From the outside being rich and famous seems like a great deal.  What’s bad about being rich?  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  Being rich is great.  Not only can you get whatever you want, but you also don’t have to worry about all of life’s bullshit.  Bottom line, being broke is stressful.  Who wants to worry about whether or not you can do something?  When someone says, “do you want another drink”, I don’t want to have to check or think about it before I offer a resounding, “Yes.” Even worse, I definitely don’t want to have to decide between my cell phone bill and my cable, or my lights and my heat.  That will wear you out quick.

There is only one thing that sucks about being rich, and that is when other people actually know you are rich.  It isn’t a problem trying to figure out how to spend your own money, but when other people are thinking about how to spend it, or judging hot you decide to spend it, that is when the trouble starts.  Which brings me to being famous.

Being famous seems like a pretty good deal too.  People know who you are.  Famous people seem to do a lot of fun stuff.  Make music, play sports, go to awards shows, get free stuff, get in places for free.  Sounds great right?  Yeah, it probably is pretty good as long as you are the right kind of famous.  There is definitely a range.  First, there is Tom Cruise, Oprah, Brad Pitt famous.

Also known as famous and stupid rich.  Tom Cruise has his on freaking planes.

On one hand, they can’t actually do many normal things.  It is a little hard to walk down the street or go shopping when paparazzi and crazy ass fans follow you.  When Tom Cruise went to a Harvard Law School class last spring to listen in on a professor he was working with, there was damn near a riot after class after students were texting and tweeting from class.

OMG! Tom F’n Cruise in n my prop. Class! WTF?!?!?!?!111111/////!

That is a little wild, but when you are rich it is okay.  You can hop in the private jet, hit your estate in Prague, and go catch some first run movies in the theater room while your chef whips up a five star meal.  There is a trade off there, but it seems like they might be able to deal with it.

Then there is the level of pretty famous people.  Sure, they get recognized when they are out, might have to take a few pictures or sign a few autographs when they are out, but in general people see Martha Stewart at Nobu and she can generally eat in peace.  Tom Brady isn’t going to shut down the local Kroger if he needs to run in and grab Giselle some deodorant and a bunch of bananas.  That might be the sweet spot right there.  If you have $80-$100 million and you get to do all the cool shit while people generally leave you alone, that sounds like a pretty good life to me.  Below that we have the people who are famous, but not necessarily rich.

As you can see, generally as you slide down this scale life gets a little bit worse.  If you are a mid level movie or music artist, people generally assume you are rich as hell, but you might not make that much money.  If you clear $1,000,000 a year and you don’t know if you are going to be cut the next year, or if you next album or movie is going to be your last, you might be in bad shape.  Don’t get me wrong, that milli feels good while you’ve got it, but it might suck to pick up every single check and have all your cousins living with you because they think you are rich.  That back up cornerback on the Atlanta Falcons does not make that much money.

That redhead chick from the Pussycat dolls is struggling.

She does have a crazy tail game though.

That dude that is on Sportscenter late Friday night.

Eh-eh.

Then the whole thing bottoms out with the reality stars.  They are famous and recognizable, so everyone has an opinion on them and asshole bloggers like me can talk shit about them, and those cats don’t have loot to show for it.  Those cats from Jersey Shore were getting a spot to stay, which they basically covered by working a job at a t-shirt shop, and $300 a show each.  Those cats are not rich.  They negotiated up for the second season for $10,000 per show.  Sounds great, but Uncle Sam is gonna get about half, so when Snooki and J-WOWW walk away from season 2 with 65K and a swift boot in the ass after they jump the shark long about 3 episodes in, they will be on Celebrity Fit Club and Intervention in three years wondering when it all went wrong.

Sure, $4,000 to show up in some club in Newport, VA is great now, but that is gonna wear off quickly.  I swear I saw a chick working up in the Bed, Bath, and Beyond near my crib that was on Real World Philly or some shit.  I’m just saying she looked familiar, and the harder I looked, the more her face turned in to “please don’t ask, please don’t ask, pleasepleaseplease don’t recognize me.”

For real, I feel like that chick second from the left sold me some tongs and a pillow.  Bed, Bath and Beyond…that ain’t what ya want.

