oney grubbing bastards abound in the modern world, and they weren't too few or far between in the olden days either. The concept of not taking more than you need is easy to espouse, but very difficult to adhere to, and it's getting harder every day in the modern world, with "greed is good" and "profit motivations" and Paris Hilton and other such concepts and people dominate much of the public discourse.

This page doesn't get too psychological, but it does collect news commentaries featuring conspicuous consumption, as well as archiving more personal thoughts about having, wanting, brand names, income, and more.

More recent updates to this page are added on top.

December 20, 2003

One of the more ridiculous articles I've read this month can be seen here.  It's about the hysteria surrounding... a new design of sneakers.

I laughed numerous times while reading it, amused by the oh-so-earnest tone taken when discussing something so frivolous, but the writer was either dead serious, or doing a great job faking it in dead pan style.  It's all about the new shoes Nike is doing for Lebron James.

Nike launches the product endorsed by the Cleveland Cavaliers' rookie Saturday, and store managers nationwide are expecting teenagers to sleep outside -- just as they did for debuts of the Air Jordan line.

James' shoe launches in 2,225 stores nationwide, starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, when New York City's Foot Action opens its doors.

"You could call it the Harry Potter of sneakers," said Jamelah Leddy, a sportswear analyst with McAdams Wright Ragen Inc. in Seattle.

Okay, so it's the new trendy thing and teenagers are very insecure in their own look and status and they need to latch onto trends to give themselves security and an identity. I can accept that; it's a very unfortunate state of affairs, but I was just as dumb when I was 13.

But if the lining up to buy new sneakers part is silly, the article descends into self-parody once it gets into talking about the design process, in breathless terms usually reserved for oh... something that actually matters?

In a room stuffed with easels, designers struggled to graft James' star appeal onto a sneaker.

"This is a watershed project," said Tinker Hatfield, Nike's chief designer, who created the Air Jordan prototype two decades ago. "We're taking everything we learned and applying it."

Under Hatfield's direction, each Air Jordan prototype shoe mirrored a different aspect of his personality. The panther he loved, the fighter jet he admired, even his Ferrari -- all became design elements, translated into color schemes and lines.

See, those ugly, plastic red, white, and black high tops Jordan wore while running up and down a court bouncing a ball weren't just shoes... they were reflections of different aspects of his personality!  Not that he really had a personality, as you'll know if you've ever heard him try to talk about anything other than shooting a basketball.  There's a reason Jordan's never gotten into broadcasting, and it's not just that he's got a nearly unintelligible speaking voice, owing to his amazingly deep No' Ca-ro-lie-nuh accent. (I lived there for several years when I was a little kid; I know what they talk like.)

The article then goes into some background history of Lebron's first shoe design, the one they put out a couple of months ago to much less fanfare.

But Nike wasn't waiting for the deal to be signed to try to figure out how James' personality could be sewn into a shoe. At the time, James was driving a $50,000 Hummer, which he said was a birthday gift from his mother.

"The original Hummer is pure utilitarianism. Pure function. No luxury -- like his game," said 35-year-old Eric Avar, one of the two other designers.

The designers made more than 100 sketches, producing a design in which the Hummer appears as the metaphor throughout -- from the metallic lace holes, which mirror the shape of the vehicle's wheel, to the chevron sole, a reference to the Hummer's tire tread.

I guess they need some sort of design and marketing gimmick, and kids who will sleep outside of a Foot Locker to get a new pair of shoes a few hours earlier than anyone else are the type of people who don't laugh out loud at the sight of a riced out Hummer.  But didn't you have to read that "Pure function. No luxury" quote twice, thinking you'd gotten it backwards the first time?  Hummers are ridiculous luxury items;  that's the whole point! They get absurdly low mileage, they cost $20k more than comparable vehicles, they have terrible reliability and cost a fortune to get fixed, and they're bought solely for the image, rather than any sort of function, perhaps even more than other SUVs.  People who want a real working truck get a quality Ford or Chevy or Toyota for $25k to haul lumber or off road in.  Celebrities, rich housewives who don't have a clue about vehicle safety, and balding middle-aged men with small penises and troubled egos are the ones willing to spend $75k on shiny SUVs that they'll never drive over anything steeper than a speed bump in.

Of course that's just the base Hummer.  LeBron's H2 has been estimated to have cost upwards of $100k, since it came massively-customized with features including three television screens, custom leather seats with his "King James" logo on all of the, chrome, rims, and much more. All that and it gets almost 9 miles to the gallon.  Nothing like stopping for gas every time you drive to work to back up that "Pure function." mantra.

