The Fortune Cookie (1966)

Why are we so depressed and discouraged?

Do me a favor, if you are at home take a look around your kitchen and pantry. If you are at work, poke around in the eating area or your cubicle. Now, wherever you are, look at the boxes, packages, or bags of food. How many of them are advertizing a contest? I would bet you could find at least one or two. Did you buy that food because of the chance to win a contest? I would probably say no.

How many contests happen all around us? How many of your favorite grocery products, fast food restaurants, coffee stops, banks, or other customer based business have a contest going on right now? I would say a lot of them. How many have contests that you don’t even know about? Probably many more than you would think.

I took a new box of cereal down from the cabinet this morning and opened the box. As I was getting ready to pour the cereal, I saw words printed on the inside of the box that said “Sorry. You are not a winner”. My first thought was “What didn’t I win?”. I had to look on the outside of the box to see what I had not won. I saw on the front of the box that there was a contest for winning a vacation trip to some location. I hadn’t even noticed the contest when I bought the box. I know that my kids didn’t either because they didn’t say anything. Oh well, I didn’t win again. No surprise there.

I later went to work. For a snack I grabbed a candy bar from the vending machine. I also got a popular brand of a soda drink from the next vending machine. I opened the wrapper of my pre-lunch candy bar only to see the words “Sorry. Not a winner. Try again!”. Ok. So this morning I was told that I am not a winner. Now I didn’t win on whatever this contest was for. (I saw that the contest was for winning another trip. This time to some sports location.)

Looking at my soda can, I saw that there was a contest on there was well. Just go online and enter a code for a chance to win a car and other “great” prizes. I admit that I have gone to many of these “enter online” sites and inputted the code. Needless to say, I have never won. “Sorry. Try again!”. I just can’t win.

I like video games. I, like many other gamers out there, are eagerly anticipating the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Did you know that they have an online contest regarding that too? If you pre-ordered your copy, you have a code that you can enter at a website twice a day for a chance to win some prizes. I have been entering my code either once or twice a day, depending on when time allows and I remember to do it. I have yet to win anything, or know anyone who has won through this site.

McDonald’s is once again running their infamous yearly run of the Monopoly game, which offers a grand prize of a million dollars. (Seriously? That’s all McDonald’s can afford?). Select items offer the game pieces. You get two game pieces at a time. The trend seems to be one game piece is something like “Baltic Avenue” and the other one is “You won a small french fry”. I learned quickly that there is no reason to keep the “Baltic Avenue”-like game pieces. If you win something, it will probably just say “You won a (whatever prize)!”. I say probably because in the fifteen years or more of going to McDonald’s and occasionally getting the game piece, I have never won anything bigger than a quarter pounder.

Remember several years ago when it turned out that the marketing company that put out all the winning game pieces to the McDonald’s monopoly game had embezzled the winning pieces? Yeah. Some guy gave them to his friends and relatives and he shared in the prizes. He was caught, but doesn’t it just make you feel like you REALLY never had a chance all of those times when you were at McDonald’s and thought “this is it, I am going to win”.

My bank had a promotion going on for awhile; “We cover the bill!” I never read too much about it, but it was on their website, and the ATMs. The bank would randomly select people who had signed up for the promotion somehow and the bank would pay for a random purchase where the customer’s ATM card was used. Before reading some of the details, I initially thought that since I was already a good standing customer, that I was already entered. Nope. Not only do you have to be a customer, you have to sign up again, just in case the bank didn’t know who I was the first time, or knew that I already use my ATM card for everything from buying a bottle of water to paying my utility bills. I never got anything covered by the bank, nor did I ever heard of anyone winning that.

Then there is the biggest contest of all, the state lottery. The chance to win millions of dollars. The amount of money offers so many things such as, a new house, car, vacations, financial security, and most all, your freedom. You ever think about the lottery like that?

Your freedom. With that kind of money, you don’t have to work. You can do what you want, when you want, for the most part. You don’t have to answer to a boss. You don’t have to worry about an alarm clock or getting to work on time. You are free to buy the house you want and where you want it. You are free to build a race track on your land and drive your Ferrari like you are Mario Andretti. And how do you win millions in the lottery? All you have to do is pick six numbers. That’s it. Sounds easy enough. Pick the right six numbers that will come up, and you win your freedom.

(On a side note, I don’t think many people realize how much money is involved in the lottery. As an example; the lottery right now is about six million dollars. Doesn’t seem like a lot does it? But put it this way. Say you have six million and you are conservative with your money. You buy a nice house for $500,000. Now you have no house payment for the rest of your life. Just the standard utility bills. You have 5.5 million left. If you spent $100,000 a year you could live like that for 55 years on the remaining money you have left. Now if you actually put that money into a savings account. Who knows, it could last 70 years. That is a life time of security.)

As a kid, my single working mother would come home from work and then she would start “working” the lottery numbers. She had wheels with numbers and pages and pages of past lottery numbers. She had books and charts and numbers highlighted. You know what happened with all those pages? They eventually became the paper that we used to start our fireplace on cold nights. I think you can guess, but mom never won the lottery. She eventually got frustrated, and dreams crushed.

I started playing the lottery when I turned 18. I played every now and then, picking numbers based on a “vibe”. When I got older, I played numbers based on numbers that I thought had some meaning in my life, like birth dates of loved ones, etc. I was close, but never won even a free ticket or a dollar.

