Here are some things you can spend $100,000 on: a used Ferrari, $3,000 corgi decanters for 33 of your closest friends, over 20 hours worth of high-end helicopter rental, like 40,000 2-liter bottles of orange soda, three years of law school, Halloween costumes for over 5,000 animals (NOTE: WHAT), and a damn house. Or, alternatively, you could have Guy Fieri come to your party.
Guy Fieri, the “celebrity chef” who has become the face of the Food Network, is paid $100,000 for personal appearances, records show. […]
Fieri was paid $100,000 for a 60-minute appearance at the New York State Fair in late-August, according to contract documents. Fieri’s company, Knuckle Sandwich LLC, was also paid $1500 to cover his travel costs. [The Smoking Gun]
OK, a couple things:
– OF COURSE Guy Fieri’s company is called “Knuckle Sandwich, LLC.” I mean, what else would it be called?
– I’m actually not angry at Guy Fieri about this. I’m angry at him about a lot of things, many of them detailed in this BRUTAL piece from The Observer, but not this. I could walk outside right now and hold up a sign that says “I Will Come To Your Party For $100,000” and it wouldn’t mean a single crunchtastic thing unless someone took me up on the offer. That’s how the market works. You charge the price that people are willing to pay for your good or service, and, for whatever reason, people are willing to pay six figures to have this jamook show up and turn their event into the Flavortown Carnival And Deep-Fried Jamboree or whatever the hell he does at a personal appearance. I don’t even want to know. I can imagine, and that’s enough.
Look, we can do better than this. Like, as a society. If we all just up and decided right now that we are not going to give Guy Fieri $100,000 — ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS — to appear at events, then he would have to lower his fee. And if we won’t pay the new lower fee either, he’ll have to lower it again. And again. And again and again and again, until it’s so low that it’s no longer newsworthy and doesn’t appear in big splashy headlines that make my blood boil. It’s very simple.
I guess my point here is twofold: First of all, I am not joking about coming to your birthday party for $100,000. I will definitely do that. And second of all, don’t curse the darkness, people. Light a candle.
