Mar 26, 2013 3 min read

I’m thankful for many things. For example, I’m pretty healthy, and I don’t have to figure out who the Pirates’ starting right fielder should be this year. But I’m even more thankful that I’m not female, the child of an actress mother and married to a rock star. Because if I were, I might have a chance of turning into another Gwyneth Paltrow.

Paltrow (“Shakespeare in Love,” the “Ironman” movies) is the daughter of actress Blythe Danner. Neither mother nor daughter, in my estimation, has an abundance of talent, but each is rather beautiful. An excess of beauty coupled with paucity of acting skills is rather common, so I can’t blame Gwyneth for her success. Neither can I begrudge her for marrying British musician Chris Martin. He’s a good-looking guy, and his talent as a singer-songwriter for the band Coldplay is at least as marginal as Paltrow’s talent as an actress. Good match! Heck, for managing to snag a real babe for a wife, I’ll even forgive Martin for doing more to destroy pop music than did all four Gibb brothers combined.

But I cannot forgive his wife for having either the flawed logic or the incredible arrogance to reveal, on her website Goop.com, her “must have” fashion choices for spring, which totaled nearly $500,000. Among her selections:

• A Valentino Rockstud python trapeze bag: $5,995

• An R13 glossed-leather biker jacket: $1,995

• A Valentino studded-leather iPad case: $795

• Gianvito Rossi satin-trimmed leather pumps: $750

• A Marini leather and crystal necklace: $740

If you’re female and spent three hours over the weekend at Wal-Mart looking for an Easter outfit whose cost didn’t seriously limit the amount of chocolate bunnies you could afford, I think we can safely stop here while you allow yourself to seethe. Now go to your closet and calculate the cost of the first five items you find. If they add up to more than $10,275, Gwyneth and Chris would like to have you over for brunch next weekend. Oh … maybe you’d better wear trousers. Yves Saint Laurent leather skinny pants ($2,890) would be appropriate.

Fly over in your private plane. They’ll keep the caviar chilled. Chris will write another insipid song and earn another $2 million while you’re airborne. Gwyneth will use the downtime to try to pare her fall fashion must-have list down to $350,000.

On May 3, Ms. Paltrow will reprise her role as Pepper Potts in “Ironman 3.” But perhaps her subsequent role should be that of Marie Antoinette who, when told the peasants had no bread, supposedly responded, “Then let them eat cake!” This may be apocryphal, but who cares?

Screenplay treatment: Fade in to the palace at Versaille. Marie Antoinette – wearing a Nostradamus peplum-back leather jacket ($3,570), Les Chiffoniers velvet-trimmed stretch-leather leggings ($1,070) and Valentino Studded patent leather flats ($895) — yawns and tosses aside her iPad in its studded, quilted-leather sleeve ($128).

THE QUEEN: “We are bored.”

COLDPLAY ROADIE: “Madame, the peasants are complaining that they have no bread.”

THE QUEEN: “Why … let them eat my famous Molten Chocolate Cake … the recipe for which they can find in my cookbook: ‘My Father’s Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness.’ Available at all bookstores for only $30!”

She hides her smirk behind an Alexander Wang Diego textured-leather shoulder bag ($875).

FADE TO BLACK

You may think all this sounds like sour grapes. Maybe so. But only because Bottom Dollar was out of molten chocolate.