Rant #460: Billionaires ... I'm Not One of Them

Did you know that there are 1,210 people who have enough wealth to be classified as billionaires?

According to Forbes Magazine, not only are there more than 1,200 people with this type of wealth, but the list actually includes 214 new members.

The world's richest person is Mexican telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim Helu, worth $74 billion, and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, worth $56 billion.

No, I am not on the list, not even close. Unless something dramatic drops in my lap, I'm lucky if I can even rate myself a thousandaire, or even a hundredaire.

I am just a working stiff, just like most people are. The people that achieve this amazing wealth worked hard to get it, were at the right place at the right time, and well, they had a lot of luck doing it.

That isn't sour grapes. You have to have some luck to acquire such a fortune.

Me, I have had absolutely no luck during my career. I wanted to become a teacher, went into a market that was as bad as today's market is, had to switch careers in a millisecond and market myself in a different direction, was hit by divorce, long-time child support payments, loss of my job, taking another job that paid less but kept me employed, etc. I could go on and on.

I haven't had much luck with money matters, but what can I do?

At age 53, I realize that my earning potential is waning by the minute. Although I have a love/hate relationship with my job, I am better off with it than without it.

I haven't had a raise in years--YES, YEARS--although I did ask for one last year, and, of course, got turned down. I plan on asking for another one this year, and hopefully, things will be better for me.

But, like many people, I am constantly watching my wallet.

So congratulations go out to these billionaires.

But me, I'm a working stiff, nothing more, and I know that these guys live in a different world than most of us do.

But they put their pants on the same way I do, so they really aren't that different from me .. are they?

Rant #459: Bits and Pieces

I really don't have anything major to rant or rave about today, but I do have some smaller bits and pieces I can talk about sparingly.

Charlie Sheen Fired From TV Show: So, this fool gets fired from his TV show and becomes an Internet sensation on Twitter, where he is accumulating millions of followers each day. Numerous corporations want him to sell their products there, and he is probably making millions from doing this. He also has offers to do other shows.

Again, this is the guy who beat his wife, slept with porn stars, is an admitted drug user, and may have made anti-Semitic slurs to his former producer.

I think his popularity shows a lot about this country, more than a lot of people want to admit to.

Lindsay Lohan Video Sold To Highest Bidder: For once, I am going to take Lindsay's side on this. If you tell me that she stole jewelry and you have the evidence of such a theft, why do you sell the evidence before you go to trial?

This is absolutely bizarre. If I were the judge, even if Lohan is guilty as sin, I would throw this case right out the door. Where is the store's credibility here? Did they do what they did to bank on (literally) Lohan's notoriety?

In my mind, Lohan is a free woman.

Monkees Tickets: I may be boring people to death with this, but I am a super fan of the Monkees, always have been (since 1966) and always will be. And yes, I will be seeing them in June, as I copped a few tickets yesterday.

I don't know if this is going to be the biggest tour since the beginning of time, but for me, it is ultra-important. This is music I really care about, performed by artists who I think are really talented.

No, I won't be purchasing Partridge Family tickets when they reunite for a tour (although I did see David Cassidy at a free concert two years ago).

Credit Card Account Stolen: I have had my American Express card for years, but evidently, my account numbers were stolen the other day, and people used the account to purchase computer equipment.

Luckily, American Express contacted me because they felt the purchases were a red flag that the card was not being used by me, since I never have made any computer or related purchases with the card.

I won't have to pay for these purchases, but I don't think they will ever catch these thieves. Heck, I hope whatever they bought blows up in their faces and they end up looking like the Elephant Man, who didn't deserve his fate--these idiots do.

Facebook To Rent Films: Well, it's not the end of the world as we know it, but movie rentals are coming to your favorite social networking site. Warner Brothers said it will test a service that will offer select movies for rental (or eventually purchase) through Facebook's public pages of these films.

Films will be streamed through a Facebook application, and will cost 30 credits, or about $3. Renters will have access to the movie for 48 hours and can replay it as many times as they want.

Personally, this is not for me, but I can see where kids might go for this. Me, I would much rather either rent or purchase a movie I want to see, actually have something in my hand when I spend my hard-earned cash. But today's kids don't know from this, all they know is files, so they might go for it.

Rant #458: Laugh-In: You Bet Your Sweet Bippy!

On my local PBS station the other night was a special during Pledge Week that I had been looking forward to for some time after hearing about it a few months ago.

