Entertainment Ave!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Here in the Chicago area it’s been a very mild winter, with one snow storm at
the beginning of December and then pretty much nothing for almost a month and a
half.  Hell, the weather has been warm enough that a lot of folks were able
to go golfing here in  January, although getting a tan didn’t seem to be an
option.  But once again a storm seems to be upon us, although the weather
folks still can’t seem to pin exactly what is going to happen.  My Weather
Channel forecast seems to be saying I will be getting two, maybe three inches of
snow between now and Noon tomorrow, the local dudes seem to have me in a swath
that will get between five to seven inches of snow, and I’m not sure what the
Farmer’s Almanac says for me since I haven’t actually read one since I was about
seventeen and my dad bought it.

With that, there’s a part of me that likes the
fact that even with all of our technology, even with all of our computer models,
even with all of our experts, the weather still gives us uncertainty.

It makes
me sort of remember when I was a kid growing up in Ohio.  As a kid, and
because there wasn’t cable TV yet, all we had was

Dick Goddard to tell us what was going to happen.  Sure, there were
probably some other dudes on some other channels, but Mr. Goddard always gave a
breath of honesty to a weather forecast:  That as much as he could look at
the way things were taking shape, Mother Nature has a mind of her own, and he
had no way of totally reading her mind.  He also had the power of the

Woolly Bear, a strange caterpillar that Vermillion, OH, has adopted as its
own.  Anyway, as a youngin’, we would hear about snow coming, but thanks to
Mr. Goddard, there was always an uncertainty about how much snow was actually
going to make it.  That led to one thing, and one thing only – going to bed
knowing most likely we were going to have to go to school, but there was always
that chance, that Mother Nature decided it would be better for us to stay home,
build snowmen and snow forts, have snowball fights, make our parents drive us
through the snow-covered streets to the great hill in Amherst, and thanks to
Mother Nature, and not Dick Goddard, we got a snow day.

The fun thing to hear,
a year or two ago when I was visiting my parents in Ohio, was that Mr. Goddard
still knows that Mother Nature has her own mind, even as far as the computer
modeling, the forecasting, the satelliting, have come in all of these years. 
There he was, in front of the weather map, telling everyone in his viewing area
that in the next twelve to twenty-four hours he couldn’t tell them how much snow
was coming.  There was a chance of anything from less than an inch to
almost a foot of snow, depending on how the cold front moved, and in my head, I
knew that he knew that Mother Nature still has her own thing in mind, even
though I wouldn’t go to bed dreaming of a snow day.

And so, with the winter
weather that is supposed to come tonight, I wait again to see what Mother Nature
has in mind for my Monday.  It’s not nearly as exciting as when I was a
kid, because there is nothing like a snow day when you are ten year’s old and
you can build a snow fort, but I would like to know if I can sleep in tomorrow,
maybe pretend I was ten again and build a snow fort, or if I’m going to have to
head out, in a measly inch or two of snow, and do some business consulting. 
As I do every time I hear a snowstorm might be coming, since I was like five
years old, I pray Mother Nature wants me to make a snow fort.  And that
Dick Goddard (or now, in Chicago, it’s Tom Skilling) just can’t read Mom
Nature’s mind.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Maybe I should just listen to the couple of commercials
Howard Stern has on
Sirius, because while flipping through my local Chicago radio dial for a couple
of minutes this morning I started yelling at the radio in my car.  A
way-overpaid radio dude (at least in my mind), and a reporter, were talking
about things at the
CES (that’s
the Consumer Electronics Show for everyone).  They had the audacity to
question who would want a

103" plasma screen TV, complained about the cost of LG’s dual-format DVD
player (you don’t buy it now, you wait a few years while the price keeps halving
itself), and then, couldn’t figure out who would spend $600 on the coolest phone
to come around in years.  That’s
the iphone, of
course.

I’m just bummed the iPhone won’t be available until June, and the fact
that I can’t get a lame, morning, radio show and make over a million bucks a
year.

Thanks for listening and your comments.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
On my

MySpace page blog I listed a few of my goals for the New Year.  Along
with a Chicago Bear’s Super Bowl win was my winning the
Mega Millions jackpot
when it was over $100 Million.  But now that the jackpot is over $100
Million, I have created a new dilemma for myself, especially with my big win
with yesterday’s jackpot, a $10 win that gives me the cash for buying new
tickets for Tuesday’s drawing.

You might ask, "What kind of dilemma is there
when buying lotto tickets?" but because I’m nuts, well, here goes.

Many, many
years ago, when I finally had some of my own income and would buy a few lotto
tickets when the jackpot got into that "What the hell would I do with fifty
million dollars?" range, rather than, in my head, bask in the glory of being
able to imagine the great new house, a cool car, not working for the man, well,
my thoughts turned to my family.  Not so much mom and dad, other than
figuring I would have to pay to get their phone number changed and maybe buy
them some cool stuff, but rather the thoughts turned to my brother and sister. 
If they were in a financial bind would they come to me for help?  Hell, if
they weren’t in a financial bind, would they come to me expecting a hand-out? 
And even if I gave them something, what would stop them from coming back to me
later, looking for more?

