Money Isn't Everything It's The Only Thing

Boiler Room (2000)

Jim Young: And there is no such thing as a no sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can't. Either way a sale is made, the only question is who is gonna close? You or him? Now be relentless, that's it, I'm done.

Jim Young: They say money can't buy happiness? Look at the fucking smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby.

Jim Young: Anybody who tells you money is the root of all evil doesn't fucking have any.

Seth Davis: What do you mean, you're gonna pass. Alan, the only people making money passing are NFL quarterbacks and I don't see a number on your back.

Seth Davis: I read this article a while back, that said that Microsoft employs more millionaire secretary's that any other company in the world. They took stock options over Christmas bonuses. It was a good move. I remember there was this picture, of one of the groundskeepers next to his Ferrari. Blew my mind. you see shit like that, and it just plants seeds, makes you think its possible, even easy. And then you turn on the TV, and there's just more of it. The $87 Million lottery winner, that kid actor that just made 20 million o his last movie, that internet stock that shot through the roof, you could have made millions if you had just gotten in early, and that's exactly what I wanted to do: get in. I didn't want to be an innovator any more, i just wanted to make the quick and easy buck, i just wanted in. The Notorious BIG said it best: "Either you're slingin' crack-rock, or you've got a wicked jump-shot." Nobody wants to work for it anymore. There's no honor in taking that after school job at Mickey Dee's, honor's in the dollar, kid. So I went the white boy way of slinging crack-rock: I became a stock broker.

Jim Young: There's an important phrase that we use here, and think it's time that you all learned it. Act as if. You understand what that means? Act as if you are the fucking President of this firm. Act as if you got a 9" cock. Okay? Act as if.

JIM: So now that you know what's possible, let me tell you what's required. You are required to work your ass off. We want winners, not pikers. A piker is someone who walks at the bell. A piker asks how much vacation time he gets in the first year. See, people work here to become filthy rich. No other reason. That's it. You want vacation time? Go teach third grade public school.

GREG: Okay, first of all there are going to be a lot of those regardless of how good you are. But you happen to suck dick. I have this friend who runs this other firm. He gives out this book to all his trainees. The Rebuttal Book. Looks like a fil-o-fax. Has those index tabs but they don't say A to B to G to H, they say things like Wife won't let me, I'm not in the market now, Call me back, Send me a prospectus. Has a rebuttal for any excuse. That's all the shit you're gonna have to learn later. For now you only have to remember one thing. You can be whoever you want on the phone. So say what you have to. Use a different name if you want. Tell them you're a vice- president here. Just get them on the line. That's the first step. It's the hardest part sometimes, but just get the cocksucker on the line.

GREG: Those fucking Guineas, half of them do coke. They all drink. No stability, zero capital. They make all this money and they're always living three steps ahead. Do you know there are guys in this firm that make close to a million a year and couldn't get a loan for a Honda because their credit is so bad. Everyone's just waiting for the fifteenth of the month. It's like they may drive a Porsche but they don't have ten bucks to put in the gas tank. Nigger rich.

SETH: Yes, how are you, James? Seth Marlin over at JT Marlin.

JAMES Take me off your list!!!

SETH: Okay, I'll take you off my list of successful people today.

Rounders (1998)
Professor Petrovsky: We can't run from who we are. Our destiny chooses us.


Mike McDermott: You were lookin' for that third three, but you forgot that Professor Green folded on Fourth Street and now you're representing that you have it. The DA made his two pair, but he knows they're no good. Judge Kaplan was trying to squeeze out a diamond flush but he came up short and Mr. Eisen is futilely hoping that his queens are going to stand up. So like I said, the Dean's bet is $20.

Mike McDermott: Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.

Worm: She's really got him by the balls.
Petra: That's not so bad, is it?
Worm: It depends on the grip!

Worm: You know what always cheers me up?
Mike McDermott: No, what's that?
Worm: Rolled up aces over kings. Check-raising stupid tourists and taking huge pots off of them. Playing all-night high-limit Hold'em at the Taj, "where the sand turns to gold." Stacks and towers of checks I can't even see over.
Mike McDermott: Fuck it, let's go.
Worm: Don't tease me.
Mike McDermott: Let's play some cards.
Worm: Yes!

Mike McDermott: You can't lose what you don't put in the middle.
[pause]
Mike McDermott: But you can't win much either.

Mike McDermott: It's immoral to let a sucker keep his money.

