Top Five Dream Jobs

Okay…so as you know by now, if you’ve been reading along, I need a new job.  I have a list compiled of the top five things I think I could do and make decent money doing, drawing on my management experience, etc…but that’s boring.  Who wants to read that???  I’d much rather share THIS list…my top five DREAM jobs.  Jobs I will probably never have in reality, but that would be kind of fun.  So here we go…my top five dream jobs (not in any particular order)…

 

1. Touring/Recording Musician. — Not asking to be The Who or the Stones…maybe just Frank Black in the post-Pixies, pre-Pixies-reunion years. Enough to get by and keep doing it, but not limitlessly rich and famous.  Maybe big in Europe/Japan/Norway.
2. Stand-up Comic. — Again…don’t have to be Carlin or Hackett or even Leary—and screw Dane Cook, by the way. Perfectly glad to be Patton Oswalt or Mitch Hedberg (before he became an overnight legend by dying). I’d just like to get up there, say the outrageous/stupid things that get me into trouble in real life, and have people laugh.
3. Voice-over artist. — It’d be kind of cool to be paid to go into a room and say stupid stuff, or to read travelogues. I don’t have to be the “In a world…” guy.  I’d be fine with pretty much being a guy who no one knows, but who constantly works for like PBS or someone, back in the days when people other than me still watched PBS.
4. Entertainment journalist, circa 1969-78. — Interview bands like The Who in their heyday, hang out with Zeppelin and see what Bonzo was like in real life, get offered pot by Paul McCartney…then write about it.
5. Barbecue Cook. — They say there’s nothing better than being paid for doing what you love, and I love cooking and eating meat. Gimmie an open flame and a dismembered part of a cow and I’m a happy man. I’d even develop my own “secret spice” that we’d roll the meat through before searing it on the grill (probably largely made up of other parts of the same cow).

So that’s what I’d be if time, history, money, opportunity, and/or health and safety laws weren’t a factor. Only one that seems kind of attainable is the last one…but whatever.

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Quotable Quotes — only one this time…but it’s a really, really good one:

• Kris Kristofferson to Toby Keith, upon Toby (who’d just sung a song about how great it’d be to bomb America’s enemies) telling Kris not to say any “lefty sh*t” on stage: “What the f*ck did you just say to me?  Don’t turn your back to me, boy.  You ever worn your country’s uniform?  (Keith says, ‘What?’)  Don’t ‘What?’ me, boy!  You heard the question.  You just don’t like the answer.  I asked, ‘Have you ever served your country?’  The answer is, no, you have not.  Have you ever killed another man?  Huh?  Have you ever taken another man’s life and then cashed the check your country gave you for doing it?  No, you have not.  So shut the f*ck up!  You don’t know what the hell you are talking about!”  —  And that all took place backstage at Willie Nelson’s 70th birthday concert, no less.  Stuff like that is why Kris Kristofferson is on my “heroes” list—and why Toby Keith’s on the same list as Dane Cook…  🙂  (All due credit to Ethan Hawke and Rolling Stone Magazine’s April 16, 2009 issue, in which that can be found.)