Rara Avis? Maybe. Sui Generis? Could Be. But Mentally Ill Gets My Vote

I went to the real estate website this morning. I like tinkering with the filters. It’s fun to see the cheapest houses, or the big price drops when sellers finally get religion. Setting the filters for price high to low rarely disappoints, if you’re looking for laughs. You can see some really absurd houses for money-laundering prices nationwide, but selecting it for Maine is its own brand of foolishness. There’s plenty of sugar shacks along the coast that list for many millions. They’re usually the ugliest houses in Maine. Building things at the seashore seems to bring out the worst in people. A huge, featureless expanse of water is considered a nonpareil view these days. It inspires people to a kind of madness manifested in bricks and mortar.

Today’s crop didn’t disappoint. Boy howdy it didn’t. It featured the most absurd structure I’ve ever seen in Maine, and that’s a high bar to clear. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Saracen-Punjabi-Japo-Scandinavian White House, designed by that famous architectural firm Delirium, Tremens, and  Shitfit:

It’s in Bar Harbor, which is known in Maine as the corner pocket where you roll when you have too much money and no interest in Maine itself. Bar Harbor is on Mount Desert Island, which is chockablock full of bizarre seasidy monster houses for the riche, some nouveau, many old money. David E. Kelly is from Bar Harbor, and so is David Rockefeller. You can decide if the Standard Oil Trust or Ally McBeal did more damage to the United States.

Let’s go inside.

You know, when you’re building a seven-million-dollar manse on the seashore in Maine, the first thing that pops into your head is elephants. Well, that, and weird, Fred Flintstone beams showing an even bigger butt end than the elephant’s got. It all meshes seamlessly with the marble columns and balustrades and whatnot. Some Etruscan is wearing a truss after lugging those in. If the real estate agent had been consulted earlier, I’m sure the elephant would have been white.

I think I see the fundamental problem. The owner of the house is obviously an electrician. You can tell from the two fiberglass ladders stored behind the elephant. That’s a dead giveaway. Electricians are known for bad taste in architecture when they try their hand at it. That, and lots of light switches in every room.

I think this is the living room. At first I guessed that the realtor got their slides mixed up, and accidentally included a shot of Liberace’s parking garage. But when they faced the other way and took another snapshot, I could espy the elephant. Hard to miss an elephant. Even Hemingway couldn’t do it.

The realtor doesn’t name the rooms, so we’ll have to guess. This is obviously the laser tag room. It’s stunning, isn’t it? I know I’m stunned. Maybe there’s a more sensible explanation for the decorating scheme. They’re thinking of making a Tron sequel or something.

The listing is kinda strange. For instance, there are no pictures of a kitchen. Then again, there are no pictures of coffins in the basement with heaps of Transylvanian earth all around, either, but I assume they both come with the house.

There are bedrooms. I think. There aren’t that many visual cues to put you on the scent of what’s what. For instance, I’m not sure if faux peeling wallpaper and grime is normally found in bedrooms these days. Of course to continue with the Silence of the Lambs decorating scheme, please note that the doorknob has been removed from the door in the picture. It puts the lotion on its skin, or it gets to spend another night in the crackhouse room.

There are lots more pictures at the listing, if you want to see more. But if you are interested in buying it, please memorize my name and then throw away your head. I won’t be able to sleep at night, just knowing you’re out there and thinking of me.

Great Moments in Maine Real Estate V

Thinking of moving to Maine? All smart people think about moving to Maine. It’s the “thinking” part that makes them smart, though. The moving to Maine part of the equation doesn’t usually ensue. But just in case you’ve grown envious of my semi-renovated unheated hovel at the end of civilization and sidewalks, here’s a selection of Great Moments in Maine Real Estate to get your juices defrosted and flowing.

But remember, we’re a staid bunch up here in the Pine Tree State, so no wagering, please.

In Maine, we march to a different drummer. We’re not all that interested in habits and mores from elsewhere in the (much) lower 48. People in Iowa might say, “The toilet paper unrolls over the top.” People in Florida might declaim, “The toilet paper unrolls better down and against the wall. In Maine, we like to avoid arguments and jam it on there sideways.

Our realtors are an iconoclastic bunch. Not like real estate agents anywhere else. I suspect that most Maine realtors flunked out of art school, and just needed a job, so they took up the single-family-30-year-fixed cudgels and started flailing away. But in their hearts, they will always be artistes! Here you see the results: I call it: Still Life With Abitibi. It’s an artfully arranged image, you must admit.

There are two possible scenarios in this photo. Either your dog really wants to get out, or the dates you bring home really want to get out. Either way, you really should touch up the paint before your next swipe right on Tinder.

I saw the coffee table at the foot of the bed, and immediately admonished myself to avoid making any jokes about getting plowed. I didn’t want to spoil the whole vibe. Why settle for barn door hardware on your closet doors, when you can have the whole barn in there? For some reason or another, this will be playing in my head for the rest of the day:

You must be wearing 15 pieces of flair to microwave a Hot Pocket and plop it on this table.

