Eight Reasons I'm not $113 Million Dollars Richer

Someone from Queens won $113 million dollars playing MegaMillions yesterday, and that person wasn't me. Here are the eight solid reasons why I'm not a millionaire...yet.

1) I didn't play. OK, so technically I didn't buy a lottery ticket for this drawing, but I did when it was at $90M, $65M, $42M, and so on all the way down to $12M, so I suppose the title to this post should be "Top 10 Reasons I'm not $90 Million Dollars Richer"

2) The Awwww Factor. I don't have one. I'm a middle class, 20 something from Boston who is (mostly) self sufficient. There is no mortgage to fall behind on, I didn't get laid off, I'm not a cowboy living off the land, and I ain't got 6 children. There's no reason anyone who doesn't know me should feel good about me winning lots of money.

3) I'm too intelligent. Some people might think that being too intelligent to win a game that has been referred to as a "tax for dumb people" doesn't make sense, but I'm convinced the Powers That Be are all about some GED redneck from backwoods Georgia or Iowa or Montana winning the Jackpot because those same Powers own the E! network and those same rednecks will make for entertaining TV whether they end up with a reality show or on THS Investigates: The Curse of the Lottery II.

4) I'll spend and save my earnings wisely. This may be more aptly labeled as number 3a, but I'm sure I'm going to struggle to get a substantial amount of reasons anyway, so it gets it's own. I have spent admittedly abnormal amounts of time thinking about and/or planning what I would do with the majority of my money if I were to win any exorbatant amount. It's not so much that I expect to win, as that I just want to be prepared if I do. How much would a house cost in Wellfleet on the water? How much would a vineyard in Argentina cost with a 5 bedroom house attached? How much would it take to pay off my loans and debts, to pay off my family's debts? Perhaps new clothes without holes or pen stains or a wallet to hold my belongings so they're not all just stuffed in my pockets. With all of that considered, I'd still have a lot of money left for savings (and maybe an Aston Martin or two...yes, I'd get my license).

5) I'm too rational. I have no ties to any particular set of numbers, I'm not superstitious, I don't think my birthdate is lucky, nor is yours. With all that said, I always quick pick the numbers instead of playing a particular set and with some quick google research used to find statistics that match my cause, I found that according to the 1996 New York Daily News,"Quick Pick is not the best route to winning. More than half of all players use Quick Pick instead of selecting their own numbers. But Quick Pick has accounted for only 38 percent of the winners".

6) I'm too good at not working. I'm not one of those people that would continue working my job because I'd need something to give me purpose in life or my passion for waitressing is just too strong to stop. Amazingly, I can find plenty to do with my time if I have all the money I need and (you can ask my friend Kevin), it's fun to have me around because I'm up for just about anything when I don't have to work in the morning. Want to fly to Holland tonight? I'm in. Want a weekend in Vegas? I'm in. Beer Olympics? Done. Rugby World Cup? Sold.

7) I'd get really fat. I realized yesterday that one of the major reasons I can't save a lot of money is because I like delicious food. I like to go out for delicious food, I like to cook delicious food and if I were to have a completely disposable income, I would spend a lot more time and money doing both of those things. Now, in theory, I'd have a lot more time to work out and money for a personal trainer, but in reality, I don't like working out and won't like it more if I pay someone to make me do it. Actually probably quite the opposite, I'm also really spiteful.

8) I'm not convinced I'd help stimulate the American Economy that much. I'm not a down home girl who thinks my back yard is all of the world I need to see (not that I have a back yard, but you get the point). If you look at the things I've mentioned I'd do with my money, nearly half of my theoretical spending thus far is off shore. You might never see me again if I win the lottery because I may spend my time between my cottage in Chile and my house in Malta.

So I probably put too much thought into why I didn't win and someone else did considering that I didn't even play, but I will not be deterred. I'll probably go buy a ticket today as $12 million dollars (the lowest the jackpot goes/is at now) would change my life substantially and I'm not one of those people who will only play when it's up over $100 or $200 million because I'm not that greedy. I am, however, greedy enough to desire a cool twelve mill and make plans for my life thusly. And with the creation of this list, perhaps I'll take a different approach, and start picking my own numbers based on some random reasons so when I do win, I'll have something to say about it at my press conference that will make all the spectators say "Awwwww."

