Dave Barry's 2012 Holiday Gift Guide

Saturday, November 24, 2012
http://onlineathens.com/features/2012-11-24/dave-barrys-2012-holiday-gift-guide

The holiday season is here: It’s time to do your gift shopping!

This is assuming, of course, that you live in 1985. If you live in the current year (2012), you’re too late. You were supposed to do your holiday gift shopping on Thanksgiving.

In the old days, Thanksgiving was not a shopping day. It was a day when we expressed gratitude for our many God-given blessings in the same way our Pilgrim forefathers did: by eating a 27,000-calorie meal, then spending the rest of the day lying motionless watching televised football while burping out gravy fumes.

Back then, Black Friday actually happened on Friday, which is how it got the name “Black Friday.” But then the Black Friday store-opening hours — probably as a result of global climate change — started creeping earlier and earlier. The stores opened at 10 a.m., then 6 a.m., then 3 a.m., and so on, until we reached the point where, this year, Black Friday actually began on Thursday evening.

So Thanksgiving is no longer a day of quiet reflective belching. The new Thanksgiving tradition is to gulp down your dinner, then race to the mall and join the vast swarming hordes of bargain-hunters getting into fistfights over discounted electronics.

And it’s going to get worse, as Black Friday Backward Creep continues. Soon the stores will open at noon Thursday; shoppers will eat their Thanksgiving dinners while waiting in line for the store doors to open — thousands of people squatting on the sidewalk outside Target gnawing on turkey legs, like a scene from a zombie movie, only not as festive.

And as Black Friday continues to creep backward, the time will come, inevitably, when we observe Black Friday on Halloween, and then July Fourth, and then Memorial Day, and so on, earlier and earlier, until we are observing Black Friday on Black Friday again, but it will be the PREVIOUS Black Friday, which will be so confusing that human civilization as we know it will collapse.

But my point is, if you’re just getting started now on your holiday shopping, you have already missed the mall bargains. That’s the bad news. The good news is, you’re still in time for our annual Holiday Gift Guide, which features a collection of unique gift items that you are not going to find at the mall, because not even holiday mall shoppers are desperate enough to buy these items.

As always, we want to stress that all of the items in the Holiday Gift Guide are really for sale; we know this because we purchased all of them ourselves, although not of course with our own personal money.

And as always, we stand behind these items somewhere between 110 and 135 percent depending on the item. That is why we are able to offer the following Quality Assurance Legalistic Guarantee of Limited Warranty: If you purchase any item from the Holiday Gift Guide, and for any reason whatsoever you are not completely satisfied, simply return the item to its original packaging, then bake it in a 375-degree oven until a toothpick inserted into the center bursts into flames. Serves six.
But enough with the legal boilerplate.

Let’s take a look at the items that “made the cut” for the 2012 Holiday Gift Guide, starting with:

‘THE WOOFER’ WEARABLE SOUND SYSTEM FOR DOGS
If there’s one thing that everybody agrees on, it’s that dogs do not make enough noise. Finally, thanks to technology, we have a solution to this problem, in the form of The Woofer. This is a dog coat with built-in battery-powered speakers and a place to plug in an iPod, so you can turn your pet into a walking boom box. Imagine how thrilled your dog will be when you strap it into this garment, then crank up the tunes! You’re sure to get many hours of enjoyment from The Woofer, until the day comes, as it inevitably will, when your dog rips out your throat.

• $100-$120 (includes shipping and handling) from www.thewoofer.com
Suggested by Martha Kokes of Burlingame, Calif.

NFL PRO TOASTER
If you’re a pro football fan, you probably show your support for your team in the usual ways: going to the games, drinking $12 beers, yelling obscenities at the officials and vomiting on the people sitting in front of you. And that’s fine, as far as it goes. But if you want to be a REAL fan, you need to show your support in the most meaningful way of all: with toast. And to do that, you need the NFL Pro Toaster. This amazing appliance uses advanced toaster technology to burn your team logo right into your toast. Then you can either eat it or — better yet — take it with you to the game and wave it with pride. The other fans will be deeply impressed. That’s how drunk they are.
• $27.95 plus shipping and handling from The Lakeside Collection, PO Box 3088, Northbrook, IL, 60065-3088; (847) 444-3150; www.lakeside.com
Suggested by Terri Card of Corvallis, Ore.

