Whole Foods: The Experience

Over the past few years, I’ve been hearing more and more about Whole Foods as the superior retailer of foods.  Essentially, it’s classier than Stop & Shop, Shaw’s, The Big Y and whatever other grocery stores you can think of.  Growing up a hop skip and a throw away from Providence, Rhode Island’s historic East Side, I’ve always been relatively close by a Whole Foods, yet I’ve always felt intimidated by it.  To me, it was where rich and snobby people would drive to in their Audi station wagons, wearing their sweater vests and corduroys and make snide remarks about the ripeness of the a papaya or how lacking the brie is.  It seemed like a place where fun was never allowed, smiling was frowned upon, and sales were never utilized because, well, if you shop at Whole Foods all the time, you probably aren’t worrying about pinching pennies and seeing what’s on sale.  Today was a big day for me, because I chose to go on a top secret mission into Whole Foods and go shopping to experience how the wealthy lived.  It was like the lifestyles of the rich and the boring grocery shopping edition.

Maybe I had a negative outlook on Whole Foods from the start.  My dad goes shopping there every now and then for steaks which are normally good, but I just never cared for the chain itself.  A certain friend who shall remain anonymous once set me up on a blind date with a girl she met at Whole Foods once.  There was no second date.  The only thing I knew going into this hell of a grocery store was to stay away from the women, or keep them away from me which isn’t really all that hard.  Anyways, my main purpose to go there was because I was craving sushi and I know they have relatively good sushi.  Also, as much fun as college was for my four years, my body kind of hates me for it. My AIM screen name in my middle school-early high school years was EPzSlimJim.  After four years in college it would now be more like EPzGottalose10lbsJim.  Point being, I guess it’s time to start weaning myself off of the Macaroni and Cheese and eat some more salads for now.  Whole Foods seemed like the perfect place to look for food with no taste yet good for you. 

Anyways, I walk in to the place and immediately notice a man wearing a powdered wig.  I honest to God wish I was making this up but I’m not.  It would be one thing to see a man in a powdered wig in Whole Foods wearing a costume, like if he were a George Washington impersonator at some historical museum or something, but no, this guy was in jeans, a nifty little pullover with a Brown University emblem on it, and a powdered wig.  I almost turned around and went out the door upon seeing this.  After realizing that I had stopped dead in my tracks and that I should lift my jaw up from the floor, I moved on to finding the coveted sushi.  While making my way through herds of other nerds, I realized that I didn’t know one brand that was being sold of anything.  This started to freak me out.  I finally got to the sushi and was dismayed to see that they didn’t have my damn California rolls there, so I settled with a cucumber and brown rice roll. Yawn. I decided to browse a bit to see what exactly the elite people of the East Side like to shop for, and I couldn’t have been any more freaked out.  Everything was sugar free, gluten free, light this, zero that, low sodium, lower calories, organic times ten, blah blah blah.  I understand the need to eat healthy, but all these things would make the majority of people stay away from these items. 

After being bombarded with tofu samples, I ran into some girls around my age who were debating the pros and cons of various types of skim milk, which just kind of made me sad.  These girls were in the utmost hipster mode.  Knit hats, combat boots, odd printed leggings and semi-emo haircuts, they were probably ex-employees of American Apparel at one point.  Hearing this interaction go on as I was looking for any frozen food that would appeal to me (nothing did) just furthered my rule of not talking to any females I run into at Whole Foods.  If these girls could get into a pros and cons list over various types of skim milk, then who knows what else they were capable of making petty things into arguments.  On a side note, do people really notice differences between various skim milks?  I have to call shenanigans on that.  These girls made me weep for the future.  This was like my own private Twilight Zone taking place in the form of grocery shopping.  I really was at a crossroads when I noticed that the deli guys didn’t give out any free cheese samples, much to my dismay.  Some of my favorite moments growing up was getting a slice of cheese from the deli guys while grocery shopping with my dear mother.  Whole Foods made me feel like you’d be kindly yet firmly asked to leave if you asked for a free slice of cheese.  Everything was so backwards, yet everyone else seemed to be happy.  I don’t get if shoppers of Whole Foods are just into their own lifestyle or if they all have been brainwashed to consider it a true grocery shopping experience.  Call me old fashioned, but how good of a grocery store can you be if you walk through the snack aisle and not pick anything up due to pure disgust?

After picking up some pistachios, soy sauce, some thai noodle bowl and the sushi for a whopping 35$, I realized that Whole Foods is kind of lame.  Some people say it’s for the rich, some say it’s for hipsters, vegetarians, health food freaks, but I say it’s for the pathetic.  I am a firm believer that food is meant to be enjoyed, and grocery stores should help this out.  Whole Foods just seems like a lifestyle where people pay way too much money for less taste.  The only thing I learned tonight was that brown rice in sushi is very lackluster, shoppers at Whole Foods wear powdered wigs, girls argue over skim milk, and pistachios are really expensive. 

