Sunday, November 11, 2007

Eat The Rich



A restaurant in NYC is offering a $25,000 dessert. I don't mean to add to the free publicity that is restaurant is receiving. We should probably just ignore these asinine attempts to get our attention but I excuse myself in that this will mostly be a meta comment on the matter. I don't really care what the ingredients are: they're probably a mix of some rare and therefore expensive ingredients and usually include some jewelry that the buyer can take home after they've licked their plate clean.


This kind of thing makes the rich seem like clueless showoffs as represented in popular culture by the Thurston Howell III's or the Montgomery Burns of the TV world. It's just too easy to despise the wealthy when such things are publicized. "That's rare and expensive, let's consume it" is a very unsophisticated approach to riches. I'm quite sure the people who drink gold flakes, much like the people who rent stretch limousines to go to rock concerts, and also like those who strut in white Bentley roadsters in music videos aren't really the rich but only those who want to appear to be so. The appearance of wealth is as valuable to some as actual wealth. This is probably why people rent exotic cars to attend their school reunions.

Eating gold flakes in a sundae or drinking them in a Goldschlager martini can't be good for you. But if you must so conspicuously consume I've got a suggestion for you. You know what's even more rare and valuable than gold? Plutonium costs $120,000/ounce. Why don't you sprinkle a little bit of that in your martini.

No comments: