The Billfold » jia tolentino http://thebillfold.com Everything About Money You Were Too Polite To Ask Wed, 22 May 2013 22:44:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 A Conversation With a Kyrgyz Schoolteacher About Wedding Customs (And Costs) http://thebillfold.com/2013/05/a-conversation-with-a-kyrgyz-schoolteacher-about-wedding-customs-and-costs/ http://thebillfold.com/2013/05/a-conversation-with-a-kyrgyz-schoolteacher-about-wedding-customs-and-costs/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 14:30:45 +0000 Jia Tolentino http://thebillfold.com/?p=30061 Jia Tolentino

It’s 9:30 a.m. on a late-spring Saturday morning in a Kyrgyz village called Chykalov. Sun streams in from behind white curtains and I’m sitting on the floor eating breakfast with my friend and mentor Dinara, who learned English just a decade ago, now speaks it near perfectly, and will turn 50 this year.

“Do you think about getting married?” she asks me. “Do you want to get married?”

“I do, eventually,” I say. “But we probably won’t for awhile.”

“Weddings are expensive,” she says.

“That’s part of it!” I say. “We want to be able to pay for our wedding ourselves. In America the average wedding costs more than half the average yearly salary. Not that we would have a $30,000 wedding anyway. What do weddings cost here? They’re super expensive, right?”

Dinara sighs. “Yeah, usually 200,000 som,” she says, which is the equivalent of $4,500.

“What’s the average salary here again?”

“Per year? 60,000 som,” she says, or $1,300.

“WHAT?” I yell.

Dinara’s son, asleep in the corner on a pile of cushions, twitches. “Sorry,” I whisper.

“And then there’s the price for the kelin,” she says, meaning the new wife, the daughter-in-law. “The boy’s family also has to pay about 200,000 som.”

“You said no to your own dowry, though, didn’t you?”

“Oh yeah,” says Dinara. “Absolutely. I said I didn’t want all that fighting between the parents. I guess I’m cheap!”

“I can’t believe these numbers,” I say. “This is the equivalent of an average American wedding costing $170,000. How do people pay for this? Do they take out lines of credit?”

“Yeah,” says Dinara.

“I guess they do that in America too.”

“You can make your money back in presents,” Dinara says. “But it’s so stupid. At best everyone ends up with no money. In Uzbekistan and Tajikistan there are new laws where they send a police officer to every wedding to make sure that no one spends more than, say, 15,000 som. It’s better for the economy. But no one would listen to that rule here. Imagine a police officer, some billy goat, at a big wedding counting bottles of vodka.” She laughs.

“Who pays for weddings in Kyrgyzstan? The bride’s family or groom’s family?”

“The boy, of course,” says Dinara.

“In America it’s the opposite.”

“Nooooo,” she says. “Why?”

“I don’t know why. The bride’s family doesn’t always pay, but that’s definitely the custom.”

“Here the kelin’s family has to make lots of presents,” Dinara says. “They have to buy a TV, and lots of furniture, do lots of things for the new couple.”

“So they get all that money but then have to pay it back in gifts,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, shaking her head. “And the mother-in-law is always saying, We need a bigger TV, what about this new refrigerator.”

“Yikes,” I say.

“I hate weddings,” Dinara says. “Everyone fights and there’s too much responsibility to make sure people are having a good time. And everyone gets so drunk! There’s this one woman, she’s very fat, and at every party she takes too much vodka and falls on the floor and lies there like a seal.”

As Dinara demonstrates I try not to laugh because I don’t want to wake her son up.

“Let’s get rid of weddings,” Dinara says. “Each one is a bloodless war.”

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr. Photo by Evgeni Zotov.

7 Comments]]> Jia Tolentino

It’s 9:30 a.m. on a late-spring Saturday morning in a Kyrgyz village called Chykalov. Sun streams in from behind white curtains and I’m sitting on the floor eating breakfast with my friend and mentor Dinara, who learned English just a decade ago, now speaks it near perfectly, and will turn 50 this year.

“Do you think about getting married?” she asks me. “Do you want to get married?”

“I do, eventually,” I say. “But we probably won’t for awhile.”

“Weddings are expensive,” she says.

“That’s part of it!” I say. “We want to be able to pay for our wedding ourselves. In America the average wedding costs more than half the average yearly salary. Not that we would have a $30,000 wedding anyway. What do weddings cost here? They’re super expensive, right?”

Dinara sighs. “Yeah, usually 200,000 som,” she says, which is the equivalent of $4,500.

“What’s the average salary here again?”

“Per year? 60,000 som,” she says, or $1,300.

“WHAT?” I yell.

Dinara’s son, asleep in the corner on a pile of cushions, twitches. “Sorry,” I whisper.

“And then there’s the price for the kelin,” she says, meaning the new wife, the daughter-in-law. “The boy’s family also has to pay about 200,000 som.”

“You said no to your own dowry, though, didn’t you?”

“Oh yeah,” says Dinara. “Absolutely. I said I didn’t want all that fighting between the parents. I guess I’m cheap!”

“I can’t believe these numbers,” I say. “This is the equivalent of an average American wedding costing $170,000. How do people pay for this? Do they take out lines of credit?”

“Yeah,” says Dinara.

“I guess they do that in America too.”

“You can make your money back in presents,” Dinara says. “But it’s so stupid. At best everyone ends up with no money. In Uzbekistan and Tajikistan there are new laws where they send a police officer to every wedding to make sure that no one spends more than, say, 15,000 som. It’s better for the economy. But no one would listen to that rule here. Imagine a police officer, some billy goat, at a big wedding counting bottles of vodka.” She laughs.

“Who pays for weddings in Kyrgyzstan? The bride’s family or groom’s family?”

“The boy, of course,” says Dinara.

“In America it’s the opposite.”

“Nooooo,” she says. “Why?”

“I don’t know why. The bride’s family doesn’t always pay, but that’s definitely the custom.”

“Here the kelin’s family has to make lots of presents,” Dinara says. “They have to buy a TV, and lots of furniture, do lots of things for the new couple.”

“So they get all that money but then have to pay it back in gifts,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says, shaking her head. “And the mother-in-law is always saying, We need a bigger TV, what about this new refrigerator.”

“Yikes,” I say.

“I hate weddings,” Dinara says. “Everyone fights and there’s too much responsibility to make sure people are having a good time. And everyone gets so drunk! There’s this one woman, she’s very fat, and at every party she takes too much vodka and falls on the floor and lies there like a seal.”

As Dinara demonstrates I try not to laugh because I don’t want to wake her son up.

“Let’s get rid of weddings,” Dinara says. “Each one is a bloodless war.”

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr. Photo by Evgeni Zotov.

7 Comments]]> http://thebillfold.com/2013/05/a-conversation-with-a-kyrgyz-schoolteacher-about-wedding-customs-and-costs/feed/ 7 Raising Twin Girls, and Building a Future in a New Home http://thebillfold.com/2013/05/raising-twin-girls-and-building-a-future-in-a-new-home/ http://thebillfold.com/2013/05/raising-twin-girls-and-building-a-future-in-a-new-home/#comments Tue, 07 May 2013 14:30:43 +0000 Jia Tolentino http://thebillfold.com/?p=29068 Jia Tolentino

For more help, visit facebook.com/StateFarmNation.

Two years ago, Rachel managed a popular upscale restaurant in Charlottesville, Va. and spent most of her free time writing, partying and hanging out near the booths where Rob, an old friend who’d become a new boyfriend, would DJ. Today, she’s balancing work with play of a different kind—she’s a homeowner, a wife-to-be, and a mother of 18-month-old identical twin girls. Recently, I talked to Rachel, 27, about this whirlwind two years, and what changes and stays the same when you’re catapulted into a state of new responsibility.
 
Rachel! So it’s midday and the girls just went down for a nap. What’s their schedule like these days?
 
They wake up around 7:30 a.m., and after I make an enormous pot of coffee I feed them and we do our morning thing—today we planted some seeds, dug in the dirt, introduced ourselves to earthworms—and then they’ll have lunch and nap around 1 p.m. After that it’s usually a solid 6 hours of playtime and snacking, with a light dinner around 5 p.m. They go down between 7 and 8.
 
Are you telling me about your twins or reading me a GOOP newsletter?
 
Both! Of course, sometimes they’re cutting a tooth or something and the schedule gets super awful and out of whack.  
 
They’re 18 months old. What does that mean for the baby-uninitiated?
 
Eighteen months old means they’re walking unassisted, starting to self-wean and eating more like tiny humans (spoons and forks!) rather than infants. They’re transitioning from baby signs to actually stringing words together, and they’re starting to grasp abstract concepts—they say “hurt” when they feel hurt, etc. They make lots of associations, too—they know animal noises, and Iris was looking at her Hungry Caterpillar book the other day and made the hissing sound she makes for a snake!
 
Is this your favorite stage so far?
 
I do miss certain things about their infancy—the long naps, the wordless snuggling—but toddlers are easier to connect with. They give you kisses and hugs and pats on the back, stuff like that. But also toddlers are exhausting. Anyone who says it’s easier is lying!
 
Well, you’ve also got two of them. So, you recently went back to work at the restaurant? Tell me about that.
 
I was a stay-at-home mom with sporadic freelance work for the first 15 months or so, which was awesome—I really enjoyed it, and also there was just no other option, because the girls were so sick at first. We had at least two or three doctor’s appointments every week for the first year of their life.
 
While this was happening, Rob was working steadily but seasonally—he’s a musician with a lot of freelance work as well as a position at a major venue in town, which means some months he’s got 20 events on the calendar, other months just four. We made ends meet, kind of, but it was paycheck to paycheck and I exhausted a lot of savings. Come this February, we started to have some fights about finances, and finally he looked at me and said, “Maybe it’s time for you to go back to work.”
 
I got mad at first, like, “Why aren’t we looking at what you’re doing?” And then about fifteen minutes later I said, “Wait, yeah, I actually would love to go back to work.” So I started back up at the restaurant, gradually, just three daytime shifts per day—but then two of our managers gave their notice, and they offered me the general manager position. It was a six-week turnaround from working 15 hours a week to being the boss, but I love this restaurant so much and couldn’t imagine anyone coming in from the outside to run it. Also, a huge factor was that they offered full insurance benefits for me and the twins.
 
And, you know, it’s great! I was worried that I would feel torn, or always be distracted thinking about the girls, but I love it. Because of our industries, Rob and I get to be at home in the mornings and balance our schedules in a more flexible way. We have a babysitter at night usually two days a week, and most weeks we have Monday and Tuesday off as a family together.
 
How had you dealt with health insurance before?
 
When the pregnancy test came back positive, I was insured under my parents but had just turned down my maternity rider option. So we paid for all my prenatal care out of pocket, which included a lot of ultrasounds ($1,500 each, and 5-6 of them!) and other precautions because twin pregnancies carry extra risks. It was probably 10 grand out of pocket?
 
That is a lot of money.
 
It is! I worked until I was 29 weeks pregnant and totally enormous, and when I stopped working I filed for Medicaid hoping that I’d be able to get coverage before the girls came. Luckily, the benefits came through three days before my water broke.
 
And this was an unexpectedly early delivery.
 
Yeah, the twins came at 31 weeks, which is 9 weeks early. Thankfully, Medicaid covered my delivery and recovery and the girls’ prolonged stay in the NICU. With the NICU, really, unless you literally make five million dollars a year, you end up on Medicaid. The girls spent a combined 100 days in the hospital, and the total bill was close to three-quarters of a million.
 
Holy crap.
 
Yeah. I’m paging through a stack of bills right now and it’s sort of sickening. Iris was unable to eat normally for the first seven weeks of her life—she was fed via synthetic nutrients, straight to her blood stream—and she had to undergo two surgeries, be put in a medically induced coma and generally exist in this very precarious state.
 
It was such an intense ordeal. Even when Fiona was released, I was splitting my time between caring for her and going to the NICU every day for Iris, seeing all these tiny babies with uncertain futures and their moms who are scared about everything. And all the while everyone’s reminding you gently that every physician visit and procedure is just more money, money, money.
 
This is all happening just half a year after you found out you were pregnant. Was this the point that you felt “officially” like a mother? When did your sense of yourself as a parent develop?
 
Well, any surprise pregnancy is surreal, and it takes longer to feel like reality than if you’d been trying for a long time. But I think as soon as I started feeling movement, I felt so protective of what was going on in utero. And seeing their bodies on the ultrasound, finding out that they were girls, naming them—knowing that they were twins, knowing that we were going to meet them soon because they were probably going to come early.
 
Certainly, though, when Rob and I were thrown into this quasi-emergency situation, everything else evaporated. We were instantly, fiercely, a family.
 
Tell me about going into early labor.
 
They’d just put me on bed rest. I’d gone to my parents’ house in Northern Virginia to wait it out while Rob pulled a bunch of extra shifts at work. I was watching a Woody Allen movie with my mom and outside it started snowing. I’ve heard from doctors that the barometric pressure could have made a difference—I was not the only person who went into sharp, sudden labor that day—and all of a sudden my water broke.
 
A mythical weather birth!
 
Yeah! So my mom and I drove to Charlottesville as the contractions were coming on incredibly fast, and I couldn’t deliver at the hospital I had planned to, because the twins were so premature—I had to deliver at the University of Virginia hospital.
 
