On a lighter note, the Man Cave (and not Osama's)

Ginia Bellafante has an article in The New York Times about housing, manly-version:

If Bravo is the network devoted to baroque expressions of coastal affluence, TLC exists as its spirit cousin and opposition: a cable channel committed to the ostensibly bizarre habits of non-elites. Producers take us from Pennsylvania to Arkansas to Utah, and to other places that are neither West Hollywood nor East Hampton, to uncover overbreeders (19 Kids and Counting, Kate Plus 8), polygamists (Sister Wives), addicts of household flotsam (Hoarding: Buried Alive) and the strange people who submit their young children to spray tans (Toddlers & Tiaras). Bravo ridicules the world of the well to do; TLC, instead, implicitly makes fun of the idea that those hoping to avoid encounters with creepiness or bad taste are safe beyond the realm of four-ply cashmere.
Spouse vs. House is TLC’s latest reality series, a real-estate Pygmalion that attempts to correct for the design lapses of average couples who have not yet seen fit to appoint their kitchens with energy-efficient stainless-steel appliances. The show is meant to chart the course of marital negotiation but, at its heart, it feels compelled to explore the ineptness of middle-class husbands to absorb the aesthetic and behavioral lessons of the upper classes.
In each episode the series submits a couple in an undistinguished house to a makeover agenda. Man and wife are separated for three weeks as the husband is entrusted to renovate three rooms with a $25,000 budget. The husbands do the work themselves, demolishing walls and laying tile. While all this is going on, the wife, exiled to the company of the Southern California decorator Ryan Brown, creates a mock version of her dream space under his tutelage. The goal is to see how closely (or not) the visions of the partners are synchronized.
As Mr. Brown instructs in the virtues of damask wallpaper and whimsical picture framing, the slacker husbands pursue childish fantasies. Early on we meet Justin Anderson, who conceives of his whole renovation in terms of his in-house bar, the countertop of which is made of bottle caps. He spends the first $45 of his budget on beer, avails himself of breaks in the tight project schedule to play video games and, in one shot, is shown applying deodorant. This is a universe in which men are reduced to meathead clichés, obsessed with speakers and televisions in every room. “He knows she is expecting some adult elements,” a voice-over tells us of one couple, “like furniture.”
Oddly, though, in only one of the three episodes that TLC made available for advance viewing did a couple experience the kind of teary, alienating discord that has afflicted men and women retooling their living quarters since the days of cave painting in Lascaux. In the others, husbands, given an eleventh-hour viewing of their wives’ shelter-magazine inspirations, concede in ways large and small to more feminine re-imaginings of the interiors in contention.
But drama, of course, isn’t mined from appeasement. This is a series that desperately needs high-volume rows over coffee table finishes and mutual realizations of incompatibility that are followed by mandated arbitration in the aisles of Lowe’s. Give me the threat of divorce by fabric swatch...