The Curse of the One Taled Man

My ultimate goal in life is to have some really interesting stories to tell when I'm in my 60's. Stories so interesting that they become the listener's best stories. "I once met this guy who took down a grizzly with a stapler."

I watched Conan O'Brien last Wednesday night, and he had a director on named Werner Herzog. Herzog told stories about diving onto cacti to entertain his cast of midgets, one of whom had been run over and caught on fire, and eating his own shoe to motivate his friend to finish a movie. They showed a clip of him being shot in LA during an interview and continuing that interview. Video

If I only have stories of vacations and weddings to tell my grandkids, I will be very disappointed. I want to get in a bar fight with a gang of Neo-Nazis. I want to end up stranded in the middle of Estonia with nothing but a fork and bag of Fritos and manage to make it back to America. I want to play the king of England in a cricket match, and then run off with his scepter before he realizes I don't even know what a wicket is used for.

We package our life into a neat little collection of stories to tell at dinner parties. You can easily forget the name of a company that you worked at for years, but you'll never forget the name of that one-eyed shaman who cast a curse on you in Barbados.

You could always lie and make up interesting stories, but people know the truth, and where's the satisfaction in that.