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!

A Quantum Leap into a Fantasy Highlander

Trapped in the past, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home. ~Quantum Leap (1989-1993)

'I was born four hundred years ago in the Highlands of Scotland. I am immortal and I am not alone. Now is the time of the Gathering, when the stroke of a sword will release the power of the Quickening. In the end, there can be only one.' ~Highlander (1992-1998)



When our favorite show is cancelled or ends production it can leave us wistful for more. Shows that in hindsight may not have been as wonderful as we imagined them were somehow taken away from us. The characters we let into our homes and hearts have in a way died and all we have are repeats to reminisce over. Even the introduction music to the show can trigger memories years later and bring us back to who we were when we first viewed it. The people we were with, the places we grew up in, all of those memories somehow become linked to the music in our memories and the characters who were almost family. Television is a powerful medium.



I watched a lot of television growing up. I escaped into the worlds they created. As a child I would sneak out of bed and convince my folks let me watch episodes of Dallas or Falcon Crest. There were the nights of Love Boat or Fantasy Island that stick in my head. As I grew a bit older it was Quantum Leap and Highlander that stick out in my mind. They both combined my love for history and adventure with a moral compass of right and wrong. Both characters struggled to do the right thing even when sometimes it was more advantageous for them to do otherwise. I wonder how much these shows have impacted me in my own life choices as much as the guidance of my own family. It also makes me wonder how awesome it would be if these shows somehow were combined into an episode.

What if Sam Beckett leaped into an episode of the Highlander? Maybe he would leap into the body of an immortal enemy of Duncan MacLeod and have to try to convince him somehow that he wasn’t after his head after all. Maybe the two would sword fight if Sam was unable to sway Duncan and right at the moment Sam was about to lose his head maybe he leaps into an episode of ….



…The Love Boat! There Sam is a lonely bachelor on the ship being greeted by Captain Stubing and drinking at the bar being served antidotes by Isaac. While on this episode he meets another lonely woman and they start a romance and right when, ABC has to start sending the kids to bed, he once again leaps into a hard slap to his face from…


…Alexis Carrington on Dynasty. Sam now finds himself in a dress in the body of Linda Evans. He is hard pressed to fight back as he doesn’t want to hit a woman but when Alexis knocks him into the water fountain and he sees in his reflection that he is now the character Krystle Jennings all bets are off. They proceed to wrestle in the fountain and the throw down begins. His designer dress ruined and make up streaming down him wet face Sam pulls his hand back for a wicked slap on Alexis when once again he leaps into…


“De Plane, de plane!!” Fantasy Island and he is Tattoo. A small plane pulls up onto the Island as he runs back down the bell tower. This episode would be pretty dull except for the arriving guests as Tattoo didn’t do much on the show but welcome guests and yell “De plane, De plane!” but it was still a fun leap. Maybe Sam would eat coconuts and drink pineapple juice on the beach. Or maybe Sam reveals to Mr. Roarke that his fantasy is to return to his own show and Scott Bakula would appear as one of the guests getting off the plane. So essentially he could leap into himself on Fantasy Island. This would be almost a climatic episode until once again he leaps…

Into September 1st, 2011 and a banker desk and a tie…opening business accounts…wait…oh no. I’ve leaped home. Send me back! Pleeeeease…..

Gridlock on the Grid

Animal Farm was my favorite book growing up. The parallels between that novel by George Orwell and our corporate lives as we now know them are truly stunning. First you become an owner and then your privileges slowly dissipate. That piece that you owned just became a lot less valuable. Knowledge is power you say? Knowledge is a curse. Oh how I wish I could simply surf stupid on Facebook. Isn’t that what it is called? When we are clicking links to zone out of reality or voicing our latest meal, thought, song lyrics..we are surfing stupid. There was no point to get on. No destination to discover. We weren’t trying to look anything up or research anything. We simply wanted to check out for a while and look at posts. This would be the equivalent of sitting on your porch and watching cars drive by. It’s what we did as children in cars on long road trips. We zoned out the window and looked at passing billboards. Only now those billboards are written by our friends or semi-acquaintances to you thousies out there.

