by Mike
Rank | September 22, 2003
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Ten bucks says
this shirt was bought at a mall.
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Read all about the Mall of America.
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When you’re one of the “lesser known” states, you often have to go to extreme measures to distinguish yourself. Arizona lucked out by having the Grand Canyon gouged into its landscape like a knife wound in a hobo’s stomach. It’s less fortunate neighbor, Nevada, took the lemons life threw it and instead of making lemonade, legalized prostitution and gambling. Iowa had it’s fifteen minutes of fame with “Field of Dreams”, although most people still aren’t sure whether it’s the state that’s know for growing corn or potatoes. One of those Dakota’s improvised and carved the faces of presidents into the side of a mountain. Maybe if they carved a giant sized replica of Britney Spears breasts, I would care enough to be able to tell you just which Dakota that is.
Minnesota is no exception to these states. While their license plates may bill themselves as the “Land of Ten-Thousand Lakes”, their real claim to fame in the Mall of America. That’s right, a mall. With ten thousand lakes at their disposal, they couldn’t think of anything better to make their mark with than to build a giant mall to set themselves apart from the crowd. Perhaps the whole lake angle was just too overwhelming. With ten thousand to choose from, how do you determine which one to promote? If you start focusing all of your attention on one, would the others begin to shrivel from neglect?
Whatever their reasoning, they decided to neglect the lakes and focus their attention on a mall. But not just any mall, mind you. It’s the largest mall in the United States.
Just how big is it, you ask? Imagine the biggest mall you’ve ever been to.
Now imagine it……bigger.
That about sums it up. It’s four stories tall, although the top floor isn’t a complete floor. They try to make up for that fact by stocking it with a movie theater and Hooters, but I’m saying it’s not nearly enough. This thing has already been over hyped enough and I’m not about to feed into the media hoopla. For those of you considering selling all of worldly possessions so that you could come here and re-buy them from the biggest mall ever, don’t.
Now I’m not saying that the mall isn’t impressive. In the center of the mall is a Camp Snoopy Amusement Park complete with all the rides and roller coasters a young child would want to go on. There’s a Lego shop with huge Lego Dinosaurs and a play area for kids. Of course, you’ll find your normal potpourri of department stores and shops. It took me almost an hour to walk around all three levels and I only stopped in one store during that jaunt (no, it wasn’t Victoria’s Secret).
But no matter how many times you walk around, it’s still just a mall. It’s all the same stores you would find at a regular mall with all the same merchandise and same prices. Granted, the selection is proportionately better than your typical mall and you’ll save yourself the time of having to travel to several different shopping centers to find that “perfect” gift for everyone on your list. But after walking out, you don’t feel any more uplifted or enlightened. You just have a bag (or more) of crap and you think to yourself “What did I just spend all my money on?”
My total purchases during my two-hour visit totaled
$15.06, approximately half of what I spent at the
Museum of Spam on the same trip (read about that here).
My first mall purchase was at a bookstore, buying
a magazine that I could read with my lunch, setting
me back a whopping $5.11. For the record, it was a
book that I could have purchased in any state for
the same price. My second purchase was a meal at the
Barbecue joint on the third floor. The name escapes
me, so it must not have been that life altering of
an event. But I do recommend the pulled BBQ chicken
sandwich on their lunch menu. It’s complimented with
your unlimited choice of four unique barbecue sauce
flavors. Total cost with tip: $9.95. (Go ahead, add
up the two totals now. See, it works out. Go to hell
for doubting my math skills.)
I suppose that this is a sign that I’m not born to shop. I saw things I wouldn’t mind having for myself, such as a new laptop computer. And there are plenty of people I could have shopped for. I still haven’t bought my mom a Mother’s Day Gift, even though it was a couple weeks ago. My sister has a birthday coming up. I have several friends with babies. Name an age or gender and I’ll tell you someone in that bracket that I probably owe a gift.
Now this frightens me. If I wasn’t struck with a great gift idea at the largest Mall in the country, where do I go from there? Last year I did the majority of my Christmas Shopping in the World’s Largest Gift Shop, conveniently located across the street from the Sahara Casino in Las Vegas. What kind of quality gifts did I find there? For my mom, there was a ceramic statue of a woman whose breasts were actually salt and peppershakers. My girlfriend’s brother got his own Sigmund Freud action figure. I’m pretty sure someone else got something that made farting noises. Everyone else ended up with mini George Foreman Grills.
These purchases were all out of desperation, as Christmas was a day or two away. With little time and minimal options, I was forced to resort to phallic and flatulent gifts that were undoubtedly trashed the minute I walked out the door. But I had an alibi. I had little time and I was in an unfamiliar place. People felt fortunate that no matter how bad the gifts were, at least the gifts didn’t come from someplace with a drive-thru. But word will soon get out that with no pressure or obligation, I was still unable to find anything. Then I will be known as the crappy gift-giving guy.
It’s bad enough that I can’t dress myself. As a part of the genetics crapshoot, I ended up being brown/green colorblind. No, this doesn’t mean that I see things in black and white. But there are certain shades of green and brown that my eyes can’t register properly. As a result, I tend to wear outfits that don’t match. Or aren’t clean. Or are ripped. Fortunately, I could still get by on my incredibly hot, if somewhat diminished, good looks, even if I’m wearing mismatched tops and bottoms.
What worries me is that when I show up to a party or social type event where a gift is in order, people will cringe when they see me come walking in with a package wrapped in a brown paper bag and a homemade bow. My gift will be the one that people poke fun at after I pass out in their kitchen and am technically out of earshot. I remember when my sisters were younger, one of them received some sort of headband type thing that was horrible. It became a family joke, where we would hide it in one another’s rooms and shriek from it in terror, chasing one another around the house with it. This, I fear, will be the ultimate fate of any gift I give for years to come.
So, I’ve resigned myself to one of two fates. Either I can hide from my fears and avoid gift giving altogether, saving myself money and embarrassment. But no, instead I choose to go all out, working to find the most inappropriate and gaudiest piece of merchandise for every occasion. Fortunately, I know most of my friends and family will appreciate this. When I went home for a wedding this summer, one of my friends was ecstatic that she had managed to find the bride and groom the perfect gift; a replica of the leg lamp from the cult classic “A Christmas Story”. Some people thought it was brilliant. I was disgusted. Why, God, why? Why didn’t I think of it first?
And with that, I have to go and finish taking the price tags off of the Spam infant wear I just bought for some friend’s babies.
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