Thanks very much for posting that link -- I normally don't read the Atlantic but I love superyacht stuff.
1. I'm reminded of that Bible verse about gaining the whole world and losing your soul. And then a variation that actually refers to worry not riches, but I think it applies to both -- the richest guy on earth can't add a single minute to his life. Or the great Olympia Dukakis line from Moonstruck -- "Cosmo, no matter what you do, you're still gonna die, just like everyone else."
2. I've been to the Palm Beach Int'l Boat Show. The writer is right, we found it to be the most insufferable, materialistic, pretentious, obnoxious boat show we've ever been to, and we'll never do it again. More plastic surgery and botox and fake body parts per person than any concentration of humans on earth. My mother's side of the family were factory workers in Connecticut, but my father's side -- well, let's just say my grandfather's empire was so huge he forgot which real estate developments and office buildings and other assets he owned. And when I was a little kid, he'd take my brother and me to visit his projects in a Rambler station wagon with rope for one of the door handles. In other words, I've lived on both sides and I thought the Palm Beach show was downright repelling. We like the Newport (RI) show a lot better. Older money maybe, Yankee sensibility, I don't know. The boys still dress in khakis and blue blazers, but we didn't buy the clothes in Milan and we're still allowed on (most of) the boats.
3. I read every issue of Boat International (US edition) very carefully, just for kicks. Fascinating glimpse into another universe. There was some kind of staffing shift last year though -- the London editor Stewart Campbell used to write the intro, now it's somebody named Cecile Gauert who writes it (she's US based). Campbell's intro and a lot of the articles poked fun at the pretention, and he'd throw around affected words like "off piste" and "bespoke," I swear just to be ever so slightly ridiculous on purpose, to stick a needle in the pretentiousness and hedonism and absurdity. And the photos seemed more nautical and elegant and artistic and boat-centered. Self-deprecating and a refined sensibility at the same time. Cecile Gauert on other hand (or something, not sure how much of a role she has) seems to have changed the tone and everything is more serious now -- ridiculously serious. No fun. Take themselves so seriously it gets really tiresome. It's become Vogue magazine for super-yachters. Lots of high fashion models who all look anorexic and angry, or zoned out on drugs, and no sense of humor. Now I burst out laughing because of the pretentious absurdity, not because they're trying to have a little fun in the midst of what they have to know is utterly outrageous consumption.
That world is so absurd. Like Versailles in 1788.
