Bed Building & The New Money
Names of carpet seen recently at a Home Depot: Destiny Oyster, Flag Staff Mushroom, Remarkable [sic] Light Bark.
And then, of course there's "berberesque" industrial felt for use as padding underneath office carpets. I went there looking for astro turf ion bright neon green but, as the clerk informed me, astro turf is (apparently) a seasonal item. Did the lawn flamingos fly south for winter, too?
The woman who rang me up scanned four long pipes, eight short pipes, an assortment of pipe elbows and flanges and then asked me what I was making. "A bed," I replied, and she dropped it all in a bag with the weirdest look on her face.
For me, the whole spa thing is a bit too new-agey. I would love to go to a retreat but not if it's all about honing your chi and eating brown rice. I just want to have time away and be able to get a massage the same day I request it. I think the spa problem gets at one of larger problems of late 20th century decadence: it was based on a culture of over-adjectivization. Witness the menus at any of the popular popular fusion restaurants. How many adjectives can be placed before the name of a cake? How many strange ingredients can be smushed into a side dish*? Same thing with spas and destination hotels: it's all about exotic this and rare that. I'm willing to trust that my $3000k+ weekend is sufficiently exotic/quality/rare/whatever, I dont need someone to tell me so, that just makes me feel cheap.
* That's not to say that I didn't like my star anise quail at maple, but that it would have seemed silly to see that on the menu (there was, oddly, no menu for the 'tasting menu.' food was just brought out and the head waiter explained what we were about to eat). I'd much rather order the "grilled quail" from the menu and have the waiter explain to me how it was prepared when it arrives. Not only does it remove the nasty, garish clutter from the menu, but it enhances the anticipation too. The "modern diner" trend was an honest attempt to capitalize on over-adjectivization, but titles like "Good Ole' Macaroni & Cheese" in a restaurant with obviously expensive furnishing and a new, shiny, open kitchen (not to mention the black-clad wait staff) are just disingenuous.
This quotation from The New Gilded Age sums up my the thoughts in the above paragraph as well as the aforementioned "late 20th century decadence" while also taking on the (then) new USD designs:
The New Money looks like our Gilded Age. In its combination of overkill and emptiness, the New Money evokes the new midtown hotels, with their black-and-white "Deco" marble lobbies, wedged into tiny lots, and then the cold sealed rooms immediately above-- the luxury falling off as soon as you've checked in. It calls to mind the new generation of "luxury" multiplex movie theaters, where you're drawn in by a little Egyptian décor and buttered popcorn, and then, ticket bought, find yourself with nothing but a sticky floor and a tiny screen. The comforting come-on and then the sudden abrupt blankness-- that's the look of the New Gilded Age, and the money has it. The New Money cuts off the flow of meaning as soon as you've, so to speak, "bought it." It's Camden Yards money-- see, just as good as the old place, sonny, with all the old-fashioned charm you're used to. Have another hot dog. And underneath-- the part of the stadium only shown to Rupert Murdoch-- in the security control center, the cables run out to surveillance cameras that keep a secret eye on the crowd, just as the electronic doodads in the money that let you get in wink at you beneath their reassuring nineteenth-century facade. Faux-retro reassurance and security-strip paranoia now share the same bedroom, or dollar bill. From "Metamoney" by Adam Gopnik, Nov. 9, 1998.
Paco Underhill's Why We Buy was a nice airplane read, too.
--Posted 01/27/02 03:42AM