Making Money the Easy Way

Anna Ayala tried to give Wendy's the finger in 2005

Conversations between people in awkward social situations are often kicked off with the inevitable question of: "What do you do?". The answer is usually a bore, sometimes depressing, maybe shameful, but frankly, unless you support yourself by doing something you love, who really gives a shit?

Millions of us take whatever we can get. Those of us who don't have anything we love that can be turned into money look for a means to support ourselves that is stable and offers us a relatively high level of comfort. All the while, there are those of us who simply love money itself, while hating the hard fought pursuit of work, and we search desperately for a means to gain exceptional monetary rewards while putting in the least effort possible.

For those of us searching for the “easy” way, crime can appear appealing due to it's swift rewards and lack of any need for education or prior training. Take armed robbery: you frighten someone and they give you their money, easy. But the outside appearance of crime being effortless is misleading. To be a successful criminal one must do research, preparation, and have the proper people skills. Also, a mistake or glitch while involved in crime can lead to massive amounts of extended effort to stay alive and not incarcerated.

It seems to me that the safest, easiest, least time consuming, and most financially rewarding way of making a living in America is still suing people and organizations. A few steps into the path of an expensive car, shoving a hand in a company machine, throwing yourself down a flight of stairs; it all just takes a little courage and a lawyer. But if you lack the courage and don’t think you can sacrifice parts of your body, you'll have to get creative.

One of my favorite examples of getting easy money the creative way goes back to 2005 when Anna Ayala got her hands on the severed finger of her husband’s friend, went to Wendy’s, and stuck the digit in a cup of chilli, claiming she spooned it up and bit it during her lunch. It caused a sensation and supposedly cost Wendy’s 2.5 Million in damages but unfortunately didn’t gain Anna much except notoriety and jail time. I think if she had just been a little more subtle, like a sticking a small rodent or insect the chilli, she may have pulled it off. A human finger just brings up way too many questions and next thing you know it’s gone from a nice little lawsuit to a criminal act.

A more recent example (and may yet be successful) is Maria Waltherr-Willard, a 61 year old former teacher who saw a chance to come up without lifting a finger (severed or not) and did. She taught both French and Spanish to high-school kids in Cincinnati until 2011, when the school district decided to transfer her to a local middle school.

Maria stopped showing up to her 7th and 8th grade classes halfway through the  school year. When the matter was looked into the district received a communication from Maria’s lawyer claiming she suffered from a phobia of young children, specifically 7th and 8th graders, which caused her blood pressure to soar. She then promptly sued the school district for violating the federal American with Disabilities Act when they transferred her to the middle school, forcing contact with young children and triggering her phobia.

You may wonder why a woman who has a fear of kids would get into teaching in the first place, but as far as get rich quick schemes go, hers is one of the better ones. When asked to comment on the lawsuit, the district's superintendent simply said: "She wants money." Exactly right sir, but don't be bitter just because you have to drive your shitty car to an office everyday while Maria Waltherr-Willard is sleeping in till noon, bathing in champagne that your school district paid for, and then catching up on her reading. Don't hate on a lady just because she had a genius idea and no shame. She came up with a way to sue and it just might work. It's the American way.

01-22-13

The Most Useless Thing in the World

I moved to a new apartment just over a month ago and am finally settling in. I’ve met most of the neighbors. There’s the old shut in down the hall, the nice couple across from me, the man that wears sweat pants on the second floor; all perfectly nice folk. No one has complained about noise I’ve made or made noise that I’ve found vexing, although I am coming fresh from an apartment that built up extreme tolerance.

My old place was a dump in the noisiest corner of the world. It had a four lane street in front that was congested with traffic seven days a week. It had BART tracks thirty feet from the back window, and a ranchero music producer living in the garage beneath me making the worst God awful music you have ever heard in your entire life. Two restaurants sat on either side of it, bombarding me with noise and the never ending odor of cooking oil. It goes without saying that three years of that place was just enough to truly test one’s sanity. I feel I came out stronger in the end.

