Bad taste

This will be quick:

Have you seen those ads for Pizza Hut pasta? The one where they show people in New York City (where everyone has good taste, of course) eating in a fancy Italian restaurant?

Those people were eating Pizza Hut pasta and they didn't even know it! Hey, they thought it was great! This proves that Pizza Hut pasta is really, really good.

No.

Just like those old ads for Folger's instant coffee (which took place in a similar looking restaurant) those well dressed diners are only proving one thing: most people have no taste.

All you need to do is tell them it's good and they'll believe you.

And conversely, I'd wager that if you served the finest chef in the world's food at Pizza Hut, snooty people who had to go to a fast food joint (slumming, perhaps) would think it wasn't so hot.

In fact, there's a scientific study about this phenomenon which I'll find for you, just in case you don't believe me. Later.*

Photo note: This is from Elle magazine's coverage of the "Costume Museum's Gala".
Copy: Zac Posen and Kate Mara, in a dress by the designer with Fred Leighton jewels.
Is he supposed to be ironic in this suit? And I'm sorry, but there is nobody who could pull off this dress (and her breasts (if they are indeed hers, look like they are going to explode at any moment). That much yellow is frightening. This is but two examples of truly hideous "fashion". I looked at much of the couture lines for Fall '08 and a good deal of it is wonderful, but off the runway, you just see a lot of crap.

*Okay, it's later. I found many articles about the cost of wine and its packaging determining whether a person perceives it as good or not. Here's an excerpt from one article, found here:

"The researchers scanned the brains of 21 volunteer wine novices as they administered tiny tastes of wine, measuring sensations in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain where flavor responses apparently register. The subjects were told only the price of the wines. Without their knowledge, they tasted one wine twice, and were given two different prices for that wine. Invariably they preferred the one they thought was more expensive."

Case closed.