The whole kitsch and caboodle

I had an easy faith in capitalism until a friend introduced me to SkyMall.

If you’ve ever flown before, you’ve probably seen one of their catalogs tucked away into the flap in the seat in front of you. It’s usually stuffed behind a safety guide featuring cartoon depictions of passengers calmly donning oxygen masks after the plane’s roof has flown off. I’ve seen the catalog before, but, not being much of a catalog person, I noticed it in the same way you notice a tall man wearing a pink hat: You see it, you register mild curiosity, and you move on.

That innocence was obliterated over a recent weekend, when a close friend of mine – let’s call her “Linda,” because that's her name – decided she was going to show me the ugly underbelly of consumer culture. That underbelly is cluttered with the products found in SkyMall, which range from silly and pointless to wasteful and rage-inducing. “There are children starving in Africa,” Linda told me, “and yet there are people who would buy an underwater cell phone system.”

Unfortunately, that’s an actual product available on SkyMall’s website. And it’s exactly what it sounds like. “Have you ever wanted to make or receive a phone call underwater?” the product description asks us, to which I can only reply, “No, no I haven’t.”

Adding to the surreal nature of this product listing is the photo, which depicts a person wearing an elaborate plastic mask with a cell phone stuffed inside it. The only person I can think of who would legitimately need this product is Aquaman, but even that seems like a stretch given that he can communicate telepathically with dolphins.

But as ridiculous as the underwater cell phone system seems, it pales next to the foot tanner, a product that – you guessed it – tans your feet. The photo next to this listing depicts a model, whose face is mercifully hidden, sitting at his computer desk and sticking his feet into a briefcase-sized contraption that will give his ol’ dogs the same tangerine-colored tan as his legs. That a person could simply lay sockless in the sun seems obvious, but even more distressing is the idea that someone would care that deeply about having orange feet. It only makes slightly more sense if you’re a sandal-wearer, but then you could presumably walk outside and accomplish the same thing, all while saving yourself the rather shocking $229.99 the tanner costs.

Look, everybody owns pointless kitsch. A lifetime of full stockings at Christmastime has assured that even yours truly has stores of curious memorabilia stockpiled in his closet. Among the useless artifacts I’ve collected over the years are plastic M&M mascots wearing holiday hats, a headless mechanical dog butt that wags its tail and farts, a set of wind-up chattering teeth, and a keychain that produces no less than five distinct burping sounds – perfect for those situations when my body yearns to be inappropriate but lacks the necessary carbon dioxide.

The difference is that a burping keychain doesn’t cost several hundred dollars, unlike the more lavish products at SkyMall – products that appeal to people with massive stores of discretionary income who “need” a canine genealogy kit, or a personalized branding iron for their barbecue.

Make no mistake, though: This isn’t class warfare. It’s ridiculousness warfare. It’s saying “no” to expensive clocks that display the day of the week and not the time, a life-size garden sculpture of Bigfoot, and a set of giant plastic eyelashes for your car’s headlights. It’s a shunning of neckties that inflate into pillows.

It’s sad, and a little surreal, that all of the products mentioned above are real. What’s sadder is that I’ve saved the most jaw-droppingly silly invention for last: An iPod dock for your toilet paper holder. You know, in case you can’t make it through a session without blasting Springsteen. I guess the upside is that I can finally be objective when declaring that a SkyMall product stinks.