A Lottery Dreamblog

I need to put this all down before I forget...it's been an absolutely crazy day and if I don't pen the plan, I'm gonna explode. This is a big week, and everything needs to go off right.

Tomorrow is Monday, and I get my big oversized check (I actually got and spent most of the money last week) down at Sprint Center. Tickets to the event went on sale this morning and were gone by noon...even at a hundred bucks a pop. Nobody wants to see me get my check for $113 million (lump sum after taxes) bad enough to pay...but I had the idea to hold a Haiti benefit concert at the same time and U2 were kind enough to headline. I was a little shocked that Pearl Jam agreed to open for them, but it substantiated the ticket price. Their decision to tour the States together this summer was theirs, though I might have suggested it to Bono and Eddie over drinks Saturday at The Well. (Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.) I gladly took them up on the offer to tag along with them, and my kids needed some additional music lessons anyway, so they'll spend the summer with Edge and Mike McCready on the road.

After the show I've got to beat feet for LA to do the Conan O'Brien show's first official FOX taping. He's a good dude, Conan, even letting me bring my co-workers. They're friends of Coco from way back, and it was their writing letter campaign alongside my "donation" to Rupert Murdoch that got the show back on the air. I understand Conan's desire to make a splash with the first show-and believe me, I'm humbled to be considered for a quick spot at all-but I'm afraid it might get dicey having Leno and Letterman on the couch at the same time. I'm just glad the audience will have already enjoyed the the newly reunited Led Zeppelin three song set in case Jay and Dave get cold feet.

Tuesday starts in the air as we leave L.A. and head to Colorado to meet all my western friends and family for a quick house hunting get together. Looking for something spacious in the Denver area...might have to "settle" for Aspen. There should be around 200 of us searching for the Colorado palace and doing lunch somewhere in the mountains until about 2:00. Once I pay for the house, we head to Arizona to get the winter retreat picked out. I talked to United and they agreed to just take all of us on a DC-10 for the week (so if your reading this, pack your bags!) Kind of random that Captain Sullenberger will be our pilot for the week...but hey, life is weird that way.

Tuesday night we've got the Super Bowl at Cardinals Stadium. Well, not the actual Super bowl, but the mother of all Super Bowls. One of my buddies dreamed this up the day my winning numbers got pulled. He suggested that I use some of the cash to entice all my childhood heroes out of retirement to play in one last game...split them into equal teams and hire John Madden and Erin Andrews to call the thing. Murdoch helped finance, and after my Executive Producer cut, I'll recoup the ten million I invested in the idea and make ten million more off my share of the TV revenues. FOX is having a nice little week, too. Simon Cowell is our sideline reporter and apparently has never seen a football game, so it should be sweet. Elway versus Montana...Deion Sanders matches up against Jerry Rice...you get the picture. They'll all be there. None of them even flinched at the stipulation that they go 100% or get benched. I'm pumped.

Wednesday, the entourage heads to the Keefolympics in Vancouver. We had the IOC leave everything intact following the games. I just figured people would have a good time trying each of the events. I'm looking forward to ski jumping and luge. The Boblsed has a long sign up list...as does curling. Budweiser agreed to cater the whole week as long as they could be the title sponsor for the curling match (we're having it televised since it's Fergie's favorite sport and she's tagging along for the day and then doing a show Wednesday night). I'm not sure if my Laramie/Casper friends are ready for my KC friends or the level of competition the curling match up will provide, but we'll figure it out. We're also going to have a Cornhole/Bags tournament televised around lunch on CBS. Nantz is a huge bag-tosser and graciously accepted the Captain spot for one team since it will pit him against Bobby Knight on the other side. ESPN is pissed they couldn't get a piece of the action. they wanted to call it the "Fergalympics". Lame.

Thursday is a more somber day. We fly to Haiti and work all day...it's not much, but we'll have raised 50 million plus from the concert, legalized book betting on the Super Bowl and Keefolympics action (I negotiated a 20% take from Steve Wynn) and we need to spend it quickly, efficiently and in person. The 150 orphans we've rescued will be flown to their new homes by Captain Sullenberger next week.

Friday we head to Hawaii for some R&R. This time we've opened it up to more friends and family, and United agreed to lend us three jets. We land and hook up with Dog the Bounty Hunter for a quickie demonstration and then reunite with Eddie Vedder for a morning surf. The Radiohead concert is our lunch entertainment (even though Thom Yorke isn't much of a sunbather) set against the fading sun on Waikiki beach. Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews round out the night show. They're touring in celebration of the Marijuana Legalization Act of 2010. I don't smoke it, but I talked to some people on behalf of some friends and, BAM! Next thing you know, the bill becomes a law. I had no idea the power of a little Washington grift. I just got a text from Mathematician Malcolm Gladwell...it says, "Crime dwn 85% after passing the MLA bill. U were rite. Gd jb!"

Saturday it's the big finale...back to the Sprint Center for the celebration of the return of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. All of downtown KC is being cornered off for the parade from the Wheeler airport to the Sprint Center. The White House will be there, of course, along with anyone wanting to celebrate International Peace Day. I'm still amazed how paying 5 million to Dog the Bounty Hunter yielded such quick results in capturing Bin Laden. It was over in 2 days and worth every penny. Hell, he gave the money to the New Orleans rebuild project anyway, so it was a double win. What a joke of an organization the Al-Queda turned out to be...cut off the head and the rest die like roaches. Mass suicide is never pretty, but at least they didn't take anyone with them. In less than a week, Bagdhad has become the new Prague. Airlines can't spend the tourist-flared dollars fast enough to remove seats and make their planes more comfortable to accommodate the demand for now-safe international travel.