We got to the ER with a police escort, and I could barely talk, and I tried to tell them that I thought the baby’s head was right there, and they said “Oh honey, we know it feels like that,” but then it was true—I got to the OR and Fiona was born four minutes later. Iris came 45 minutes after that. From start to finish, it took four hours, no time for painkillers or epidural. The doctors immediately identified the medical complications with Iris, and the girls were just swept straight into the NICU. Totally, totally surreal.
 
I cannot even imagine. Okay, let’s go back, say, a decade. What were your ambitions when you started college, your sense of where you’d be at this age? How did you get started in the restaurant business?
 
I came to UVA very ambitious, I got good grades, was very involved. Then I started working at a restaurant on the Corner—
 
THE restaurant.
 
Haha, yes. I liked the lifestyle and the pace, the scene, all of it—though it wasn’t terribly conducive to studying. I kept at it as a full-time student while working several nights a week, but then eventually I decided to take some time off and just work. I was good at what I was doing and, frankly, I made a lot of money. We used to call it Corner Rich—you’d walk out after a football game with $800 cash in your pocket, and some of it stays, but too much of it goes.
 
So I saved some money, but with no real direction about what I was saving for. If I’d known that three years down the road I’d have two little beauties to take care of, I would’ve put away half of what I earned or more. But I don’t regret it, living life and being briefly extravagant. And I don’t need to buy clothes ever again!
 
After you found out you were pregnant, did you worry that having kids would stop you from doing what you want career-wise?
 
I still worry about that. I always wanted to write—and I do write, and I want to keep doing it—but also I really love working in restaurants, and right now it’s a good fit for what we need with our family. And I’m 27, I’ve got some years left. I don’t discount the possibility that I could pursue other things in the future.
 
Also, I always wanted to be a younger mom, and I actually can’t imagine going through this physical ordeal if I were older and had less energy—Rob and I are both frequently so exhausted, we’ve already aged a lot. I take comfort in the fact that we’ve both lived a lot of life. He served in the military for 6 years, we’ve had our crazy young adulthood, we lived life without being terribly responsible, and we don’t really have any desire to do that again.
 
How did it feel transitioning a casual relationship to this lifetime partnership?
 
It felt surprisingly natural. Rob and I had been friends for years, and clearly, you know, one thing has just led to another. Sometimes I think back to 2007, when he would DJ at the restaurant next to mine, and he’d come in and order mac & cheese and a beer before each gig, and he’d sit at the bar and tell me stories. I remember having to work on my birthday, and nobody remembered except for Rob, who got on the microphone and announced to the whole place that we had something to celebrate.
 
So it’s definitely felt fast, but it’s felt right—we were dealt an outrageous hand, and we wanted to go all in. And I’m not the only person who would say that you fall newly in love with your partner when you see him as a parent. We were in love before, but not like this.
 
And you’re engaged now, right?
 
Yes! My mom gave Rob an heirloom ring while I was pregnant—my great-grandmother’s really stunning, delicate Art Deco engagement ring—and basically said that she and my dad didn’t care whether he and I ever got married, but that they wanted Rob to not have to consider money as a factor if he wanted to acquire a ring for me.
 
It was such a generous gesture, and I wear the jewel as an engagement ring, although we haven’t set a date or anything. Until very recently, it was better financially for us to remain separate legal entities, and even though now we have more flexibility with our money, I wouldn’t describe getting married as a priority. My heart is already wed to his, and we have already been through quite a bit of richer and poorer, sickness and health—and honestly, it’s a little strange and sad for me to think about having my partnership recognized when that right is not granted to everyone in Virginia.
 
Still, I imagine by the time the girls are school-aged, we’ll have done the damn thing. Now that we own a home and are properly building an adult life together, it would probably be smart for us to get hitched.
 
Tell me about the house!
 
This is another case in which my parents have been stunningly generous. They helped contribute to the down payment, helped us orchestrate the financing. But the mortgage is ours, and I weirdly love having it—it’s a really nice thing to not throw away money on rent, to write every check knowing that it’s going toward our future.
 
The house is sweet and small and in a great school district, and because it wasn’t quite curb-ready (asbestos in the basement, etc) it was a bargain—the asking price was $175,000 and we paid $170,000, as-is. We’d only looked at two or three others, but it was just the right situation. We were paying $1,400 monthly to rent a townhouse before, which is a lot if you’re not accruing equity.
 
Does the expense of having kids scare you? Thinking about college and all that?
 
Even thinking about kids in preschool is pretty scary! There are sliding scales for tuition, but now with two incomes we’re pretty middle-of-the-road, and we’re looking at $5-10K a year for each of them.
 
But yeah, I’m investigating 529 savings plans for the girls, things like that. It’s a balance between thinking about the future and dealing with our day-to-day expenses, which are… serious. So many diapers! I considered using cloth diapers to save some money, and then I thought about how much time I already spend on laundry, and how much it was worth it to me to not spend a lot of time scrubbing out poop.
 
How much has the way you think about money changed?
 
It’s changed a lot. I’m much more financially savvy now. Before, I’d just paid everything with cash or debit, but now I have credit, I use Mint.com, I have the mentality of “Can we justify going out to dinner when we could just cook at home?” This year, I had to withdraw from my Roth IRA, but I’m now putting money back in, and Rob just started one too. Thinking about money is stressful in big moments, but I think I’ve got my eyes on the prize when it comes to savings, which makes a lot of difference—to save for something or someone, rather than just save.
 
My parents are a big example for me. They were very frugal and financially intelligent. We had a lot of secondhand clothes growing up, which the girls definitely do, and we went to a subsidized private school, and they were really conscious about using things up and making do. They were never extravagant. And now they have small businesses of their own and are in a very enviable financial position—they’re both about to retire, now, at 53 years old.
 
Wow. 53!
 
Yeah. Jia, they’re going to move to Charlottesville!
 
Oh, no way. That is so wonderful.
 
I know. This thing that would have horrified me four years ago—this stasis, in Virginia—is now the best thing I can imagine.

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr.

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17 Comments]]> Jia Tolentino

For more help, visit facebook.com/StateFarmNation.

Two years ago, Rachel managed a popular upscale restaurant in Charlottesville, Va. and spent most of her free time writing, partying and hanging out near the booths where Rob, an old friend who’d become a new boyfriend, would DJ. Today, she’s balancing work with play of a different kind—she’s a homeowner, a wife-to-be, and a mother of 18-month-old identical twin girls. Recently, I talked to Rachel, 27, about this whirlwind two years, and what changes and stays the same when you’re catapulted into a state of new responsibility.
 
Rachel! So it’s midday and the girls just went down for a nap. What’s their schedule like these days?
 
They wake up around 7:30 a.m., and after I make an enormous pot of coffee I feed them and we do our morning thing—today we planted some seeds, dug in the dirt, introduced ourselves to earthworms—and then they’ll have lunch and nap around 1 p.m. After that it’s usually a solid 6 hours of playtime and snacking, with a light dinner around 5 p.m. They go down between 7 and 8.
 
Are you telling me about your twins or reading me a GOOP newsletter?
 
Both! Of course, sometimes they’re cutting a tooth or something and the schedule gets super awful and out of whack.  
 
They’re 18 months old. What does that mean for the baby-uninitiated?
 
Eighteen months old means they’re walking unassisted, starting to self-wean and eating more like tiny humans (spoons and forks!) rather than infants. They’re transitioning from baby signs to actually stringing words together, and they’re starting to grasp abstract concepts—they say “hurt” when they feel hurt, etc. They make lots of associations, too—they know animal noises, and Iris was looking at her Hungry Caterpillar book the other day and made the hissing sound she makes for a snake!
 
Is this your favorite stage so far?
 
I do miss certain things about their infancy—the long naps, the wordless snuggling—but toddlers are easier to connect with. They give you kisses and hugs and pats on the back, stuff like that. But also toddlers are exhausting. Anyone who says it’s easier is lying!
 
Well, you’ve also got two of them. So, you recently went back to work at the restaurant? Tell me about that.
 
I was a stay-at-home mom with sporadic freelance work for the first 15 months or so, which was awesome—I really enjoyed it, and also there was just no other option, because the girls were so sick at first. We had at least two or three doctor’s appointments every week for the first year of their life.
 
While this was happening, Rob was working steadily but seasonally—he’s a musician with a lot of freelance work as well as a position at a major venue in town, which means some months he’s got 20 events on the calendar, other months just four. We made ends meet, kind of, but it was paycheck to paycheck and I exhausted a lot of savings. Come this February, we started to have some fights about finances, and finally he looked at me and said, “Maybe it’s time for you to go back to work.”
 
I got mad at first, like, “Why aren’t we looking at what you’re doing?” And then about fifteen minutes later I said, “Wait, yeah, I actually would love to go back to work.” So I started back up at the restaurant, gradually, just three daytime shifts per day—but then two of our managers gave their notice, and they offered me the general manager position. It was a six-week turnaround from working 15 hours a week to being the boss, but I love this restaurant so much and couldn’t imagine anyone coming in from the outside to run it. Also, a huge factor was that they offered full insurance benefits for me and the twins.
 
And, you know, it’s great! I was worried that I would feel torn, or always be distracted thinking about the girls, but I love it. Because of our industries, Rob and I get to be at home in the mornings and balance our schedules in a more flexible way. We have a babysitter at night usually two days a week, and most weeks we have Monday and Tuesday off as a family together.
 
How had you dealt with health insurance before?
 
When the pregnancy test came back positive, I was insured under my parents but had just turned down my maternity rider option. So we paid for all my prenatal care out of pocket, which included a lot of ultrasounds ($1,500 each, and 5-6 of them!) and other precautions because twin pregnancies carry extra risks. It was probably 10 grand out of pocket?
 
That is a lot of money.
 
It is! I worked until I was 29 weeks pregnant and totally enormous, and when I stopped working I filed for Medicaid hoping that I’d be able to get coverage before the girls came. Luckily, the benefits came through three days before my water broke.
 
And this was an unexpectedly early delivery.
 
Yeah, the twins came at 31 weeks, which is 9 weeks early. Thankfully, Medicaid covered my delivery and recovery and the girls’ prolonged stay in the NICU. With the NICU, really, unless you literally make five million dollars a year, you end up on Medicaid. The girls spent a combined 100 days in the hospital, and the total bill was close to three-quarters of a million.
 
Holy crap.
 
Yeah. I’m paging through a stack of bills right now and it’s sort of sickening. Iris was unable to eat normally for the first seven weeks of her life—she was fed via synthetic nutrients, straight to her blood stream—and she had to undergo two surgeries, be put in a medically induced coma and generally exist in this very precarious state.
 
It was such an intense ordeal. Even when Fiona was released, I was splitting my time between caring for her and going to the NICU every day for Iris, seeing all these tiny babies with uncertain futures and their moms who are scared about everything. And all the while everyone’s reminding you gently that every physician visit and procedure is just more money, money, money.
 
This is all happening just half a year after you found out you were pregnant. Was this the point that you felt “officially” like a mother? When did your sense of yourself as a parent develop?
 
Well, any surprise pregnancy is surreal, and it takes longer to feel like reality than if you’d been trying for a long time. But I think as soon as I started feeling movement, I felt so protective of what was going on in utero. And seeing their bodies on the ultrasound, finding out that they were girls, naming them—knowing that they were twins, knowing that we were going to meet them soon because they were probably going to come early.
 
Certainly, though, when Rob and I were thrown into this quasi-emergency situation, everything else evaporated. We were instantly, fiercely, a family.
 
Tell me about going into early labor.
 
They’d just put me on bed rest. I’d gone to my parents’ house in Northern Virginia to wait it out while Rob pulled a bunch of extra shifts at work. I was watching a Woody Allen movie with my mom and outside it started snowing. I’ve heard from doctors that the barometric pressure could have made a difference—I was not the only person who went into sharp, sudden labor that day—and all of a sudden my water broke.
 
A mythical weather birth!
 
Yeah! So my mom and I drove to Charlottesville as the contractions were coming on incredibly fast, and I couldn’t deliver at the hospital I had planned to, because the twins were so premature—I had to deliver at the University of Virginia hospital.
 
We got to the ER with a police escort, and I could barely talk, and I tried to tell them that I thought the baby’s head was right there, and they said “Oh honey, we know it feels like that,” but then it was true—I got to the OR and Fiona was born four minutes later. Iris came 45 minutes after that. From start to finish, it took four hours, no time for painkillers or epidural. The doctors immediately identified the medical complications with Iris, and the girls were just swept straight into the NICU. Totally, totally surreal.
 
I cannot even imagine. Okay, let’s go back, say, a decade. What were your ambitions when you started college, your sense of where you’d be at this age? How did you get started in the restaurant business?
 
I came to UVA very ambitious, I got good grades, was very involved. Then I started working at a restaurant on the Corner—
 
THE restaurant.
 
Haha, yes. I liked the lifestyle and the pace, the scene, all of it—though it wasn’t terribly conducive to studying. I kept at it as a full-time student while working several nights a week, but then eventually I decided to take some time off and just work. I was good at what I was doing and, frankly, I made a lot of money. We used to call it Corner Rich—you’d walk out after a football game with $800 cash in your pocket, and some of it stays, but too much of it goes.
 
So I saved some money, but with no real direction about what I was saving for. If I’d known that three years down the road I’d have two little beauties to take care of, I would’ve put away half of what I earned or more. But I don’t regret it, living life and being briefly extravagant. And I don’t need to buy clothes ever again!
 
After you found out you were pregnant, did you worry that having kids would stop you from doing what you want career-wise?
 