ARTIFICIAL GRASS FLIP-FLOPS
How would you like to experience the feeling of walking barefoot on synthetic turf even when you’re not actually walking barefoot on synthetic turf? For centuries, this was just a dream of humanity. But now it’s a reality, thanks to these flip-flops, which are like regular flip-flops, except they have artificial grass where your feet go. When you put these on, you immediately notice a big difference. For one thing, people will be staring at your feet. Ignore them. They are just jealous.
These are the official flip-flops of the United States Supreme Court.
• $30.59 plus shipping and handling from www.kusashoes.com
Suggested by Jeff Meyerson of Brooklyn, N.Y.

SQUIRREL, CHICKEN MASKS
Have you ever found yourself in a meeting at work when you wanted to fall asleep, or make faces at other meeting participants, but you can’t because you need to remain employed? If so, you, or some employed person on your holiday gift list, could definitely use one of these masks. These are large rubber masks that cover your entire head. You can see out, sort of, through the eye holes, but nobody can see in. So you appear to be an attentive, interested, meeting-attending squirrel or chicken, no matter what you are actually doing with your face in there.
FACT: Many airline pilots wear these on international flights.
• $21.69 and $26.25 plus shipping and handling from www.amazon.com
Suggested by Jan Mangan of Aromas, Calif.

TOILET TATTOOS
If you’re like most people, it has been a long time since you remarked: “That is certainly a visually interesting toilet seat!” The sad fact is that most residential commodes feature boring, “ho-hum” seats. But that no longer has to be the case, thanks to Toilet Tattoos, which are removable vinyl decorations you can stick onto your toilet seat. They come in a variety of stock themes, including toilet-training cartoons, monograms and some very tasteful Christmas and Chanukah images. Or you can design your own Toilet Tattoo. Here at the Gift Guide we had one made from a photograph of the great entertainer Barry Manilow. Every time we look down at our toilet, there’s Barry, looking up at us. He has never looked better.
• $9.95-$24.99 plus shipping and handling from Lena Fiore Inc., 1039 Riviera Way, Macedonia, Ohio 44056; (330) 468-3226; www.toilet-tattoos.com.

INFLATABLE UNICORN HORNS
Do you have cat lovers on your holiday list? If so, here’s a gift that is sure to make them say: “What?” It’s an inflatable unicorn horn for cats. And if you know anything about cats, you know how much they, as a species, enjoy being dressed up as mythical figures. To use this horn, you simply blow it up and attach it to your cat’s head with elastic straps. Then it’s time to sit back and enjoy the ensuing hilarity for several lighthearted nanoseconds. And then it’s time to go to the emergency room.
• $5 plus shipping and handling from Archie McPhee and Co., 10915 47th Ave. W., Mukilteo, WA 98275; (425) 349-3009; www.mcphee.com
Suggested by Jon Harris of Christiansburg, Va.

EMERGENCY UNDERPANTS DISPENSER
This is a convenient dispenser box that contains five pairs of emergency unisex underpants. It makes a perfect holiday gift for people who occasionally lose control of their bodily functions, or cause others to do so. Picture this scenario: A business executive calls a longtime employee into his office and says: “Fred, I have to let you go. If you feel this news will cause you to soil yourself, feel free to take a pair of spare underpants from this box.” This is exactly the kind of heartwarming gesture that makes the holidays what they are.
This year, give the precious gift of peace of mind. Give emergency underpants.
• $6.95 plus shipping and handling from Archie McPhee and Co., 10915 47th Ave. W., Mukilteo, WA 98275; (425) 349-3009; www.mcphee.com
Suggested by Terri Card of Corvallis, Ore.

