Dear Mastercard,
I am writing to answer the question you've so tantalizingly posed, "What would be 'priceless' about the chance to have breakfast with the Jets GM?"
My answer, simply: "Bacon."
First, however, I must say that I am most bemused by the irony with which you choose to include the terms "priceless" and "Tannenbaum" in the same sentence. "Why, Tom?," you may ask. Well, Mastercard, I'll thank you for asking me to expound upon my opening salvo and will continue with great fervor thusly:
Let's begin by considering the many different ways to define "priceless." Webster offers three definitions.
The first is the most commonly understood definition, "having a value beyond any price." This particular description would not apply to a "breakfast" with one Michael Tannebaum. Clearly, the food to be served will have a finite market value, as does Messr. Tannenbaum's time (we shall assume that this is a paid endorsement), as would the service, amenities, travel costs, etc. Thus, there is, therefore, a measurable "price" to be attached this experience. A cost; a quantifiable
value, per se.
No, it is with the secondary and tertiary definitions that we can better hone in upon describing the experience of a so-called
Breakfast With Tannenbaum (for which we shall use the acronym
BWT henceforth).
The second definition Webster offers reads, "Having worth in terms of other than market value."
Ah. The irony.
Mastercard, have you heard of Calvin Pace? Perhaps you're aware of Curtis Martin? Or, perhaps, Chad Pennington? (Please note, it galls me to cite these names in our brief conversation regarding "market value"). I do so to illustrate the point that Messr. Tannenbaum has NO VERIFIABLE UNDERSTANDING of the term
market value. A Certified Public Accountant by training, Tannenbaum has flouted the very principles of the free market by signing both Pace and Pennington to contracts that totalled exponentially over and beyond any conceivable measure that would have been defined by said "market."
1 His coup de gras, however, was serving as the architect behind the dubiously conceived, doubly-disconcerting Curtis Martin de-facto "trade" and contract imbroglio. By ceding first and third round picks to the rival Patriots for a running back was fool-hearty enough, but to then grant Martin salary cap-strangling contracts totalling nearly $40 million dollars (US) for a running back with as much mileage as Martin had accumulated
before he had yet to even don a Jets uniform? Ludicrous! Alas, let's not linger too long on this point. I mean, a man who's been in the job as long as Messr. Tannenbaum has is sure to have a few landmark foibles in pursuit of ultimate success, yes? What's that you ask, Mastercard? Surely such expenditures would result in a championship? Haha! No, Mastercard, it hasn't! Messr. Tannenbaum, CPA, has spent this money haphazardly with little return and no regard for his organization's future financial flexibility!
2 These examples are but the tip of a leviathanic iceberg that are the very definition of operating under the premise of spending at a rate "other than market value." It's as if Noah Webster himself had Messr. Tannenbaum in mind when he wrote this very definition!
3The third definition is, of course, a trifle: "delightfully amusing, odd, or absurd." Were Mr. Webster alive today, I'm more than sure we'd share a knowing chuckle over this particular choice in terminology as we considered how
priceless it is watching two diminutive caucasian safeties chasing, in vain, after considerably more athletic
4 foes through the lens of this particular description. Odd and absurd, indeed!
Messr. Tannenbaum, you are indeed a solid two-thirds "priceless"!
In closing, and to answer your initial query, I think it would be "priceless" to attend
BWT if only to stare into the eyes of the Dread Accountant, to watch him eat his bacon and his eggs, to sip his coffee, all the while meticulously calculating the amount of triglycerides accumulating in his cold, dank arteries; to imagine the clusters of trans-fats building stroke-inducing walls inside his veins; and to wonder when--
when--this man, this...book-keeper, this
person who has stolen over a decade of my life while in the employ of the New York Jets--when the toll that the inevitable existential angst caused by trading his soul for the opportunity to draft ever newer (yet familiar) incarnations of Anthony Schlegel finally causes him to walk away, head bowed in shame, a failure. Oh, bacon.
Bacon, bacon, bacon.
Work your magic, bacon
5.
Sincerely,
Thomas Shane
1 To wit, Calvin Pace is paid in roughly the same salary frame as fellow linebackers James Harrison and DeMarcus Ware, both perennial Pro-Bowlers, All-Pros and frequently mentioned in the conversation for NFL Defensive Player of the Year. Calvin Pace has never been voted to a Pro Bowl. Chad Pennington, similarly, was given a mammoth contract that the given market would value as "elite," despite the fact that his arm could project a football about as far as my penis is capable of projecting semen.2 Which, incidentally, would make him the perfect mark for an unnamed, largely-unregulated corporation to entrap with a high-interest, predatory lending scheme! (Hint, hint!)3 Anachronistically, of course.4 Noracist.5 ****.yeah, bacon.
Edited by T0mShane, 12 November 2011 - 01:00 PM.
Well, that's the internet, man: 9 billion tough guys who secretly want to touch your pee-pee.