I’m coming up with new terminologies today. Thousies are you brave folks that accept and add everyone to your Facebook...you’ve exceeded a thousand friends (or are on your way). Oh I’m sure you really are that popular. Maybe I’m just jealous, yet I know that you won’t be reading this anyways because thousies don’t actually have time to read anything on Facebook. When you have that many posts on your news feed my blog link is a distant memory. It is like driving on the freeway at 200 miles an hour and every billboard is a blur. And you can’t post anything of significance on your wall when you are a thousie because well you really don’t know the other 800 plus people that you added. It would be like going in the middle of a busy street in a city and yelling out your personal information. And the problem with too many thousies on your Facebook friend’s list is your news feed gets clogged with all the latest friend additions. I’ve scrolled though two pages of friend add notifications just to find out what one of my friends ate for dinner last night. It was quite frustrating.

Of course I am being cynical. I am as guilty as every one of this stupid medium and my ranting and raving against it is simply a re-circulated blog from last year but that doesn’t change the fact that it is true. We are simply frying our brains on a slow simmer. Going off the grid never seemed so appealing. Just disappearing into life somewhere, be it a tropical island, an isolated wilderness cabin, or the Bermuda Triangle. Maybe Amelia Earhart was really just trying to get away. Perhaps she finished her life on a remote island and left the show behind. Watching the show Dual Survivor a lot has me envying the lives of Dave and Cody. Maybe technology isn't what it is cracked up to be. It sure gives us a lot more to desire and a lot less to accomplish. Yet seeing an episode where Cody built a huge tee pee out of the trees in remote Argentina seemed more appealing to me than some over-priced beach house in Malibu.

There the stock market isn't on the radar, nor is the latest celebrity gossip. We could care less about the new Fall line up of television series debuting or our fantasy football leagues. It is primitive as surviving. Making shelter, starting a fire, and finding food. Granted I don't envy their meals. Yet the bugs and critters they have to eat to survive are probably healthier for them than the garbage most of us fill ourselves with on a daily basis. And yet as much as I enjoy the show, it is simply staged scenarios and watching survivalists make it out of the jungle in an hour long episode is pretty easy while sitting on my couch with a bag of Doritos.

We are spoiled by technology and our generation. We can whine about the job market but 100 years ago people were just lucky to live past 40. We can travel the world with a touch of a computer button where 100 years ago many people had no idea what other parts of the world looked like. We can decry that the end of the world is coming, but our indicators are exaggerations blown out of proportion compared to the real hardships past generations suffered and prospered through. No one said this life would be easy except for the reality television shows. Of course it isn't for them either, and maybe most of all. Exposed and disposed of after their 15 minutes. Their illuminated skeletons our guilty pleasure. You want to envy the Situation? Fine, but lets re-examine his life in five years (or even one). The pretty picture and glossy images only hide the reality of these so-called realities in plain sight.

I read an article that said there are less men in the job work force than any time since 1948. There are more women than men currently employed. The jobs that were once available to men who wanted to work with their hands are no longer available. Industrial and manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, to the benefit of corporate shareholders. Foreign and illegal workers take farming jobs that are paid far less making them undesirable to most US men again for the benefit of profits. Meanwhile there is less disposable income to purchase these products. Men are told that it is their lack of education holding them back and that they are being lazy, but tell that to the coffee barista with the college degree and 60K worth of student loan debt.

For too long we are getting told that there is a model to follow for success. Yet no one told us this model was glued together with plastic. The college professors teaching business are themselves detached from the industries they are training their students for. It's the blind leading the blind, yet the only one holding their hand out are the universities subsidized by the government and it's hard to lift someone up when you are reaching for their back pocket. Trade schools which can actually offer a career path and available jobs are unable to offer financing options for their students. Yet you can get a college degree paid for by the US government in French poetry as long as you sign off on the 30K loan you'll be paying off forevvver with your job at Applebees. Suddenly that tee pee in Argentina looks a lot more stable doesn't it?

Staying optimistic is fine and dandy. Everyone should focus on the positives and we are lucky to have the things we do, but we are following roads to success paved with reality land mines. We can start making wise decisions and saving our money but the instruments to increase our wealth are being directed by people with a lot more of it. I guess the more we sit and analyze the things the more that surfing stupid on Facebook has it's advantages.

