Is Highest Paid "Per Hour" Really "Highest Paid"?

Actor John Forsythe died yesterday at the age of 92.  I never watched Dynasty as a kid and very little of Charlie's Angels.  But from his 1 minute obituary aired on ABC World News last night (which you can watch HERE), he sounded like a very accomplished man who had a distinguished career.


But I'm not sure that ABC News' reporting about his death last night was quite as distinguished.  When mentioning his role as the unseen, mysterious "Charlie"on Charlie's Angels they noted, "that role made him the highest paid actor on television at the time."  I was sort of only half listening to the news in the background, but that caught my attention.  The highest paid actor on TV?  When he never appeared onscreen in Charlie's Angels, but only talked to the "Angels" for a minute or two via speakerphone at the beginning and end of each episode?  That shocked me.  There must be an interesting story behind how that came to pass.


Well, as it turns out, that's not really true.  He was the highest paid actor on TV alright, but only on a "per hour basis," when factoring in that he recorded his dialogue for each episode in a matter of minutes apparently, while the actors appearing on-screen in Charlie's Angels, like Farrah Fawcett, worked 15 hours a day plus a couple of hours of make-up.

TV Ads For Tax Debt Relief (Near Death?)

If you're like me, you've seen dozens of TV commercials in recent months for companies that promise they can help you negotiate with the IRS to reduce your back taxes. By citing specific past success stories they not only imply that your tax debt, too, can be nearly wiped out in the process ("pennies on the dollar"), but also that the whole process is relatively simple and painless. With their paid help, of course. (Paid upfront.)


And if you're like me again, you've probably wondered when seeing these commercials over-and-over again whether you've been a sucker for paying your income taxes in full and on time every year.  But I've also been skeptical about these claims because these commercials seem so similar in tone to those promising mortgage relief or to negotiate down credit card debt, services that are now known largely as notorious scams.


Well, MSNBC has an article today (that you can read HERE) which analyzes their promises about easy tax relief. "As with many unscrupulous offers, the reason this one is so pervasive is because there is a grain of truth to the claims. Yes, in extreme circumstances, the IRS will settle old debts for a tiny percentage of the outstanding balance. But in most of those cases, the consumer is either near death or completely unemployable and without any valuable assets."


"Firms that advertise tax debt settlement services are selling a legitimate IRS procedure called an 'offer in compromise.' If IRS debt collectors determine that the federal government has no chance of collecting on a tax debt, the agency will consider settling for a lesser amount. But the process is long, drawn out and relatively painful. No one can quickly obtain a 'pennies on the dollar' settlement with the IRS... The agency did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this story. But in 2007, it told CNBC that it rejected nearly three-quarters of the 46,000 settlement offers it received."

The Headline Was "Fat Man Steals Food"

You may have seen the headlines yesterday about a 600 pound Florida man who pled 'no contest' in criminal court earlier this week to charges that he was stealing food from restaurants and convenience stores.  At least, that was the "man bites dog" headline which made it national news. But like the best of these sorts of stories, the underlying details are what really make it fascinating, much more so than the screaming, smirking headline.


The Florida man was George Joliceur, who at 5 foot 11' inches tall and 38 years old does indeed weigh 600 lbs apparently.  What he was actually charged with was conning restaurants and convenience stores out of cash refunds or replacement food by claiming that whatever comestibles they initially sold him were, "spoiled, adulterated or inedible."  That's pretty straightforward and, in and of itself, probably a less interesting crime than the headlines implied.  But the devil's in the details, as they say.


First of all, in addition to pleading 'no contest' to five counts of petty theft earlier this week, Joliceur apparently has a long criminal record of doing the same thing over-and-over, dating back to 2007.  That's pretty industrious for a 600 pound man who breathes with the aid of a respirator and who is, allegedly, "bedridden." You can see a photo of him sweating in his mugshot by clicking HERE (and scrolling down just a little).  Now keep that image of his mugshot in mind as I tell you now the details of one of his 2007 thefts.  "Masquerading as a fireman," according to reports (a 600 pound fireman who breathes with a respirator, apparently), Joliceur entered a 7-Eleven and asked for a $50 refund for 10 containers of Breyers ice cream, all 10 of which he claimed were "damaged."  When police later went to his home to take him into custody, the arresting officer reported hearing "what sounded like a male trying to cover his voice as a female" saying that Joliceur was not home.

