Wednesday, November 13, 2013

James Franco YOLO's Airbnb Pop-Up Suite

Although he's not much—ahem—appreciated by several of the more high-nosed art world denizens we know, Your Mama likes prolific actor/artist/provocateur James Franco. We even follow him on the Instagram-doohicky. However, we have two major issues with the free-standing, pop-up bedroom suite he recently designed for Airbnb's "Hello L.A." campaign (shown above) and installed—buckle your seat belts, butter beans, at the star-dotted Hollywood Forever Cemetery.*

We die for the still very en vogue Beni Ourain rug, of course, and, since we like to read, we're totally down with the over-sized book/magazine rack next to the bed. The leather patchwork bed frame is organically evocative and we can even appreciate the absurdly self-conscious absurdity the photograph of Jeff Koons's porcelain sculpture of Michael Jackson and his monkey, Bubbles, lends to the whimsically curated, compact, and slightly cluttered space. We even sort of get the cemetery location or, at least, are reasonably amused by the Tinseltown macabre of it.

What we can not understand, firstly, is how a person, especially one who has, say, a handful of gin & tonics in their belly, is supposed to get in or out of the bed let along sleep soundly with all the crap and tchotchke pushed right against the edges. And, secondly, we absolutely can not abide the custom paint-by-numbers wall mural. The paint-by-numbers motif is, in itself, fine. Maybe it's a little bit yesterday but, still, it's okay. The decorative disturbance for Your Mama is the giant, white letters that read YOLO, which all the texting and hashtagging children know is the ubiquitously trendy acronym for You Only Live Once. Sorry, James, but, no. Seriously, no. Puke, in fact.

We are, to be sure, not at all sure what would be more troublesome to stomach, a convoluted and possibly cynical artistic intent of irony or an unfettered and brah-ish obsession with the saccharine acronym that compelled Mister Franco to actually paint it on the damn wall. Both scenarios unsettle our admittedly sensitive stomach. Can we at least agree on that, children? No? Yes? Could there be any other, less upsetting reason for Mister Franco to undertake such a decorative statement? Maybe we're the only one that cares about this? Moving along...

*Other celebrities who contributed pop-up designs include Angelica Huston, Molly Sims, and Moby and you can click right here to seem planning renderings and photos of their finished pop-up suites.Your Mama wonders why the Airbnb people didn't ask us to do up one of their cute glass cubes. Anyhoo...

photo: Domaine Home (via Curbed)