Great taste, Less filling.

Growth is overrated. Really, why do we have to learn and grow when it is so much easier to stay stunted and stupid? It’s the world we live in right? Good luck seeing a movie with a plot or dialogue that sounds like it wasn’t fished out of a Cracker Jack’s box. Our finest literature these days comes from 10 year old boys’ bedrooms. Screw growth; it only brings you down. I grow so that I may realize how many weeds exist in my garden? How what I thought was a tomato plant was CGI-created, GMO-produced, and poisonous-rogue IRS agent? And I was being audited because I once saw an Amanda Bynes film “What a Girl Wants” and thought she was cute until I realized that girl wants to crowd all of the news articles with her crazy on every search engine online with an obsessed press and a damn Twitter account. I can’t provide receipts for that, I’m guilty!

I don’t know what is more impressive. The fact that we can make the #1 movie with no plot, fast cars, cartoonish-looking actors and action scenes that make me want to jump from the top of a building to a moving car below just to see if I can not only land without a bruise but smile and zip into Daytona before the checkered flag. Or the fact that a damn Twitter page update from a D-list retired child celebrity becomes the top story on Google news daily. Give me a freakin break! The promos alone before Fast and Furious 6 made me realize we live in a society I am not sure is salvageable. After Earth with Will Smith may be closer than we think, but why would any space aliens want to eat our brains considering the high calories and artificial sweetener they are full of to begin with. It would be like a child gorging on cotton candy. Surely there is a better planet to take over than Earth!

Hey I paid the tickets for F&F 6. I have no moral high ground to walk on, but if I did it would be quick sand anyways. You can’t function in this world without dumbing yourself down to function in it. It’s a daily compromise with each other just to get through the day. It’s like a game of Texas hold-em poker. I know I am not always as smart as the guy or gal next to me, but am I as stupid? Should I bluff them or will they call my bluff? We compromise everyday just to survive and if you think you are the one bluffing that you are smarter, you’ve just been called. You are holding a Jack-Ten unsuited and all-in. You are screwed. That lunatic child-star who is having her tenth Twitter breakdown of the day is holding Ace-King, and she thinks you are ugly.

Where do we go from here? I used to think I wasn’t intelligent enough to be a writer. I felt my voice was saturated with generalities and I couldn’t hold a candle to what real dignified authors that sit in elaborate writing rooms do, smoking pipes while they churn out novels for an admiring public. As our attention spans digress and our ability to even read a paragraph of those great novels wanes, I realize novels are dying anyways. Who can sit down and read one unless the characters jump out of the pages and onto our tables talking in Twitter-friendly verbiage that will hold our attention? But who am I kidding; I already lost you at growth didn’t I?

Running Man

The thing that frustrates me to no end on this recent bombing in Boston is that it takes a moment of clarity that people have running and suffocates it in the same saturation of media and life that we run to get away from. Running is therapeutic. I never thought I would say that, but running clears the mind of garbage and the mindless things we focus on and takes us to some primitive place where all we focus on is the breaths we take and the road ahead of us. More than endurance it is a healthful cleansing for me from my own self. At mile two we may be still stuck in our own minds but by mile 5 we are free of our own barriers that we’ve set up in our minds. We hit that euphoric runner’s high and feel a peace even as our feet pound the pavement.

Now it is bogged into that same news cycle which closes in around us. It’s amazing how big the world is but how small it feels under the microscope of media we have created and that infiltrates our daily lives. Events all over the world hit us real-time as if we are there and a part of it when we are neither. We are all inter-connected, when we are truly not. Their pain is our pain, but is it really? Should we care what happens somewhere else, of course, but when it consumes our own daily lives do we not lose perspective on life in general?

Being on a road running is the only place that can free many people from the constant media and technology that forcibly pulls us all together. We can’t get away when we flip channels, or surf our phones or the web, it is all around us. Doesn’t matter what page or channel you find yourself on, it is there waiting for you. On the road you’ve been freed from that direction. It is important to empathize and being knowledgeable but we can’t control the events that we are getting fed to us daily. It is life the good, the horrible, the tragic and a lot of it is reprehensibly ugly. We can’t look away because it is all of us and can be all of us. We could have been there or we know someone that was. We are the event as much as the person next to us, or at least we are told we are.

I just want the break. CNN, Headline news, Yahoo, Google, Drudge, TMZ, stop!! Whatever media mouthpiece is plucking into our eyes, ears, psyches, we need the ability to step back, step off, and run away. Now they’ve taken some of that escape away. They’ve polluted the water even more to the point where even running will have to be done with some cautions we hadn’t planned a week ago. That drift less freedom just got taken away from me. I know that is a selfish thought but I don’t care. It’s mine. I refuse to apologize for it. I hope when I hit mile 5 or mile 10 that I still have that moment where my mind is released from itself, if only a moment and I’ll take it. I appreciate that I have those moments at all.

Quick Holiday/'12 wrap-up-We lived!

I just realized run-on, fragmented sentences and misspellings create a nice red and green holiday underlining for the holidays. It’s a greeting card from Microsoft for the stupid people. Awesome! Spell check must be Ebenezer because I just lost my colors. Alright, so here we go. I have to psyche myself up for another column because it has been buried under boxes or old Holiday decorations and lights and some creatures that have been living in my garage attic. No they aren’t aliens waiting to take me away to the French Alps and then their home planet rescuing me from my Mayan predicted destruction, apparently they were just rats re-introducing the black plague for a 13th Century renaissance...rats!!! Wow, ok welcome back random thoughts..no rats, I swear, but yes the column/blog/mental cleansing apparently was backed up. I feel like I am taking my first drink of alcohol after years as a teetotaler.

How was the year for everyone? 2012? Didn’t think we’d make it this far? Not sure what to do now that we have? Glad you didn’t build that bunker after all? Has anyone knocked on the bunkers of those doomsdayers to let them know it’s ok to come back into the light? I feel like the old psychic from Poltergeist calling into the white tv fuzz that used to exist before we all got sucked into 2000 cable channels of reality television..”Carol Anne…Carol Anne…come back to the light…Carol Anne???” And her little voice calls back..”I just got a show on TruTV with PaulyD screw you old psychic lady! Did you predict that?”

It’s been a good year for me. I ran a lot, more running that I’ve ever done in my life. At least the type of running that doesn’t involve sirens behind me and that is a positive. When you can run recreationally and not for survival that is the good stuff. I didn’t write as much (obviously) because the words now come out pouring like a backed up faucet minus the lead poisoning. I ran four half-marathons in 2012 and another one on the horizon in early February to start of the New Year. It’s hard to motivate myself to run when the snow flurries and wind chill pounds you in the face and the darkness swallows you like the whale swallowed Geppetto in Pinocchio but it is also kind of cool to have cars pass you in awe of your a) bad ass(ed)ness and b) outright insanity. My race in February is in Huntington Beach, so that helps motivate, plus Maui on the docket in early March is also motivation…because I don’t want to look like the whale that swallowed Geppetto!

