There is nothing dirtier than money.
I’m not speaking proverbially here. This is no tirade about the “root of all evil” or the insatiable hunger pangs of human greed. Money — the bills and coins that you carry around in your wallets (or, if you’re like me, airtight baggies) — is sanitarily reprehensible. Germs flyin’ out the wazoo. So that is why, my dear friends in modern fiction, I implore you: stop rolling around in it.
Last night, on the latest episode of Breaking Bad, a stalwart fellow we know only has Huell satisfied an apparently longstanding desire and took a quick breather atop a monstrous mound of cash stowed away in his client Walter White’s top secret locker unit. Any hot-blooded working stiff can sympathize: you see a ton of dough, you want to just dive right in. Do the ol’ Scrooge McDuck (a reference Huell’s compadre Kuby makes during the scene) and really feel the riches painting your skin. But if you’re, once again, like me, that last phrase probably made you want to vomit.
Take a dollar bill out of your pocket. Not even the crumpled one with the coffee stains and the six-digit phone number scribbled on the back — the most presentable excuse for legal tender you have on you. Take a second to think about where you got it — the bowling alley? The compost depot? The T.G.I. Friday’s? No matter where it was, odds are it has passed through the hands of thousands (and that’s being humble) of other people before you. People who bite their nails, clutch subway poles, groom warthogs professionally, and give massages to particularly swarthy members of organized crime rings. By the time this dollar bill lands in your palm, it has traces of everything from lice to cocaine to livestock pheromones to human blood coating it that inimitable shade of green.
Of course, we live and function in a capitalistic regime. To forego use of tangible currency would be as crazy a notion as not keeping the latest issue of Wild Boar Weekly in the waiting room of your warthog-grooming salon. As such, we must handle money. But that doesn’t mean we have to roll around in it!
No, Huell, you don’t have to sprawl atop Walt’s collection of ill-gotten gains. No, Scrooge McDuck, you don’t have to take daily dips in an ocean of gold coins. No, Demi Moore. You don’t have to cake your bedspread in the treasures of prostitution while you celebrate your newfound fiscal fortitude. Quite frankly, you’re the one I’m most disappointed in.
Take heed, all. Resist the urge to flounder about in tainted notes of trade. It might seem like a cheap thrill, but at the expense of your health. And money can’t buy health.
Well, I guess it can… and if you’ve got enough of it to roll around in, you’re probably pretty set on medical insurance… still. Don’t do it. It’s gross. You should all be ashamed.
I’m talkin’ to you, Demi.
Follow Michael Arbeiter on Twitter @MichaelArbeiter | Follow hollywood.com on Twitter @hollywood_com
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