My favorite four things in this world are 1) bargains, 2) rich people's houses, 3) celebrities who have been famous for so long they're losing their grip on reality, and 4) snooping through other people's shit.
So I was overjoyed when I found out there was going to be an estate sale featuring the entire contents of one of the houses Nicolas Cage lost due to his financial troubles. Can you imagine a better celebrity house to snoop through? His whole financial mess was caused by his blowing money on stuff like dinosaur skulls and albino king cobras.
So I headed down to take a look around.
Prior to my arrival, I'd been picturing madness. Not, like, Hoarders-level madness, but that kind of controlled, polished madness that the sort of person who buys dinosaur skulls surrounds themselves with. I was expecting, like, secret corridors, a trapeze room, and a desk that used to belong to the Unabomber or something.
But, disappointingly, every room of the house looked like this.
A totally bland mix of Mediterranean and oriental stuff, like every other Beverly Hills mansion decorated by an interior designer circa early "noughties." (See also: the Osbournes' house, The Bachelor's house, all filming locations for reality TV shows between the years of 2000 and 2009.)
Ditto all of his possessions. Just standard, gaudy rich-people stuff. Like the kinda stuff poor people have in their houses, but purchased in shops without price tags where they give you complimentary champagne.
There were some personal items scattered around, though. Like a couple hundred copies of a comic book that Nic wrote with his son about a reincarnated Union soldier working as a detective in post-Katrina New Orleans (or something) that I never knew existed.
And this ADORABLE old backpack that, presumably, used to belong to that weird goth son he has. "Rammastein"!!!
Then I got to the closet of the master bedroom. This is just the hallway of the closet, BTW—it was made up of several rooms. Its total size was, depressingly, larger than my entire apartment.
Which is where I found a pair of Nicolas Cage's old long johns. I grabbed them to give to someone as a novelty birthday gift.
The closet was also where I found this. Not sure if you can make it out from the picture, but it's a fireman's helmet and two whips (like, the kind of whips old people buy after reading 50 Shades of Grey, not, like, the kind you use for horse riding or tomb raiding).
Which, on the one hand, is exactly what I wanted to see in Nicolas Cage's house. It's weird and funny and indicative of something you would totally expect him to be doing in his spare time. But it also made me feel gross and voyeuristic. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was looking at stuff that he wouldn't want me to be looking at.
Like, this is WEIRD, right? That Nicolas Cage's ex-wife's underwear was all just lying out for people to rifle through and buy for a dollar?
Which was kind of how I felt for the rest of my visit.
Like, when I went to look around the library and found this. Which, obviously, is hilarious.
But then looked into the box next to it and saw this. A parenting book about dealing with "children who are out of control," which was on top of a bunch of other self-help books about stuff like learning to live with Tourette's, communicating better with loved ones, and how to stop yourself from getting wrinkles.
Which was kind of a bummer.
:(
Also, "God Wants You to be Rich"...
This was a house where Nic had gone through a divorce. Where he'd dealt with someone's mental illness. Where he'd worried about normal people stuff like wrinkles and money. And which was now being repossessed by the bank because he fucked up his finances.
I felt like a parasite, hunting for hilarious things to buy from a ruined man's life, while people sneaked peeks behind doors marked "do not enter" around me.
This was the breaking point. One of those cushioned toilet seats that are, without question, the absolute grossest things in the entire world. Why did a man like Nicolas Cage have this in his house? Why did he let it get all cracked and nasty? I felt like I was looking at a physical manifestation of his depression.
The thought of Nicolas Cage sitting on this thing, with years of farts and pee seeping out into his thighs through the cracks while his marriage crumbled around him and his uncontrollable child succumbed to Tourette's and OCD was too much for me. I felt like the biggest bottom-feeding shit bag in the entire world, and had to bail.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: If you're given the opportunity to take a glimpse into the private world of a walking joke, DON'T. It will ruin them for you. Nobody wants their LOLs to be humanized. I just tried watching the "NOT THE BEES!" clip, and I didn't even crack a smile. All I could think about was Nic's miserable old mansion full of failure.
I didn't even feel comfortable buying his old thermal underwear as a hilarious present and had to go put them back in the closet.
I did snag this extension cord, though. I needed a new one, and at $4, it would've been irresponsible not to buy it.