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(In)Conspicuous Consumption:
The Grammy Awards We Take for Granted paul Lukas pays attention. His new book, "Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted, from the Everyday to the Obscure" (Crown), is a good-humored waltz with capitalism. The collection of pieces from his 'zine, "Beer Frame," delights in consumerism's strange rewards, describing the entertaining absurdities of goods like Magic Scent Crayons (the black one smells like a leather jacket!) or Lawn Makeup (a spray that conceals the brown spots in your grass) while critiquing the free market's favoring of packaging over product. In "Inconspicuous Consumption," Lukas writes: "Like most people, I have a basic series of staples that I buy just about every time I hit the supermarket ... but I also try to keep my eyes open for interesting products that I don't really want or need, things that strike me as intriguing, entertaining, puzzling, or some combination thereof. And in a commercial landscape filled with familiar brand names and logos we've seen again and again for decades, I try to stay alert for consumer revelations and epiphanies that I might have overlooked or previously taken for granted." Substitute the word "supermarket" with "record store," and I imagine Lukas has touched on the way most of us consume music. We survive on bread and milk, Beatles and Stones, but we live for the so-called non-necessities, those often ridiculous indulgences whose only redeeming quality is that they crack us up for three minutes at a time. I'll be dealing with "You Can't Always Get What You Want" until I die, but that didn't make unwrapping instrumentalists Satan's Pilgrims' new album last week (and goofing to their surf-rock version of my beloved "Godfather" theme) any less fun. Lukas sets his eyes on two strains of objects: those "so obscure that we never see them, or so ubiquitous that we've essentially stopped seeing them." Two things made me realize just how personal that vision can be -- his entry on the "All-Weather Paintstik Livestock Marker" and watching the Grammy Awards on TV. Cooped up in his Brooklyn apartment, the city-slicker Lukas is joyfully puzzled by his blue cattle marker and fails to inscribe his initials with it on his cats because they're "too furry." But those markers are ordinary to me. I grew up with an art-student sister in Montana, where the cheap, gorgeous sticks were hardly more unusual than watercolors. She would load up on them at Big R Ranch Supply every few months, making these sweeping, gigantic drawings that were impossible to achieve with puny, costly oil pastels. As for the Grammies, the event billed as "music's biggest night," I've often felt ill at ease with its promise of familiarity. Just who picks these people? The nominees are meant to represent the dominant performers of the previous year -- the Coca-Colas, the Oscar Mayers, the Campbell's Soups of the music industry -- when the majority of those who win the awards have about as much effect on my life as the "Sweet Ones Diet Dessert Sprays" Lukas laughs at in his book. And I don't just think it's because I move in circles where Steve Albini, not Babyface, is the producer of choice. For every sucky Toni Braxton, there are 12,000 indie bands that suck even worse. Maybe it's just that the American buyer's paradise has stocked too many cans on the aisle, which is to say that there's too much music out there to keep track of, much less like. I'll take too many choices over too few any day of the week, but so many of the Grammy folks hail from other musical maps that, at times, watching it can make your own living room feel like some hotel room abroad. This wouldn't bother me if I wanted to be one of those underground resistance fighters every minute of the day. But the fact is, I like the popular element of popular music, I enjoy it when there's a hit song I can live with, I prefer to care about the Best Male Pop Vocalist. Because when you occasionally get to like something everyone else likes, then you have more people to talk to. Do you know anyone who bought the nominated records by Sting or Natalie Cole or Pete Seeger? That said, I couldn't help but leaf through Lukas' book during the three-hour Grammy broadcast. So, as a tribute to alienation, communion and "Inconspicuous Consumption," I have bestowed the following awards inspired by Lukas' commentary on his objects of (dis)affection: The Slimchips Tortilla Chips, 0.75-Ounce Bag Award for being "practically empty. Literally." Winner: Tracy Chapman, whose live performance of her hit "Give Me One Reason" had about as much stage presence as a vending machine. The Bacon Curls Original Flavor Microwave Pork Rinds Award for "knowing the secret might ruin the fun." Winner: Lyle Lovett's hair. The Victor Mouse Trap Award for a "pleasingly organic combination of wood and wire." Winners: Vince Gill, Patty Loveless, Alison Krauss and Union Station for their version of the late Bill Monroe's favorite gospel song, "Working on a Building." The Glide Dental Floss Mint Flavor Award for being "a modernist treat that's extremely difficult to resist." Winner: Beck's angular dance moves to "Where It's At." The Alpo Gourmet Dinner Dry Cat Food Award for "acknowledg[ing] that the packaging was all we (or they) ever cared about in the first place." Winners (tie): No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani's pants; No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani's belly button. And finally, The "one quick whiff is enough to kick my gag reflex into overdrive and send me sprinting to open a window" Meeter's Kraut Juice Award. Winner: Celine Dion, whose canned impersonation of someone who cares about
what she's doing won her a Grammy for Album of the Year. Something smells.
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BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/columnists/vowell.html