Billion Dollar Babies: Reading from #JFTRE3

Mookie Spitz reads from his new sci-fi novel, Jonnie Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine, a ruthless, intimate descent into Penny Pitz’ post-crypto aftermath—equal parts satire, survivor's tale, and societal indictment. Once a jet-setting crypto PR queen, Penny now finds herself downgraded to business reporter at a stifling office in Jersey City, exiled from luxury and reduced to eavesdropping on nerds wooing her with candy. Still, her past life gives her an edge: she’s assigned to the Zillionaires List, interviewing the ultra-wealthy she once partied with—and occasionally dodged.

From male oligarchs mistaking her press pass for an invitation to flirt, to sisters who passive-aggressively battle for credit for her career reset, Penny’s life is now one endless performance. She weaponizes charm, sarcasm, and innuendo to survive in a man’s world where every compliment is a trap, every nod a negotiation. And yet, through the haze of truffle oil, Chippendales calendars, and drunken interviews, Penny starts to feel the cracks widen. The crypto crash didn’t just ruin her résumé—it shattered something deeper.

Haunted by memories she won’t name and needs she won’t admit, Penny's defiance masks something raw: the ache for autonomy in a world that only values her surface. Her success is always conditional, her power always borrowed, her pleasure always performed for others. Even her dirtiest moments—begging for release in bed—are scripted for someone else’s benefit. The trauma, long buried, still twists her decisions, making intimacy dangerous and ambition hollow.

Meanwhile, as the political tides turn and crypto resurrects in grotesque new forms, Penny finds herself at another crossroads. The Prez and his family come calling. Meme coins flood the market. Billionaire cronies rally around a new inauguration. But this time, she turns them down—scarred, smarter, and maybe still salvageable. Alienated from her sisters, unwelcome at Shabbat, still not laid, Penny finds a strange comfort in her solitude. She’s not better, but maybe she’s finally alone on her own terms.

A reckoning, a portrait of burnout, betrayal, and the sick joke of feminist progress under late-stage capitalism: “Billion Dollar Babies” dares to ask what happens when the girlboss grows up—and realizes the empire was a pyramid scheme all along.

The Novel

Jonnie Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine

First Reading

Alice Unchained

Next Reading

Changing Beats