Mike McDermott: In "Confessions of a Winning Poker Player," Jack King said, "Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career." It seems true to me, cause walking in here, I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can't stop thinking about the way I lost it.

Mike McDermott: I've often seen these people, these squares at the table, short stack and long odds against them. All their outs gone. One last card in the deck that can help them. I used to wonder how they could let themselves get into such bad shape, and how the hell they thought they could turn it around.

In my opinion there are only 2 games worth playing in this sick twisted game of life god gives us. People, which has always been my game. Always the table I'll sit at and always the game that becomes the most interesting with the highest level of emotional risk and money. I'm taking this morning to explore this money one. And yes I lied from my last blog, neither of these films are new, but I may do that from time to time... lie, cause I wanna be happy and if I don't have to explain myself which is just perfect for me I will be. Even though I played the people game and I still do. I like people more then I like money cause they can give you things that money can't buy and ironically enough the things that money can buy never satisfy me nearly as much as the the simplest things people can give like smiles and winks and isms (charachter facial expressions/reactions). But that's not saying that I haven't played the game of money. And standing here getting closer and closer to the crossroads of where I go and what I do it's again important to remember where I've been. The game of money is all about lieing and coning. That's all it is. How do I take this guy or girl for as much as I can. Can I do it in a way that they never see it coming and in a way that they'll never notice it's gone until I'm gone. I was best able to do it when I didn't acknowledge them as humans. Makes it so easy. It's extremely unethical and un-moral. But that's capitalism for you. Survival of the fittest and in that survival the weakest link is the poorest. In NY there are plenty of jobs you can do to make good pay, you can go to class forever, get yourself a degree and start measuring where on the payroll curve of your said position you will be overtime. If you think of yourself as an innovator and essentially see stupid people everyday, you'd get so much more satisfaction from life if instead of mocking those stupid people with your friends capitizing on they're stupidity. It's a humbling experience for you and them. As for sales, you gotta remember one thing life is really boring and most of the time people in general are killing time. With that said that's why salesman are so excitable, this is why we talk in loud voices, to break you, the customer, client, out of your routine like oblivion and buy into whatever it is we're selling to cure u of the burden of having money that your not using.

I'm gonna have to disagree with Jim money is the root of all evil. If you think about this life without factoring money in you see everything is still very much possible. It doesn't matter how old you are, where you come from, or what you do. At any moment you can extend your metaphorical hand and pull in what you want. I like doing that. Often. It's a great little tool for brainstorming, imagination, and creativity. However when you do factor money in that pretty world or universe quickly gets chained down and imprisoned. What is he wearing? Is that the new Audi? So your a doctor? The next time your out at a social gathering silence the words and the music and eye up people, see if you can guess the labels of everything they're wearing. When they open their mouth see how much of their words and experience is about what stuff they've accumulated. Are you thinking right now as you read this blog hmm what do I need. The truth is all u need is food, shelter, water, and love. That's all you need to live. And the happiest times of my life is when all those things were satisfied. That's when I've been the most on point. I used to have a ford mustang 92 GT. I loved that car. I loved the way it started and purred when it started. I loved driving it. But in the 2 years I had it before a drunk driver cremated it. Nothing that special happened. Nothing really notable. It was a thing that every once in a while if I remembered gave me joy. And it wasn't what others thought as I drove it, it was how it felt when I drove it. So I'll probably get another when I return home but it's still a thing. And as for how judgement works on those nice things. I think they're distractions. Like a nice little smokey fog with lights to change an opinion. In this past little hibernation. Especially not last week but the week before. You have a better chance of people liking you from saying nothing at all. You have a better chance of taking everything you want from someone if you refrain from speaking until the precise moment of weakness in your competitor or friend. Sorry you gotta excuse me, this friend element or concept keeps getting confused in me of late. And I think I maybe talking like this not because I honestly believe it but because when I think I can become unethical and immoral that people in general become not people. They become a means to and end. Almost all of them. I could say all of them. Every single last one of them.

