{"id":3581,"date":"2013-03-16T15:14:11","date_gmt":"2013-03-16T20:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=3581"},"modified":"2013-03-16T15:18:26","modified_gmt":"2013-03-16T20:18:26","slug":"electric-elephants-and-other-bad-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=3581","title":{"rendered":"Electric Elephants and Other Bad Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"

So there I was\u00a0on a Saturday morning before the Mall opened, at the Mall.\u00a0 As \u00a0usual, don’t ask.<\/p>\n

Is there any place more soul destroying than a decrepit old mall?\u00a0\u00a0If there is,\u00a0it’s that mall before the doors open and the lights come on. As I walk past the run-down furniture store – and yes, they sell run-down furniture –\u00a0the lights go up on the jewelry across the way,\u00a0the furniture, the early morning dance studios.\u00a0 The music starts slowly and the salespeople come to life like plastic automatons of some bygone horror film, the circuit is closed and the rusty sales force creaks to life, again.\u00a0 This ancient mall is a palimpsest of stories, the hopes and dreams of sales and vendors and con men, written and crushed out and rewritten until the walls themselves can tell the stories, money, money, sell, sell, fail, fail, fail. We should accessorize our thirst, dance, relax, the walls tell us, beaconing us in, come in, buy something.<\/p>\n

There are two massage parlors, open early, for the discriminating shopper to get their freak on in the early morning before the roving bands of stroller-toting exercise moms take over the halls.\u00a0 There is a “D&D Security Training Academy,” which doesn’t seem to feature anywhere near as many swords or dice as you would guess.<\/p>\n

They have anchor stores. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the purpose of an anchor to drag along the bottom and impede progress?\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 They have two of these.\u00a0 I think this explains a lot, really.<\/p>\n

There’s a store called Columbia Linens. \u00a0Columbia is the poetic name used for the female personification of the United States – there are 35 places in the US with Columbia in their names, along with at least 5 songs, a university,\u00a0and the odd space \"electric-elephants\"<\/a>shuttle.\u00a0\u00a0Linen, a textile made from flax, is valued for its marvelous coolness in hot weather.\u00a0 In this store, Columbia Linens, \u00a0therefore, we should expect to find flax-based cloths that are either made in the US or printed with themes that\u00a0might have something\u00a0to do with the Americas.\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 No, of course not.\u00a0 They don’t carry anything to do with the US, nor do they, in fact, sell linens.\u00a0 Mostly they sell furniture of the Late Shitty period, and a lot of Far East knickknacks.\u00a0 They do, however, have a display of Van de Graaff elephants, in front of a framed needlepoint rendition of Da Vinci’s Last Supper.<\/p>\n

I mean, fucking electric elephants.\u00a0\u00a0I’m sure someone asked their boss, “Hey, where the hell do I put this thing?”\u00a0and got an answer of, “Um, put them in front of, Christ, I don’t know.”\u00a0 Where else would you put them?<\/p>\n

There’s a store called New York Fashion.\u00a0 Here’s a pic.\"New<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, I’ve been to New York City, and I don’t remember seeing anyone wearing this.\u00a0 Maybe I didn’t get to the right part of New York.\u00a0 I tend to think of this as Los Vegas Fashion, but what do I know?<\/p>\n

I love the serial entrepreneurs as well. There’s a place called Eyebrow Designer 21. Me, I would probably have given up on this idea after the failure of Eyebrow Designer 8 or 9, but this guy perseveres. Good for him.<\/p>\n

So, the mall.\u00a0 In the end I outwaited them and accomplished what I came for, and possibly more than that.\u00a0 After all, I now know where to pick up a steady supply of Van de Graaff elephants, which I can sell for a stiff mark up while wearing my New York Fashion go-go shorts.\u00a0 What more could a guy ask for?<\/p>\n

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The mall has anchor stores. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the purpose of an anchor to drag along the bottom and impede progress? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3581"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3581"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3593,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3581\/revisions\/3593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}