MEGA PLUMBER ACTION HERO
Do you have a child on your holiday gift list? If so, we’re certain that child will be very surprised to receive this item. It’s the Mega Plumber Action Hero, and it’s sold by American Standard, a leading manufacturer of commodes. The Mega Plumber stands 6 inches tall and comes with a miniature toilet. Tragically, he does not come with a miniature visible butt crack. Nevertheless we’re sure he’ll provide hours of quality entertainment for any child who enjoys fantasizing — and what child does not? — about unclogging drains. We think American Standard should come out with additional plumbing-related action figures, including villains who could be Mega Plumber’s arch-enemy, such as The Leaker, Big-Wad-of-Toilet-Paper-Flushing Woman and Hairball.
• $10 plus shipping and handling from American Standard Plumber Protects League, 1 Centennial Plaza, Piscataway, NJ 08855-6820; (800) 442-1902; www.plumberprotects.com
Submitted by Janice Gelb of Melbourne, Australia

TRAILER-HITCH-MOUNTED STRIPPER POLE
The big problem with conventional stripper poles is that they are attached to strip clubs, which are large heavy buildings and therefore difficult to transport. This severely limits a stripper’s ability to relocate his or her pole quickly in the event of an emergency, or to make a house call. That is why we are so excited about this product, which is a solid-steel stripper pole on a platform that mounts on a standard vehicle trailer hitch. This means that the pole can be moved to anywhere the vehicle can go. Theoretically, it also means that the stripper could do a pole dance in traffic. We don’t know if that would be legal, but it should be. If we had more strippers pole-dancing on our highways, we would have a lot fewer drivers looking down at their phones and texting. In other words, this item could actually be beneficial to highway safety. It could also bring some much-needed levity to funeral processions.
• $449 plus shipping and handling from Platinum Stages, 1582 Monrovia Ave., Newport Beach, CA 92663; (866) 857-6537; www.platinumstages.com
Suggested by Sharon Lurie of Antioch, Tenn.

‘ON THE GO’ CHARACTER INFLATABLE POTTY SEAT
If you’re a parent of young children, there’s one thing you could definitely use when you take your kids out to public places: drugs.
No! Sorry! We do not mean that. What we mean is, you could definitely use this inflatable potty seat. Instead of making your child sit directly on a public toilet that has, for all you know, been used by some disgusting disease-ridden pervert or United States senator, you can simply inflate this potty seat, using your mouth, then put it on the toilet seat for your child to sit on. Then you simply deflate the potty seat and burn it, because you’re not going to want to keep it around, let alone reinflate it.
Bonus: This item can also be worn as a hat.
• $11.95 plus shipping and handling from www.amazon.com
Suggested by Peter Metrinko of Gainesville, Va.


Dave Barry is a humor columnist for the Miami Herald. Write to him c/o The Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza, Miami FL 33132.

Why 'Black Friday' Has Dark Roots

ALAN GREENBLATT
November 23, 2012
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/11/21/165662876/why-black-friday-has-dark-roots

Black Friday may not yet be a bigger holiday than Thanksgiving, but it certainly has a bigger marketing budget. Retailers may have needed it to overcome the term's long and negative history.

And that's well before you get to talk of striking Walmart workers, or violence involving impatient shoppers in recent years.

Older generations may still associate "Black Friday" with the stock market crash of 1929, which triggered the Great Depression. But the connotation of financial distress dates back even further, to the collapse of the U.S. gold market on Sept. 24, 1869.

"The term Black Friday survived to be used again and again for various disasters and unfortunate events, including a 1910 incident in England where police assaulted several hundred suffragettes at a protest," notes Richard Townley in The Washington Times.

What does any of this have to do with shopping? Perhaps nothing. But even the earliest references to Black Friday as a post-Thanksgiving retail spree were negative.

The term appears to have originated about 50 years ago among police in Philadelphia inconvenienced by downtown crowds kicking off the holiday shopping season. Those crowds added to congestion from traffic in town for the Army-Navy football game, which in that era was generally played in Philly the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Black Friday "was not a happy term," department store historian Michael J. Lisicky told CBS News last year. "The stores were just too crowded, the streets were crowded, the buses and the police were just on overcall and extra duty."

Even a sales manager at the department store Gimbels in Philadelphia back in 1975 acknowledged the term's negative connotation and link to traffic headaches. "That's why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today 'Black Friday,' " she told The Associated Press, while watching a policeman struggle with a crowd of jaywalkers. "They think in terms of the headaches it gives them."

