Lucky

You can never take the perfect vacation, because you always take yourself along. – Me

Martin Scorsese: “Frances, I’m broke. They’ve torn up my credit cards. I having nothing, do you understand me, nothing!”

Frances Ford Coppola: “Marty, will you shut up? I owe $50 million dollars.”

Just like I have always wanted to do a video entitled Girls Gone Wild A Decade Later, in which Republican PTA soccer moms are chased down to their mega churches and high end organic grocery stores and reminded that they showed their mommy parts in front of a bunch of drunken frat rats for roughly about a dollar and quarter worth of cotton and rayon, I have always thought Cribs: What The Hell Happened? would be a must see. For those of you who have never seen Cribs, it is an updated version of Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous, usually featuring a young hip hop star who proudly gives a tour of his home. He maybe has one big CD under his belt and you know, as he is showing a marble statue of himself in a Scarface pose that pees champagne, that his next effort will probably flop. A year or two from now you will wonder what happened to him. By the end of the decade he will be back in the housing projects he came from, squeegeeing your windshield for whatever you have in your ashtray. The audience coos over Master Ice’s pool. Caligula’s grotto must have looked like this, complete with its own private McDonald’s. Where is the adult that should be giving the young man financial advice about saving money for a rainy day, month, decade and next half century because songs about the junk, in your girlfriend’s trunk, gets old. Just ask MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, the guys waxing your fleet of batmobiles with stereo systems so loud they can shake the fillings in your teeth out.

Have you ever wondered why your sports hero, the guy you loved as a kid, is signing autographs down at Loser-Con this Saturday for $35 a pop? Because he is broke. Seventy-eight percent of NFL football players are in deep financial trouble or bankrupt two years after they retire. Sixty percent of NBA basketball players are financially belly up half a decade after they leave the sport. It is estimated that Mike Tyson made between $300 to $400 million during his boxing career. He is currently $27 million in the hole. Latrell Sprewell, who earned over $50 million, felt the $21 million, three year contract extension offered by the Minnesota Timberwolves was an insult. In 2008 the bank took his home and yacht. Thanks to Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen has several championship rings to show for his playing career, but not the $120 million he made with the Chicago Bulls. Rollie Fingers, one of the greatest relief pitchers of all time, could not save the $8 million he made on the mound. Boxer Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield made an estimated $250 million during his career. With eleven children, it is hard to figure out how he had the time to lose all of it. Former Celtic Antonio Walker made $110 million during his playing career and is now $4 million in the hole to creditors and facing felony check fraud in Las Vegas.

Our silver screen stars are not exempt from this stupidity. Pamela Anderson found herself living in a trailer park last year, at least until she finds a new sugar daddy to pay off the quarter of a million in back state taxes, and millions in other debts she owes. At least she is not Nicolas Cage, who is bankrupt and owes the IRS $6.2 million in back taxes. Lindsay Lohen has blown through $7 million the last couple of years. (I will personally buy her some underwear, so I do not have to see one more picture of her having a wardrobe malfunction in some Hollywood hot spot. Marilyn Monroe she is not.) You might be a millionaire, but Johnny Carson’s sidekick, Ed McMahon, was not when he kicked the bucket. It is a regular who’s who of Hollywood royalty of those who died penniless: Judy Garland, John Wayne, Bela Lugosi, Stan Laurel, Joe Louis, Veronica Lake, the Unsinkable Molly Brown, Sammy Davis Jr., and Redd Foxx just to name a few.

Almost everyone reading this column will at some point know someone who has worked like a dog their entire life. Then one day you will learn that they got a large inheritance or insurance payout. You will feel good for them and a year later they will be in deeper financial straits than before. They will have burned through the money and then some. Some people and money do not mix.

Why would lottery winners be any different? The statistics are all over the board. Claims of 50 percent to 95 percent lose it all. No one has ever done an extensive study, but I am sure that the percentage of lottery winners who lose it all is roughly the same as the musicians, actors, and sports stars. It is clear from psychological studies of particular winners that the new found money does not bring nirvana. Much like bringing children into a bad marriage, money is not the Disney E ticket to happiness. Already existing problems are intensified, new headaches pop up, and a lot of people are just not prepared for the road ahead of them. As conservative reporter John Stossel noted on ABC, "Studies of lottery winners found that within a year, most say that they are no happier than they were before they won." If it takes you a long time to earn some wealth, you often, not always, develop the financial skills on how to handle and preserve the money. Instant wealth is a recipe for compulsiveness, poor financial choices and magical think. It is why extended struggle, hardship and getting your nose wiped in the dirt from time to time is a good thing.

Still, unlike artists, musicians, actors or sports stars, we can identify with the lottery winner because, as the commercials say, “he or she could be you.” Almost everyone has been there, or will be there, financially strapped to the point of almost having panic attacks, and there is the dream for just $1. Even I, who would give Groucho Marx and Jack Benny a run for their tightwad money, and am legendary for screaming at a roommate, “Unless there is ice in the toilet, I’ll break your fingers if you turn on the heat,” have given into buying a lottery ticket. That $1 ticket allows you to dream of escaping your problems, no longer having to worry about getting sick, or the car making it a few more months. If your boss is driving you nuts, you now have the kind of money that allows you to walk away. It is a life of boat drinks and Jimmy Buffett songs.

We do not think of Evelyn Adams of New Jersey who won, not once, but twice to the tune of $5.4 million and is now living in a trailer. William “Bud” Post who famously won $16.2 million in the 1980s and is now on food stamps. Willie Hurt of Lansing, Michigan who took home $3.1 million, is now divorced, broke, and charged with murder. $18 million winner, Janite Lee of Missouri has only $700 left to her name. $314.9 million Powerball winner, Jack Whittaker, is being sued by an Atlantic City casino for writing bad checks. $37 million winner Billie Bob Harrell Jr., out of Texas, killed himself after his wife threw him out for his financially reckless ways. As one financial advisor to one of these rags to riches to rags families noted, “It was not the pot of gold at the en of the rainbow.”

Stories like these are why I enjoyed director Jeffrey Blitz’s newest documentary on lottery winners. For those of you who have never heard of Blitz, he is kind of a lottery winner himself. His documentary on spastic, homeschooled socially awkward kids participating in the National Spelling Bee, Spellbound (2002), became a national sensation. He followed it up with the criminally underrated fictional tale Rocket Science five years later. If you have seen Spellbound, you know that Blitz knows how to do this type of thing. And who cannot enjoy getting a big bowl of popcorn, watching people have their wildest dreams come true, and then lose everything, and think to yourself, “At least that is not me.”

Verdict: Great Documentary