I’ve been reading The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich, a collection of New Yorker magazine articles, in order to develop some understanding of what our neighbors down in Palm Beach go through. One chapter is devoted to “privates” in which successful music stars perform at corporate events and private parties, e.g., for a birthday or a wedding. The costs range from $250,000 to $24 million (Beyoncé in Dubai) for something that was considered shameful during the Classic Rock period. Artists who express solidarity with the 2SLGBTQQIA+ are delighted to perform in Muslim countries where homosexual acts are punishable by imprisonment or death. Artists are also happy to perform for various dictators, e.g., in Central Asia. That said, our much-loved stars do have some scruples. With the exception of some Christian bands, no artist will agree to work a Chick-fil-A corporate event.
A recent New York Times article covers a kind of “inverse private” in which the musicians stay where they normally perform and the rich douche comes to them:
The musicians of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra took their seats at Roy Thomson Hall on Wednesday for a performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony. Then a stage door swung open, and out walked the conductor.
He was not a world-renowned maestro or even a trained musician. The man who walked out, wearing a crisp white shirt and taking the podium, was Mandle Cheung, a 78-year-old technology executive who had paid the Toronto Symphony nearly $400,000 to lead it for one night.
Cheung, a lifelong fan of classical music who played in a harmonica band in high school and has dabbled in conducting, persuaded the orchestra to allow him to act out his long-held dream of leading a top ensemble.
“I had watched the videos and heard the recordings,” Cheung, the chairman and chief executive of ComputerTalk Technology in Toronto, said in an interview. “I had seen the magic of the guy standing in front of the orchestra with a stick. So I said, ‘Why can’t I do it, too?’”
He added: “I can afford to do it, that’s the main thing. So when it came across my mind, I said, ‘Hey, maybe I should give it a try.’”
This man is my hero!
How’s the book, you might ask? There are a lot of interesting tidbits. Just be aware that it is the New Yorker and, therefore, all of the world’s ills are blamed on the existence of Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular. Trump is mentioned roughly every three pages, despite his apparent lack of connection to any of the events chronicled. The author never explains why California is plagued by inequality, a high poverty rate, and envy given that nearly everyone there is a Democrat. If Republicans were eliminated, rich Democrats would give most of their money to social justice nonprofits and to community-building (Andrew Carnegie is cited approvingly for his funding of libraries). There would be no war (just as Andrew Carnegie prevented any wars from happening in Europe via his 1910 founding of a peace institute). The author never explains why rich Democrats can’t do all of this starting right now.
A limitlessly wealthly lion would pay to accompany the tabernacle choir. In the modern click harvesting economy where the only artists who get paid are the lowest quality, the best ones are going to be the ones who pay to be seen.
> The costs range from $250,000 to $24 million (Beyoncé in Dubai) for something that was considered shameful during the Classic Rock period. Artists who express solidarity with the 2SLGBTQQIA+ are delighted to perform in Muslim countries where homosexual acts are punishable by imprisonment or death.
Hahahaha! How do you expect any celebrity to not be for or against any popular groups? Neutrality doesn’t rouse people’s emotions, which is the prime concern of any celebrity, Dr. Greenspun!
> Trump is mentioned roughly every three pages, despite his apparent lack of connection to any of the events chronicled.
That reminds me of ‘The Big Lebowski’ and Walter’s PTSD!
I’m sure some of your astute readers are going to point that you might be in the next version of this book!
Carnegie faced up to the legacy problem that confronts the well-to-do. He funded the building of libraries all across the country, saddling the municipalities with the maintenance and upkeep in perpetuity. Can’t say the old Scotsman wasn’t canny.
Take away the fiction shelves and the online terminals and what is left of your local library?
“Dr” Phil:
I would like to invite you to give a 30 minute talk at my seminar next week. It is in San Francisco (Tenderloin) at our “Americans for Palestinians” club. You must adhere to the dress code and wear a blue tie, like everyone in the audience, to indicate you are a Democratic Party member. The crowd will be 95% LBGTQ (don’t mind Tom and Bob, who will likely be making out in the crowd — they can’t keep their hands off of each other!). I am offering a speaker’s fee of $24 million. You need to stand for a reception line with each audience member afterwards.