Fight or alien flight??

I don’t know about you but I’m tired of being on the ropes. We are like some beat-up prize fighter wailing away with wobbly footing. We can’t focus. Our eyes are darting off to some flying circling birds around our head. The punch we are countering with has the power of a teenagers pillow fight. And we are taking straight head shots the likes unseen since Rocky vs. Ivan Drago in the Soviet Union. We are being clobbered. This is the kind of damage that turns our brains into Anderson’s split-pea soup. What are we to do?

Do we stay off-kilter and wait for the white towel to get flung into the ring? I hate to tell you this but Mick is busy watching the Bachelor Pad. That towel you are waiting on to bail you out is being used to wipe his chin after an episode of Man vs. Food. He is not paying attention to the carnage unfolding in the ring in front of him he is listening to CNBC tell him how the instability in some bank in France is causing his retirement fund to shrivel up like his..gloves. Yes, Mick will not be bailing you out of this beat down. So what is plan B?

Do we wait for the vicious final TKO blow? It’s got to be coming right? Aliens are shortly making landfall to evaporate us into fuel for their distant planet. The stock market will crash completely with every stock reaching zero simultaneously. The gas prices will grow so high that people will abandon their car at the station and at stop lights in every city. Television will soon realize the only show we will actually ever watch will be one where we are each the star and will implant cameras into all of our houses only for us to discover that we are completely boring after all having lived the last several years through the lives of others. No, we will not get knocked out people. Ivan Drago was juicing remember? While we await that final knockout punch so that we can sleep in peace the U.S. government wants to seize all evidence of this film enhancing drug activity. Who was that Russian doctor injecting Drago’s biceps? Can we call Dolph Lundgren to testify? The public wants to know! How dare they falsely enhance such an important movie to our culture? The people must know the government means business. Ok..so plan C?

Fight?! Do we fight back? Do we grit our teeth and refuse to accept this national malaise? Do we search for a deeper meaning? Do we train harder and stronger so that we can no longer be a punching bag for all the calamities that life is currently hurling at us? Do we all make like little Rudy’s and be the underdog so that we can get some five minutes of mop up time? Are we going to come to the realization that the safe road is now lined with land mines? Life is supposed to be hard and challenging and if we want the prize we have to endure hardship right? But, it would be a hell of a lot easier if these damn aliens would hurry up and get here already.

Surfing a bubble

I am not a surfer. I have never paddled on a board out in the ocean. I have never balanced on the pounding ice cold blue water as a wave crested behind me. I've never jumped a shark, nor have I come in contact with one. The idea of surfing is what drew me to my blog title. It has always been something I've wanted to do, but never have. It seems like surfers possess some kind of spiritual intelligence and depth even when speaking in two-syllable words. No, I am not a surfer as the physical and literal description of surfing describes. However, we are all riding the wave.

Economist call our economic downturns the popping of bubbles. When the stock market crashed in the 1920's it was a bubble. The technology stock collapse in the early 2000's, another bubble. The housing meltdown we are still all in the middle of? Once again another bubble. As if we blew them up with a child's bubble wand in our front yard. Or if we were chewing a wad of bubble yum gum. It gives us the feeling that we somehow control the outside forces of this so-called bubble. That we are all children playing. As if we could even blow up a bubble big enough to burst and cause such devastating ramifications. We were all so irrational. We should have known better. If we had just played with our toy guns and G.I. Joes instead of blowing bubbles as children maybe we wouldn't have these things happen to us. No these economic downturns are not fun and bubbly bubbles. They are waves. The force of them too strong to say that they were simply man-made irrational creations.

 This analogy always makes more sense to me. You see a bubble will always pop but to a child its results are harmless. We simply blow up another one. There are no dire consequences of it. We don't get spanked or yelled at. No one laughs at us or calls us names. It's simple physics. A bubble created by hot hair eventually pops. Yet it doesn't grow so massive as to cover entire cities with it's carnage. We don't hear about bubble yum damage to vehicles or houses. You can not die from a bubble. You can however drown from a wave. And every time our economy collapses due to a wave of economic force that is both created and natural people drown all the time.