"Prior to the mid-1980s, the term 'Black Friday' was always used for some calamitous event," columnist Paul Mulshine wrote in New Jersey's Star-Ledger. "All of that negativity makes sense. 'Black Friday' has a naturally gloomy sound to it."

Of course retailers have long since embraced it, holding that the "black" in "Black Friday" is borrowed from accounting, meaning they hope to get "in the black" for the year by dint of holiday sales.

Some accounts credit this meaning to Peter Strawbridge, president of Strawbridge & Clothier, a now-defunct retailer that was based in Philadelphia.

But it doesn't seem that Strawbridge himself liked "Black Friday" much.

"It sounds like the end of the world, and we really like the day," he told The Philadelphia Inquirer back in 1984. "If anything, we should call it 'Green Friday.' "

Midnight openings grow, but not all retail on board

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousivMolt/idUSN0932353820071109

Midnight openings grow, but not all retail on board
By Nicole Maestri
Fri Nov 9, 2007

Mall operators are betting the early bird gets the worm during this year's Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend.

More shopping malls plan to open at midnight on Thanksgiving night, holding events like "Merry Midnight Madness," to kick off the competitive three-day holiday shopping weekend.

In an extreme example, Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas said its 100 designer outlet stores will be open on Thanksgiving Day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

But not everyone is jumping on the open-early bandwagon.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, Wal-Mart Stores Inc will open the doors at its discount stores that are not open 24 hours a day at 5 a.m. -- the same as last year.

Circuit City Stores Inc will also open its stores at 5 a.m., the same time as it did a year ago, while Best Buy will still open at 5 a.m. but close at 10 p.m. -- an hour earlier than last year.

"It's a long day by that time. Were we gaining enough by that last hour to justify keeping everybody there another hour?" a Best Buy spokesman said. "This year, we decided to try closing at 10 and let people go home and get some rest."

TRYING TO KICK-START SALES

The holiday season is crucial for retailers because it can account for between 25 percent and 40 percent of their annual sales. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is consider the official start of the holiday shopping season.

Retailers have started opening their doors ever earlier on Thanksgiving weekend and touting eye-popping deals to try to garner sales at the start of the holiday shopping season.

"There's this new level of frenzy associated with it, and it's turned into sport," said Candace Corlett, a principal with consulting firm WSL Strategic Retail.

This year Simon Property Group Inc will hold "Midnight Madness" events at 38 of its Chelsea Premium Outlet Centers, up from 26 a year ago. Tanger Factory Outlet Centers will also host midnight events at 22 of its shopping centers, compared with eight a year ago.

General Growth Properties will open 12 of its malls at midnight this year, up from seven a year ago.

Wally Brewster, senior vice president of marketing and communications for General Growth, said more malls and their stores are opening a midnight because it has been shown to boost sales over the three-day holiday weekend.

"It's a bit of a 'me-too"' phenomenon, said Linda Shea, global managing director of customer strategies at Opinion Research Corp.

But she said retailers need to make sure the investment pays off, and they are not filling their stores with tired employees, who would rather be sleeping than helping customers with their holiday purchases.

"In a market where the forecasts are not great for the holiday season, I suppose the hope is, 'Well, if we just start earlier, we just let them know earlier'," we'll win sales, she said. "But all of that costs money."

BETTER SALES? WE'LL SEE

The early openings come as retailers are on pins and needles, worried that the housing market meltdown, credit crunch, and higher food and fuel prices will crimp consumer spending this holiday.

Corlett said the early openings are retailers' attempts to try to grab shoppers' dollars before their wallets slam shut or they spend their limited budgets at a competitor's store.

"There's something very serious going on here and that is this panic among everyone in the business that shoppers are going to run out of money," Corlett said.

But she said the gimmicks will not necessarily convince shoppers, who may be facing higher mortgage payments or declining home values, to accumulate more debt than they were planning this holiday.

Instead, analysts expect Thanksgiving will only mark the start of what will be a highly promotional season, and the battle among retailers to ring up sales after a lackluster autumn and eke out holiday profits will extend until Christmas Eve.

"There is virtually no momentum coming out of September and October as we head into the thick of the holiday shopping season," Retail Metrics President Ken Perkins wrote in a note. "Retailers have their work cut out for them over the next 6-8 weeks."