Update:

9) I have no real plans for giving a substantial amount of money to charity. I'm not one of those people that claims I'll give half my winnings to feed children in Dorchester or something. I'll probably do something good with my money- maybe I'll do some volunteer work, but in all honesty, other than those that have been charitable to me, I have no strong sense or desire to give up much of my winnings.

1 Rena

Well, after an extended period of blog silence, I've finally reconnected after settling in at 1 Rena St in L.A. (Lower Allston).  I've moved into a lovely 4+ bedroom apartment with a motley crue of roommates for the next three months, my bedroom being the + part of that statement. 1 Rena St is a quaint brown house split into two apartments, the owners living in the lower apartment, and renting the above one to my roommate Phil and the parade of subletters moving in and out on their whim.  I am the most recent of these subletters, crashing in a tiny bedroom on the third floor with one small window and a futon to call my own.  After a week of relative madness (literally - Katy was in town and I was at my parents house every night I wasn't working), I've settled in officially with my puppy, my computer and my pots and pans.  My new roommates include the aforementioned Phil, sort of an enigma from a small town in northern New York and aspiring East Coast Dog Whisperer; Jason, who is afraid of ghost stories and works for a private jet company based out of New Hampshire; Jess, a tall girl who plays volleyball all over the country and works for Brine volleyball; and Jen, of whom I know very little as she's super quite and we've only met twice.  Our other roommate is Twix, a 15 lb puppy of something like a Rat Terrier breed and now, his hopefully new best friend Roscoe.  It makes for quite a bustling apartment with 5 humans and two puppies coming and going as we do, but for the first time since September of 2008, I have keys to come and go as I please, I have my own space to keep my stuff, and I have my dog.  I've also acquired (at least for the next few months), a flat screen HD TV (no analog pizza here); a nice, well-stocked kitchen; and a friend to tucker out my little guy and give him some exercise. 

Now that I'm all settled in, its time to begin searching for a place for September. Hopefully one I'll be in at least for a year.

Sunday at Frankie Santucci's

Please see below to read Sunday at Frankie Santucci's. Great post. Great folks. Great 'za

My Distaste for Humanity

I'm sitting, between shifts, at one of those lousy chain restaurants with more TV's than anyone knows what to do with, all showing different sports related tickers and information nearly sending me into an epileptic seizure, simply because I wanted spaghetti for lunch and wasn't willing to spend a Harvard Square fortune for a pretentious small plate of significantly better quality fare to suppress my hungover stomach. The music is - as expected - louder than need be and a contemptible, corporate approved collection of instrumental, sophisticated, cool jazz, smooth R&B and lounge music. The bartender, Allison, as she makes sure each and every customer knows, is an overly perky - must be highly medicated or supremely depressed - twenty something screeching corporate restaurant hyena and is yelling something about a special Rolling Rock deal at me to which I must have nodded as I ended up with a 220z beer in front of me, but in reality I was distracted by her dark banana curled pony tail garnished with a pink ribbon, and the two curled tendrils hanging in her face.
Everything in her life is "So good!" "So Awesome!" or "So Perfect!" and I know so because she let all of her patrons know. She is thrown, only briefly, from her obnoxiously peppy nature by a customer named Lorraine - which incidentally is the name of Allison's grandmother and thus in turn her sisters middle name - who is a woman whose size alone is cause for discomfort. She stands easily near six feet tall, shoulders like a lineman and a protruding gut on which her large breasts rest. After her $2.75 Rolling Rock to which she added three olives (?), she and Allison get into a discussion, nearly an argument, about mixed drinks and the excess of any mixed drink being poured down the drain. She wanted Allison to make her a Pina Colada and add the alcohol after the mix was made so no portion of her shot, 2 oz of Bacardi rum ended up going down the drain. Eventually, and reluctantly, Allison did, but only after threats from Lorraine involving the Better Business Bureau as well as the Attorney General, as if he has nothing better to worry about except the fraction of a shot of sub par rum mixed with coconut and ice being dumped into her clearly alcoholic glass.
She somehow lured me into the discussion where, after asserting that I am a waitress, I clearly had the back of the supremely obnoxious server who only moments before I was imagining bound and gagged in a completely non-sexual way. My support of the bartender only led to more adamant and outrageous arguments from Lorraine, in her Patriots embroidered jean jacket, her hair slicked back into a tight bun and her sunglasses resting on the crown of her head. Eventually, mostly because I couldn't hide my contempt for Lorraine's existence any longer, I conceded my position, flipped open my notebook and proceeded to reproduce the experience there so as to avoid any more conversation with either party on that or any subject. A song whose chorus keeps repeating the phrase "Popsicle toes" plays in the background. It's well past time for me to get out of this mass-produced hell hole.

