For the past few months my roommate and I have been discussing the crazy ways people get rich in the U.S. I used to work at Pebble Beach Golf Course, and met quite a few “wealthy” people. Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, wasn’t the type of guy who had anything less than hundreds in his bill fold, and was nice enough to give them to me and my co-workers. Donald Trump is surprisingly personable to strangers (i.e me). Cint Eastwood owns half the town and stopped by every now and then... These types of people have tons of money, but they have their hands in lots of different types of industries. Now we have a basis for filthy rich, but then how do people get lucky and fall into wealth?

No, I’m not talking about the Paris Hilton types in the world that were actually given a free pass. I’m talking about the innovators that change people’s everyday life. Take EBay founder, Pierre Omidyar, he was living modestly then thought why not create an online pawn shop (You have to believe that half the stuff on there is stolen, Right!?!). A short while later he’s 31, and filthy rich. This man turned into an accidental billionaire. He innovated the way people pawn off stolen goods, err, I mean people auction goods online. Who has Tom on their friends list on Myspace? I know, everybody has an opinion about myspace in one way or another, but it’s a part of many people’s daily agenda to check it on a consistant basis. Wow, that was a nice accidental multi-million dollar break for him! How about Hurley and Chen, bringing Youtube out of nowhere!?! There are plenty more companies that have good ideas that catch on like a lepper loses skin.

Basically, there’s plenty more ridiculous ways that people can make millions of dollars off a simple idea. I just need to come up with that one good idea that puts me on easy street. Do I really have any good ideas? I wish I did, because then I'd be on traveling the world!

I've also been racking my brain for ideas about the Super Bowl commercial contest... I thought of a funny one the other day, but realized that balaspa might be offended if I made fun of Rex Grossman's 1.3 QB rating last week!