Last night I was blown away by one of the most surprisingly wonderful motion pictures. Ghost Town looked like a light and funny romp and I love Greg Kinnear and Tea Leoni so I bought my ticket and salted my popcorn.

There were only about 20 people in the theater on a Tuesday night so I had the 3rd row all to myself and I settled in to enjoy a comedy. I don't usually see comedy films in theaters, preferring to see sci-fi or special effects type films that have BIG SCREEN action. Comedies usually get viewed on cable or DVD.

I laughed and laughed and snorted and squealed like a braying donkey (so much so that people leaving the theater took the time to tell me I had a "great laugh." Ghost Town is brilliant written and so well acted by the lead Ricky Gervais I couldn't believe it hasn't gotten more press. Ah, well, maybe the movie elites were busy with a Britney story.

Creative, fresh, funny and poignant. Gervais plays perhaps the least empathetic human in New York, a dentist who does his work and goes home to be alone. While under anesthesia for a colonoscopy he "dies for 7 minutes" and gains the ability to see, hear and talk to dead people.

NOTE: The Saturday Night Live actress Kristen Wiig who is known for her bizarre interrupting "better than you" routines, and played the producer in Knocked Up, is BRILLIANT as the surgeon who has to reveal to the paranoid Gervais that he died on the table. Her obfuscating dialogue with Gervais is nothing short of comedy dynamite and should be studied by anyone who wants to be funny.

As funny as the movie was I was not prepared for the huge emotional arc that the snarky dentist would go through as he began to see the plight of the dead people who asked him to help them get closure and move on to wherever movie ghosts go.

Gervais had so convinced me of his hard boiled meanness I was nearly blown away as he started to see what was really going on around him.

I have to admit that this film made me look at my own selfishness and self absorption. As I've been mulling over my options about where to take this next phase of my life - I've gotten so wrapped up in ME that I forgot that there are a lot of other people on the planet too.

When the dentist's partner sits him down and asks him how being such a total prick is working out for him - and how long he plans to continue with it - it hit me in the chest.

With all the lame and awful films asking for my $10 (and so many depressing brutal films made for twentysomethings) I wanted to find the writer, director, and producer as well as the Hollywood exec who let this film be produced and thank them all.

Ghost Town gave me laughter that released tons of endorphins, entertained me, and had the impact of a great inspirational speech - and it only cost $10.

Last night I leaked out to some friends on my personal email list as well as my Twitter Followers that I had decided to sell my Internet marketing business. (My Tweet Peeps get secret messages!)

Here is the link for more information about this very unique (1 buyer only) opportunity.

A couple of people emailed me and asked what I was going to do if I quit doing online marketing. To clarify, I'm NOT going to stop making money online. I am simply selling off the part of my business that you probably know me for, creating products for Internet marketers.

This blog will stop posting Internet marketing related articles - and transition to the stuff I really want to be doing - creating videos, satire, music, opinion and commentary - and quite probably an Internet radio show.

I LOVE Internet marketing - but as I mention in the Internet Marketing Business for Sale page - I'm just no longer really turned on by creating stuff for our market.

A long time ago - back in the Blogburner/Blog & Ping days, people used to say - "DUDE! Why are you selling this technology and methodology? If you would simply DO the strategy yourself you'd make a pile of cash!"

So, my plan is to apply my mad skills to getting paid for the stuff I really enjoy doing.

I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts for me - nice words - advice - or head's up opportunities below. If you know someone who loves Internet marketing and wants to be in this business to help people make money online - please let them know about the opportunity?

No matter where I go - I always seem to end up in Breckenridge Colorado. Perhaps it is because 10 years or so ago I first came here with Rachael, my daughter; me to learn to ski - Rachael to learn to snowboard.

We both learned to shred the mountains. Funny but I still remember how scary the thought of a "ski mountain" seemed to me. Without ever having done it - I had visions of being on a vertical icy cliff with my feet strapped to slick sticks and God Forbid, no way to stop - except a tree or worse!

It's late September, 2 days from Fall (my father's birthday September 23d - the Atumnul Equinox.) The aspen trees are turing brilliant gold, the afternoon rains have watered the trees and brilliant color paints the majesty of the Rocky Mountains in every direction into postcards that never quite capture what the human eye sees so easily.

The night after I sold the house I stayed in a little suites hotel near the Denver Tech Center, sore and achie from lifting furniture and weird stuff through the yard sale, Craigslist and donations to friends family and charity of my sticks and bricks.

