Tag Archives: Victory plates

I’ve got Abe Lincoln fever

Can you believe there have already been two Abraham Lincoln movies out this year? When was the last time Abe made an appearance on the big screen? I’m not going to look it up or anything, but I think it was Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, right? Doesn’t he come out at the end and say something like “Party on dudes!” I actually don’t remember. That movie came out when I was like three years old. I remember my parents rented it for me one time when I was maybe seven, but what’s the point of showing any movie to a seven year old? They’re not going to remember it, one. And two, do you think a little kid has the attention span necessary to comprehend exactly what’s going on? I still have no idea what that movie was about. I remember there was something about fixing that telephone booth with chewing gum. Maybe I wasn’t the brightest seven year old. Or maybe that movie didn’t have the most well written script.

But this is all entirely beside the point. There have been two Lincoln movies this year. I can’t think of any other Lincoln movies besides some stoner comedy from twenty years ago. What I’m getting at is, let’s keep going with this before Lincoln-mania dies out and we have to wait another four score before it’s hot again.

So far we’ve had a vampire movie and a serious biopic. I say next up we go for abstract sci-fi. How about, hundreds of years from now, a divided United States realizes that its only hope in getting past centuries of partisan gridlock is in cloning and resurrecting the one man who couldn’t stand to see a divided nation split apart. But there’s a twist. When the scientists reach for the vial of Abe Lincoln DNA, they accidentally spill some Hitler DNA in the mix. The result is exactly what you’d think: Abe Lincoln’s body but Hitler’s mind.

I saw this going an alternate way, where a competing group of evil scientists resurrected a Hitler clone at the same exact time as the good scientists created the Lincoln clone. The evil group would kidnap the Lincoln clone, and then they’d do the whole Face-Off thing. You know, surgically switching their faces. Hitler would look like Lincoln and he’d head off to Washington to unleash his diabolical plan. Lincoln, however, who now looks like history’s most evil of villains, would have to gain the trust of a more than skeptical nation, ultimately overthrowing the impostor and taking back the White House.

Next up: romantic comedy. This one would be a little harder to pull off, seeing as how history has kind of made Mary Todd Lincoln out to be a little crazy. But isn’t every character in a romantic comedy sort of crazy? The writers would just have to be a little creative in their interpretation of history. They’d have to cast either Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts.

And Lincoln would have to have a slightly different back story. No top hat. No beard. Maybe it would be all about how the First Lady convinced Abe to acquire his signature style. And maybe he’d cheat on her, apologize, and then swear his loyalty all over again, thus earning the nickname Honest Abe. I’m thinking Gerard Butler as Lincoln. I’m also thinking there has to be a big dramatic motorcycle chase to the airport. You know what? Just cut in the motorcycle chase scene from that Matthew McConaughy movie, the one where he’s chasing after Kate Hudson. Just put it in there, it doesn’t really matter if it doesn’t make any sense. Because it’s romantic.

Maybe four Lincoln movies would be a little much for the public to stomach. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t exploit it for all it’s worth. I’m thinking a TV series. We’ll call it Lincoln Blvd. about five guys that share a house together. And guess what? They’re all professional Lincoln impersonators. So the whole show could be about their mishaps and stumbles as they try to get gigs selling cars on Presidents’ Day or doing those silent acted-out-of-focus shots used in the background of any History Channel documentary. And then maybe the show would take place in some random city, like Columbus, Ohio, where maybe the demand for five Lincoln look-alikes isn’t that high, so every time they show up at an audition, it’s just them, the five of them. And they act all surprised every time they see each other in the waiting room. And actually, that could be the whole series, just a bunch of awkward auditions. When one of them goes in to try out for the role, the other four talk shit about him behind his back. And everyone would laugh because it would be so funny.

Let’s keep going. There has to be a way to just completely max this out. What about an Abe Lincoln breakfast cereal? Or some vintage Abe Lincoln victory plates? Jesus, I just thought of it. What about pennies? And five dollar bills? We should get the mint to issue some limited edition collectable currency. And the banks could just randomly release the currency into the general money supply, and everybody would rush to the banks and demand more Lincoln money. I think this is great. Let’s just keep it up until it dies out. Maximum Lincoln.