And so I developed a "buying lottery ticket’s" plan.

If the jackpot was small I would buy a quick-pick ticket or two.  If I won
– great!  But if the jackpot was larger I would buy five tickets, all with
the same numbers, based on my family.  My thinking was this:  I buy
five tickets, all with the same numbers, and they come in.  I give my
brother one ticket in exchange for a dollar and I give my sister one ticket in
exchange for a dollar.  I keep the other three tickets, with the agreement
between us being that I will take care of any need’s mom and dad might have
(since I have the other two tickets), and if any of us are fiscally
irresponsible with our winnings, in the future, well, we can’t go to any sibling
looking for a hand-out.  We would all be on our own with what where my
winnings and now part of those are theirs.  So say the jackpot was $100
million and my five tickets were the only winners?  That leaves my brother
and sister with $20 million each, and me with a nice $60 million dollars. 
(On a side note, imagine if there were six winning tickets, and I have five of
them – that other person first finds out that they won and thinks they have $100
million, then they find out that there are six winning tickets and they are
still happy because they at least won over $16 million bucks, then they find out
that I have $83ish million dollars worth of tickets to their $16ish million. 
Would they be mad at me?  I’m sorry I digressed.  Back to dilemma-ing.)

But this morning I came up with my new, "buying lotto ticket’s" dilemma.

I
have a favorite nephew, and I have a favorite niece.  In fact, right now,
they are my only nephew and my only niece.  And I wondered, in the shower
this morning, if I should now include them in my lotto ticket buy?  My
nephew is in college, so he is supposed to be an adult, and my niece will be 16
in a few weeks, making her an adult in at least a country or two in the world. 
Does this now mean they deserve their own tickets?  And really, can I trust
my sister to make sure they are taken care of, or would my fear of them coming
to Uncle Dude, looking for money in the future, become a new reality?

But then
the financial reality of including them in my ticket buy came in.

Let’s see: 
Instead of five tickets I buy seven.  The jackpot is still $100 million
bucks and I have the only winning tickets.  Instead of being worth $20
million each, now each ticket is worth about $14.3 million.  That means my
brother, sister, niece, and nephew find themselves with $14.3 million apiece,
not a bad chunk of change for them thanks to my good fortune.  Meanwhile my
jackpot diminished from $60 million bucks to take care of myself, my mom, and my
dad, to a paltry $42.9 million.

So I have to decide if my favorite niece and
favorite nephew are worth a little over $17 million bucks to me, or should I
count on their mother to make sure they are taken care with her winnings?

Then
it occurred to me that instead of five tickets with the same numbers, well, I
could up that to ten.  With that same $100 million jackpot each ticket
would be worth $10 million.  I’d give one ticket to my brother, one to my
sister, one to my favorite niece, and one to my favorite nephew, leaving me with
six tickets, and I’m back at $60 million buckaroos!  Now my brother and
sister are pissed because their winnings went from $20 million to $10 million
(and especially my brother since my niece and nephew aren’t his kids), my niece
and nephew are pissed because if I weren’t so greedy about the $60 million
they’d each have another $4.3 million, and if there happened to be another
person with a winning ticket, that poor bastard goes from winning $100 million
to less than $10 million, all because I wanted to stake my claim at that $60
million dollar mark.

See, I told you I was nuts!

I’ve got a $10 winning Mega
Millions ticket and now I don’t know how to spend it.  I could buy ten Mega
Millions tickets all with the same numbers with the potential to piss off a lot
of people; I could buy seven Mega Millions tickets all with the same number and
maybe lose $17 million bucks for me; I could stick with my "buying five tickets"
plan and hope my sister takes care of her kids; Or I could, oh hell, maybe I
should just buy two "Quarter Pounder With Cheese Meals" and be happy for an
hour, until I realize that it  means I will probably also lose a bet with
my sister.

You see, I’m nuts, and also with dilemmas!

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Do you make resolutions or goals for the New Year?  I make goals, with one
being to get organized (again), yet I’m having issues with my old Palm Pilot,
calendar programs, and to-do lists.  This simple goal is becoming more
complicated than I planned.  I also made a goal to get postings more
consistent here at Entertainment Ave!, starting with a redesign of the review
pages (give me your opinions, if you will, if you like the page design of

"Rocky Balboa" vs.

"Dreamgirls" vs. our old design at

"The Pursuit of Happyness," and our new concert review design for an old

Bob Seger review).  We also hope to have a new feature, sort of, in the
next couple of weeks.

I’m also happy because I found a place to relive my love
for "Calvin &
Hobbes" (use the "Tools" link to add the RSS feed to your favorite reader),
wonder if it really matters that
Barack Obama tried
cocaine when he was younger in his maybe bid for the Presidency (maybe he could
use my slogan when I run for Governor of Illinois in a few years), and am
rethinking my goal to lose weight since wearing a

mansiere might also save my life.

Thanks for listening and your comments.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!