Keanu Reeves can’t act, right? I mean, that’s clear, am I right? Here’s this guy, who can’t act, and yet he’s a big famous actor, and he gets lots of money for acting. Which he’s bad at. Acting, that is. Not getting lots of money. He’s quite good at that. But see, I don’t think that’s a difficult trade. I’d like to think with minimal training, any of us could be pretty good at receiving large amounts of money.
Apparently not. I saw a thing on TV the other day, oh, let’s say I saw it on Oprah, for the sake of argument, and it was about people who suddenly come into large sums of money (by winning the lottery, getting an unforeseen inheritance, falling into a huge pit of gold, etc.) and who are very sad because of it. All of them were all depressed. Some of them had spent all their money very quickly and were now (shudder) poor again; some of them were just (sniff) overwhelmed by the large amount of money.
Well, boo-freakin’-hoo, OK? What am I, supposed to sympathize here? With these morons? "This man was lucky enough to win $15,000,000 from the lottery, but now he has nothing because of some bad business decisions. And so he’s very sad now. Feel for him." Bad business decisions? Like what? Like, "Hey, I think a good idea for a business would be to, like, get a bunch of money, oh let’s say…. $15,000,000, and then we’ll pour lighter fluid on it and burn it! Yeah! Great business idea!" Or "Margeret never even leaves her house these days, her stunning 15-bedroom villa in the hills of Belgium, she nevers leaves it because she’s so torn apart by how the money has changed her. She cries every night, into her $34,000 silk pillow." Well, sure, money’s gonna change you! Sometimes for the worse! You know how you can console yourself? That’s right: with the huge amount of money! Did you lose your friends? Buy new ones! Can’t find love? Buy concubines! Shunned by your family? Have them killed! It’s the American dream, people!
I also recently saw a Behind the Music on the band TLC. Apparently, they didn’t plan out their tour right or something, and despite being the number one group in the world one year, they had to declare bankruptcy. How can you plan so poorly, that despite selling over five million albums that year, they had to declare bankruptcy. "OK, T, if we sell five million albums, we just don’t break even, we’ll need to sell 70 kagillion if we wanna break even." "Yeah, L, that sounds good." "There’s no such thing as a kagillion!" "Shut up, C."
But I really just want to focus on a line from the documentary. Here it is:
"That year… the members of TLC… only took home $50,000…. each…. after taxes."
(CUT TO shot of TLC girl crying) "It… (sniff)… it was just so hard…."
Now, I added in "after taxes", but other than that, that is verbatim what appeared on that program. Who does the media think is watching this? The majority of people in the world don’t even make near $50,000! They make it sound like there should be a freakin’ Save the Starving Popstar Fund. "Oh, it’s so sad… those poor girls… despite the fact that three times my annual income forces them to tears, I feel sorry for them. Honey, get the checkbook!" "A rat ate the checkbook." "Stop complaining, honey, at least we’re not TLC! Walk a mile in their shoes!"
In the end, I think the problem here is, the wrong people are getting rich. We need people who can handle this money. People who can persevere if, God forbid, they are struck with millions in lottery winnings. I want to be that person. Oh, I know… it’s a tough thing to take a stand on. But it’s something I believe in. If you’re unfortunate enough to win the Pick 6 drawing and get stuck with $70M, I’ll take the burden. If you have a rich grandma who leaves you millions in their will, I’ll weather that storm for you. I’ll take care of all your money woes. Just forward the money right to me. Porter Mason, T.J. Monkey’s. And… shed no tears for me. This is something I want to do. For the good of humanity. Plus, if I get rich, maybe I can hang with Keanu.