I didn’t quite know what to make of this one. I found it intriguing. The listing didn’t have enough information to form a solid opinion about the place. I decided to actually go there and see for myself. It was pretty hard to find the place. It was way out in the woods, and surprisingly, there was no trail of breadcrumbs or anything to point the way. After hours of fruitless searching, I finally stumbled into a sylvan clearing, and there it was. There was a petite real estate agent minding the door. She was a pretty little thing. She had dark hair, light brown eyes, bright red lips, and a lovely, if somewhat dated dress with puffy sleeves and a high white collar that framed her clear, unblemished face nicely. She wouldn’t let me in. She looked at her clipboard twice, and told me, “Sorry, but you’re not on the short list.”

[Update: Many thanks to Grandalekat for their generous contribution to our tip jar. It is much appreciated]

Great Moments in Maine Real Estate. The Fourthening

Maine real estate has a logic all its own. It doesn’t share this logic with other states, and it doesn’t share this logic with the general public. You’re going to have to figure out what’s going on here on your own. No one is going to explain it to you. Well, the real estate agent will try, but kindly offering that you can add a ceiling fan to your four-storey log cabin split-level foyer is advice, not an explanation.

But I must try. Here’s a handy selection of Maine real estate for sale for you to browse, with my own, admittedly feeble, attempts to explain what’s going on in them:

This one’s easy. A layup, really. If you’ve ever worked in a construction company’s office, in any capacity, you know that sometimes the house plans get pretty wrinkled when they come out of a fax machine laboring to clear a particularly nasty paper jam. This is what happens when you build it anyway.

This one’s a little harder. You’ve got to be a little bit literate to identify the “Dresden 1945” model chandelier from the Slaughterhouse-Five collection.

This house must have been built from an old architectural plan book I recall. It’s one of the two upstairs bedrooms from the “Obsessive Compulsive Cape.” You can put one of your modestly disturbed children in there and they’ll have hours of fun, even if you don’t give them any toys. Or furniture.

Plumbing supply houses have really caught on to the Go Bleep Yourself single-lever faucet craze. This homeowner has achieved the coveted “Double Aniston.”

Let’s say you’re an evil interstellar Mind Lord. Your Death Star is in the shop for repairs. as usual. The check engine light on one of those things will curl your hair, if it’s not all irradiated off under your helmet, I mean. You try to fill the hole in your schedule with some meetings around the Galactic Deathstorm office, to keep your minions up to date on your latest plans for taking over the universe, but your laser pointer keeps cutting a hole in the whiteboard and frying some secretaries in the break room on the other side of the wall. You realize you need a vacation. OK, Darth Boone, have we got a getaway house for you!

You know, conversation pits with fondue pots were really popular back in the late sixties. You’d invite all your friends over and sit on shag-carpeted levels and dip bread into molten cheese and talk about how many punch cards you folded, spindled, or mutilated down at the office, while the womenfolk compared notes on just how high they could get their hair using Johnson-administration-era bumpits and headbands. But times change, and sometimes you have to wind the clock back to go forward, as they say. So forget conversation pits. I can assure you there’s nothing more convivial than a medieval two-holer. But beware of this one. It appears from that empty wrought iron bracket that neither of you is going to be able to spare a square.

I remember the good old days when guys like this homeowner would just bring along some soil from the graveyard they were buried in when they moved to new, ahem, digs.

Great Moments in Maine Real Estate. Part 3

Well, it’s time for another installment in our ongoing series of Great Moments in Maine Real Estate. Buckle up, cowboys.

Of course it would be fair to observe that my own house would have made a great entry in the Great Houses series. For instance, here’s a bedroom at our place, just as we found it:

But honestly, just because one wall in your house would make a pretty fair Max Headroom backdrop, you really shouldn’t enter your pad into the sweepstakes, and I know it. There’s some tough competition out there in Maine.

By the way, doesn’t it bring a tear to your eye to remember Max Headroom? Well, back then, it seemed a minor scandal that Max was a real person being presented as a computer-generated bot to fool a gullible public. Things certainly have come full circle, ain’t they? Now all we need to find are singers who aren’t auto-tuned or lip synching to finish the transformation.

But I’m getting off the beaten path here, and in Maine, the path takes quite a beating as it is. So on to the real estate!

See, this is what happens when you fire your interior decorator before the job is complete. She would have made you paint the closet bifold doors and the window sash gray, too. Never interrupt a visionary when they’re really percolating.

Maine has bears, and likes bears, and this bears repeating, has bears.

Some folks are Stoics. It’s a popular ethos these days. I espy people reading dogeared copies of Epictetus in coffee shops, and wearing Marcus Aurelius slogans on their T shirts, although these folks generally look more like “Neiman Marcus Aurelius” than true believers to me. Devout Catholics are no longer thick on the ground, but you can usually find a quorum in church on Christmas and Easter. Maybe they know a little Tommy Aquinas by heart. Millions of people quote Nietzsche on the internet, and I’ll bet several of them actually understand some of it. You can examine your yins and yangs during your hot yoga class if you like, at least if you’re flexible enough to see your own yang without a mirror.