The new apartment is very small but it’s quiet and clean. Sun pours through the windows throughout the day. I realize now that when I started looking for a new place to live, sun was subconsciously at the top of my list. My old place was a dank hole really, the windows built in walls that never ever faced the sun directly no matter the time of year. There’s nothing like enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning (let’s face it, the high point of the day, everything goes downhill from there pretty much) and watching the sun bloom, feeling it’s heat actually press  through the glass onto your skin. So simple but a true luxury.

When I was in Ireland in September I learned that the Irish were actually taxed based on the size of their windows, you had to pay for the amount of sun you could enjoy in your dwelling. Makes sense to me, people should have to pay for the finer things.

This new place is nice but quite small, like a hobbit hole really (but with more sun). Also, like a hobbit hole, it is equipped with odd nooks and crannies. It took me the first month to figure out all these nooks and perfectly position my limited possessions into said crannies. It was exciting to go in the closet and find an extra shelf or a hook maybe, an odd compartment in the kitchen.

There were a few things left over from the person who oversaw the apartment during it’s vacancy (it was remodeled during that time, new floors, appliances, paint, etc.) A few items were left in the refrigerator, three things I think: horseradish sauce, mustard, and a half jar of olives. For some reason finding that combination of things made me want to yak right there in the refrigerator. I threw them out right away. There was also a pair of rubber gloves and a box of tissues left in the bathroom. I threw out the gloves too, kept the tissues.

There was one more thing left behind but I didn’t think much of it at first. In the kitchen there’s a plastic spindle to put your paper towels on that fits between a shelf. I thought it was handy and was thankful to whoever left it.

During the second week I replaced the towels while I was listening to a basketball game on my phone. As I went along my business I started hearing what sounded like the music of an ice cream truck, right there in the kitchen. Being eleven o’clock at night it was highly improbable that it was an actual ice cream truck, plus the window was closed in the kitchen. I surmised that it was bleeding in from the basketball game and left it at that.

Some days later I was in the kitchen cleaning up and listening to my phone, my NPR app this time (my relationship with NPR is on again off again. I listen for six months until I just can’t take their voices and their lame public radio jokes, at which point I take six months off and listen to podcasts) when the same ice cream truck music started playing again. Exact same circumstances, but this time louder. I actually entertained the thought that the music was coming from the NPR broadcast until I realized how utterly insane that was. How the hell could the same ice cream truck be barreling through Terry Gross’s studio only days after crashing a Warriors/Blazers game?    

I turned off my phone and the music continued playing, the jingle jangle of the tune taking on a sinister lilt. I stuck my head into every nook and cranny of the kitchen until the music was playing right in my ear. It was the paper towels, or to be exact, the plastic spindle that the paper towels sat on.

I had just stuck it through a new roll when the music started playing, my squeezing it had caused the tune to start. I pulled the towels off and examined the spindle. It was long white plastic with a gold “Made in China” sticker prominently stuck on the side. My mind tried to stretch itself around the idea that far off in China, in some creaky draft filled industrial warehouse, it was some poor bastard’s job to place a tiny music device inside a plastic paper towel spindel.

All my mind could muster was why. Why would someone design this? Why would someone build this? Why in the hell would someone purchase this?? Was it for a blind person, so they would know they had successfully replaced the paper towels? Was it for the other members of a household? When the ice cream music played they could all breathe easier knowing that someone had fulfilled their responsibility and replaced the paper towels?

I stood in my tiny kitchen and held the paper towel spindle in my fingers knowing, deep down in the darker recesses of my consciousness, that millions upon million of useless items just like this exist in our world. Day to day, I turn my mind away from the fact that companies sell millions of these sort of plastic doohickies to millions of people that walk through Dollar Stores and off the grid hardware depot’s. But deep down I’m well aware that millions of musical spindles and other bullshit are bought up and kept in people’s kitchens until they inevitably end up where they were meant to be all along: a landfill.

Well, I for one refuse to let that play out. I’m keeping my music playing paper towel spindle forever. Or at least until I move out of this place.