I still worry about that. I always wanted to write—and I do write, and I want to keep doing it—but also I really love working in restaurants, and right now it’s a good fit for what we need with our family. And I’m 27, I’ve got some years left. I don’t discount the possibility that I could pursue other things in the future.
 
Also, I always wanted to be a younger mom, and I actually can’t imagine going through this physical ordeal if I were older and had less energy—Rob and I are both frequently so exhausted, we’ve already aged a lot. I take comfort in the fact that we’ve both lived a lot of life. He served in the military for 6 years, we’ve had our crazy young adulthood, we lived life without being terribly responsible, and we don’t really have any desire to do that again.
 
How did it feel transitioning a casual relationship to this lifetime partnership?
 
It felt surprisingly natural. Rob and I had been friends for years, and clearly, you know, one thing has just led to another. Sometimes I think back to 2007, when he would DJ at the restaurant next to mine, and he’d come in and order mac & cheese and a beer before each gig, and he’d sit at the bar and tell me stories. I remember having to work on my birthday, and nobody remembered except for Rob, who got on the microphone and announced to the whole place that we had something to celebrate.
 
So it’s definitely felt fast, but it’s felt right—we were dealt an outrageous hand, and we wanted to go all in. And I’m not the only person who would say that you fall newly in love with your partner when you see him as a parent. We were in love before, but not like this.
 
And you’re engaged now, right?
 
Yes! My mom gave Rob an heirloom ring while I was pregnant—my great-grandmother’s really stunning, delicate Art Deco engagement ring—and basically said that she and my dad didn’t care whether he and I ever got married, but that they wanted Rob to not have to consider money as a factor if he wanted to acquire a ring for me.
 
It was such a generous gesture, and I wear the jewel as an engagement ring, although we haven’t set a date or anything. Until very recently, it was better financially for us to remain separate legal entities, and even though now we have more flexibility with our money, I wouldn’t describe getting married as a priority. My heart is already wed to his, and we have already been through quite a bit of richer and poorer, sickness and health—and honestly, it’s a little strange and sad for me to think about having my partnership recognized when that right is not granted to everyone in Virginia.
 
Still, I imagine by the time the girls are school-aged, we’ll have done the damn thing. Now that we own a home and are properly building an adult life together, it would probably be smart for us to get hitched.
 
Tell me about the house!
 
This is another case in which my parents have been stunningly generous. They helped contribute to the down payment, helped us orchestrate the financing. But the mortgage is ours, and I weirdly love having it—it’s a really nice thing to not throw away money on rent, to write every check knowing that it’s going toward our future.
 
The house is sweet and small and in a great school district, and because it wasn’t quite curb-ready (asbestos in the basement, etc) it was a bargain—the asking price was $175,000 and we paid $170,000, as-is. We’d only looked at two or three others, but it was just the right situation. We were paying $1,400 monthly to rent a townhouse before, which is a lot if you’re not accruing equity.
 
Does the expense of having kids scare you? Thinking about college and all that?
 
Even thinking about kids in preschool is pretty scary! There are sliding scales for tuition, but now with two incomes we’re pretty middle-of-the-road, and we’re looking at $5-10K a year for each of them.
 
But yeah, I’m investigating 529 savings plans for the girls, things like that. It’s a balance between thinking about the future and dealing with our day-to-day expenses, which are… serious. So many diapers! I considered using cloth diapers to save some money, and then I thought about how much time I already spend on laundry, and how much it was worth it to me to not spend a lot of time scrubbing out poop.
 
How much has the way you think about money changed?
 
It’s changed a lot. I’m much more financially savvy now. Before, I’d just paid everything with cash or debit, but now I have credit, I use Mint.com, I have the mentality of “Can we justify going out to dinner when we could just cook at home?” This year, I had to withdraw from my Roth IRA, but I’m now putting money back in, and Rob just started one too. Thinking about money is stressful in big moments, but I think I’ve got my eyes on the prize when it comes to savings, which makes a lot of difference—to save for something or someone, rather than just save.
 
My parents are a big example for me. They were very frugal and financially intelligent. We had a lot of secondhand clothes growing up, which the girls definitely do, and we went to a subsidized private school, and they were really conscious about using things up and making do. They were never extravagant. And now they have small businesses of their own and are in a very enviable financial position—they’re both about to retire, now, at 53 years old.
 
Wow. 53!
 
Yeah. Jia, they’re going to move to Charlottesville!
 
Oh, no way. That is so wonderful.
 
I know. This thing that would have horrified me four years ago—this stasis, in Virginia—is now the best thing I can imagine.

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr.

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17 Comments]]> http://thebillfold.com/2013/05/raising-twin-girls-and-building-a-future-in-a-new-home/feed/ 17 The Love Song of the Banana With Dreadlocks http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/the-love-song-of-the-banana-with-dreadlocks/ http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/the-love-song-of-the-banana-with-dreadlocks/#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:15:41 +0000 Jia Tolentino http://thebillfold.com/?p=28682 Jia Tolentino

Henry Gribbohm says he lost his life savings, $2,600, on a carnival game and all he has to show for it is a stuffed banana with dreadlocks. — CBS, EPSOM, NH, April 29, 2013

When I was born I was one of many—eyeless, unsmiling, without my hair, without my Rastafarian hat. Pressed into the rubber of the assembly line, I felt my friends all around me. We were hundreds of plush yellow tubes. We could sense the godlike faces hovering above us, their breath muffled by factory masks. We waited for them to fill our eye-sockets and give us teeth. The chemical air filled us with a collective longing. What else could you wish for at birth other than someone to hold you?

They pulled back my sockets and inserted pillow-like eyes. I caught a glimpse of myself in the cheap glasses of the Chinese worker who smoothed the threads of my dreadlocks. A strand hung unevenly across my forehead.

“Like my Liu Xiang,” the woman whispered, running her fingers through the black nylon ropes. A tear bloomed behind her glasses. I felt the dryness of my own false eyes and I was ashamed to not be able to mirror her pain. Then a supervisor began shouting about this sentimental delay. The woman—my mother?—now owed him eight hours of overtime. 

I tried to speak in her defense but my mouth was sewn shut. The conveyor belt shuddered to life and soon I was bagged and boxed, trying to quiet myself. I sensed my fellows all around me, the rumbling of a truck, a long wait in a hot dry space, then the low, eerie sway of the sea. Your time will come, I told myself. Unable to blink, I was beginning to fear the possibility of my own immortality.

They unloaded me in a hangar where bright light burned the dust in the air. Still bagged in clear plastic, I was thrown into the back of a truck by a man holding something fragrant—it was yellow, like me, elongated. But without dreadlocks.

“Will you look at that,” he snorted. “Two bananas.” My name washed over me as he bit into my son. I watched the man chomp as he slid the truck gate down, and inside the welcome darkness, I wondered if what I had just witnessed was love.

From the truck I was carried to an arena that kaleidoscoped in front of me beyond comprehension—salty, bright, littered with people and sweat and screaming. Hung up on a stand next to others of my kind, I watched the blinking machines that tortured people and observed the children emerge from the garish chambers giddy and grateful. I learned my full name: Banana with Dreadlocks. I became friends with Panda and Alien. Beneath us, men tossed white balls into a bucket. We vibrated with the hope of belonging to them, but they always walked away as our caretaker silently jeered.

A man with tattoos and a white shirt walked up to the stand. “I’m not walking away till I get that XBox,” he said.

I wondered: What is an XBox? He lobbed a softball into the bucket and it bounced off the rim.
“Shit,” he said. He tried again, and again, and again.

“Tubs of Fun ain’t for the weak,” said our caretaker.

“Double or nothing,” the man said angrily, and then missed. “One more time,” he said. He missed again. “I’ll be right back,” he growled.

Our caretaker adjusted his purple polo shirt and laughed, counting the new stack of bills. “I shall pocket one of these hundos,” he muttered under his breath. “Thank you very much, Henry.”

A girl in pink shorts walked by our stand and paused. “That banana is racist,” she said, and walked on. I stared out into the afternoon sun, wondering if my life would ever amount to more than this.

Soon the man with tattoos was back, pushing a stroller that contained a tiny child. He brandished a wad of cash. “See this? That’s how much I want to beat your damn game. Your little Tubs of Fun. More like Tubs of FUCKING RIGGED.”

He began smashing softballs in the vicinity of the bucket with such force that we, hanging overhead, trembled. I looked at his child, who giggled happily. As his father handed over more and more money I dreamed that the child and I had the same mind—that wordlessly, we were one. At night we dreamed the same dreams of being created, or sea voyages, of hands to smooth our hair.

“FUCK,” screamed the man with tattoos. His hands were empty. Softballs lay all over the floor. “That’s my LIFE SAVINGS.”

“Twenty-six hundred dollars?” asked the caretaker. “I mean—”

“I’m going to sue you,” hissed the man with tattoos. “And I’m taking that damn banana.”

His hands reached up to me—he was choosing me!—and I came unhooked, fell vertiginously into his hands. The child clapped and giggled. He threw me over the back of the stroller and my head hung, dreadlocks swinging in midair as the child swiped his small hands back and forth within them. “Ba-na-na,” the child chortled. “Ba-na-na-na-na.”

Bliss flooded through me as we rolled along the hot sidewalk and out of the fair. I was mine; I was claimed; I had a home now, forever. I tried to make myself extra plush underneath the hands of the man with tattoos. Thank you, I wanted to tell him. This is the best day of my life.

 

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr. (image via)

10 Comments]]> Jia Tolentino

Henry Gribbohm says he lost his life savings, $2,600, on a carnival game and all he has to show for it is a stuffed banana with dreadlocks. — CBS, EPSOM, NH, April 29, 2013

When I was born I was one of many—eyeless, unsmiling, without my hair, without my Rastafarian hat. Pressed into the rubber of the assembly line, I felt my friends all around me. We were hundreds of plush yellow tubes. We could sense the godlike faces hovering above us, their breath muffled by factory masks. We waited for them to fill our eye-sockets and give us teeth. The chemical air filled us with a collective longing. What else could you wish for at birth other than someone to hold you?

They pulled back my sockets and inserted pillow-like eyes. I caught a glimpse of myself in the cheap glasses of the Chinese worker who smoothed the threads of my dreadlocks. A strand hung unevenly across my forehead.

“Like my Liu Xiang,” the woman whispered, running her fingers through the black nylon ropes. A tear bloomed behind her glasses. I felt the dryness of my own false eyes and I was ashamed to not be able to mirror her pain. Then a supervisor began shouting about this sentimental delay. The woman—my mother?—now owed him eight hours of overtime. 

I tried to speak in her defense but my mouth was sewn shut. The conveyor belt shuddered to life and soon I was bagged and boxed, trying to quiet myself. I sensed my fellows all around me, the rumbling of a truck, a long wait in a hot dry space, then the low, eerie sway of the sea. Your time will come, I told myself. Unable to blink, I was beginning to fear the possibility of my own immortality.

They unloaded me in a hangar where bright light burned the dust in the air. Still bagged in clear plastic, I was thrown into the back of a truck by a man holding something fragrant—it was yellow, like me, elongated. But without dreadlocks.

“Will you look at that,” he snorted. “Two bananas.” My name washed over me as he bit into my son. I watched the man chomp as he slid the truck gate down, and inside the welcome darkness, I wondered if what I had just witnessed was love.

From the truck I was carried to an arena that kaleidoscoped in front of me beyond comprehension—salty, bright, littered with people and sweat and screaming. Hung up on a stand next to others of my kind, I watched the blinking machines that tortured people and observed the children emerge from the garish chambers giddy and grateful. I learned my full name: Banana with Dreadlocks. I became friends with Panda and Alien. Beneath us, men tossed white balls into a bucket. We vibrated with the hope of belonging to them, but they always walked away as our caretaker silently jeered.

A man with tattoos and a white shirt walked up to the stand. “I’m not walking away till I get that XBox,” he said.

I wondered: What is an XBox? He lobbed a softball into the bucket and it bounced off the rim.
“Shit,” he said. He tried again, and again, and again.

“Tubs of Fun ain’t for the weak,” said our caretaker.

“Double or nothing,” the man said angrily, and then missed. “One more time,” he said. He missed again. “I’ll be right back,” he growled.

Our caretaker adjusted his purple polo shirt and laughed, counting the new stack of bills. “I shall pocket one of these hundos,” he muttered under his breath. “Thank you very much, Henry.”

A girl in pink shorts walked by our stand and paused. “That banana is racist,” she said, and walked on. I stared out into the afternoon sun, wondering if my life would ever amount to more than this.

Soon the man with tattoos was back, pushing a stroller that contained a tiny child. He brandished a wad of cash. “See this? That’s how much I want to beat your damn game. Your little Tubs of Fun. More like Tubs of FUCKING RIGGED.”

He began smashing softballs in the vicinity of the bucket with such force that we, hanging overhead, trembled. I looked at his child, who giggled happily. As his father handed over more and more money I dreamed that the child and I had the same mind—that wordlessly, we were one. At night we dreamed the same dreams of being created, or sea voyages, of hands to smooth our hair.

“FUCK,” screamed the man with tattoos. His hands were empty. Softballs lay all over the floor. “That’s my LIFE SAVINGS.”

“Twenty-six hundred dollars?” asked the caretaker. “I mean—”

“I’m going to sue you,” hissed the man with tattoos. “And I’m taking that damn banana.”

His hands reached up to me—he was choosing me!—and I came unhooked, fell vertiginously into his hands. The child clapped and giggled. He threw me over the back of the stroller and my head hung, dreadlocks swinging in midair as the child swiped his small hands back and forth within them. “Ba-na-na,” the child chortled. “Ba-na-na-na-na.”

