People, people who hate people, are the luckiest people . . .

There is no faster way to like somebody than to discover you both hate the same person.

Isn’t that great? When I worked on Wall Street in New York – believe me, there is no shortage of a-holes on Wall Street - we knew this client, I’ll call him Mel, whose head was so far up his own ass, he was so smug, so condescending, so humorless, so opinionated, so arrogant that nobody could stand to be around him. But because he was a client, nobody ever said anything.

One day, after listening to this guy spew his proclamations at a stuffy bar – he didn’t really talk to people as much as he issued statements – I was walking out with a guy I worked with, a nice guy but a guy I didn’t really know well, and then he said;

“I’m sorry, I know Mel is a big client and makes us a lot of money and all, but I just hate that freakin’ guy.”

Oh my lord. At that instant I was the closest I have ever been to suddenly turning gay. (not that there is a thing wrong with it) No lie, I wanted to grab him and hug him for saying that.

How do guys like that Mel guy get and stay so successful? It absolutely amazes me. I picture his co-workers – especially his long-suffering assistant – sobbing themselves to sleep at night and having to point a gun at their heads to get themselves into work. Let alone take his BS day in and day out.

Hollywood has a lot of those guys. Of course, a lot of it has to do with how much money they make someone. The more money you make people, the more they can stand. There was a mega producer named Don Simpson who was the cartoonish epitome of a blowhard, difficult, booze and drug and whore-humping little-weiner Hollywood a-hole. When he died of a drug overdose, you could actually feel a sigh of relief come from the entire city of Los Angeles.

The supermodel Gia was supposedly so horrible that, when she died, the only thing close to nice anybody had to say about her was her agent’s assistant who said;

“When she was alive I spent a lot of time and energy trying to avoid her. It will be a lot easier now that she is dead.”

And Gia wasn't close to as bad as assistant-beater Naomi Campbell. (Sorry Naomi Watts. Thanks Mark Snake)

It's like the old joke when the universally despised financial big shot died, at the funeral, the Rabbi said;

"I did not know this man personally, so could somebody who knew him please say something nice about him? Please? Nobody? Nobody has anything, not one single nice thing to say about this man?"

From the back of the Synagogue, one old codger yells out:

"His brother was worse."

And yet, when you hear these egomaniacs rant, they always have these great, great wonderful friends they’ve known for twenty years. They have a couple they share a villa in Tuscany with every summer. They play golf with the same foursome at the exclusive country club every week. They co-own a yacht with their childhood friend. How is that possible? Who are the people who actually, gulp, like this guy when any sane and decent person automatically despises them?

It happens. Hell, ABC even gave a show to one of them called “The Apprentice.”