Pay the rich and close the schools.

This will prove to test the new attention span of modern humans so if you can't make it all the way through please read during commercials or on your occasional breaks from Facebook. Thank you. - The Author

I love sports! I love movies! I watch sports and make movies! Sports, movies, sports, movies! I can't get enough, apparently no one can. The obsession over sports and entertainment has gone on since the first living being watched someone, or something, and thought, "wow, I wish I could do that!" Most of us seem to understand that sports and entertainment go hand-in-hand and encompass huge dollar amounts while attracting the attention of millions of viewers. And many of us realize that the reason the performers are on the fields, courts, stages and screens, is simply because they have talent - a talent we can only dream of. We are spectators, and spectators watch and criticize. Then criticize and watch some more. But what we don't realize is this - we, the non-entertainers and non-athletes, are the reason we are merging schools, closing hospitals and have a very thick line drawn between the "haves" and the "have-nots." It's our faults and we must accept this blame.

In 2011 the NFL's players and owners were fighting over 9 billion dollars of revenue to divide between themselves. The average NFL player earns $1.9 million. Now bare with me on this, I'll be throwing numbers at you that will hopefully make you think about why we are in the financial state we are today. The average NFL team is now worth $1.04 billion and there are 32 teams. The NBA created $3.817 billion in 2010-11 in what is called BRI - Basketball Related Income and the average players salary is $5.15 million. In 2010 the average Major League Baseball team was worth $491 million and there are 30 teams in the majors. The revenue for 2009 was $6.6 billion and the average player salary was $3.4 million.

Now for the movies and entertainment. Here is a quote from the NY Times - "North American ticket revenue for 2011 is projected to be about $10.1 billion, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box-office data." How about this one - HBO made over $1 billion in 2011. Game of Thrones anyone? Here are the top five Hollywood salaries for 2010-2011: James Cameron - $257 million. Johnny Depp - $100 million. Steven Spielberg - $80 million. Christopher Nolan $71.5 million. Leonardo DiCaprio - $62 million. And one for the females, Kristen Stewart falls to #13 on the list with a woeful $28.5 million.

These statistics are from solid sources so please feel free to dig. But what I am saying here is again, this is our fault! We, the quickly disappearing middle class, are to blame for this issue. We spent our youths dreaming of being on stage or on camera, or hitting the "big shot" to win the game. We were in love with fairy tales and happy endings and believed we could write the next great movie or win an academy award. We hoped that Hollywood would, and still believe, that it WILL call our names and give us our big break. The players take us from our current lives and bring us back to the smell of the fields or the squeak of the sneakers. While movies take us to places we wish were real or believe can exist. We want more, or less, or SOMETHING, ANYTHING different from what we have. We all want stardom, everyone wants stardom, but we can't all have it. Yet we can all have art, music, literature and sports in our schools.

Before I get attacked for the trickling down of lost jobs for the "little people" who get paid $10 an hour to run the behind the scenes of sports and entertainment, let's think for a minute - jobs would be created through bettering our failing towns and cities. Money would be put back into our pockets and schools, and we would, as a community, reassume the temporarily misplaced "community spirit" that is causing so many of us to up and leave our struggling towns. And I am not calling for the extermination of professional sports and entertainment, just to find a way to have them get paid less by us not spending as much on them.

Why should a an athlete and an actor make more than a doctor? Why are teachers salaries being frozen and mergers our only options? Athletes and entertainers are making more now than ever before, but we are still looking for ways to save a school. The Minnesota Vikings just approved a $950 million stadium and Dallas Cowboy Stadium is worth over $1 billion, but schools are closing.

Now for the juicy part. We have NO right to complain for the state of our society. It is our faults. Anyone who subscribes to HBO, Showtime or any pay channel. If you spend $80 at a movie or shell out $300 for a ball game. If you buy your kid those $150 kicks, flat brimmed hat, and a Lebron jersey. If you purchase the NFL network, NBA League Pass or MLB Network as well. It's our faults and we are to blame. All that money could go back into our pockets, back into our schools, back into our towns, back into our families. More teachers, more firemen, more hospitals, post offices, libraries, musical instruments, art supplies...

Our small communities pour out millions and millions of dollars to the sports and entertainment industry and then we complain that athletes and entertainers make too much. It's essentially "we the people" that pay the salaries of those we criticize for making too much money. An empty arena, field or movie theater will build our schools and hospitals and prevent mergers and closings of all types. I have to stress here that if you are not the type to complain about athlete and entertainer salaries, then bravo no sweat off your back, but if you ARE the type, then you should put your best efforts into a major change. The new "Just Say No!" is for Americans to stop letting big business, big money and the big time, stop running our lives. We are like the Romans who got fat and lazy watching the Gladiators while society was crumbling down around them. Our needs are overshadowed by our wants! Oh by the way, all the time we spend on Facebook contributes to one guy's net worth of $17.5 billion and counting. Are we contributing to the wrong charities? I believe we are.

Candy

We Should all be able to experience an extraordinary life. A life with court side seats and private jets, with caviar and Crystal champagne, where physically beautiful people surround us and make us feel wanted. We should have backstage passes and camps with boats, or ocean-view-homes on the coast with yacht's, and a Mercedes Benz or a Harley Davidson and a Bentley stocked full of single malt scotch and Heineken. A life where Beyonce and Jay-Z high-five us on their exit from the Grammy's, and Brad and Angelina give us air-kisses after their premier in L.A. We should all have the ability to climb to the top of Mount Everest or explore the abyss of the ocean. I believe that we should all have our own TV show and share dinner with The President, or hang with Hugh and shoot a round with Tiger. Just once in our lives we should be invited to attend a Hilltop party that overlooks the valley where the models are high and the artists are higher. A party where Italian Marble cools our feet and French cigarette's heat our lungs, where our whistles are moistened by expensive vodka - flavored with cherry, or banana, or mango, and where the small are SO small that they're never even thought of and most of the guests often forget where they are from. We should all experience that. And then we should all experience the place where the game is far from the working man's grasp and his kid can only see it on TV. where a jet is the name of a football team and champagne is something we only see in the movies or taste at a wedding. The place where beauty is found in the soul and in the heart of a person, and feeling wanted would be a blessing to the lonely. Where we would only dream to own a camp or live on the ocean and play in the water for hours and a small splash won't ruin our day. A simple place where floating on the water is getting into a canoe or a kayak, but that is a luxury one can only rent. A trying place where owning a car is the highest luxury, but often times a curse, and where single malt scotch is appalling while Heineken is for the "Richies" and the preps. We should all live a life where we've only seen Beyonce and Jay-Z on TV and it wasn't even in high-def. The sad life where we can't afford to take our families to a movie and the only Brad and Angelina premier we see is the trailer or on a public billboard. A place where the highest mountain we try to climb is the pile of bills we've stacked on our counter tops ultimately leading us to the abyss of self-loathing brought on by the inability to climb said mountain, and where our own TV show is a grainy home video of our second birthday. Sharing dinner with the president will only happen in our living rooms eating a TV dinner under the light of a shaded orange-hued tungsten and wishing we were Hugh or Tiger - still. The party on the Hilltop is the place where we slide in winter and the valley has few lights. The life where getting high is induced by cheap wine, 30 packs of Bush and local weed and where artists never, ever, see a gallery. This is the place where Italian marble is in Italy and French cigarettes are over priced. Where flavored vodka is the addition of cranberry juice or tonic with lime, and where WE are so small that that the images of the rich and famous seem like a candy that we will never taste.