Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Can you really turn it up a notch? A financial explication of Kendrick Lamar's "Swimming Pools"




Here’s the scene: Being the one-percenter you are, you just moved into a ritzy apartment complex that has all the amenities a 26 year-old could possibly want: fitness center, billiards room and of course, a swimming pool.

You’re excited as can be, so you want to throw an apartment-warming party. I’m not talking about just having a few friends over to check out your new 900 square-foot, one-bedroom digs either. You want this to be on some Project X ish, except the guests will be about eight years older so, you know, you don’t face a statty.

You’re pondering ideas on what you can do to make this the biggest, baddest celebration anyone has ever been to, but to no avail, you can’t think of anything outside of setting up a beer pong table (you’re rusty; it’s ok, you haven’t thrown a party since college).

But then that “a-ha!” moment hits when you’re listening to the radio and Kendrick Lamar’s new joint “Swimming Pools” blasts through your speakers. The song puts you into a trance with its hypnotic beat and rhythmic chants of “drank”. You’re grooving along to the song when the chorus hits:

Why you babysittin’ only two or three shots?/ I’m a show you how to turn it up notch/ First you need a swimming pool full of liquor then you diiive in it it/ Pool full of liquor then you diiiiiive in it


That’s it- you have your answer! You don’t even need to hear the other four bars of the hook; you know exactly what you need to do- get a swimming pool full of liquor (then dive in it once the swimming pool is full of liquor). You already have the swimming pool (good thing you moved into that fancy shmancy apartment complex!); all you need to do now is go out and buy some liquor. Well, a lot of liquor.

That’s when it hits you: If I want to do Kendrick Lamar proud, I’m gonna have to spend a considerable amount of cash. But how much? Let’s take a look.

First, you catch a break: the swimming pool has been emptied of its water due to renovations (don’t worry, it’s not locked off or anything, you can still get in there). Otherwise, you would have had to go to management and ask them to empty the pool for you, at which point you would have had to explain your grandiose plans to management, which would have not been the best foot to start out on with them. Even if they went along with your plan, the costs of emptying the pool and then filling it up when the party is over would have most likely fallen on you. This would have cost you anywhere from $70 to $150 if you decided to go with a professional pool service- save that money for the licka!

You’re going to need a lot of it- try 30,000 gallons worth (since it’s a community pool serving the whole complex, it’s a little bigger than your normal backyard job). This is starting to sound expensive.
You’re a vodka person at heart, and you don’t believe in mixing the pool with different types of liquor (who knows what kinds of problems that could or could not pose!), so you decide to look at a few different brands and see how much a handle is going for:

Brand
Price (handle)
Absolut
$32.99
Svedka
$22.99
Gray Goose
$58.99
Skyy
$23.99
Smirnoff 100p
$34.99
Ketel One
$40.99
Belvedere
$59.99
                                                                                               
Keep in mind, a handle is 1.75 liters, and there are 3.78541 liters in one gallon. This leads to some straightforward math: 3.78541 ÷ 1.75 2.16309143 handles in a gallon. And 30,000 x 2.16309143 64,892.7429. But let’s round up a little bit and say you will need to purchase 64,893 handles of vodka to fill your swimming pool.

The question then becomes: How much would it cost to fill up a pool of vodka with 64,893 handles? Let’s chart this for your convenience (it’s about the last bit of convenience you’ll have):

Brand
Price (handle)
Price to Fill up Pool with said brand
Absolut
$32.99
$2,140,820.07
Svedka
$22.99
$1,491,890.07 (the economic choice)
Grey Goose
$58.99
$3,828,038.07
Skyy
$23.99
$1,556,783.07
Smirnoff 100p
$34.99
$2,270,606.07 (the “I don’t want to seem cheap, but I don’t want to show off how much gwop I really got” plan)
Ketel One
$40.99
$2,659,964.07
Belvedere
$59.99
$3,892,931.07 (the “we doin’ it big tonite!” option)

Unless you have free access to a fleet of U-Haul trucks, you’re looking at some pretty big transportation costs too, though I would hope that the liquor stores (you didn’t think you’d be able to buy 64,893 handles at one store, did you? Don’t forget about the gas costs!) would help you move the product back to your apartment. However, my guess is that unless you have Bilderberg money, you’ve already probably been priced out of following the orders of the person who whispered into Kendrick Lamar’s ear at the function during which he was babysittin’ a couple of shots. If you do have Bilderberg money, you’re probably not living in a 900-square foot apartment.

In the snowball’s chance in hell that you a) can afford millions in handles and b) live in an apartment complex, there is the whole matter of pouring the vodka into the pool. I’m no expert in viscosity (or vodka, for that matter), but let’s generalize and say it would take roughly the same amount of time to pour equal amounts of water and vodka from the same container.

It takes roughly 8.8 seconds to empty out a 710 mL (24 oz) bottle of water. More math to follow:
1750 ÷ 710 2.46478873 x 8.8 21.6901408 seconds to empty out a handle of vodka. Let’s give you some breathing room and round up to 22 seconds since I’m a generous guy. 

Thus, if it takes you 22 seconds to empty out one handle of vodka, it will take you 1,427,646 seconds to empty out 64,893 handles of vodka to fill up the pool. That’s 23,794 minutes, or 396.568333 hours (approximately), or 16.5236806 days spent in just the action of pouring the vodka into the pool. You also have to consider bending down to pick up the bottle, opening up the bottle, putting the bottle back and getting a new one. Those intermediate actions would take you about 10 seconds combined, so multiply those numbers by 1.45 (because 10 goes into 22 0.454545… times, and I’ll politely round down for you), and you get 2,070,086.7 seconds, or 34,501.445 minutes, or 575.024083 hours, or 23.9593368 days, or 3.422764 weeks.

I hope you have some friends, because time is money like that Styles P and Joell Ortiz track. Living in a 900 square-foot apartment, I’m guessing you make about $60,000 per year (you can afford $3 million of liquor thanks to the old money that runs in your family- this is a stretch), or about $30 per hour. You probably want to have this party ASAP because it’s an apartment-warming party; the whole thing is to celebrate the newness of moving into your new plush apartment complex. If you do this by yourself around the clock, starting on a Monday, you would miss 18 days of work and lose $4,320 in opportunity costs (assuming $30 per hour on a 40-hour work week). You’re gonna need some help, because you’ll need to sleep at some point. As many people as you can round up…

Good thing you didn’t have to spend that $70-$150 on emptying the pool in the first place.

The second part of the equation- diving into the pool- seems like a free venture at first…until you realize that swimming in alcohol is pretty impossible to do. You will most likely drown, which would prompt a 911 call. An ambulance ride, depending on where you live and how close you are to a hospital, could cost more than $2,000. Hopefully you have insurance; it'll help a good bit, but you'll still be pretty screwed.

If you somehow survive, you will be on the hook for a night in the hospital or two, which could be about $5,000 per night. Again, you better have insurance. You probably do since you can afford a 900 square foot apartment in a ritzy complex, so you won’t have to worry about a five-figure hospital bill when it’s all said and done.

Your cheapest option- if you decide to dive in the swimming pool full of vodka- would be to just die and let yourself drown. That way, you eliminate the hassle of having to save your life with exorbitant ambulance and hospital bills.

You thought the $1.5 million-plus alcohol bill would be where the costs stopped, didn’t you?

After analyzing all this information, you probably realize it isn’t economically feasible to get a swimming pool full of liquor and dive it; you’re better off babysitting a Jagerbomb or two and setting up a beer pong table. Oh well, you tried.

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