And just think about their logic on the shoes: they're Hummer-inspired since they've got metal lace holes (like every pair of hiking boots ever made), and a tread that's something like a car tire (like almost every sneaker ever made).  Boy, I can see why those Nike designers get the big bucks, with that sort of innovation.  And anyway; the whole point in basketball shoes is that they get good traction, provide ankle support, and are light. What the hell are you doing putting unnecessary metal eyelets on them? I mean it's all about function, not style and flash, right Nike?

Yes yes, of course it is.  As is the case with all $100 sneakers that cost about $7 to make, including the $.03 cents some 8 year old Vietnamese girl with very slender, clever fingers makes for sewing together 314 pairs during her daily 14 hour shift.

I got curious about the shoes after writing this, so I looked up a pair.  Don't bother with the Nike website, it's got a horrible design with excessive mandatory navigation options, and then it runs slowly in full screen flash with annoying sound effects and pretentious visuals.

But hey, you can't deny the strong Hummer influence in the design!

Oh wait, yes you can.  Mostly since they look just like every other pair of high top sneakers out there, and nothing whatsoever like a luxury SUV.

To be honest, I have no idea if these are the Hummer-inspired ones I had such fun ridiculing a moment ago; these might be the new ones, or some other interim design. I'm sure they're all very different.

But mostly I'm sure glad that I can't even imagine caring what brand my sneakers are.  I feel so sorry for teens and preteens when I read about this sort of thing. Their inability to rise above fashion victimhood is so depressing, when viewed from an adult perspective.

I can't even imagine having my own kids when commonsense-defying issues like this arise. Boy or girl; they'll be screaming for designer clothing and shoes by the time they're 5, and when I require them to give me five scientifically solid reasons why I should waste $50 more on the trendy brand of the week when they'll reach the "wouldn't be caught dead in brand X" stage less than three months later, they'll fail miserably, I'll go back to writing whatever book or screenplay I'm working on at the time, and they'll quietly pack up their Lincoln Logs and a Kraft cheese sandwich and run away from home.

And what's worse is that even when the Swedish au pair catches them trying to scale the outer fence and drags them back in, and they go back to whining incessantly and start to shriek and turn purple, I'll be unable to stop myself from flashing back to when I was 11 and just entering the 6th grade in a new school in Arlington, Texas, having just gone to live with my dad there after a year with my mom in San Diego (they had joint custody after they divorced when I was 7), and remember the shit I got from various rednecks for not owning a single pair of jeans or Texas-appropriate shirt.  And I'll realize that while it's clearly a waste of money to pay 100% more for something trendy, it'll make my kid's life 500% more pleasant in school, since all the other kids are clueless fashion victims as well, and kids are very cruel and look for any excuse to pick on another kid. And while I didn't begin to care anything for brands and style until I was 11 or 12 (and then it was only brought on by peer pressure, and I probably would have gotten the same shit if I'd stayed in 6th grade in San Diego, just pressure to buy a different type of clothing), my kids will probably get it by the time they're 7 or 8 (or 5 or 6), in today's much more ad-filled and consumer-pressured world.

I'm so not ready. 

August 30, 2003

Something I thought of the other day while shopping with Malaya, and that I meant to discuss in the day or three of blogs about our shopping excursions, but somehow forgot to include, even though it was the best idea of the lot and the seed that germinated into the entire discussion in the first place.

Anyway, the revelation I had while walking hand in hand with Malaya, a moment after leaving Sun Coast Video, was this. Even if we had all the money we needed, we still wouldn't buy lots of splurge items, or even borderline splurge items.  The example in my head then was DVDs, since we'd just been in a DVD store that had dozens of movies and hundreds of Animes that I wanted, as well as lots of huge box sets and so on.  I wanted them, but not enough to actually buy them, and I realized that would be true even if I could afford anything.  And when I began to voice that realization to Malaya, I further realized that she almost certainly agreed with me.

She loves books and purses/bags and DVDs and shoes and Faberge eggs and several other such things, but due to budgetary restraints she hardly ever gets to buy them (less often for some than for others, price determining frequency).  But she also loves to buy things she wants when they are on sale, and refuses to overpay for anything unless it's an emergency.

My initial example was along the lines of, "So say I had just received a $50,000 advance on my first novel, with the promise of much more in royalties.  You know we wouldn't buy a damn thing with it. We'd save it up for a down payment on a bigger house."

Malaya laughed and agreed, and then we played along with the subject by inflating the monetary amount.  Of course at some point we would splurge, I mean if I invented the next Harry Potter (assuming there is ever another publishing phenomena like Harry Potter) and had $50m a book in advances and was going to clear $75m a year in movie rights and book royalties for the next fifty years, yeah, we'd go and buy every damn DVD we might ever even consider viewing, and quite a few that we wouldn't just for the fun of having them. Hell, I'd hire a guy to come in and do nothing but install shelving and open up the goddamned sticker-sealed boxes and sort them alphabetically, always being careful to avoid the huge crates of purses and boots and Faberge Eggs that were also being delivered to our new mansion.

