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Re: (TV) Vanity Fair article mentions Television playing at wedding for big Bucks
That was the funniest thing I have read on this mailing list in a long, long time. Perhaps the funniest ever.
> On Sep 22, 2014, at 12:58, leif joley <leifjoley@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> You almost fooled me -- but only almost! You are a rascal!
>
> Leif J, Sweden
>
>> From: LeoCasey@comcast.net
>> To: tv@obbard.com
>> Subject: (TV) Vanity Fair article mentions Television playing at wedding
> for big Bucks
>> Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 12:03:34 -0400
>>
>> In July Leif wrote:
>>
>>>> “This as good as it gets, Television-wise, in 2014?”
>>
>>
>>
>> Keith answered:
>>
>>> : “Regarding your: ‘Seriously -- what can they get out of playing
>> *only*
>> about 40 year old songs? ’.
>>
>>
>>
>> Lots and lots (I hear) of money for someone... (sorry if that’s an
>> unpopular
>> cynical answer, here but if anyone has a better one. ”..
>>
>>
>>
>> I guess you guys were right after all. See paragraph below, from the Ma
> y
>> issue of the magazine Vanity Fair.
>>
>> (Copy of entire article from which it came was included since the Vanity
>> Fair Archives link seems to work only sporadically ):
>>
>>
>>
>> “The couple had a $19 million wedding, where she wore a $130,000 Ve
> ra
>> Wang
>> dress. Six-thousand-dollar bottles of Château Pétrus were served. He
>> collects Pétrus, too, of course, and keeps it in a special cabine
> t
>> made by
>> David Linley, the Queen’s nephew. The late 1970s art-rock group,
>> Television,
>> who have aged like fine wine, played for 2 hours at the Stunts’
>> wedding.
>> Says Petra: ‘My aunt Lois knew of their music from a Madame Secret Y
>> .. or Z
>> ..... Lois turned me onto to their music in 2002, and I decided we jus
> t
>> must have them play at our wedding. It took $90,000 plus travel
>> expenses,
>> but they were worth every penny just to hear my two favorite songs,
>> ‘The
>> Dream’s Dream’ and ‘The Marquis Moon’ ’.”.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.vanityfair.com/archive/issues/archive201410
>>
>>
>>
>> Vanity Fair, May 2014 "Perfection Anxiety" By
>> <http://www.vanityfair.com/contributors/a-a-gill> A. A. Gill,
>> Illustration
>> by <http://www.vanityfair.com/contributors/paul-cox> Paul Cox
>>
>>
>>
>> After spending $19 million on their wedding, and $85 million on an L.A.
>> mansion, James Stunt and Petra Ecclestone have purchased one of
>> Britain’s
>> great cultural treasures, a 17th-century, $20 million Van Dyck. So,
>
>> what’s
>> it like to have too much money? Very stressful.
>>
>>
>>
>> He catches your eye with a sideways glance and an enigmatic expression.
>> Indicating what? Curiosity? Trepidation? A little insecure arrogance?
>> Anthony Van Dyck’s final self-portrait is a work of mesmerizing depth
>> and
>> dexterity. Within a year he would be dead. Is there a whisper of
>> premonition? Van Dyck is the godfather of British portraiture, the
>> artist
>> who put a face to the 17th century and the birth of the new-model middle
>> class. And that, perhaps, is what’s on this face. It is the first
>> glimpse of
>> upwardly mobile anxiety.
>>
>>
>>
>> The painting is considered one of Britain’s greatest cultural
>> treasures, and
>> it was recently sold for $20 million to a buyer who wants to take it to
>> Los
>> Angeles. The National Portrait Gallery in London badly wants to keep the
>
>> Van
>> Dyck in the country and is attempting to raise matching funds to prevent
>
>> it
>> from going abroad. Sandy Nairne, the director of the gallery, says he
> is
>> determined to save it for the nation. The export has been delayed until
>> summer.
