20 bucks for advice
this entry brought to you by queens of the stone age, "covered in plaid"
I was reading an article in Esquire by a writer named Tom Chiarello, a frequent writer who I've grown to look forward to reading. This particular month he called himself the 20 Dollar Millionaire, who had a big wad of 20s, and would peel one off for everyone who could possibly give him extra, well, anything. For example, he gave a bell hop at a hotel 20 bucks to fill up his bathtub with ice. Why? "Because I have a friend coming with a lot of fish. A lot of fish." It was a lie, but the point was to see what benefits 20 bucks could get him.
While in Vegas, however, he learned that the 20 was more expected than most place. "What can I get for twenty bucks?" he asked someone, peeling off a 20. "Advice," the guy answered with a shrug. So the 20 Dollar Millionaire went looking for advice.
And I stopped and thought, if someone handed me twenty bucks for advice, what would I tell him? Something deep and philosophical? Or something practical?
I thought about this long and hard, and I remembered something my friend Lisa once told me a decade ago.
"She plays guitar fast because she's no good. When you play really fast it's easy to hide the fact that you're no good."
She didn't mean for it to be, but I loved that as a metaphor for life. So, for 20 bucks, I'd tell him the above story, and my advice would be, "Learn to play well. Not fast."
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with love from CRS @ 10:11 PM
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
I was reading an article in Esquire by a writer named Tom Chiarello, a frequent writer who I've grown to look forward to reading. This particular month he called himself the 20 Dollar Millionaire, who had a big wad of 20s, and would peel one off for everyone who could possibly give him extra, well, anything. For example, he gave a bell hop at a hotel 20 bucks to fill up his bathtub with ice. Why? "Because I have a friend coming with a lot of fish. A lot of fish." It was a lie, but the point was to see what benefits 20 bucks could get him.
While in Vegas, however, he learned that the 20 was more expected than most place. "What can I get for twenty bucks?" he asked someone, peeling off a 20. "Advice," the guy answered with a shrug. So the 20 Dollar Millionaire went looking for advice.
And I stopped and thought, if someone handed me twenty bucks for advice, what would I tell him? Something deep and philosophical? Or something practical?
I thought about this long and hard, and I remembered something my friend Lisa once told me a decade ago.
"She plays guitar fast because she's no good. When you play really fast it's easy to hide the fact that you're no good."
She didn't mean for it to be, but I loved that as a metaphor for life. So, for 20 bucks, I'd tell him the above story, and my advice would be, "Learn to play well. Not fast."
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