@Randem

When I think of the great wastes of potential in history, tons of examples come to mind. I think of all the expensive, high-powered, imported sports cars that will never be pushed over 55 miles per hour because they’re purchased by bald men in their 50s. I think of the Betamax video players that collected dust while VHS was tops for two decades. I think of the last 50 years of Chicago Cubs baseball.

None of those scratches the surface of the atrocity that is 88 Minutes. Never mind the low-hanging fruit of a big name like Al Pacino, this movie was actually ripe with talented supporting actors who have been impressive behind the stories in many other films.

But just like a wealth of talent isn’t enough to make the Detroit Lions a good team, neither is it enough on its own to make 88 Minutes a good movie.

I have never seen such horrible scene-cutting and forced dialog in such a high-budget film. Unlike many Hollywood let-downs, 88 Minutes is dead right from the start, and then is spends the ensuing hour-and-a-half violently twitching and convulsing on the floor, heaving and bleeding out slowly but never surely.

Given the choice between watching this film or Battlefield Earth, I’d have to choose Battlefield Earth. Okay, that’s not true — I’d actually just kill myself. But I’d give serious consideration to Battlefield Earth before I pulled the trigger.

In fact… I was considering going into detail about all the elements that make this film such a bad movie, but I think I’m actually managing to successfully repress those memories. Besides… what fool would willingly relive them?

I cracked second place this time around on the caption contest. The first place submission really was funnier… but I didn’t even get an Honorable Mention for my A Few Good Men reference, which I thought was the best:

“We follow odors, son. We follow odors, or people die. It’s that simple. Are we clear?”

Part of comedy is figuring out who your audience is, and since I’m getting closer to that top position it seems fair to say that I’m starting to get an idea of what kinds of punchlines work.

Expelled has been exposed. Ben Stein’s godawful tragedy of a mockumentary has been revealed for the blubbering nonsense it really is: lying theist propaganda. The emperor has no clothes, Ben.

The strange thing is, all the awful reviews it is receiving actually make me want to have a look at this nonsense. Maybe it’s morbid curiosity. After all, I enjoy Bruce Campbell movies, too.

John McCain’s tax return statement became public last Friday, and the details raise some interesting questions in my mind. Actually, it’s one detail in particular: McCain receives a 100-percent disability pension, amounting to almost $60,000 tax-free.

The first, most obvious question is this: Is a man who is 100% disabled fit to lead our country? If elected, McCain would be the oldest man ever to enter the Presidency. Shouldn’t that fact alone require an exceptional bill of health?

I would never belittle the heroism of a man who suffered the way he did in the service of our country. There should never be any question of my respect for who he has been, but while the way in which he acquired his disability is admirable, that shouldn’t make for exceptions for his physical ability to lead this nation.

Sure, it’s not as if you need to bench-press your body weight or run a six-minute mile in order to pick up red phones or shake the hands of diplomats. But with major disabilities come increased risks for other health problems. One has to assume that McCain’s choice of running-mate would have increased likeliness of being called to fill the role of President.

The next question this brings to mind is: What does this say about his financial policy? At the rate at which he was taxed, McCain would have had to pay an extra $18,000 on this income if this income were taxed.

This is the same guy whose campaign platform includes reforming the tax code; the same guy who said, “Americans do not resent paying their rightful share of taxes - what they do resent is being subjected to thousands of pages of needless and often irrational rules and demands from the IRS.”

Considering how anxious he is to cut everybody’s tax rates — even as our national debt reaches new, unimaginable heights — McCain openly exploits a “100% disability” loophole to save money and not pay taxes. What does that say about him? Apparently, Americans do not resent paying taxes, but he does.

I’m glad the cold season is finally over. Not because I dislike the cold weather — I actually prefer it. But I’m glad it’s over, because I think if I had to walk behind one more frumpy chick wearing a North Face jacket and Uggs on my way to the train, I might have to stop and give her a piece of my mind.

This has got to be one of the lamest fashion trends I’ve ever witnessed. Ugg makes some nice boots, but you’d never know it by looking at what people buy! Why does every female between the ages of 18-35 find it so important to buy the ugg-liest boots ever made, and then wear them with everything? Is it me, or do these look like something you would expect a primitive tribal people to wear in the winter while hunting elk?

Even worse than the ugly boots, though, are the ridiculous North Face jackets, with their front logos on the back. News flash, people: it doesn’t look trendy, it looks like a screen printing mistake! The jackets really aren’t even nice — they’re cut in a generic, unflattering square shape that make skinny people look frumpy and frumpy people look fat.

