Here’s another thing about this so-called “Modern Lifestyle” that is a stone in my soul’s shoe:
A SUPERYACHT owned by a Russian tycoon boasting an eye-watering £61million price tag is set to be auctioned off after being seized.
The stunning 240ft vessel – named The Axioma – has a catalogue of bougie features including six decks, a pool with a swim-up bar and even a cinema.
What is it with having an in-home movie room these days? You can’t open a real estate listing without seeing a windowless room with a giant screen and a few overstuffed easy chairs in it, and if I ever bought a house with such a “feature”, all that crap would be tossed out and replaced with something of redeeming social value — like a tasteful, fully-stocked bar — before the ink was dry on the closing documents.
Here is where I could hang out with a few friends, enjoy good fellowship, conversation and companionable drunkenness, all in a friendly setting. Maybe a TV screen in the corner so we could catch a decent game or a Grand Prix maybe, but live sporting events are different from movies, as a moment’s thought will prove: they are definitely group entertainment.
Movie houses are, almost by definition, not a place for gathering and social interaction. Oh sure, you enjoy the movie “experience” together (not that too many modern movies actually provide much of an experience, don’t get me started), but that’s it.
“Oh, but Kim,” I hear the cry, “it’s really a place for your teenage kids to hang out with their friends.”
Yeah, I really want my teenage daughter hanging out in a dark room with her testosterone-laden boyfriend, with the sound turned up loud lest parents actually hear what’s really going on in there. Or if there’s a whole group of them, to be greeted by a sea of thrusting pimply adolescent backsides when I walk in the room.
Okay, enough of that. 
Or if not a bar, then a gun room. Yeah, a wall full of cabinets such as below, inside a securely-locked door and suitably-impregnable walls:
Add a decent cleaning station / workbench, and I think you can all see where I’m going with this one.
Of course, someone might say that this would not be a place where I could entertain my friends — but clearly, you don’t know my friends.
Whatever alternative use you can dream up for that room, you can be sure that you’d get more enjoyment out of it than can be had from a screening of Fast & Furious 207 or whatever other childish comic-book action comes out of Hollyweird.
