The Price of Recommendations

The gorgeous Louboutins, pre-4/11/08, on my messy desk

Bad recommendations are the most annoying thing in life, and at the top of my list of things that piss me off are when people recommend bad books or bad service providers, like tailors, shoe people, cleaners, or whatever. I will never forgive my college suite mate Lyn (who has since become a mortal enemy for other, legitimate reasons) for recommending Slaughterhouse Five. I read 20 pages, told her it sucked and she told me to keep on reading because it "gets good", so I read the whole stinking book, got to the last line, which was, I kid you not, "Poh too weet?" and I was on the bus at the time and I remember my eyes welling up with tears of anger - how could she have wasted my time with this shitty book? Why would you recommend things if they don't rule.

I personally have amazing taste in books and I take recommendations VERY seriously - and I have NEVER recommended a book that the other person didn't find 100% awesome afterwards. My friend Emily highly recommended to me The God of Small Things once despite the fact that I had a sneaking suspicion it would blow, I read 5 pages of it and determined that it was actually a piece of shit directly from the toilet - I can't get into books that have sentences like "Nana poured the milk for me and I watched her leathered brown breast dip toward the table. A fly landed next to me and rubbed its legs against my skin." Um, this book might be good in Narnia.

Anyway, I bring this up because yesterday I picked up my originally shamazing gold-ish bronze Louboutins from my shoe guy who was supposed to redye the shoe because there were some scuffs. I told him that if he didn't think he could get the color EXACTLY RIGHT, don't do it. Similarly, if you don't think you can get him to say he ordered a Code Red, don't put Jessup on the stand. So of course I pick them up and they are now a dull gold color and to say I went ballistic was putting it mildly, because when service people fuck up my shit, I feel completely betrayed. I left my Louboutins at the shoe hospital with a mild cold and basically they came back amputees.

It makes no sense that in this city of ten bagillion people there are no cleaners who won't bleach stain your shit, no tailors who won't ruin your stuff, no shoe people that can dye metallic shoes correctly, and no hair dressers that won't fuck up your hair. When I first moved to the city I remember asking around where people got their hair dyed and it took me two years and several shitty recommendations from friends to find Saori at Salon Seven who always dyes and cuts my hair perfectly and generally kicks shit into high gear. The next get rich quick/Feldman, Feldman, Feldman Feldman Feldman & Feldman scheme is a business where we clean your clothes, tailor your shit, spruce up your shoes and cut your hair and all these services will rule and you will never have to be angry again.