2013 will be an exciting year to come. I have a feeling I’m in for unveiling new chapters in my life and may even write one or two for once. I won’t make it a long blog because with the Holidays, attention span (yours, mine, ours, etc) I don’t have the stamina to write another few paragraphs in ’12. I just thought I’d let you all know I still write (things that should stay in my head) and you haven’t missed anything in the process. Hope all of my family and friends have a wonderful Christmas and New Years wrapping up the 1-2. See you all in the very lucky ’13.

My jersey says idiot

I don’t envy kids today. We live in a world where it is more important to look good than to feel good. Our infomercials show us that a toned fit body is more important than the knowledge received picking up a book. I am as guilty as the next person, the commercial I can’t get out of my head is the fitness routine based on MMA fighting which seems to guarantee abs that will make me look like a chiseled Octagon fighter. Abs I could crack eggs on in the morning, all the while I’ve completely forgotten the link to the cool infomercial online a few weeks back which could teach me any language in two months. Which one would bring me more value? Making breakfast on my stomach or learning skills that would allow me to eat breakfast anywhere in the world?

Try being a student today and playing sports. We find out every day another hero we idolized cheated to success. How would you like to be the young cyclist with the Lance Armstrong poster on your wall? I find myself watching baseball and not marveling at their skill but wondering what their testosterone count is. Are they 3-1? What are they doing to stay undetected? I am not going to lie, I was wondering how I could obtain testosterone myself to go ahead and speed up those ab exercises in the first place. If you look good it must be healthy right? If you aren’t cheating you are not utilizing all the tools. And hell, in the case of football you are only guaranteed so many years of playing without damaging your brain on concussions why not maximize your profits and make sure you sign a top dollar contract.

I just watched a baseball team yesterday trade for three players with contracts paying 270 million over the next 6-7 years. This California team is worth more than half of its cities, which are filing bankruptcy. City employees, firefighters, police forces, are losing jobs and benefits because of the financial hardships due to short-term thinking and failure of long-term planning and we just shell out an extra $100 (at least) every time we go to the park to distract ourselves from how bad the rest of our lives are. I wrote a long time ago in internet years (last year to be exact) that we live like the Romans before the collapse of the Roman Empire. We pay to watch these gladiators in the Coliseum and obsess over statistics while our own houses crumble around us. We are grateful if one millionaire who arrives at the park from him mansion in a limo graces the field in our presence and does something he is paid millions to do in the first place. We cheer them on like conquering hero’s and buy their jerseys until they find another park that pays them more. Meanwhile we are still paying their salaries in higher ticket prices and concession stand prices, long after they have driven away to “grace” another field.

I love sports as much as the next guy but we are crazy. We have literally saturated our daily lives with numbers and statistics that mean nothing, give us nothing, and achieve for us nothing, but the ability to distract ourselves. And we seem to be ok when we find out that some of our heroes cheated. We rationalize that everyone does it anyways.  Is it not fitting when our own companies cut down on employees and benefits, job promotions, yet find the hidden fortune to place their names on stadiums and sponsor athletes? These nearly billion dollar Coliseums that the masses flock to that are sponsored by the same companies that also make it difficult to afford the games in the first place? We are being squeezed. Each and every day us the consumer are being squeezed by our purchases and lifestyles. I say this as I can’t even watch Fox on Direct TV because of a dispute with a broadcasting company in Yakima that holds our Fox television rights. Both sides claim they are working for us. Both sides will agree to just charge us more. Don’t worry, it’s coming. Do you hear that sound behind the trumpets of the Coliseum? It’s the sound of eggs getting thrown at our washboard abs. Better react fast, that’s dinner.

About that Mt. Ashland hike....

When you reach the summit of anything there is an exhilaration that can be overwhelming. It can punch you in the gut with honesty. It can make you reflect on choices in our lives we are both ashamed and proud of. You can be filled with an enormous relief and excitement and also a deep sadness. We realize how small we are, tiny in the large world we live, and also how many things we set upon as children that never were fulfilled or imagined. It’s not all glory, it’s an awakening. It’s clearing of mental cobwebs in sweat and tears and pain that can make every emotion within us pound our psyches like an orchestra.

Somehow in my long four hour trek last weekend I found myself pushed like I hadn’t been before. I was angry at my naivety of my fitness level and arrogance. I was stunned that people who appeared less able-bodied blew past me. I wondered what the hell I was doing, several times, it all sorts of colorful foul language to myself, my girlfriend, and the damn bees that swarmed me repeatedly up the mountain. I channeled the voices of every motivation movie clip or sound bite I could remember in my life. Quotes from great philosophers, authors, motivational speakers, movies, and Yoda played through my head instead of IPod music. “Try not. Do, or do not.” I heard the little green bastard scold me as I struggled up different portions of the trail. Like young Luke my arrogance was overwhelming. And just like old Yoda, old men sped by me up the hill.

Three miles into my ascent I felt amazing. I was running confidently and with purpose. I didn’t see what the big deal was about this trek. The hype seemed undeserved. Who can’t handle this? By mile six I realized what I had gotten myself into. The perpetual climb up trails that never seemed to level was infecting my false bravado. I was getting pummeled by the climb. That imaginary finish line that was around each corner was never there. I kept waiting for the incline to stop but at every turn would watch it only increase. It was like a scene out of Inception. The floor became the ceiling above me. I was hoping I could wake up but found myself just in another dream inside a dream with myself being played by Screech from Saved by the Bell. Where was the casting re-write? I thought I could easily have been Tom Hardy. Dustin Diamond??!!

By mile ten I was cursing the existence of mountains. What was the purpose of man to climb these things? We invented elevators and escalators to avoid this. Technology enabled us to not torture our bodies with such ignorant pursuits. Hell, even the old settlers had stagecoaches and horses. Yet you keep moving. Realization sets in that there is nothing else to do but move forward. No one is going to do it for you. It’s you versus your subconscious. The voices of don’t and failure against the motion of progress. Those voices are always there, mine just happen to sound like the munchkins from the Wizard of Oz, but helium-throated negativity is still a downer! And I’m going up!!

And up and up..and up. You realize by mile 12 and the promise of the Mt. Ashland Ski Lodge that up is eternal. The road leading to the lodge is no oasis of comfort but more unending Eternia that must eventually lead to Castle GreySkull. Oh how I wish Battle Cat hadn’t abandoned me on mile 7, but I must move forward.

The lodge was finally reached and a nice reprieve but I knew that the hardest part was yet to come. The entire run/hike was built around the final hurdle of the journey. I would have to climb to the top on Mt Ashland, the white weather ball that had glared down at me from Lithia Park in its brilliance. It seemed insurmountable, unattainable, yet was closer than ever until I turned the final turn on the trail and looked up at where it actually was. Holy Sh##$$%$&*(__()@#%$#! Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepppppppppppp.


This was a test of the emergency broadcasting system…


It was a straight vertical incline that looked almost like a ride out of Disneyland, if Disneyland found masochism fun for the whole family. This was the Matterhorn on steroids. This was the Alps out of the Sound of Music minus the singing children and the music and general happiness. 12.5 miles of hardship led me to half a mile of straight physical brutality. What made it even more intimidating were the people who has passed us miles ago who were still only half way up the final mountain to the finish. Dear God, what have I done?! There was no secret elevator passageway. No rope climb option. It was scaling, scaling rocks, hands and knees style. The dream inside the dream now spun upside sown with Yoda and munchkins singing and Skeletor glaring down at me.