What blows my mind is that North Face phenomenon isn’t restricted to the 18-35 crowd. Everyone under 50 is wearing this retarded camping gear on their grueling, arduous drive through the suburbs and into the wild, untamed concrete jungles where they brave the elements behind a desk. What is happening to America?

North Face jackets are actually so popular that they are a motivation for crime in and around the metropolitan DC area, and according to Silver Chips Online, a high school newspaper in Maryland, high school kids would actually throw bleach in people’s faces in order to conceal their identity and rob the wearer of their North Face jacket

So now that the warm weather has finally arrived, I can expect a sixth-month break from this unimaginative fashion trend, and welcome back the equally ridiculous flip-flops and surfer shirts with popped collars.

I’m getting really tired of seeing this stuff. Tourists, doing tourist things in tourist places are not allowed to be tourists any more. Even in Disneyland:

Just as I took this photo, however, a Security Cast Member in a patrol unit approached me (well, he stopped a ways away and shouted through a rolled-down window) and told me photography was not permitted there. Since that statement didn’t make any sense, my first reaction was to question why that was. As I evaluated the possible responses, I thought “security” or “because I said so” would be what I’d get, so I complied and continued walking. I brought this up to appropriate people, who agreed there is no blanket prohibition of photography there.

Seriously, what’s the harm in a photo? As a photographer, I understand the rules about having a signed release if you plan to print your photo for profit. But that has no bearing whatsoever on taking a photo for personal use, nor even to be printed and distributed in a documentary context.

People need to be aware of their rights when holding a camera. It is not okay for Big Brother to push people around, even in the name of anti-terrorism. Nor is it okay for ignorant security personnel to make up the rules as they go.

I’ve often thought about how much work I’ve had to put into learning about finance. I’ve read numerous books, spend endless hours researching online, and irritated numerous business school graduates with my questions. And there have been many occasions when I thought to myself that this is such an important part of life, and wondered why we don’t learn it in school.

I had a basic economics course in high school, and I remember thinking that I didn’t learn anything from it. It was dumbed down, as if we wouldn’t understand. Kids aren’t bored by economics because they don’t understand it, they’re bored because the curriculum is too easy.

When I see that a sixth-grade teacher wants to teach his student about finance, I find it encouraging. But at the same time, I find it equally scary that even this well-intentioned teacher doesn’t really know what they need to learn about. So this prompted me to ask myself, what do I wish I had learned about finance when I was in school?

Balance sheets
The first, most important thing to understand about finance is the balance sheet: assets and liabilities, income and expenses. It seems to me that too many Americans don’t understand the simple concept of the importance of spending less than you earn. Everyone seems to think this is obvious, common knowledge, but so few people actually follow it, and I believe that’s because too many consider their credit cards or their homes as assets.

I know that a lot of people have a lot of opinions about the book, but Rich Dad, Poor Dad seems like the perfect introduction to assets and liabilities at a sixth grade level. There is nothing complicated in that book, and it really drives home the simple concept of putting your money to work for you, and paying yourself first. I see no reason why a sixth-grader couldn’t learn a great deal from exposure to that book.

Rules of thumb
Rules of thumb are easy to remember, and they tend to serve us well. I can think of a few rules of thumb that used to be common knowledge, but seem mystical in today’s world.

For instance, the sub-prime crisis would never have happened if everyone knew the rule of thumb that your house payment should be no more than 25% of your monthly income. How many unemployment claims could be avoided if everyone kept an emergency fund equal to six months expenses? And nobody would be talking about a Social Security crisis if everyone remembered to put 10% of every paycheck into savings.

The magic of compound interest
Any sixth-grader can understand multiplication. There’s no reason they couldn’t grasp the concept of compound interest, if it was explained to them.

There are two sides to compound interest. On the positive side you have investment, where you make your money work for you, each year better than the last. On the negative side, you have inflation, where each year your money is worth even less than it was the previous year.

In both cases, earlier is better. If teachers could get students excited about compound interest as early as sixth grade, maybe those kids would be more diligent about saving and investing as early as possible, and we would no longer need things like Social Security in this country.

What else?
The last thing that really stands out to me is the intimidation factor. It is human nature to be afraid to try things you haven’t done before. If a teacher could show the kids how easy it is to open a savings account or a money market account, or how to invest in an index fund, it would take the intimidation out of the process. And maybe you’d have a bunch of sixth-graders running home and asking their parents to set them up now!

