What is it about rec rooms?

If I thought there was a market, I'd either do a coffee-table book or a documentary on trailer park rec rooms across America. If Wal-Mart is a scourge on America, trailer park rec rooms are doubly so.

I'm not even sure what got me started.

Was at a funeral - the after-party, the we're-not-calling-it-a-wake, wasn't held at a rec room as so many others before had been. I didn't realize before how relieved I was. What is it about rec rooms? Why do they seem to scream 'failure' at me? Was it like visiting a K-Mart at 8:30 on a Thursday night...nobody wanted to be there, nobody was happy. The decor that hadn't been updated since the Carter administration weighs down on you like a ton of bricks.

I just wanted to leave.

So when I look at a rec room and I look at the aged linoleum, the avocado kitchen range and the hanging light fixtures - they leave me unsettled and depressed; I can never say why.