TALES FROM THE RICH

who says rich and famous people dont contribute to society? look at what they have given us: papparazzi photos, "punk'd" and funny stories for vh1 shows. ok, fine. they are weird, self-centered, quirky, and wasteful and self-centered and...you get the idea. we have all had some exposure with rich and/or famous people. and for some reason those experiences seem special to us. yet, if it were any other person you wouldnt have noticed.

case and point. i grew up in seattle. this is a big city and there are a fair number of famous people that live there. like bill nye "the science guy." when i was a young teen (and familiar with his shows via 8th grade science class) we lived across the street from a "scientific glass blower." he made specialty items like those cool bobble thermometers and stuff for scientists...like bill nye. yup, i remember climbing on the couch looking outside our living room window watching as bill nye "the science guy" got out of his black bronco and when inside the house. it was amazing. i was amazed. but if it was any other person i wouldnt have turned off the tv.

but that story is actually kinda boring. what about the wild and crazy stuff you read in "the national enquirer" and other equally reputable news journals? i want stuff like, "bill and ted's excellent gay marriage" or "giant alien bat eats ted bundy's younger brother." you know, the good stuff.

so i got to thinking about it and i dont have any good stories like that. well, not of actual famous people. just regular rich people. the rich people that try hard to make up for the fact that no body knows who they are when they drop 30 grand on a home theater system for their toy poodles named jay and silent bob.

so here are my best "look at me, im rich" stories.

today i saw a car with a license plate cover that said "life flight pilot: landing daily at a hospital near you." my first thought was "that is funny." my second thought was "that is horribly morbid." then i noticed that the car was a lexus and i thought "that figures."

a couple months ago we had some old mini fridges that we were trying to get rid of at work. lots of people bought them. most of them were newly weds or students. a couple were just plain poor. but one lady came in who appearantly knew one of my bosses (i have several. they remind me daily). she picked up two. it was a pain picking them out for her. she said that she was trying to find ones that didnt have as many dings on them. they were all equally "dinged." finally she makes up her mind and i put the fridges on a cart and take them out to her brand new lexus. yup. i know.

i had a similar experience when i worked at rc willy a few years ago. a man bought a really nice flat panel plasma tv (back when they were still new). it was pretty big, prolly about 52 inches. and he insisted that we fit it in his porche. we tried for a good 10 minutes or so (during peek hours) but there was no way that tv was gonna fit in a car that small. disappointed, the man hollars over to his friend to back up his truck... we were pissed.

now for my favorite story. this doesnt exactly fit the "look at me, im rich" category. but it is a great story. micheal coleman is a local painter/sculptor. i know him personally. he is very quiet and timid in most social situations. but he is also very good humored.

over the years he has become quite rich. really quite rich. he gets several thousand dollars per piece of art. he is that good. as is typical of rich people, he has hobbies. expensive hobbies.

he is a big game hunter. he has been on safari in africa about 10-12 times and has every kind of animal in his art studio. everything from bears to lions to hippos to field mice to beetles to crocs to a shrunken human head (he bought it, dont worry). think of it as a small scale cabellas. it is really impressive. unless you are a hippie. as a big game hunter he has dozens of very large guns.

since he is rich, he lives in a rich neighborhood. now, one might ask "what do rich neighbors do for fun?" or perhaps you might ask "what do rich neighbors feude over?"

airplanes.

one of mike's neighbors was in to model airplanes. not just any model airplanes. remember, this is the rich neighborhood. we are talking $20,000 replicas that fly. so this neighbor is enjoying the afternoon and flying his ridiculously expensive model plane over the neighborhood. mike hears the motor running and comes outside to investigate. did i mention he was carrying a shotgun?

mike also has a wide variety of ammunition. he happened to have handy a particular type of shotgun shell which has a delayed charge. this means that the slug will split into pellets after it has travelled a certain distance. this increases the shotguns accuracy while still allowing a spread shot.

well, when they found the plane they counted over 100 holes.

as a peace offering, mike later painted a landscape with WWII fighter planes dog fighting. he signed it "saddam coleman."