Bliss flooded through me as we rolled along the hot sidewalk and out of the fair. I was mine; I was claimed; I had a home now, forever. I tried to make myself extra plush underneath the hands of the man with tattoos. Thank you, I wanted to tell him. This is the best day of my life.

 

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr. (image via)

10 Comments]]> http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/the-love-song-of-the-banana-with-dreadlocks/feed/ 10 Billboard Singles As Indicator of Changing Economic Circumstances, Cultural Priorities http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/billboard-singles-as-indicator-of-changing-economic-circumstances-cultural-priorities/ http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/billboard-singles-as-indicator-of-changing-economic-circumstances-cultural-priorities/#comments Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:35:26 +0000 Jia Tolentino http://thebillfold.com/?p=28075 Jia Tolentino

Or, a cultural anxiety reading of Billboard #1 singles, 2003 vs. 2013.

2003:

Watch out for the medallion, my diamonds are reckless
Feels like a midget is hangin from my necklace

(Ludacris, ‘Stand Up’)

2013:

Hey Macklemore! Can we go thrift shopping?

(Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, ‘Thrift Shop’)

2003:

Cristal poppin in the stretch Navigator
We got food everywhere, as if the party was catered

(R. Kelly, ‘Ignition (Remix)’)

2013:

I’m living on such sweet nothing

(Calvin Harris ft. Florence Welch, ‘Sweet Nothing’)

2003:

If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck

(Youngbloodz, ‘DAMN!’)

2013:

Don’t you worry, don’t you worry, child
See, heaven’s got a plan for you

(Swedish House Mafia, ‘Don’t You Worry Child’)

2003:

My flow, my show brought me the dough
That bought me all my fancy things
My crib, my cars, my clothes, my jewels
Look nigga I done came up, and I ain’t changed

(50 Cent, ‘In Da Club’)

2013:

They say money make a nigga act nigger-ish
Well – at least a nigga nigga rich

(A$AP Rocky ft. Drake, Kendrick Lamar & 2 Chainz, ‘Fuckin’ Problems’)

2003:

Feel on each other and sip on some Hen
One thing leading to another, let the party begin

(Chingy, ‘Right Thurr’)

2013:

Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young

(Ke$ha, ‘Die Young’)

2003:

And everywhere we go, the sun will always shine
And tomorrow, we might wake on the other side

(Christina Aguilera, ‘Beautiful’)

2013:

This is it, the apocalypse

(Imagine Dragons, ‘Radioactive’)

 

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr.

8 Comments]]> Jia Tolentino

Or, a cultural anxiety reading of Billboard #1 singles, 2003 vs. 2013.

2003:

Watch out for the medallion, my diamonds are reckless
Feels like a midget is hangin from my necklace

(Ludacris, ‘Stand Up’)

2013:

Hey Macklemore! Can we go thrift shopping?

(Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, ‘Thrift Shop’)

2003:

Cristal poppin in the stretch Navigator
We got food everywhere, as if the party was catered

(R. Kelly, ‘Ignition (Remix)’)

2013:

I’m living on such sweet nothing

(Calvin Harris ft. Florence Welch, ‘Sweet Nothing’)

2003:

If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck

(Youngbloodz, ‘DAMN!’)

2013:

Don’t you worry, don’t you worry, child
See, heaven’s got a plan for you

(Swedish House Mafia, ‘Don’t You Worry Child’)

2003:

My flow, my show brought me the dough
That bought me all my fancy things
My crib, my cars, my clothes, my jewels
Look nigga I done came up, and I ain’t changed

(50 Cent, ‘In Da Club’)

2013:

They say money make a nigga act nigger-ish
Well – at least a nigga nigga rich

(A$AP Rocky ft. Drake, Kendrick Lamar & 2 Chainz, ‘Fuckin’ Problems’)

2003:

Feel on each other and sip on some Hen
One thing leading to another, let the party begin

(Chingy, ‘Right Thurr’)

2013:

Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young

(Ke$ha, ‘Die Young’)

2003:

And everywhere we go, the sun will always shine
And tomorrow, we might wake on the other side

(Christina Aguilera, ‘Beautiful’)

2013:

This is it, the apocalypse

(Imagine Dragons, ‘Radioactive’)

 

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr.

8 Comments]]> http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/billboard-singles-as-indicator-of-changing-economic-circumstances-cultural-priorities/feed/ 8 How We Should Think About MFA Programs http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/how-we-should-think-about-mfa-programs/ http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/how-we-should-think-about-mfa-programs/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:45:51 +0000 Jia Tolentino http://thebillfold.com/?p=27291 Jia Tolentino

“Creative writing programs can teach you how to write, but they can’t teach you what to write. No instructor or Zellowship can transform you into a storyteller without experience strutting your ambition.” — Jon Reiner, “Live First, Write Later: The Case for Less Creative-Writing Schooling,” The Atlantic, 9 April 2013

That quote is from a characteristically faux-contrarian Atlantic article about creative writing programs. It’s specifically about the “Zellowship,” or the $26,000 no-strings post-grad fellowship currently awarded to every student in the University of Michigan MFA. Students like me. With a recent $50 million gift to the program by Helen Zell, this funding, which goes to 22 people per year, has been guaranteed in perpetuity.

This, writes Jon Reiner, is “noble, but it’s a mistake.”

Reiner recently realized that he believes something about the “essence of good writing: experience matters.” What made him realize this? He watched a non-traditional college student get an essay published in The New Yorker, he felt jealous, he decided that “the quality of the writing wasn’t important, even for the esteemed New Yorker” and that “story is and always has been king.”

He concluded by driving straight to Bait City and telling a little story that sounds like this:

MFA programs can’t teach writing, only life can teach writing. MFA programs are training inexperienced young douchebags to churn out proficient, mediocre realism when these students would be better served evolving into experienced, slightly older douchebags who’ve put in a good heartbreak, an unpaid internship and some time at an Alaskan salmon fishery and can then carry on writing their mediocre realism about that. Writers with a financial cushion can’t quite feel it in their bones yet that the publishing industry’s ever-fainter claims to lucre are snapped up by self-exploitative hate reads and whatever erotic werewolf trilogy takes the seven-figure advance of 2013. Aspiring writers, “Zellians beware”—one should live first, write later. Turn down your stipend and live hard.

These ideas may be sort of true, but more importantly, they’re stupid. Equating good writing with unique situations and setting both things in opposition to graduate programs designed to give decent writers a three-year break from scrambling for their rent—it’s just as dumb as the other side of the coin, the side with the MFA defenders who hold writing up as a precious existential proposition, a little bird made of gold filigree that shall forever be protected in a $100,000 nest of student loans.

I avoid these people, as I do the small overlapping sector who complains about the fact that an MFA doesn’t automatically get you a respectable university position teaching the art of fiction to sophomore hockey players looking to express themselves. What a weird thing to be upset about! I like short stories quite a bit—I’m in a fucking MFA program—but the craft of creating pleasing literary nuggets is not quite on par with tax preparation or thank-you note etiquette in terms of skills that translate to real life, and the unsung entitlements of MFA graduates are uninteresting at best and criminally myopic more often.

Why all these answers of technological determinism to a question that no one is asking? The MFA, as a concept, is a neutral entity—it does not automatically qualify you for anything, it does not fundamentally make you better or worse at what you do. The MFA system is a collection of greenhouses, and what occurs within them is for each program and writer to decide.

Here, briefly, is where I stand on writing programs. The ones that make you pay are dead to me and I do not understand how they continue to exist and multiply. The ones that pay you are rare and beautiful, like unicorns.

About the latter case, the ones that pay you—why not take the money? Why does this Atlantic writer conflate financial stability with personal stasis? Why does he assume that MFA students are all young sentimentalists swaddled in blankets, cradling large teacups and measuring their brain out in listicles about what it’s like to be a twentysomething in grad school? The people in my program average out around age 30, and they’ve lived, certainly—lived as people who have struggled to feed themselves, lived as parents, social workers, scientists, Marines, Enron employees, farmers, teachers and prison guards.

At 24, I am in the abstract an exact example of what Reiner is worried about. But, like any intelligent person would do, I use my MFA stipend to enlarge my purview rather than shrink it. This stipend gives me the cushion to write fiction, sure, but also to interview whoever interests me, to go undercover at strip clubs, to write Shark Tank recaps, to do unpaid reporting on Central Asian feminist collectives. School is not a cloister but a job with great requirements. I’m not the only one who is taking reasonable advantage of this weird, temporary, lucky patronage system—and with all this fuss about who can and should write for free, I shouldn’t be.

Also, and maybe most importantly: writing is just writing! Writing is just a practice that improves over time, like doing yoga, and sometimes MFA programs help a person with this and sometimes they don’t. Writing is a vital and fundamentally democratic art that nonetheless requires programmatic interference to not favor the privileged; writing is a skill that is useful in so many other arenas other than the teaching of short story craft. Writing is a proposition that is not worth fussing over in grand “Can Writers Really Have It All?” style but is certainly worth nurturing for the insane glimmers of genius and transformation that will be waiting once we put the dumb think pieces down.

How about this: we let writers write however they can, let the cream rise however it will. We leave it alone. There’s nothing more sadly revelatory of the writer’s marketplace than a piece citing the extravagance of a grad school stipend that, while more than enough to pay my bar tab, is less than double the federal poverty level. And certainly, there is nothing less creative than dissecting the MFA.

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor.

37 Comments]]> Jia Tolentino

“Creative writing programs can teach you how to write, but they can’t teach you what to write. No instructor or Zellowship can transform you into a storyteller without experience strutting your ambition.” — Jon Reiner, “Live First, Write Later: The Case for Less Creative-Writing Schooling,” The Atlantic, 9 April 2013

That quote is from a characteristically faux-contrarian Atlantic article about creative writing programs. It’s specifically about the “Zellowship,” or the $26,000 no-strings post-grad fellowship currently awarded to every student in the University of Michigan MFA. Students like me. With a recent $50 million gift to the program by Helen Zell, this funding, which goes to 22 people per year, has been guaranteed in perpetuity.

This, writes Jon Reiner, is “noble, but it’s a mistake.”

Reiner recently realized that he believes something about the “essence of good writing: experience matters.” What made him realize this? He watched a non-traditional college student get an essay published in The New Yorker, he felt jealous, he decided that “the quality of the writing wasn’t important, even for the esteemed New Yorker” and that “story is and always has been king.”

He concluded by driving straight to Bait City and telling a little story that sounds like this:

MFA programs can’t teach writing, only life can teach writing. MFA programs are training inexperienced young douchebags to churn out proficient, mediocre realism when these students would be better served evolving into experienced, slightly older douchebags who’ve put in a good heartbreak, an unpaid internship and some time at an Alaskan salmon fishery and can then carry on writing their mediocre realism about that. Writers with a financial cushion can’t quite feel it in their bones yet that the publishing industry’s ever-fainter claims to lucre are snapped up by self-exploitative hate reads and whatever erotic werewolf trilogy takes the seven-figure advance of 2013. Aspiring writers, “Zellians beware”—one should live first, write later. Turn down your stipend and live hard.

These ideas may be sort of true, but more importantly, they’re stupid. Equating good writing with unique situations and setting both things in opposition to graduate programs designed to give decent writers a three-year break from scrambling for their rent—it’s just as dumb as the other side of the coin, the side with the MFA defenders who hold writing up as a precious existential proposition, a little bird made of gold filigree that shall forever be protected in a $100,000 nest of student loans.

I avoid these people, as I do the small overlapping sector who complains about the fact that an MFA doesn’t automatically get you a respectable university position teaching the art of fiction to sophomore hockey players looking to express themselves. What a weird thing to be upset about! I like short stories quite a bit—I’m in a fucking MFA program—but the craft of creating pleasing literary nuggets is not quite on par with tax preparation or thank-you note etiquette in terms of skills that translate to real life, and the unsung entitlements of MFA graduates are uninteresting at best and criminally myopic more often.

Why all these answers of technological determinism to a question that no one is asking? The MFA, as a concept, is a neutral entity—it does not automatically qualify you for anything, it does not fundamentally make you better or worse at what you do. The MFA system is a collection of greenhouses, and what occurs within them is for each program and writer to decide.

Here, briefly, is where I stand on writing programs. The ones that make you pay are dead to me and I do not understand how they continue to exist and multiply. The ones that pay you are rare and beautiful, like unicorns.

About the latter case, the ones that pay you—why not take the money? Why does this Atlantic writer conflate financial stability with personal stasis? Why does he assume that MFA students are all young sentimentalists swaddled in blankets, cradling large teacups and measuring their brain out in listicles about what it’s like to be a twentysomething in grad school? The people in my program average out around age 30, and they’ve lived, certainly—lived as people who have struggled to feed themselves, lived as parents, social workers, scientists, Marines, Enron employees, farmers, teachers and prison guards.

At 24, I am in the abstract an exact example of what Reiner is worried about. But, like any intelligent person would do, I use my MFA stipend to enlarge my purview rather than shrink it. This stipend gives me the cushion to write fiction, sure, but also to interview whoever interests me, to go undercover at strip clubs, to write Shark Tank recaps, to do unpaid reporting on Central Asian feminist collectives. School is not a cloister but a job with great requirements. I’m not the only one who is taking reasonable advantage of this weird, temporary, lucky patronage system—and with all this fuss about who can and should write for free, I shouldn’t be.