PBS's look at "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" was only slightly more than an hour long (due to pledge breaks), but I think it got the essence of this classic show--and you can look that up in your Funk and Wagnals!

I used to laugh, laugh, and laugh some more when "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" came on the air for its six year run on NBC, every Saturday night in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The show was groundbreaking. Usually, variety shows went at the pace of a turtle, but "Laugh-In" was different--very different.

Jokes were rapid-fire, and just when you got done laughing at one joke, another came on, and another, and another. There were regular bits: The Party, the Farkle Family, Laugh-In Looks at the News, and, of course, the Joke Wall, but most bits lasted little more than a few seconds.

The show was tied together by its hosts, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. Rowan and Martin were veteran Las Vegas entertainers who dabbled in both the movies and TV with varying degrees of success. They had made an OK movie, "Once Upon a Horse," which featured an un-named and then very unknown Mary Tyler Moore as one of the dancers in the film. Dick Martin had appeared semi-regularly as the next door neighbor of Lucy on "The Lucy Show." But generally, they weren't that well known outside of Las Vegas.

With producer George Schlatter at the helm, NBC ordered a special from Schlatter starring the duo. The show also featured a pretty much non-descript cast of players who also had had some minor successes in the entertainment field, including Arte Johnson, Joanne Worley, Judy Carne, Ruth Buzzi (she had been seen from time to time as Marlo Thomas's friend on "That Girl") and Alan Seus. All had been around for years, but had never broken through. They probably took this show as a lark.

But little did anyone know that this lark would turn to gold.

The special clicked with audiences, and a series was ordered.

Running during its first season after the equally groundbreaking "The Monkees," "Laugh-In" became the No. 1 show in the country, and stayed there for two or three years.

The cast, which also included Goldie Hawn and Henry Gibson, became megastars overnight.

And who can forget the debut of Tiny Tim?

Everyone wanted to be on this show, and such mega-stars as Sammy Davis Jr., John Wayne, and yes, even Richard Nixon made cameo appearances on the show.

The program ran afoul of the censors during its period on the air, but clever writing often was over the heads of those on the panic button. Alan Seus' wonderful performance as the slightly queer sports reporter was certainly a regular spot which went over their heads, as was the word "bippy," a word planted by the writers (including Coslough Johnson and Jeremy Lloyd) to throw off the censors. The censors thought bippy was something dirty (it wasn't), but they couldn't pull it because they couldn't find any evidence that it was something obscene.

They spent so much time looking for "bippy" dirt that a lot of stuff was left in that they missed.

What they did leave in included girls dressed in bikinis with sayings painted all over their bodies. You couldn't quite read some of those sayings with all the dancing about, but let me tell you, they missed plenty!

And you had oldtime black comedian Pigmeat Markham reaching new heights of popularity with white audiences with the "Hear Come the Judge" blackouts, which I don't think the censors really got as much as the public did.

But what you did get was a "Potpourri" of impressive talents. You literally saw the creation of several enduring stars taking their first babysteps, including Hawn and Lily Tomlin.

And you also had the foundation of "Saturday Night Live," as Lorne Michaels was one of the later writers on the show. He has said that "Saturday Night Live" is a combination of "Laugh-In" and "The Monkees," and I think he is correct.

Anyway, the show had its run, had a few spinoffs ("Letters to Laugh-In" and the later "Rowan and Martin Report"), several records (beyond Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," there was Shorty Long's "Here Comes the Judge" and many others by cast members and other acts), and several imitators ("Turn On," one of the all-time TV bombs).

In the mid 1970s, the show resurfaced, without Rowan and Martin or such a talented cast, but it did launch the career of Robin Williams.

So it was fun seeing "Laugh-In" again this weekend. Sure, as an 11 year old, I am sure some of the jokes on the show went way over my head, but looking back, I think I got more than I missed.

What a great show! There will never be another like it.

Rant #457: Back to the Past

It's early March, and although we haven't had much snow since the end of January in my neck of the woods, it's still winter. Today, it is a little crisp, a little windy, and quite rainy right now, although it is supposed to get nice and warm during the day, maybe pushing 50 degrees.

This weekend, other than doing food shopping, my family and I really didn't do much of anything, which is good, because I was pretty pooped from a very busy week.

Anyway, turning the channels yesterday to find something to watch, I came across the YES broadcast of Game 3 of the 1999 World Series--October 26, 1999--between the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves. The Yankees would go on to win the World Series in four games, but this game is special to me for a variety of reasons.

