Rich People Buy Dumb Things

So I've had the pleasure (is it really a pleasure? hmm) of visiting several very expensive homes in the last few days.  Both of them were very nice houses, quite large, and of course, extremely pricey.  They were beautiful, to say the least, with crazy spiraling staircases and fancy backyard pools and top-of-the-line viking stove tops.

But another thing they both had in common was the large quantity of gaudy CRAP that just about covered every surface imaginable.

Take, for instance, fake fruit.  Now, I've definitely seen various homes with a bowl or two of fake pears or apples, and I've never really said anything because I too have been to Pottery Barn or Restoration hardware and have seen how this in moderation might be considered fashionable.  However, this place I went to was like walking through a farmer's market there was so much fruit everywhere - and it was all fake!  Fake cherries and grapes in a silver bowl on the living room coffee table, fake pears in a vase on the mantle over the fireplace, fake apples on a platter in the den - I mean good grief, if you have that much money why not at least buy the real fruit?  I mean after seeing so much fruit everywhere, you kind of start to get a craving for a piece of it, and then you're just left with disappointment when you discover that the pomegranates in the really hideous jar on the kitchen counter are not, in fact, edible.

Another product I can't understand: candles.  In a home I visited a few years ago they had a table in their entryway that was just covered in candles, a few of which were probably about as thick as my body, but not one of which had ever been lit, as far as I could tell.  Now what is the point of that?  Just to show that they are so wealthy they can afford to buy a bunch of ginormous candles that will never be put to use? (Unless, of course, there's a power outage, in which case that one candle could probably light up the place for a good month.)

And then of course there's just the gaudy choices of decor.  Onyx dragon bookends, zebra rugs, marble dragon statues, random magnifying glasses (these things are everywhere - why?), huge fake silk flowers in even larger crystal vases, thick leather-bound books that have obviously never been opened, ginormous ugly paintings that cover every inch of every wall...and in one of these houses the guy actually owned a gold sink.  Like what Marie Antoinette or Queen Elizabeth probably owned.  I mean are you kidding me?

I wonder if, when people have overflowing amounts of money, they just don't NOT buy something.  I mean if I see something I like, I consider it, at the very least, and then decide if it's really worth the purchase or not.  But maybe when you have just tons and tons of money, you just scan your credit card and be done with it - hassle free?

All I can say is, if I ever get to be as rich as these folks are, there's no way in hell I'm every buying fake fruit.  If you ever come stay with me, you'll always be gettin' the real thing.