Excursions in Suburbia

  The wannabe Faneuil Hall bar that somehow was banished to the wannabe white collar, but not quite there yet, suburban nightmare filled up quickly Saturday night with groups of friends of all ages, though mostly over thirty, as the band set up in the corner in front of the large television playing the UConn-Villanova NCAA game. My friends and I, urbanites through and through, were there not only to support the band, as my uncle was the lower lip-biting, bespectacled bass guitarist and backup singer, but also because I promised my friends the very real and certainly guaranteed opportunity to mock the locals, the townies as it were, as Mansfield is quintessentially a Townie Town, and that was made painfully evident only a short time later.

  The band starts pumping out an enjoyable selection of 90's soft rock hits that Rob Thomas probably has on a mix-CD he made sometime at the apex of his career but has since forgotten about. My aunt, a Mansfieldite herself, is in my party and quickly acknowledges that just about everyone around us went to high school with her - twenty five years prior.  It became evident that the social heirarchy of the high school dynamic doesn't have the opportunity to grow or change when nobody leaves the town. The wannabes still want to be as "cool" as the cool kids, and the cool kids know that at least in their own little microcosm that they are still just that.

  To our left was a table of four women sitting awkwardly behind the speakers, each eating a salad with dressing on the side and almost obnoxiously typically sharing an order of mozzarella sticks. Their clothes are clearly a bit tighter than they're comfortable with but it's Saturday night and they're effectively on the prowl, still trying to catch the eye of the same guy who didn't notice them at junior prom and only signed their yearbook with his name, no message. They all wear pearl earrings and a pearl necklace - but lord knows, not the dirty kind- and sweater sets. They stayed at their table all evening, staring longingly at the dance floor, wishing so much that they could just let go for once in their lives.

   In regards to the dance floor, immediately to my right, it was covered with a gaggle of women appropriately referred to by a member of my party as The Real Housewives of Mansfield, MA as each of them was dressed completely in Real Housewife uniform. Starting at the feet, each of the six or so forty-plus year old women were wearing heels somewhere over four inches tall disabling their already feeble excuses for dance moves to a general body sway and an occasional slow turn. Each woman wore a pair of tight black pants to show off the fact that they've all been able to keep their bodies in general good shape with a combination of constant and excessive dieting, hours upon hours at the gym and- for some of them- their secret addictions to railing the prescription drugs they've convinced their therapist they need. Their upper bodies were covered with any sort of blouse, covering their arms of course, as not every woman can compare to Madonna biceptually, in black, white, or some combination of the two. Each and every lady had bleach blond hair, perhaps to cover their grey hairs, or even worse, to cover the fact that they were naturally born a brunette, as so few of those on the dark side get let into the clan.

  Among them, I was eventually informed, was the  - and I quote - "It Couple" from high school.  One of the clones standing awkwardly in front of, and constantly trying to get the attention of her "it" husband. He stood, pretty tall, if I had to guess, the letterman jacketed football quarterback, leaning against the bar, staring past the band at the NCAA game, despite the fact that UConn was significantly ahead. His Stepford wife stayed directly in front of him, every once in a while turning to face him, and as awkwardly as her high heels and tight pants would allow tried to "grind" (as the kids say) down the front of him which would elicit only a look of acknowledgement from the letterman, followed by a swig from his Bud Diesel bottle. 

 And people questioned my intense desires to get away from high school.

