Everyone in the pool

You cannot win if you do not play.

As a former lottery winner—you heard me—I know the thrill of realizing you've won. And while my winnings were enough to get me into a new 1986 Toyota Supra, they weren't quite enough to make the kind of life-changing moves a bigger jackpot would've allowed.

I'm hoping that all changes tonight.

Tonight's Powerball drawing is up to $460 million as of this writing, and will probably go higher as it gets closer to it.

Now, as anyone who knows me will tell you, the very last thing I'd ever describe myself as is a team player. But for tonight at least, I'm going to be the best team player ever.

The group of mostly fabulous people I work with—you know who you are—and myself have a lottery pool going for tonight's drawing. It was a $4 buy in, and we managed to pony up enough to buy 63 tickets.

The team player part? I'm rooting for the team. In fact, I may be its biggest cheerleader.

As we all spend the afternoon sitting around contemplating what we'll do with our winnings, I'd like to say it's been great working with all of you. I know there are a few responsible, forward thinking individuals who will, in a fit of common sense and an eye towards the future, squirrel their winnings away in a low interest yielding account somewhere, while they continue to do God's work selling luxury automobiles to people with a FICO score of 750 or higher.

As for me, Harvard University School of Engineering has yet to create a device able to measure exactly how fast I'd be out of here.

So from me to the team, good luck to all of us.

And if for some reason we don't win, the MegaMillions drawing is Friday.

Tired

A lot of people would say it's manipulative of me to post a picture of a cute puppy, who's obviously so tired it can't keep its eyes open.

I agree. It would be if the picture had nothing to do with my post, which fortunately it does.

Because that's how tired (and cute) I feel tonight.

For whatever reason, I haven't slept well the past week. A couple hours at a time at most, up for an hour, then a couple more. That kind of interrupted sleep pattern, together with Friends reruns at 3:30 in the morning takes a toll. And tonight I'm paying it.

So I'm going to do something I haven't done in a very long time ("Put up an interesting post!" I heard that). I'm going to bed early.

I start a new gig tomorrow, and I want to be refreshed and ready to tackle a couple things: the assignments waiting for me, and scoping out new sushi places for lunch. Not necessarily in that order.

Anyway, as this Sunday night winds down - at least for me - let me wish you what I wish for myself: A great nights' sleep, sweet dreams and a cool breeze to carry you away on.

I'll save Scarlett Johansson and the winning lottery ticket for another post.

Winning

I don't know whether I have good luck or bad luck. As a rule, I feel like I'm pretty lucky in life. Things seem to go more or less my way when I need them to, and I never seem to want for too much. God knows I'm not going hungry.

Still, I do have my own wing at the Venetian in Vegas, so good luck clearly isn't always riding shotgun.

But every once in awhile, Lady Luck doesn't have a date for the night and decides to plant a big wet one on me.

For example, the reason I joke so much about becoming a lotto winner as a profession is because I've actually been one. Back when the state lottery was first introduced - when they only had scratcher tickets - on the third day they were out I won $5000 with a ticket similar to the one above. My wife-to-be was with me when I bought a ticket in the little market between the towers at Santa Monica Shores, where I lived at the time. After I'd scratched off two $5000 squares, I remember turning to her and saying "How funny would it be if there were a third one under here?"

Which to our unbridled surprise there was.

My feeling was since it was the introduction, they top-loaded the scratcher tickets with winning ones. Fine by me. I wound up using the money to buy my 1986 Toyota Supra (the first half of the year model, before they ruined it by rounding out all the edges).

Years ago on channel 9 in L.A. there was a local show called The Dick Curtis Show, which everyone always confused with The Lloyd Thaxton Show (feel free to look up both of them). Anyway, the show aired live, and one afternoon they had one of those "...and the fourth caller wins a months supply of frozen pizza!"

Guess who was the fourth caller?

I remember they sent a certificate for ten frozen pizzas, which we had to pick up from the market. It was as exciting as it was challenging, because we didn't have a freezer nearly big enough for ten frozen pizzas. But we had hungry neighbors and I'm a giver, so we made it work.

Just this past week, I won something I desperately needed: a luxury car wash. I take my car to Rossmoor Car Wash in Los Alamitos for two reasons. They do a great job, and it's owned by good friends of mine. Which is why I thought winning their Facebook question of the week contest was a total fix.

Come to find out they had nothing to do with it. It's entirely overseen by their manager, who also selects the names randomly from what I can only assume is an empty carnuba wax container.

So I claimed my prize yesterday. Just my luck, as I was driving home it started to drizzle.

Oh well. Can't win 'em all.

Portlandia

I haven't been to Portland in a long time. Somewhere around nine years. And I miss it.

The last time I was there, I lived for three weeks at the Hotel Lucia downtown while I was shooting a commercial for an agency called Perceive that no longer exists (it barely existed when it did). Because we were also editing up there, I had plenty of time to explore the city. If you've ever been there, you already know it's a good walking town.

Alan Otto, my friend (currently) and creative director (at the time) would meet in the lobby every morning. Then we'd pick a direction and start walking for as long as we could before we had to be at the shoot or the edit. One morning we walked to the 97-year old Portland Luggage Company where I picked up a mid-size Boyt suitcase to complete my set and had it shipped home.

I love luggage stores. Whole other post.

Another great thing is that all of Oregon is a Powerball state. And for someone like me who's inclined to play the lottery since I won $5,000 in it once (yes I did), it was fun to play in a multi-state draw where we're talking real retirement money.

By the way, the hotel you see here isn't the Lucia. It's the Benson, just a block and a half up the street. It's one of the grand old hotels you run into, a 100-years old - the one where presidents, foreign dignitaries and celebrities stay when they come to town. In fact when we were shooting up there, at three in the morning Nic Cage was playing piano and singing to Lisa Marie Presley in the lobby.

Anyway, I imagine it'll be somewhat of a let down for them, but the Benson is where I'll be staying when I return to Portland in May. I'm looking forward to it because it's Portland, but also because the reason I'm going is for a gathering to celebrate my dear friend Paul Decker's life.

The good news is I already know what suitcase I'm taking with me.