But that's a ridiculous example.

Say we were earning $250k a year, combined.  Malaya will be making a good salary for as long as she stays in her job, and I'm assuming I clear $100-200k a year from my writing.  All highly hypothetical and wishful thinking, but just for the sake of the argument.  Would we get into splurge purchases?  I doubt it.  Sure we'd get every book and DVD we were really interested in, and we'd both have a new car, but mostly we'd want to save up for a truly glorious mansion on several acres of forest, and we'd want to be able to take long vacations to glorious foreign lands, and so on.  We'd never be happy blowing $5000 on designer clothing we were only going to wear once, or eating at overpriced restaurants we didn't really enjoy, or any of that typical rich bastard behavior.  And I don't think we'd bother with that sort of stuff no matter what our income was/is.

I have no desire to ever wear giant bling bling jewelry or designer clothing; I see all that sort of shit as late term junior high school behavior, where you are so insecure in your own life and identity that you have to try and obtain one from designer names and status symbols. So I don't want to do it, and I sort of loathe or at least pity people who do; I certainly never want to join their ranks.  I'd get a nice suit for the red carpet appearance at the Academy Awards when my screenplay was nominated, of course, but I wouldn't ever get into wearing designers just because I had to have a certain tag on the back of my collar. And neither would Malaya, or so she tells me.

I always wonder what happens in the minds of people who grow to be adults, and are still so insecure and status-driven that they have to spend 5x more than they need to just to get some clothing by a certain manufacturer.  Everyone knows the crap is made in the same factories with the same quality control as generic clothing, or other brands that cost less, so it's not about quality, when it comes to clothing.

Sure, if you're going for shoes or skis or heavy weather jackets or something that has to be actually functional, there is a big difference between bargain stuff and the top of the line.  But there it's a demonstrable difference in  quality and performance, it's not a suit that's $5000 instead of $400, and looks identical except for a tag that no one can really see.

The hunger some people have for designers is obviously not confined to formal attire; witness any rap video in the last 10 years, where grown men (and occasionally women) go on and on about how one given brand name is really that important to them.  I expect that sort of thing from children, hell I can remember when I was the new kid in school in 6th grade in Arlington, Texas, just arrived from the pre-fashion conscious 5th grade, and from the much more clothing-liberal California.  I suddenly had to get a bunch of Levi's jeans, after owning zero jeans before, since well, all the other kids wore them.  I didn't really want to wear them, I found them heavy and bulky and clumsy, but hey, it was the fashion and I got shit from the hicks in school for wearing slacks of warm up pants, and as I recall shorts were against the school dress policy for boys. And I clearly remember later that year when suddenly several of the cool kids were wearing long sleeved Panama Jack shirts, which were a brand new brand at that time, in that place.  I had to nag my dad relentlessly to take me shopping and get some of just that brand, and fortunately dad was hip enough to my new kid-itis to give in and pay 3 or 4x what they were worth just so I could have the brand name I thought I needed.

It's easy as an adult to laugh at that sort of behavior, and to chalk it up as kid's stuff, but for the kids in question, it's like fricking life and death, and I shall have to try and remember that when my inevitable offspring are whining about how it's so unfair that all the other kids have brand X, and I expect them to go to school dressed like they shop at the fricking Salvation Army and how they'll lose all of their friends if they don't keep up with the fashions.

I'll probably point out that their real friends hardly ever wear anything from any of those brands when they are around the house, and my kids will grimace and scowl and redouble their pleas.  And I'll eventually give in, just like we do for Dusty now when he whines and whines about something or other (usually a closed door that we are on the other side of).  But at least when I have functional human offspring I can extract concessions from them in exchange for granting their whined requests.  Most parents are terrible at manipulating their young.  Kids aren't smart, or at least they can't see the big picture very well. They'll bargain away anything later for something they really want now, and if they're so eager to hand you the mallet and assume the nail shape, it's really your own fault if you aren't able to pound them into the appropriate hole.

Well, that digressed frighteningly, eh?  Anyway, my point is that sure, there's some imaginary income level that would tip Malaya and I over the edge into the "buy stuff we want when we want it", and maybe even a (much) higher level that would tip us over into the "buy anything want at any time" range.  But I don't think we'd ever really want to be like that.  I certainly wouldn't, given how much contempt I have for the weak people who behave like that past the age of 17. I'm not sure Malaya agrees with this 100%, but since I'm the man, I make the important decisions around here.  Just like Baby Jesus said I should.

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