the first rule about fight club

is don't talk about fight club. like the matrix, fight club has a catchy tag line that is actually key to the plot, because the less you know about the movie going in, the more you'll enjoy it. so instead of talking about fight club, i'll talk to you about ikea.

they're opening up an ikea in the east bay next year. whenever i drive over the bay bridge into berkeley or wherever the hell i'm going, i'm greeted by this immense sign announcing the imminent approach of an even more immense building. my parents used to drag me to ikea when i was growing up. it was this gigantic four story monolith that would take up almost an entire city block. catalogues wait for you at the door to guide you through their walking tour of kitsch. they have scandinavian food, complete with a backlit picture menu in their "food" court, a playroom with those multicolored hard plastic balls that you can drown your kids in, and lots and lots of furniture named after european yuppies. my dad bought a black leather "gunter" sofa-set that didn't match anything else in the house, but he was proud that it came from ikea. it represented that exotic european cookie-cutter success that my parents were so desperate to happily project but miserably failed at. ikea actually seemed pretty harmless to me back then. oddly enough, it almost seemed like a good thing.

i didn't know it then, but i know now: ikea is the anti-christ.

for a long time, it seemed like ikea was being safely contained in southern california, with all the other monolithic stores that inhabit its mini-malls and concrete gardens. but, like starbucks, it's managing to infiltrate every aspect of our existence. successful people drink successful coffee at starbucks. successful yuppies buy their successful cobalt blue dishware at ikea. you don't even have to visit the gigantic four story store anymore. the store will gladly come to you, encased in those very same catalogues full of glossy paper with young, peppy adults in their starter marriages utilizing their "olga" kitchen utensils and "uter" bath towels.

which brings me to american beauty. to be perfectly honest, i wasn't really that enraptured with american beauty, although i do give kudos to kevin spacey who once again blew my socks off. the reason why i bring up american beauty is because while i was watching fight club, i thought to myself "lester's wife must shop at ikea."

american beauty and fight club have very similar messages to very different audiences. while american beauty speaks to folks stuck in mid-life crisis whiling away their time in dead-end jobs, fight club speaks to folks in their late 20's and early 30's, realizing that there's not much more to look forward to as they while away their time stuck in dead-end jobs.

i'm rambling. there's so much more that i want to say about fight club, but like i said before, the first rule of fight club is.... i shouldn't talk about fight club.

but definitely go see it. if anything, it's worth your money to see meatloaf in one of his oddest roles yet.

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future | retro