Also, and maybe most importantly: writing is just writing! Writing is just a practice that improves over time, like doing yoga, and sometimes MFA programs help a person with this and sometimes they don’t. Writing is a vital and fundamentally democratic art that nonetheless requires programmatic interference to not favor the privileged; writing is a skill that is useful in so many other arenas other than the teaching of short story craft. Writing is a proposition that is not worth fussing over in grand “Can Writers Really Have It All?” style but is certainly worth nurturing for the insane glimmers of genius and transformation that will be waiting once we put the dumb think pieces down.

How about this: we let writers write however they can, let the cream rise however it will. We leave it alone. There’s nothing more sadly revelatory of the writer’s marketplace than a piece citing the extravagance of a grad school stipend that, while more than enough to pay my bar tab, is less than double the federal poverty level. And certainly, there is nothing less creative than dissecting the MFA.

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor.

37 Comments]]> http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/how-we-should-think-about-mfa-programs/feed/ 37 Shark Tank Is Literally the Best Show on Television http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/shark-tank-is-literally-the-best-show-on-television/ http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/shark-tank-is-literally-the-best-show-on-television/#comments Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:30:26 +0000 Jia Tolentino http://thebillfold.com/?p=27022 Jia Tolentino


SHARK ATTACK! Welcome to Shark Tank, literally the best show on television.

I started watching Shark Tank apropos of nothing a few months ago and have since then become hooked to the point of backtracking through the entire series on Amazon Instant Watch. It’s a magnetic proposition, to watch a person in a candy-striper costume walk up to a panel of millionaires and ask for $300,000 in exchange for 20% of a company devoted to making doggie ice cream. It’s even more appealing to believe that American entrepreneurial success can be stripped down to a 15-minute distillation of a person’s pitch, personality, and business plan.

The five people you see standing in front of the jet/American flag and behind the two Ferraris are your Sharks, the “self-made millionaire and billionaire investors” who are cultivating their personal brands through appearing regularly on Shark Tank. You, the entrepreneur, can come here seeking money for your business, and the Sharks will either personally invest or eviscerate you for being too soft for the game.

The Sharks are called sharks because they are mesmerizing on camera and deserve a full week devoted to their exploits. Let’s meet them!

(For a first-time viewer, it can be difficult to keep all 5 sharks straight, so I have included helpful look-alikes to increase their memorability.)

First up is Kevin O’Leary, a very impatient venture capitalist who calls himself Mr. Wonderful and reliably makes it rain with incredible analogies like, “I send my money out to war every day. I want them to take prisoners and come home so that there’s more of them.” He might have a torture dungeon in his basement. Who knows?
Next is Lori Greiner, the friendly and luxuriously-maned “Queen of QVC.”

Now we have Daymond John, the dapper and affable man responsible for FUBU.
Then Robert Herjavec, who is vaguely fancy and looks like Surprised, European Robin Williams as Patch Adams.

Last but certainly not least comes Mark Cuban, who owns the Mavs. CLASSIC CUBES.

First into the tank are two cool-looking dudes named Taylor and Jayson. They stride in wearing red and blue t-shirts that say LIDDUP. They are seeking 100k for 10% equity in their company, and this is their $1 million idea:

Coolers that light up.

Jayson launches into the origin story of LIDDUP. He was camping. “Four hot dogs deep,” he went to the cooler to look for a beer. He sloshed around in the dark and ended up retrieving a soda instead.

“OH, BRO,” says Cubes, empathy coursing through his body.

Incredibly, there are no other light-up coolers on the market, which makes me ashamed of the market.

“Let’s get LIDDUP,” Jayson and Taylor shout, cracking open a beer and crouching like boy band members. “Because it’s awesome.”

Daymond calls them rude and selfish, making Taylor and Jayson poop their pants until Daymond explains he only said that because he wants a beer. Taylor and Jayson immediately give out beers.

Why don’t the sharks always drink on this show?

Mr. Wonderful calls bullshit on the $1 million valuation for a company that sells light-up coolers. Taylor and Jayson string together several dozen buzzwords and Daymond John interrupts them. “Those words just mean I don’t have any sales, right?”

Taylor and Jayson admit that he is right. So what’s with the $1 mil, guys? “Well, we had to start somewhere, so that’s where we started,” says Taylor. The sharks find this honesty extremely hilarious.

But Taylor and Jason are still trying to make their case. They have intellectual property rights! Because the item in question is a light-up cooler, the sharks find this statement funny too. But really, the bros say, we’ve got three patents on this!

“So no one can put an LED inside a cooler except you two dudes?” asks Mr. Wonderful.

“Correct,” says Jayson.

The Sharks go back to being intrigued.
But then the Sharks think back to the prep binder that their assistants handed them in the makeup room while they were getting their pre-show orange on.

“The cooler industry is just a few manufacturers, isn’t it,” says Robert.

“It’s a zero-sum game,” says Cubes. “Either you get the big boys to play ball, or you have to spend an obscene amount of money getting shelf space.” Cubes continues spitting wisdom. LIDDUP’s real play is to make a deal with one of the major manufacturers and get paid a few dollars (if they’re lucky) or a few cents (if they’re not) every time a light-up cooler is sold. The sharks all nod in agreement.

“So why do you guys even need us?” asks Lori.

“Because all roads lead to Mr. Wonderful,” says Mr. Wonderful.

“For a million dollars, I got a guy in the hood who will follow you around for the rest of your life carrying a flashlight for your beer,” says Daymond. “So I’m out.”

Lori is also out because anyone with a brain could stick a tap light in a cooler.

Robert Herjavec says he’s BFF with the biggest cooler manufacturer in the world. He’s ready to set up a meeting bro-to-bro. Here’s his offer: $100k for a 25% stake in LIDDUP. He swigs, waiting.

Mark Cuban volunteers the information that he is out. “Thanks for the beer, and take Robert’s offer,” he says.

Mr. Wonderful, who is now calling himself “Uncle Kevin,” makes a counter offer. He’s also ready to put up $100k, but he doesn’t want any of the equity. Instead, he wants a third of LIDDUP’s royalties, forever.

What are you going to do, Taylor and Jayson? They ask for a minute to study the offer and Robert becomes offended. “If his offer is appealing to you, I’m out.”

Looks like LIDDUP is in business with Mr. Wonderful! They hug it out.

Here’s the next guy, who appears looking extremely ill at ease:

Meet Dave Alwan, who is “hoping to whet the sharks’ appetites with his quality meats.” He wants $300k for 20% equity in his meat company. He wants “help with the e-commerce.” He’s a “third generation meat man.”

Dave walks over to the sharks with a tray in hand. “Ladies first,” he says, offering meat. The sharks munch on beef stuff and they’re loving it. But then they find out he has no business plan whatsoever, and then Dave says the word “maybe” and they recoil as if touched by a Poor. “Good luck,” they say, waving his sweaty visage into the reject bin.

Here’s the next guy, who studied mechanical engineering at Yale.

“My business doesn’t just sell a product, it’s more of a lifestyle,” he says in his staged introduction. “It’ll take any experience and make it incredible. I think it could be the next social phenomenon, and I think there’s something a little mysterious about it.”

Yale comes in, says “ROOT SUIT,” and then in marches an army of fetish warriors.

“ROOT SUIT gives you instant charisma,” says Yale. By charisma, he means attention, but these days it’s the same thing. Good on you, Yale—you’ve distilled your generation’s need to simultaneously conceal and construct the self in public into one terrifying array of ROOT SUITS.

Then the show is interrupted for a shark attack!

AHH! The sharks love it.

Yale says Root Suits sold $525,000 last year and made $140,000 in profit, all through online sales. Very impressive.

Robert Herjavec delivers the unnerving information that his son and his friends all wear suits like this out to nightclubs. “Are they wearing your suits?”

“Maybe. We have competition. We were the first, though,”  says Yale.
Robert says that the concept is “super hot” (??) but he doesn’t like that there’s no visible brand name on the product. He’s out. Lori says there’s too much competition. She’s out. Mr. Wonderful is also out, leaving only Daymond and Cubes.

“I’m going to give you a sharky offer,” says Daymond. “I’ll give you the $100k, but for 50%, contingent on us getting this into retail.”

Cubes is interested, but he’s waiting to see what Yale says before he makes his offer.

“I’d love to work with both of you,” says Yale.

“Yeah, I may take my offer back,” says Daymond.

Mr. Wonderful drops the classic analogy of Yale being like a dog with a bone in his mouth. He’s looking at his reflection in the water and thinking that he can get a second bone out of this, when all he’ll do is lose the first bone in his greed. “Bone-in-mouth syndrome,” says Mr. Wonderful.

Aroused by Mr. Wonderful’s usage of one of his favorite phrases, Yale is sweating. He’s taking too long for Daymond, who suddenly says he’s out. “I don’t like indecisive people,” he says.

Cubes says that Yale’s going to make a boatload of money off of ROOT SUIT.

“You wanna get some of that?” asks Yale, suggestively.

No. Cubes is out. But he’s rooting for him! All the sharks say good luck. The fetish suit army, who have been standing as immobile and terrifying as statues, take Yale by the arm and walk him offstage.

Next into the tank is Rusty Allen, who looks like a guy I used to hook up with and has designed some water bottles he’s calling GOBIE.

Rusty says that his GOBIE technology filters 99.99% of contaminants out of any water, no matter how dirty. He puts potting soil in a water bottle, shakes up the liquid till it’s pitch black, and then impressively filters the water clear and drinks it from a wine glass. He brings over a bunch of bottles to the sharks, also saying “Ladies first,” a topic which I will discuss at length in my forthcoming 20,000-word think piece on whether saying “Ladies first” is feminist or anti-feminist or something in between.

But okay, Rusty—what makes this water bottle so special? Rusty starts spewing indecipherable nonsense about soft shells and hard shells. He is unraveling fast.

Daymond comes to the rescue. “This is a sexy water bottle,” says Daymond.

“I appreciate that,” says Rusty, blinking back tears.

Let’s get to the facts. These water bottles cost $10 to make and they sell for $30. Over 17 months, GOBIE has done $285,000 in sales. “But how are you worth $3 million today and more tomorrow?” asks Mr. Wonderful.

“Every human being on this earth, from the richest man in Beverly Hills to the poorest man in Kenya, both drink water,” says Rusty, forgetting how to say words.

“That’s just a HORRIBLE sales pitch, Rusty, COME ON,” says Cubes. He’s very out.

“That was a really convoluted presentation, my friend. I mean that was just so bad,” says Robert. “You’re going to get crushed, my friend. Crushed. I’m out.”

So Rusty turns his attentions to Daymond.

“I sleep on a pad next to my desk and I wake up and I start working. I do not stop working, dude,” he says. “I will work so hard for you. So hard.”

Moved by this manic assertion of personal work ethic, Daymond offers $300k for 40% of the company.

“Twenty percent,” says Rusty. Daymond says no. Rusty goes to the back room to call his business partner, then returns. He launches a Hail Mary effort to form a three-way partnership with Daymond, Lori and Cubes all at once.

Daymond says hell no.

Rusty looks longingly at Cubes and Lori, then turns his eyes on Daymond like he’s the sloppy girl draped over the bar at last call. But Rusty is a gentleman. “You’re the man, Daymond,” he says.

The two of them hug as Rusty hisses at the sharks, “You’re going to regret this, I swear.”

After Rusty leaves, Mr. Wonderful looks at Daymond and says, “I was waiting for you to say no so I could get in the royalty game with him. Squeeze his head like a teenage pimple.”

And so—one light-up cooler, tray of meat, fratty bodystocking, $30 water bottle and five white male contestants later—ends this week’s Shark Tank: Parade of Bros.

See you next time!

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor. She’s got a tumblr.

9 Comments]]> Jia Tolentino


SHARK ATTACK! Welcome to Shark Tank, literally the best show on television.

I started watching Shark Tank apropos of nothing a few months ago and have since then become hooked to the point of backtracking through the entire series on Amazon Instant Watch. It’s a magnetic proposition, to watch a person in a candy-striper costume walk up to a panel of millionaires and ask for $300,000 in exchange for 20% of a company devoted to making doggie ice cream. It’s even more appealing to believe that American entrepreneurial success can be stripped down to a 15-minute distillation of a person’s pitch, personality, and business plan.

The five people you see standing in front of the jet/American flag and behind the two Ferraris are your Sharks, the “self-made millionaire and billionaire investors” who are cultivating their personal brands through appearing regularly on Shark Tank. You, the entrepreneur, can come here seeking money for your business, and the Sharks will either personally invest or eviscerate you for being too soft for the game.

The Sharks are called sharks because they are mesmerizing on camera and deserve a full week devoted to their exploits. Let’s meet them!

(For a first-time viewer, it can be difficult to keep all 5 sharks straight, so I have included helpful look-alikes to increase their memorability.)

First up is Kevin O’Leary, a very impatient venture capitalist who calls himself Mr. Wonderful and reliably makes it rain with incredible analogies like, “I send my money out to war every day. I want them to take prisoners and come home so that there’s more of them.” He might have a torture dungeon in his basement. Who knows?
Next is Lori Greiner, the friendly and luxuriously-maned “Queen of QVC.”

Now we have Daymond John, the dapper and affable man responsible for FUBU.
Then Robert Herjavec, who is vaguely fancy and looks like Surprised, European Robin Williams as Patch Adams.

Last but certainly not least comes Mark Cuban, who owns the Mavs. CLASSIC CUBES.