Let’s not even talk about ex-stars.  Ma$e is spelling his name with a regular “s” right now because he’s broke.

Everyone from 98 degrees not named Nick Lachey?  Broke, broke, broke.  And if Nick wasn’t still on that Jessica Simpson loot, he’d be broke too.

Every MTV Vee-Jay other than Carson Daly and La-La because she is about to marry Carmelo, broke.  Hell, Terrance and Rocsi on BET right now aren’t getting paid.  Not real loot.

That is the worst place you can be.  Craig Hodges has two NBA Championship rings and won a three All-Star three point contests.  You think he has loot?  Nah.  Not professional baller money.

The sweet spot of the whole thing is rich and anonymous.  That way people don’t ask you for much and you can do your thing.  You get most of the benefit with none of the pressure.  If you want a little taste of the fame, you can go ahead and be a celebrity businessman.

No one is following Steve jobs around.  Even better, those random second or third on the totem pole bankers and lead partners in law firms who are clocking $80 million are killing it.  Picture Bernie Madoff if he wasn’t actually stealing most of that money.  For every Bernie Madoff who stole the loot, there is someone out there who has that same money and is legit.  They are just walking down the street doing their thing.  Rich as hell without all the baggage.  That has to be the sweet spot.  If you mess up, your business is not in the news, if you do well your second cousin doesn’t show up talking about how they only need $50,000 for this new business they are trying to start.

-Brock, tryin to be rich but only internets famous.

The Us Versus Them Challenge is already 25 deep, get in now before the late crunch tomorrow morning.  We’ll let you run a victory speech on the front page and you get to talk (more) shit all year in our always active comments section.  Lake said he might even come back to get some.

——————–UPDATE————————

don’t be that dude who doesn’t get their pics in.  Looking at you H8terade…

——————–UPDATE————————-

ESPN: http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/en/frontpage

Group Name: Us Versus Them

Password: Brock

-Brock

I’ve got an epic post brewin’ that needs one more chart before I’m done.  Can’t make it happen until the morning, so I’m going to do what I always so in this situation.  Throw up a random bad chick.  What way you can’t really be mad at me, right?  The always pleasing, and runner up for UvT Chick of the Year 2009, Rosa Acosta.

I’m sure 50% of you think this picture is all about the J game, but that lower stomach and hip crease is the real deal in this one.  Goodness.  I appreciate the J’s too though.  I haven’t made the interns work in a while, so I’ll have them dig up good old angle 2.5.

This chick was actually a semi-professional ballet dancer which explains a lot of what is going on here.  It is a shame when too much ass can actually make you lose your job.  Angle 3?

These are un-retouched and she might be the baddest chick out right now.  There will be a lot more Rosa Acosta around these parts.

-Brock

People forget that John Edwards got his sex scandal on before Tiger Woods.  (Is John Edwards also a sex addict?)  Can you imagine if this guy was actually President or if he was in the home stretch to with the office when this came out?  It would have been the wildest story ever.  But instead, he tucked back in to his mansion in North Carolina, claimed his gotta hit it love child and went on his merry way.  Until the mother of his Kid Rielle Hunter decided to drop an interview in GQ this month along with a fresh new set of pics.

She cleans up real nice, although the picture with all the stuffed animals is a little creepy.  At least she looks good.  Here’s something I didn’t realize about her…she changed her name.  I’m not sure when, and I don’t know why she chose a stripper name, but she used to be named “Lisa Druck”.  I’m thinking she probably changed it because when you plug “Lisa Druck” into Google, you get this:

I might change my name too behind that picture.  Rielle Hunter is that “I can’t believe you cheated on me you bastard” chick that makes your wife feel like she let herself go.  Lisa Druck is “I can’t believe you cheated on me with that tired looking bitch”.  Big difference.

So Rielle, broke down all the dirty secrets in her interview.  She said that all she did was whisper “you’re hot” to John Edwards and all of a sudden she found herself in his hotel room unable to resist his magnetism.  She also said she didn’t know who he was when she met him in 2006, which pretty much means she didn’t have a tv in 2004 when he was a vice presidential candidate, or she is lying her ass off.  She also claims that she wanted to help him because his public persona was fake and that she could see who he really was as soon as she met him.  She didn’t even want to have sex with him, she just wanted to spiritually integrate his persona.

