Why Should I Pay Taxes On These Imaginary Lottery Winnings?

I totally Believe in the American Dream, which is winning the Lottery. Your Dream might be different, but in America, you get to Dream one, and that’s the important part, right? Or you can be like, “Dreaming is for Dreamers, I am going to Do Stuff!” Me, I like Dreaming. What is Your American Dream?

My Dream of winning the Lottery — and a big Lottery, not some li’l poop-butt million bucks, because the minute you spend one dollar you ain’t a Millionaire anymore; I’m talking like a hundred Million — entails winning enough money to fill a swimming pool with coins and gold bars and money and stuff and go swimming in it, Scrooge McDuck style.

Scrooge McDuck is an important figure from American Literature (as well as a number-one duck) who shows us what it’s like to be Wealthy. He spends a lot of his time getting into adventures, because he’s trying to make more dough, because that is his Dream. I don’t like to judge, but he might be Greedy. He has lotsa cash, enough to bathe in, but he wants More, and guess what? It is his right as an American Dreamer to Go For It! What is “it?” More!

This is kinda off-topic, but that reminds me of another famous Duck who is greedy: That is Daffy Duck, in the 1955 Warner Bros. classic “Beanstalk Bunny,” where he and Bugs Bunny climb the fabled Beanstalk and deal with everybody’s worst nightmare, a giant-sized Elmer Fudd, who has lots of gold and treasure and stuff.

Daffy: Keep your hands off me. I came here for those solid-gold goodies, and I ain’t leaving without them. On account of I am greedy.

Then, fueled by 100% Pure Greed, Daffy goes toe-to-toe with American tattoo icon The Tasmanian Devil in 1957’s “Ducking the Devil,” when “Taz” gets between Daffy and a dollar. But total spoiler alert on that one because the gag doesn’t come until the end of the cartoon. Here is the cartoon by itself if you don’t want to get Spoilered.

There is a certain Purity in Daffy, eh? But anyway, back to me and my Dream of winning the Lottery! I always try and do the Math where when you win, you are supposed to decide on if it makes more sense to get paid the “Lump Sum,” or take the dough as an annuity, paid out over 20 years or something, but jeez, I might get hit by a bus tomorrow, you know? Math?!? Nevermind Math! Gimme! Now! Mine! Mine! Mine!!! The confusing Math part is they (and you know who They are) pay you way less than the stated jackpot if you take the sum in Lumply form. Also, however, I think when you are talking the Mega-dough, you can Lump it and then put that booty out on the street and make some Real Money, you know? And that’s where you turn into a Republican.

I mean, Republicans hate Taxes, right? I have no problem paying taxes now, because I’m not a millionaire, so what I’m paying out doesn’t really amount to much, but I think I would go Full-Republican and start looking for places to stash my loot, you know? That’s why I can understand how Willard Mitt Romney, who is running for the office of POTUS as a Republican, would be stashing dough in Bermuda and The Caymans and stuff. But he’s not like Tony Soprano, stashing money made from Criminal Enterprises; Mr. Romney is probably keeping his loot offshore to prevent getting bled by the Tax Man here in the U. S. of A., which I can totally understand, and if it’s legal, then show me how to do that, man!

I mean, when I think about it, if I won the giant Mega-Power Lottery prize, I’d have to cut Uncle Sam in right from the rip, for, like, 30% or something? Then the State I live in, Mayland, would be right there asking for their slice of my Amercian Dream Pie, and then once I quit my Day Job and go full-time in my new job as a Mega-Millionaire, and I’m farming my dough out on the Open Market, I gotta look at rendering quarterly payouts unto Caesar any time I make a dollar the Old Fashioned way — by charging somebody Interest for borrowing it — and then I’m gonna start feeling very Republican. I mean, I’m using up all the same amount of Public Services I was when I had a Day Job, and now that I’m a Katrillionaire and I live in Xanadu, I probably use less Infrastructure and stuff, because I never go out anymore! I just hang out in my Pleasure Dome and chill in my coin pool, man. I order out for pizzas and stuff, but that’s not me driving on the road and wearing out the pavement, it’s the Pizza company, you know? I mean, I gotta pay More Taxes just because I make More loot?!? I’m good for the Economy, man! Look at me, Creating Wealth and stuff by lending people money! Fucking Taxes, man, I’m not even a Kabillionaire yet and they got me sweating.

