Yet another reason I should be super rich

$602,500,560

Read that number to yourself a few times, say it extra slow so that you can really take in how much money that is...

Some reference points

*The value of Twitter, a page that is getting credit for redefining media as we know it is worth approx $60,000,000

* The salary cap in the NFL (which makes over $100 billion a year) is 128,000,000

* The population of the United State is 304,059, 724

* There have been 30.2 million Xbox 360s, 52.62 million Nintendo Wiis, and 23.8 million PS3s sold

If you add all of those numbers up, you will still have 3 million less than the amount of US Dollars made by this movie




If you have never seen this movie then you are single and lucky; to fill you in on what you have missed, watch this and instead of 4 minutes imagine it being 2 hours long

I get the whole musical thing, some musicals like West Side Story are amazing because they not only involve fighting and death, but also because they involve original music written specifically for a movie. Mamma Mia however takes undoubtedly the greatest actress of all time, Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and a bunch of people that make you say isn't that the guy from that movie, and force them to sing and dance to the Sweddish band Abba's greatest hits, somehow working each song into the ridiculously holed plot of the movie.

By the way, where in his roles of banging Robin Williams' wife and playing a poor James Bond did somebody get the idea that this guy knew how to sing?

To drive home this point, I would like to share some quotes given from professional movie critics

The story is ... urh. No film has ever had a more irrelevant story.

Unfortunately, Streep and her ancient co-stars create pure torture whenever on screen together. This is the Catwoman of movie musicals

And my personal favorite:

It's My Two Dads set to crappy Swedish music.

I don't really have much of a reason to write this blog, if you have been fortunate enough to avoid this movie up until now I imagine you are in the clear, however a Summer TV schedule full of watch X celebrity do Y job has led to HBO deciding Mamma Mia playing ever hour on the hour will be a great way to torture the trash man.

This movie has given me a chance to create a few movie ideas of my own, I would think I stand 0% chance of getting any financing for these awful ideas, but then again somebody financed Mamma Mia.

Movie #1

2 best friends from the mean streets of Connecticut are about to lose a girl they were both dating when she leaves for College. After reminding her that she has The Right Stuff and begging her Please Don't go Girl, they realize she is going to leave no matter how hard they try. The boys must stay hanging tough and take things step by step eventually falling out with each other. Soon enough they learn that both men have impregnated the girl without each other knowing (in movies like this a girl can get pregnant twice at once). Finally they decide that This one's for the Children and finally work it all out.

I think I'll call it No More Games, set to the music of my favorite childhood band




Movie #2

A stoner comedy/drama/musical (think Dazed and Confused meets trainspotting meets Chicago). A group of friends decides to go all out after graduating high school. After asking themselves Are you Ready? The friends pass around all kinds of drugs to make themselves higher, only to realize that they really drugs are not the answer to the question Whats this life for? It takes one friend who promises the others he will make My Sacrifice and join rehab. Upon exiting he expected to find friends With Arms wide Open ready to greet him. All that is left is for him to ask What if?

This movie will be called My Own Prison set to inspirational rock


$602,500,560

I just wanted you to read that number one more time, and realize that for stealing every single one of those dollars from people all over the world that Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, cast, crew, director, key grip and everybody else involved in making this insult to both movies and musicals: ALL OF YOU...IS TRASH

NO GAME FOR YOU!

What do these 3 men have in common?




The answer: None of them have sent me any mail in the past 2 days

Now as for Redd Foxx and Jesus, this is somewhat forgivable considering they are both dead and don't know me. The third person however is Sean Spector, co-founder and VP of Business Development for Gamefly Inc. If you are not familiar with Gamefly, I will explain. Imagine paying a psychiatrist for several sessions ahead of time, however each time you try to visit the DR you are told they can't talk to you about your messed up childhood because they have talked about that too many times today. You are however welcome to talk about fine china, basket weaving or something else you have no interest in. Either way you aren't getting a refund. If that has ever happened to you than your psychiatrist probably also was the Dr for Sean Spector.

Gamefly is similar to netflix in that you are welcome to rent video games through the mail, keep them as long as you would like and return them for the next game with no late fees. The main difference between the two company's is best explained by this copy of the Gamefly employee manual I found

Gamefly likes to ask the question:

Considering my mailman is 100 years old, wears shorts shorter than hers, and never has that orange envelope I think it is safe to answer NEVER!

Everytime I get really sick of the Gamefly being such trash I send them an email asking things like why it takes me 3 hours to drive from Columbus to Pittsburgh but when the mailman does it with my game it takes 10 days. One time I even asked them if I could drive to Pittsburgh myself and drop off the game. My emails are usually greeted by the Gamefly employees resorting to step 2 of the Gamefly employee manual seen above.


As a marketer, I am jealous of a company that can follow such a simple manual and still continue to see such great success. In fact I am going to consider this blog entry a portfolio and resume for Gamefly, if any of you know Sean Spector please pass along the following samples of some work I have done to improve some gamefly advertisements and really let the customers know what they are in for.

Old: New:


Old Logo: New Logo:


Sean Spector, CEO David Hodess, VP of content Jun Suh and everybody at Gamefly...
ALL OF YOU...IS TRASH

Thinking about driving somewhere? Don't bother!

Since this is my first rant about garbage I will stick to something we will all find to be trash.

Please feast your eyes on exhibit A:

This impossible to comprehend picture is the official map of current road construction projects in Columbus Ohio...the important thing to note, there are 33 OF THEM!

This lovely map is found in the "2009 Glovebox Guide to Central Ohio Construction", a handy guide to stick in your glovebox and pull out anytime that you are stuck in traffic and looking for fresh reading material. You might also want to keep this guide on hand in case you ever want to remind yourself what pulling out your eyelashes with a pair of pliers feels like.

Today the construction work on High St which for you who are not from Columbus, is the main street on Ohio State's campus was so bad, that I stood on the sidewalk and watched a man pee into a Mcdonalds' cup, Golden Arches indeed. The more I thought about it I realized he was most likely on his way back from a lunch break cut so short by construction and traffic that he did not even have time to eat at Mcdonalds.

One more delightful piece of recent construction trash, imagine exiting the only open North/South highway to find a line of traffic on the exit ramp that did not move for 15 minutes. What would you imagine the delay to be? Broken traffic light? Accident? Flat tire maybe?.....WRONG





This delay was caused by O-Dot deciding to repaint the right turn arrow during morning rush hour traffic!




Fear not Buckeyes, if Brutus can be a fan of this construction, then we can all do it!
O-Dot, Penn-DOT and every state's DOT....ALL OF YOU...IS TRASH