I suppose when it comes to ethics, morallity, and virtue, either I have it or I don't. And if I don't it becomes really not real. Other people that is. Which is kinda psycholtic.... trust me I know, I'm okay with it for the moment. I'm missing those people that keep me grounded and I'm grounded by love, recognizable love by trust and undeniable compassion which I don't see. Except from my mom but she can be a real Tool sometimes..lol. Anyways I wanted to get to these movies and try to do what I was doing before which was attempt to relate them to me and my experience and that ethical morality thing isn't something you just wake up one morning and say hey blog writer I think today you should stop acting like you have virtue. I think the environment plays a major role in molding you into a certain type of person. And it even has the availibility to change your perception of the environment. There are lots of people in these parts that talk about making more money and getting the quick buck. But What I notice more and more is it's talk. There are rivers and oceans of bullshit here sometimes. Like omg can someone please please put their money where their mouth is. Do you know what that phrase means? It means show your money from your great F'en idea instead of running your full of shit mouth. People should try it. They might become as quiet and silent as I am. But I'm still not one to talk. If I chose to go that direction btw it'll turn ugly. Not like it's so frikin pretty as of the moment but if people aren't people, and they don't have thoughts the way I have thoughts, if they are in theory cattle. The point of the game is seriously just to herd their dumb asses where I want them to be. That's the point. Just putting it out there. I've done it before. I was miserable but I do have an end and don't got the means. I've created lots of means. There is seriously not enough crime here. I'm not that far gone, I'm just saying. Without of coarse letting my emotions getting the best of me. Which haven't been good emotions running wild. The biggest emotion running wild these days is seriously anger. It doesn't run in the vain of yelling and getting pissed off either. It runs in a kinda I'm better than all this, kind of let me hurt people where it really hurts, not something simple like a confrontation. No something methodically villainous. I hope it's not the next big blog writer adaptation cause I could see a sea of misery upon the horizon for any unlikely person.

Anyways I wanted to get back to Boiler Room. Cause Boiler room is seriously the shiznit of sales. I remember standing in my cubicle in NY 2 years ago and the lines from this movie my co-workers said over the phone to clients. The phone, omg why do I seriously ditest the phone. On any given day you will be hung up on 70+ times, often being told to fuck off and die before the ungodly sound of a phone being slammed on a reciever. I love Seths charachter. He's obviously smart enough to figure out this game of money. The conflict of conscious comes in wanting more and more. In the game of money there is no enough. In the game of life or people there is enough, at least for this blog writer. Enough is having this one person (which could be a fictional mind fuck the blog writer gave himself by watching way too many Disney Movies when he was younger). But that would be enough. Technically though I have hobbies and a job I'm not in the game of money. I'm not really trying to make more, I'm not thinking how do I get enough to buy some nice stuff. I'm pretty content where I am. No worries about getting a house or anything. I do have some major issues with the concept of "an honest living". I don't think that exists. There are stupid livings, like where someone is just to stupid to see how money travels from hands but an honest living. Please. If you got a check and they gave you too much money would u be like umm... hey there's a mistake. Laughable. If you say yes it's outta fear of getting caught and I don't believe you for the record. The thing I felt the most in Boiler room was with Seths plite in just finding his place and his way. That "rite of passage" (nomadic me jan?). The rite of passage to get from point A in this countinually whack existence to the next. He just wants to find his place in it. And that's kinda what we all want, I think. The really ironic thing, and I'm gonna cite another movie for a moment, I'll probably do a whole blog on it, maybe V-day, possibly. But Joel in Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind says as he's laying on the ice with clemintine. "This is exactly where I wanted to be". It's a moment and even though it directly applies to the people game instead of the money game, it's note worthy. It's note worthy cause this life is a journey but having that goal or that place where u can rest and say this is it I'm here. Exactly where I wanted to be. For me that's come with the premiere screening of any of my films. Standing there in the back watching the audience taking in my story, my message, and watching them laugh at the funny parts or smiling at the lines that as I wrote them meant so much to me. This life it just goes sometimes and it's in the moments that we are where we meant to be that mean so much. That do that not the breathes we take but take our breathe away thing.

It happens in rounders as well. The up and down and oh fuck, to get to it. The thing I like about rounders and gambling in general, even though I'm not a gambler (in the game of money that is, I gamble often with chips of the heart) is that metaphorical risk. In gambling and cards it's the quinticential gamble. As us silly stupid humans say we're weighing our actions or words or experience the card game has such a better example of what we are doing. I appreciate it's existence. When you say things like what's on the table, ya know. It's only recently that I have taken more and more off the table that I'd let ride. That I'd take my chances on. Like it is and always will be with that influx of how it comes and goes. How this life will throw you a hand or deal you some cards that u think are the hand but something or someone comes across and totally wrecks that dream. Or on the other hand your down to one chip and slowly slowly the game swings up in your favor.