excess

We had the TV tuned to Discovery this weekend so I watched a show that both fascinates and disgusts me – Extreme RVs, I think they call it. I guess it was made for the Travel Channel. The name tells it all. It’s a show full of extreme, amazing, fully loaded recreational vehicles owned by random rich people.

Some of them are amazingly engineered. One was designed by the owner with a space underneath to fit his convertible sports car (he designed the space, then found a car that would fit into it). The RV was actually built onto the back of a truck (the kind that pulls 18 wheelers). Another one was motor home in front and a horse trailer in back, so the family could take their girls to riding competitions in comfort and style. There was space enough for 6 horses, and when the horses were not aboard the area could be hosed out and used for hauling ATVs or to host a party. I think that couple had made $75 million with a pet shedding brush invention, so they were happy to spend a couple of mill on a trailer. They also didn’t mind their girls wearing riding boots on the bed, which I found utterly disgusting!

A couple of the RVs were 2 stories high, which made them too tall to be street legal, so they were engineered with folding or removable parts upstairs so the top story could hydraulically collapse down to a legal height for road transport. One of the 2 story RVs was owned by a pro golfer who had been living on the road for decades. He created/bought an amazing rolling home for his family, and obviously he’s making enough money to pay a truck driver to haul his home to its new location periodically. His motor home was more glamorous than 90% of the houses in this country, I would bet.

And then was the one that made me feel the most sick. It was a 2 story mansion that wasn’t intended to be moved, or even slept in. It’s parked at a Hollywood studio. Downstairs it had an amazing living room space, big enough for many people to sit around and relax, and a makeup counter that (if I remember correctly) was made from a massive piece of white and grey stone lit from within. Upstairs there was no need for a bedroom, because this trailer was not for living in, but there was a huge bathroom with a massive 2-person soaking tub, very sleek and white. Of course engineering the motor home to handle such a huge tub, plus the weight of the water (not to mention being able to plumb the thing to get the water into and out of the tub) was probably quite the feat.

The RV was Simon Cowell’s dressing room while he was working on the X Factor.

I tried googling it, but all I could find at first were images of another trailer. I believe he had a trailer, but then bought an upgraded one because it wasn’t good enough. The trailer I saw on the show is, I think, a remodel of the upgraded one. I found video tours of the upgraded one before the remodel (along with a peak inside Paula Abdul’s tiny dark little dressing room for the same show, which was literally too small to get the video gear and crew into) but I couldn’t find anything on the remodel except these images.

I realize Simon is a very, very rich man, and he can afford to relax however he wants to. I’m sure he works very hard (or has, at some point). I recognize the amazing skill of the people who engineered this beautiful trailer. It is beautiful. I understand people wanting to see it, and the logic and economics of a TV show that gives us all a glimpse inside.

But what a waste! It just made me feel sick thinking about the couple of million dollars spent on this thing, so that Simon can have a nice place to sit and host his entourage when he’s at work but not working. Which is probably only a couple of dozen days a year, maybe. I’m sure that bath is very relaxing when he has a lot of downtime. It would suck to have to wait and take a bath when he gets home at night. sigh.

Do you ever feel sick at the waste and excess that is glorified on these types of shows and celebrity profiles? I am sometimes fascinated by the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but more often they just seem over the top and completely unnecessary and kind of sad.

I mean, are these people any more content or happy because they have a lit marble counter? Most of them seem about the same or even less happy than the rest of us.

So why even bother?

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btw I’m going to start posting these kind of random thoughts and links here instead of shouting into the void that is Facebook. Sometimes they’ll relate to things I talk about often, like this one. Other times they might not.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jo:)

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