Money and Respect

I'll explain the photo in a bit, probably.  Maybe.  We'll see where this all goes.  

After sulking most of the day about various things, I was uncertain about going to Grit City to see "the peeps."  I realized I had a lot of anxiety, and indeed, fear, for I don't feel socialized now.  My timing is off.  My pace has slowed.  I am diminished.  They would notice and whisper behind their hands.  

"Uh. . . ."

I've been seeing a lot about a sardine fast.  You eat only sardines.  Nothing else.  Sardines and water.  It stimulates peptide production so that you lose weight quickly without reducing your muscle and bone structures which is much different, let's say, than most diets and GLP-1 supplementation.  Five days.  

I didn't have time.  I'd have to go in as Quasimodo.  

It began to rain.  There was an excuse.  I wouldn't go.  I went to the gym late in the afternoon.  When I got home, I showered and dressed.  I grabbed my things and got into the car.  What the hell.  

It's been awhile.  I'd forgotten that there are still people who knew me professionally.  I was good.  I was smart, funny, kind. . . .  Yea, I know. . . you don't see that part of me.  As I say, it has been awhile, and it was nice to be reminded that I once was more than simply competent.  I had been, as hard as it might be to believe, a source of inspiration.  

"Everything has gone downhill since you left.  It is horrible." 

Yea, yea. . . I could be making that up.  But I'm not.  

Still, on the drive home, I felt the distance between then and now.  The last couple years have stymied me. It is impossible to sit around in hospitals and doctor's offices and rehab centers and not think about inevitabilities.  It is difficult to keep your spirits up when you are not quite active beyond caregiving.  

My mind was full when I got home.  I didn't want to think, though, so I poured a whiskey and turned on the final of the NCAA tournament.  

I had to turn it off midway through the second period.  Michigan is the first completely paid for college basketball team.  They bought all of their players from other colleges.  It is Big Money ball.  But apparently, they had bought the refs, too.  It was a terribly refereed game which is O.K. if it is terrible for both teams, but hideously egregious calls kept going in Michigan's direction.  The game was close, but the outcome seemed clear.  

When I woke up this morning and saw the final score, I was glad I went to bed.  

Money is everything now.  Money is what separates the rich from the hoi-polloi.  The distance grows larger every day.  Here is one example (link).  

I can't believe how many people don't subscribe to the Times.  People are always asking me to gift them articles I reference. WTF?  Where do they get their news?  Where do they read about culture?  It mystifies me.  

The article, for those of you who mystify me, is about the new new luxury travel for the ultrarich.  It keeps them from all waiting, all lines, all the irritating people.  It is for you who can spend $12,000 for a luxury class ticket from NYC to Paris.  You'll never see a line.  You'll never have to carry a bag.  You'll have no need to even see any of the "regular" people.  Privacy is what you pay for, privacy and servants.  It is for those of you who can afford to pay $110,000/week to stay in your own hotel suite on your own private floor at a luxury hotel.  

And then. . . there is that picture at the top of the page.  I took it on my Easter walk.  The place was closed, of course, but I put my camera lens against the window and shot through.  This is what a barber shop looks like here in my own hometown.  It is for men who get haircuts, who wear suits and have nice homes and take their families on expensive trips to Aspen or Jackson Hole or one of the luxury islands on the Georgia coast.  Aspirational men with high incomes, men who work in or visit one of the thousand private equity firms in town, "Wealth Management" places.  

They are nowhere near the top.  

But they are nearer than most.  

The crowd may be elevated, but it is still a crowd.  There are country clubs, and then there is something else.  

Big money controls everything now, and these fellows follow it like remoras stick to a shark.  Yes. . . that is pretty good.  Let's call them that. 

The Remora Class.  

I laugh now at a memory.  My father and I were snorkeling on a reef in south Florida, just floating around watching the anemones and clownfish and colorful sponges when a remora swam underneath my father and tried to attach to his belly.  My father was a brave man, in general, but that turned him inside out.  I thought he would have a coronary kicking and thrashing about.  I was a zoology major in college then and wise to the ways of nature, and I thought I would drown guffawing through my snorkel. 

It was a short swim to shore where my father popped up white as a ghost.  I called him "Shark" for the rest of the trip.  

I've wanted a flying car since I was a kid.  Now that the roads are impossible to navigate, they are finally getting them for the ultra-rich to help them cross town quickly (link).  Important people have important things to do. 

Just for fun, here is a link reporting the fortunes of the ten most successful Saturday Night Live alumni.  It is shocking to me.  How did we decide to give comedians so much money?  It seems crazy (link).  

Of course, they deserve it, just like Brittany Spears and Hannah Montana and Taylor Swift.  Well. . . those women are worth a hell of a lot more than the SNL cast, but. . . . 

I fret about the cost of filling up my gas tank.  

It's a Wonderful World.  

Here's another fun fact.  When he died, Jimmy Buffet was worth one billion dollars.  Bob Dylan is "only" worth five hundred million.  Troubadours of the People!  They understood your hopes and dreams and aspirations.  

I haven't been in a barber shop since I was a teenager, of course.  That is where you get "normalized."  

But there was a time when I was a pretty respected "professional."  

Imagine that.  

I know, I know. . . I said "imagine."