You see a bubble is always going to pop, but some people are amazing surfers. The economy can collapse and they will still be riding their board. Some of these people even thrive in periods of intense misfortune for others. They've either been wise enough to ride on a smaller wave behind the gigantic wave everyone else swam up to, or they rode the wave before the fatal one and are already back on the beach drinking a Pina Colada. You see the wave is timing. You see other's on top of it and the water is incredibly inviting. It's calling you out. Maybe, just maybe I can ride the wave too you think. Maybe I am a natural. Of course a lot of people who die on this wave thinking they are naturals have never had a surfing lesson in their life. No one is a natural born surfer. If you jump on the wave in the mid force of it with no skills you will not be prepared when that wave collapses on you. Even the best surfers in the world die on waves.

Of course many of them don't. They time the wave perfectly. They feel the wind on their faces and the dampness in their hair as they master the water beneath their feet. The feeling must be incredible. To somehow balance on such a powerful force of nature that claims so many others year after year. And as they jump off their surfboard after an exhilarating ride and feel there truth could not be any clearer, they are greeted by a shark and eaten to death. Oh yeah they live in the ocean too. And whether you are a professional surfer or a novice lured into the wave, you taste all the same.

I came to collect

What makes us remember what we do and forget what we shouldn't? I always have ideas for great stories or business ideas and when they hit they will rattle around in my head like a quarter in the dryer. It is so overwhelming and all encompassing as to drive me mad.  I try to hold it and keep it inside as the day progresses or before I can write it out and by the end of the day I don't even remember my first name. You spend so much time zoning out to distract yourself from the monotony of the day that what you actually do want to hold on to washes away to sea. It's a message in a bottle floating out in the universe so someone more adapt at writing things down can absorb and make millions. Thanks asshole!

I want my 10% commission off every good idea I've floated into the universe. There must be a bit to collect. I'm sure I came up with songs and movies before they were written. I am sure I created the pillow pet before that woman claimed it and made hundreds of millions. All I want is my cut for floating it out there originally. Call it my thought finders fee. I am not asking for half or even a quarter. They had the gumption and the follow through I lacked. They bled the sweat and tears to get it off the ground. They invested capital and man power. They stayed awake nights unsure of themselves while I slept, on my elephant pillow pet, like a baby. But I floated it out there. I created the mojo for the magic to follow. Without my positive karamtic vibes they would be sitting behind a desk somewhere slinging something for a living. So hook me up already. Give me my dime bag of the profits!

Wouldn't that be great if we could repo our thoughts or feelings? To hell with vehicles..I want my idea back and I'm coming to collect, you can keep my kidney! I just want that idea I gave you ten years ago. I want that attention I showered you with. I'm repossessing it, pronto. There is no way to pay it off. You are way past making payments. I'm just here to collect it and move on. I guess that was the basis of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Let's free up some mind space. Wipe the slate clean from all associations and start anew, clearing our head like you would the cache in your computer. In Memento short-term memory was the driving force to that fun motel adventure. Who needs a vacation when every ten minutes we can start all over again. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray lamented how he is stuck reliving the miserable day in Puksatawnee. Why couldn't he have his one day on the beach to live over? Why can't those memories be bottled up and sealed tight? Why do our memories, or in his case recycled days, seem to focus on the should haves or could haves, instead of the haves?

Well I for one am done floating out my ideas for free. I am holding onto my idea like child does a balloon and not releasing it's hot air into the atmosphere. Instead I will carry it around with me and I don't care what anyone says about it. A grown man can carry balloons with him wherever he goes. Ok, well that idea can go...nevermind. Released. But no seriously, I want to finish what I start. I have ideas..bold, crazy, ideas. Sometimes I share them too soon and it is like releasing the air out of this hypothetical balloon. It sputters out and dies or pops unceremoniously. I'm going to keep these things tight until they are strong balloons, huge balloons, I'm talking massive balloons. Do you see where I am going here? They will be almost offensively gigantic balloons.

That doesn't mean I don't want to collect on my 10%. It just means I realistically realize that by donating it into the universe I have contributed to the economic well being of our society. I am always a giver. If we can find a way to write those kind of contributions off on our taxes, now that would be ideal.