As the American Idol Season Begins to Close, Contestant Popularity and Keepsakes Heat Up

American Idol contestant and front-runner Adam Lambert got a chance to visit his hometown and high school in San Diego, CA last Friday. Over 7,000 screaming fans turned up at Mount Carmel High School to greet him, including the mayor, radio personalities, cheerleaders, television cameramen and photographers. Also included in the mayham was a sea of cell phones with texting, video and photography capabilities. One lucky, local resident and member (known as “backdraft”) of social network, greedypeople.com was able to get 5 close-up shots and has decided to offer them for sale on the site.

GreedyPeople.com offers a humorous and light-hearted way for average Joes and Janes to make extra cash or outsource unusual needs. From dropping off dry cleaning to peeling grapes in a panda suit (or selling unusual things), GreedyPeople.com provides members with the ability to negotiate cash deals with each other. The site owners recently signed a television production development deal to expand the concept into a reality/game-show and could possibly be on a major network as early as fall of this year.

The site is the brainchild of Chick Ciccarelli, CEO of MediaBuys LLC and managing agency for GreedyPeople.com. “In any economy, there are people who have money and people who need money. This is especially true in a recession. GreedyPeople.com simply brings those people together and allows them to have a little fun while also overcoming difficult circumstances,” says Ciccarelli.

Ads for “Offers Wanted” typically run for 10 days, so the Lambert photos will have a limited time-frame for accepting offers.

Former first lady Imelda Marcos has landed in a list of “greediest people of all time” by Newsweek magazine. Marcos is said to be among the 11 greediest individuals worldwide.

According to Newsweek, Marcos “saw it as her duty to provide ‘some kind of light, a star’ for the impoverished Filipino people over whom her husband presided.“

“So she took $5 million shopping sprees to New York and Rome, reportedly owned the world’s largest collections of gems and 3,000 pairs of shoes,” noted the magazine.

Marcos was also known for holding extravagant parties for foreign visitors during the reign of her husband, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Rounding up the “greediest list” were Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus, Genghis Khan, Pope Sixtus IV, industrialist William H. Vanderbilt, American politician William M. “Boss” Tweed, swindler Charles Ponzi, Wall Street arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, former Tyco International CEO Dennis Kozlowski, and Bernard Madoff.

Evelyn De Morgan’s 1909 painting The Worship of Mammon could be considered a portrait of a great number of today’s celebrities.

Excessive amounts of money, large vehicle collections, dresses that could go for a mortgage down payment, wrist watches that could feed an entire third-world country (well almost) and jewelry that cost as much as a 401K plan.

Celebrity greed has become accepted by our society to the extent that it is now the status quo for a couple to own seven cars, or a mansion with 19 rooms, even if they have no children. It has actually gone so far that if a certain famous person does not associate themselves with this type of lifestyle, they are considered a cheapskate or their career has tanked.

Is it wrong to enjoy life? Is it wrong to be successful at your career and generate exorbitant amounts of money? Is it wrong to buy the best “stuff” for yourself and your loved ones? This article will not even try to make such a statement. Most people would agree that good things in life are a blessing, especially if you work hard for them. But there are always extremes.

In 2006, the attention of all attendees of a wedding was not the bride or groom, not even the band, but the bride’s dress! The dress cost 8.5 million dollars. How about a car that costs 1.25 million dollars? Could somebody justify driving that Bugatti? Or how about a Blancpain’s Apotheosis Temporis wrist watch that was purchased for $489,000? Would you ask the owner for the time? Would they charge you for it? The list can go on and on.

Well-off celebrities, purchasing items they don’t really need, in a world where millions are going to bed hungry or naked. Can you see anything wrong with that picture? This pursuit after unlimited wealth, the worship of “stuff”, is unfortunately the picture we see when we look at many of today’s celebrities. It reflects an inner thirst for never enough, for always more and our desire to live vicariously through their obsessions.

While greed seems to abound everywhere, surely there are some acts that are below the purview of even the greediest of cads? Think again.

Over and over, greedy people abuse the trust of vulnerable people. One popular choice? Defrauding charities that help people in need, and other worthy causes, in order to make off with whopping great wads of cash.

Some of the world’s greediest people willingly lead people to believe that they are collecting for a charity, when in fact they intend to pocket the cash for themselves.

Just this summer, an out-of-work Indiana man was arrested for raising money, supposedly for a local food bank, but instead, kept it for himself.

You might think that defrauding charities would only be the act of a desperate man who was out of work, however, we found a well-to-do architect and two surveyors in the United Kingdom who stole from a charity trust.

An entire family plotted to steal 1.7 million pounds from the United Synagogue (a Jewish charity) in London (possible proof that greed might be hereditary).

Even the wealthiest people can show astounding greed; a Texas insurance heir was convicted of defrauding his own company’s charitable wing and absconded with $1.5 million.

These are just a few samples of greed at its lowest form. Some people really will do just about anything for money.

People who wait in line for days on end in hopes of securing the next new techno gadget inspire the same feeling in me as people who have gotten so grossly obese due to their gluttony that even though they can walk they chose to forgo some much needed exercise and scoot along in their motorized wheelchair.