01-13-13

The Greatest Gangster Rapper Ever

By Sam Clemons.

Before crime was simply a starting point for mainstream rappers and before murder, extortion, and drug selling was just a staple in everyone's first verse, there were "gangsta rappers". The creation of the gangsta rap sub-genre can be traced back to the late 1980's and early '90's, officially started in Philadelphia by Schooly D and then perfected on the West Coast by the likes of Ice T and NWA. Now, don’t get all your khaki’s in a bunch, but when I say perfected I don’t mean that west coast gangster rappers were necessarily the best. I would just say that they hijacked the label and kept it through the rest of the 90’s, like real gangsters do.

Due to classic tracks like “Colors” and “Six in the Morning” Ice T should be the greatest gangsta MC in history, if it weren’t for the Hollywood chapter still being written right now. It could be said that storming Hollywood is the most gangsta move Ice ever made, but I can’t agree. I personally love Ice T, with all my heart, but he plays a cop for God’s sake, on a show created by Dick Wolf. That’s just not gangsta.

Ice Cube, while definitely one of the greatest rappers ever (up to 1993 of course, before “Are We There Yet” and his other late career bullshit) was just too political, to introspective in his post-NWA career to be simply labeled a “gangsta rapper” (although the media definitely did just that).

Personally, when I think of growing up in the golden age of gangsta rap, the voice I hear most prominently in my memory is Easy E’s. Easy was the first to popularize the idea of turning one’s crack money into rap money and really didn’t have any interest in being a rapper himself. But, as the legend goes, when the Rutheless Record’s signed group H.B.O. didn’t show up for their recordong session Dr. Dre suggested that Easy spit the lyrics to “Boyz-N-The Hood” himself, which he did, birthing a classic. But Easy didn’t write the lyrics, Ice Cube did, and he didn’t really write any of the lyrics he would go on to record in his career before having his life cut short by AIDS. You have to write your own stuff to really be in consideration for the “greatest”.

Someone I would like to briefly mention is the underrated Boss who was the toughest and most classic lady gangster rapper. I still to this day quote her 1993 song “Receipe For A Hoe”  whenever my buddy Jose does something hard headed: “You gotta let a hoe be a hoe!” (the hoe standing in for the shortened version of the name Jose).

Boss also did the stand-out track from the “Strapped” soundtrack titled “I Don’t Give a Fuck!” which drops the f word at least a hundred times within three minutes. Boss ran into trouble early in her career when rumors started swirling about the media that she grew up very ‘un’gangster: private school and upper middle class upbringing. Regardless, I salute her for outgangstering many of the men at the time with her lyrics and delivery during the most gangsta of rap eras.

Now, our number one. This is of course one man’s opinion but I would be surprised if someone can come up with a better rapper or storyteller with a classic gangster twist than Kool G Rap. Coming up in the “true” golden age of the late ‘80’s with the Juice Crew, G Rap could really rap about anything and keep your attention due to his lisp, voice, and multisyllabic delivery. But the man born Nathaniel Thomas Wilson chose to dedicate his gifts to the tragic world of the gangster, where he not only painted vivid illustrations of the everyday struggles of your average street corner hustler, he also brought us into the world of the New York mafiosos where he brought stories to life like a studio Scorsese.  

The stand out album for me is “Live and Let Die”, controversial for it’s cover art (a photo of G Rap and DJ Polo executing two undercover DEA agents), and genius for it’s lyrical content. Films play out in your mind in vivid color as Kool G Rap takes on the mantel of the noir era anti-hero. The sex and violence are relentless, backed by the flawless production of Sir Jinx (who also happened to produce Ice Cube’s best albums from that era). Not only did G Rap have an incredible influence on a generation of top tiered rappers (Jay-Z, Nas, and Biggie all cited him as an inspiration) he continued the rich legacy of American crime writing that, through him, spilled into rap as the updated version of what had previously been found in the books of Elmore Leanard, Jim Thompson, and David Goodis.

