At this point, you either really do have two black eyes from your The Walking Dead-esque Black Friday experience, or you stayed home and are fretfully wondering what Christmas gift you can get for that wife/husband/child/president-elect who has everything.
If you fall into the latter camp, we "feel" you. And, lest you thought we'd forgotten you ... we submit, for your approval, our darn-near annual ...
Let's Talk Christmas
Gift Guide
• Crafting With Cat Hair
So your cat-loving gift recipient didn't see the humor in the Crazy Cat Lady figurine you gave her a few years back (which, by the way, is still available)? Are visits to her home your sole reason for owning a lint roller or clothing brush? Is she a do-it-yourself type? Perhaps she'd like the 2011 book Crafting With Cat Hair: Cute Handicrafts to Make With Your Cat by Kaori Tsutaya with Amy Hirschman (published by the interestingly named Quirk Books). The book, offered for various prices, used and new, on amazon.com, shows how to take "stray clumps of fur" and spend an hour or less creating such masterpieces as tote bags, finger puppets, cat toys (What? So they can chew on them and cough up even more fur balls?) and picture frames "with a little help ... from your feline friends!" But ... who left the dogs out? Um, nobody. Your dog-owner gift recipient may benefit from the mid-1990s-era book Knitting With Dog Hair: Better a Sweater From a Dog You Know and Love Than From a Sheep You'll Never Meet by Kendall Crolius.
• Wine & Beverage Dispensing Tote
Someone has finally come up with the woman's answer to the man's liquor flask: tote bags that dispense wine. The Wine & Beverage Dispensing Tote goes for $20-$129.95 at Uncommongoods.com. Designed by Tracey Luebbers and made in Glasgow, Mo., it's a rather attractive, summery-looking, easy-to-clean polyester bag that not only holds a boxed wine bag but also comes with a dispensing bag (extras are available). Plus, there's a spout from which to pour wine without opening the bag. And yeah, there's room for cups and your usual purse stuff. Too conspicuous for your giftee? There's also The Wine Rack ($29.99), a sports bra with a drinking tube and removable polyurethane "bladder" that holds 25 ounces of beverage.
• Constitution Tie
Ever get into fights and debates over the "threats to the Constitution"? Now your debator can have a quick Constitution reference. These silk ties are offered in several colors. The downside? Now there's a whole other threat to the Constitution: spilled food and/or drink.
• Christmas Tree Tinsel Hat
You might just win that Ugly Christmas Sweater contest with the proper accessory: this hat, available in the $5-$7 range from multiple peddlers. Just so you know, the hat "does not light up," one website warns. Ah, well. Actually, this topper looks much like a witch's hat with a Christmas-tree veneer, so any do-it-yourselfer with such a Halloween relic could just dip into her surplus Christmas-tree decor and save a few dollars. The perfect accessory would be the Tacky Christmas tree sunglasses, $4-$5. (We, ahem, won't mention the "mankini thong" with a Christmas reindeer pattern. We just won't.)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Garden Gnomes
To heck with the old plain-Joe garden gnome who's grossly overexposed in those travel-deal website commercials! For only $14.99, exclusively at Thinkgeek.com, these polyresin figures come in Star Trek: The Next Generation characters Picard, Riker, Data, Worf or Borg. The base of each figure bears a line that figure might say -- "Engage!," "Resistance is Futile" or "ghIqtal," which is supposedly Klingon for "To the death!" (I'm a bit more of an old-school Trekkie myself: Where's my figurine of Dr. McCoy with the line, "He's dead, Jim"?) If your gift recipient is more Star Wars than Star Trek, there's something for him, too: Star Wars Geeki Tikis ($8.99-$14.99) in the likeness of Chewbacca, Darth Vader, R2-D2, Yoda and more.
• Boyfriend Pillow
Hey there, lonely girl: There's a Boyfriend Pillow for you! This gift, $30-$40, is half-torso shaped, complete with an arm to go around your neck. It's advertised as being perfect for singles, but it also may be welcome if your giftee is married to someone whose job keeps him on the road or who thinks being affectionate means sharing the remote. There's also a girlfriend pillow as well as a Boyfriend Muscle Man Arm pillow for those who prefer he-men.
• But wait! There's more
Might your gift recipient want more than just an arm? There's always that Grow a Boyfriend figure ....
Holly, jolly email:
Style on 12/04/2016