Even John Edwards isn’t buying that B.S.

She also bought him a “Tiger Woods Special” hotline phone.  John Edwards needed her to do him a huge favor, huge, and not call him anymore.  Because Elizabeth Edwards got a hold of the batphone and called the only number on it one day and Rielle answered “hey baby”…that was pretty much it.

Another ridiculous aspect of this train wreck?  There still seems so be a sex tape floating out there.  There are a lot of reasons to make  sex tape, and there are even more reasons not to make a sex tape.  I’m pretty sure #1 on the “don’t make a sex tape” list is “I’m not having sex with my wife”.  All plausible deniability is pretty much shot when you are tapping that ass on video (unless you are R. Kelly).  This whole thing is just a complete debacle and I’m actually starting to feel sorry for this dude.

I’m guessing that stomach game is airbrushed, and the kid in the pic is a pretty low blow.  John Edwards step yo game up, your stuff is completely out of control.

-Brock

There is a big debate on whether waterboarding is torture or not.  Some people want to draw the line at exposing someone to actual physical harm or causing them pain.  You know all the classics, beating someone, extreme starvation or disorientation, hacking away at body parts, all of that is on the “no” list.  Proponents of waterboarding claim it is different.

They say that there is no actual threat of physical harm.  That they aren’t actually hurting you.  I’m going to assume that you can pour water on that cloth for long enough to kill someone, but I guess the people asking the questions are playing by the “rules”.

So Playboy has a guy called the Lab Rat who agreed to be waterboarded.  Check out how that one went.

First of all that dude got his swagger stolen really quick.  Second, waterboarding must suck because he tapped out really fast.  It is just a matter of time before this gets incorporated into some fraternity initiation, especially with youtube clips that basically act like instructional videos.

Who invented this?  Was it a scientist, or a soldier with too much time on their hands?  Whoever came up with this is a crazy m*therfucker.

-Brock

The Us Versus Them Tourney Challenge is about to kick off.  I know past winner Rosy F Baby is gonna get in.

ESPN:

Group Name: Us Versus Them

Password: Brock

-Brock

I don’t think there is any event that is more like magic than the NFL Draft.  Sure, you never know what you are going to get in basketball either, but at least the only rounds that really matter are the first two, and there are less than 60 guys to deal with.  There might be a 5 seed that does better than the #1.  You have Kevin Durant doing better than Greg Odom.  You’ve got the Pistons taking Darko Milicic over Dwayne Wade, Melo, and Chris Bosh.

You have guys like Gil Arenas who went in the 2nd round and got a $100,000,000 contract.  Sure he blew it later and flamed out on injuries and gun charges, but he really stepped up.

But the NFL Draft is different.

The guys end up running around, jumping high, the all get 40 yard dash times, they hit stuff, all in one weekend.  It is actually amazing listening to coaches evaluate players.  They see crazy things about how an athlete stands or moves and can tell if they can even play the NFL game.  If a cornerback turns the wrong foot inside when he is dropping back into coverage, they know he loses half a beat and can’t cover an NFL Wide Receiver.  Then of course we get the always “leaked” results of the Wonderlic test.  Now for you who don’t know about the Wonderlic, it is 50 questions in 12 minutes.  So it is about speed as much as it is about knowing what the answers to the questions are.  Most people say it works well with quarterbacks because it shows that they can make quick decisions and recognize the answers based on the type of question quickly.  They want you to be able to quickly assess the situation and answer the questions.

So the questions aren’t made to be super hard, not to get all SAT on Us, but check out this sample question.

1. Look at the row of numbers below. What number should come next?

Please tell me all of Us know the answer to that question.  And I know the test is timed, but I’m hoping you banged that particular one out in about 7 seconds, and that is considering that it might take 5 seconds to read it.  So on the long list of Tim Tebow issues in the NFL is the fact that he got a 22 out of 50 on the test.

But what do you expect from a guy who wears Crocs and thinks that is a good thing to do with a baby?

There are harder questions though.

13. Three individuals form a partnership and agree to divide the profits equally. X invests $9,000, Y invests $7,000, Z invests $4,000. If the profits are $4,800, how much less does X receive than if the profits were divided in proportion to the amount invested?

