Come Visit!

I want to just get out of my life. I'd like to go somewhere warmer. I thought of the Azores, which I've heard are in the 50's and 60s in winter. I also thought of Spain, a place I went to in college and haven't been back to since. I thought: Hey, I'll move to Spain for the winter and then invite people to come visit.

But when thinking about it, I don't like that idea so much. I want it to be truly warm where I go. So maybe I'd go to Aruba or Costa Rica. Somewhere that's far but still close. Somewhere that's foreign yet still trusted and relatively safe.

Then, when I was there, I'd invite people to come visit me. No one I know is extremely wealthy, so it would be a great feeling to give them all the opportunity to get away. I even thought I'd offer them the chance to go anywhere they liked! Just send me a description of the trip they want to take and the dates and I'll buy the tickets and book the hotels and cars. I'd run it all through my Facebook page, letting everyone who knew me through there that I was available to send them where ever they liked. Maybe I'd create a page specifically for the project. I could ask people to post pictures from their trip on that page so that everyone could see where they'd been.

How cool would that be?

Tonight I saw a wonderful documentary called "Typeface" and I was struck with all of the things I wanted to do to help the people in the documentary.

1. I wanted to find people to help sort and catalog all the boxes of type they had.
2. I wanted to help pay for more people in the Purdue professor's class to go up to the museum.
3. I wanted to contact some kind of 'Graphic Designers' Association' and suggest they give money to the museum.
4. I wanted to find a way to provide scholarships for people to spend a month, 3 months, 6 months or a year working at the museum doing work with the type and presses.

I was glad that the end credits showed good news for the museum (The Hamilton Museum) because the end notes were very down and didn't forebode much of a future for the place. I don't know how they've continued in the in the intervening years (as the economy has continued to sputter and I imagine arts are hit the hardest) but I hope they've managed to hold on.

I thought tonight: what if I had all the money? I thought of all the projects I'd like to get off the ground and then I thought:

Rent the house next door
Start a tutoring service for the neighborhood
Hire/recruit college students from the nearby schools
What would I charge? Or would it be free? Or just low-cost/sliding scale?

I was driving home from the mechanic with my niece in the car and sang: "I wish I won the lottery..." and she said "Why?"

"Well, I would like to buy your mom a new car. I would like to buy your dad a new car. I could get a car. I could get my friend a car. Things like that."

My friend's dog needs an operation; I would pay for that.

A friend needs to pay off taxes on a house: I would pay for that.

A friend needs to get his car emission-ready to drive it: I would pay for that.

I have various friends in the film industry; I could help them with projects.

I could rent office space for a friend of mine.

And of course I have various projects of my own I could pay for.

I was thinking in fives recently.

$5,000 would get me through September plus maybe pay for a root canal.

$50,000 would get me through the next year plus maybe pay for a trip overseas (maybe South America).

$500,000 would pay for ten or more years of life, depending on what I did with it. I could give friends and relatives small monthly stipends to help them out. I could give larger (or more) donations to charity.

$5,000,000 would be enough for the rest of my life. I could give friends loans or gifts; I could buy a car for me, my friend, my brother and sister-in-law. I could buy a house or two. I could travel around the states and around the world. In my mind, I would set up auto-payments for all my bills and leave the country as soon as possible. I don't know if that's realistic but it's what I tell myself I would do.

$50,000,000 would be enough to do things I've only dreamed of: Start a small foundation. Finance short film projects. Make commercials and pay for them to be aired. Buy a full-page ad in the NYTimes (or USA Today). Buy billboard space and put up message billboards all over. Travel everywhere. Start innovative programs. Pay for everything myself.

When I think about having millions of dollars, I generally don't think about buying anything for me. (Except travel, but I'll come back to that.) I think of buying my brothers cars or buying a house and renting it dirt cheap to friends or buying a building and turning it into a homeless shelter.

This week I've been staying at my brother's house and I thought: if I had millions, I would hide bundles of cash all over his house. (It would be tricky because if his dogs found it first, they'd eat it.) I was watching a CNBC special about tax cheats recently and they showed bundles of cash found in a pimp's house and I thought: "Wouldn't it be awesome to leave folded up wads of cash secreted around someone's house?!" I've thought before - with my friend M - that I'd love to leave individual hundreds around her house - between DVDs, in jacket pockets, stuck under furniture... Here I was thinking of a wad of folded bills that I would leave in a messy drawer or behind the ice trays or stuck in the bookshelf somewhere. I love the idea of someone finding treasure that they didn't expect.

I talked in my last post about leaving cash in the glove box of a gift car for my brother; today I was thinking about how cool it would be to messenger him a utility envelope full of bundles of cash - totaling 50 or 100 thousand, maybe. Take those bank stacks of $10k and fold them over and put rubber bands around them. Make someone feel wonder at seeing that amount of money.

I was thinking about handing my roommate a stack of stacks, 50 to 100 thousand. I can imagine he would be stunned and protest fiercely but I would assure him I don't need it and he can use it to take a trip or shore up his retirement (I don't know what he has going for him at the moment). I imagine telling him that I'll be cleaning all my crap out of the living room as I've rented (a couple!!) offices and will be moving into them and later maybe buying a house in a nicer part of town and offering him a posh space within it.
Why? Because he's a decent person and I think he deserves it. And because, like most people, I think to reward those immediately around me.

For myself what I'd want most is travel. I'm sure I would think of other luxuries as well (I've mentioned renting office space; I'm sure I'd want a house as well) but mostly I would like the ability to move about the planet freely. I'd like to see South America and Australia and South Africa and parts of Asia. I'd like to go to offbeat places - places in Africa and Asia that most people don't go. (I'd like to go to North Korea, for instance. You can get a visa and go on a tour.) Mostly I would like that ability, to go where ever I choose at close to a moment's notice.

Brothers

My Oldest Brother
I dream of buying a BMW M5 and parking it outside his house late at night. I would leave the title and $20,000 in cash in the glove box. The next day I messenger him the keys and a note that the title and repair fees are in the glove box.

I'm supposed to dogsit for he and his wife in a couple of weeks. They are leaving their car for me to use and I was thinking about how I'd like to leave that car for my brother when it occurred to me that their current car is damaged and how cool would it be to replace that car? Oh, hey! I could give their current car to my friend M! Her car is running down and she could use a new car and theirs is 1) a station wagon - which she could use space-wise in her job and also 2) a diesel, which she could convert to bio-diesel and possibly get free fuel! How cool would that be!

Then I would take her car and see if I could get an electric engine installed in it (by some private group or something). That would be cool. (My friend might actually want it back if that were the case.)

My Next-Oldest Brother
Yesterday I was thinking about taking some money out of the bank but there were no branches where I was. One bank I saw was Wachovia, which is this brother's bank. "Wouldn't it be great," I thought, "if I could just walk into his bank and deposit $40,000 in his account?"

I changed it to $4,000 because I thought about taxes and then I thought: "What the fuck, just put $40,000 in there and let him deal with the taxes." Even better, I would deposit $40,000 once a week for three weeks and not say anything to him and let him deal with the mind explosion.

My Younger Brother
I think I might send him $500 - $1,000 a month but no more. I would send it to his wife and let her spend it on bills or their children.

My Sister
She lives in a very expensive part of the country. I think I would buy her a house. Maybe.