$101 million Powerball jackpot is really just $49 million

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

We love our Powerball-winner stories, like this one from the Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union:

“The winners of the $48.8 million Christmas Day Powerball jackpot are Jeff and Christine Pintuff, both 58. ... At a ceremony [on Feb. 11], the Pintuffs said they spent a month interviewing financial planners before contacting the New York State Lottery.”

At the same ceremony, we met the winner of a $122.1 million Powerball prize. Stephan Kirwan, 68, is a retired firefighter who spent 24 years with the NYFD in the South Bronx.

Feelgood stories. Nice couple gets nearly $50 million, former firefighter wins more than $122 mil.

Except that’s not how much they won.

From the same story:

“The Pintuffs opted to receive their prize as a lump sum and split it equally. Each will receive a one-time payment totaling more than $12.4 million — $8.2 million after taxes.

“[Kirwan] also elected to take his money in a lump sum and will receive $40.4 million after taxes.”

I know. Whether it’s the $8.2 million each of the Pintuffs gets or the $40.4 million for Mr. Kirwan, that’s life-changing, generationally beneficial, “Holy [Bleep!]” dough.

But the number on the billboards and advertisements, the number invoked first and loudest in the news stories, is almost never the actual payout figure.

The big figure is an estimate of what you’d get if you opted for an annuity, paid out over nearly three decades.

“When we advertise a prize of $100 million paid over 29 years...we actually have less than $50 million in cash,” reads the fine print on the Powerball website. “If the winner wants the annuity, we invest the $50 million to fund the annuity payments...”

If you opt for the lump sum, as most winners do, you’ll get about half as much — before taxes.

The “Current Estimated Jackpot” on the Powerball site is “$101 Million.” In smaller type, it says, “$49.6 Million Cash Value.”

We don’t report the take-home pay of actors after they’ve paid taxes, fees to agents, managers, staff, etc. We don’t report athletes’ net pay. It’d take a lot more work and it’d be much more difficult to ascertain the correct figure. Plus it doesn’t sound as glamorous and outrageous to say an actress is bringing home $2 million when her gross pay is $6 mil.

But it would be closer to the truth.

Just Go With It. If you can.

Consider the moment in “Just Go With It” that kicks the plot, such as it is, into gear.

Adam Sandler’s Danny is an obscenely wealthy plastic surgeon who wears a wedding band and concocts elaborate tragedies so he can nail an endless parade of bimbos without fear of commitment.

After Danny meets and sleeps with a beautiful schoolteacher named Palmer (Brooklyn Decker) and believes she just might be the one, she discovers his wedding band. (Guess he didn’t use the ruse on her.)

“You’re married!” exclaims Decker.

All Danny has to say is he’s never been married but he sometimes wears the ring to stave off potential gold diggers. After all, he’s been lying for 20-plus years to get laid; what’s another semi-lie now that he’s found the woman of his dreams?

Instead, Danny tells Palmer he’s married but he’s getting divorced, and he enlists Jennifer Aniston’s Katherine to play his about-to-be-ex-wife, and she’s got two children, so now there’s this extended farce with everyone performing an elaborate con so Danny can convince Palmer he’s marriage material.

And what’s Danny going to do once he “divorces” Katherine and marries Palmer? He’s going to tell Palmer his two children were killed in an accident. I guess he’ll just hope Palmer never visits him at work, sees that Katherine is actually his assistant and learns those two children aren’t dead after all, they’re just not Danny’s.

This is the movie that grossed $31.5 million at the box office over the weekend. (Of course the actual net proceeds ... oh, just go back to Item One in today’s column.)

Not only is “Just Go With It” awful on an epic level, it’s also just ... odd.

In one scene, Danny and his fake family are walking in slow motion, when we see a small boy being chased by his pregnant mother. He turns and hurls a large soft drink at his mother’s belly.

That the mother and child are the only two black characters in the movie only makes the scene more questionable. How is that supposed to be funny?

Later in the movie, Danny is irritated with his faux-daughter, so he pushes her face-down into a mud pit. Cut to the next scene where she’s still covered in mud, and Danny makes a blackface joke about her.

In a movie set in 2011.