One, because it was one of the most exciting World Series games I have ever seen, and two, because I was there ... yes, to this day it stands as the only World Series game I have ever seen in person.

What happened is that my childhood best friend, out of the blue, contacted me and said he was given a pair of tickets to the game by a client. They were in God's country in the old Yankee Stadium, but he asked me if I wanted to go.

I didn't hesitate saying yes. (Just to add that my very first Yankees game that I attended, in 1965, was with my friend and his father, so this really brought us full circle.)

I left work a half hour early, and somehow, I got from Western Nassau County to the Stadium, during rush hour, in about a half hour, which to this day I feel is an almost impossible achievement, but I did it. I parked my car, and met my friend at the old bat that was a popular meeting place at the Stadium.

Overshadowing the World Series that year was John Rocker, the big-mouthed but talented relief pitcher with the Braves. He had said some unflattering (but not totally untrue, unfortunately) things about New York City and the No. 7 Subway earlier in the season, and New Yorkers had had about enough of him. My friend and I went to our seats in the upper deck in left field, and we saw New York City's response to Rocker: about 100 of New York City's finest patrolling the bullpen area. There was also extra police in the stands, both uniformed and plainclothes.

It was unusually warm for late October in New York City. I had come pretty bundled up--I was at the 1976 playoff series and froze my rear end off--but it was very mild that night. We settled in, and ended up seeing an extraordinary game under extraordinary circumstances.

Andy Pettitte started for the Yankees, but he was battered early, and didn't last very long. I believe that the Yankees were down 5-1 when he was taken out in the fourth inning, and was replaced by Jason Grimsley, a pretty nondescript pitcher who has since gained notoriety as one of the bean-spillers during MLB's steroid investigation.

Anyway, whatever he was on that night, or even if he was on nothing but adrenaline, he had his shining career moment, pitching three pretty quiet innings, giving the Yankees a chance to come back.

And come back they did! Powered by home runs by Chad Curtis, Tino Martinez and Chuck Knoblauch, the Yankees rallied to tie the score at five, and the game went into extra innings.

And yes, John Rocker did pitch, but he was not pelted with anything but boos.

However, in the stands, I know that one fan, who was wearing top-to-bottom Braves apparel, was taunted and pelted to the point that I saw the cops lead him out of our section for his own safety.

Anyway, on the field, the Yankees took care of business in the 10th inning. Chad Curtis, who had hit only five home runs the entire season and had hit one previously in this game, homered again for the victory.

Yankee Stadium went nuts! That old place could get awful loud during big games.

After the game, the infamous non-interview of Chad Curtis took place, when he refused to be interviewed by NBC's Jim Gray after Gray interviewed baseball's banished all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, after the previous game. Many players took Gray to task for raking Rose over the coals during that interview, and Curtis chided Gray after hitting the game winning homer.

But when all this was happening, my friend and I were looking for my car. Yes, I said looking. I couldn't find my car! I had parked it in a parking lot adjacent to the Stadium, but tucked away in a corner. I couldn't find the car, but after about 45 minutes of looking, we finally found it, and drove back to Queens to drop my friend off at his apartment in Astoria.

When I got home to Long Island, I could barely sleep that night, but somehow dozed off.

What a kick it was seeing the game on TV for the first time yesterday, and the broadcast used the Yankees radio announcers, John Sterling and Michael Kay, to call the game, rather than the network guys.

I have it recorded and hope to watch the whole thing later. And yes, I saw myself, although with the other 55,000 people in the stands that night, my speck in left field wasn't discernible from the other thousands of specks I saw.

But I was there, make no mistake about that, and the broadcast, which I stumbled upon, brought back many, many memories.

Thanks Howie. You did good that night!

Rant #456: Free Speech?

Normally, I applaud free speech decisions made by the Supreme Court because the entity of "free speech"--being able to say what you want, when you want, and not being persecuted for it--is a basic tenet of our country.

Without free speech, I could not be writing this blog every morning.

But yesterday, I have to take issue with the latest Supreme Court ruling, which said that religious zealot anti-gay protesters who picket funerals of U.S. soldiers cannot be sued for their actions.

The Supreme Court, citing previous rulings related to flag burning, decided that "simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable" does not allow the government to punish such words or ideas.

And the Supreme Court backed this view with an 8-1 decision, even though tit was not happy with its decision.

Nonetheless, it had to back First Amendment rights.

Well, the First Amendment is a wonderful amendment--it prevents any law that impedes our freedom of religion, free speech and peaceful assembly--but when it is abused, as it is by these protesters, the amendment becomes hurtful.