Recently I downloaded some lottery software for my state lottery. This was it! I was going to get serious now. I was taking it to the next level, a level way beyond my mom could have ever imagined. Computer software from the 21st century, crunching numbers on a dual processor computer that is a million times faster than hand writing numbers and using a number wheel.

The program downloaded all the past winning numbers and then analyzed the numbers. It gave me some numbers that said were the “hot numbers”. It gave me some that said “These numbers are due to come up”. This was it. I was going to crack the lottery. I was going to win! I went to my local convenience store and bought my tickets. I was going to win this time. Freedom was coming for me!

To make these numbers even more convincing was that my wife got a fortune cookie that day. The fortune said something to the effect of “Great financial success is coming your way”. On the back it gave her “lucky numbers”. The numbers on that fortune cookie were almos identical to the numbers that software had spit out. It was fate! I was bound to win. Nothing could stop us.

The lottery day came. I can never remember what TV channel the lottery drawing is on, so I just got onto the website after 7:59pm. It was 8:03pm. I got the lottery tickets out of my wallet. They still hadn’t posted the numbers on the site. I refreshed the page a couple times. Still nothing. I went into the kitchen and got a snack. While I was in the kitchen, I thought about my reaction should we win. Would I be cool? Would I just jump up and down like a little kid at Christmas? Would I cry? I thought about all things I could provide for my family. My boys could go to private schools. They could have their pick of colleges. The future would be wide open. We could pay off our house and even do some remodeling. I could get that perfect 1966 Chevelle SS I saw listed on ebay which was selling for $40,000. As much as I like my job, I still have a lot of stress there. I could quit and persue my dream of writing. Aww…life would open up for us.

I came back into my bedroom a few minutes later and refreshed the webpage again. I checked my numbers….and….

Not even close. I did not even win a $1.

I did better when I was guessing or had a “vibe”. At least then my numbers were a lot closer. The numbers I had with the software weren’t even close.

Contests are happening all around us, everyday. I pay little to no attention to these contests unless they jump out and tell me how I haven’t won, and to “try again”. I don’t buy my products based on the contests they offer on the box. I see no one at the stores filling out the entry forms. I wonder if the marketing divisions of these companies see sales and revenue go up when they offer these promotions. How many people actually buy the box of cereal because of the chance to win a trip to “Sea World”?

I saw a contest the other day on TV. You enter a contest to win five quick-picks lottery tickets. So let me get this straight? I am entering a contest so that I can enter another contest? Holy cow! The odds of winning the lottery are already like 1.5 million to one. And then my chances of winning the quick pick lottery tickets could be hundreds of thousands to one. My head hurts with trying to figure out the odds of winning the lottery on that one.

By the end of any given day, I have been told that I am not a winner at least once or twice. I have never won anything from any promotion or contest of a marketing nature. I have never won the lottery. After years of “try again” and “not a winner”, I am thoroughly sour when it comes to contests such as these.

In the theory of six-degrees of separation, I should at least know someone, or know someone, who knows someone, who heard about this guy who is the neighbor of a friend who won “that” contest or the lottery. I have heard of people winning, but only because of the official news articles or TV. It just seems like I would have heard about these people through the grapevine by now. But, no. Maybe its all a big lie.

In the end, I am only that much more frustrated about not winning anything. I think that you can only enter so many contests, play the lottery so many times, be told “Sorry. You are not a winner” before you finally get beat down, discouraged and start to believe that you are not a winner. You finally come to the conclusion “I will never win”.

But then, after you say that out loud, people say “You shouldn’t think like that. How can you think like that?” Gee, I wonder why. Do you have to wonder why people are depressed? I think that contests and sweepstakes are a big reason why people are negative and discouraged about winning and life. A large portion of the population dreams of winning, never does win and is let down, and then is told repeatedly “you are not a winner”. Sounds like psychological conditioning to me.

That’s all for my rant. It is time to take my Prozac and pick some more lottery numbers.

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BILLY WILDER’S The Fortune Cookie (1966)

The Fortune Cookie $6.98 Jack Lemmon and Oscar-winning Walter Matthau star in Billy Wilder's hilarious, cynical fable about a TV cameraman who is injured while shooting a football game and his brother-in-law, a conniving lawyer with a plan to collect $1 million in insurance money. With Ron Rich, Cliff Osmond, Judi West. 126 min. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital mono, French Dolby Digital mono; Sub...

The Billy Wilder DVD Collection (The Apartment / Avanti! / The Fortune Cookie / Irma la Douce / Kiss Me Stupid / One Two Three / The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes / Some Like It Hot / Witness for the Prosecution) $58.99 Features include: •MPAA Rating: PG-13•Format: DVD•Runtime: 1136 minutes...

FORTUNE COOKIE (ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK LP, 1966) $15.99 RARE 1966 ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK LP FOR THE CULT COMEDY WITH MUSIC COMPOSED BY ANDRE PREVIN (MONAURAL SOUND). FILM STARRED JACK LEMMON, WALTER MATTHAU, JUDI WEST, CLIFF OSMOND, RON RICH; DIRECTOR BILLY WILDER. A GREAT GALLERY OF BW PHOTOS FROM THE FILM ON THE BACK COVER!...