This is a standard idiom in English. The earth here is a metaphor that symbolizes the impossible, the immoderate, or the unfulfillable:
promise (someone) the earth (or moon)NOAD
make extravagant promises to someone that are unlikely to be fulfilled:
interactive technology titillates, promises the earth, but delivers nothing
The origin of this idiom is probably from the third temptation of Jesus (in the Bible), where the devil tempts him with the ridiculous promise of all the kingdoms of the world:
Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
— Matthew 4:8–9 (The Bible, King James Version)
Bucket list
There's no known evidence bucket list was used as a "list of things to do before you die" before the movie.
The OED has bucket list from 29 June 2006, about the film "The Bucket List".
- There's no evidence in Nexis of bucket list before 2006.
- There's nothing in Usenet and Google Groups for "my bucket list" before the OED.
- There's nothing relevant in Usenet (via Google Groups) for "bucket list" much before the OED. (Lots of unrelated programming bucket lists.)
I think it came from the movie, by scriptwriter Justin Zackham. The most likely origin is it comes from the phrase "to kick the bucket", meaning to die.
Antedatings
Here's a one-day antedating from Variety referring to the film (found via Usenet):
Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are committed to star in “The Bucket List.”
Via the same Usenet group, a 16 June 2006 blogpost quoting a 11 June 2006 Usenet post referred to the script:
So it seems pretty solid that Scott is, in fact, not the author of The Bucket List.
But obviously the script had already been written and there'll be early script drafts somewhere.
Dubious claims
Slate Magazine searched Google Books and claimed a 2004:
In 2004, the term was used—perhaps for the first time?—in the context of things to do before one kicks the bucket (a phrase in use since at least 1785) in the book Unfair & Unbalanced: The Lunatic Magniloquence of Henry E. Panky, by Patrick M. Carlisle. That work includes the sentences, “So, anyway, a Great Man, in his querulous twilight years, who doesn’t want to go gently into that blacky black night. He wants to cut loose, dance on the razor’s edge, pry the lid off his bucket list!”
But I think it's misdated. Carlisle's book may have been first published in 2004, but the two full view editions in Google Books are copyright 2003-2010 and 2003-2011. The phrase also appears in the author biography at the end of the book and it's not clear when that was written.
The phrase appears on the author's biography on his own website, but not in any of the pages I checked in the Internet Archive.
Also, a Wordwizard forum post claims a 9 November 2005 on a AP Images caption of actors in a scene from the movie, but it must be wrong seeing as the script and actors were only announced in 2006.
Computing
Bucket list has been used in computing literature much prior to the film, often referring to algorithms for "bucket sort", a way of sorting data. Wikipedia lists a number of other bucket metaphors in computing. A bucket, also a bin, is sometimes a buffer, or place to discretely distribute data, and can be of fixed size.
I think it's safe to say there's no link between this and the modern meaning of things to do before you kick the bucket.
Best Answer
It's a reference to the show "The Sopranos." She means that the name "Carmela" makes her friend sound like a member of a New Jersey mafia family. "Big Pussy" and "Meadow" are also names of characters from the same show. The reason for the joke is that the name "Carmela" is relatively unusual and most people would know it primarily from the show.