Robert Mapplethorpe lunchboxes.
  

• Ensure a repeat victory in my dorm’s “Twist” contest by insisting that dance partner Laura Sammons address me year-round as “Chubby.”  We can’t just fall back on last year’s winning technique, wherein I sat on the dance floor while Laura grabbed my feet and pivoted me on the rump axis.
  

• Don’t worry, be happy.  Or worry just enough to make Bobby McFerrin unhappy.

© 2009 Tim Mollen

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