Imagine you are burying your child, and protests outside of the funeral home call your child's death a right one, because, the U.S. backs gay rights.

One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other, but these idiots are equating soldier's deaths as justified, because we, as a nation, support gays.

Is this idiotic or what?

In their decision, the justices threw out an $11 million jury verdict against the Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, Kan., which was sued by Albert Snyder, a Maryland father who was burying his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, USMC, amid protests from the group that the nation is "overly tolerant of sin" and "God kills American soldiers as punishment."

Not only does a father have to bury his hero son, but he has to see and hear these protests at the same time!

People have been known to bend the rules when they want to get attention, and I would say that the Westboro Baptist Church has done just that with their inappropriate protests.

When you infringe upon the freedom of others with these protests, I think you have crossed the line.

The Supreme Court should have ruled that in certain instances--this one in particular--freedom of speech should be trumped by human dignity.

However, they didn't rule that, and their ruling is a truly unfortunate one.

(I will have to take tomorrow off for some personal business, but I will be back on Monday.)

Rant #455: Gas Prices Giving Me Gas

Have you noticed how gas prices have been rising at a dramatic rate recently?

Where I live, the best price that you can get is $3.59, and a lot of stations are pushing the $4 mark.

Gas has seemingly gone up in a skyrocket fashion the past few weeks, or ever since all the hub-bub in the Middle East was taking place (see recent post about Egypt--I told you so!).

Anyway, it seems that the price rise has been going on at every gas station on the map, but the question I have is:

WHY?

Again, we receive minute percentages of oil from both Egypt and Libya, so why should gas prices be rising at such a ridiculous rate?

I would call it price gouging, but being more to the point, gas prices are rising because once again, I believe that the oil companies are taking advantage of the situation.

Why aren't our legislators calling for an investigation into the recent rise in prices? Why aren't hearings being set up so gas company executives can once again plead their case to a wary public?

The gas lobby is real strong in Washington, and I believe that with all the money they are funneling into our nation's capitol, the green stuff is keeping those we have voted into office quiet on the subject.

It shouldn't be that way, of course, but I don't hear any clamoring from anyone in Washington about being raised like 20 cents in price in a week's time.

And what are we to do? Are we to put away our cars and ride bicycles?

No, that won't happen.

There is really nothing you can do.

The only thing I have done is to never fill up my tank. I put in $20 and that is it.

Of course, it speeds my way back to the gas station, because, obviously, I have to make more visits because the gas runs out quicker.

But the days of driving just for relaxation are over, and actually have been over for years. I now drive when I need to, and that is it.

And that's the way it will be, because once we break the $4 mark, you know $5 will not be out of the question.

Rant #454: Keeping Abreast of Another Icon's Passing

To a certain generation, all you have to say is "Jane Russell" and their eyes will light up.

Russell was the first of the modern sex symbols. She smoked on the screen without revealing very much, certainly much less than actresses show on the red carpet of the Academy Awards.

Russell, 89, died yesterday of respiratory failure, but she will be remembered as the predecessor to the great screen sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s, including Marilyn Monroe.

A local newscast, in reporting her death, said she was full figured, but I would call her sultry. She had a sex appeal that started with her wild, curly mane, moved down to her penetrating eyes, and then, well moved down a bit more.

Howard Hughes took her under his wing, and before she was in any movies, his publicity mill churned out photo after photo of her in low-cut costumes and bathing suits, all of which accented her exceptional figure.

Then, in 1943, right in the middle of World War II, Hughes and Russell made headlines in an absolutely horrible movie called "The Outlaw." There was more sexual innuendo in this film than had been seen and heard before, and it became something of a scandalous film. Russell wore low-cut costumes to accent her figure, but nothing came off on screen.

She starred in numerous other films, including "The Paleface," but even with her buxom figure and the possibility of made-up scandal, she mainly kept out of the headlines. She was married for many years to pro football quarterback Bob Waterfield, and really didn't generate much negative publicity.

She also starred with Marilyn Monroe in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and it was like the passing of the torch from Russell to Monroe in that film.

During the 1960s and 1970s, playing on her ample figure, she was featured in a number of bra commercials.

With her passing, the last great pre-1960s sex symbol still alive is Mamie Van Doren, but Russell paved the way for her, Monroe, and into the 1960s, actresses such as Raquel Welch and Ann-Margret to exude ultimate sexuality without revealing very much.

She will be missed.