A stunning, historic, stunning victory

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all of these Barack Obama commemorative plates that I invested in shortly after the 2008 general election. I’m assuming that they’re all skyrocketing in value as I write this, but I didn’t realize how tough investing actually is. Like, I totally didn’t think about the fact that, while my money is maturing in my victory-plate portfolio, I’m really not able to use any of it. And times are getting tough. I’m starving.

Every once in a while I’ll try to bring one of my victory-plates around and try to buy stuff on credit. The problem is getting these plates anywhere. They’re very fragile, much more delicate than you’d expect, and I’m not really comfortable stacking them up so they’re easier to transport. But then again, if I choose to leave them in their special commemorative victory-plate protectors, then I can’t carry more that two or three at the same time.

One time I went to the Home Depot and one of the cashiers seemed interested in making a trade. After a brief negotiation, we struck a deal: two and a half victory-plates for an extension chord and a nine-volt battery. So I handed over the victory-plates and waited for change. But the cashier wasn’t allowed to give me cash back for plates. She cracked one in half. Two and a half victory-plates. But then she told me that, now that she was looking at this plate cracked down the middle, she wasn’t sure if it had the same value as it did when it was whole. I tried to argue that it wasn’t a clean break, that it wasn’t precisely down the middle, and that I’d be willing to part with the bigger half if we could just get on with this transaction. Unfortunately for me, a manager came over and shooed the cashier away. Turns out she wasn’t a cashier at all. She was, once, like months ago, but she got fired for being crazy. But she kept showing up randomly in an orange vest acting like she still worked there. I asked the manager about the victory-plates and he told me sorry, cash only.

“What about the certificates of authenticity that came specially numbered with each plate?” I asked the manager. “Aren’t those kind of like banknotes? Like how dollar bills used to be used so that people didn’t have to carry all of their gold around?” The manager wouldn’t budge. I demanded to see a different manager. He said fine, walked away, but then came back fifteen minutes later claiming to be a different manager. It was clearly the same person. I’m not an idiot. Home Depot has the worst customer service.

I hope the Euro collapses. I hope that, by the time this article makes it up on this blog, the Euro is gone. That’s what I need. I need a society with absolutely no dominant currency. I initially wrote that I hope that the US dollar collapses, and while, yes, that probably would have proved to be somewhat of a vindication in the short-term, with everyone else carrying around wheel barrels full of useless greenbacks, unable to trade them in for even a loaf of stale bread or a gallon of expired-but-not-yet-spoiled milk, and I’d be sitting on a fortune in cold, hard, recession-proof, economic collapse-proof victory-plates, I realized that I probably wouldn’t want to actually live in a society completely overrun by financial ruin. No, I’d rather use the value of my victory-plates to exploit a separate society, like Europe, and then use that wealth to live very comfortably over here. Greece looks like it’s going to need a new currency pretty soon. I think I have enough Obama plates to cover at least the mainland. I’m not sure about all of the islands though. I think my parents have some George H. W. Bush commemorative silverware locked up in an undisclosed location somewhere. I keep trying to get them to show me where it’s all being stored, but they’re so secretive with their cutlery, which, I guess is a smart move. There’s no way I’d ever tell anyone where I’m hoarding all of my wealth.

Part of me hopes Obama doesn’t win come November, not because of any politics or anything petty, but it’s because I’m pretty sure that reelection-plates rarely fetch as high of a market value as commemorative, stunning, historic victory inauguration-plates. I’ve already called up the Franklin Mint and put special hold orders on any potential Romney dishes, or Romney limited edition soap dishes, and they said OK, but they needed half of my Obama-plates as a deposit. But none of this is helping me out with my finances. Like I said, I’m starving here. I have all of these plates but nothing to put on them to eat. Not that I would actually use the victory-plates as actual plates, like I wouldn’t put food on them or anything stupid like that. I just thought it was a nice little image there, the absence of food contrasted with the abundance of plates.