What’s on your bucket list?

Last night, I was looking for something to watch, because I had just been glued to the TV watching the Lombardi Gras parade (but one can only watch Drew Bress heave throws at the crowd for so long while not being there in person) and I stumbled onto this new MTV (yes, MTV) show called The Buried Life.

While I had seen previews, I wasn’t enticed to watch. It just struck me as something too Jackass-y and that show was a waste of time so I hadn’t given The Buried Life much thought, but it was on and not preempted like every other local channel so I watched.

I was so wrong about the Jackass concept.

I was actually kinda impressed. The premise of this show is that these four guys (Dave, Jonnie, Duncan and Ben), who look to be in their early 20s, have created a Bucket List of sorts, and travel around the country trying to accomplish all 100 items on their list of Things to Do Before They Die. Normally, my interest wouldn’t have been piqued because, really, I’m almost afraid to hear what would be on the list of things a 20-something male wants to do before he dies. I was anticipating something like, ‘make out with Jessica Biel, {insert name of other attractive women here}’ and the like.

But to my surprise, their list is actually pretty intriguing. It contains things like “take a kid on a toy shopping spree” (#71-accomplished) or “teach an elementary school class” (#86-accomplished) and last night’s episode, “help deliver a baby” (#74).

Crazy, I know.

The best part is that for each thing that they cross off, they help someone else cross something off their own personal bucket list. So last night, they called into a Memphis radio station because that is the city in which they were passing through (they roam the country in this big bus it literally looks like a former public-transportation-city-bus and it’s got their list items painted on the sides). They asked the DJ to request a pregnant woman to call in if she was willing to allow these four guys in the delivery room to help her give birth.

They found Laura and her husband, who allowed them in the delivery room. It was crazy, but very cool! One of the guys, Dave, was very skiddish about the whole thing, but he took part anyway. They set up a Lamaze class for her and her husband since they hadn’t taken one yet but said they wished they had, they wore sympathy bellies to see what carrying extra weight was all about.

The part that I like best about this show is where they help a stranger cross off something on the stranger’s list. Since Laura helped them cross off item #74 on their list, the guys helped a girl named Queen cross off something on her list, which was to visit her mother’s headstone in Denver, where she had never been. The backstory was that she and her mom had been separated during Hurricane Katrina and when Queen evacuated with extended family, her mom stayed behind in the Superdome. Her mother went on to contract some kind of disease from the water (yikes!) and ended up passing on after she had been evacuated to Denver, and it was there that she was buried.

So the guys needed to raise money to send Queen on a plane to Denver.

They explained the situation to a manager at a restaurant in Memphis and he let them do odd jobs to earn the money. They did, and they went with Queen to Denver and had to search for the headstone amid a sea of uniformly arranged white headstones. It was super poignant but I liked the mission that the guys were on.

I’m actually kinda diggin’ the show now. I definitely didn’t see this coming (from an MTV show for sure) but the documentary-style and the personalities of the four guys make the show worth watching.

MTV airs their shows 17 times a week so if you happen to be flipping through the channels, odds are good you will see it. I recommend giving it a whirl.

It also got me thinking about my own bucket list. I am going to have to start thinking about things I would list, as I have no idea where I would begin. But I’m making a new page on CL.com to update/track/report progress because, really, I’m kinda jealous that they are working to accomplish their list.

We’ll see how mine goes, but in the mean time, I might just keep watching The Buried Life.

Since I may need some inspiration, lemme know what would be on your bucket list. I’m intrigued to hear what people want to do…