Both groups perhaps deserve a swift kick in the ass for being so greedy.

However, there is another group that runs a fine line to the geeks and fatties of this world, who could be classified as the super-greedy. These are the kind of folk that would shake down the corpse of a plane crash victim for loose change while the fuselage is still burning. But sometimes their greed tactics backfires on them.

Take for example this news report on June 29 by the Fox affiliate in Dallas. Just minutes before the local Apple store opened on the first day of sales for the new iphone, a woman carrying about $100,000 in cash, and whose greed that was almost palatable was spotted hovering over the long line of X-box withdrawal suffering losers who had been there for days. She was looking to buy her way into the queue. As luck would have it, the person holding the number one spot in line offered up his place. The price tag for this coveted spot, $800.

Looking to buy out the store and double her money on ebay, her greedy hopes were high when the doors opened and she was allowed into the store. Only one problem, in order to insure the stores would have enough phones for everyone who waited, AT&T and Apple implemented a one phone per customer rule. The result, this smug, cash toting, greedy she-devil paid what amounts to $1200 for a glorified Game Boy.

There is something great about seeing greedy people get what’s coming to them!

If you cannot find the humor in that, then you must have been the guy who passed up the cash to stay in line. If she had a soul, I would recommend she put it up for sale on Ebay to cover her losses. Oh yeah, I forgot, she already did and I bought it.

We must be doing something right. GreedyPeople.com has been featured in one, two, three online publications during the last three days! We welcome the new users and thanks to Thrillist, Josh Spear and AdRants for the positive reviews - who can disagree with the gecko - Greed is Good. If you find us in the ethers of the greedy universe or would like to write about GreedyPeople.com feel free to drop a note. On a separate note, the stock market tanked today and we commiserate on your lesser portfolio!

GreedyPeople.com launches an on-demand service site that allows users to buy and sell traditional and non-traditional services while responding to member-issued challenges of, “What would you do for money?”

LOS ANGELES – (August 19, 2008) – Would you wash a stranger’s car in your bikini for $100? How about mow your friend’s lawn in your wife’s wedding dress for $250? What more would you do for an extra $500? GreedyPeople.com wants to know what people would do for money and the answers are an eye-opener.

Gas prices rise steadily and employment rates decline. Everyone seeks to ease the brunt of living costs while finding a way to make extra money. GreedyPeople.com offers a humorous and light-hearted way for average Joes and Janes to make extra cash or outsource unusual needs. From dropping off dry cleaning to peeling grapes in a panda suit, GreedyPeople.com provides users with the ability to negotiate ultimate desires.

The site is the brainchild of Chick Ciccarelli, CEO of MediaBuys LLC and managing agency for GreedyPeople.com. “In any economy, there are people who have money and people who need money. This is especially true in a recession. GreedyPeople.com simply brings those people together and allows them to have a little fun while also overcoming difficult circumstances,” says Ciccarelli.

Traditional service websites often act as provider auction sites for small business outsourcing. GreedyPeople.com is designed to serve the average person with specific requests using one-on-one negotiations with others. “There are many places where you can find a typist, but what if you need something out of the ordinary? What if you need a singing telegram delivered, or you want 50 people to start picketing in a lawful demonstration by Wednesday? GreedyPeople.com is where people go to negotiate deals for normal and not-so-normal services.”

Blend one cheeky service site with a powerful social networking engine, and you have a recipe for laughter. “If you could imagine Elance, Facebook, Craigslist, The Moment of Truth and Comedy Central combined into a consumer-based web environment, you’d have a pretty close idea of what GreedyPeople is all about,” states Kyle Lindley, president of net-ARB.com, whose company will provide arbitration services for any greedy transaction disputes.

Ciccarelli notes that the site isn’t just about the money. Creativity is encouraged, and there are monthly prizes for the Most Outrageous Offer. The user community submits votes, and the site keeps track of those who make the most money as well as send and receive the most offers. A list of the Greediest People on Earth is on public display, too.

Everyone has a price, and the public can discover exactly what that price is while watching the drama and comedy unfold. Even more entertaining is exploring which service piques the interest of even the most conservative thinkers.

While doing strange things to make extra money is hardly a new phenomenon, GreedyPeople.com’s online service site is the first in which people can hawk their proverbial wares. Whether you’re visiting to see what’s on offer, what people will do for money or just interested in finding out exactly how materialistic our society has become, GreedyPeople.com is the kind of website you can’t keep your eyes off.

While you’re there, don’t forget to “Make Me An Offer”.

• • •

The programming has been completed. The system has been tested–up, down, back, forth and sideways. GreedyPeople.com is pretty much ready to go. With a minimal amount of tweaks left, we’re finally going to begin the campaign to search for the greediest people on the planet. But, we’re going to do it in a somewhat quiet fashion.

Why? We want to gauge the reaction slowly so that we can track visitors clicks throughout the site to learn what interests them the most. We will however send out the press release next week, begin a very light campaign in Facebook, Google, Yahoo and other areas just to see what happens.