To close I’ll leave you with the lyrics from the third verse of Kool G Rap’s gangsta classic “On The Run”  which only gives you an idea of the song; it must be heard to really be expierenced:

“The next thing I know, it was daylight

And I been sleepin in this motherfucker all night

I started pullin on my hoe

C’mon man what? wake up bitch, we gotta go!

Pulled out the alley, then I dipped

Looked down and picked up the nine and put more rounds in the clip

You know I’m headin south no doubt

And I don’t give a fuck where, as long it’s a hideout

Finally we crossed the border, I pulled into a station

To fill up the tank, and get a drink of water

Pullin over to park my ride

That’s when I noticed this limousine comin up on my left side

Then the sucker started rammin me

Then I looked, it was the luciano family

Looked at my bitch she started cryin, my finger on the trigger

I pulled it -- bullets started flyin

Now I’m hittin all them bastards

I’m droppin em fast, splashin blood out niggaz asses

Then I’m finally done and

I took em all out, but I caught one in the stomach

Now I’m lookin for survivors

So I ran up on the side of the car, and hit the driver

And then I laid low

The only motherfucker left was don luciano

So I snuck up the sucker

Put my gun to his head, whassup now motherfucker?

He said, wait, I want to talk

*five gunshots* I put his brains on the sidewalk

Another life I had to waste

He fell on his back, and then I spit right in his guinea face

He saw the barrel of the devil’s gun

Now I’m no longer on the motherfuckin run.”

-Kool G Rap

-12/29/12

Storming The Organic Grocery

I recently moved to a new apartment and with the change of smell, noises, and neighbors comes the adaptation to a new local grocery store. My old neighborhood had a Safeway, and while it sucked in many ways I had become familiar with it’s layout and could navigate it’s aisles with ease, be it two in the afternoon on game day or scrambling for a bottle just before closing. I had my confidence there.
This new neighborhood has an Organic Grocery and for the first week I scoped it out without going in, driving by late at night or walking along the sidewalk with one eye cocked towards it’s storefront. What I saw kept me away. Everyone seemed a good deal older and more sophisticated than I as they talked with the workers, read the nutrition information on their purchases, and concentrated very hard while inspecting the fruit with long sensuous finger massages. This was a secret world I wasn’t a part of.

At Safeway people used to buy chips. They bought other things on occasion but mostly chips. Sometimes soda.

I was intimidated and needed to do some research before I braved my way into the new store. I went on Yelp and things got worse. There were thousands of entries debating the level of quality and the prices at the OG. Younger people, people closer to my age, wrote of rabid “gray hairs” that rudley elbowed them in the aisles. Hundreds of posters claimed that only the “elite” could shop there and one person claimed the parking lot was “packed with European Luxury Cars”.
There was lots of talk concerning brands of tofu I had never heard of and debates about rice that were way over my head. I didn’t want to shame myself in front of my new neighbors, grabbing the wrong thing and then paying out the ass for it while getting mercilessly mocked by the cashier (in my head: a beautiful woman that had studied medicine in school but had chosen to live a simple life as a cashier at the local Organic Grocery).
I hid in my new apartment for days until I had run out of food and woke up weak and feeble on a Saturday, desperate for nourishment. All I had left was one box of Cream of Wheat sitting still packed in one of my moving boxes. I just needed a cup or two of water to make it work but I would be damned if I was going to eat it dry and bland.
I stepped outside, a stranger in this new neighborhood, and walked the four blocks to the Organic Grocery. It was around 9:30 AM, only a few people inside to my relief. I first searched for sugar but came up empty, unfamiliar with the store’s layout. It’s a small place and soon I had wandered around it’s entirety three or four times, still no sugar, and starting to feel like I was getting looks from the workers and the patrons. I fell upon honey and figured that would do but, sweet Jesus, there seemed to be hundreds of different brands, all in different sized containers yet all priced around twenty dollars.
I quit the search for a sweetener and made my way in a panic to the dairy aisle, refusing to leave without some milk. I felt the blood flow to my face when the first small carton of milk I spotted was priced at eight dollars. I was horrified until I realized it was goat’s milk. Everything on the shelves seemed to be goat’s milk, at least thirty different cartons and glass bottles of goat’s milk. Finally, at the end of the aisle, I spotted a carton that simply said Milk for a dollar eighty nine and I made a break for it.
Back home I realized it was non-fat milk, which I dislike, but I poured it on my Cream of Wheat regardless and celebrated my first sortie into the unknown. Next time I'm getting some honey, even it kills me.