I need to look to my Role Model, Scrooge McDuck. What would he do? Would Uncle Scrooge dodge taxes by shifting his wealth into offshore? Would he spend time and energy paying for strings to connect to Politicians so he could work ’em like puppets to cut his Tax bill? Isn’t Uncle Scrooge so rich he doesn’t give a fuck about Anything, even Taxes? When I win my Lottery Millions, all I wanna do is help people, you know? I know there’s been lotsa times I coulda used one of those Payday Loans, you know? That’s helping, right? Being a Bank? Being There to lend somebody money so they can pay their credit card bill? Man, I wish I wasn’t Rich sometimes, so I wouldn’t be all caught up in Protecting my Wealth.

Previously: Why ‘The New Yorker’ Doesn’t Have A Public Editor

Mr. Wrong can converse with you via many medias.

★★★★ Squarely over the equinox. The baby needed socks and something other than a summer romper — a whole new set of problems to be solved. The sky was as the sky should be; the glaze on a white-brick apartment building shimmered. Then there were white smudges in a thick band across the blue: skywriting, with the wind pulling the letters into illegibility nearly as soon as they were puffed out. The readable part appeared to say “TWITTER RT.” Later, indoors and out of analog space, the actual Twitter would explain it had been a protest against Mitt Romney and funding cuts for the arts. So here we are, when would-be critics of unchecked philistine plutocracy feel compelled or entitled to scrawl advertising across the clear public skies. On the playground, older boys filled water balloons and poured them down the slides, to slick up the metal for extra speed. Then they went away, leaving chilly puddles all over everything, for someone else to deal with.

“Can You Really Make Booze Out of Paint Thinner?”

“Researchers have shown that eunuchs living in Korea centuries ago outlived other men by a significant margin. They say their findings suggest that male sex hormones are responsible for shortening the lives of men.”

by Mike Barthel

For some entries in our series on vanity projects, it was perhaps unfair to refer to them as such. Christopher Lee and Milla Jovovich’s albums were legitimate art products made by people who also happened to be actors, while Lindsay Lohan and Ian McShane were simply extending their careers in logical, and successful, pop directions. This is not the case with Brian Austin Green, who played David Silver on the original “Beverly Hills, 90210.” His 1996 album One Stop Carnival is a vanity project par negligence. (He went by just “Brian Green” for the album, which is at least less ridiculous than Allen Iverson renaming himself “Jewelz” for his.) What’s unusual, though, is that he nabbed an eminently respectable producer for the project: Slimkid 3, of the legendary rap group the Pharcyde. Was his participation enough to allow David Silver to safely navigate past the landmines faced by a famous white person attempting a rap career in the mid 90s? Let’s see!

THE SONGS: Just as the actors on “90210” were able to do minimally convincing imitations of human teenagers, so does Green do a minimally convincing imitation of a rapper. If you didn’t understand English, this would be hard to differentiate from any other Native Tongues-derived album of the era, with its jazzy loops and vaguely self-satisfied air. Green’s flow is not entirely dissimilar to someone like Common, which is a laudable enough technical feat, and there aren’t any obvious white-dude-rapping winces to be heard. Even ego trip didn’t have any specific criticisms of the album. Other than the fact that Brian Austin Green made a rap album, there isn’t anything particularly horrible about Brian Austin Green’s rap album.

THE PACKAGING: Your first question, after “Why does the cover look like it should be on a Trapper Keeper?”, will likely be “What’s up with the carnival thing?” Who knows! Presumably whatever cultural currents inspired the Insane Clown Posse (who released their first major-label album a year before) got to Green as well, or maybe carnies are the only way for white people to seem hard. The whole thing is like the mid-90s’ own scrapbook: the font from the New Radicals album, a sad clown juggling torches, UFOs, and a thumbnail reproduction of a poster, rendered in the style of Joe Cool’s iconic “Doggystyle” cover art, in which Green appears as a magician and an astronaut plants an American flag on the moon. Fans are invited to write the Brian Austin Green fan club for a 20″ by 30″ copy of the poster, which brings up the haunting image of a long-forgotten warehouse full of Brian Austin Green posters being out there somewhere.

