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So many restaurants don’t make it. So many people think they have a good idea for a restaurant and the guy that makes all the money is the guy who sells the equipment. It’s just like the guy who sells the guitars makes the money, not the guy in the band – Joel Hodgson
While watching the so-simple-I-can’t-believe-this-is-so-funny comedians in cars getting coffee a funnyman that I have never heard of summed up what I have been thinking for years. This whole concept that all you have to do is buckle down to become rich and famous just never really sat right with me. It wasn’t till I heard it spoken, on a comedy show, in front of Jerry Seinfeld that it made sense. Who is making money off all these people thinking they can make it big if they just put a lot of effort into it? It’s those selling the dream! When gold was struck in the … anywhere … it was’t the miners that got rich, it was the people outfitting the miners, selling them flapjacks and selling them booze. The money isn’t in the dream but creating a way to profit off those who are struggling, often hopelessly to reach their dream.
Even if you have real talent your chances of striking it big are small … very small. Ask anyone who is into music and they’ll give you a huge list of bands that ooze musical skills out of every orifice of their bodies but seemingly just can’t get a break. Those that do become hits are just the lucky ones, right place, right time.
Reality TV if anything has broadcast that theme to the masses. Hundreds of thousands of people with real talent duke it out on X Factor, American Idol, The Voice yet there is only one winner a season and even with the all that marketing behind them barely a handful of these “grand finale winners” ever get a music career. Yet people don’t see the hundreds of thousands, some with real talent, that have fallen by the way-side all they see is the few that make it, and imagine themselves in that position. While these shows that sell the dream make millions. It’s the same with Hollywood. For every actor that makes it hundreds don’t yet the only stories we hear are the ones that make it onto Leno, or Letterman.
I’m not saying don’t go after your dream but it seems, to me anyway, that the odds are stacked in favor of the house. So shelve your dreams of opening a new restaurant (that have a 60% failure rate), don’t purchase a couple grand sound system to advance your DJ career. No the angle you want is in selling the dream, not following it.
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Gaijinass 
I am still shooting for my dream (which kind of exists to exploit another dream when you really think about it). Directing, exploits the bigger dream that more people shoot for and fail at, acting. I have to get back into college first. So, for now, its find a way to get the old college paid off, then find a way to get into the better college, then hopefully chase a career in the dream.
Recently saw a sequel to a great movie. The original is Baraka. It is scenes from around the world set to worldly music. Blows the mind. Locations that beat even the best CGI. Well the sequel does a perfect job following up. With one change. At the end of Baraka I was left in awe. At the end of Samsara, I was gasping for breath from the sadness it leaves in you. Wow they really dwell on the harsh stuff in the sequel.
The other dream, the one with more importance, getting to Japan… seems farther away ever day. The directing one is only any good if I get to direct movies for the Japanese market (hopefully samurai dramas). Both are hollow without the right woman at my side. Less human contact every day and less friends emailing or texting each month.
Buried in the search for a way to achieve my dream I am looking at the bottom of the barrel to get back on track. Stuff that makes things take years longer than I wanted and may not keep ahead of interest costs. Its become very isolated. Trudging forward as its the only thing left to do. Almost wondering if I could just drop into Japan and struggle by on ramen packets long enough to land an English teaching job. The costs to get my AA degree out of the college’s clutches just keeps going up as the job ops that are left over pay less and less and require more spending of money.
anyway, found an expired can of chili beans, going to go make a bean burrito for breakfast, Then its a cheap Ramen packet for the second meal… not sure what to call it but I have combined lunch and dinner. It was an executive decision on my part to get the shrinking budget to work. I am so sick of collecting soda pop cans and bottles for money. Bees, ants, other bugs, rotten food, and occasionally syringes end up in the damn bags of cans that people give me. Those bags keep getting smaller, the can recycling centers hours keep shrinking, the redemption center employees keep getting ruder, and somehow I keep getting ripped off on the money that I should be getting for my efforts.
Holy Shit, I’m thankful I don’t live my life like this. Where are the stinking rich guitar shop owners? Or the ridiculous G-5 owning industrial oven salesmen?
Haven’t heard of them have we? Because they don’t exist.
Jesus, if Musicians made music simply in the hopes of getting rich, we would not have the music that matters today. None of it. And although the guy who sells the PA equipment might have a two car garage and take vacations in the Caribbean once a year, I assure you nobody is throwing panties at him. Even the most unknown bands I have seen play live, nobodies touring on a shoe string budget getting cans of soup at venues along with the money for gas to the next city have chicks following them back stage and guys looking up to them. They are living the dream. The dream is the music.
Now, what I think you are talking about are people like Robert Kiyosaki and Anthony Robbins. They give seminars, write books, develop audio products and have constructed multi-million dollar empires on one thing: Peoples sickening obsession with becoming rich. Largely their advice is bullshit, but that doesn’t matter because it’s all about the sell. One more seminar, one more book. THESE ARE THE MODERN DAY EQUIVALENT OF THE PEOPLE WHO FED, CLOTHED, TRANSPORTED and INFORMED those poor bastards running after that Gibbonsville gold.