So I Finally Saw Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Review

In a shockingly ironic twist that would makes hipsters across the globe proud, contrary to popular belief, I never saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s until two nights ago.  I really don’t know why it took me so long to do so, but I just never really got around to it.  I thought the movie would be about Audrey Hepburn being a rich socialite named Tiffany and the movie was about her awesome life hobnobbing with the rich, the famous, and the beautiful in New York City.  Clearly I was wrong about this assumption.  Now here are my thoughts/movie review of the only film worthy of enough for me to make a mockery of with the naming of this blog. 

Holly Golightly- What the hell kind of a last name is Golightly?  Is this supposed to be a realistic sounding last name?  I understand that Holly was poor and on the run since she was 14, but if you’re going to use a fake name why on earth would you use such an odd last name that stands out when you’re trying to be hiding from your past?  It just doesn’t fit.  I mean sure, Holly Golightly is a pretty awesome sounding name, but not when you’re trying to pull off your best Carmen San Diego impression in life.  Actually now that I think about it, Carmen San Diego isn’t really a good name when you’re trying to be incognito either.  Further adding to the confusion, she picks an absurd name like Holly Golightly for herself, but she can’t come up with a name for her cat, choosing to call it Cat?  This is troubling. 

Moving on, Holly kind of surprised me with how much of a gold digging tramp she turned out to be.  She basically dumped her first husband who was about 60 years older than she was to get rich.  As a young man who hopes to one day be happily married and a true family man, it sickens me to hear that Holly would just go for the money and live a life without true love.  What a fraud.  If Holly Golightly were around today, she would be one of those girls to date an asshole, post a Facebook status about how there are no good guys out there in the world and she only dates assholes, and then proceed to keep on dating assholes instead of going for genuinely nice and caring dudes.  The way she had poor Paul wrapped around her finger was quite disheartening.  Don’t even get me started on how she dumped Cat out of a running cab into a back alley.  It seemed to me that Ms. Golightly, if you can even call her that, has relationship issues and a few screws lose upstairs.  In a sense, Holly Golightly seems like the type of girl who would be the cause of kids to form emo bands.  What a weirdo. 

Paul- Paul was a sucker from the start.  Essentially you’re a writer who gets paid to sleep with a disgruntled yet rich housewife.  With that going for him, it was almost too easy to see him fall for and get his heart trampled on by Holly.  Let’s face it, he had no chance.  His only source of income was whoring himself out, which isn’t good when you’re trying to land a gold digger.  Great job Paul.  I also didn’t care for how easily influenced he was by Holly.  He became all reckless and even stole from a 5 and 10 cent store just because Holly told him it was something he had never done.  I’ve never kidnapped a small child and sold him/her on the black market, and I don’t think I would start doing that just because Holly Golightly told me to.  This being said, I am a fan of Holly’s YOLO, therefore, DGAF lifestyle.  Much respect in that department.  Paul is just sad to watch throughout this whole movie. 

That Whole Marriage Thing- So Holly got married when she was 14 to a horse doctor who was about 70? Yeah that’s not weird or anything.  How is that even legal?  It’s not like he was even a good looking or charming horse doctor.  He was exactly what I would imagine a horse doctor to look like.  Can you imagine being married at the age of 14?  Sounds awful.  High school was hard enough being a bachelor nevermind having the ol’ ball and chain waiting for you as you got back home after a tough day in geometry class.   

 

The Mob- Arguably the strangest part of the movie is that Holly is passing along drug trafficking information for a jailed mobster named Sally Tomatoes.  I’m not sure what the bigger crime here is: drug trafficking or the fact that a character’s name is Sally Tomatoes.  Was Truman Capote on drugs when he wrote this?  Well, probably, but you know what I mean.  This whole mob and drug thing kind of came out of nowhere, but along with that, stealing cartoon masks out of a store, and the fact that a white guy was cast as the Japanese landlord, crime seemed to be an underlying presence throughout the movie.  By the way, if a white guy were ever cast as a Japanese man today a war would probably break out.  Imagine the Rush Hour movies if Chris Rock was paired up with a white dude pretending to be Japanese?  Actually that does seem somewhat appealing in an odd way, but bottom line is that it just wouldn’t work and it would piss off a lot of people. 

 

In the end, I was kind of confused when the movie was over.  I found myself just staring with a Jim Halpert-like face at the screen when ‘The End’ showed up on my TV.  I just couldn’t comprehend the fact that the movie ended with Holly getting bailed out of jail, gets dumped by her Brazilian playboy fiancé, turns down Paul, throws her Cat out of a cab, gets bitched out by Paul, retrieves the Cat and makes out with Paul in the pouring rain.  Some might call it a happy ending, but I believe that standing in a rainstorm while being reunited with your unstable crush who will be soon be on trial for drug trafficking isn’t really ‘happy’.  It kind of sounds like a bleak future to me.  Anyways, I give it a B, which translates to about 1.5 thumbs up or 3 stars out of 5 if you prefer those ratings.  I will say though, it will be nice to finally say yes to the question “have you even seen that movie?” when I tell people what my blog’s name is.