Not that I am saying I have 8 million dollars to spend. 8 million dollars is just a figure from nowhere OK? How am I going to spend it?
Make A Feature Film.
8 million dollars would only buy Mel Gibson’s lower regions. Our Nicole wouldn’t even attempt her robotic grimace for that much. Our Russ wouldn’t stop singing for more than that. 8 million bucks is what a Hollywood production spends on condoms. And if the film was made in Australia no one will go just to keep up a long standing artistic tradition. You’re dreaming. Making a feature film is a fantasy best kept within the walls of funding councils and kunst kamps.
Start A Record Label.
So that’s; sign a band, put them in a studio, design a package, run a campaign, press up thousands of discs and have it uploaded to a torrent before they even reach a shop. Why not just record your armpit farts and upload that to a torrent? Because you’re going to get just as many listeners, and they’ll all agree that your first armpit fart was better. Record labels are just banks, they loan to make recordings instead of houses. But these days, musically, everybody is living in cardboard boxes, thinking how cheap it is.
Start An Arts Collective.
Being the sugar plum fairy you’ve decided to share your funds with all the local artists. They’ll be able to get the latest gear for nothing and set up their studios in a big warehouse you’re going to buy. It’ll be just one big happy art commune – just like was intended for Apple Corps and American Zoetrope… two great ideas which kept kleptomaniac junkies in hockable goods for a while before the plug was pulled. Yessir, there’s a lot of ‘artists’ out there. If you do go ahead with this always remember to turn the doors around to hinge outwards so they’re harder to kick in.
Burn It.
Famously the KLF took one million pounds in cash and tried to burn it. Surprisingly, it was hard to burn. Unsurprisingly, once the drugs wore off and they found themselves older and fatter with kids, they wondered what the fuck they had done. And the electricity bill is due this week.
Start A Venue.
I don’t know which city you might be in – in this city there’s no venue between tiny and enormous. Every now and then a bright spark gets the idea to start a new venue. For those acts which are between tiny and enormous. God bless them but the question needs to be asked – just why did that kind of venue cease to exist? A little research goes a long way to solving the mystery of the disappearing 8 million. It’s a conundrum wrapped in police uniforms, insurance claims, drug packets, liquor licenses and lots of letterheads. And a lot of nights where the audience is smaller than the number of people in the band.
Give It To The Poor.
Once you hand over 8 million dollars to the poor you’ll be considerably poorer. Save the trouble.
Start Building A Really Weird Ass House And Then Die.
Thank God you’re starting to make some sense. I thought it was going to be stupid all night. This is excellent and two places – the Winchester House and The House On The Rock – by their mere existence stop me from jumping on a knife. Everything good is here – crazy people, deranged architecture, spooky mannequins and steam machines. When I think about what’s wrong with my nation of Australia I would start here. No immensely rich loonies and their Raptures.
Fill The Centre of the City With Jelly Beans.
When I was younger this seemed a noble aim. I quite liked the idea for the start, where everybody is thinking ‘cool – jelly beans’, to the end where several tonnes of disgusting multicoloured jelly lies rotting in the sun for days afterwards. The pay off would be some newspaper article calculating how much money was lost by local businesses due to the city being clogged up with jelly. If somebody asked me what typified the culture in which I live, it would be that type of article. ‘Boy pats dog, businesses lose 5 dollars’. This seemed a great idea until I realised that its exactly the kind of image that an advertising agency creative would think was clever. And I was working in advertising.
Fly Around America Shooting Celebrities With A Sniper Rifle.
This is appealing until you release how much they would love the attention.
Buy The Rights To Expensive Software And Make It Open Source For Everybody.
Wait, you’re losing me.
Buy The Rights To Open Source Software And Make It Expensive.
Much better.