LFB is diverging somewhat from the normal “funny story mode” with this topic. Today’s topic is “a commentary on move star and/or athlete salaries“. We’re also supposed to include a mention of a cactus and a Milli Vanilli CD. I feel like tackling both today, as this is a subject I can really sink my teeth into. We’ll see how well I do.

It’s no secret, I don’t think, that Tom Cruise gets paid more than I do. Likewise, I don’t think you’ll be shocked by the news that Tiger Woods also beats the pants off me in the revenue department.

However, would you be surprised to know that Tom Cruise makes about $69.945M more than I do? For a single movie? War of the Worlds earned him seventy million dollars. Seventy million. Poor kids, how will he ever put new clothes on their backs?

Would you be as suprised as me to know that Tiger Woods makes even more than me than that? Yes. He walks away with about $70 million a year just in endorsements. Just to say, “Hi I’m Tiger Woods and you should buy these shoes” or “these clothes” or even “this cactus”, for crying out loud. That’s in addition to the approximately 10.3 million dollars a year he makes just doing his golf thing.

Am I the only one disgusted by this?

Am I the only one that thinks that people should be paid commensurately for the work they do? That we should be supporting hometown sports and indie films and Broadway theater instead of Hollywood?

Now, I’m not saying that being an actor isn’t long hours or travel or hard work. I’m not saying that swinging a golf club at just the right angle with just the right force in order to get a hole in one isn’t a difficult job. But is it a seventy million dollar a year job? Honestly?

When I go to take my son to the movie theater and it costs me more than twenty dollars to catch a matinee and have some popcorn, damn straight I think actors are overpaid. When I see Tiger Woods smiling from my tv selling something like Adidas shoes or Secret Deodorant or whatever the hell it is that he sells, you can be damn sure I think he’s overpaid. And, you can tell his sponsors that their seventy mil was wasted because I, 2N, do not even have a clue what they paid him 70M to endorse.

Do you know what I could do with just ONE seventy million dollar payout? Let’s forget that Tiger Woods makes that PER YEAR (that was back in 2003, by the way). Let’s forget that Tom Cruise made that in the what, six months (if that) that it took him to film War of the Worlds. For seventy million bucks, (FYI that’s a million per year for the rest of my life if I live to be a hundred and didn’t even invest. Yeah I know I’m forgetting taxes, but let’s say I get me a really good tax attorney and only pay 20%. That’s still 56M and I think I could manage). I could buy an island, hire some chicks in grass skirts to bring drinks and fan DD and me all day, and never have to work another day in the rest of my life. Ever. Off one movie.

Okay, I’m overdramatizing. I know that Mr. Woods and Mr. Cruise are the singularly highest paid folks in their respective fields (Woods is the highest paid athlete, period.) and that not all actors or athletes get paid that kind of bank. I also realize that it took Mr. Cruise and Mr. Woods many years to get to the point where they could command the salaries that they do today. But isn’t it getting a little ridiculous? It has to be always bigger than last time, better, more more more more. And then you hear how celebrities just can’t do this movie because they won’t get paid enough. Are you SHITTING me? Why are you doing this? For love of the work or love of the money? Sometimes I wonder. I see stories like that and it just pisses me off. I think the head of Paramount Pictures did the best thing possible by dropping their partnership with Tom Cruise. There is a point when wanting to get paid for the work you do just turns into greedy selfishness.

Then, of course, they turn around and offer the MI role to Brad Pitt and offer him the opportunity to be the highest paid celebrity IN HISTORY. I think. The articles were conflicting. But don’t worry: Tom still gets his producers credit and salary for inventing the franchise.

Lucky him.

Let’s just think about how ten years ago, matinees were four-fifty and although overpriced, I would not have had to part with a limb or sell my child in order to get the popcorn special (two limbs if I wanted a Diet Coke too). I could go to a game without paying $38 per seat…for the crappy seats. I could hear athlete’s salaries and complaints about not making enough money without wanting to throw a shoe through my tv set. I don’t even have an idea how to fix it. Stop buying shit? Stop going to see movies? Stop buying DVDs? Stop going to sporting events? Stop buying the stuff that the stars are selling?

We have a national deficit in the billions. Trillions. We have homeless people and kids on the street and schools that can’t even afford enough money to buy computers that have CD drives instead of 4″ floppies (or any computers at all, for that matter). For all I know, they could be force feeding our kids that crap that masqueraded as music from a Milli Vanilli CD during music class for lack of funds to buy new CDs.

And we pay our movie stars seventy million dollars a movie.

That, to me, is ree-fucking-diculous.