And the Materialist is telling you, she is not going*

Photo: Habitat for Humanity

Whenever the Materialist leaves her office--on an exciting trip to, say, the bathroom, or the cafeteria, or even, occasionally, the great outdoors--she inevitably returns to find something on her chair, silently delivered by one of her colleagues. The offerings, left for the Materialist like droppings, generally take the form of a press packet that they're not very interested in themselves but--for whatever reason--are unable to chuck into the trash; the Materialist's Aeron, then, becomes a handy sort of purgatory: never the guilt of actually throwing something away, and always the promise to the publicist that it's been passed on to the appropriate person.

Among the offenders, though, there is also Sanjay, the magazine's indefatigable Gold List editor and one of the few people who actually manages to supply the Materialist with interesting articles that appeal to her love of travel oddities. A couple of weeks ago, Sanjay gave the Materialist a piece he'd saved for her from the WSJ about the odiously named Kidzania, a wildly successful theme park in Tokyo (a satellite of the original Mexico City location) in which elementary-aged schoolkids are given the chance to try all sorts of careers, from airline pilot to engineer, in a simulated environment. The piece, by Miho Inada, points out that this is no mere Ayn Randian experiment in enforced fun; it's actually being positioned (and thought of) as a sort of sociological necessity--as Japan's slacker generation finds themselves more and more content to slouch around Daikanyama eating Crunky bars, Kidzania is being heralded for its potential to awaken in six-year-olds the joy of working for The Man.

Although the Materialist loves simulated environment amusement parks herself, she can think of many, many places (say, a 20-hour flight to Asia in coach) that she'd rather be than Kidzania. But the article also reminded her of the many other sort of extreme total immersion encounters whose mushrooming she's watched with interest: Habitat for Humanity's Global Village and Discovery Center in Americus, Georgia, for example, the so-called "poverty theme park" in which Americans can totter fatly through actual homes built by Habitat for Humanity in some of the most impoverished areas around the globe (Max Becher and Andrea Robbins have shot some great pictures of the place in their 2003-5 series, Global Village); or, as reported by Patrick O'Gilfoil Healy in the New York Times recently, a service offered by Parque EcoAlberto in Mexico, in which tourists are allowed to experience what it feels like to be in an illegal border crossing--a fascinating piece of performance art with real-life reverberations, but one the Materialist probably won't be visiting anytime soon.

*Oscars(c) humor with the Materialist!

Among the offenders, though, there is also Sanjay, the magazine's indefatigable Gold List editor and one of the few people who actually manages to supply the Materialist with interesting articles that appeal to her love of travel oddities. A couple of weeks ago, Sanjay gave the Materialist a piece he'd saved for her from the WSJ about the odiously named Kidzania, a wildly successful theme park in Tokyo (a satellite of the original Mexico City location) in which elementary-aged schoolkids are given the chance to try all sorts of careers, from airline pilot to engineer, in a simulated environment. The piece, by Miho Inada, points out that this is no mere Ayn Randian experiment in enforced fun; it's actually being positioned (and thought of) as a sort of sociological necessity--as Japan's slacker generation finds themselves more and more content to slouch around Daikanyama eating Crunky bars, Kidzania is being heralded for its potential to awaken in six-year-olds the joy of working for The Man.

Although the Materialist loves simulated environment amusement parks herself, she can think of many, many places (say, a 20-hour flight to Asia in coach) that she'd rather be than Kidzania. But the article also reminded her of the many other sort of extreme total immersion encounters whose mushrooming she's watched with interest: Habitat for Humanity's Global Village and Discovery Center in Americus, Georgia, for example, the so-called "poverty theme park" in which Americans can totter fatly through actual homes built by Habitat for Humanity in some of the most impoverished areas around the globe (Max Becher and Andrea Robbins have shot some great pictures of the place in their 2003-5 series, Global Village); or, as reported by Patrick O'Gilfoil Healy in the New York Times recently, a service offered by Parque EcoAlberto in Mexico, in which tourists are allowed to experience what it feels like to be in an illegal border crossing--a fascinating piece of performance art with real-life reverberations, but one the Materialist probably won't be visiting anytime soon.

*Oscars(c) humor with the Materialist!