Happy new year to you...in jail!!!

Last night, I watched It's A Wonderful Life, which I am not ashamed to admit is one of my favorite movies. For one thing, it's a totally great movie, and I always feel like there's more to it each time I watch. Like last night, I realized that the first person who shows up at George Bailey's house at the end of the movie to bail George out of trouble is the guy who goes to the Building and Loan in the bank panic and demands all $242 of his money. Also, I realized that the movie is really about the danger of going into business with your dad's alcoholic brother. You'd think they would have fired Uncle Billy long before trusting him with $8000 of the B&L's money, right? I mean, he keeps a crow named Jeremy in the office! He ties strings around his fingers to remember things instead of, I don't know, WRITING THEM DOWN!!!

But hey, the movie is awesome. I mean, it's all romantic, and it's basically about how awesome it is to be kind to others, because they will be there for you, and how your friends are really the proof of how rich you are. In the end, Mr. Potter and all his money are still unhappy, unfuckable, and alone except for the creepy guy pushing him around in his wheelchair. Still, personally, I want to be both. Why is it that you can't be like super popular and rich at the same time? Is that a law?

I mean, don't get me wrong, when the revolution comes, I plan to put rich people's backs up against the wall. But I wouldn't mind being rich if I had the chance. It's much better than being poor, I think. I mean, poor might be semi-chic from time to time, but it's really only cool to look poor, as in wearing designer clothes designed by people who live in the gas chamber of a condemned prison and sewn by Cambodian infants to look shabby. That is pretty cool. But I would enjoy being able to boss people around with money. Really, let's face it, that's all that money is. In the olden days, you would be like, "I am the Archbishop of Mainz!" and that would be enough to let people know not to fuck with you, because you command like crazy amounts of knights, and everyone's afraid of you, because without your favor, God will kill them with the Black Plague and other shit. Or you'd be like the Baron of Muchausen's Syndrome, and when people around you are like going to war, you're pretending to be sick to get attention. That's power. Oh wait, that's mental illness. I'm so fucking confused.

No, money is power, not a new point, but let's face it, people with money always do totally boring things with all their power. I like me a crazy billionaire like Richard Branson, a conceited asshole who's dream is to circumnavigate the earth in a balloon. Well, that's not actually his dream, that's just an awesome thing he does with his money. Seriously, if I had Bill Gates kind of money, I'd start my own space program, and I'd build a golf course on the Moon. Then I'd demand like $100 million from my crazy asshole friends to play 18 holes. Since gravity is like 1/6th of Earth's, a par 4 hole would be like a mile, and instead of sand traps, you just have giant craters everywhere. Plus, at the end, I'd have a bar called the 19th Hole that would actually be a time portal to the Cretaceous period, and we'd all go there and fucking hunt dinosaurs, and pretty much kill all the animals we could. Ray Bradbury be damned.

I mean, rich people set up the most boring charities, and honestly, many charities give money to people with money, like when people set up charities to give money to doctors and hospitals to find a cure for some disease, like Spidermonkeyitis, where your left foot turns into a spider monkey during the full moon (my uncle suffers from this), I mean, why not just give the money to some real shit, like people without feet at all, or without a place to sleep or food to eat? No, rich people need to be like, "I gave 100 grand to cure Dandy-Walker syndrom! Yay for me!"

I think I'm going to start my own charity that gives money to rich people with awesome, worthless uses of money and power. Like, you know what would be awesome? A guy who gets around town by having an army of people crowd-surfing him down the street. Get like 500 people, and pay them all like $100, and they've got just one job, not to drop you, and they like run around, and push you down the street, crowd-surfing your way to work. That would be an awesome waste of $50,000, and you would have many 500 people kind of happy, and me very happy. What about taking vicious dogs from every dog pound in America, and instead of euthanizing them, you employ them as the guards at a new Supermax prison!??! Try to escape when Fido the Fido-killer is ripping your leg off. Guess you'll think twice about being in the Aryan Nation now? (Question: are people in the Aryan Nation racist against black dogs? And if not, then they are even stupider than they already are. At least take your prejudice to the illogical extreme.)

What does this have to do with It's A Wonderful Life? Nothing at all, but to say that Mr. Potter sucks balls. By the way, where did he get all his money? Was he just born with it? God was like, "You don't get working legs, but you get a million dollars," and Potter was like, "You once called me a warped, frustrated old man," and God's all, "Um, no, I just said you get a million dollars," and Potter's like, "What if I were to offer you a position making $20,000 a year, starting today?" and at that point, God is like, "I forgot why I don't talk to characters from movies," and Rocky shows up and knocks Mr. Potter out, and is like, "I hate you, Mr. T!" Remember? Like in Rocky V where he has brain damage and beats up crippled people because he's demented?

Well, I feel like I pretty much didn't talk at all about what I really love about It's A Wonderful Life. That's OK. At some point, I promise, I will.