SOMETIMES IT'S JUST TOO EASY to make cheap laffs from the things corporations think up to entertain us supposed proles.
Here's the easiest example yet, and possible ever: The Rainforest Cafe.
It's a national chain, whose flagship outlet's in Minnesota's infamous Mall of America. Most of the other two dozen or so units are also in malls, except for one in downtown Chicago and three at Disney theme parks (where I'm sure they fit in perfectly). The circuit's first Northwest outpost just opened in Southcenter, between Sears and Nordstrom.
Like Planet Hollywood, the Fashion Cafe, et al., it's an "entertainment experience" first and a dining-drinking establishment second. You don't go there for the food; you go there to sit for 45 minutes or so among the "environment," the decorations and doodads.
In this case, the "environment" is "environmental." It's a plastic-and-wood fantasy of a South American rain forest (albeit one with wildlife not seen in South America, especially elephants).
In the front: the requisite merchandise shop, full of toys and T-shirts and stuffed figures, mostly with the chain's frog mascot.
Along one wall: the lounge, specializing in soft-ice-cream cocktails and strawberry daquiris.
Between these spaces, and past the plastic elephant in which the front clerk announces "Crocodile party, your safari is about to begin," lies the large dining room. It's all dark-green, with a plastic "canopy" of tree leaves on the ceiling and rows of plastic fountains "raining" into rows of plastic drains along the sides.
In the front of the room is a (real) salt-water aquarium with (some real, some plastic) fish. Along one side is a (real) parrot cage. In the back is a robotic plastic elephant and a robotic plastic toucan, yelping at precise intervals. Scattered throughout the room are plastic trees and robotic "wildlife" (butterflies, apes, et al.). In the center, the ceiling sports a night sky dome, with fiber-optic twinkling stars. Once an hour or so, the lights flash during a sound-effects "thunderstorm."
The food, you ask? Standard all-American and fusion-cuisine fare (burgers, fried chicken, flatbread pizza, pasta-and-sausage), oversized and overpriced for that "destination restaurant" feel and bedecked with such cutesy names as "Volcanic Cobb Salad," "Rumble in the Jungle Turkey Pita," and "Jamaica Me Crazy Chops."
I was there with a sometime Weekly writer who couldn't stop smirking about what he felt was the hypocrisy of meat being served at a place supposedly dedicated to preserving the rain forest. A cheap shot--the meat they serve is undoubtedly all-North-American in origin; and the acres and acres of old-growth forest being chopped down daily in Brazil is cleared for a variety of cash crops (including the wood itself), not merely for beef-grazing.
The menu's back page boasts of how "a portion" of each Rainforest Cafe's income gets donated to a set of unnamed organizations to preserve the environment down in the tropics. It also invites schools to write in for the company's free enviro-education materials, which I'm sure are full of company logos. They'll also lead school kids through the cafe itself, under the premise of "on-site guided safaris" in which the kids "learn about our Resident Parrots, aquatic life forms, species on the verge of extinction, efforts to save the rain forest, and the creation and culture of Rainforest Cafe."
So what's a commentator to do, when faced with something this big, this brash, and this obvious?
Laugh at the too-mockable suburban families who go there? (I wound't.)
Smirk at the very idea of this love-O-nature theme attraction, constructed with so many petrochemical components and plunked down amid the everywhere/nowhere of suburban sprawl?
Sarcastically dismiss a place that preaches responsible caring for the land while selling big-big meals and just-for-show touristy trinkets?
Earnestly denounce the treating of a real environmental crisis as the premise for neocolonial "adventure" entertainments?
Note the possible implicit racism in a vision of the rain forests that excludes any mention of their indigenous human residents?
Or just reiterate a line from South Park, "Rainforest, Schmainforest"?
Nah.
Best to let the joint speak for itself--robotic frog-chirping and all.
MONDAY: Speaking of tributes to excess, let's look inside Safeco Field.
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