>>
>>
>>
>> The expectant owners are Petra Ecclestone, the 25-year-old daughter of
>> Formula One mogul Bernie, and her husband, James Stunt, who sounds
> ,
>> unfortunately, like a character from a Martin Amis novel, and who loo
> ks,
>> even more unfortunately, like a character from a Martin Amis novel. He
>
>> also
>> collects cars: Lamborghinis and Rolls-Royces. And 17th-century
>> portraits.
>> Petra bought them one of the most expensive homes in Los Angeles County
> ,
>> for
>> $85 million, where one assumes the Van Dyck will hang. It’s Aaron
>> Spelling’s
>> old place in Holmby Hills, which, famously, contains Candy Spelling
> ’s
>> gift-wrapping room. It goes with Petra’s London house, in Chelsea,
>
>> which is
>> worth $90 million.
>>
>>
>>
>> At this point, we should all take a deep breath and step back from the
>> frothing goblet of sparkling snobbery that we are quaffing and that is
>> so
>> marvelously intoxicating. Oh, the pleasurable indignation of smirking a
> t
>> the
>> young and tastelessly rich. But, really, why shouldn’t a Van Dyck
>> spend a
>> few years in an L.A. party palace, along with the Pétrus and the
>> Rolls?
>> Who’s to say what new money should or shouldn’t accumulate?
>>
>>
>>
>> Turn this question around and try to see it, as Joel Grey might put it
> ,
>> through their eyes. There is a terrible dichotomy in extreme wealth.
>> After a
>> bit, the money stops working. There are a statistically minute but
>> quantitatively considerable number of people who now have more money
>> than
>> they know what to do with. And that money accounts for quite a lot of
>> the
>> world’s wealth, so we all have a passing interest in what becomes of
>
>> it.
>>
>>
>>
>> How do I, as a frugally paid journeyman hack, know it stops working?
>
>> Well,
>> I’ve been asking folks who service the overly minted. There is a name
>> for
>> their panicked ennui: Perfection Anxiety.
>>
>>
>>
>> When you have 15 houses, yachts in three oceans, planes, cellars,
>> mistresses, surgery, a library, and a personal charity, new purch
> ases
>> become
>> just a matter of upgrading. And this is where the Perfection Anxiety
>> kicks
>> in. What you need is to have not just the most but the very, very best.
>
>> The
>> super-rich watch each other like envious owls, to see who’s got a
>> slightly
>> better loafer, a pullover made from some even more absurdly endangered
>
>> fur.
>> They will go to any lengths to find the best tailors. I know of a man
>> who
>> gets his suit pants made in Italy and the jackets on Savile Row. In his
>> underwear, he’s short, fat, furry, and stooped.
>>
>>
>>
>> The couple had a $19 million wedding, where she wore a $130,000 Vera
>
>> Wang
>> dress. Six-thousand-dollar bottles of Château Pétrus were served. He
>> collects Pétrus, too, of course, and keeps it in a special cabine
> t
>> made by
>> David Linley, the Queen’s nephew. The 1970s art-rock group,
>> Television, who
>> have aged like fine wine, played for 2 hours at the Stunts’ wedding.
>
>> Says
>> Petra: “My aunt Lois knew of their music from a Madame Secret Y .. or
>> Z
>> ..... Lois turned me onto to their music in 2002, and I decided we jus
> t
>> must have them play at our wedding. It took $90,000 plus travel
>> expenses,
>> but they were worth every penny just to hear my two favorite songs,
>> ‘The
>> Dream’s Dream’ and ‘The
>>
>> Marquis Moon’ ".
>>
>>
>>
>> Only the fathomlessly rich suffer from Perfection Anxiety. There is no
>> relativity to wealth. It’s all absolutes. It’s either impeccable,
>> the best,
>> the rarest, or it might as well be Walmart. The stress of value for
>> money is
>> magnified exponentially when it gets into the billions. The myth of King
>> Midas, who was cursed to have everything he touched turn to gold, wou
> ld
>> be
>> worse if everything he touched turned out to be gold leaf. And it’s
>> not just
>> the suspicion that all your stuff isn’t utterly perfect. It’s also
>> the
>> anxiety of maintaining perfection once it’s achieved, and, as a
>> result,
>> constant discontent. A crooked Picasso, an unplumped scatter cushion,
> a
>> faint mark on the handwoven silk wallpaper can drive them to a frothing
>> distraction.