Gummi Bears: Bad Parent or Bad Liar?

I had the following conversation with a middle-aged check-out clerk in the express line at my local grocery store last night:


Clerk: "Gummi Bears, huh?"


Me: "Yeah, my 3 year-old daughter has started to like them.  So I thought I'd get her a bag for Easter."


Clerk: "That's a really big bag for a 3 year old...."


Then there's this long, awkward pause as I quickly try to figure out whether she's implying that I'm a bad parent, or merely lying about who they're for.


Me (changing the subject): "Yeah, you know, I wanted to get her some Silly Putty, too.  But you guys don't seem to sell it..."


Clerk: "Sure we do. It's right over there in the 'Easter' section.  Why don't you grab one while I ring up the rest of your items?"


Me:  "That's ok. I'm kind of in a hurry right now.  But I'm sure I'll be back before Easter."


Another silent pause. My receipt then prints out, but sits idle on the register for a second as the clerk instead looks me in the eyes with a triumphant, skeptical glare that says, "I've got you pegged, you dirty Gummi Bear eater...."

Sketchy Mall Easter Bunnies

Last Christmas I posted a link to a website called Sketchy Santas that features vintage family photos of kids sitting on the laps of  particularly creepy looking mall Santas.  Well, they now have a companion website for mall Easter Bunnies that you can view HERE.

Nazi Stealth Fighter?

Did the Nazis almost succeed in building the world's first stealth fighter at the very end of World War II?  I'd never heard anything about that before.  Usually when there's any mention of Nazi super-weapons under development at the end of WWII (so-called "Wunderwaffen"), you hear about the V-2 rocket, or, as you head into the realm of the X-Files, maybe that supposedly gravity-defying, bell-shaped UFO device called "Die Glocke."


But I recently watched a 1 hour documentary on the National Geographic Channel about the Horten 229, a prototype German fighter made almost entirely of wood, including a plywood skin.  The only surviving version of the plane, the v3, was captured by the Allies at the end of the War and is now being stored by the Smithsonian in a warehouse outside Washington, D.C.  In this documentary, a group of engineers from Northrop Grumman painstakingly reconstruct a life-size model of the fighter. Then they take it out to a secret testing facility in the California desert and perform real-life radar tests on it to see whether it did, in fact, have "stealth-like" characteristics.  


The 229 looks amazingly futuristic for a plane built 65 years ago, as you can see from the photo below of the new replica built for the show. I thought that the whole documentary was fascinating, including the explanation of why this might have been such a "killer app" given Britain's radar defenses at the time.  If you're interested in seeing what the remains of the original German Horton 229 v3 look like today in that Smithsonian warehouse, you can watch a 3 minute clip from the show by clicking HERE.

Who Was That Pale Rider?

Yesterday morning as I was jogging in my neighborhood I saw a guy walking down the sidewalk toward me who looked strikingly like Clint Eastwood in this photo at left, only without the hat. He really caught my eye, though, because he was wearing a garish pink t-shirt and had a long, bright pink scarf wrapped jauntily around his neck.  I'd never seen him around before.  But he was walking with beleaguered purpose in the direction of a bus stop about a mile down the hill. As I ran past him, I couldn't help but notice that he was engulfed in a cloud of powerful women's perfume.




I live in a quiet suburban neighborhood.  The pedestrian traffic is usually pretty sparse, and typically limited to middle-aged dog walkers and early morning joggers.  So this guy stood out pretty starkly, what with his hot pink t-shirt and all that perfume.  Who was that man, I wondered? (Barely daring to speculate about what had brought him there.)