First into the tank are two cool-looking dudes named Taylor and Jayson. They stride in wearing red and blue t-shirts that say LIDDUP. They are seeking 100k for 10% equity in their company, and this is their $1 million idea:

Coolers that light up.

Jayson launches into the origin story of LIDDUP. He was camping. “Four hot dogs deep,” he went to the cooler to look for a beer. He sloshed around in the dark and ended up retrieving a soda instead.

“OH, BRO,” says Cubes, empathy coursing through his body.

Incredibly, there are no other light-up coolers on the market, which makes me ashamed of the market.

“Let’s get LIDDUP,” Jayson and Taylor shout, cracking open a beer and crouching like boy band members. “Because it’s awesome.”

Daymond calls them rude and selfish, making Taylor and Jayson poop their pants until Daymond explains he only said that because he wants a beer. Taylor and Jayson immediately give out beers.

Why don’t the sharks always drink on this show?

Mr. Wonderful calls bullshit on the $1 million valuation for a company that sells light-up coolers. Taylor and Jayson string together several dozen buzzwords and Daymond John interrupts them. “Those words just mean I don’t have any sales, right?”

Taylor and Jayson admit that he is right. So what’s with the $1 mil, guys? “Well, we had to start somewhere, so that’s where we started,” says Taylor. The sharks find this honesty extremely hilarious.

But Taylor and Jason are still trying to make their case. They have intellectual property rights! Because the item in question is a light-up cooler, the sharks find this statement funny too. But really, the bros say, we’ve got three patents on this!

“So no one can put an LED inside a cooler except you two dudes?” asks Mr. Wonderful.

“Correct,” says Jayson.

The Sharks go back to being intrigued.
But then the Sharks think back to the prep binder that their assistants handed them in the makeup room while they were getting their pre-show orange on.

“The cooler industry is just a few manufacturers, isn’t it,” says Robert.

“It’s a zero-sum game,” says Cubes. “Either you get the big boys to play ball, or you have to spend an obscene amount of money getting shelf space.” Cubes continues spitting wisdom. LIDDUP’s real play is to make a deal with one of the major manufacturers and get paid a few dollars (if they’re lucky) or a few cents (if they’re not) every time a light-up cooler is sold. The sharks all nod in agreement.

“So why do you guys even need us?” asks Lori.

“Because all roads lead to Mr. Wonderful,” says Mr. Wonderful.

“For a million dollars, I got a guy in the hood who will follow you around for the rest of your life carrying a flashlight for your beer,” says Daymond. “So I’m out.”

Lori is also out because anyone with a brain could stick a tap light in a cooler.

Robert Herjavec says he’s BFF with the biggest cooler manufacturer in the world. He’s ready to set up a meeting bro-to-bro. Here’s his offer: $100k for a 25% stake in LIDDUP. He swigs, waiting.

Mark Cuban volunteers the information that he is out. “Thanks for the beer, and take Robert’s offer,” he says.

Mr. Wonderful, who is now calling himself “Uncle Kevin,” makes a counter offer. He’s also ready to put up $100k, but he doesn’t want any of the equity. Instead, he wants a third of LIDDUP’s royalties, forever.

What are you going to do, Taylor and Jayson? They ask for a minute to study the offer and Robert becomes offended. “If his offer is appealing to you, I’m out.”

Looks like LIDDUP is in business with Mr. Wonderful! They hug it out.

Here’s the next guy, who appears looking extremely ill at ease:

Meet Dave Alwan, who is “hoping to whet the sharks’ appetites with his quality meats.” He wants $300k for 20% equity in his meat company. He wants “help with the e-commerce.” He’s a “third generation meat man.”

Dave walks over to the sharks with a tray in hand. “Ladies first,” he says, offering meat. The sharks munch on beef stuff and they’re loving it. But then they find out he has no business plan whatsoever, and then Dave says the word “maybe” and they recoil as if touched by a Poor. “Good luck,” they say, waving his sweaty visage into the reject bin.

Here’s the next guy, who studied mechanical engineering at Yale.

“My business doesn’t just sell a product, it’s more of a lifestyle,” he says in his staged introduction. “It’ll take any experience and make it incredible. I think it could be the next social phenomenon, and I think there’s something a little mysterious about it.”

Yale comes in, says “ROOT SUIT,” and then in marches an army of fetish warriors.

“ROOT SUIT gives you instant charisma,” says Yale. By charisma, he means attention, but these days it’s the same thing. Good on you, Yale—you’ve distilled your generation’s need to simultaneously conceal and construct the self in public into one terrifying array of ROOT SUITS.

Then the show is interrupted for a shark attack!

AHH! The sharks love it.

Yale says Root Suits sold $525,000 last year and made $140,000 in profit, all through online sales. Very impressive.

Robert Herjavec delivers the unnerving information that his son and his friends all wear suits like this out to nightclubs. “Are they wearing your suits?”

“Maybe. We have competition. We were the first, though,”  says Yale.
Robert says that the concept is “super hot” (??) but he doesn’t like that there’s no visible brand name on the product. He’s out. Lori says there’s too much competition. She’s out. Mr. Wonderful is also out, leaving only Daymond and Cubes.

“I’m going to give you a sharky offer,” says Daymond. “I’ll give you the $100k, but for 50%, contingent on us getting this into retail.”

Cubes is interested, but he’s waiting to see what Yale says before he makes his offer.

“I’d love to work with both of you,” says Yale.

“Yeah, I may take my offer back,” says Daymond.

Mr. Wonderful drops the classic analogy of Yale being like a dog with a bone in his mouth. He’s looking at his reflection in the water and thinking that he can get a second bone out of this, when all he’ll do is lose the first bone in his greed. “Bone-in-mouth syndrome,” says Mr. Wonderful.

Aroused by Mr. Wonderful’s usage of one of his favorite phrases, Yale is sweating. He’s taking too long for Daymond, who suddenly says he’s out. “I don’t like indecisive people,” he says.

Cubes says that Yale’s going to make a boatload of money off of ROOT SUIT.

“You wanna get some of that?” asks Yale, suggestively.

No. Cubes is out. But he’s rooting for him! All the sharks say good luck. The fetish suit army, who have been standing as immobile and terrifying as statues, take Yale by the arm and walk him offstage.

Next into the tank is Rusty Allen, who looks like a guy I used to hook up with and has designed some water bottles he’s calling GOBIE.

Rusty says that his GOBIE technology filters 99.99% of contaminants out of any water, no matter how dirty. He puts potting soil in a water bottle, shakes up the liquid till it’s pitch black, and then impressively filters the water clear and drinks it from a wine glass. He brings over a bunch of bottles to the sharks, also saying “Ladies first,” a topic which I will discuss at length in my forthcoming 20,000-word think piece on whether saying “Ladies first” is feminist or anti-feminist or something in between.

But okay, Rusty—what makes this water bottle so special? Rusty starts spewing indecipherable nonsense about soft shells and hard shells. He is unraveling fast.

Daymond comes to the rescue. “This is a sexy water bottle,” says Daymond.

“I appreciate that,” says Rusty, blinking back tears.

Let’s get to the facts. These water bottles cost $10 to make and they sell for $30. Over 17 months, GOBIE has done $285,000 in sales. “But how are you worth $3 million today and more tomorrow?” asks Mr. Wonderful.

“Every human being on this earth, from the richest man in Beverly Hills to the poorest man in Kenya, both drink water,” says Rusty, forgetting how to say words.

“That’s just a HORRIBLE sales pitch, Rusty, COME ON,” says Cubes. He’s very out.

“That was a really convoluted presentation, my friend. I mean that was just so bad,” says Robert. “You’re going to get crushed, my friend. Crushed. I’m out.”

So Rusty turns his attentions to Daymond.

“I sleep on a pad next to my desk and I wake up and I start working. I do not stop working, dude,” he says. “I will work so hard for you. So hard.”

Moved by this manic assertion of personal work ethic, Daymond offers $300k for 40% of the company.

“Twenty percent,” says Rusty. Daymond says no. Rusty goes to the back room to call his business partner, then returns. He launches a Hail Mary effort to form a three-way partnership with Daymond, Lori and Cubes all at once.

Daymond says hell no.

Rusty looks longingly at Cubes and Lori, then turns his eyes on Daymond like he’s the sloppy girl draped over the bar at last call. But Rusty is a gentleman. “You’re the man, Daymond,” he says.

The two of them hug as Rusty hisses at the sharks, “You’re going to regret this, I swear.”

After Rusty leaves, Mr. Wonderful looks at Daymond and says, “I was waiting for you to say no so I could get in the royalty game with him. Squeeze his head like a teenage pimple.”

And so—one light-up cooler, tray of meat, fratty bodystocking, $30 water bottle and five white male contestants later—ends this week’s Shark Tank: Parade of Bros.

See you next time!

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor. She’s got a tumblr.

9 Comments]]> http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/shark-tank-is-literally-the-best-show-on-television/feed/ 9 The Annotated “Bye Bye Bye” http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/the-annotated-bye-bye-bye/ http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/the-annotated-bye-bye-bye/#comments Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:35:21 +0000 Jia Tolentino http://thebillfold.com/?p=26537 Jia Tolentino

The boy band ‘N Sync formed in Orlando, FL in 1995, consisting of five members: Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Chris Kirkpatrick, Joey Fatone and Lance Bass. After signing with RCA and selling 10 million copies of their debut album, the group sued their manager Lou Pearlman in 1998 for defrauding the group of more than 50 percent of their earnings. The group reached a settlement out of court, and ‘N Sync signed with Jive, releasing “Bye Bye Bye” as their first single in early 2000 and selling 9.9 million copies of No Strings Attached by the end of the year. “Bye Bye Bye,” while ostensibly about a romantic breakup, is rumored to be about the band’s relationship with Lou Pearlman.

1 In early 1992, Queens-born airline businessman Lou Pearlman placed a casting call in the Orlando Sentinel for a teenage boy band. After auditioning A.J. McLean in his living room and hosting a larger audition in his Kissimmee blimp hangar, Pearlman put together the Backstreet Boys.
2A boy named Chris Kirkpatrick missed the Backstreet Boys cut.
3In 1995, Chris Kirkpatrick asked Lou Pearlman for a meeting to talk about forming another boy band. Pearlman offered to finance the group if Kirkpatrick helped put it together. He came back with one of his friends, Joey Fatone; Pearlman then suggested Justin Timberlake, a former Mickey Mouse Club performer, who joined the group and recommended his former castmate J.C. Chasez.

I’m doing this tonight1
You’re probably gonna start a fight2
I know this can’t be right3
Hey baby come on
I loved you endlessly4
When you weren’t there for me
So now it’s time to leave and make it alone5

 

4 With four members, the group selected a fifth, a boy named Jason Galasso.
5 Jason dropped out after a month of rehearsal, saying that he didn’t like the musical direction the band was taking; he didn’t want to be a “teen idol.” He was replaced by Lance Bass, a 16-year-old singer (amusingly—a bass) who came recommended by Timberlake’s vocal coach.

I know that I can’t take no more, it ain’t no lie6
I want to see you out that door, baby bye bye bye7

6 The bands called Pearlman “Big Poppa.” He paid for clothes, housing and tours—but for a long time, he didn’t pay his band members.
7Justin Timberlake told a reporter, “We were being monetarily raped by a Svengali.”

 

(Bye bye) Don’t want to be a fool for you8
Just another player in your game for two9
You may hate me but it ain’t no lie, baby bye bye bye
Don’t want to make it tough
I just want to tell you that I’ve had enough
It might sound crazy but it ain’t no lie10 baby bye bye bye11

8 The term Svengali comes from a 1894 novel by George du Maurier called Trilby, in which the title character, a singer, is catapulted to fame by a controlling hypnotist named Svengali.
9Lou Pearlman, according to friends, was born a schemer. As a child he’d take guitar lessons and then re-teach the lesson to friends in the neighborhood in order to make back his lesson money.
10In 1999, during court proceedings, Pearlman’s lawyer publicly estimated the figure the manager had made off ‘N Sync as at least $7 million.
11 By this point, ‘N Sync had collectively also made $7 million. Pearlman had taken a 50% cut, rather than the one-sixth in his contract.

 

You just hit me with the truth12
Now girl you’re more than welcome to13
So give me one good reason, baby come on
I’ve lived for you and me
And now I really come to see
That life would be much better once you’re gone14
I know that I can’t take no more, it ain’t no lie15
I want to see you out that door, baby bye bye bye

12 Pearlman countersued for $150 million and the rights to use the ‘N Sync name.
13The judge denied the injunction and ‘N Sync signed with Jive.
14No Strings Attached was the top-selling album of 2000
15 The Backstreet Boys, who also contractually paid Pearlman as a sixth member, had sued him previously after realizing that he had paid the group only $300,000 while himself taking in millions.

 

I’m giving up I know for sure
Don’t want to be the reason for your love no more1
I’m checking out, I’m signing off2
Don’t want to be the loser and I’ve had enough

16 Lou Pearlman has also faced numerous allegations of sexual abuse. Nick Carter’s mother told a reporter, “Certain things happened and it almost destroyed our family. I tried to warn everyone. I tried to warn all the mothers.”
17In 2006, Pearlman was discovered to have been perpetrating an extensive Ponzi scheme centered on an airline company called Trans Continental Airlines Inc., which did not actually exist. To hold up his fake company, he’d created fake financial statements from a fictitious accounting firm as well as falsified FDIC, AIG and Lloyd’s of London documents.

