101 Things I Hate About Your House™ kicks off a new weekly feature “Things I Hate About Reality TV Interiors” an unflinching look at the terrors (many) and the triumphs (few) of today’s reality TV show’s interiors.
Let me state right up front that I enjoy House Porn. I always have and I imagine I always will. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy the artistry of nubile naked bodies like the next guy….but on a rainy Sunday evening with a fire blazing in the fireplace there’s a stirring deep inside that can’t be satisfied by mere flawless flesh. This boy needs page after page of overly lit, four-color, sternly composed photographs of perfectly conceived, masterfully executed and tantalizingly alluring interiors or he’s just going to burst. My stash of shelter magazines spans styles, boarders and generations with some prized issues dating back to the 1930’s. Over the decades the list of shelter publications has multiplied like adult rabbits under the warm glow of studio lighting leaving those of us trapped by their seductive pout awash in truck-loads of printed matter. All those slaughtered trees have proven great research material over the years as I’ve done my part to fill pages of said magazines with lofty and lusty creations of my own. Most recently this same material proved a mighty foil as I’ve tapped out my soon to be published book “101 Things I Hate About Your House”.
So imagine my surprise when my fingers typed up the idea for a blog post or two titled “101 Things I Hate about Reality TV’s Interior’s”. I’d been gathering additional research for my book promotion (“Hey little boy, what do you hate about your house?”) on a variety of social media platforms, when paths crossed, a suggestion was made and, voila! I was researching the interiors of today’s media marvels; the reality television show.
As someone who watches very little television I was initially overwhelmed. Show choices where abundant; the depth of horror represented by their interiors seemed unfathomable and it appeared that all I would need was uninterrupted hours to blithely chronicle these decorating disasters. In this light (always very good light) my job seemed easy; rather cut and dried. Chronicling the thoughtless design foibles of straight men and oblivious women could be done with one hand behind my back while the other firmly grasped a cocktail or two. And then I met the Kardashian’s.
It was not love at first sight, but I will own up to a certain fascination. It’s all been observed before I’m sure; “Train-wreck you can’t take your eyes off…”etc. But what I found most compelling, as the last season wound down and the new season leapt at us like a 16 year olds libido, was a pure sense of House Hope. For the new season had brought with it a new home for Bruce and his cherished wife Kris. The old digs, with its low-slung ranch-like appeal; its disjointed furniture and random art, was bursting at the seams. Something had to give and, like many of Kim or Khloe’s earlier, fuller-figured frocks, no one wanted to be around when it did. So, like any responsible Reality Dad, Bruce took the situation in hand and on Christmas day introduced the family to the pile they would now call “the family home”.
To describe this sprawling edifice adequately would require adaptive use of architectural references drawn from all the Mediterranean countries and would stretch back as far as the 16th century meandering right up through sometime in 2009. It would be about then that the developer/general contractor began adding new and previously undocumented architectural elements making for an architectural mash-up of Herculaneum proportions. To say that it’s a fragmented mess does an injustice to fragmented messes everywhere. But, it is The Kardashian’s fragmented mess and from the reported teary-eyes on Christmas day I can’t begrudge these cloying folk a new place to call home.
So with the speed of television production crews the old house was sucked dry of its style-anemic content, all of which was summarily deposited in the bare, hallow rooms just down the road. And there they rest, or fester as the case may be.
It’s at this point that my house-hungry eyes begin to water; primed by hope of what might be. Yes I am confident that even Mr. Seacrest could not convince the family to bulldoze the mess and start over; so my hope has shifted comfortably to the idea of a major design redo; a home make-over of Wagnerian proportions. Now it is in this state of heightened anticipation that I live waiting to see if this cabal of fashion conscious women (all six of them) and their sweet, if ineffectual men-folk (three or four depending on the episode and the erratic whims of one or more of these fierce dames), have the combined interior design sense of a first year Parson’s dropout. Imagine the fun to be had if they were to wrap their collective heads around the obvious need in which they are wallowing. It’s a classic “sold a house/bought a house/ moved in with what we own/have no idea what to do with all this space” scenario. Designers see it regularly and know exactly what’s to be done. But imagine the shit-storm even the most effective and talented design practitioner would find themselves in upon accepting this televised commission/ slaughter. In many ways it could be the best entertainment the show has ever offered; a crack-shot, gun-toting design pro vs. the Kardashian’s Varsity Squad (10 opinionated bodies, give or take a boy-friend or two) tackling nine thousand square feet of blank canvas in the hills of Calabasas.
I’m hot and bothered just thinking about it.