You turn the offer down, right? Because your moral compass is stronger than Beyonce’s?
Thanks, Mike. Enjoy your event. I will be at Oshkosh along with 100,000+ people from all around the world who love aviation.
I am amused how the implicit assumption is that it would be impossible, or a sign of irredeemable stupidity, to turn down such an offer.
AvM: Indeed. I mean it’s like not believing that the US is a capitalist country. When given a choice between doing the moral thing that doesn’t make any strategic sense and doing the amoral thing that does, the realistic option is to choose the amoral option. Rational members of any society which values power, be it political/monetary etc., would do that.
PhilG Fan, especially rational leftist always choose their self-interest, large component of which is minimizing effort which translates in not doing any productive work. That’s why socialism does not work! Everyone is governed by notions they believe in, and thus atheistic socialists are governed by laws of increasing entropy,
@Mike, I would like to invite you to give a 30 minute talk at my seminar next week. It is in Gaza at our “Hamas for Palestinians” club. You must adhere to the dress code and wear green headbands and keffiyeh, like everyone in the audience, to indicate you are a Hamas Party member. The crowd will be 95% Hamas fighters (don’t mind the ones sworn to commit suicide against civilian — they are eagerly waiting for their 42 virgins!). I am offering a speaker’s fee of $24 million. You need to stand for a reception line with each audience member afterwards.
You turn the offer down, right? Because your moral compass is stronger than Beyonce’s?
perplexed: I see what you mean, and agree with you in the context you speak in.
However, to tell you the truth, I have thought long and hard about this. The only thing I realized is, if left works in the context of right or right works in the context of left, anything can work. It’s like God (masculine) works in the context of Nature (feminine) or Nature works in the context of God, it’s equivalent.
There’s some force/law that controls the average number of enlightened people in specific places that keeps increasing or decreasing and this leads to happiness or distress on an average.
perplexed: I see what you mean, and agree with you in the context you speak in.
However, to tell you the truth, I have thought long and hard about this. The only thing I realized is, if left works in the context of right or right works in the context of left, anything can work. It’s like God (masculine) works in the context of Nature (feminine) or Nature works in the context of God, it’s equivalent.
There’s some force/law that controls the average number of enlightened people in specific places that keeps increasing or decreasing and this leads to happiness or distress on an average.
BTW: Is your name influenced by “The Guide for the perplexed”? Wonderful book, by the way.
Phil’s fan, your are very well read. I think you will enjoy USSR dystopia book “Moscow 2042” by late Vladimir Voynovich, especially his “primary is secondary and secondary is primary” metaphysics take on Kant and Hegel who were influenced by (culturally appropriated from) Eastern philosophy and themselves influenced habitually drunk student Karl Marx. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/74399.Moscow_2042 If Hegel were a little smarter, understood math and could also copy from Gauss, he would probably come up with LLMs first.
Even though I learned SQL from relational algebra and CJ Date and EF Codd and web development from some old CGI book, Philip here created so many guides, wears so many hats and, as a true Renaissance man explains so many issues I consider him true modern Maimonides. When, by Philip’s prediction, I was re-inventing lisp runtime in the middle of a large C/SQL application and googled closures I got hooked on Phillip’s blog and started reading his advise on everything. So I am real modern perplexed as I follow Philip’s guidance.
> Phil’s fan, your are very well read. I think you will enjoy USSR dystopia book “Moscow 2042” by late Vladimir Voynovich, especially his “primary is secondary and secondary is primary” metaphysics […]
Hahahaha! Thanks! Added the book to the list.
> Even though I learned SQL from relational algebra and CJ Date and EF Codd and web development from some old CGI book, Philip here created so many guides, wears so many hats and, as a true […]
That’s actually pretty cool! I didn’t know that Dr. Greenspun was a major computer science guy. I just came across ‘Real world divorce’, and found it incredibly funny and sad, having been raised in a conservative background where love (and marriage) is taken seriously, almost as a gift of nature. And then I think I came across the blog via the ‘Human Husbandry’ post.
I just use the name ‘PhilG Fan’ because it desribes me more objectively and I read somewhere that he thinks that his dog is the only one who is his fan, hahaha!
LARPing for the sophisticated.