Don’t want to be your fool in this game for two
So I’m leaving you behind18
I don’t want to make it tough19
But I’ve had enough
And it ain’t no lie20
Baby bye bye bye21

18 Lou Pearlman fled the country in 2007 to avoid arrest. He was found in Indonesia, after being reported by a German tourist couple.
19In 2008, Lou Pearlman was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for cheating investors out of more than $300 million.  The judge offered him a loophole: he could cut his prison sentence by one month for every million dollars that he paid back to his bankrupt investors.
20Pearlman unsuccessfully tried to postpone his sentencing until he could launch his latest boy band, US 5, who he argued could earn the “significant profits” that he needed to pay back his victims and reduce his prison time. The judge denied his petition.
21Currently, Pearlman is serving his sentence in Texarkana, at the Federal Correctional Institute. He is set to be released on March 24, 2029.

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor. She’s got a tumblr. Previously: The Annotated Bills Bills Bills

2 Comments]]> Jia Tolentino

The boy band ‘N Sync formed in Orlando, FL in 1995, consisting of five members: Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Chris Kirkpatrick, Joey Fatone and Lance Bass. After signing with RCA and selling 10 million copies of their debut album, the group sued their manager Lou Pearlman in 1998 for defrauding the group of more than 50 percent of their earnings. The group reached a settlement out of court, and ‘N Sync signed with Jive, releasing “Bye Bye Bye” as their first single in early 2000 and selling 9.9 million copies of No Strings Attached by the end of the year. “Bye Bye Bye,” while ostensibly about a romantic breakup, is rumored to be about the band’s relationship with Lou Pearlman.

1 In early 1992, Queens-born airline businessman Lou Pearlman placed a casting call in the Orlando Sentinel for a teenage boy band. After auditioning A.J. McLean in his living room and hosting a larger audition in his Kissimmee blimp hangar, Pearlman put together the Backstreet Boys.
2A boy named Chris Kirkpatrick missed the Backstreet Boys cut.
3In 1995, Chris Kirkpatrick asked Lou Pearlman for a meeting to talk about forming another boy band. Pearlman offered to finance the group if Kirkpatrick helped put it together. He came back with one of his friends, Joey Fatone; Pearlman then suggested Justin Timberlake, a former Mickey Mouse Club performer, who joined the group and recommended his former castmate J.C. Chasez.

I’m doing this tonight1
You’re probably gonna start a fight2
I know this can’t be right3
Hey baby come on
I loved you endlessly4
When you weren’t there for me
So now it’s time to leave and make it alone5

 

4 With four members, the group selected a fifth, a boy named Jason Galasso.
5 Jason dropped out after a month of rehearsal, saying that he didn’t like the musical direction the band was taking; he didn’t want to be a “teen idol.” He was replaced by Lance Bass, a 16-year-old singer (amusingly—a bass) who came recommended by Timberlake’s vocal coach.

I know that I can’t take no more, it ain’t no lie6
I want to see you out that door, baby bye bye bye7

6 The bands called Pearlman “Big Poppa.” He paid for clothes, housing and tours—but for a long time, he didn’t pay his band members.
7Justin Timberlake told a reporter, “We were being monetarily raped by a Svengali.”

 

(Bye bye) Don’t want to be a fool for you8
Just another player in your game for two9
You may hate me but it ain’t no lie, baby bye bye bye
Don’t want to make it tough
I just want to tell you that I’ve had enough
It might sound crazy but it ain’t no lie10 baby bye bye bye11

8 The term Svengali comes from a 1894 novel by George du Maurier called Trilby, in which the title character, a singer, is catapulted to fame by a controlling hypnotist named Svengali.
9Lou Pearlman, according to friends, was born a schemer. As a child he’d take guitar lessons and then re-teach the lesson to friends in the neighborhood in order to make back his lesson money.
10In 1999, during court proceedings, Pearlman’s lawyer publicly estimated the figure the manager had made off ‘N Sync as at least $7 million.
11 By this point, ‘N Sync had collectively also made $7 million. Pearlman had taken a 50% cut, rather than the one-sixth in his contract.

 

You just hit me with the truth12
Now girl you’re more than welcome to13
So give me one good reason, baby come on
I’ve lived for you and me
And now I really come to see
That life would be much better once you’re gone14
I know that I can’t take no more, it ain’t no lie15
I want to see you out that door, baby bye bye bye

12 Pearlman countersued for $150 million and the rights to use the ‘N Sync name.
13The judge denied the injunction and ‘N Sync signed with Jive.
14No Strings Attached was the top-selling album of 2000
15 The Backstreet Boys, who also contractually paid Pearlman as a sixth member, had sued him previously after realizing that he had paid the group only $300,000 while himself taking in millions.

 

I’m giving up I know for sure
Don’t want to be the reason for your love no more1
I’m checking out, I’m signing off2
Don’t want to be the loser and I’ve had enough

16 Lou Pearlman has also faced numerous allegations of sexual abuse. Nick Carter’s mother told a reporter, “Certain things happened and it almost destroyed our family. I tried to warn everyone. I tried to warn all the mothers.”
17In 2006, Pearlman was discovered to have been perpetrating an extensive Ponzi scheme centered on an airline company called Trans Continental Airlines Inc., which did not actually exist. To hold up his fake company, he’d created fake financial statements from a fictitious accounting firm as well as falsified FDIC, AIG and Lloyd’s of London documents.

Don’t want to be your fool in this game for two
So I’m leaving you behind18
I don’t want to make it tough19
But I’ve had enough
And it ain’t no lie20
Baby bye bye bye21

18 Lou Pearlman fled the country in 2007 to avoid arrest. He was found in Indonesia, after being reported by a German tourist couple.
19In 2008, Lou Pearlman was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for cheating investors out of more than $300 million.  The judge offered him a loophole: he could cut his prison sentence by one month for every million dollars that he paid back to his bankrupt investors.
20Pearlman unsuccessfully tried to postpone his sentencing until he could launch his latest boy band, US 5, who he argued could earn the “significant profits” that he needed to pay back his victims and reduce his prison time. The judge denied his petition.
21Currently, Pearlman is serving his sentence in Texarkana, at the Federal Correctional Institute. He is set to be released on March 24, 2029.

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor. She’s got a tumblr. Previously: The Annotated Bills Bills Bills

2 Comments]]> http://thebillfold.com/2013/04/the-annotated-bye-bye-bye/feed/ 2 The Annotated “Bills, Bills, Bills” http://thebillfold.com/2013/03/the-annotated-bills-bills-bills/ http://thebillfold.com/2013/03/the-annotated-bills-bills-bills/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:30:53 +0000 Jia Tolentino http://thebillfold.com/?p=25852 Jia Tolentino

At first we started out real cool1
Taking me places I ain’t never been2
But now, you’re getting comfortable
Ain’t doing those things you did no more
You’re slowly making me pay for things
Your money should be handling3

1 According to online apocrypha, Beyoncé acquired her first boyfriend, Lyndell Locke, at age 12. “It was puppy love,” said Locke, now a chef in Houston, in a rare interview in 2009. “I would take her to the movies, or we would eat out. Normal things teenagers do.”
2 As Beyoncé was 16 when she co-wrote “Bills, Bills, Bills,” this line might mean “R-rated movies,” etc.
3 Today, 80% of women and 70% of men state that they desire a financially (and otherwise) egalitarian relationship, although only around 23% of women state that they feel prepared to make major financial decisions.

 

And now you ask to use my car4

4 Beyoncé did not learn how to drive until 2010, when Jay-Z taught her.

Drive it all day and don’t fill up the tank5

5 Four years before she learned how to drive, Jay-Z bought Beyoncé a 1959 Rolls Royce (est. value $1 million) for her 26th birthday. Filling up a 1959 Rolls Royce in Manhattan would cost around $81.

And you have the audacity
To even come and step to me
Ask to hold some money from me
Until you get your check next week6

6 Perhaps he wished to avoid the exorbitant interest rates charged by payday lenders, who often advertise a simple interest rate (15%) instead of APR (300% or more) on the loans, which are rarely paid off in full within the prescribed two-week period. At a 300% APR, the interest on a payday loan will exceed the principal in 4 months.

 

You triflin’ good for nothing type of brother7

7 The unemployment rate among black Americans aged 16-19 is 39.3%, nearly double the unemployment rate for white Americans of the same age.

Silly me, why haven’t I found another
A baller, when times get hard
I need someone to help me out
Instead of a scrub like you
Who don’t know what a man’s about8

8 In 1939, a psychologist named George Crane created a merit/demerit chart for husbands and wives to score each other on their marital performance. The first merit to be checked off on the husband’s list is “Gives wife ample allowance or turns over pay-check to her.”

 

Can you pay my bills?9

9 In mid-2012, tens of thousands of Americans were scammed by criminals who spread a rumor that President Obama would pay their utility bills.

Can you pay my telephone bills?10

10 The average monthly cell phone bill in America is $71.

Can you pay my automo-bills?11

11 The average annual cost of car ownership is $8,946.

If you did then maybe we could chill
I don’t think you do
So, you and me are through12

12 Beyoncé and Lyndell Locke broke up in 2000, the same year that “Bills, Bills, Bills” became a chart-topper and The Writing’s On The Wall sold over 15 million copies worldwide.

 

Now you’ve been maxing out my cards
Givin’ me bad credit13

13 The average American credit score is 661, which is not super good.

buyin’ gifts with my own name14

14 Beyoncé’s full name is Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter. Jay-Z’s full name is Shawn Corey Knowles-Carter.

Haven’t paid the first bill
But you’re steady heading to the mall
Goin’ on shopping sprees 15

15 Beyoncé is known to enjoy a good shopping spree, having dropped $32,000 one afternoon at Harvey Nichols in London, etc, although this behavior is eclipsed by Jay-Z’s $350,000 day at Hermes in 2010.

Perpetrating to your friends that you be ballin’

 

And then you use my cell phone
Calling whoever you think’s at home
And then when the bill comes
All the sudden you be acting dumb
Don’t know where none of these calls come from
When your mama’s number’s here more than once

 

You triflin’, good for nothing type of brother16

16 In 2011, Beyoncé ended her business partnership with her father Mathew Knowles, who had managed her career since childhood.

Silly me, why haven’t I found another17

17 Shortly after firing her father, Beyoncé hired a Live Nation representative in his place. Later that year, Mathew filed papers disputing Live Nation’s claims that he embezzled funds from his daughter. Live Nation is the partner company for Jay-Z’s massive entertainment company Roc Nation.

A baller 18

18 “I’m not a businessman/ I’m a business, man” –Jay-Z, “Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)”

when times get hard
I need someone to help me out
Instead of a scrub like you
Who don’t know what a man’s about19

19 Jay-Z’s net worth is $475 million. Beyoncé’s is $300 million. They are the richest celebrity couple in America.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor. She’s got a tumblr.

 

16 Comments]]> Jia Tolentino

At first we started out real cool1
Taking me places I ain’t never been2
But now, you’re getting comfortable
Ain’t doing those things you did no more
You’re slowly making me pay for things
Your money should be handling3

1 According to online apocrypha, Beyoncé acquired her first boyfriend, Lyndell Locke, at age 12. “It was puppy love,” said Locke, now a chef in Houston, in a rare interview in 2009. “I would take her to the movies, or we would eat out. Normal things teenagers do.”
2 As Beyoncé was 16 when she co-wrote “Bills, Bills, Bills,” this line might mean “R-rated movies,” etc.
3 Today, 80% of women and 70% of men state that they desire a financially (and otherwise) egalitarian relationship, although only around 23% of women state that they feel prepared to make major financial decisions.

 

And now you ask to use my car4

4 Beyoncé did not learn how to drive until 2010, when Jay-Z taught her.

Drive it all day and don’t fill up the tank5

5 Four years before she learned how to drive, Jay-Z bought Beyoncé a 1959 Rolls Royce (est. value $1 million) for her 26th birthday. Filling up a 1959 Rolls Royce in Manhattan would cost around $81.

And you have the audacity
To even come and step to me
Ask to hold some money from me
Until you get your check next week6

6 Perhaps he wished to avoid the exorbitant interest rates charged by payday lenders, who often advertise a simple interest rate (15%) instead of APR (300% or more) on the loans, which are rarely paid off in full within the prescribed two-week period. At a 300% APR, the interest on a payday loan will exceed the principal in 4 months.

 

You triflin’ good for nothing type of brother7

7 The unemployment rate among black Americans aged 16-19 is 39.3%, nearly double the unemployment rate for white Americans of the same age.

Silly me, why haven’t I found another
A baller, when times get hard
I need someone to help me out
Instead of a scrub like you
Who don’t know what a man’s about8

8 In 1939, a psychologist named George Crane created a merit/demerit chart for husbands and wives to score each other on their marital performance. The first merit to be checked off on the husband’s list is “Gives wife ample allowance or turns over pay-check to her.”

 

Can you pay my bills?9

9 In mid-2012, tens of thousands of Americans were scammed by criminals who spread a rumor that President Obama would pay their utility bills.

Can you pay my telephone bills?10

10 The average monthly cell phone bill in America is $71.

Can you pay my automo-bills?11

11 The average annual cost of car ownership is $8,946.

If you did then maybe we could chill
I don’t think you do
So, you and me are through12

12 Beyoncé and Lyndell Locke broke up in 2000, the same year that “Bills, Bills, Bills” became a chart-topper and The Writing’s On The Wall sold over 15 million copies worldwide.

