Cheap stuff at fancy places

I wrote below about how the long and formal-looking dining table at Hearst's Castle would always include a ketchup bottle and a jar of mustard. The plates were normal, just like you would find in a cafe. Same with the silverware. Nothing fancy. Hearst was a millionaire many times over. In today's dollars he would be a multi-billionaire. He could afford good china. But sometimes people with new money don't have the high taste of old-money blue-bloods who can't even comprehend the concept of poverty. Which reminds me:

Have you ever been to Graceland, where Elvis lived? The house is called a mansion, but I'm telling you, it's one tacky place -- with ugly shag carpet, couches that look like they came from Woolworth's, and stuff all over the place that doesn't match. Elvis liked junk food, too. I don't think there was anything fancy about his dinner table. I bet he used TV trays.

Years ago, when I was in college, I was invited (long story) to spend an afternoon at Hugh Heffner's Playboy Mansion when it was in Chicago. I remember walking down the stairs to the basement, where there was a tropical, cave-like bar that I had seen a hundred times in Playboy Magazine. There was even a life-sized shark hologram that floated right in the middle of the room -- very, very cool! But what I have always remembered the most about the mansion were the bare colored lightbulbs that dimly lit the stairs to the basement bar. I thought to myself, "This is just like guys put in their dormitory rooms to impress girls." The food was good at the mansion. Servants in formal attire were at our disposal, as they were 24 hours a day. Playmates walked around in skimpy white bathrobes. I was a college guy filled with massive numbers of very young, raging hormones (as opposed to the approximately 57 partially comatose ones that still remain). You might imagine how I felt when one of those centerfolds brushed by me and said hi. Sort of like what the Wicked Witch said before she died: "I'm melting." Whoa! That was tough just looking and not touching!