Sunday at Frankie Santucci's

The following is an account of a pizza Sunday with Frankie Santucci and his boys - no exaggeration, no joke:

Having woken up in what my friends and I like to refer to as "bonus time" post a night that began early and ended, well, early - around 5AM, Mallary Santucci and I piled into her mother's oversized, white, early '90s Isuzu Trooper, the juxtaposition of the tiny 4'9" lady and the giant vehicle always putting a smirk on my face. She sits in the large, fake white fur covered bucket seat, her tiny legs reaching for the gas pedal, as she starts it up to get our caravan mobilized heading North from Narragansett to Cranston, where we were informed by Frankie (her father) that the boys "Ray, Edmund, Joey, Mikey. They're all here and the first calzone's already in the oven."

After about an hour, four raw pizza doughs, some girl scout cookies, and iced coffees, our three car caravan pulled up in a small suburban neighborhood to a quaint little house with five or six cars strewn about the driveway and roadside. Mal, being the family member and most comfortable with the situation, entered the screen door first. Inside, the house had a nostalgic feeling of a blue collar classic rock video, probably by John Cougar Mellencamp, back when he still was the Cougar and before a cougar was a nickname for an older lady (which will come up again later in this story). The panelling on the walls, the long carpeting and mismatched furniture. There were four large Italian men squished into a small living room, crowded around an older large monitored television showing the Bay Hill Invitational Golf Tournament, yelling at each other and into the kitchen about some apparent long-running golf game they have.
"You guys havin' a team pow-wow over there? Tryin to get a strategy togethah?"
"It's only April and you're already bustin me about this?"
"You know you're not allowed to have a golf magazine in your bathroom, tryin' to gain an upperhand in the bathroom"
"Happy Bay Hill weekend!"
And so on.

Frankie was in the tiny galley kitchen manipulating a two pound pizza dough on the counter, with one Margherita pizza already sliced on the table and a chicken sausage and broccoli rabe calzone next to it. "I been cookin' for three days straight for this. I started cookin' Thursday for this weekend, Mal" After the hugs and introductions, Frankie offers us a drink."We got some red, followed by some red. Then some red" He says while he pulls out bottle after bottle of red wine. And in a traditional Italian fashion, he immediately offers us all the food he's currently got. The pizza, the calzone and some soup."You guys want some soup? Who wants soup. It's the healthiest thing you'll eat all day, everything else is garbage. Here, have some soup." He handed everyone a bowl without anyone having a chance to answer. It didn't matter if you didn't want soup, you were eating soup, and to not do so would be disrespectful.

He opened up his oven, put the dough onto his pizza stone and started creating as Joey, his brother called it, his next 'za. Olive oil drizzled all over, sauteed garlic spinach, caramelized onions, chipotle maple chicken, applewood smoked bacon. My mouth was watering at the idea of it. "That's what's happening" Joey kept reminding us as Frankie gave us a lesson on pizza making.

Caleb, sitting in the corner, was offered a Miller High Life, which after the night of drinking we'd had before, he took his time on. "What? You gonna take two hours on that thing? Want me to put a nipple on it? Waiting for it to get to 98.6 degrees before you drink it?" All the men berated him until it was gone. "Kahlib? What kind of a name is Kahlim? Calem? Kahleeb? Is it Hebrew?" The questions continued until they all just shrugged off his name and started calling him "buddy".

"Hey Edmund" (Who I should just interject was larger than a normal sized doorway both in stature and girth) "You want some soup? It's the healthiest think you'll eat all day." Mal just looks at us and shakes her head. Apparently it's just another day at Frankie Santucci's.

Wine continues flowing, mostly into my glass as others had to drive home later, and the glasses of the older gentlemen. Apparently Bobby wanted to come get his pizza to go, so he can watch the golf tournament in HD to which Frankie and Joey respond repeatedly, "Welcome to Analog Pizza. We don't delivah." The pizza comes out, cools and is cut and I take a bite of the most delicious, crispy, perfectly cooked pizza I've ever had. There is no exaggeration there, it has ruined pizza for me forever because nothing will ever be as perfect as that slice was. I had had two slices of the other one, and this third piece filled me up but I couldn't help but eat two and a half more slices.

