Trader Joe's Frozen Turkey & Stuffing en Croute

"It's not that circus horses dance particularly well, it's that they can dance at all".
   ~ Famous old quip that's strangely impervious to Googling

A friend bought $30,000 speakers for his stereo.

"Why?" I asked.

"It sounds exactly like being in a jazz club," he replied.

"Is that so great? In actual jazz clubs, do you go so nuts for the acoustics that it strikes you like a $30,000 experience?"

"No, but this is in my house!"

"So you save the trip?"

"Exactly!"

"You know, you could rent a helicopter for $1000 per hour. Land with friends on a helipad near a jazz club, and hire a limo for the final few blocks. That's still more than an order of magnitude cheaper!"

The conversation went nowhere, of course. Especially when I made gratuitous reference to starving children...a dick move given my $100 sneakers, $400 eyewear, $1000 phone, and $15000 car parked outside. Yeah, look at me, so totally there for the starving children.

"But how," you ask, "does this pertain to frozen convenience foods at Trader Joe's?"

Because the interesting part is not the lavish spending, it's the way we reframe quality in different contexts. Jazz club acoustics, which you'd never value much in an actual jazz club, are fit for a king when they're recreated in your living room. And Trader Joe's frozen Turkey & Stuffing en Croute, which tastes like a decent meal whipped up by a real live cook (albeit not a very good one), seems like a miracle when you've simply popped a humble frozen box in your oven.

Few of us would normally feel the least bit stirred over a decent meal from a not-very-good cook, but this is an amazing result from a frozen convenience product. Hence the excitement among TJ loyalists. Shoot, even I'm excited, and I'm the cynical bastard dispelling illusion here! I can get hooked, too! For that matter, I'd probably giggle delightedly at the sound from my friend's speakers...if there were a snowball’s chance in Hell of my scoring an invitation after I put him through the Marie Antoinette treatment. 

I said I'm less interested in the pricing aspect, but I'll note that Turkey & Stuffing en Croute costs a steep $15.99, which is the Trader Joe's frozen food equivalent of $30,000.

One more.

I'm addicted to Youtube videos made by ecstatic travelers who've thrown away hundreds of thousands of frequent points (or $10,000-$20,000 in cold cash) to fly in enclosed first class compartments on swanky Middle Eastern airlines. The luxeness is just beyond belief!

We're supposed to view with admiring awe and/or seething envy. But I peer at my screen like an anthopologist at what's evidently a shitty office cubicle tarted up with leather appointments. The whole thing is laughably chintzy and uncomfortable, though an undeniable improvement over the inhumane steerage of coach. If this were a hotel room, one wouldn't pay more than thirty five bucks. And hotel rooms are yours for the day, while this crappy cubicle - rigged up in an arid, fetid metal tube - is rented for a mere six or eight or ten hour stretch.

But it's ON AN AIRPLANE. So people pay >$10,000 for the exquisite privilege of something they wouldn't ordinarily value presented in a context where they wouldn't ordinarily expect it.


Business idea: attach EZ Boy lounge chairs onto each end of a seesaw, glue jars of high-end macademia nuts to the arms, and charge $100/minute to experience the world's most exclusive level of seesaw comfort.

Of course, richy riches don't reserve those first class compartments for swanky status. It's an expedience; a marginally less disgusting flying experience that's easily afforded if you've got zillions. Then, when you transfer to the VIP suite at the Ritz Carlton, you still don't celebrate with lofty exuberance. It's just lodgings. Like Holiday Inns for us, it's a loose stand-in for the comforts of home. The only exuberant celebrants are slobs like you or Me or YouTube hosts, on the rare occasions when we stumble onto such strata. It's not really for us. We don't get it.