Lazy Man stole the words right out of my mouth this morning:

Articles like these remind me how it is the possessions that own you. While a home is one of the better possessions you can buy, it’s odd that it can turn into a jail. It’s another reason why having money isn’t always about the money, but about the freedom of choice is allows.

“The things you own end up owning you,” and “money doesn’t buy happiness, it buys freedom”… two mantras I’m fond of reciting, and he used them both in one paragraph!

I was just playing with this neat little data-mapping tool that displays housing costs and transportation costs mapped across regions. When looking at the Chicago area, I made a few interesting observations.

My first observation was, of course, the one they’re trying to get you to make: when you factor in transportation costs, living in the city is more affordable than living in the suburbs. I don’t doubt this to be the case, considering the astronomical cost of owning a vehicle, insuring the vehicle, and fueling the vehicle, in comparison to the very affordable cost of public transportation in a city like Chicago. Getting rid of my car has worked out to be one of my best financial decisions.

On a strictly monetary scale, living within the city of Chicago and using only public transportation appears to be the most affordable choice. It would be naive to accept that data alone, however, since other considerations will apply, for instance, if you have children. I’m sure we all have our theories about schools, parks, and crime in cities vs. suburbs, but all I’m going to say about that is that those data are quite absent from the mapping tool.

My next observation, however, was that the map colors didn’t invert as I expected them to when I switched to only mapping housing cost without transportation. In other words, based on their data, housing costs are higher in the suburbs regardless of transportation costs. (Granted, the data is mapped as a percentage of median income, rather than by dollar amount, but it seems that median income should be a reasonable number to use, since it factors out the extremely high and extremely low numbers on either side.)

I was rather surprised to see that. I’ve always been under the impression that the suburban home was less expensive than the urban home. That may still be true by the square foot of living space, but it’s not true on overall cost of ownership — with or without the cost of transportation.

And the final observation I made was that suburban life appears far less sustainable, financially speaking. The graph separates areas into two groups: those where housing costs 0-30% of median income, and those where housing costs more than 30% of income.

The rule of thumb, for what seems like forever, has been that your mortgage payment should cost no more than 25% of your income. Before the sub-prime mess started, that was the rule banks used to decide whether or not to approve a loan.

So even if we round that number off to 30%, we’re still looking at a scary proposition: most of those families in the suburbs are in over their heads just on housing cost. Then, if you factor in transportation costs (which the map allows for up to 48% combined) and the rising cost of gasoline, it’s hard to imagine how suburban families make ends meet each month.

Depending on how this whole sub-prime mess turns out, this could easily foretell the coming of lots of suburban slums, even while the inner city (long considered a euphemism for a slum) becomes the high-end place to live. What I’m really curious about now is what roles crime and education will play in all of this.

This weekend I watched Street Kings. After seeing the commercials, I expected it to suck. Let’s face it; you put Keanu Reeves and Forrest Whitaker into any movie, and you’re pretty much asking for a lousy movie. But then fill in the cast with bit parts played by Hugh Laurie and Cedric The Entertainer, and a handful of no-name gangster rappers, and I’m starting to believe you’re just trying to fulfill P.T. Barnum’s prophecy about the birth rate of suckers.

Fortunately it didn’t full-out suck, so I suppose you could say I was pleasantly surprised. You know, in that same way that you’re pleasantly surprised to find out that the burning sensation when you pee is an STD, but it’s treatable with a shot.

Right. So Keanu Reeves plays the role of maverick-risk-taker-with-no-personality. No surprise. If you’ve seen Point Break, Speed, Johnny Mnemonic, Chain Reaction, The Matrix, or Constantine, then you know what I’m talking about. This time, however, the writer and director weren’t sure that we would get the point, so they made a repeated effort of actually spelling it out to the viewer. “Tom, you’re the only guy crazy enough to do it. You’re like a guided missile.”

There were a few interesting plot turns, a handful of quotable one-liners, and some uniquely intense action scenes that really made the audience feel the bones breaking, and those are the details that kept this movie from being a total suck-fest.

The majority of the film is completely forgettable, but there is one moment I’ll always remember. It’s at the end of the movie, where Keanu is playing talentless-actor-trying-to-look-betrayed, and Forest Whitaker is playing the part of overweight-guy-who-exaggerates-every-body-movement, and I’m about ready to go watch the paint dry in the lobby when I look up and make a startling realization…

Forest Whitaker is Mr Potatohead.