All you can do is keep climbing. You must silence the singing, the doubts, the acid-trippy visuals and keep moving forward. Ten minutes later you look down and see the same bewildered face from someone else that you made when they are looking up at you. Twenty minutes later you are near the top the finish line beckoning. The altitude sucks you dry, the length exhausts you, but the finish is worth the pain. You are there, finished, four hours later. Someone tells you the top guy finished under two. You want to hurl that person off the mountain, but you are too tired to even lift your arms. They have a masseuse at the top for muscle relaxation, but where is the psychiatrist?! Oh, that’s what the beer is for? I share a keg with my green friend Yoda and Skeletor.

Hazy day

Been a while since I’ve blogged so why not. I’m not melting outside, or inside for that matter, so those are positives. I realize that Seth McFarland is dialed into my psyche somehow. I’ve already been compared to Brian from Family Guy a few times and now his new character in Ted is named “Jon” is 35, single, a slacker, and his best friend is a teddy bear. It’s uncanny this guy! He is so dialed into me it’s ridiculous. I too like to sing way too often for my own and everyone else’s good. So Seth..you are welcome. I am glad I can provide you endless revenue streams..but if you don’t mind would you please fire me back a little retro motivation on that creative genius you got flowing? Thanks!

It’s important to not lose sight on the important things. What those are today..I have no clue. I guess we have an election coming up in November. The new Iphone hasn’t arrived yet? The global economy is teetering, wait it’s not? Joe Paterno was really not the great guy we thought he was. Maybe we focus too much on self-image and preservation than doing the right thing in the first place. I love that the American uniforms for the Olympics are made in China. And also that American cities are filing for bankruptcy. These are all great positive things to look forward to. That global economy thing is looking to be working smoothly.

I had a client tell me yesterday that there is a city in California that is close to SF that is so broke their entire police force was laid off. They have beautiful homes that have been vacated because there are so many loans under water and no services available in the city. The vacant homes are being used by gangs and turned into meth labs. People in this city can’t call the cops because there are none. If they complain they can be intimidated and murdered, they can’t re-sell; they can’t safely stay, so they are forced to abandon their homes or load up on artillery. The old American West reborn, minus Gene Hackman who I read today has been retired from acting now for a few years. Where is Little Bill when we need him?!

Other than that we can train ourselves. We can make better buying decisions. Spend less, eat healthier, work out. I know I am addicted to the gym right now and running. At least when gasoline gets too expensive and the oil wells runs dry I can run to work! We got a vegetable garden growing that requires a heck of a lot of TLC and watering but has yet to produce any edible food, that’s progress I guess. All the money in the world can’t buy you your health. All the free health care in the world won’t prevent the diseases we ourselves have the ability to protect ourselves from just by living healthier lifestyles.

There is fog, smoke, and smog that can fill the air and cloud our vision and there is rain, sweat, and tears that can wash it all away. Liquid can cleanse pollution, either the external or internal we fill our lives with. But it’s only a temporary cleansing unless we change what polluted it in the first place. If nothing else at least hydrate yourself with some water or jump in the river, that is as long as there are no River Monsters in there. Those catfish are gruesome.

Firing squad

The last few days I became engrossed in the Hatfields and the Mccoys. Something about drunken hillbillies drinking moonshine and firing off sawed off shot guns at each others in the Appalachian wilderness kept me captivated. It's good to know that people were just as freaking crazy back then as they are now, but damn..people are crazy now! There is something in the atmosphere that is making people who are normally off their rockers even more delusional. Maybe that paradigm shift leading us to 12/21/2012. I don't know, but I'm scared and annoyed. Crazy people irritate the hell out of me. I understand conditions and the economy and whatever whacked stuff people feed their brains can affect them but I am over sympathy and compassion.

Is it possible people were less messed up 50-100 years ago? With technology and increased information and knowledge I don't see ourselves advancing as a species. If anything we are regressing into instinctual barbarians. Perhaps the internet and dripping of bad news like Chinese water torture on our psyches is forcing repression of emotions for individuals who need to lighten up. They can hide in daylight and explode in vengeance when they're perceived slights become unbearable in their deranged minds. It's bizarre. Hit the gym. Open a bottle of moonshine and get lost in the Appalachians. Find a pen pal. Don't go eating people's faces. Don't mail human body parts. Do talk to someone who isn't behind a computer screen. Do go outside and get sunshine or take a hike. Wow, it's just sad how screwed up people are today. We need to form an army to weed out the wackos before they infiltrate our lives. Who needs terrorist cells to worry about, we have the nut jobs in plain sight all around us apparently.

I personally am over analyzing why people act this way. We are not going back to dissect how someone picked on them in high school, or what their parents did to them as a child. We tend to blame the victims in our country than the criminals. Somehow this person needed help. No, what they needed was to be put down before they put any innocents down. We don't save rabid dogs with rabies by petting them. We shouldn't try to sooth psychopaths with words of condolences and remorse. The only mistake was that we let them be crazy around us too long. If we see crazy behavior we should be able to report it to authorities before they act, not only after. There should be a system in place to corral these individuals before they storm our coffee shops with their ammunition.

The news media doesn't help. They feed this frenzy cycle of tragedy in an attempt to get web views and advertising dollars to keep their word engines running, but it doesn't make it right. We shouldn't feed this culture of sensationalizing tragedy. It's like the media wants to break the next horror story first and we feed on it for days and every major outlet breaks down the reasons before they can break the next story. I don't know about you but I sure can't survive without watching another commercial about car insurance in between the doom and gloom they are spoon feeding us. Maybe that is why the Hatfields and Mccoys was such a great history lesson. They knew their enemies, by name. Now we don't know who is friend or foe, who is crazy or not, nor do we know what lunatic lurks around the corner from us.

Short fiction: Summer fling

It’s tempting to wish summer lasted forever. That the skies always stayed a purple haze and the cool breeze caressed off the trees behind a symphony of crickets. Their music softly echoing in the near distance like a party but not quite next door enough to join.  The lightness of air made him float in his backyard ignoring the colder darkness and its deeper chords soon beckoning.  His thoughts cast in midair like a baited line hovering before its plummet into an icy river.

All he could think about tonight was the way her glow radiated across the distance. She consumed him and devastated him all at once. His mother had always told him as a little bugger when the one he loved met his eyes he would know immediately. Yet the feelings that reverberated through him morphed from giddiness to downright sickness. She was more beautiful than the brightest sunflower yet made him stomach ache like he had swallowed sour grass.  She kept him up at night, her vibrant shimmering image, more frustratingly loud in his head than the mating bull frogs in the pond behind the yard.

During the day he would wallow at the lack of attention she showed him as if she were only interested in his affection when the sun fell down. At night when their paths crossed she displayed almost another personality altogether. Her beauty was even more alluring, so much so that he knew there were others who coveted her, yet he could believe none more so than he.  Sure he’d heard stories from his friends of her unattainability. He had heard she was too illuminating for a rogue like him. He had a reputation himself and had certainly met other beauties who had probably crossed her path as well, but she buzzed in his head like no others.

