Money actually can't buy you everything, yay!

Maybe its all the holiday encouragement to shop and spend, but I have been feeling monumentally annoyed and generally cynical about consumer culture lately (as mentioned in the previous post). Everything – including many of the things I hold sacred (education, love, art) – has become a business venture and creative marketers are seriously cleaning up. A few examples:

Standardized test prep: practically a pre-requisite for taking any school admissions test nowadays. The prep course, the books, the practice tests online, the online communities… cha-ching Kaplan! These courses cost at least $1000 each, and most law-school / business school hopefuls will not even consider taking the test until they have gone through the course. This seems incredibly wrong to me. You can’t get into a top graduate school unless you have a certain score, and the only way to “guarantee” a good score is to take the course. Essentially, fork over $1000 or face immensely fewer options for school. In a world where academic pedigree and alumni networking are essentially the only ways to land a job, paying for test prep has become as much a necessary expense as paying for the degree itself.

The new wave of finishing schools: apparently no one can get a date on their own anymore. I’m not talking about e-Harmony or J-Date (because I don’t even want to get started on those…), I’m talking about seminars for men and women on how to interact with members of the opposite sex. Have you heard about this? Recently, a friend of mine informed me he had taken a new job as a seminar instructor for Charisma Arts: “Dating, Attraction, and Seduction Tips”. Young and middle aged men pay $1100 for a weekend seminar with him, during which they bar-hop in their respective cities (he travels to them for these gigs) and he encourages them to talk to women, providing tips and confidence-boosting. That is a seriously expensive wing-man, if you ask me.

But I must relate a moment of validation I received the other evening on my way home from work. It was the week of the big Radiologists conference in Chicago – when thousands of the highest-paid professionals in the world grace our city, and all the most expensive restaurants, hotels, and limo companies scramble to accommodate them. Among these establishments is, of course, Charlie Trotter’s restaurant, which happens to be one of the places I was passing on my walk home. The evening was cold and rainy – standard for late November – but I had a warm coat, wool hat and a sturdy umbrella, and I was somewhat happily bouncing down the street (for whatever reason… probably just glad to be leaving work). A large group was standing outside the restaurant as I approached, waiting for a cab or car service, shivering and grumpy. One taller, handsome middle-aged man had a petite woman clinging to his arm, her frozen ankles looking ready to collapse any second in 4-inch heels. He caught my eye as I breezed past and drunkenly blurted-shouted in my direction, “I’m jealous of you!”

It all happened far too quickly for me to respond with appropriate humor. As I turned the corner, I thought of a million hilarious retorts. I could have stopped and pointed out that he had just finished one of the highest-quality meals he would likely consume in his lifetime, yet he was still unsatisfied. Or I could have said simply, “that’s ironic”. Or I could have said “welcome to Chicago”. There are too many great one-liners to list. It was just somewhat wonderful (and simultaneously depressing in a way) that after all the money this gentleman had spent on living “the good life,” in a moment of wine-induced brutal honesty, he admitted to little old anonymous me that he was unhappy.

Conclusion: spring for a good umbrella, rich people.