Obamas making TV shows? Hopefully they will involve re-taking the White House...
WE last saw the Obamas scooting away from the White House as fast as Richard Branson’s jet skis would carry them, after handing over what’s left of the United States to Despot-in-Chief Donald Trump. We needed no reminders then or now that fact can indeed be stranger than fiction, but it looks like Barack and Michelle aren’t quite ready for the slippers and cocoa yet.
In a reputed $50m (€42.8m) deal, they’ve signed up with Netflix to make movies.
This is terrific news. Netflix is already the home of presidential thrillers such as ‘Designated Survivor’, ‘House of Cards’, ‘JFK: Making of a President’ and ‘Race for the White House’, so surely we can expect gripping fare, with enormous budgets and high production values. And Michelle in stunning costumes.
Will Barack play himself? Will Michelle opt for a wise-cracking FBI agent who foils an assassination plot?
The couple have a dazzling array of celebrity actor friends – George Clooney is top of the list. With Amal stealing all the plot lines from him at the moment, he’ll be on the look-out for a meaty role: a shooter entering the Oval Office disguised as a bush from the rose garden perhaps?
Or dropping Tom-Cruise-like-but-sexier from the ceiling on steel wires to steal the nuclear codes and save the world?
But no. They’re going to be making programmes that “promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples and help them share their stories with the entire world … curating and inspiring creative voices”.
Worthy. But it all sounds really, really B.O.R.I.N.G.
Honestly, if they’re not going to film the re-taking of the White House, why bother?
If you’re looking for luck, work for a credit union
PERHAPS the Obamas could get funding from a credit union instead. These bastions of community lending look after the little people, and most of us who have one in our town consider ourselves lucky, but it seems the luckiest people of all are those who work there.
In an extraordinarily auspicious coincidence, it turns out being a staff member can put you in the driving seat … of a brand new car.
A hard-hitting audit by the Central Bank (pesky beancounters that they are) revealed 85pc of credit unions allow staff and directors to enter prize draws and in a third of them they won top prizes including, in many cases, cars.
The probe focused initially on the now defunct Rush Credit Union where the records of 15 winners had mysteriously disappeared, and the cars with them.
So it looked at another 276 of the organisations (just to be sure) and found a litany of shortcomings, including draws being performed by staff who were also eligible to enter, and draws being held without supervision (this never happens in the Lotto, where a stern chap from KPMG stands to attention only dying to clobber Nuala Carey with his clipboard for dropping the wrong ball).
For ordinary members, it seems the only way to get a new motor is to borrow for it.
No such thing as a free launch
MAYBE if he’d won a car – or wasn’t a lazy git – Michael Rotondo wouldn’t be in court fighting his parents for chucking him out of the family home he should have left years ago.
Mimicking the Matthew McConaughey film ‘Failure to Launch’, without the gorgeous, talented McConaughey anywhere in sight, the real-life 30-year-old lost his case. His arguments that he and his parents actually love sharing the family home fell on deaf ears and the judge ruled he needed to get a life.
Suffering parents Mark and Christina brought the case after they had offered him money to do the right thing, and resorted to eviction notices to get the big lump off the sofa.
They also suggested he get a job and tentatively recommended he could sell his stereo, power tools and, er, weapons to fund it.
If I had a euro for every time I told my kids to flog the assault rifles and stop asking for cash, I’d be a lot richer too.
In one letter, they beseeched their lazy son: “There are jobs available even for those with a poor work history like you. Get one – you have to work.”
In the movie, McConaughey’s parents find a “fixer” in Sarah Jessica Parker who promptly solves the problem by bedding him (well, you can hardly blame her).
Mr Rotondo may have more difficulty.
Just saying.