DID IT SELL? No figures exist, but it didn’t make it onto the charts, so “no” seems a reasonable response.

CURRENT AVAILABILITY: It’s out of print, but Amazon has MP3 downloads for sale, and there are plenty of used copies. None of this explains why all the new copies on Amazon cost forty dollars or more.

SKETCHINESS OF LABEL: Yab Yum Records was a subsidiary of the major label MCA, but their sole major release seems to have been Green. Run by Tracey Edmonds, then-wife of Babyface, Yab Yum released a few other R&B; projects, but seems to have left no solid mark.

WHO HELPED HIM MAKE IT: Slimkid3 (or Slim Kid-3 as his name appears on the liner notes here), born Tre Hardson, was a founding member of the California rap group the Pharcyde. Hardson and two other founding members of the group met their manager while appearing as backup dancers on “In Living Color.” If you do not already know them you may be familiar with the backward-running video Spike Jonze made for their song “Drop” (above; see also Jonze’s video for founding member Fatlip’s 2000 debut single “What’s Up Fatlip”). Though the group slowly disintegrated over the course of the decade, Hardson seems to have been willing to dedicate time to the less reputable areas of rap; in addition to his work with Brian Austin Green, he not only contributed vocals to a Korn song (“Cameltosis,” an actual track from a five-time platinum album) but also appeared in the very “I Wanna Go”-ish video for “Got the Life” as a squeegee dude who steals Korn’s car, which then explodes. He also co-wrote a song with 311 and toured with Ozomatli. What does our mockery matter to Slimkid3? Very little, one suspects.

WHEN HE MADE IT: Green got his first major role at 13 on “Knot’s Landing,” the “Dallas” spin-off that became the third-longest running primetime drama in the US. (Just behind “Law and Order,” RIP.) When he started playing David Silver on “90210,” he was 17; show creator Aaron Spelling liked that he was a normal teenager and wanted to build the character around Green’s own interests, which sounds a little ridiculous until you remember that the show actually was about teenagers in Beverly Hills. A side character in early seasons, David Silver was the younger kid desperately trying to be cool; while he succeeded (in the show’s universe, anyway), the uncool best friend he left behind accidentally shot himself, which made David feel super bad while he was spinning discs as the school DJ. (Green himself wanted to be a DJ.) He dated Donna on and off, and struggled through various drug problems, including heroin, because… well, the 90s. In later seasons, when many of the more famous cast members had departed — Brenda, Dylan, and Andrea were all gone by season 6 — he became what one viewer described to me as “a main character no one liked.” He pursued — David did, the character — a music career, managing a band who turned out to be white supremacists, while also running the Peach Pit After Dark, where, as Dave Eggers has made note of, the Flaming Lips once played. In one episode, David wants to book a rap night, but an Australian metal band objects and trashes the club; members of the Pharcyde appear as themselves. In a b-plot, according to Wikipedia, “Dylan allows Molly to hypnotize him and regresses to a past life as a hobo.” Later, Brandon and Steve hire David away from a car wash job by making him the music critic for their paper. David Silver is not an aspirational character.

Of course, Brian Austin Green, the person, was fine: he dated Tiffani Amber Thiessen and, in 2010, married Megan Fox, so the albatross that weighed so heavily on his character did not seem to translate into real life. Well, except for his rap career.

