Well Cover Me in Tiger Skin and Call Me Richie Rich
The Way We Live Now: Sick of it all. You work and work to stay positive and then one day you come across some superrich asshole whose yacht's decorated in endangered animal skins. Screw it.
You can tell when the facade starts cracking. People are having bad days at work. Like the federal agents who stumbled on billionaire real estate tycoon Tamir Sapir's yacht in Florida and found that the whole thing was upholstered in the hides of rare endangered species, like so: "barstools upholstered with python and anaconda skins, seven carved elephant tusks, hides of jaguars, tigers and zebras, and a fully stuffed and mounted lion."
It's enough to shake your faith in mankind, I tell you. People are having bad days. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger. His state is billions of dollars in the hole. You know what he's saying? Here's what he's saying: Fuck everything, I am selling everything we own. Including San Quentin prison, the LA Coliseum, and the Orange County fairgrounds. You want to own some iconic property? Step right up, if you have the cash.
He's just had enough. It's frustrating. You can tell when people are having bad days. This story's first paragraph, for example, was written by a reporter having a very bad day:
After a long week of contemporary art auctions, the hearty trekked down to Phillips de Pury & Company in Chelsea - a renovated warehouse with concrete floors and sweeping vistas of a car wash, the Hudson River and the West Side Highway - where the struggling boutique firm held a disappointing sale of contemporary paintings, drawings and sculptures.
Do you get the vague sense that maybe the reporter is not so enthusiastic about this assignment? It's okay. It's a bad day. Everybody's broke.
[Pic: NYP]