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Simplify
Yourself
by Mad Dog
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It’s true we all
have different needs in life. Some people need a Hearst Castle while I
don’t. Okay, some people can afford a Hearst Castle and I
can’t. |
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I saw Hearst Castle the
other day and, with its 165 rooms, 41 fireplaces, priceless tapestries,
and dining room table that seats more people than the average tour bus,
it reminded me of my youth—wasted. Think about it, 90,000 square feet
is a lot of space. Lord knows I didn’t grow up in anything like that.
Okay, maybe it was a little like that since our house also had walls,
floors, and ceilings, but to say it was similar is like saying I’m a
dead ringer for Yao Ming because we both have two arms, two legs, a
head, and ten fingers. Just my luck another similarity isn’t our
endorsement income.
After checking the place out, which
is only one of six homes William Randolph Hearst had, I went back to my
$40-a-night Days Inn room and looked around, consoling myself with the
knowledge that I could easily find my way to the bathroom in the middle
of the night. After all, I only had to remember where one was, not 61.
See, I have simple tastes. Unlike most Americans, I don’t need things
to be huge. Whereas people love their SUVs, I drive a motorcycle. Where
they have closets jammed full of Costco toilet paper in the handy
64-pack, I buy four rolls at a time. And while they hit “Reply” when
they get emails offering to enlarge their penises and breasts, I sit
around pondering why it is I’m getting offers of both and wonder if
whoever it is that’s sending them knows something I don’t. Like
maybe it would double my chance of success in the bars at closing time.
It’s true we all have different
needs in life. Some people need a Hearst Castle while I don’t. Okay,
some people can afford a Hearst Castle and I can’t. Hell, I’m
ecstatic when I feel like I can splurge and upgrade from Motel 6 to
Super 8, even if it means I have to sleep in the car the next night. But
even a car would be better than the Spartan accommodations I saw on the
way to another motel which I’ll get to in a second.
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It pretty much
started with the Simplify Your Life series of books and gathered
steam until now you can buy titles like Choosing Simplicity: Real
People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World, which
should take its own advice and simplify the title. |
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I was driving down Hwy 1 when I spotted the California Men’s
Colony. Call me naïve—there, do you feel better now?—but when I saw
the sign I thought, “How liberating! Here’s a place where men can
gather together, bond in a sweat lodge naked while sneaking peeks to
make sure they’re not the only one who didn’t reply to those emails,
sit in a drum circle and play until dawn, and hug each other while
murmuring supporting phrases like ‘I’m OK, sorry to hear about
you’ without feeling like they’re an American Greetings card.” In
other words, a place no one would object to were an errant Scud missile
to land there. But no, it turns out the California Men’s Colony is
actually a state prison. Either that or the barbed wire is there to keep
the sweat lodgers from mingling with the rest of us. Hey, sometimes
miscegenation should be discouraged.
Prisoners have simple needs, even if
they didn’t before they went into prison. Considering that one out of
every 142 U.S. residents is behind bars, this constitutes a two million
strong simplification movement. A forced one, but one nevertheless.
They’re not the only ones simplifying their lives—there’s a
full-fledged movement sweeping the nation. It pretty much started with
the Simplify Your Life series of books and gathered steam until
now you can buy titles like Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding
Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World, which should take its own
advice and simplify the title. As with any movement, you know it’s
bona fide when AOL Time Warner gets into the act, as they did when they
put out Real Simple magazine. A recent issue offers such life
simplifying tips as how lip balm will help you slide a too-tight ring
off your finger and how you can resuscitate stale bread by rubbing it
with an ice cube and putting it in the oven for 12 minutes, which is not
only a lot more trouble than buying another loaf but is one dead chicken
short of a Santeria ceremony. Real Simple is the new Hints from
Heloise and you can find out more each month for only $19.95 a year.
Think of the subscription as simplifying your bank account.
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Possibly the epitome of the anti-simplicity movement is the
Madonna Inn, a motel 40 miles away from Hearst Castle in San Luis
Obispo. It actually manages to make Hearst Castle seem quiet and
understated. |
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As Newton once said, for every action there is an equal and
opposite reaction. That’s why the simplicity movement has spawned the
Simply More movement. On the way to the next hotel—don’t worry,
I’ll get to it in a second—I saw three Hummer H2s. These are the new
$50,000 consumer version of the Army’s tank-like car. That’s pretty
much the same consanguinity that got us from the AK-47 to the Super
Soaker. Two of the three H2s were driven by women and only one had the
back loaded with toilet paper from Costco, so maybe they really are
being used for all-terrain driving more than I realize.
Possibly the epitome of the
anti-simplicity movement is the Madonna Inn, a motel 40 miles away from
Hearst Castle in San Luis Obispo. Named after its founder Alex—not the
performer whose idea of simplicity is to use one name when singing and
one expression when acting—the motel actually manages to make Hearst
Castle seem quiet and understated. With 108 themed rooms including the
famous solid-rock Caveman room, a gaudy hot pink steak house, the
all-copper Copper Café that serves pink French—I mean Freedom—toast
and blue sugar, and a rock waterfall urinal in the men’s room that
starts when you step up and unzip your pants, it proves that you don’t
have to have Hearst’s money to mix and match decorating styles. Of
course their twinkling lights and naugahyde don’t cost as much as
Hearst’s ancient Egyptian sculpture, but to each his own.
I’d like to see the Hearsts and
Alex Madonna on Trading Spaces next week. Or maybe they could do
a tag team show pitting them against the interior decorators from Motel
6 and the California Men’s Colony. I’ll gladly spend the night in
each place and act as the judge, even if it means having to spend the
next night in the car. It’s that simple.
©2003 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Read them, they're simple.
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