Christmaswatch 2008: The big ticket

Certain gifts are ageless, and if they are also articles of clothing, they are the best gifts to get your mother.

Question: Will Bergdorf cut the price on a Hermes Scarf?



AAK! I hope so!

Deals still not worth it

I looked at the inserts, I saw the deals. I didn't think that they were worth breaking a door and inadvertently killing someone. 798 for a 50" plasma is cheap, but with circuit city going out of business, I'd imagine there will be deals equal or rivaling that.

"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling `I've been on line since yesterday morning,'" she said. "They kept shopping."

Hands down, I don't like mobs and rallies. They never succeed in enlightening the ideals they support. Sure, there can be a speech associated with it, but that speech is usually preplanned and could have been given on the radio or in a controlled setting.

If I was thirty years older, I would (hopefully) make an exception for Woodstock, though I can see I'd be fighting with myself.

Christmaswatch 2008: Gifts no one expects

Cat in a cardboard tank? Things made of legos? Toast Wallet?

CURIOBOT

Thanks to contributor Jess

Christmaswatch 2008: CDs

CDs may be a great gift idea this year because they're relatively affordable. They also hearken back to an era when music purchase was a serious part of being a music fan.

For some of us, it still is.

Here are a couple of CDs on my Amazon.com Wishlist, and I think that they're good for fans of certain types of music. They're released as of this year, I believe:



Little Willie John, Nineteen Sixty Six: The David Axelrod & HB Barnum Sessions.

These are unreleased album sessions that Little Willie John cut at some point before he began serving a lengthy prison sentence, which cost him his life. His King compilation appears to have gone out of print, but I highly recommend this artist to fans of the young James Brown, Please Please Please era. This is high-energy R&B.



The Nerves: One Way Ticket

There are three ways to be familiar with the Nerves without knowing them: The first is that their frontman, Peter Case, wrote and performed "Hanging on the Telephone" which Blondie covered on Parallel Lines. The second is that Peter Case went on to form the Plimsouls, which had the hit, "A Million Miles Away." The third is that the Plimsouls were in the movie "Valley Girl" (Nicholas Cage's first), playing themselves in a seedy Hollywood bar. High-powered LA punk or power pop. Any fan of male-led retro rock should dig this.

More to come! If you have compact disk recommendations, feel free to let me know. Christmas isn't the same without some gifts under the tree!

ChristmasWatch 2008

Ho Ho Ho! It's hard to get people gifts for Christmas, so here is one suggestion that was a hit last year. I got some of this chocolate from a client last year. I'm not sure why they gave it to me, though it may have grossly affected my decision making abilities for the entire year.



My parents went so far as to say it was the best chocolate they'd ever tasted. They've put in orders with me already.

Burdick's Chocolate in New Hampshire