The next night - I stayed up in Grand Lake - pulling in the serenity of the 275 foot deep dark green and blue of the largest natural lake in Colorado. The native indians called it Spirit Lake but in that flat caucasion way someone came along and named it Grand - as if that were an improvement. Trust me, if you go there, you'll feel the spirit of the place.

In scenes from Kubrick's "The Shining" fall preparations were underway to pack things away. See, Grand Lake is pretty much a summer destination. It is also the Western entrance to the Rocky Mountain National Forest and home to winter sports primarily snow machine, snow mobile. Sarah Palin's First Dude would be right at home here. And, if you go straight East from here you could evenentually end up in Loveland Colorado and hang out with Joel Comm!

The next night I dragged my still sore carcass to the promised land, ie: Hot Sulpher Springs. Yes, all my dreams came true (well, there were not bikini clad hot girls) as 24 pools of natural hot sulpher water awaited my achie breaky body. Tucked into the hillside are these truly cozy little pots of water growing progressively hotter as you ascend (that means go up higher) the mountain.

This place has been used for such hedonistic soaking since 1850 as the pictures in the lobby attested to. I'll try to fish out some photos of the place and post them here.

Yesterday I would my way through Kremmling (think Moose) and down Hiway 9 to Breckenridge.

Can you interrupt your life for a moment - and imagine what it's like to sit here in this Starbucks (of course) and consider what to do with the next phase of your life? You are 53 years old, single, daughter grown, and you make you money doing niche Internet marketing for which you can literally be anywhere on the planet with link to the web.

You have already fulfilled you dream gigs multiple times. Professional rock musician (guitar, bass, vocals) for 10 years, started and run several businesses, gone to seminar and been the pastor of a church, led men's discipleship groups, toured Internationally as a way-overpaid professional motivational humorist, stayed in the finest hotels, met world leaders, and finally burned out completely on travel.

You figured out how to make money online - have armloads of cool connections with some of the smartest people in the business and have a kind and smart flock of readers and followers (yes, I'm actually kissing your ass right this moment - dig it!) and can make money by sending an email nearly at will to a variety of niche market lists. I'm not really bragging, I'm grateful. I got nothing to sell ya, this is kind of just where I'm at right now.

Here's the question…

What do you want to do with the rest of your life?

Your comments, ideas, and thoughts here below would be greatly appreciated - as much for me as for you to explore your own options if all those nasty boundaries and boat anchors were released - it just might happen…

Sorry I haven't been around much the last two weeks. It's been a crazy time for me - as I've bounced all over the globe about where to live. I'm not going to Budapest, Costa Rica, or Disneyland, (at least not today), in fact I'm not really going to GO anywhere.

It's hard to describe the unusualness of having absolutely no requirements or responsibilities personally or professionally. Freedom has been one of my most important life values and apparently I've pursued it to the max.

So today I'm moving out of the house I've sold and putting my shizzle into storage. I made four piles, throw-away, charity, storage, and suitcase. I named the small pile "suitcase" as that is what I'll put in the truck and take with me on my road trip.

Tomorrow I believe I'm going to head up to Grand Lake near the Colorado National Forest and spend some time just breathing and relaxing. Perhaps if I stop chasing shiny stuff - the real deal will emerge in the silence?

Thanks for your support and for being such an important part of my cyberlife. I have some very important ideas, articles, videos, and more for you, coming really soon.

Watching the footedge come in from the news about the hurricane about to hit Galveston tonight I takes me for a little ride down memory lane.

I was a professional musician in Texas in my 20's and played at the Balinese Club, as well as several other clubs along the Gulf coast as well as the Clear Lake Hilton. The Balinese is a classic party crib, dating back to the days when Houston based ZZ Top used to play there. (They were originally the Moving Sidewalks before adopting the name that would follow them into fame.

"Down at the Balinese" written by ZZ Top actually made it on to one of their early albums.

When we were playing at the Clear Lake Hilton Hurricane Alicia, August 18, 1983 hit the area nearly destroying the hotel on a Sunday - while our equipment remained setup on the stage in the club there. I never saw the original aftermath, but our drummer went down and was shocked to see that everything except out guitars (which we never left onstage) were pushed off the stage and slammed into the bar.

The big plate glass windows that surrounded the club overlooking the harbor and bay had been blown out and everything was totally soaked. Kenny's drums were custom made from some exotic wood - now baked in the Texas sun, warped and ruined.