Most days he just had to survive. The world had changed since his parents were young. The environment more threatening. Perhaps his desires were a foolish attempt to hold onto his youth the way the dusk held off the night. While the sun beat hotter each summer that passed it felt much colder. The evenings brought the familiarity of warmth and his childhood. It brought back the long games he played with his friends, the trees he climbed upon, and the wet grass he laid in.  At night they hovered near a flaming barbeque or light in the backyard, the laughter of family and friends and crickets all-encompassing.

This day was longer than usual. There were less spots to hide and more trouble to hide from. All day long he could think of nothing but the shade, a breeze, and her radiance. He envisioned the pond and a festival of flickering lights around them.  He knew tonight would be the night he showed her the way he truly felt. No longer would he hide in the day and be teased by her nighttime flirtations.

The weekly barbeque they both were to attend seemed as good a time as any. Their friends would congregate and he would fly in when she was free and make his pitch. His stomach once again felt like sour grass as the night approached and she glowed even more than usual. He watched as several others approached her only to get shot down in a hurry. His instincts told him to turn away but his heart would not allow him. The cool air hit him as he dived into her orbit. The beauty she possessed even warmer the closer he came. As his heart sang and his stomach hollowed he swooped in to whisper in her ear. “ZAP!” The surge ran through his body as her kiss left him cold. He crumbled to the ground lifeless one last glance at the purple sky above, her glowing orb, a giant shoe…CRUNCH….”Damn bug.”

Blogist's perspective

I’ve neglected the blog. I’ve denied its existence. I abandoned it in a field buried under mounds of debris and used lawn furniture. I’ve watched it sink to the bottom of the Marina Trench and land in the alien-like empty sea floor until James Cameron fancies himself another trip to the bottom of the ocean. At least this time he’ll find something, read it, and hire me to write the screenplay for his next film! I haven’t written in months, nor had a desire, maybe no one has noticed.

The blog however is like Michael Corleone in Godfather III. “Every time I think I am done..they pull me back in!!” They being the voices in my head telling me I haven’t written in forever and I’m verging on losing brain cells due to lack of creative activity. How much of this is intelligence, creativity, or just quieting the voices I am not sure. Painters paint, Musicians play music, Writers write novels, and nutcases like me..we pen rambling blogs. No rhyme or reason, no start nor destination, just mumbo jumbo that consumes me.

I know every artist goes through dry spells, even bloggers or a blogist. If someone who shops at TJ Maxx can be a Maxximista I can be a blogist. Let me say this as a returning blogist I am over political season. Supposedly it is just beginning but it can already end as far as I’m concerned. I don’t care who is elected, I don’t care what they stand for, I am indifferent to their policies and personal background and history, just elect one of the two and let us focus on something else. In my industry we have seem to be painted enemy #1 and I’m sick and tired of having conversations everyday about how mad they are at the process. I don’t make the rules, nor do I have a voice within my company to change the process. Too many people think that if they share their voice here we can do something, we can not. The media has fed stories placing blame on sources that are not to blame. It’s a free marker enterprise. If you are unhappy move your business, you can’t change the way a business runs.

If you don’t like a companies policy that is completely fine. When did we become a nation where everyone has to love everyone and we dance and sing in harmony? The benefit of freedom is being free to do something else. No one holds you hostage somewhere you don’t want to be. I hate that I’m even contributing to the gluttony of information on the web. Everyone thinks that their voice needs to be heard, be it a blog, on the streets, holding signs, at your desk, in the classroom. Not every voice does need to be heard or regurgitated on the blogosphere.

A friend of mine told me that an 89 year old man decked her manager in his office over a $1 fee. This is the fuse that has been lit by too much media. People have absolutely lost it. I remember listening to someone once say it is not a major event that causes someone to lose it, it is their shoelace busting. That may set them off because it builds like a powder keg inside of them. Yesterday I had a thirty minute discussion with a client upset over a $6 fee I was already reversing for him. It’s no longer the dollar amount it’s the principle he says. Everything with everyone is the principle. Who sets the principle? Network television which broadcasts commercials for many of the same companies they slander on their news shows that also help pay for the junk food television we are feeding our brains? The over-priced Iphone who are getting your daily news feed from? The local coffee shop which raised the price of flavored water?

The problem with the information age is all the misinformation it feeds everyone. Suddenly everyone is educated about everything, but they failed to learn anything in the process. They may be knowledgeable but they lack a broader perspective. They absorb news but they don’t relate it to themselves and how it truly impacts them. They want rapid responses. Just as the problem with the economy was short-term investors trying to make a quick buck and not thinking long-term, the problem with information junkies and new media is not digesting what we’ve been fed. We vomit the media’s text and words right back into society like a ten week old baby unable to digest baby food.

Frustration exists over a lot of different things but we control how we react to it and that is truly all we do control. Michael Corleone had different ways to react and I hope people realize that was a movie.

An acrobat, a piano, and some slots

Opening night in Vegas felt like a scene out of Cocktails. We sat in a dive bar in the casino watching some dueling piano players belting out everything from Billy Joel to Aerosmith before a highly intoxicated and adoring crowd. You saw real talent pounding away at the keys and in that packed house off the strip at 3am. And in their resignation to sing such classics as Salt N’Pepa and Def Leppard you could feel that years of lessons and practice had resulted to this pinnacle, this moment, belting out retreads and begging for tips from vacationers unable to let the music end. This is what Vegas is, both expectations and disappointment, both promise and failure. It is a loud and crazy party and a buzz that lingers but won’t last. It is time standing still and people holding on when reality bucks you from the heights of Bellagio and the Wynn to the “f*ckin Harrah’s casino."

Nothing is cheap in Vegas. Those recession specials you may be looking for…forget it. If anything you are paying more for your indulgences than less. When you ask the cab drivers for good recommendations and price, just multiply it by two. You forget you are paying their recommendation kickbacks as well. They will all recommend the same place (Rio) too and a price that sounds affordable ($25). By the time you get all the way out to the isolated fortress of a casino and walk up to the register you get blind-sided by truth ($50). What? Too hungry to fight it and too far to turn back you take the hit and expect to make it back up at the tables (-$250).

That’s the other thing; the black jack tables are abusive. The $5 black jack tables don’t exist in reality and O’Sheas doesn’t count. That place along with Excalibur and the “f*ckin Harrah’s” casino makes you feel less Vegas like the Venetian and more Vegas like the venereal..as in the diseases of people frequenting! You are more likely to find $15 dollar tables than $10 anywhere and consistently while losing money on a $15 black jack table I’d watch them hike the antes up to $25 for new players. Vegas is most definitely not in a recession.

The bars are cool and we enjoyed the ice bar in the Mandalay and the Chandelier bar in the Cosmopolitan but $10 single jack and cokes leave you wanting. The pursuit of a buzz makes you want to shell out for doubles or sit at black jack tables too long waiting for your drink. And you can taste the quality difference from a free drink at the penny machines to the free drink at the $15 black jack table. One is a single and one is some sort of bottle backwash handed around from fellow gamblers. And sadly the backwash probably has a better chance of getting you hammered.

