{"id":94745,"date":"2026-02-15T16:13:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T00:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=94745"},"modified":"2026-02-15T16:13:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T00:13:45","slug":"the-american-dream-is-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2026\/02\/15\/the-american-dream-is-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"The American Dream is Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><em>\u201cI got an exclusive campaign for Gucci when <strong>Tom Ford<br \/>\n<\/strong>was running it.&nbsp; I flew to Italy for the runway show.&nbsp; He puts<br \/>\nme in a pink <strong>Speedo<\/strong>.&nbsp; I know exactly how much I weighed:<br \/>\n178 pounds.&nbsp; He was like, \u2018He\u2019s too fat,\u2019 and I got fired.\u201d&nbsp;<\/em><\/span><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><em><br \/>\n\u2013 <\/em><span style=\"font-family: Verdana;\"><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>Ashton Kutcher<\/strong>.&nbsp; As luck would have it, I\u2019m in Europe, roughly 170 pounds<br \/>\nand about to put on my pink <em>Speedo<\/em>!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a small world after all, as the song says.&nbsp; This was driven home during my endless overseas excursions.&nbsp; Last week, I was in a remote area of Bulgaria \u2013 a country made up of nothing but remote areas.&nbsp; Being the capitalist pig I am, I ordered dinner to be delivered (I can only struggle to pronounce letters shaped like the number \u201c3\u201d for so long).&nbsp; I got a call that my food was downstairs.&nbsp; The delivery guy explained that he realized my phone number was from the United States because he had been there.&nbsp; \u201cWhere?\u201d I asked.&nbsp; Massachusetts.&nbsp; I tell him I\u2019m from Massachusetts.&nbsp; Turns out he spent the summer in Provincetown \u2013 working in places like <strong><em>Bayside Betsy\u2019s <\/em><\/strong>and the <strong><em>Governor Bradford Inn<\/em><\/strong>.&nbsp; \u201cBy working there for three months, I could pay for a year of college and living expenses here.\u201d&nbsp; <strong>Big Daddy Masters <\/strong>used to tell me how he\u2019d work all summer to pay for a year at <strong><em>Boston University<\/em><\/strong>.&nbsp; It\u2019s nice to know the <em>American Dream <\/em>is still alive&#8230;as long as you don\u2019t live in America!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI got an exclusive campaign for Gucci when Tom Ford was running it.&nbsp; I flew to Italy for the runway show.&nbsp; He puts me in a pink Speedo.&nbsp; I know exactly how much I weighed: 178 pounds.&nbsp; He was like, \u2018He\u2019s too fat,\u2019 and I got fired.\u201d&nbsp; \u2013 Ashton Kutcher.&nbsp; As luck would have it,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94745"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94754,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94745\/revisions\/94754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}