Now that unemployment is less than 1% world wide, Sunday will be a day of total rest in order to get everyone recovered for the return to the workplace Monday. Some attribute the meteoric rise in new industry to the Bin Laden capture. Fear disintegrated, people started looking around and getting off their ass. Travel skyrocketed, the tourism industries of the world swelled and needed workers and the dominoes fell fast. Stocks rose, governments stopped bailing, banks started repaying, taxes decreased, jobs sprung out of the ground. What a great week the economic recovery was. It's nice. People are happy again.

I need stop by Quick Trip on my way to work Monday to get another Powerball ticket since we haven't solved the energy crisis yet. Don't let me forget...I have a busy week.

I love a good Gold Medal

Confession:

The Olympics are a fantastic and unexpected gift to me, like finding a twenty dollar bill in the Target parking lot or passing a billowing gas monster in a crowded movie theater and convincing your family it was that "disgusting guy in front of you" that did it.

With each, I end up saying, "where the hell did that come from?" and taking it for granted though I may, I usually become obsessed with wanting that same surprise from everything else in my life...only to be left emptily disappointed. Unless it's a long movie and I've recently consumed more than four Cheesy Gorditas from Taco Bell.

The Olympics start (well they never stop for the athletes, but they start for you and I) about two weeks before they start. The host city begins their preparation about 12 years before they're even chosen as the host site. The athletes begin training for them roughly 6 months prior to their own conception.

But all I have to do is watch Bob Costas for thirty minutes each night and I'm caught up on who I should be rooting for and against. Pretty sweet deal for me. For example, I know who Apollo Anton Ono is. I just remember Apollo Creed, the indomitable heavyweight boxer from the late 70's who died in the ring at the hands of that Russian bastard, Ivan Drago. I then imagine Susan Anton in her loveliest pose with feathered hair. Lastly, I imagine John Lennon and his domineering wife lying in bed for three weeks protesting the Vietnam war without bathing or wearing clothes. Mash all those images up in a blender and you have the mnemonic device...Apollo Anton Ono. See? It's easy.

Anyway, I know who he is from the last Olympics and all the cool stuff he did and the sweet facial hair. But he hasn't exactly been in the forefront of the news the way that normal celebrities are. He's been busy training and getting faster at skating and things like that while regular celebrities like Jon and Kate plus Eight have been hogging the spotlight by breathing air and eating food and getting divorced and tending to their weird children. You know...important shit. The newsworthy type of behavior that catches my eye.

So Apollo comes around to my circle of interest twice, maybe three times in his lifetime, and only when there's a gold medal and a tearjerking National Anthem at stake. That's cool, I figure. But can't he and Lindsey Vonn-Jacobellis and Shaun White and Bodi Miller et al. do something for the other 1500 days between Olympics to keep me interested in them? Like, I don't know, something aside from trying to achieve a lifelong goal? Aside from getting up at 4 in the morning every day of the week to run sixty miles to train for the upcoming games four years down the road?

Come on people!? How am I supposed to keep track of your every move if TMZ won't follow you to your three hour workout before church each Sunday? Can't you spice it up a little? Why not attend said session on the bruised heels of a 13 hour bender at the Viper room with enough coke and Red Bull in your system to jump start your car? Why not show up for the free skate with a crowbar and a new tatoo over your face depicting the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Could you at least get divorced or file bankruptcy once between Olympic games?

Of course, all this absence of dirt is why we love the games. I cheered mightily for the Chinese couple to win the pairs figure skating gold. You know, the married couple that came out of retirement in their late 30's to train and live in separate dorms to capture the only honor they've never received. It could have been Betsy Ross and George Washington skating against them and I would have pulled in the direction of the Big Red...not because I'm a Commie, but because I cried during Rudy, Hoosiers,The Blind Side, Lucas, Angels in the Outfield, A League of Their Own, Chariots of Fire, Rocky IV, Victory, Ladybugs, Caddyshack and every other sports movie ever made.

We love winners and losers. We love to exhalt heroics and opine over near misses and lament what might have been. We love to look back in retrospect and adore the greatness of years gone by. We love a video montage that stretches our own shortcomings into someone else's achievements with a song we can beat our chest to. (Note: In my funeral video montage, there will be various pictures fading in and out of me from ages three to whatever age I kick it. Mostly toothy grins and hugs...really sap it up, please. The following songs need to be included: Prospekt's March by Coldplay, A Lack of Color by Death Cab for Cutie and Wherever I May Roam by Metallica. In that order. It'll be nuts in that church by the end.)

I love the Olympics. For a couple of weeks I can stop hearing about Charlie Sheen smacking the old lady around or caring whether or not Brangelina have adopted another child from Madonna's litter. For a couple of weeks, I can drift in and out of Bob Costas telling me who on this planet we should really be rooting for...regardless of country, religion or color. I like that. I also like when Danny Noonan overcomes the smoking Denunzio hollering in his backswing in order to sink that clutch putt to win the Caddy scholarship. Those are the things that really matter in life.