Friday, August 12, 2011

WHAT, ARE YOU MAD? I'M NOT MADE OF AIRPORTS: So Elle Decor, formerly known as Nothing Better to Do Than Set This Here Money On Fire Monthly, finally cracked that reclusive nut Gwyneth Paltrow and asked her what 10 things she can't live without* (their dangling preposition, not mine). Paltrow, that woman-of-the-people, included on her list such things as "the Antonio Lupi Baia bathtub in my bedroom." Hey, imagine a 99-foot plank, hovering a millimeter above the ground, suspended by ropes affixed to a pair of two-foot-high poles. That's about what it would look like if you graphed "percentage of people with bathtubs in their bedrooms" against "percentile income distribution." Hack off the left rope and you have the same graph, except with "Antonio Lupi Baia bathtub in the bedroom."

Just out of curiosity, let's play Player A/Player B and see if you can guess which one is me and which one is Paltrow. Gwyneth and Isaac, what eight things can't you live without?

Player A: Hand-painted wallpaper for one wall of living room in the second-favorite home I own
Player B: Oxygen

Player A: Flowers, single-variety seasonal arrangements
Player B: Food

Player A: Large-scale one-of-a-kind print by famous photographer
Player B: Shelter

Player A: Charles Edwards star lanterns, three, used as decoration and not lighting
Player B: Light

Player A: $10,000 bathtub for use in bedroom when bored with $10,000 bathtub in bathroom
Player B: Clothing

Player A: Holy books from different religions, used as pretext to point out how I had a bookshelf custom-built so that the tops of religious books are all at the same height because nothing promotes world unity like spending a lot of money on symbolic gestures that the famous people I invite to my home can appreciate
Player B: Human interaction

Player A: Clothbound Penguin Classics for sore muscles.
Player B: What? Pass

Player A: YUBZ retro headset and YUBZ retro bluetooth rotary dial and YUBZ retro telegraph operator
Player B: That's pretty much it for me

*Note: only 8 things listed; apparently the other thing Paltrow can't live without is base-8 notation.

26 comments:

  1. Jennifer11:51 PM

    You know, we the audience of famous people tend not to like it when someone comes across as one way in public and another in their medium of choice. I have always found it odd that in every movie/show I've seen GP in, she's come across as pretty down to earth, friendly, and likeable. While in real life she's an amazingly shallow twat.

    I guess that means she's a really good actress, I suppose. But it's what annoys me about her anyway. False advertising.

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  2. Adam C.12:15 AM

    Isaac is (figuratively!) on fire this week.

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  3. This does raise the interesting questin of just how bored Isaac had to be in order to read an article in Elle Decor.

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  4. Also for "10" in base-X to equal "8" in base-10, wouldn't it need to be in Base-7, where the count would go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10?

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  5. kd bart9:57 AM

    I wonder if she's shared her list with that delightful William Joel?

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  6. sconstant10:24 AM

    It does say "See some of Gwyneth’s favorites here and check out the September issue of ELLE DECOR, on newsstands August 16, for the rest."

    One assumes that the other two are "(1) oxygen, food, shelter, light, clothing, and human interaction, of course and (2) a good beat-down of the rest of my list by Isaac Spaceman."

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  7. J. Bowman10:31 AM

    No. "10" in base-x is equal to x in base-ten.

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  8. Isaac is right. Base-X means that you use the values from 0 to X-1, so base-8 means you can use 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. After 7, you increment the next column.

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  9. Adam C.11:09 AM

    And what's the deal with hexadecimal?  I've got numbers, I've got letters, I don't know what the hell is going on there.

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  10. I assume the magazine (or her agent) had a list of 100 things that would pay her $5k each to be named as a "favorite / can't live without" and she (or her agent) just picked 10 they thought were compatible with her image.  Right?  Isn't that how these things work?

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  11. You're correct.  It's been too long since I learned how to count in binary and hex for AP Computer Science, and, like my knowledge of writing Pascal script, it's all gone.

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  12. spacewoman1:21 PM

    Believe me, if there's one thing the spacefamily knows, it's base 8.  And base 4, and base 5, and you get the idea.

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  13. spacewoman1:23 PM

    Thank you for this observation -- it resolves a lot of inner conflict I was feeling after I actually really liked her on Glee.  It was driving me crazy.  It literally never occurred to me that it could just be good acting.

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  14. isaac_spaceman1:40 PM

    <span>Yeah, I mean, it's simple.  One set of bookshelves for non-fiction, one set for fiction.  Fiction is organized alphabetically by author.  Non-fiction has separate sections for general non-fiction, law, biography, art/architecture, and memorabilia (high school yearbook, college/law school facebooks, etc.), each, again, organized by author.  A separate, smaller shelf or nook for books by authors who are friends or family members.   
     
    Though those of you who have stayed with the Spacefamily know that we're about three or four bookshelves short, and therefore have resorted to giant stacks of books in the guest room.</span>

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  15. J. Bowman2:23 PM

    It was also 9:00 on a Saturday morning. I went to school for years to be able to count in different bases without the aid of stimulants.

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  16. Isaac_spaceman3:22 PM

    Surely you are not suggesting that the founder of Goop, whose mission is to convey to the masses impeccable taste unfiltered by crass commercialism, has compromised her principles.

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  17. Joseph J. Finn3:44 PM

    Exactly, though I have more sections than that (including Books on Books, for instance).

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  18. Jenn C4:06 PM

    I love this blog so much.

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  19. My books originally were arranged in that way, but as I've acquired more, it's proven difficult to keep that in order, though I still try to keep series together.

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  20. Anonymous12:11 AM

    Where's the reality show starring Goop-y that drops her out in the middle of some nowhere trailer park with no money and no access to money except working at like a truck stop shelving cheetos and then never ever picks her back up again?  I'd watch that.

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  21. Anonymous2:07 PM

    It's my fiction that's split into shelves, as I have much more fiction.  Mysteries; fantasy/science fiction (a dwindling shelf); classics; books from college courses that still seem worth keeping around (African-American lit and poetry; plays; etc.); childhood books; modern fiction.  Nonfiction is mostly nonfiction generally; Books on Books; Judaica.  Though that sounds much more organized than it really all is.

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  22. Genevieve2:07 PM

    That was me.

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  23. Jennifer2:14 PM

    I have that feeling all the time myself.

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  24. Jim Bell2:48 PM

    She said twat [teehee].  I love that word.

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  25. I'm suggesting there is no other explanation for anyone to be touting a five pound foot long retro-70s bakelite handset for your cellphone, yes.  (I looked it up on Amazon.)  For my next trick, I'm going to spend four minutes wondering if this "Goop" thing would be amusing enough to justify a Google search then go play EVE Online instead.

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  26. Heather K1:58 PM

    That was me.

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