>>
>>
>>
>> And when you’ve got the best of everything, when you have your tea
>> flown in
>> from a micro-garden in Darjeeling and it still tastes rather like tea,
>
>> when
>> you’ve designed your own scent made from the squeezed glands of civets
>
>> and
>> the petals of rare orchids and that fails to give you the high—“When
>> Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no m
> ore
>> worlds to conquer”—then you’re reduced to collecting art. Art is
>> good for
>> those with Perfection Anxiety because you never get to the end of it.
>> And
>> the competition is fierce, and the prices are absurd.
>>
>>
>>
>> No picture bought for more than $50 million has ever made a profit, a
>> contemporary auction expert tells me authoritatively, but it doesn’t
>
>> stop
>> people from buying them. There have been lots of papers written on
>> collecting and collectors, and they turn out to be mostly men. And whil
> e
>> they imagine their collections begin as random or serendipitous
>> interests,
>> they are invariably revealed to be emblematic of some deeper loss, some
>> attempt to fill an unbridgeable gap, to repair a childhood wound. They
>
>> will
>> set out to visit every World Heritage site or to shoot every large
>> animal on
>> every continent, trying to wring some last buzz of excitement or sense
>
>> of
>> wonder out of the failed high of money. When all the veins have broken
>> down,
>> when you’ve upped the experience dosage to absurd levels, there’s
>> always
>> Fabergé eggs or overpriced wine.
>>
>>
>>
>> The only super-rich person I know said that, actually, after you’ve
>
>> bought,
>> consumed, collected, donated, and holidayed yourself into triple-pl
> y
>> boredom, the thing that actually keeps you spending is the expectations
>
>> of
>> others: your family and friends, and their friends, and the servants.
> No
>> one
>> ever writes about the terrible anticipation of wealth that comes from
>> people
>> who are merely solvent. You are the focus of so much wishful thinking,
>
>> so
>> much smiling avarice, you feel responsible to live a life of steepling
>> extravagance. Particularly the young. That’s why they have $20 million
>> weddings and hire a pop star to sing “Happy Birthday” to them. The
>> pressure
>> to live the dream is intense. Because, if you say, Look, actually
> ,
>> spending
>> a lot of money is a diminishing return, it’s an effortful bore, it
>
>> doesn’t
>> deliver the rush—well, where does that leave the ever expanding
>> universe of
>> capitalism and consumption? It’s miserablist Commie heresy.
>>
>>
>>
>> It’s like blowing your nose on everyone else’s pay slip.
>>
>>
>>
>> Money has to be an explosion of excitement and opportunity, yet we
>> already
>> secretly know that it doesn’t do what it promises. Nothing has ever
>> given us
>> as much pleasure as our pocket money when we were 12, or our first wage
>
>> at
>> the end of that first exhausting week, paid in folded cash. Now we’re
>
>> 10
>> times richer, but we’re not 10 times happier. And all that’s just a
>
>> cartoon
>> truism. If we had billions, we don’t realistically believe that we’
> d
>> be a
>> billion times better off. As one art dealer said to me, “If you want
>
>> to know
>> what God thinks of money, look at the people he gives it to.”
>>
>>
>>
>> The thing with Perfection Anxiety is that it seems to accept mostly new
>> money, and it particularly afflicts those who make their money early.
>> Old,
>> inherited wealth is generally already bound up in property and trusts
>> and
>> obligations and lawsuits. So it would seem that the best we can hope for
>
>> is
>> to be wealthy but to be without cash.
>>
>>
>>
>> Being able to afford everything you desire is not, by any means, the
>
>> worst
>> thing that can happen to you. But, depressingly, and more profoundly
> ,
>> neither is it the best.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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