"Hey, Ray" Frankie yells, "Ray, have you had any soup? You want some soup? It's the healthiest thing you'll eat all day. Everything else is garbage. Here, have some soup."

David Nardalillo, owner of a funeral home in Rhode Island and lifetime friend of Frankie Santucci (and apparently everyone else in the room), rolls, almost literally by the size of him, into the party having just come from a funeral, dressed in a suit, removes his jacket and I immediately notice a spattering of blood on the bottom of his white button down shirt.
"What's the blood from Colonel" (Apparently Mr. Nardalillo's nickname).
"Don't you worry about that Frankie"
He says seriously, then looks at Marcy, Caleb and myself "I bury people for a living, and sometimes they're dead." He says to us and we all sort of just nod at him, not asking for any further clarification. He then bursts out laughing, pulls out a 750 ml bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and pours champagne for all of us kids, making sure his glass gets just a little bit more than anyone else. He sits down and proceeds to regale us with tales of his adventures with the Santucci family and the other boys in the room. They're trip to Florida, they're trips snowmobiling, how he broke his leg, how it snapped and hung and needed to be rebuilt."

"Hey Dave, Colonel, you want some soup? Healthiest thing you'll eat all day. Let me get you some soup." The colonel just laughs, and we giggle with him.
"Analog Pizza. We don't delivah" Joey chimed in.
"We don't delivah." Says Mikey.

David Nardalillo decides that we are now family and tells me that if I have anyone I need taken care of, I should just let him know and don't ask any questions. Then he tells us stories about a friend of his called Uncle Roland. Uncle Roland used to be a sniper, worked in law enforcement his whole life, is a trained killer and can shoot out your eye from 500 yards away. David called him up with a problem once, and Uncle Roland showed up with 5 guys in a matter of minutes to "take care" of the colonel's "problem".
"What's your name?" David asks Caleb
"Caleb"
"Calem?"
"Caleb, with a b"
"Ok. Paul. You're name is Paul now. You want to hear Uncle Roland's voice?" David called up Uncle Roland and passed the phone around the table while we all listened to his voicemail. The phone was passed to me, I put it up to my ear and on the other end was a man who sounded like an angrier version of Brad Garrett (Everybody Love's Raymond's brother) and said "...leave me a brief message..." and I handed the phone back to David. He starts speaking into the phone, "Hey asshole. It's the colonel. I got a problem, I need you to take care of. Call me back."

"Hey Mikey, did you have some soup? Want some soup? Healthiest thing you'll eat all day"
"Analog Pizza, we don't deliver.""
Hey Paul, you need another beer? Or you still nursin' that first one?"
"We got some more red, anyone need more red?"
Uncle Roland calls David back, talks briefly to Paul, talks briefly to Mallary (who he informs should call 911 before he gets there because he's going to kill anyone who needs to be taken care of) and then again to David. The Colonel tries to tell him he was just screwing around and that he should come over for a drink, but apparently he's made Uncle Roland upset. You're not supposed to joke about having problems fixed.

Mikey decides its time to drive home, at the question of his ability to drive his response is "I'm moderate, I'm moderate. It's ok, I'm moderate" He didn't look moderate. He looked drunk, but away he went with a promise to call once he got home.

David has Edmund, who he refers to as his bodyguard, drive him to the liquor store around 6pm after making Paul promise him that we wouldn't leave until after he got back. After his departure Frankie informs us that the liquor store closes at 4pm so he'd be out of luck and back in no time. Two or three more pizzas have come out of the oven at this point, but after the perfection of the chipotle-maple chicken one, I can't even fathom putting a different one in my mouth and don't partake in eating anything else, although the bottom of my wine glass does stay wet with some red for the entirety of our visit.

