What would you do with $136.2 million?
Tonight's estimated Mega Millions jackpot is $252 million, which, if taken in a lump-sum payment, works out to $136.2 million, according to this jackpot calculator. One could live pretty darn comfortably on that, huh? Play your cards right, and you could probably make a living "wage" on the interest alone.
But what exactly does one person do with an amount of money that astronomical? Winning an obscene amount of money didn't really help Hugo Reyes or Jack Whittaker, and I shudder to think about the ramifications such wealth would have on the relationships in my life. If you help one friend who needs money, won't they all want help?
(Sure, new Powerball winner Solomon Jackson Jr. is all smiles now, but we'll see how he feels a year from now.)
This sort of question was far from my mind just a couple years ago. I used to scold my then-girlfriend after she first moved from the South suburbs to Sherman Oaks, Calif., and found herself in a money situation that was far from ideal; she would constantly say things like, "If only I could win the lottery ..." That seemed like such an insane thing to pin your hopes and dreams on.
But these days, I find myself thinking the exact same thing.
Hugo Reyes won the jackpot, and many people connected to him
died. Then his plane crashed on a mysterious island. I don't need
that kind of drama!
Of course, $136.2 million is way, way more money than I need, or even want. Heck, 25-grand would do me just fine. That sum wouldn't afford me the opportunity to retire at 30, buy a mansion in the Hollywood Hills and build my own replica of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in my basement, but it would clear my debt and pay off the new(ish) car I start making payments on next month. 50-grand would be nice, but I'd settle for the 25.
I'd like to think that if I won the Mega Millions tonight, I would keep enough money to live comfortably, take care of the family, take an epic vacation and buy a home somewhere where the weather's warm. The rest? Donate it to a number of charities.
That's what I'd like to think -- what I actually think is that I would make a series of horrible decisions, trust the wrong people, and lose my shirt within five years.
But what an exciting ride it would be. If money truly was no object, I'd probably try to accomplish one or more of the following:
• hire Metallica to play at a kegger at my house
• build a private movie theater with my own projectionists and ushers
• get a lifetime passport to Disney World and Disneyland (Hey, John Stamos has one, so I figure I could afford one.)
• own a private suite at United Center, U.S. Cellular Field, Wrigley Field and Soldier Field
• finance a major motion picture
• buy every case of Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy in existence
• offer to buy out Alfonso Soriano's contract in exchange for 10 starts in left field
• pay John Williams to write me a personal theme song
• build a perfect replica of "The Hatch," complete with world-saving Apple IIe
• commission a fifth season of "The O.C."
• buy apartment space inside the Hollywood Tower Hotel
• pay Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity to stay off the airwaves and quietly retire to some remote island.
What would you do?
- Hire the Cubs to play me and my friends at Wrigley Field (if Kevin Gregg closes, we might even win!)
- Run for mayor of Chicago. Hire 300 private investigators and reporters to dig up every bit of dirt on every politician in the city, then ridicule them during the 30-minute ad spots I would buy during prime time.
- Season tix (not skyboxes) to the Bears, Bulls, Cubs and Hawks, giving the seats away to underpriviledged kids on nights I didn't feel like going to the games.
- Book a jet to Vegas, invite all my friends, eat, drink, and party like VIPs until we get bored.
- See the world. A new trip every month or so. Home base would be my penthouse in Chicago.
- Buy up every piece of Packer memorabilia I could find and burn it in a massive bonfire to celebrate the Bears' next victory over the Packers.
- Hold another bonfire with Brett Favre jerseys after the Bears beat Minnesota.
- Go to all the old dive bars I've ever been to and buy drinks and food for the whole bar all night, then make sure the bartenders get the biggest tip they've ever seen. The people working and hanging out in those bars deserve it.
- Hire a personal trainer and chef so I can live a long healthy life with all that cash.
- Call my ex-wife once a year to remind her what she was missing.
I'd pay all the liberal extremist commentators on TV to quietly retire, then. Might as well remove all forms of American debate. What a stupid comment to make! There are liberal people on TV, there are conservative. Stop whining that the conservative ones are getting more attention than your guys/gals.
My beef(s) with Beck, Hannity and O'Reilly has very little to do with them being conservative. It has more to do with how they appeal to the worst in all of us. That includes me, who watches Bill O'Reilly far more than I would care to admit to myself. I don't agree with just about anything he says, but at least he's producing a reaction -- that's more than I can say about Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz, or the entirety of CNN. (Is there a more boring network?)
Not much of what those three men present to their audience is actual news. And it shouldn't be, as they are commentators -- but they all puff themselves up as the arbiters of truth. As blustery and repugnant as Hannity and O'Reilly are to me, they do on occasion present actual civil discourse. Beck doesn't even know what that phrase means.
I single them out because they are, more than anything else, entertainers, but people follow them as if they are prophets. A news channel would be better served by more actual news, wouldn't you say?
Am I giving Keith Olbermann a free pass? Not in my TV viewing habits. As the rhetoric on both sides gets more ridiculous, so does Olbermann, who is seeming more and more like the Bill-O he so despises. From what little I've seen lately, Olbermann doesn't even bother to invite conservatives on; he's more interested in having his liberal buddies over so they can all have a laugh at the conservatives' expense. Again, not very newsy, is it?
What I really shouldn't have done was ended my admittedly silly entry about fantasy wish-fulfillment with a statement that had such political ramifications. We can agree that the rest of my entry was awfully silly, can't we?
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