A tongue in cheek primer on how to live well in a flyover state.
Why are rich people so miserable?
Maybe it’s because the skull of a jaywalking child dented the quarter panel on their Audi A8. Or perhaps because they spend too much of their money doing exactly what their neighbors are doing.
I’d like to set things straight.
Where to live
Being rich you probably work too many hours, or hardly any hours at all. That means you need an inviting castle to collapse into an exhausted heap in as well as a place to plan charity fundraisers to benefit wounded puppies, urban children or “the arts”.
Hallbrook and Deer Creek are nice but the lots are small and filled with people like you–people who make incredibly shitty neighbors because they’re used to calling the shots. There’s nothing more pathetic than watching millionaires fight over the placement of a wrought iron security fence.
Avoid Mission Hills.
If your house is in Mission Hills it is probably being renovated and having asbestos torn from the walls by people who come from a country where your grandfather once owned a fruit plantation. So you’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly to keep a prewar federalist colonial in presentable shape and your neighbors are very, very old. You probably even had to lose a bedroom in the last remodel so you could have a walk-in master his-and-her closet. Not cool. Not cool at all.
Don’t live downtown.
The pavement there gets old fast and having to go to a cruisin’ park (Penn Valley) to see grass gets old quick. Plus only gays, cocaine dealers, people that are bad at math and overvalue ‘exposed brick’ live downtown. It’s an atmosphere for people who have tiny houses.
Get yourself some acreage and do a new build.
Residential Home Contractors are the only profession where you can be an illiterate millionaire with a GED. They have a lot less hubris than in 2005 because McMansions aren’t being built left and right these days.
Which means you can build what you want at a good price. And of course, you get to call the shots. So you can have high fences and good sight lines. All a man wants, rich or poor is to be left the f*** alone.
Live in a place like Raymore/Creekmore, Cleveland/Loch Lloyd, or Gardner/Cedar Creek instead. Worrying about the commute is what people who drive Altimas do. In your Jaguar XK, Cadillac XTS or Merc S600 you could commute from Booneville if you had to.
Where to Dine
Former Chiefs quarterback Steve Bono was right. Kansas City has few restaurants that are really worth eating at. Plus we’re about 10 years behind the trends in LA and NY. People in South Leawood still find Thai food novel. “Foodies” are not even being mocked here yet, at least not openly to their face like they damn well should be.
Avoid PB&J Type restaurants.
They are populated by the nouveau, not-so-riche and rely on the most basic concepts—above average, non-challenging food served in a nice surrounding on a plate that is likely square or triangle shaped. That means no Ya-Yas, Nick and Jake’s or anything of that sort. Why pay $50 a person for something that beige? You’re not a wannabe, so the only time you should step foot in one of these places is to drink. When you have been invited. By someone hot.
A big part of being rich is showing that you’re a man of the people.
And since you can’t find a Michelin star within a 500 miles, go downscale. Eat at places like Bryant’s, Rosedale’s, Winstead’s, 75th Street Brewery or McCoy’s. If you must go out for a nice meal, you eat it at JJ’s or Californos. Save the white tablecloth service for when you’re in a city with real choices and innovative cuisine.
Take advantage of your surroundings.
You live in cattle and farm country. Stock your wood-paneled Sub Zero fridge with the best from Cosentino’s, McGonigle’s or Hen House. Even a Princeton legacy can figure out how to cook a dry aged steak on the infrared grill that you had installed on the cool deck out back.
School Daze
Since you took my advice and built out in the burbs on acreage, you should be able to send your kid to public school without him being murdered. Being the richest kid in an upper middle class public high school is a license to destroy pussy. Do your kid a favor.
If you are an alumni of either Pembroke or Sunset, you may send them to Pembroke Hill. Legacies are guaranteed B’s no matter how stupid they are. Always refer to it as “Pem Day”, because you don’t give a f*** and it was a “merger of equals” like Columbia and Barnard and Sprint and Nextel.
If your child has behavior problems you can send them to Barstow. Small class sizes and the craven need to increase their paltry endowment means your little brat can have the run of the place. If you’re Catholic and your child enjoys homo-eroticism and bullying then go to Rockhurst. If he doesn’t think women have cooties send him or her to St. Thomas Aquinas.