The last night we checked out The Mystere at Treasure Island. The show was amazing and I’m in awe of the acrobats. They possess real talent and it seemed fitting to book end the pianos to the performers in the show. When I walked out of Mystere I had fully absorbed Vegas minus the mushrooms. I was walking on a cloud of lights and sounds. The night was mine, the last night, and I was prepared to go out with a bang…then my wallet was raped and pillaged by Pirates. The dealers in Treasure Island decided that I was carrying too much bounty in my pockets and decided to wash my good high with it. When we walked out of the casino a couple of hours after the show had ended I was ready to jump into the pirate performance going on outside and walk the plank.

The trip was great and a needed escape/birthday and one realizes how fast time can fly. I turned 21 in Vegas and had the Midas touch. Everything I touched turned to gold and I couldn’t lose. Fourteen years, two lifetimes, and twenty new casinos later I have an aluminum touch, as in collecting them to keep eating and surviving after Vegas. Sitting in a restaurant in the South Coast casino off the strip with my good friends Sam and Jess and my girlfriend I realized the important things in life are not always what we can spend or buy but what we have to lose, and I had another $100 so I stumbled to the atm and pulled up to one more black jack table. Ah Vegas, you heartless vixen how I love you.

Gold dust in the wind

In my third grade class we had to sing Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” song for the cities Almond Blossom Festival. I remember that song to this day unfortunately. This was one of her first songs before she became the biggest female singer on the planet and made movies with Kevin Costner. This was Whitney with hair so high it was used as flight radar for Maverick and Goose. So it is sad to see that Whitney has passed and with her another 1980’s icon. Did I mention in third grade I also wore full Michael Jackson gear, the red leather zipper jacket, the silver sparkling glove and the black zipper pants? I did. I was the most popular third-grader at Dixieland school, denying those third-grade females crushes with a moonwalk away.

Now there is a revival of interest in the career hits of Whitney as there was with Michael Jackson’s in 2009. The best career moves for a singer past their time apparently is an early death and I’m sure there are struggling 80’s and 90’s artists wondering how they can fake death, relocate under an alias, and live off ITunes residuals on a tropical island somewhere. The best career rebound is now a permanent grounding.

It’s hard to get rich quick these days. On the Discovery Channel we see people willing to dive into the bottom of an arctic ocean with a vacuum cleaner to pick up gold specks of dust. The Bering Sea Gold shows men and women who have decided that building their own rickety ship (which apparently lasts without a breakdown for only a few hours a day) and diving into freezing water is their path to prosperity. Unfortunately it seems all the contestants on this game show are already mired in hundreds of thousands of child support debt or medical bills. Their path to prosperity is surviving debtor’s prison. This is always an inspiring message. It’s no longer instant wealth and lottery winnings, it’s breaking even. Forget gold teeth how about just purchasing some dentures or visiting a dentist! Staying with the Kevin Costner theme and adding some Patrick Swayze this show is part Waterworld and part Road House. I am not sure if these men have fins but I know that they are at the end of the world/ Nome, Alaska. But at least it is not Greece!

Who would have thought the Greek Islands have become less desirable than the arctic frigid waters of Alaska, but in Alaska you can still dive for prosperity. In Greece you have to pay to go to work. A new austerity measure (which apparently is the counter-opposite of prosperity) requires several thousand government employees to pay back their earned income and work for free until they get their budget under control. It must be just a blast to go to work for free! At least the ruffians in Alaska are on a ship out in the water with the possibility of wealth..and death. In Greece you are only promised death and taxes. But unless you were a 1980’s pop music icon there will no ITune gold dust residuals to fill your vacuum cleaner..just rocks, dirt, and cat hair..lot’s and lot’s of cat hair.

Fire and Ice

On New Year's Day the elements reigned. One man ran through a mountain of snow. Another man lit a city on fire. Both caught the media and our attentions for the wrong reasons. Two men separated by just over 1000 miles and with back stories that loomed larger than fireworks or next-day hangovers for many celebration revelers.

Outside of Seattle the remnants of a New Years celebration were marred by gunfire. There a 24 year old former Iraqi war veteran unleashed gunfire  before heading off to Mount Rainer that bitter morning to hide out. He was locked and loaded. His car filled with ammunition and body armor. His head wrecked from combat. The war had left him damaged goods mentally, or perhaps had allowed a mentally damaged man to learn the power of semi-automatic weapons. He bore them in photos shirtless like an action figure. Only no one buys action figures of murderers and when he gunned down a female park ranger and mother of two he became that. His service to the country became a detriment and military training a liability instead of a virtue. Men chased him through chest-deep snow two hours behind him and unsure of what other damage he had in mind. There were hikers and people left on the mountain and a desperate man willing to kill anything in his way to get away.

Meanwhile down the I-5 corridor in a different eco-system in Los Angeles warm weather was a petri- dish for an alarming number of arson fires, over 50 of them. Cars and buildings burned. People laid awake at night unable to fall into a sleep as their eyes focused for any glow and their smell for smoke. The rash of fires took place over three days causing $3 million in damages and countless nightmares for those they affected, yet thankfully no lives. There were no clues nor suspects. It made a city famous for riots unsure what message they were receiving. Was this a multiple act by many? Or a deranged act by one? It turned out to be the latter, a 28 year old German nationalist, in a dispute over immigration. His message was he hated America and wanted to watch it burn.

Hours after the German was captured the American soldier was found face dead in snow. Both men, under 30, who reaked terror on New Years day were finished a day after. A day of fresh starts and new beginnings for many was left with unanswered questions and heartache for others, leaving charred buildings and scarred lives as their hangover.

And the vault door swings open...

What if it were empty? What if your dollar bill was worthless? What if we are exchanging monopoly money under the guise of real currency? What if we found out we were no longer a superpower country? That we were merely another tourist destination like Greece, desperate for foreign investment and holiday travelers? What if instead of a wrapped present the box was empty, and that we would be lucky to have coal in our stockings to burn for heat?

When Geraldo Rivera swung open the vault on national television in 1986 to broadcast Al Capone's secret hidden vault he was left holding a broken bottle of moonshine as his prize. Could Fort Knox's vault filled with the US gold supply seized by the US government be just as empty?  Is that the reason we have no audit on the contents of this vault since 1974? This was the premise of the show Decoded I watched last night and I have to wonder if our whole economy is one big ponzi scheme generating value in our currency in the world markets that our government knows is non-existent.

Meanwhile earlier this year over $20B in diamonds, gold, and other treasures were discovered in a 16th century Hindu temple in southern India. Nice to know southern Hindu temples are better at protecting their assets than our government. Most recently here in the US a man purchased an abandoned storage unit for $1,100 and inside it was discovered to have of $600,000 of gold and silver coins. This was the great find that now may be not because the man who abandoned the unit is in jail awaiting federal charges of identity theft and the government may seize the loot based on the possible illegal means the former owner took to maintain it. Tough luck for the guy who thought he won a jackpot. More than likely it will be seized and never heard from again. If it is claimed eventually through legal channels the fees the guy will have to pay for a lawyer to seize it back will clean him out. If it is not the government secretly spending your tax dollars and gold reserves it is the lawyers we hire to defend ourselves of these ventures that do so boldly in our faces.