 12-12-12

Skyfall, a Review.

James Bond has always swum with the current of his times be it Sean Connery scuba diving with nuclear weapons during the Cold War, or Roger Moore swinging his way through the 70’s, or even Pierce Brosnan wenching it up in luxury during the boom of the 90’s. What we have in Daniel Craig is the post-9/11 Bond, the cold blooded killing machine that has little time for martini’s when there are secret terrorist cells popping up in every shadowed corner of the globe.
We were introduced to this new Bond beautifully in the fantastic “Casino Royale” from 2006. This was followed up with the considerably weaker “Quantum of Solace” in 2008 which brought Bond’s story line with his love Vesper Lynd to a close. So where do we you go from here? The producers, directors, and writers of “Skyfall” seemed to have all answered in unison “we do a Bat Man!”
It truly does pain me to say that this new Bond movie is a Christopher Nolan Bat Man rip off everywhere you look. London stands in for Gotham City and we got it all: the villain, the climax, the resurrection, the come back; there’s even a God damned Alfred in this flick (played by Albert Finney instead of Michael Cain). When I realized it (“this seems very familiar” kept popping up in my head) I couldn’t help but make the logical conclusion that “Skyfall” is pretty lame, and actually kind of boring. If you savored “Casino Royale” good for you, because it’s becoming apparent that a James Bond film like that doesn’t come around very often and may never come again.
Let’s start with Silva, the villain played by Javier Bardem. He’s a near perfect replica of Heath Ledger’s Joker, grotesque, asexual, psychopathic, genius (always ahead of the good guys by four or five steps), and only happy when handing out death and destruction. There is even a scene where Silva dons a police uniform and struts around as did the Joker in Dark Knight when he and his goons attempted to shoot the mayor at Gordon’s funeral.
The way the writer has tried to make Silva unique is by giving him a revenge motive while the Joker had none. But it’s stupid. He’s trying to kill an old woman (no offense Dame Judi Dench) over an old betrayal, and while he does cause a considerable amount of havoc in London, when it come to actually killing the old woman he is surprisingly incompetent.
The worst part is when they return to Bond’s childhood home and trade the character in for Bruce Wayne. His parents died when he was young, he hid out in weird caves under the house, and was raised by the groundskeeper (butler) named Kinkade (Alfred). Why? Why do we need to know all this?
“Casino Royale” was brilliant because it toyed with the idea of revealing Bond’s origins with a beautiful scene between Bond and Vesper where they guessed their respective backgrounds based on knowing each other for only a few minutes (both guessed orphan). But it never actually revealed anything. The current film wants to slow down the action to slog through the past for a while, while “Casino Royale” never slowed down, not even during a poker game, and it still packed an emotional punch while revealing a very defined Bond character. Instead of putting Bond in even more and more impossible situations, the makers of “Skyfall” want us all to imagine little James Bond on a creepy Scottish estate grieving for his dead parents and vowing to dedicate his life to fighting injustice (freaking Bat Man!)
James Bond should have no past because he doesn’t live in the past, he lives in the present. If the present is 1976 then he’s played by Roger Moore and he’s bedding a woman in 0 gravity on a cheesy swinger space shuttle. If it’s 1987 then he’s played by Timothy Dalton and he’s tobogganing on a cello while fighting Colombian cartels. Once you start giving him some moody past that involves the death of his parents and the motivation for his career in espionage then you don’t have James Bond, you have Bruce Wayne.
Everything I just listed forces me to say that that this movie is a bit of a bummer, but that’s just one man’s opinion.

11-23-12