Time To Stop Rebuilding in Hurricane Zones

Am I the only person who watches hurricanes and floods repeatedly cause billions of dollars of damage and mega-billions more in State and Federal dollars to protect and rebuild over and over - wonder why we haven't called a "time out" and sought a better solution to this madness?

At what point do you stop handing band aids and aspirin to a guy who keeps hitting himself in the head with a hammer? 14 hurricanes have slammed into Galveston with winds above 111 mps in the last 100 years.

After Katrina hammered the ramshackle trash town that was New Orleans the damage was so bad that more than one voice was heard to say that rebuilding in such a dangerous place, that will surely be hit again, was just a bad idea and that the city should be disbanded or rebuilt somewhere else.

Sentimental drunks, Richard Simmons, plastic bead manufacturers, and Girls Gone Wild went wild to protest - claiming that "Bourbon Street Must be Rebuilt!"

Have you ever BEEN to New Orleans? Seriously one of the filthiest stinkiest towns in the United States. Crime has always been off the chart, poverty ridden and drug addled - New Orleans sits on Interstate 10 as a nice layover for illegals, drug dealers, and criminals of all sorts.

Roping the Big Easy off and allowing it return to what it has always naturally been would be a great idea. No, not the biggest slave retail outlet in the world in the 1800's. Imagine the beauty of the bayou as a giant wildlife refuge (read: swamp) where gators, neutra rats, snakes, mosquitos and other forms of flora and fauna that battle humans daily to flourish without human intervention.

Enviromentalist extremists - are you listening?

In fact this would be a great place for environmentalists to live. Maybe the 16 caribou who live in Anwar could be introduced to this wildlife wonderland?

And just think about what a great contribution the bartenders, oyster shuckers, and zydeco musicians could make if they were dispersed across America.

We could also figure out a way to create "Cajun Land" in Disney World! All that would need to be done is to stretch the rules a bit to allow women to bare their breasts for plastic beads.

And who better than Disney to implement a nice system to hose down the vomit and urine that the locals and guests heave into the French Quarter each night. Maybe there is even an alternate fuel to be found in all that seafood and alcohol human Mardi Gras bi-product.

Finally - once we stop shoring up the people who "choose to stay" in the path of the big storm - they will die off, and cease to reproduce.

Residents in Galveston who refused to leave in the face of imminent life threatening destruction, were told to write their social security number on their arm! This is a giant CLUE PEOPLE!

Fulfilling the Darwinian survival of the fittest principal, which if true we are thwarting big time now, and a smarter human will advance - who will NOT choose to build their homes and businesses in the path of certain destruction.

In my humble, but accurate opinion,

Rick Butts

Tuesday September 16th the sale on my house closes - and so I have to be OUT of my little hideout cave here in Denver on Monday.

I've vacillated (don't need glasses) all over the map, the glove even, about where to move. My ticket to Budapest got cancelled because 1800FlyEurope.com said they never got my fax confirmation that I knew it was a 1-way fare. Otherwise I would be getting on that plane to Munich/Budapest tomorrow!

A trip to the mountains here had me nearly leasing a cool bungalow in the mountains - then Nico Pisani of the Costa Rica Travel Channel invited me to come down and check out that little slice of paradise - and I said SURE.

(Her name is May - and apparently Nico has hypnotic powers (see the Costa Rica Travel Video this image came from).

NOTE: Don't count on me going anywhere until they shut the door on the plane with Me and Little Dog inside!

The last two nights I have been looking at Craigslist listings for houses along Puget Sound up around Olympia Washington. My friend Kirt Christensen lives up in Spokane. I had a speaking/trainng engagement up on the Olympia Peninsula (the only North American Rainforest is there) and it was just an amazing place.

If you have a crib up there - or little cabin - or sturdy tent in the Seattle Vancouver area, please let me know?

Today I'm posting my stuff on Craigslist.  Man, if you ever get lonely - start putting stuff on craigslist and you'll start meeting people locally - stat. (And you have something in common - you both like the same stuff!).

I'm trying to decide whether it is worth it to put some of my Internet marketing DVDs up for sale?

The most important thing I've learned from this strange confusing time - is that you don't really have to make decisions along the lines of what the world thinks. Everyone is at my throat asking me, or telling me what to do, but all I REALLY have to do is move OUT of this place.

Not really by choice or by goal setting - I'm trying to live out the big phrase from my book The Safari Chronicles "The Greatest Adventure is the REST of Your Life."

All comments, encouragement, suggestions, invitations, are welcome below!

What a surprise!