THE MUSIC: Listening to One Stop Carnival today feels like attending the performance of a technically precise but bone-dry period drama: you show up early and get settled in while marveling at the set’s period-perfect details, and then the actors come out and do their period-perfect thing but they’re just saying “we are actors in a play and we are acting, saying lines.” It sounds like what a computer would calculate a hip album in 1996 would sound like, a zeitgeist in search of an author. The second track is produced by will.i.am back when he was called “Will 1X” and sounds a little like a Cibo Matto song; you half-expect Father Guido Sarducci to show up at and start yelling about Tilt-a-Whirls. Green repeatedly name-checks the Black Eyed Peas even though they hadn’t yet released an album as such, and thanks them first in the acknowledgments, even though “The whole Pharcyde crew” (third thanked) clearly played a far bigger role in the making of the album. Green knows how to assemble a flattering taste palette, but can’t do anything with it. Two separate songs (“Style Iz It” and “Da Drama”) start with an admission that he has nothing to talk about, and this is not false modesty.

On the opener, “The Closet,” Green presages Drake’s “buy two and claim they got it for they sister” line by some thirteen years, one teen-soap star to another: “I was in the closet last night listening to that Brian Green album,” he mutters. “That shit was phat, but I ain’t gonna tell my friends.” It’s the same self-consciousness, but here it falls flat. As ridiculous as the idea of Brian Austin Green, Rapper is, Drake’s career demonstrates that there’s no reason why Green couldn’t have made it work. Hell, the Insane Clown Posse have made it work (despite media outlets’ annual ritual of paying for reporters to fly out to their festival for the sole purpose of making fun of their fans, while the basically identical Burning Man gets treated like some countercultural new Jerusalem), regrettable carnival imagery and all. The only fair conclusion is that Green is an awful, awful rapper. Which is fine, really. I imagine it matters less to him these days.

Previously: Christopher Lee’s Concept Album: When Saruman Went Metal

Mike Barthel has a Tumblr.

“They were giving their childhood to this woman! They were starting at seven, and by the time they were sixteen they were still reading bloody Harry Potter — sixteen-year-olds, wearing wizard outfits, who should have been shagging behind the bike shed and smoking marijuana and reading Camus.”
 — I feel you, Alan Taylor, but you can’t fight the Harry Potter Industrial Complex.

“’Mortality is so universal, but the ways we cope with mortality may be culturally specific,’ she said, noting that East Asians are taught early on to look at the world in terms of yin and yang. From that philosophical perspective, life and death are inseparable; death would mean nothing without life, and vice-versa. ‘From a Western point of view, we think of death as the annihilation of all we hold dear in our hearts,’ she said. ‘But (from an Eastern perspective), when you are reminded of your own death, it can serve as a reminder that right now, you have a wonderful, glorious life to live, and you should make the most of it before it comes to an end.’”
 — Harvard University psychologist Christine Ma-Kellams discusses her finding that “East Asians and Westerners react very differently to reminders of our mortality.” I guess this is all well and good if you can somehow con yourself into thinking that right now you have a wonderful, glorious life to live, but let’s face it, you don’t. In any event, it’s going to happen at some point, so whatever works.

by Jeff Winkler

Despite the media attempts to create a sense of drama, the 2012 presidential election is so excruciatingly boring. (Didn’t you hear? Obama’s won already!) Luckily, there are elections happening all over this grand democracy. And it’s the local races where all the real excitement happens. The reason is simple: when you get down to city politics, particularly small-town politics, everything is personal. Got any skeletons in the closet? Chances are half the town knows about them. As for conflict of interest, well, in a small town everyone’s related to someone, and many government officials serve multiple roles — a lack of “segregation of duties,” as it were.

My family is intimately familiar with the intrigues of local politics. Two-and-a-half years ago, my father began publishing the weekly Washington County Observer in West Fork, Arkansas (population 2,500). The first-time editor and publisher conscripted family members into various positions — along with a few other innocents — with me as managing editor, my mom as proofreader, and my younger sister Lillian as public notices editor. From the start, the 1,000-circulation paper struggled financially, and it met its demise earlier this year, a fate roundly applauded by many city officials.

Now one of our family is stepping back into the spotlight: My sister Lillian is running for West Fork city clerk. It would have been journalistically irresponsible to not interview her about small-town campaigning, that mirror image of American politics, despite the obvious conflict of interest.