But let’s face it. Plato, Kant, Descartes, Mill, Foucault, Sartre — the whole lot of them, can’t compete with the concentrated firepower that Carly Simon brings to the dining room.

I’m trying to remember the name of the book. Something about the “madness of crowds.” It was a dusty old tome, written by some cranky periwigged guy I’m sure, trying to explain why everybody seems to do the same crazy things all at the same time. This kind of behavior usually burns itself out after a short, frenzied period, usually until the public is whipped into a frenzy about the next big dumb thing. So we won’t dwell on this overlong here.

But I have to ask one question. Why, all of a sudden, does every shelter show, home center, and plumbing supply manufacturer want every homeowner in America to come downstairs in the morning and be greeted by a sink that’s giving them the finger?

Ah, this is one of my favorites. This is a “bonus room.” It’s the payoff for building a snouthouse. If you’re not familiar with the term “snouthouse” it refers to the architectural practice of stapling your actual house on to the ass end of your garage, instead of the other way around. This room is generally unfinished space over the garage, but these fine folks have certainly finished this one off, haven’t they? Cheery, ain’t it? The layout, the hominess, the color scheme, and the finishes seem familiar, but I can’t quite place them. Something is missing.

I know:

Open the garage bay doors, HAL.

Great Moments in Maine Real Estate, Part the Second

Well, it’s time for a melange, a veritable cornucopia, borderline copious amounts of Great Moments in Maine Real Estate. A cornucopious melange, if you will.

Of course if you’re of a more staid personality, you can always go shopping for houses within a one-hour drive of Massachusetts, down York County way. You can find all the $750,000 houses you could desire, all identical. They’re big vinyl boxes stapled on the ass end of their garage, with gray floors, gray walls, gray counters, gray cabinets, and a Live Laugh Love sign over the sink, in light gray lettering. Well, they would have gray walls, if they had any interior walls. They generally don’t, anymore.

But we’re of a more adventurous sort, you and I. We want the real Maine. We want to venture forth, to where the trolley don’t go, and the sidewalks end, and the where the couches are outside the house. Well, here you go:

You better lift weights, pal. Because when that bear makes it all the way through the wall, you’re going to have the fight of your life on your hands. Bears can be ornery critters, and this one is probably still pretty angry about you building a wall around him. And I’m sure the fiberglass insulation in the wall is making his butt itch something awful. Don’t mess with an itchy bear, my grandpappy always used to say.

Hey, have you ever been to Newport, Rhode Island? It’s a great seaside resort town. All the robber barons used to “summer” there, and built big show houses that are museums now. You know you’re rich when you use “summer” as a verb. Anyway, one of them built a beautiful mansion on the ocean, and pretty much every surface in it was fashioned from marble or other sort of exotic stone.

I’m not sure, but I’m fairly certain that this is not a picture of that house. The single curlicue light bulb in the vanity mirror light fixture gave it away. The Vanderbilts were strictly incandescent folk.

Lots of talk in the news lately about UFOs. Not many people know what UFO stands for, I gather. It’s an acronym to denote a flying object that can’t be identified. This perfectly useful term for “I don’t know what that is” has completely morphed into, “I don’t know what that is, so it must be a unobtanium space cruiser filled with lizard men, looking to probe somebody.”

Look, you can get a reasonably priced colonoscopy at any of Maine’s fine local hospitals, and a free one at many highway rest areas on the Massachusetts turnpike, I hear, so there’s no need to look to the stars for one. Besides, you people have got the whole thing all wrong. You think the little green men from Alpho Cestawni evade detection with cloaking devices and spaceship hulls fashioned from pure energy or stealth titanium or something similar. You’re not thinking outside the box, the way aliens do, my friend. They escape detection from radar by building their space traveling surreys from pine boards. They land in the Maine woods all the time. Mainers aren’t that into being probed, but the little moonmen can always find a bear or something with his arse sticking out of the back of a home gym wall, and probe away.

Unlike other UFO devotees, my evidence is reproducible. Here’s another star ship that just landed. It has an escape pod attached to the back of it, with a chimney. That’s for the exhaust from the hyperdrive, I imagine. They burn coal, generally:

OK, gang, lets’ play The Floor Is Lava!

Some people remember the seventies as bell-bottom pants, turd curls on the girls, cocaine in the bathroom at the disco, and gas rationing. None of those horrors could compare with the selection of carpeting from that decade.

Honorable Mention: Vermont

Our friends from the Northeast Kingdom, as they style themselves, are no slouches when it comes to Great Moments in Real Estate. Ladies and germs, it’s my pleasure to present to you, The Steel Belted Living Room:

It’s your move, New Hampshire.