Someone pulls into the driveway and from the living room someone announces that Uncle Roland's here. Marcy looks out the window, and whirls around to Paul and myself. "He looks like Dog the Bounty Hunter without the mullet!!" We all sit awkwardly facing away from the door as Uncle Roland makes his way in. David isn't here to intervene if this man is actually coming to kill people and I worry mostly for Paul's life as he, unlike the other 50 year old men in the room, hasn't spent his life in Cranston and will probably stick out like a sore thumb. Luckily for him, David walked in with Edmund before Uncle Roland was introduced to us. David came in with another bottle of champagne, Andre this time, a bit more our style as it runs $4.99 per bottle but he quickly informed us that it wasn't for us, that he'd met a woman at the liquor store (which was supposed to be closed) and she was on her way over, after she dropped her kids off at home. In his gravelly voice, Uncle Roland berates David for getting him all riled up for a fight, "then you invite over some dizzy bitch and you expect me to just hang out?"
"Don't you call her a dizzy bitch. She was like someone right out of a magazine, gorgeous and breasts out to here" He says making an exaggerated motion with his hands. Uncle Roland decides to stay, have a couple fingers of Gentleman Jack and pull up a chair next to Marcy.
"Can I sit here? Are you with someone? When the dizzy bitch gets here, you're going to be my wife, OK Joanne?" Poor Marcy. We couldn't have saved her if we wanted to. This terrifying man was a trained killer.

"Hey Uncle Roland, you want some soup? I got some delicious soup here? Who doesn't like soup? What kinda person doesn't like soup? It's the healthiest thing you'll eat all day, everything else is garbage, have some soup." Uncle Roland didn't want any soup.

After some crude comments about what Uncle Roland plans on doing to the dizzy bitch upon her arrival, one involving the phrase "rented mule" which was a favorite of Uncle Roland's, someone asked David if the liquor store was closed when he got there.
"They said they were closed, but I told them they weren't." When we all laughed at him, he responded, "What? I paid in cash."

Uncle Roland stood up, had Mallary sit down next to Paul, who was next to me, who was next to Joanne, said "Now I want you all to know, that I'm a 51 year old man. Ok?" We nod. "Now what do you think of this..." he says as he proceeds to turn and pull his pants down to his knees. While I didn't see my comrades reactions, I can guarantee they were much like mine in that both hands flew up over our eyes, our jaws dropped and screeches and groans of terror poured out, while Uncle Roland burst out laughing, pulled his pants back up and took his seat back next to his wife, Joanne.

A truck rolled up and parked outside, as David and Edmund had stepped out to guide the magazine lady to the house. I peeked out the kitchen window and saw someone who looked as though she originally was black, but has self-tanned her way to a shade of florescent orange radiating off her dark skin. Her hair was many shades of blonde and gold (and upon closer inspection was quite obviously a wig) and she walked up to the house, made her way inside and comfortably introduced herself as Michelle. Now, there isn't any proof of the following presumption, but if I had to go out on a limb, I'd go ahead and say that "Michelle" was really once a man and is post-op or in really good drag because homegirl was impressive. She has a seat next to Uncle Roland, who introduces her to his wife Joanne and encourages Joanne to tell Michelle about her goose pie recipes.

"Hey Michelle, you want some soup? I got a great soup for ya if you like soup. David, get Michelle some soup."

I sat next to Paul, my jaw agape, baffled at what was happening in our lives and wondering why I didn't have my notebook to keep track of all of the specifics of the characters at hand, the things they said and how they moved and I apologize to my readers for my uncharacteristic lack of detail but between the wine and sheer bafflement of what was happening around me, I don't have as many specifics as I would have liked.

Somehow, Joanne was able to get herself out of there, after Michelle asked for her number so she could get her goose pies into a store in Cranston, we said our goodbye's to the men, Uncle Roland kissed me on the mouth, David Nardalillo gave me a hug (and asked Paul if he was a "Stem Gobbler" or a "Pickle Pusher" despite the fact that we were clearly together) and we all made our way outside where we said goodbye to Mal as she's on her way to South Korea for a year.

I also left out, as it happened somewhere between being mooned and goose pies, that Uncle Roland also did his best Silence of the Lambs Buffalo Bill tuck, pulled up his shirt and pulled down his pants and did a little dance, which got, from all of us under 50 year olds yet another terrified reaction.

We pulled out of there, trying to get back to Boston, all speechless and baffled, all of us repeating "Oh my God, Oh my God. I can't believe that was just our real life. I can't believe the past 6 hours were real."

I needed to share, despite the fact that nobody will appreciate the chaos of Frankie Santucci's pizza Sundays until they experience it themselves, but it made me so happy, the food was so delicious, the company was so...interesting and while I'm only a quarter so, it made me happy to be Italian.

