pompadoured
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the food and wine classic in aspen:
June 18, 2007
aspen is at once the most horrible, frightening, and peaceful place i have ever been. it is pretty here. i saw a man bid $35,000 to cook with bobby flay for twenty minutes, and get outbid by a woman and her daughter who paid $37,000 to cook with bobby flay for twenty minutes.
there is a gucci store, a prada store, a louis vuitton store, and about eight-hundred high-priced boutiques. there are mountains and trees and little waterfalls and creeks and rivers. the water is clean. a nice meal costs $100, without drinks. i walked two miles back to the house i am staying at in the highlands, and i passed a deer and a fox and two baseball diamonds that have huge mountains behind them. i was offered a chance to look at prada luggage by a woman who appeared to be a supermodel.
i heard nine people call the food and wine celebration "the superbowl of food and wine". in the past week i have tried so many different kinds of gourmet food and wine, that i cannot remember one name of any one thing i tried. fiji water. my head hurts and i have a sore throat. it is dry in aspen.
everyone is white. almost. the people who actually work in aspen are diverse and accepting. i like talking to them. they see a lot of shit, and aspen used to be really great before the prada model luggage crowd moved in. the people that own houses here are, mostly, mindless consumers who have found the ultimate place to spend money. some are assholes, some are unassuming and nice. everyone is willing to talk about possessions and the news. i bought a cowboy hat. i am wearing it right now on the side of a mountain. someone is mowing their lawn. i am reading a dave eggers book about the lost boys, and i like it, and i feel like a tool.
i am reminded of the place that powerful people go in atlas shrugged. this is that place, but fucked-up and not utopian. and in its reality, it is also the best example of why ayn rand was wrong about selfishness, and the wealth of living it creates.
you don't have to question anything in aspen if you have money, because you don't have to drive by a crack house, or worry about theft. you can sit on your outside achievements in the stock market or whatever. there is no one starving in this city. if you live rich here, you never have to look around and consider that your life isn't that important, and maybe maintaining dignity and respect is something that isn't pretty or nice-feeling, but consistently hard and difficult and contrary to easy living. maybe being a good person isn't donating $37,000 to charity in order to cook with bobby flay, but donating $37,000 to charity and expecting nothing in return.
i am by all standards comfortable and polite here. my hosts here are nice, and i like them very much. i am closer to who they are than to who the guy mowing the yard for money is. i am probably part of the the problem with this place, and rich people in general, even though i feel like a nice person, i buy organic products, recycle, and think about buying a hybrid car often.
i bought a cowboy hat, and am typing on a $2,000 computer on the side of a mountain. there is a man mowing, and i am sitting next to a waterfall.
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I was shopping today, at a place called the Domain located next to this place with expensive condos located next to IBM headquarters, and felt like I was in a logoed ugly purse pageant with very expensive shoes being the talent part, and the latest tacky expensive dress being the swimsuit part. I felt like I was in a world of bored people. Bored people with too much money. And then I bought stuff and went home.
I think being selfish is fine. I am selfish (or not)depending on the situation, or who you ask. The people who call you selfish are just mad because you're not letting them have their way. They use that word to make you give them what they want from you in the same way that people use the word 'arrogant.'
The people in Atlas Shrugged were probably tired of all the dead weight, tired of sinking on some doomed boat. They decided to get a lifeboat and find some island, to start over, to get away from people who pitching a fit about not having their way with them and their ideas. Those people wanted to make money with those ideas, they were selfish too because ultimately most people want to have eveything they need for a comfortable life. Some people just need more, and other people get carried away into some bored purse pageant. A good life's having whatever makes us seem happy I suppose. I don't think it's selfish to want a good life.
- Sabra / June 24, 2007 8:31 PM
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