The lack of accountability and truth forthcoming from our government makes the days of pirates on open seas seem not only ideal but actually virtuous. They may have more honestly and ethics as they rob a ship's treasure face to face then the way our assets are robbed from us in the dark of night. This is why when we watch movies nowadays the bad guys are the guys chasing the supposed criminals. We've given up hope on the truth being fed to us we automatically assume the crimes don't fit the punishment and are even justified to begin with.

If they do open that vault at Fort Knox and we find it is empty what do we do? Will it be the wild west all over again? Do we start making decisions based on need rather than want or desire? It's a dark question four days before Christmas I know and maybe a time to start reflecting on more than the shiny present under the tree...unless it is gold bullion, but let's be realistic...we don't live in India..or China.

A-D-D-I-C-T...30 pts!

At least I haven't caused airplanes to fail from takeoff. My Words with Friends addiction has only impeded my work production. Unlike Alec Baldwin I would have shut off my game when the flight attendant informed me it was time to turn off my electronics...well if I didn't have a J or a Z maybe. Otherwise maybe I see Alec's point here, or points rather, like 50 of them and who needs to get anywhere on time really? We all need a few extra minutes delayed to get in a word or two between friends. Of course some of the words I have been playing have been more words than I have had with these friends in years, so maybe more "Words with Strangers" feels more appropriate. Of course then you are tiptoeing into some dicey situations. Oooh, good word, tiptoe, dicey, take personal memo...

No one took me up on my initial investment opportunity to that distant planet..heck even I forgot the name of it. I think once I discovered it wasn't a word I could score points on I lost interest: K-E-P-L-E-R..is not a valid word. Well that planet sucks! I understand the lack of interest now. So let's get back to reality. It's political season and my interest level is applied to my word play. N-E-W-T...word! Score!! M-I-T-T...score!! O-B-A-M-A...not a valid word...hmm...do I smell a regime change? As the wise Confucius once said.."If the words spell it, so it be true." Or maybe that was Y-O-D-A.

People the Christmas season is upon us. I don't know how merry everyone is but people are sure crabby. The cold weather doesn't help, the light wallets everyone's carrying, and the added general discord in the media and economic outlook can make the holiday music a little more grating to the ears than usual. Funny, I remember the songs being a little more cheerful but when they are blaring through our expensive Iphones or flatscreens they lose some of the lightness. Rudolph wasn't just a red-nosed reindeer he is a red-eyed debt collector coming with his cohorts with hooves and horns to take your stuff..and he's speaking another language too...what?? Frosty the snowman can also be another name for the bitter, un-festive, mean people that also seem to spring forth during the holidays. Um, sorry your life is rough and you aren't happy but try not to sprinkle your holiday misery my way, ok? Thanks! I've got some words for you..P-R-O-Z-A-C...R-U-M..or L-E-A-V-E!

I think the highlight for my cold holiday season is all the plans I put in my head about somewhere warm. I definitely am ready for a beach somewhere. I wish my present was some bright sunshine, warm sand, and a Mai Tai. Can we box that one up? At least I have the ability to visualize these things so I am not carrying around sadness all day like some people. Just because you are doing a transaction somewhere and someone ask how you are doing does not mean they want you to spill your troubles all over them. Head shrinks charge by the hour and bartenders get tips..I don't know where my compensation is for hearing people's life stories. The problem with reality is that without an inventive imagination it is not very enjoyable. Yet part of anything we enjoy takes creative thinking and visualization of something better. We either absorb the positive and the possible or we stand in the bread line and moan like we are all doomed to life in Siberia Russia. There Frosty is some comrade who beats you and Rudolph's red-nose is a hot poker used to torture information out of you. It could always be worse!

Anyways I've finished my blog for the day and have some words playing to get back to. C-I-A-O..not a valid word? WHAT?! SCREW THIS!!!

Investment Opportunity

I’m looking for investments into my new company. I am planning a trip to Kepler-22. You know, that planet 600 light-years away they say is like Earth. If you invest in it today then there is a good chance you can own a piece of this new planet too. I mean, it is 72 degrees and always sunny. The days move a little faster too so we won’t be stuck in the office as much. I am putting together pamphlets and a prospectus for your initial investments. Are you excited? In 2500 years we may actually reap the benefits of this new world. That is really setting up your great-great-great-great-great-great-great (to the twelfth power) grandchildren for success! Talk about the gift that keeps on giving for the holiday season. This one gives forever. It’s like buying coffee for the car behind you at Starbucks. Just please don’t be the scrooge that stops the giving train. With the way our dollar is spending might as well start your investment for the next millennium.

Right now we are being told the US dollar is worthless anyways. Everyone should be investing in Kardashian’s. That is the new currency according to Google. Every news article I find on there is Kardashian related. E news has somehow supplanted the New York Times as far as Google news is concerned. Our economy may be on the verge of collapse but that Kourtney is having another baby. Thanks for filling me in, I’m going to purchase some of that right away! The stock..not the baby. Of course the way our society has become in the realm of talentless individuals getting an unfair advantage on the playing field of life due to their last name lets go ahead and start investing in the babies of the wealthy today. Instead of writing my first screenplay for Justin Timberlake or Mila Kunis’s movie career I’ll just start one for their baby that they’ll eventually have. We’ll just fill in the name blank later.

There are unrealistic expectations from everyone. Companies want you to produce more with fewer resources and they offer less to you to do so. This is while you are being surveyed by customers for your experience level. Everyone is surveying experience level. If I go to McDonalds I know I am getting terrible service and I am lucky to get what I originally ordered and am hopeful it was not intentionally spit on by anyone in particular. That we now should expect excellent service from McDonalds is ridiculous. They pay their employees $5 an hour. They are not going to offer great service for $5 an hour! Just because the economy has collapsed and you can no longer afford a fancy steakhouse you have to realize that you get what you pay for! You want good service, pay for good service. It isn’t free. The problem with society is that we’ve adapted to this behavior where we expect something for nothing. If you don’t pay for service don’t be offended when you get none. The lack of economy and jobs notwithstanding does not mean your service level should improve either.

Of course my company provides excellent service, you just will get no return on your money this or next millennium. Your great-great…grandchildren (to the twelfth power) however, they will be enjoying some nice sunshine on their beach home on Kepler-22. That is of course unless a Kardashian invests in it first, then they are just screwed.

It ain't Knute Rockne

I am giving up my addiction. I only picked it up this fall. It was given to me by a co-worker. He told me it would be fun to try and he was heavily into it. A few of my friends were doing it, he said. It would consume whole days of my fall and winter. I would secretly check in on my addiction while at work and would relish when others who had this same addiction struggled. I envisioned myself continuing this lifestyle for years even if I knew it was destructive. It made me care about things I didn’t really care about and wasted hours on end for things that were meaningless to me, but they satisfied my urges and fulfilled the gaping void that my life has supposedly been without this addiction.