That is actually hard.  You have to pay attention to make sure you don’t miss that “how much less” or you screw it up.  I’m just going to lay this out there…I feel like I would crush this test.  I’m talking 49 or 50, maybe a speed mistake holds me back.  The funny thing is that for everything else in the NFL combine, they treat these guys like football players.  They are doing bench presses, footwork drills, all of the things that football players do.  This test assumes that these dudes were actually paying attention in class.  Ryan Fitzpatrick went to Harvard and got a 48, and there are a gang of cats who get a 11-15.  This test assumes these guys know math and logic games.  People always want to talk about how the SAT is culturally biased, this damn Wonderlic is not what football players know.  They know plays and how to get at these chicks on campus, not fractions and logic progressions.  For the skills to transfer, they actually have to know the subject at hand.  I bet they know how many natty lights each man gets when you have to split a case 4 ways.  They may even ask whether it is the extra large case with three extras.

So check out some sample questions on the test, how did you do?

http://ow.ly/1h3Fj

Separating Us from Them…

-Brock

For those of you who don’t watch a lot of boxing, Jim Lampley on HBO is great.  I’ve met him a few times and he is a really nice guy, and for me a fight isn’t really a fight unless he is on the call.

He is also one of the smartest guys out there.  His vocabulary is exemplary.  He is one of those guys who doesn’t let you get away with saying something is “very unique” because it is either unique or it isn’t.  I’m not saying he’s a dick about it, he just uses words carefully…which is what makes this next video hilarious.

Somehow, Manny Pacquaio beat Clottey up so badly, Jim Lampley turned into Pops from Boomerang.

In fact, I might need to run that “My Love Goes Bang, Bang, Bang” by Pops Williams and the Temptones. You can make a bad R&B song out of anything.

I feel like R. Kelly could really make a decent remix of that.

-Brock

I know there is a lot of controversy around all of this and this isn’t going to be easy.  But after the Oscars, Howard Stern went in on Gabourey Sidibe from Precious.

During the Oscars, Oprah was introducing Gabourey and said, “I know this is the first wonderful performance of a long, successful career”.  Now I didn’t go see Precious.  I feel like if I did I would have taken a picture of myself with my camera phone, posted it on UvT and done and entire “Come on Bruh!” post about how I shouldn’t have been in that movie.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Black people and Black cinema, but I haven’t seen a single solitary second of a clip of this movie that makes me feel like I want to see it.

But enough about me.

So it took me a while to figure out this chick was actually an actress, I thought the got the girl who the book was about to relive the issues for the movie.  I thought she was playing herself.  Howard Stern heard the same comment and said out loud what a lot of people were thinking.  “Exactly what other roles is she going to play?”

I’m not trying to be a weightist here, but isn’t she just going to get typecast.  Isn’t she gonna be “big friend”, or “funny sidekick” or “Aretha Franklin“.  Other than a dramatic story about a big girl who overcomes her problems, what are the other Oscar worthy projects she is going to work on?

Now I don’t think successful multi-millionaire radio guy needs to start a fight with brand new Oscar nominated actress, but isn’t this chick resigned to be in bad Tyler Perry movies for the rest of her career?  Maybe a TBS sitcom in 5 years?  Maybe I’ll be wrong, I hope I’m wrong.  But I’m thinking I’m probably not.  Maybe she can break out and surprise us all.  Big guys have a lot more of a chance to make it in Hollywood.  Here is the question, can she really play another role at this level?  Can she overcome the stereotype?

I know Howard Stern didn’t do it right, but someone, anyone, tell me what is next for this chick.

-Brock

Now I know MMA ain’t for no punks, but I’m pretty sure this guy is taking it too far.

Ol’ girl’s knee really buckles right there too.  She was smiling  and everything and really just not ready for that kick.  This guy is a real dick for that one, and apparently this is his “thing”.  Peep this one.

This dude is picking on little girls, and the best thing about him is that you know this is one of those dudes who steps into the octagon with an actual fighter and gets knocked the hell out in a real fight.  In fact, here he is fighting Shogun Rua.

Ha.  He got knocked the hell out with a left.  What a loser.  That first pic up top is still hilarious though.

-Brock