🚀 go-pugleaf

Jag_Pop@Hotmail.com wrote:

> Leif Erikson wrote:
> 
>>Elmo wrote:
>>
> 
> .
> (snip)
> .
> 
> 
>>We're talking 3500 square foot (and larger) McMansions,
>>for people with two children at most, and who
>>themselves grew up in the 1950s and 1960s as one of
>>three to five children in a 1400 square foot house, and
>>consider their youths to have been idyllic.  Multiple
>>big-screen TVs (HD cable, of course) scattered
>>throughout the McMansion, when they may have had a 17"
>>black-and-white with rabbit ears antenna and perhaps
>>six broadcast channels available.
>>
> 
> .
> "six broadcast channels" ! ? !
> 
> We only had three. And had to frequently bang the top
> or sides of the tv to improve reception.
> .
> My wife and I sat in a movie theater lobby recently and
> did some people watching. We love to people watch.
> .
> Have things changed radically overnight? Or do parks
> and outdoor cafes, bookstores, garden shops, hiking paths
> live theaters and museums have a different breed to watch?
> The movie theater lobby
> (a large one for a fourteen theater multiplex) was obese-city.
> The trim were few, very very few. The kids were mirror images
> of the parents. I saw kids with soda containers the size of
> Oktoberfest Bier steins - NO, BIGGER! (Oktoberfest! now there
> is people watching!). Disgusting and shameful display.

Well, "fourteen screen multiplex" tells you all you 
need to know.  What kind of movies were they showing? 
I can tell you that it wasn't whatever today's 
equivalent of "My Dinner with Andre" or "Tampopo" might 
be (I don't go to the movies any more; can you tell?) 
No, they were showing Hollywood grind-em-out lowbrow 
fare, in most of which the star was Special Effects.

I know just what you're talking about.  Movie theaters 
have for decades been among the most unholy temples of 
Americans' tendency to excess.  I remember seeing 
popcorn buckets that were big enough to bathe an 
infant, and I can only guess they've gotten bigger.


> .
> My theory is: SUV and Minivans. People that ride hogs
> are effected in appearance by it, why not SUV?
> Big fat, guzzling, selfish, view obstructing SUV. The family
> dog and the master look alike over time, why not SUV
> and rider?

But SUVs and minivans are symptoms, not causes.  They 
do go together in lockstep with all the other grossly 
excessive forms of consumption.

There's a restaurant chain out here in California 
called Claim Jumper; don't know where else they might 
be.  This place is infamous for obscenely large 
portions.  Nothing is worse than some 
heart-attack-on-a-plate dessert they serve called the 
Chocolate Motherlode Cake, described on their website 
as "A 'Giant' Slice of our Six-Layer Chocolate Cake." 
The word "giant" in the description doesn't do it 
justice - it is Gargantuan.  One slice of this crap is 
more than enough to serve four adults generously, but 
I've seen some blowpig devour one by herself.

This kind of restaurant is almost entirely a suburban 
phenomenon.  You don't see them out in small towns, and 
you don't see them in the trendy, too-hip parts of big 
cities.  The really sad thing is, it exemplifies what 
far too many people think is The Good Life, but it's 
simply grotesque.  And it all comes down to what I 
earlier described as the American philosophy, summed up 
as a motto:  if a little of something is good, a lot 
must be great.  That belief simply is wrong, to the 
point of being immoral.


> 
> Not kidding.

Unfortunately.