Of course I am talking about fantasy football. The aggravating, alienating, and mind-numbing game I was forced to play this fall by co-workers and friends alike. It has held my Sunday’s hostage for the last 12 weeks. I would wake up worrying that my players would not suit up and hit the field, not because I cared whether their team won or lost, but because I needed their points. I even found myself rooting against my favorite team if a star player on my fantasy team was up against them and I needed some “pointage.” My last straw of the absurdity of this stupid game is having a 40 point lead in the fourth quarter last night and watching my opponents reserve players collect 50 points against me in garbage time. My quarterback was so lights out and efficient it actually cost me the game because he stopped scoring.

There is no mercy rule in fantasy football. It seems the flaw in fantasy is when your players are too good that they still cost you wins. You can’t even win for making the right picks. This may be a fun past-time and a way to keep Sundays interesting but I am finally free of caring about the Titans vs. the Rams, or the Browns vs. the Jaguars, because my opponent may have a third-string tight end who catches a touchdown pass in the final seconds and gives my opponent a win. You can read the projections and scout the match ups and actually even watch the horrible games as if somehow your eyes and attention will somehow will your player to maximum point potential, but at the end of the day this is merely the fantasy football team “owner” turning the actual player into some sort of stock projection and we all know my feeling about stocks.

We’ve turned what was a fun game into a bad investment. My projections were faulty. I lost and lost and lost again even when I was projected to annihilate my opponents. And worse than the CEO’s who fire employees I was the owner who released players because that one week they didn’t produce. I’ve proven once again our culture’s obsession with numbers and instant gratification by playing this distracting time-consuming game within a game, that requires nothing of me but to sit on my fat ass and watch the game.

Or I could just be upset my team lost.

It's a numbers game

Lately it seems we've been consumed with numbers. There are demonstrators protesting on behalf of the "other 99%" of Americans. A politician espousing his proposed tax code policy of 9-9-9. A baseball executive who is moving from Boston to Chicago that made his career looking at statistics of players over their scouting evaluations and the movie called "Moneyball" from a book that inspired that type of thinking in the first place. There are polling questions, stock market projections, and fantasy football point totals just bombarding us everywhere. Why does my running back have to have a bye week and why am I stuck starting a third-stringer?  Yet among all of that madness (and poor drafting) somehow the number I can't get out of my head is that damn Subway commercial "5 dollar, 5 dollar..foot looong".

Numbers are easy to grasp. They are constant and we'll always have them to gauge our success or failure. Our economy is healthy or deathly-ill by the numbers that shoot out of computers and evaluate our financial wellness. We get bills with numbers on them. Sometimes they multiply quicker than we could have imagined. We shoot for number goals. Be it a dollar amount we want to acquire, diminish, or spend. We calculate our rate of success by a figure that we imagine will get us there. Or in some cases (more so then ever) we try to make our figure last longer. Everywhere we look a new number is shooting out at us, and with it a number to tell us what that number really means. I wish I was good at numbers. I am a writer. Numbers were not my thing, but long-winded paragraphs don't hit people with the same truth as do numbers. Numbers to people equal facts..until they don't.
Then we want to know who was running the numbers..must be the top 1%.

I'm 14 blogs away from 100..that's the new number I am shooting for. Not sure what lies after that. I think I want to wrap up my blogging career as it has yet to bestow me with the millions of followers I anticipated. I know that today I feel like I got hit by a semi-truck and I can't blame any number of drinks or shots on this one, only the annual head flu that hits me once a year. I am calculating the number of DayQuil shots I can take in conjunction with my EmergenC vitamin packets. Not exactly Petron or Jager and maybe that is really what 3 out of 4 doctors recommend. I have reservations booked at Seven Feathers today to go lose some dollar numbers playing blackjack on the horizon so it would be awesome if I felt more human and less zombie-esque. Who knew the Walking Dead was Girard Dr on a Saturday in October.

Speaking of Girard drive, this is my new writing name I am introducing on my writing career. Jon Miller is becoming Jonathan Girard. So in ten to fifteen years if you see Jonathan Girard on a bookshelf that is me. Just a heads up. It was down to Jonathan Deane (the road I grew up on in my childhood) or Girard (the home of the walking zombie today) and zombie won. The only problem with Girard is it is pretty close to Joe Girardi, the manager of the NY Yankees. However, I calculate (doing the numbers) that by the time my books hit the shelves he will be long-gone as a Yankees manager and the added value of the few diehards thinking the former coach is now a fiction writer could only help my numbers.

In the spirit of wrapping up my column nice and tidy I'm going to throw out a few numbers I'd like to focus on this weekend. 21: as in blackjack and I hope I hit that a few times tonight. 40-21: As in 49ers over the Detroit Lions tomorrow morning when I am chowing down on a big breakfast and a Bloody Mary (make that 2 bloody marys). 111: the amount of points I want my fantasy football team to score. 121,000: the jackpot at slots I hit? Sure. Two friends, 1 girlfriend and one hell of a time. Is this too much to ask for?

My meaning of life

I'm looking out my front window and see the sun poking through the autumn leaves. It's nice to see the sun after a few gray days and as late fall and winter approaches we have to absorb more of it, sort of hang on to it as a memory of the year that passed us. People sometimes like to reflect on their year in the winter. That leads to a more depressing reflection because we've been in the cold so many months we forgot what the sun felt like. I think it is best to reflect on the year in the fall. The leaves are changing and falling just as we are aging ourselves. We are in a sense getting ourselves prepared to bed up in our bunkers for the next few months. We won't be out as much, the gym will get visited less frequently, and there are more family Holidays but less time with friends.

There is an uneasy restlessness in our society. We are mad but we don't know exactly at who. The politicians and media wants us to lay blame somewhere but it could very well be at ourselves for listening so much to the politicians and media. There always needs to be media just as politicians always need a cause to push for. There is less honor in the workplace. Maybe there was always the illusion of honor and honesty but even that guise has been lifted. We are told to eat our cold porridge and be grateful for it. When people are throwing tomatoes at you that can be a lot harder. Causes are easy to join because they separate ourselves individually from our decisions. If we stepped back for a moment and looked at our own choices we may see that some of the blame lies within ourselves and not at this blank screen everyone wants to hurl their anger at together. Individual choices don't sell advertisement dollars or bring in television cameras however.

The internet brought people together. There is no denying the power of technology. It also has let us shift a lot of individual reasoning to mass appeal. We no longer have to search within ourselves for answers when we can google something closely resembling it and fill in the blanks from there. We no longer have to soul search, we search engine it. It used to be fun to remember and imagine our past now we can youtube clips of it. Somehow it seemed better in our memory.

I remember playing Legend of Zelda and thinking it was the coolest game ever when I was a kid. Youtube clips tell me I was mistaken. I remember playing Where in the World is Carmen San Diego on an ancient Apple computer and loving that game. I hope I never find the clips of it to change my mind. We act as though it's always been this way, yet the majority of us have had the internet for 17 years of our lives. Who knows what mass hysteria would have existed if we had access to it 20, 30, or 50 years ago.

