Damn Ameriprise and their Chair

So I finally get to the point in my life where I can go ahead and get a couple of Eames Chairs (you know, the red ones).

Here I am sitting in one of them - they are strategically placed in the lobby of our firm to inspire creativity and good design and all that. (Really, it's so I can own a couple of Eames Chairs. They are so comfy.)

As soon as I get these things unpacked, I look at the TV and there's my "Beat Junior Hero" Dennis Hopper standing on MY CHAIR and telling his boomer buddies to go out and do whatever it is they want because their retirement "ain't no sitting around the fire, shuffle board, yadda yadda yadda retirement" thanks to Ameriprise financial.

He's sitting in my chair...

OK, At first I think it's cool and all. Kind of zeitgeisty and everything - I'm right on top of it, I'm hep.

But now that damned chair is everywhere...dozens of variations of the campaign in print, on TV, on the Web. I still love the chair, it's still the most comfortable hunk of plywood you will ever sit in - and the lines are to die for. It just makes me feel...older I guess. I'm not a boomer, I'm a Gen Xer - the chair wasn't for the boomers anyway - it was for their parents, fresh from the war and looking for a new future. Sitting in a Medallion home (for the uninitiated, a "Medallion" home was ALL ELECTRIC...YEAH!) on clean wooden floors with a Harmon-Kardon cabinet stereo.

The chair is for ME - the un-jaded embracer of the future who looks with longing on those Raytheon Tube Advertisements and as a kid read the World Book encyclopedia from cover to cover and thought the coolest thing to own would be a Nike Hercules missile.

I hope old Charles and Ray are getting royalties wherever they are, I hope Ameriprise is paying through the nose.