T-25

Today, Carl Marks meets his maker. Today, Carl Marks joins the choir invisible, and we will only have an endless succession of pontificating avatars in his stead. I’m not sure we’re any worse off. I’ve been doing some reading about this buyout thing, as I’m sure you have, and here’s one question: where’s the money going? Marks is old. Not as old as me, but he’s well past the midpoint of his biblical threescore and ten. He’s not worth as much in potential avoided expenses as your average twentysomething pizza delivery guy who gets in a fight with his dealer over an eighth of Kona and accidentally on purpose plugs him nine times with an old Glock he stole from his uncle. Now, he’s made upwards of a dozen movies. For most of them, he only had to license image rights and pay his code monkeys to render, and even if you, my onliest listener, never saw one of his films, there are two billion people in China. They did. And there are half a billion in Vietnam. They did. Carl Marks made some money. His family doesn’t need the two million his buyout is going to bring in. So where does it go? I hope he sent it to me. In fact, I hope he put me in his will. Did I mention I loved Koba!? And hey, I take back all that stuff I said about The Long March. I just didn’t understand…