Jeff Winkler: So you’re running for West Fork city clerk?

Lillian Winkler: Yes. You have to get 30 signatures from West Fork registered voters that live in the city limits.

You know, I’m your brother and I’ve known you all your life, so I ask this as objectively as I can: As a 22-year-old, what exactly are your qualifications?

Well, I did work for two years at the local newspaper.

Yes, you did.

And I was able to learn about West Fork and how it works.

I also was the secretary in Future Farmers of America in high school. I completed real-estate school and worked in the juvenile drug court in Hot Springs. Now I work in the law school at the university [of Arkansas].

So what exactly does a city clerk do?

The City Clerk’s main job is to attend council meetings, take and transcribe the minutes, take notes and pretty much write a summary of the meetings. Also, some official documents require the signature of the mayor and the clerk.

From what I understand, the City Clerk position is currently vacant. The City Treasurer/Water Commission secretary had been serving in that position. But she quit after our dad filed some complaints of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) violations and she was one of those charged by the county prosecutor.

Yeah, there was an issue with her not being able to keep up with the FOIA information, so she resigned her spot. But they hired an outside person and she’s doing it now.

Were the charges against the City Treasurer the only sort of controversy surrounding the city clerk position?

Well, the thing is, as far as anyone knew, a week up to the time that I decided to run, there was no one else running. But a few days later, once the word got out that I was running, turns out there was another person who got a bunch of signatures from people on the City Council and their family members.

I was actually able to receive a copy of her petition. I guess she had one of the people in the police department, Alana, going around getting signatures for her. All her signatures, she got in the last two days [before they had to be filed with the county clerk].

Doesn’t this other candidate have some other connection with the local police department?

Her son was fired for indiscretion from the police department.

Sexual indiscretion, right?

Right, among other things.

Okay. I think I found some of the details in our archives. He was asked to resign in 2010 after performing hanky-panky in a driveway while on-duty, among other things. His defense during the controversy was that he was on his lunch break at the time of said panky.

Yeah.

Why was the woman you mentioned both the city clerk and the city treasurer (and Water Commission secretary)?

There was someone else who ran [in 2006] and she was good. But the council did not treat her well.

Right. I think Dad said that the council once publicly complained that the woman’s meeting notes were too detailed. There was also the rumor that they didn’t like her mixed-race marriage, although, of course that never found its way into print.

No comment.

Well done.

Anyway, [the incumbent city clerk] decided to run again, and they put this other girl up to run against her.

Who’s “they”?

You know, the council. But anyway, the girl who ran against [the incumbent city clerk] is a family friend or something of the city treasurer (and Water Commission secretary).

Oh, okay.

And they had her run against [the incumbent] city clerk. Well, the new girl won. And then a couple months into it, that girl quit. So the council then assigned the city treasurer to it.

It sounds like there’s a lot of turmoil surrounding the city clerk position.

Yeah, it’s been controversial.

That’s putting it delicately! Other controversies we covered at the Observer include: One alderman, the husband of the city treasurer/Water Commission secretary/former city clerk, dragging his stepson by his hair through the city street (domestic assault in the second degree); local paramedic members “practicing” needle injections in a truck beside a public park; local firemen practicing smoke inhalation (of marijuana) at the local E-Z Mart; and the former mayor putting on a blonde wig to conduct a sting operation concerning the Mart possibly selling the synthetic drug K-2.

And when the city clerk’s son, the officer, was being pressured to quit, someone put flyers up in the E-Z Mart supporting him and dissing the council, after which the Mayor instructed the Police Chief to demand the store’s security footage in order to find out the responsible party. So why the hell do you want to do it? Are you worried about getting involved in such a mess?

As far as I knew, I was running unopposed.

The thing is, I don’t have any other family here apart from our parents. There isn’t any sort of big connection that I’d feel like I’d need to make someone happy, you see what I’m saying?

Yeah.

It’s completely impartial on my part. I don’t care about the neighbors I might offend. It’s also hard to see the City Council meetings go on in such an unprepared way. At the last meeting, there was no person to take care of the FOIA information. So at this meeting, they decided to have the clerk in charge of that, which is exciting for me because that’s a lot of the stuff and I want to help make the government transparent.