So, is the DREAM possible?
First, define your dream.
Personally, mine has never had dollar signs attached to it and I have pitied those who have lived within the confines of something so trite and lifeless.
And in closing, irregardless of anything…
-He who Dares, Wins.-
My dream is making straight to video/DVD samurai dramas for Japan, with my pen pal at my side smiling (the most important part, even more so than directing). The dollar symbols don’t matter as long as there is enough coming in to keep her happy. She lives a simple modest life and seems very happy. So, I think as long as she has a roof over her head, normal portioned meals three times a day, and some money to get seeds for flowers to plant she has all the money she needs. She fishes, dances, hangs out with friends, occasionally takes relaxing drives, and all the while she smiles.
Still, it takes money to get out of my situation, it takes money to get into a college, and it will take money to get to Japan. I barely have the money to keep my phone on and that is on the cheapest text only plan I could find. I barely have money for food and tend to eat expired food bought at an Amish salvage food store. I have the money to send her letters, but not to afford anything nice for her.
So, I see both points. As pessimistic as Yos’ stand on it can seem, it is true. He is thinking about people and trying to make sure they don’t fool themselves. Gaijin your point may have the better meaning though. Re evaluate your dream and what it is really about and enjoy living it while you can. If you only think about the money you will have nothing left on your deathbed but the regrets of everything you had but missed out on because you never took the time to enjoy it.
I am not after a casting couch, or chicks following my to my director’s trailer. I want to put together beautiful movies that will touch a person’s soul. I am a one woman man, if you can capture one special woman’s heart then take the time to enjoy that connection and don’t find yourself looking back at a bunch of meaningless empty sex with people that meant nothing and had no substance. Its better to look back and remember lots of truly amazing sex with a woman that meant something and connected with you on a deep level.
I don’t care if my movies make people look up to me, as long as the movies touch their hearts and illicit strong emotion and meaning. If I ever get to direct movies. Fingers still crossed as I bust my @s$ trying to get there.
I think the thing Gaijinass is missing and maybe I haven’t spelled out enough is that the dream has changed. The American Dream used to be about getting a white picket fence and lifting themselves out of poverty but now everyone wants to be rich and famous, and with the advent of Jackass, Twitter, YouTube, etc anyone seemingly has the ability to become famous. Don’t get me wrong many a star has been made by these mediums but it’s an illusion, an illusion peddled to us by Twitter, YouTube that if you use their service you can have the dream. While these new social medias are the ones with the angle, making the money.
In terms of music I don’t doubt that there are bands that are touring, not making a dime, following a dream, a dream of “the music.” That was the big angst of my generation’s musicians. As soon as money touched their art it became tainted yet they needed to money to survive, or they needed more money to reach more people with their music. Look at rap. Like any genre they have what you would call “pure” artists chasing that dream making music for the sake of making music but then you have rappers that are falling over each other to sell out the fastest.
Rappers that are really living day by day, renting bling, carrying all their cash on them to appear like they have a big roll, and dropping tons of money on producers to follow the dream to be the next Snoop, Puff Daddy, whatever.
It’s a gamble, it’s not something that you can get if “set your mind to it” or “buckle down” it’s not a sure thing.
Nothing is a sure thing, other than the end of the line.
I think the reality is that, and sorry everyone, most people are simply talentless and mediocre specimens. In fact, the data backs this up. Not everyone was meant to “Make it Big” or whatever. In fact, the majority of people out there were meant to plow fields and pick veggies. Perhaps sad, but true.
I never understood trying to achieve a dream of dollars and cents. I will use myself as an example, I love to cook. I love to experiment in the kitchen and often times I make enough to share with those I care for. I have never thought of squashing my fun time in the kitchen with the stress it take to be a business owner and run a kitchen that meets all health regulations.
My dream is and always has been to write. And everyday I count my lucky stars that I have fulfilled my own dream and can live it. I am literate. Shit that’s all I needed to get my going. I have snail mail pals I write to and a host a blog. It’s not even a monetized blog. If anything more came out of my writing, which I highly doubt and don’t really strive for, oh well. As long as it does not encroach on my ability to write no big deal.
My mister is an excellent artist, with his skills he could have gone into animation or manga but he didn’t. Because he draws for himself, his personal enjoyment. He doesn’t draw for the money, which then would take something that gives him joy and turn it into work.
My dreams can become a reality, I want to run a half-marathon. Easy peasy, I train and I run. I don’t have to be at the right place/right time. Or have start up money under my belt to attain my goal. I guess the way I dream is for fools with no money or no want for more money. I think the minute a dream involved dollars and cents; you lose your sense and start pissing on people on your way to your dream.
Also I finally figured out why I couldn’t comment this blog. My website has the name of a Rx drug in the title. Doh!