Cargo cults of the laptop class, part one
Ignoring the LinkedIn request from God
Weekends in the Willennium
Once cracked open, no thirst is safe from Liquid Death. After ritually dismembering its thirst victims, this brutal can of water used the severed body parts of dead thirsts to build itself a flesh suit which it used as a disguise to get a job in marketing.
But Liquid Death never took the job.
— Packaging copy, Liquid Death brand drinking water
I never want to lie to you, reader. But I never made it to New York.
Turns out the friendliest couch in the Northeast Megapolis was my dear friend Lidija’s; her Philly rowhouse also boasts the prettiest dog. And when I found out about the party planned for Saturday, Manhattan seemed farther than ever.
Born in what was then Yugoslavia on the eve of civil war, Lidija and her parents fled as the country splintered under NATO bombardment; initially granted asylum in Germany, they finally resettled in, of all places, Cincinnati’s eastern suburbs. She was nine years old.
Entering 3rd grade, Lidija could not speak the language of her classmates, teachers, or textbooks. Fifteen years later she was financially supporting both herself and her father, who never learned English, while beginning the still-unfinished project of paying off her Miami University student loans. My first job out of college was an AmeriCorps deployment at a Vermont nonprofit; I still remember the incomprehension on Lidija’s face when I cheerfully told her I was on food stamps. She said, “Your parents paid for Dartmouth so you could get a job where you can’t afford to eat?” At the time, I thought she was the weird one.
It’s not that I aspire to be a social climber. With his arrival in Boston, my great-grandfather’s emigration from Italy was over, but immigration’s spiritual voyage was only beginning. As far back as I can remember, I’ve sought glimpses of the folkways of American power with a voyeuristic ferocity whose effects on my social life range from mere embarrassment to near self-destruction. It is not the hobbyist’s curiosity, but the cat’s. Fortunately, immigrants have at least nine lives.
Meeting friends of friends in Chicago last month, all consultants, I asked if they worked for McKinsey, which is the Harvard of consultancies, and, to a nontrivial extent, the Harvard of Harvard. Their faces told me that this was like asking a Premiere League striker his favorite NFL team, or greeting someone named Pam by asking after Jim; it’s still conceivable I’m not an idiot, but I haven’t helped my chances. Just when I think I’ve grasped an approximate taxonomy of white-collar fanciness, I discover flavors of management consulting I’d never heard of.
McKinsey’s client “engagements,” as they call them, have included publicity campaigns for the warlords of luckless countries, helping Purdue Pharma convince doctors to prescribe more Oxycodone, and, presumably, long walks on the beach.
My friend’s friends, on the other hand, met each other in a public-policy Master’s program, which is like getting an MBA at a business school run by Leslie Knope.
Too late, I remembered senior year’s blur of corporate recruiting. Bridgewater is the largo hedge fund; Bridgespan is the nonprofit consultancy.
As my new friends in Chicago patiently explained that they worked at opposite-McKinsey, I made a bid for half credit, asking, “Like Bridgespan?” Close enough. These guys were at Guidehouse, the Pepsi to Bridgespan’s Coke. (Ish?)
As I finished recalibrating my taxonomy, their de facto leader said, “I actually used to be at McKinsey.”1
The demolition of the Crystal Palace might have meant the end of “the parliament of objects,”2 but the parliament of corporations survived even 9/11. In harpooning the Pentagon and toppling the World Trade Center, bin Laden hurt but failed to maim the democratic–capitalist order, whose true headquarters—an unassuming courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware—remains unscathed.
Lidija’s conditions for me to crash at her place were more than fair: that I bring Milanos3 from my parents’ pantry, that I dogsit Rupert Big-Potato during her work trip to DC, that I only stay for two weeks, and that I inform her in advance if I was going to write about her friends’ party on Saturday.
So, their friend Jordan had hatched a plan for a DIY “Hot Ones,” “Hot Ones” being the YouTube show in which celebrities answer thoughtfully researched questions while eating, via the medium of chicken wings, a gauntlet of ten increasingly devastating hot sauces.
At the risk of confirming Lidija’s great-grandfather’s worst suspicions about the softness of the West, I declined to participate. Per Jordan’s rules, I was still allowed to watch—as long as I first ate a sauce-dipped toothpick’s worth of the fourth-hottest concoction. I bravely did so without physically crying, though I did end up scurrying to the refrigerator for Lactaid, the softest man on the eastern seaboard.
Meeting one of Lidija’s friends, I was unusually eager to ask about his life, as neither of us knew what to say after he asked where I lived and I said I was improvising.
When he told me he was a consultant, I left McKinsey unmentioned, asking only which consultancy he worked for.
“McKinsey,” he said. “Healthcare clients.”
I said, “Not warlords!”
“Exactly,” he said, explaining that warlord consultants are a different division.
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR PART TWO OF HOT ONES: THE PARTY.
Devastated to report that I misremembered this part; I regret the error. Eyewitness testimony is not reliable!!!
Either Alexander Kluge or Ben Lerner or someone they were quoting!
If Inception were a documentary about my life, my totem would be Milanos. That said, my life has already been featured in a movie: I’m Owen Wilson in You, Me, and Dupree.
Milanos, huh? I always liked the Chessmen better.