Sure. But aren’t a lot of the FOIA requests coming from our own father?

Right. But there are other people who were asking questions about it.

Are you worried about whether this is going to turn into an ugly race?

A little bit, but the whole reason for me running is the whole reason I wouldn’t get upset about anything happening during the campaign.

Oh, did you hear what happened where this guy had a felony arrest for the hot checks and they got dropped to a misdemeanor charge?

Yeah, I heard about that. Years ago, the alderman we mentioned had a hot check felony that was reduced to a misdemeanor. Still, under Arkansas law, he committed a “crime of infamy,” making him ineligible for public office. If people are aware of it in West Fork, they certainly haven’t talked about it.

Yeah, they’re working on that. Just thought I’d update you. I mean, you heard about the alderman threatening Dad right?

You mean, recently? You’re going need to be more specific because Dad’s yelling matches with that alderman and the rest of the council have happened before. Dad said during the most recent one, that alderman threatened him after Dad called the council a bunch of “chowderheads.” The charges Dad filed against that alderman after that were dropped because the county prosecutor’s office didn’t want to upset the people in the West Fork city office who have to file court paperwork. And that was a different incident than the charges the city treasurer/water commission secretary/that alderman’s wife filed against Dad a few weeks later for getting into a verbal disagreement with the Water Commissioner. In that case, the judge found Dad guilty of disturbing the peace or something. Did I get all that straight?

Yeah.

Okay. Well, whew, anything else you think I’m missing?

I just honestly think they need someone in there that is ready to give the town a digital upgrade.

Nice! But what happens if you win?

[Nervous laughter] I know, right?! … If I win, I’ll work. I get $200 a month and the thing is I don’t answer — the mayor isn’t my boss and the City Council isn’t my boss. I am my own entity. I answer to The People.

That was another thing that happened with the last woman. They thought they could get her fired and they can’t. They pretty much tried to embarrass her in front of this big meeting, asking her to resign. She said no. So there’s nothing they can do about that, except make her life miserable and try to get her to quit.

It’s about a 10-to-15-hour-a-month job. For four years.

It kind of looks like the old man is helping to run your campaign. Is Dad your campaign manager?

No. He is not. I made that very, very clear to him. He’s my campaign advisor.

Oh, campaign advisor. Why don’t you want him as your campaign manager?

Honestly, because his name is a bit controversial in the town. I actually thought about making my slogan “I’m Not My Dad.”

How have you been campaigning?

Well, I made a Facebook group where people can go and ask me questions they might have. And I just launched my website, which has my bio, experience, related skills, examples of what I’ll be doing as city clerk, and what my job will be. I’m also going to be putting some yard signs up and I already have offers for campaign donations.

So is the election on Nov. 6?

Yeah, and I am number two on the ballot, but I’ll be the number-one choice! Ha. Ha. Ha.

You’re making me proud. Living up to the Winkler name with that cheese. So are you going to take people up on those offers of political donations?

Yeah, and I’ll probably do some sort of fundraiser, a bake sale, or something like that. My campaign advisor is helping me with that.

Your who?

My campaign advisor.

Oh. Dad.

Yeah.

Well, what’s Mom doing in all this?

Oh, you know, she’s busy.

Interview condensed, edited and lightly reordered.

Jeff Winkler is writing an entirely fictional novel about a small-town newspaper. Contact him here to purchase the movie and/or TV rights.

“The Union Jack and the Maple Leaf may soon fly side by side at embassies and consulates around the world, as part of a new cost-saving foreign affairs agreement between Britain and Canada, prompting concern that a hybrid diplomatic channel could weaken Canada’s global standing.”
 — This seems like the set-up for a hysterical sitcom in which the meek Canadian ambassador is constantly trying to avoid his drunken British counterpart, who manages to get them into all kinds of trouble every week. Also, each episode would have a different way in which the Canadian apologizes to the Briton for having been stabbed by him.