All Over Albany

The Rachael Ray Garbage Bowl. It's a bowl. That you put garbage in.

Now entered as evidence that we are, in fact, living in a decadent age: the $18 hand-wash-only Rachael Ray Garbage Bowl. While this might strike you as just plain crazy, or perhaps a sign that Rachael will slap her name on almost anything at this point, Lori Borgman writes in the Indianapolis Star that this designer receptacle might be a sign our own inner longing:

I'm not knocking the garbage bowl; it's a good bowl. It does everything a bowl should do -- it sits there without giving you any sass, holds things and looks very bowl-like.

I'm just wondering when we became so affluent, coddled and cushy that we need designer bowls to hold garbage? Bowls remarkably similar to the bowls we already have.

Perhaps the garbage bowl is like a consolation prize. If I can't look like Rachael, or cook like Rachael, at least I can make garbage like Rachael.

If I can't cook like Emeril, at least I can buy knives like Emeril and chop like Emeril. If I can't be a domestic diva like Martha Stewart, I at least can buy her stemware, dinnerware, 600-count sheets, towels, muffin tins and play like I'm Martha.

It's always so much easier to buy the gizmos and gadgets than to actually acquire the skills.

It seems Ms. Borgman has company in her assessment. Here's what one reviewer wrote about the RR Garbage Bowl (brick color) on Amazon:

This bowl belongs IN the garbage. I would give it zero stars if Amazon would let me. There's a better place to put garbage, it's called the *garbage can*. Food goes in bowls. Don't be lazy, walk across the kitchen and throw trash away in its proper place. Your food won't taste any better by saving yourself six seconds not walking to the trash can... especially if you're cooking one of Rachael's "recipies". This woman is getting away with highway robbery. Stop buying her low quality, worthless products!

Hmm... sounds like someone needs a sammie.