I was in Barnes and Noble looking for a book for my daughter Rachael. Surfing around in the motivation, inspiration area, I was wanting to find something that would be helpful to her as she was going through kind of a challenging time in her life.

Learning from the Heart by Daniel Gottlieb caught my eye because of the clean and attractive cover. It reminded me of the magazine look of Real Simple Magazine. It's a small and compact read, too, which is good because I am reluctant to pick out War and Peace for anyone in their 20's!

But, when I began to read bits of the book I was instantly hooked by the writer's style.

Rachael enjoyed the book (YEAH!) and I kinda forgot about it.

Then one day a week ago - she handed me the book, open to a page, and asked me to read a few paragraphs. This doesn't happen very often, so I jumped on it and began to read.

What I read was so compelling for my relationship with my daughter - and the helpful idea was delivered in the fewest possible words (and a story, my favorite!)

The story was about a couple who brought their son into Gottleib's therapist office to deal with his sullen and withdrawn behavior. What was revealed was how the unhappiness of the mom and dad was actually driving the sons behavior.

What the son wanted, needed, was for the parents, especially the father, to find some happiness in his own life. Dad's focus on the son was ignoring his own needs, and his terrible relationship with his wife, the weight of it all was a giant burden on his son.

I've said this in a clumsy way, but I think you get the idea. The author, Daniel Gottlieb, did a tremendous job of getting this idea across. Every short little vignette in this book is powerful, enlightening and insightful.

I'm not usually the big "touchy feely" book type guy - partly because I prefer how-to steps.

I really recommend this book - and actually ended up writing this review as a result of logging on to Amazon to buy a copy for my step-mother, who is dealing with losing my father in February and her Mother in August of this year.

Rick

Here's my secret weapon for getting the most out of the powerful social networking site Squidoo - I just don't do any of it myself!

Seriously, who has time to be an expert at EVERYTHING.

Some things - like this - are just such a terrific time saver - brain saver - and money maker. These folks are total experts, their service is incredibly affordable - and gets results! Say no more…

So I'm sitting in the farthest chair from the stage in the back of one of those big airwall ballrooms at some convention for dentists. Since I gave the same motivational keynote speech, almost word for word, at every booking - I rarely took the time to even find who the name of the meeting, usually.

But today I'm bored out of my gourd enough to leave the hotel room and go see what is going on in the conference, a couple hours before I give the closing keynote for that day.

In that subtle way life has of humbling me an my sizeable ego - I got a giant a-ha from the opening line of a dental professional - whom I'm willing to bet will be an awful speaker even before I heard him

See, I'm a kind of a weird collector of pithy phrases, killer quotes, and clever verbiage. For some unknown I"ve been able to capture the spoken word and remember it my entire life - verbatim - just like I have always been able to do with pop music lyrics and later, good lines from films I"ve seen.

I won't make you wait any longer - cause this one is really important for marketers (and the entire human race, in my humble, but accurate opinion) so listen up.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "always remember that at the end of every tooth - is a human being."

That's it.

Do you get it?

Your market, your customer, regardless of how tightly you've niched your traffic and your offer - are people.

They have hopes, dreams, afflictions, pain, sorrow, hopes, values, and are in the middle of a very human day with 1000 other things going on when they encounter your ad, blog post, adwords ad, YouTube video or article.

If you can remember this one single idea as you craft your business you will be light years ahead of the people who will forever remain lost in the clicks, conversions and margins.

Maybe this means cross selling across your niche. Organic pet food customers also buy cars. Maybe it means finding that 3% competitive edge by tying your product into their wants and needs in a more real way?

How can you put a little more humanness in your marketing? Hey, maybe even in your life?

So, today I took a Sunday drive up into the Rocky Mountains West of Denver to think over the whole trip to Europe. You know, the whole "what should I do with my life thing."

Five days ago I stopped taking an anti-depressant medication I've been on for 3 years. I'd been taking it easy, not working, just letting my body and brain catch up.

While contemplating the Europe trip and how much I love Colorado - I ascended into one of the most beautiful weather conditions - and was video taping the amazing views, when…

Out of the forest appeared the Mount Evans Lodge next to Squaw Lake. I pulled into to sample their pan fried fresh trout - caught right in the lake below the lodge.

Inside, I heard voices I thought to be Russian or Ukrainian - and ran into a whole group of totally cool young people from the Czech Republic.

Was this a sign that Colorado has allowed me to make the trip?

One thing was NOT a mystery - and that is that Iva is a great example of the legendary beautiful women of the Czech Republic!