When I was a kid, I used to daydream for hours about the things I would do if I ever became an eccentric millionaire. Eccentric millionaires lived the kind of fast-paced, whacked out, self-centered life that really appealed to my 7-year-old id. As a 32-year-old, not-terribly-eccentric non-millionaire, I've finally realized what's important in life--family, close friends, high-speed internet--but that doesn't mean I've completely abandoned my daydreams.
Last week, while sifting through a box of stuff my mother brought over from Charlotte, I found one of the many lists I made regarding my millionaire hopes and dreams when I was a youngster, and though today I'd probably make a few minor tweaks, most of the aspirations listed, written in my childish scrawl with a red crayon, remain wholly relevant to my life. Here's just a taste.
Things I Would Do If I Were An Eccentric Millionaire by Matt L.
1. Buy my own Shamu.
2. Buy my own Sea World.
3. Eat JELL-O for dinner every night.
4. Buy my own Toys-R-Us and play with all the toys.
5. Pee in a lemur's face. (Ed. note--I really hated lemurs when I was a kid for some reason)
6. Bring ALF to my house to live with me.
7. Ride Shamu to Hawaii and buy a volcano.
8. Turn my volcano into a secret spy headquarters.
9. Fill my volcano secret spy headquarters with dragons that only respond to my, and maybe Graham's [my best friend], demands.
10. Buy Graham his own Shamu.
11. Fly a rocketship to Mars for my birthday party.
12. Buy a house in Duckburg. Be best friends with Scrooge McDuck.
It goes on from there. Gets a lot more anti-lemur. Disturbingly so.
Point is, eccentric millionairacy didn't happen for me. It did, however, for Josh Harris. Of course, his eccentric personality was forged by his mother's lack of interest in any and everything he did as well as his drug addict-like obsession with Gilligan's Island. I've always blamed my parents for being there for me too much as a kid, loving me unconditionally and taking me on vacations. It's made me the decidedly un-eccentric, gainfully employed, home-owning family man I am today. Thanks a lot, Mom and Dad! While I'm playing Upwords with my beautiful wife of three years and preparing a nursery for my forthcoming baby, Josh Harris is planning his next wacky internet experiment and dressing up like his creepy clown alter-ego, Luvvy.
I don't know if Harris ever made a physical list of the things he wanted to do when he grew up and became worth a cool 80-million bucks, but here's a handy little list I made for him after the fact.
1. Josh Harris created internet television. It was called Pseudo and it was way ahead of its time. Harris was slowly pushed out of Pseudo's inner circle when Luvvy became a horrifying distraction to investors. Harris didn't care though. He was already planning his next venture...
2. A community called Quiet. Quiet was located in a bunker underground. Citizens were given jumpsuits to wear, food to eat, drugs to snort, booze to guzzle, and guns to shoot. Participants were also regularly grilled--and later, "tortured"--by an on-site psychologist. There was only one catch: cameras would be filming the people of Quiet 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week, for 30 days. Things went pretty well for awhile, but Harris, who viewed the entire thing as a social experiment and less the art project everyone else believed it was, kept upping the stakes: throwing people out for no reason, subjecting citizens to psychological torture, etc. On the first day of the new millenium, New York City cops stormed the bunker and threw everybody out. Harris ducked out the back entrance.
3. We Live In Public-Dot-Com. After the conclusion of Quiet, Harris bought a rather large apartment, filled it with cameras--in the bathroom, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, behind the mirrors, in the fridge, inside the toilet, etc--and moved his girlfriend, former Quiet citizen Tanya Corrin, in, so people could watch them laugh, fight, and screw. SPOILER ALERT: It did not end well. Tanya moved out, Josh found out he was broke.
4. Josh bought an apple farm. OK, so the whole apple orchard thing isn't that cool actually, but, you know, good for you, Josh.
5. Josh moved to Africa. It was here Harris committed his most eccentric act to date: commissioning a local artist to paint portraits of the characters from Gilligan's Island for him. Now that's what a crazy rich guy does!
GEP says: WATCH IT!