A Reflection on Religion as a Detriment to the Progress of Humanity

   I recently saw Bill Maher's Religulous which was directed by Larry Charles who also directed Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and seems to enjoy mocking the masses of America, which is all right with me.  While many people saw Borat and thought about what the sad state our country is in culturally, I saw it, laughed at the jokes about our society and appreciated that someone else was there to point out how absurdly hilarous and unintelligent a large portion of Americans are. Religulous has a similar mocking tone to it, as Bill Maher questions organized religion, namely the three major Western religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and their devout, passionate followers but he isn't quite as degrading as Sasha Baron Cohen pretended to be as Borat.  

    Maher begins his documentry at Megiddo, Israel, the town below Armageddon, where Christians believe that Jesus Christ will come down from Heaven and save the Believers at the end of the world as Maher makes a statement regarding his distaste for prophecy only second to his distate for self-fulfilling prophecy because when that prophecy was made, only God could end the world, but man was able to figure out nuclear weapons before he was able to figure out world peace and acceptance. Clearly, Maher had a very specific audience in mind when he went about creating this film. It certainly wasn't anyone who believes the Bible as a non-fiction work, anyone who attends Church, or Temple or Mosque services, it is instead the 16% of Americans who consider themselves unaffiliated with any religion, and are more than content to keep it that way.  He shows, via a very technically impressive bar graph that the 16% of Americans in that category make up a larger percentage of the population than Jewish people, Black people, homosexuals or members of the NRA and it's at this point that his purpose of the film becomes clear. He's not creating the film just to mock, berate and belittle those who have faith in Faith, but instead as a call to arms for those of us who don't. Maher wants us to "grow up or die" in that we shouldn't believe in Santa, or talking snakes, or a man living for three days inside a large tuna and reminds us that the majority of the people leading our country do believe (except in Santa, because that's just ridiculous)...and those are just the Christians. 

   One of the questions Maher asks which really resonated with me, put into words how I feel regarding religion, was at a truck stop church in North Carolina when he asked the very helpful men there "Why is Faith a good thing? Why is believing something without any evidence a good thing?" in an attempt to apply reason to religion and while he comes off as ever so condescending he's really just trying to challenge something that so many people accept without hesitation. And to me while its disturbing that people believe in a supernatural man who can hear all their thoughts, it's far more disturbing that people believe in believing in God  - as in, without question, hesitation or thought, people believe in their religion because that's what they're supposed to do. 

  He discusses the fact that America has become synonymous with Christianity as "good Christians" believe in America and those of us who aren't good Christians have no patriotism. John McCain (you may remember him as throwing the Republican ticket out the window in the past election) said "The Constitution established America as a Christian nation" which Maher refutes with a series of quotes from founding fathers Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson who all felt that this country would be better off without Christianity influencing it's decisions.  Thomas Jefferson actually went so far as to take the New Testament of the bible, seperate out the dogma and produce the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth which according to Jefferson is "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man." And while I haven't read Jefferson's version of how man should act, I do believe it's evidence enough that the seperation of church and state should be upheld far more voraciously than it is.

  I'm not going to disect the movie scene by scene for you, but it is clearly edited for amusement purposes, adding appropriately placed clips of Charleton Heston as Moses, sardonic voiceovers and subtitles. Maher tries to make it obvious that religion and intelligence are mutually exclusive and while he makes a fair argument for those of us who already are leaning in that direction, he closes the movie with an uber serious address to the 16% of the population he's targeting with a bit too much alarmist hysteria for my liking. He seems to desire us anti-religious folk to try and shut down the major religions of the world because otherwise those who do believe will lead us directly to Armageddon. He may have forgotten that we do only make up 16% of the US Population and only 14% of the population worldwide and the chances that in our sarcastic, patronizing, sneeringly outsider way we're going to convince the rest of the world that their faith in faith is what's driving the world to its end are essentially non-existant. Besides, my lack of faith makes it easier for me to accept the end of the world whenever it may come, my lack of ability to change it, and my ability to sit back and enjoy the ride because I won't double down on religion just to save my ass when the end is upon us.