 

Now you’ve been maxing out my cards
Givin’ me bad credit13

13 The average American credit score is 661, which is not super good.

buyin’ gifts with my own name14

14 Beyoncé’s full name is Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter. Jay-Z’s full name is Shawn Corey Knowles-Carter.

Haven’t paid the first bill
But you’re steady heading to the mall
Goin’ on shopping sprees 15

15 Beyoncé is known to enjoy a good shopping spree, having dropped $32,000 one afternoon at Harvey Nichols in London, etc, although this behavior is eclipsed by Jay-Z’s $350,000 day at Hermes in 2010.

Perpetrating to your friends that you be ballin’

 

And then you use my cell phone
Calling whoever you think’s at home
And then when the bill comes
All the sudden you be acting dumb
Don’t know where none of these calls come from
When your mama’s number’s here more than once

 

You triflin’, good for nothing type of brother16

16 In 2011, Beyoncé ended her business partnership with her father Mathew Knowles, who had managed her career since childhood.

Silly me, why haven’t I found another17

17 Shortly after firing her father, Beyoncé hired a Live Nation representative in his place. Later that year, Mathew filed papers disputing Live Nation’s claims that he embezzled funds from his daughter. Live Nation is the partner company for Jay-Z’s massive entertainment company Roc Nation.

A baller 18

18 “I’m not a businessman/ I’m a business, man” –Jay-Z, “Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)”

when times get hard
I need someone to help me out
Instead of a scrub like you
Who don’t know what a man’s about19

19 Jay-Z’s net worth is $475 million. Beyoncé’s is $300 million. They are the richest celebrity couple in America.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor. She’s got a tumblr.

 

16 Comments]]> http://thebillfold.com/2013/03/the-annotated-bills-bills-bills/feed/ 16 A Church For the Poor And The Price of Cocaine http://thebillfold.com/2013/03/a-church-for-the-poor-and-the-price-of-cocaine/ http://thebillfold.com/2013/03/a-church-for-the-poor-and-the-price-of-cocaine/#comments Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:30:22 +0000 Jia Tolentino http://thebillfold.com/?p=25585 Jia Tolentino

If you combined Harper’s Index with its Findings section and dramatically lowered the research quality of both, you would get my mind after a good Internet k-hole. Here are all the things I learned this week.

Last Thursday, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became Pope Francis, the nominal leader of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. Bergoglio is the first-ever Pope to take the name Francis, which he did in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, the thirteenth-century Italian friar famous for his humility and love of animals. At age 24, St. Francis experienced a mystical vision that led him to seek out a life of poverty, embarrassing his rich father, who beat and imprisoned his son. After St. Francis was freed, he gathered an enormous following and continued to emphasize poverty as a primary virtue. To one bishop who disapproved of his monastic order’s lifestyle, he replied, “If we had any possessions, we should need weapons to defend them.”

In his new role, Pope Francis will be expected to clean up the finances of the Vatican Bank, the controversial privately-run firm with $8 billion in assets and a distribution network that spans over 100 countries. Last year, documents were released showing millions of dollars in transfers from the Vatican Bank to Catholic dioceses in America, earmarked to pay legal bills in child sex abuse cases. In January, the lack of transparency in the Vatican Bank led Italy to cut off all credit card processing within Vatican City; within a few weeks, the Vatican started conducting its transactions through a Swiss bank immune to normal banking rules.

The most common Pope names are John (21 popes), Gregory (16 popes), Benedict (15 popes), Clement (14 popes), Innocent (13 popes), and Leo (13 popes). In the 1860s, Pope Leo XIII appeared in a print ad for Vin Mariani, a stimulant-laced “cocawine” containing 6 milligrams of cocaine per ounce. “His holiness the Pope writes that he has fully appreciated the beneficient effects of this Tonic Wine, and has forwarded to Mr. Mariani as a token of his gratitude a gold medal bearing his august effigy,” states the advertisement. Other celebrity endorsers of Vin Mariani included Jules Verne, Henrik Ibsen, and Thomas Edison; around this time, Sigmund Freud published his first major scientific piece, entitled Uber Coca, and wrote love letters to his fiancée with sentences like “If you are forward you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who does not eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.”

Pope Francis, who told journalists he would like a “poor Church, and for the poor,” was born and raised in Argentina, a country that consumes five times more cocaine than the global average and accounts for 25% of domestic demand for the drug in Latin America. In Buenos Aires, Pope Francis’s hometown, a gram of cocaine sells for about $20—a sixth of what it costs in the States—and a tremendously popular crack-like substance called pacosells for as little as 30 cents for a 10-minute dose. The country is working on its drug problem; the addicts in one paco-blighted slum in Buenos Aires remember Pope Francis as the cardinal who used to come in and wash their feet.

Up to 90% of the cocaine sold in this country is grown in South America. Coca growers receive around $1.30 for each kilogram of harvested coca leaf; it takes between 450 and 600 kilograms of coca leaf (or, $585-780) to produce one kilogram of cocaine. In interior Colombia, this kilo enters the trade at a price of $2,200; by the time it reaches the ports of Colombia, it costs between $5,500-7,000; by the time it gets to Central America, it costs $10,000. When it’s sold wholesale to dealers in America, the kilo has gone up to $25,000 wholesale; in Europe, a kilo costs $54,000; in Australia, over $200,000.

Early last week, while the cardinals were deliberating their new leader in the Vatican, Bolivian President Evo Morales recalled Vin Mariani at a press conference and voiced his hope that the next pope would “use the wine like Mariani.” This seems unlikely, but of course drugs and religion are similar. They affect us differently based on our genetics, they aid us in times of need; they induce euphoria, they require repeat practice, they change a person’s character, they can govern our decisions, they can hurt us when we withdraw.

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr. 

6 Comments]]> Jia Tolentino

If you combined Harper’s Index with its Findings section and dramatically lowered the research quality of both, you would get my mind after a good Internet k-hole. Here are all the things I learned this week.

Last Thursday, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became Pope Francis, the nominal leader of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. Bergoglio is the first-ever Pope to take the name Francis, which he did in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, the thirteenth-century Italian friar famous for his humility and love of animals. At age 24, St. Francis experienced a mystical vision that led him to seek out a life of poverty, embarrassing his rich father, who beat and imprisoned his son. After St. Francis was freed, he gathered an enormous following and continued to emphasize poverty as a primary virtue. To one bishop who disapproved of his monastic order’s lifestyle, he replied, “If we had any possessions, we should need weapons to defend them.”

In his new role, Pope Francis will be expected to clean up the finances of the Vatican Bank, the controversial privately-run firm with $8 billion in assets and a distribution network that spans over 100 countries. Last year, documents were released showing millions of dollars in transfers from the Vatican Bank to Catholic dioceses in America, earmarked to pay legal bills in child sex abuse cases. In January, the lack of transparency in the Vatican Bank led Italy to cut off all credit card processing within Vatican City; within a few weeks, the Vatican started conducting its transactions through a Swiss bank immune to normal banking rules.

The most common Pope names are John (21 popes), Gregory (16 popes), Benedict (15 popes), Clement (14 popes), Innocent (13 popes), and Leo (13 popes). In the 1860s, Pope Leo XIII appeared in a print ad for Vin Mariani, a stimulant-laced “cocawine” containing 6 milligrams of cocaine per ounce. “His holiness the Pope writes that he has fully appreciated the beneficient effects of this Tonic Wine, and has forwarded to Mr. Mariani as a token of his gratitude a gold medal bearing his august effigy,” states the advertisement. Other celebrity endorsers of Vin Mariani included Jules Verne, Henrik Ibsen, and Thomas Edison; around this time, Sigmund Freud published his first major scientific piece, entitled Uber Coca, and wrote love letters to his fiancée with sentences like “If you are forward you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who does not eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.”

Pope Francis, who told journalists he would like a “poor Church, and for the poor,” was born and raised in Argentina, a country that consumes five times more cocaine than the global average and accounts for 25% of domestic demand for the drug in Latin America. In Buenos Aires, Pope Francis’s hometown, a gram of cocaine sells for about $20—a sixth of what it costs in the States—and a tremendously popular crack-like substance called pacosells for as little as 30 cents for a 10-minute dose. The country is working on its drug problem; the addicts in one paco-blighted slum in Buenos Aires remember Pope Francis as the cardinal who used to come in and wash their feet.

Up to 90% of the cocaine sold in this country is grown in South America. Coca growers receive around $1.30 for each kilogram of harvested coca leaf; it takes between 450 and 600 kilograms of coca leaf (or, $585-780) to produce one kilogram of cocaine. In interior Colombia, this kilo enters the trade at a price of $2,200; by the time it reaches the ports of Colombia, it costs between $5,500-7,000; by the time it gets to Central America, it costs $10,000. When it’s sold wholesale to dealers in America, the kilo has gone up to $25,000 wholesale; in Europe, a kilo costs $54,000; in Australia, over $200,000.

Early last week, while the cardinals were deliberating their new leader in the Vatican, Bolivian President Evo Morales recalled Vin Mariani at a press conference and voiced his hope that the next pope would “use the wine like Mariani.” This seems unlikely, but of course drugs and religion are similar. They affect us differently based on our genetics, they aid us in times of need; they induce euphoria, they require repeat practice, they change a person’s character, they can govern our decisions, they can hurt us when we withdraw.

 

Jia Tolentino lives in Ann Arbor, has a tumblr. 

6 Comments]]> http://thebillfold.com/2013/03/a-church-for-the-poor-and-the-price-of-cocaine/feed/ 6 Reason for Dispute: My Name Is Not Angel Polentino http://thebillfold.com/2013/03/reason-for-dispute-my-name-is-not-angel-polentino/ http://thebillfold.com/2013/03/reason-for-dispute-my-name-is-not-angel-polentino/#comments Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:30:57 +0000 Jia Tolentino http://thebillfold.com/?p=25523 Jia Tolentino

Yesterday I checked all three of my credit scores, which I’ve done before but always immediately forgotten the number because it’s so boring—”It’s green,” I remarked to myself, “and I believe that means you’re done for the day.”

But yesterday the three numbers were different—the highest and lowest were 167 points apart—and two of them were not green at all. One was on the anemic lime portion of the miniature credit spectrum. Another was straight-up yellow, and the word above it said “WEAK.”

My first reaction was to take personal offense. I signed up for the TransUnion and Experian websites to better understand the reason for this cyber-bullying and answered a series of Big Brother-esque questions that further embarrassed me about my life (In 2005, you bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee: was it a 1987 model, a 1988 model, or 1989 model? “Goddammit,” I said to myself, and clicked the button next to 1987). Then I went through my credit reports in full. One of them didn’t show the Bank of America credit card I’ve had open for six years, so I called Bank of America and within two minutes a woman had filed an account report for me to TransUnion—easy.

The other report showed a $90 Comcast bill from 2012. “SERIOUSLY PAST DUE,” said the report. “I have never even owned a TV so can you back the f**k off,” I said in return. At the end of the report, under Personal Information, I saw a list of all the names I have ever used financially—my full name is Jia Angeli Carla Tolentino and I have used various combinations on various things—and then, at the bottom of the list, I saw the name “ANGEL POLENTINO.”

Experian wouldn’t let me dispute an identity issue online, so I called their 800 number. “Reason for dispute?” the kind, articulate Experian lady asked me.

“My name is not Angel Polentino,” I said. “Who is Angel Polentino?”

This morning I got emails saying that both of my erroneous credit reports had been corrected. Everyone check your credit scores! And then don’t forget to unsubscribe from the little gotcha services where you can view it free for 7 days but after that it’s a million dollars per month on autopay!

 

This has been a public service announcement from Jia Tolentino.

21 Comments]]> Jia Tolentino

Yesterday I checked all three of my credit scores, which I’ve done before but always immediately forgotten the number because it’s so boring—”It’s green,” I remarked to myself, “and I believe that means you’re done for the day.”

But yesterday the three numbers were different—the highest and lowest were 167 points apart—and two of them were not green at all. One was on the anemic lime portion of the miniature credit spectrum. Another was straight-up yellow, and the word above it said “WEAK.”

My first reaction was to take personal offense. I signed up for the TransUnion and Experian websites to better understand the reason for this cyber-bullying and answered a series of Big Brother-esque questions that further embarrassed me about my life (In 2005, you bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee: was it a 1987 model, a 1988 model, or 1989 model? “Goddammit,” I said to myself, and clicked the button next to 1987). Then I went through my credit reports in full. One of them didn’t show the Bank of America credit card I’ve had open for six years, so I called Bank of America and within two minutes a woman had filed an account report for me to TransUnion—easy.

The other report showed a $90 Comcast bill from 2012. “SERIOUSLY PAST DUE,” said the report. “I have never even owned a TV so can you back the f**k off,” I said in return. At the end of the report, under Personal Information, I saw a list of all the names I have ever used financially—my full name is Jia Angeli Carla Tolentino and I have used various combinations on various things—and then, at the bottom of the list, I saw the name “ANGEL POLENTINO.”

Experian wouldn’t let me dispute an identity issue online, so I called their 800 number. “Reason for dispute?” the kind, articulate Experian lady asked me.

“My name is not Angel Polentino,” I said. “Who is Angel Polentino?”

This morning I got emails saying that both of my erroneous credit reports had been corrected. Everyone check your credit scores! And then don’t forget to unsubscribe from the little gotcha services where you can view it free for 7 days but after that it’s a million dollars per month on autopay!

 

This has been a public service announcement from Jia Tolentino.

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