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The Big Three at multimedia corporate behemoth Viacom—shuffling, mummified executive presence Sumner Redstone, co-president/eternal teenager Tom "someone stole the 'gr' page in my thesaurus" Freston, and inevitable worldwide despot Les Moonves—had the overcompensation clauses in the contracts honored for 2004, in which each executive was paid in hundred dollar bills dumped directly into their empty, Olympic-size swimming pools. Once the money was tallied up, each executive received $52 million (Freston and Mooves) to $56 million.* (Redstone's contract, it seems, also stipulated that his ten-person Jacuzzi be filled with cash.)

This compensation disclosure is comforting news for shareholders, who saw the company's stock value drop 18 percent. They're savvy enough to know that the Big Three's extravagant paychecks will pay for new bandages for Redstone (it's demoralizing for the Board to see their leader draped in tattered cloth, inadequate for keeping his ancient skin from sloughing off in embarrassing fashion during meetings), Hot Topic gift certificates for Freston, and seed money for Moonves' robot army, which will one day plunder the countryside and fill Viacom's coffers with peasant gold. A stock-price rebound is virtually certain in 2005.

Also: The bi-coastal Freston and Moonves get paid handsomely to work from home. There's nothing quite like having your calls rolled by your in-house, eunuch manservant.

[*Also includes stock options, which are harder to visualize being dumped into a pool.]