Rodney Dangerfield and perserverence...

Strangely enough, I was at one of the few remaining bookstores awhile back and picked up Rodney Dangerfield's biography ("It aint easy being me") just to kill a few minutes. I have always loved dangerfield and actually when I was in high school I burned through his original tape version of "No Respect" because I listened to it so many times. What struck me about the autobiography was how long it took Rodney to hit it big and how hard he had to scrap to get it done. When he was 40 years old he was unemployed, he was broke and in debt 25k (a shitton of money in the 1950s) because he had fronted money to buy a bunch of aluminum siding that he had planned to sell door to door...and he was only doing comedy occasionally for 20 bucks a night in the Poconos. That was at age 40, when most normal people are starting to do the math on retirement! When he died 40 years later he lived next door to Shaq, was worth deep into the 8 figures, and was one of the most recognizable people in the World. And it was really all because of one joke that got a bunch of radio play at the time (and it wasnt even one of his batter jokes). Forty years to come up with one joke and the rest is history.

I just thought this was worth posting for the 21 year olds who are panicking because they cant get a job at Goldman Sachs...life is a marathon and great people are forged in the crucible of adversity not by always cruising through life on some path they picked out (or had picked for them) at age 17.

I also dedicate this post to Paulsen, my favorite former billionaire...im guessing it looked like the fall of Saigon in that office today. If Paulsen has half the moxie of Rodney he will come back stronger...we'll see...