Life isn't about quick decisions, about instant answers, nor is it about laying blame. Maybe we expected too much. Maybe we were told something was possible when it really wasn't at all. Or maybe we were told something was going to make us happy but when we got there and landed on that spot we didn't feel the way that we were supposed to at all. Television and the internet can inspire many surface emotions, but they can't penetrate into your soul. They can't tell you who you are, though they will forever try. We are not the music we listen to any more then we are the food that we eat. We are not the things we buy any more than we are the places we like to visit. We are not where we bank anymore than we are where we go to school. These are marketing tools. You are being sold something.

I'm as guilty jumping on the next conspiracy as the last person. I pretty much have laid blame on everyone from the CEO's, the government, to the sun shining down upon me. You can find every reason in the world to feel lied to, misled, betrayed, and guilty. Just put something in a search engine hit the send key and off you go into whatever tangent of life you want to satiate at that moment. Go for it. But today on this fall day in October I am only searching  the engine in my own head for answers. If it takes me sometime, I'm ok with it. If I never find the answer I seek well then I will wander aimlessly through life for a while. I'm done giving over the most valuable commodity we have left on this planet away for free, our minds.

Making money..now, no now, wait...NOW

The news that Don Lapree committed suicide in his prison cell awaiting his trial on a 52 million dollar fraud charge brought me back a few years. I was enthralled with the idea of easy money and remember watching his late night infomercials with the belief he was the smartest man in the world. Down on his luck Don, had somehow defied the odds and become a millionaire and he was graciously sharing his success with us. He wanted ALL of us to make money with him.

I was 17 when I fell in love with the pitch: Making money now, Making money easy, and most importantly making money. The images dazzled. Young guy on the screen talking passionately on how he succeeded against all odds and you can too. All you need to do is buy his video with his booklet on the steps following his own path to success. I was ambitious and ready to start my own empire I picked up the phone and ordered the program. Don Lapree’s Making Money program arrived in the mail two weeks later.

At least I was 17 when I picked up the phone and dialed. In hindsight the advertisements were horribly made and the package I received even worse. The video showed Don in a conference room scribbling his vision on a white board while they all nodded in scripted fascination that we would later call reality television. “Oh so we just make ads in newspapers and advertise them across the country?” “Oh, so we don’t really need a product to sell..we can sell anything.” “Oh the most important thing to do is find newspapers where we can place these ads and the checks start rolling in.” The video while probably shot in the early 90’s looked straight from the 70’s. The men and women could have been shipped from an instructional video for any bank in 1980. The men wore ugly suits, the women offensively hideous dresses, and Don was wearing his trademark everyman t-shirt teaching these business professionals how to “really” make money.

This prevailing attitude stuck with me unfortunately for years. Success wasn’t about education it was about effort. He just worked harder and he out-smarted the system. He used his passion and drive to create his wealth; he didn’t follow the path given to all of us. We could either follow his lead or become these people sitting at the table in their ghastly attire. We could punch the clock everyday and live in want, or we could seize the day and start making little newspaper advertisements and selling some anonymous product to other people nationally. Granted, this was before computers and the internet became a household appliance when newspaper advertisements were still something people actually purchased. Join or be left behind a desk wallowing while the other Don Lapree disciples lounge on a tropical beach with a mai tai in hand while their money is made overnight.

Now almost 20 years later we remember the folly. As in anything in life, the illusion is always more fascinating than the reality. We want therefore it must be possible. The images glossy, the voices animated, and the reality television life not as real as we all believed it to be. Madison Avenue can sell us any product and we lap it up. The news media can feed us any story and we respond in kind. We are hungry for information so we will devour anything, be it what is force fed or what is given to us as unhealthy substitutes for actual knowledge. Somehow we cling to what we know is fiction because the reality is less satisfying, rewarding, or inspiring. That fiction however perpetrates into lifestyles as unfulfilled and unobtainable. You are chasing a balloon that slipped through your fingertips into the atmosphere above, a balloon that you will never capture. The higher you climb in altitude in pursuit of it the less of a prize awaits your grasp. You start to realize it was all hot air. And as your hand reaches its final desperate grab, it pops, and you are 12000 feet above the ground with no parachute. A life you lived only an illusion, but the ensuing fall before you is very, very real.

Something about imagination

When Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka opened the doors of the Chocolate Factory to the children and looked at the sparkle in their eyes while bursting out his song and dance, I wonder if he would have needed business financing. How exactly did Willy Wonka build such an elaborate factory of chocolate rivers and jelly filled mushrooms? Did he realize that those Oompa Loompa's were probably illegal and he would have to face severe monetary as well as public relations damage? Who finances a world of sweet imagination? Well if you work in Ashland, Oregon...that would be me.

I'm sure Willy would have started as my client. There is a pull visionary/lunatic clients have to me that must be cosmic. Maybe it is because I can reference most of the ideas they came up with. You want to build a pirate ship? Great idea. Remember Goonies? That was based in Astoria..you should have the boat visit there! You want to start a dream studio where people use their dreams as therapy? Awesome. I just watched Inception last night, that sounds like it could really work! Oh you want to eliminate space based satellites to welcome extra-terrestrials? I was just watching Ancient Aliens. I am amazed we haven't done that yet! You play the renaissance flute? I just listened to some renaissance music. Does Milli Vanilli count? No? Culture Club?

Ashland lives in a bubble of hope, dreams, positive energy, and pixie dust. In it people make their own realities and block out those that don't necessarily fit in...aka, financial capital, business plans, built in market, and general realistic expectations. There is a beacon flickering like a distant lighthouse, calling out creative minds from the foggy seas to its tiny inland shore decorated with Shakespearean pirates, musicians, and bums. It's a lifestyle choice, personal income be damned. And yet if this rolling economic blackout has told us anything it is that it is better to be poor somewhere you are happy then somewhere you are not. A pirate ship business has as much chance at failure as a restaurant, and even less so. If the business model fails you can always take the ship to high seas and start pillaging a few cruise liners. Or as we in corporate America call it..your contingency plan, aka Plan B.

I've become immune to the standard business model. You say you want to start an auto repair shop? What else are you offering? Are there jugglers? What about fire-breathing acts while I wait for my oil change? What can you give me?? I am not going to just sit there and wait for you to sell me. At least dazzle me and distract me before you serve me the bill. That standard shop may work in some small towns..but this is Ashland kid. Come back and see me when you are ready.

We can't all live in Never-never land, but why not. If reality is the same in every city across the country, if we are all mired in the same downturn why can't we serve ours with a little pizazz? You know who used to live there;.. we did, our children did, or still do. They never forgot that life was what you make it not what CNN or the Wall Street Journal tells us it is. Our reality is truly what we make it not what society shoves down our throats.


My reality? Lets go back to that pirate ship, I'll be driving glow in the dark golf balls into the midnight sea where they float on the water safely (as not to harm any marine life) illuminating the ocean and serving as a beacon to welcome extra-terrestrials to our planet. Of course, that reality comes with a contingency plan of white padded walls and a straight jacket, but lets not get ahead of ourselves!