Sexual Picadillos
Don’t screw the interns at work, that gets really expensive and you’ll be fired regardless of your net worth or pedigree. Twenty-two year old women who get paid in college credits are horrible at keeping abortions secret. Take your age and subtract about 20 years. That is as young as they can be otherwise you get sick of conversations about dubstep, filling out FAFSAs and “sustainability.”
When it really comes down to it mistresses are passé. They cost too much money and age like a box of tissues.
Your wheelhouse will be lonely women in your profession who work for other companies in your field. Clarion brand Hotels are great for hookups- just seedy enough to be a bit naughty but they still clean the sheets, have HBO and serve a continental breakfast. Plus those little foldouts in the mini-suites are great for reverse cowgirl.
If you are lucky your wife still has a little bit of dyke in her from her years at a “Seven Sisters” school (she probably went to Mount Holyoke). That means you get to have threesomes. But let her pick them out, your only rule is no fatties. If you went to Yale you are likely a clinically depressed, closeted homosexual so just park backwards in parking spaces at Penn Valley or Minor park.
Getting High on the Down Low
If you still get high, good for you! You are sticking it to the man while likely actually being the man. Your drug dealer is older than you. He has a regular job and has too much to lose. You enjoy high grade marijuana like your grandfather’s generation enjoyed a double martini. You own a Volcano Vaporizer and a glass on glass tube, likely from Roor or Illadelphia. Your occasional dabbling in powder is limited to special occasions and bachelor parties—at least that’s what you say. You never, ever ride dirty. You get high at your house. Why crack a line out on a porcelain toilet tank cover when you have perfectly fine glass coffee tables at your manse?
Now sit back and turn on your custom surround sound system. You have three remotes for it and barely know how to turn it on…but you don’t care.
You are RICH IN KC AND DON’T GIVE A F***
Mike, THAT…. was a GREAT read!! Thanks! Very funny and way too accurate. The only thing you missed was personal quotes from our own resident 1%er!! That would have lended validity to the content.
+1
Smartman, Im waiting for Harley to weigh in from his persepctive as the only rich person on here!! Thats the 1% reference I was making, from our own pet asshat.
Agree totally.
I’m glad you enjoyed the article. There will be more on various topics in the future. Some humorous, some informative…
Keep commenting, I enjoy your stuff here.
I didn’t know any of the cars, had to look up “Dubstep”, don’t get the Clarion Hotel joke, Volcano Vaporizer(?), and I still thought it was funny.
But, time through the hourglass, I ain’t gettin any younger, so my window is probably 6 to 12 months before the Memantine wears off and I am unable to reference anything to current and past realities.
But today, that was pretty funny.
🙂
Holy crap, CHUCK, that was funnier than the story!!!
🙂
When you stay at a Clarion brand hotel (Quality Suites, Sleep Inn, etc) the nicer rooms will have a loveseat in it. On that loveseat there have been many dirty dirty things that happened before you check in.
A volcano vaporizer is a $500 way to smoke weed.
I heartily apologize for you having to listen to even a minute of dubstep. At least some of “the kids” still listen to psytrance, the best of the electronic dance music genres.
Don’t worry Chuckster, Im probably the youngest old man on the site. Glazer is probably the oldest young man on here.
What, no chill and trance?
I thought I smelled funny things emanating from that foldout loveseat at that hotel in Casper on the way to Yellowstone. Smelled like a mix of Astroglide and Santorum.
How do you, and why would you smoke weed through (?), or in a vaporizer?
Not being a smartass, just looking for a little info.
🙂
No fire and no smoke, per se. When done the stuff is still there but the THC is gone. Or so they say.
I’ll wager I’m older than you Mike.
Having moved from KC’s NE to Philadelphia’s Main Line and back, I learned there are people who will ask, don’t you have something which costs more money?.
But it all goes back to what The Waco Kid taught me, if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.
you put the herbal mix in a ceramic bowl which is placed on the volcano. You attach the plastic bag to the top. The unit heats up and “vaporizes” weed which releases thc but no smoke into the provided bag. You just take little nippers out of the bag.
Then you wake up a few hours later on your couch with 5/8/77 blasting and your hand in a bag of Guy’s chips.