Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted, from the Everyday to the Obscure
by Paul Lukas
Review by Sean Doorly

I saw "Inconspicuous Consumption" lying on TBR's table of newly arrived books and the photos of Kraut Juice and Musk Lifesavers caught my attention. I threw the book in my bag, started to read it on my subway ride home -- and couldn't put it down. Paul Lukas, a "consumer detective", notices products and gadgets no one has bothered to notice before, and then writes hilarious descriptions of them. I was chuckling all the way home to Brooklyn.

What was I chuckling about?

THIRSTY DOG AND THIRSTY CAT -- "You are still giving your pet tap water? Tap water, you see, is riddled with impurities, trace elements, and additives, which is why it's only fit for lower beasts like you and me."

LAWN MAKEUP AEROSOL SPRAY -- "It's basically a can of green spray paint designed for use on patches of brown, scorched lawn.... I see a suburban street lined with houses, each with an identical husband carefully spraying Lawn Makeup all over the front yard; I see the wives watching the husbands through the screen door, shaking their heads in disbelief but unable to resist yelling, 'Honey, you missed a spot."

And my favorite product is:

THE CAR JOHN -- "is designed to provide relief for the automobile-bound male whose bladder is about to burst. It's a Port-a-Pot that fits in your glove compartment.... For starters, you need to park your car in order to use it. Why not invent something that would facilitate urinations while still driving? Now that would be progress."

All I kept saying to myself is that these are real products and that someone put time and effort into creating them. And never once did they say to themselves, "What... are we crazy?"

Paul doesn't just concern himself with these wacky, never-should-have-been products. He also talks, lovingly, about everyday products everyone else seems to overlook -- matches, mousetraps, Band Aids and Twinkees.

Speaking of Twinkees, Paul is so obsessed with this Golden Sponge Cake from Hostess that he notices a difference between a New York one and a Chicago one. (For the record Chicago Twinkees do not have the granular taste of their New York counterparts.)

I'm sitting there on the F train laughing out loud, and I know if I am ever in Chicago I am going to try their Twinkees.

That is what this book has done to me: Thanks to Paul, I am starting to notice things I haven't bothered to notice before.

So, Paul here are the products I have thought about in the past week or so.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS -- not those new fangled high-tech ones where you can't see if it's red on a sunny day. No, I'm talking about those good old fashioned red, yellow and green ones with the low-tech lights that you can see rain or shine.

TOILET BOWL -- some call it the throne, others the captain's chair. Names aside, as far as I know the design hasn't changed much in a hundred years.

SCHOOL-CLOCKS -- the basic Cincinnati model with a silver rim and black numbers. Every damn school I was ever in had that model. Do they make any others?

Anyone else out there notice the "commonplace?" If so, send in your ideas via the WRITE TO US button and maybe we can send them off to Paul for Volume II.