My Dinner With Andres

Listen, I have a $150 phone that’s several years old that I can use to take and make calls, take photos and send texts, and on a good day I can take and send a photo while texting. I sometimes can follow a link other people text to me, and on a really big day I manage to get on the internet and provide a link for other people.

So when you tell me there’s a meme coin out there for sale, well, I don’t really know what you’re saying to me. But when you sweeten the conversation by adding that at the end of this meme-coin rainbow there’s a fabulous prize, a chance of dinner with Greatness — and yes, the Greatness was capitalized in a Not-Twitter post (another digital place I’ve rarely managed to go) — well, how can one say no to that?

So I cracked open my digital wallet and started buying. Million upon million, I started buying this really Great meme coin that some people might foolishly think is computer pixels backed by air and not very much else but the truly jenius among us —

[Republican pollster Frank Luntz once told a Vanity Fair reporter that he had asked the then-president what his middle initial, J, stood for, and the answer was “jenius.” Now, the Washington Examiner told us this was just a joke, and perhaps Mr. Luntz said that as well, but as we’re all learning these days, why worry whether it’s true so long as the story sounds good?]

–recognize it as a monetizing opportunity. And why not? Isn’t everything, really, when you come right down to it?

So I started buying this coin, this air, that in January hit a value of $74 (that’s half the value of my phone!) but now for rather obscure reasons has dropped to a much lower value.

Now, I wasn’t the only one making these purchases, and this demand pushed the value back up to around $12 and in so doing inflated one wallet held by people long used to monetizing red hats, gold shoes and gilded bibles to the tune of $100 million, plus another $1.25 million in transaction fees received whenever coins are bought or traded.

If I was the top buyer — and I’m not telling — I spent $2 million to acquire 24 million coins. Why, to stuff all that in one wallet, well, that wallet might just be the size of Iran. Or Hungary. Maybe North Korea. India? China? Anywhere, really. Maybe not Russia. That’s pretty big, and why buy influence when one already has it?

But this is for dinner, don’t you understand? Dinner. A meal with Greatness. “Shoulder to shoulder with Greatness,” it read on Not-Twitter. (Or so I’m told by the Washington Post, which I know how to access on my computer and sometimes even on my phone.)

All the personal access I and 219 others can buy during one meal. Although you might forgive the uninitiated among us for thinking that if I spent $2 million of my hard-earned dollars [whatever happened to that quaint saying, “Born on third base and thinks he hit a triple?”] buying this coin I can’t see, touch or hear clinking against all the other coins in my wallet (although it does smell a tad fishy); can’t even bite into like I’m sure I will this delectable dinner that like as not will be very low on calories yet high on cost — well, you might think if I spent that kind of money for no real reason at all, no ulterior motive in mind, shouldn’t that dinner be complimentary?

I imagine it ought to be complimentary, as in, “Sir, you’re such a jenius, sir,” but it turns out it will not be complimentary as “on the (white) house.” No.

For spending $2 million [I have to confess, the Washington Post lost me with its math: the coin was selling at around $12, which may have been a recent gain of 30%, but even with all this recent flurry, the value is 90 percent less than the high of $74. When I do math, 10 percent of 74 comes out to 7.4, not 12, but I learned math way back in the ’70s, and perhaps my teachers didn’t know I’d someday need to try to calculate the value of thin air], this is what I get: a dinner I have to pay for myself.

I have to get to this dinner on my own dime. (Are dimes still worth something?) And pay for all my own accommodations. But let’s not stop there. I have to pay for my own parking at this dinner. I don’t even know for sure where this dinner is going to take place, but I’m pretty sure parking will be cheap. Gratuities of course are not included.

Also not included, it turns out, is the dinner itself. I have spent $2 million, plus an airline ticket, plus travelers’ insurance for when the plane catches fire and turns upside down and clips another plane (good thing the Department of Transportation is trying desperately to rehire everyone who mistakenly left when they were told either to take a buyout or just get the hell out), plus hotel and parking and tips and maybe even a new suit to go with the Greatness I’m about to stand shoulder to shoulder with . . . and I need to pay for my own dinner. Do you suppose they will accept meme coin?

This may come as a surprise, but there’s fine print with this offer: the dinner might not even happen at all. It can be cancelled at any time, if you read closely enough, and the host (guest of honor, if we’re the ones doing all the paying?) may not show up. Don’t fret, though, because in lieu of dinner I could — as, in, this isn’t an iron-clad promise either — could then receive (probably not free of charge, the way the evening is going so far) a limited-edition NFT.

That’s a Non-Fungible Token, and while “fungible” is a fun word, if you don’t understand my meme coin I’m certainly not going to be able to explain the air that is the substance of an NFT. Let me just try it this way: dinner with DJT evaporates into an NFT. WTF?

Look, there’s a lot about the world these days I just don’t understand at all, like meme coins and NFTs and how anyone comes to regard someone who thinks every single transaction should be monetized in his own favor is Great, with a J.

But I do know this: there is soup, and then there are soup kitchens. One can go to post-disaster Puerto Rico and indifferently launch paper towels at people in need, or one could go and set up soup kitchens, allowing even the most ordinary to dine shoulder-to-shoulder with world-class greatness at no cost to themselves, not even to their souls.

There are people who turn their celebrity into compassion, and then there are those who mistake themselves for Great, who back all that could be substance with nothing but hot air, whose meme coin of the realm is completely commoditized at others’ expense.

Really, which kind of person should we all be opening our wallets, digital or not, for? Caveat emptor, America.