Salvage Heart

A brief review in the Oregonian today, of Edward Ugel's Money for Nothing: One Man's Journey Through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions. Ugel will be back in Portland tomorrow evening for a 7:30 p.m. reading at Powell's, just down the street from where he first got hooked on gambling himself: the video poker machines at Claudia's, a sports bar on S.E. Hawthorne.

I first heard about this on "This American Life" last spring I think, and was struck by the story, elaborated upon here, of companies that basically buyout lottery winnings. In short, the result is a good book, very entertaining, though a little light at times on number details (which could owe to certain legalities that also necessitated the changing of most names).


The book title also reminds me of one of John Cusack's underappreciated works: Money for Nothing, which I had forgotten was based on a Mark Bowden article. This is a similar unemployed dockworker oeuvre that echoes throughout season two of HBO's "The Wire." Does Cusack come across as a more desperate loser than Pablo Schreiber, a.k.a. Nick Sobotka? Hard to say. Is Cusack girl Debi Mazar hotter than Nick's Aimee (Kristin Proctor)? I don't know...both were worth looking up the names on though.

Cusack was recently quoted as saying that he'd made ten good movies, and everyone knows which ones they are. Was Money for Nothing? Probably. Is his new one, with the Martian? Uh....

Labels: books, Edward Ugel, John Cusack, Money for Nothing, Oregonian, Powell's, The Wire