The Spirit Moves Me: My 2015 Holiday Gift Suggestions

Including Fantasy Gift Ideas For Republicans!
By Noah

The ads! The ads! These retailers! It’s worse than the political ads!

Then, there’s the usual endless local news coverage of the pillaging, people camping out in the cold just to be the first in the store. The Visigoths were better behaved.

I’m already so sick of hearing “It’s that most wonderful time of the year”. I’m so sick of Kay Jewelers ads. "Every 'kiss' begins with Kay?" I’m so sick of hearing the word 'door-buster' and terms like Black Friday and Giving Tuesday, and all the rest. Mayhem Monday is only a matter of time, except that that’s what the whole "shopping season" has become.

If you ask me, I’m into Fuck You Thursday followed by Fuck You Friday followed by Fuck You Saturday. You get the drift, and, well, if you don’t… I’m getting in a great mood for the holidays. I long for a long ago time when there were just 12 days of Christmas. Now, it’s 55. It starts with the boom of the last cherry bomb in a pumpkin on Halloween, even sooner on TV shopping channels.

It ain’t just a War On Christmas for me. It’s becoming a lifestyle! Fuck you Bill O’Reilly, and that one goes for every day of the year until the end of time and after the next big bang starts it all over again.

So, without further ado, I cheerfully present my 2015 gift ideas.

1. The Menorasaurus- Since Hanukkah comes before Christmas, let’s start with a very unique line of menorahs made by TheVanillaStudio in Portland, ME. Shown is the T-Rex version. It also comes in a more placid Brontosaurus version, which would suit any of your vegetarian friends or relatives. It also comes in Triceratops and other dino models. If you want something more modern, you may go for the Hippo or Elephant version. There’s even a turtle version, but, for me, it’ll have to be the T-Rex. It’s just that I’m a T-Rex kind of guy. However, there was definitely a time when the next item on my list would have been my first choice.

2. The Grav Menorah-



You like your holidays high? If so, this one’s for you. GRAV makes scientific glassware. You know, beakers and such, those things you played with in high school chemistry and teabaggers use to cook the meth they’re obviously smoking.

Fortunately for stoners, GRAV also makes a beautiful Bong Menorah. That’s right. It’s a working bong and a menorah! What will they think of next? For a demonstration, see the clip. Weed not included.

Also, the thing costs $700, so, you might want to consider that, after you by it, you might not have any money left for weed! I guess you’ll just have to stick with using old cardboard paper towel or toilet paper rolls with aluminum foil. Whatever works. I always loved to put weed into spaghetti sauce. It gets stronger by the day by the way.

Please note that it’s already too late to get your menorah for this holiday season. Both the Menorasaurus and the GRAV Bong Menorah are made to order. That takes time. But, if you’re a stoner, you’ve got time, lots of time.

3. Jingle Bells Shotgun Shells Christmas Lights- Getting ready to decorate your Christmas tree? Then, may I suggest these nifty red and green lights that look just like real shotgun shells! I’ll assume that they are NRA-approved. However, maybe not, since they can’t kill anybody.

Warning: Santa’s Reindeer may not want to land on your roof if they know you have anything that even looks like shotgun shells.

4. The Beer Belt/The Beer Bandolier- This one is real extra dumb, for more than one reason. It comes as both a belt and a bandolier style double beer can holster. They even come in camo-patterned fabric. The seller even says they’re great for hunting trips (oh boy drinks and huntin’. What could go wrong?) and make "a great gift for any beer lover or alcoholic in your life," but, I’d like to suggest that you could also buy one for that special someone you’d like to get rid of. In these edgy times, it doesn’t take much imagination to think what a nervous cop might do if he saw someone wearing one of these on a crowded downtown street or getting out of a car at the local mall or sports arena. The bandolier model, especially, just screams suicide bomber.

5. The Drone Disabler-

The real name of this fabulous product is the Drone Defender but I prefer to call it by what it actually does. This thing shoots down drones with some sort of electronic pulse or beam. Fantastic! I want one!

This is a product whose time has come. On one recent afternoon, I was waiting to cross the street at 62nd and 1st Avenue in New York when I looked up and saw a drone hovering above the intersection. To me, that was all too ridiculous being as there are already 2 or 3 cameras that catch everything that goes on in the immediate area. What was even more ridiculous to me was that no one but me even noticed that there was a drone watching our every move. People are just so unobservant. I guess I was the only one looking up, and there it was. It’s funny, so many people say they see UFOs all the time, but no one notices a drone? Maybe they won’t care until a drone that can provide an anal probe arrives. I don’t know.

As I see it, the thing that gives the Drone Disabler so much sales potential is that it looks like a gun, and Americans love guns! If this drone thing keeps up, I can see a world where the streets and yards of America are littered with drone pieces everywhere. Of course, some drones can fire back, so beware. Hmmm. Isn’t this how Terminator started?

But wait, there’s more!

Finally, I’ve been thinking about some gifts that aren’t readily available, although you could make them yourself for that special Republican you know who "thinks" that the Three Wise Men rode on the backs of dinosaurs to see the baby Jesus.

I’m thinking these ideas would be the kind of thing most Republicans would like to find under the tree.

• A DVD box set of Classic Police Shootings Of African-Americans- This would be perfect for that crazy old uncle on your list who always thought police wielding fire hoses just wasn’t enough.

• Ben Carson’s Pantry Pyramids™- Now you can store your grains properly! Feed the multitudes!

• A Voodoo Doll dressed in a Burka Gives hours of playtime satisfaction to wackjobs who watch FOX all day.

• A backyard stand-up barbecue in the shape of a cross- Gas-powered, of course.

If you’d rather not go to the trouble of making any of the above, I suppose you could wait and see if we end up with a President Cruz or President Trumpf. How’s that sound? If that happens, we’re bound to see any of the four above ideas for sale on a new FOX News shopping channel. Buy two of the three and they’ll give you a 50% discount on a home-fracking kit.

Happy Channukah to all -- and fry up a storm! (Including my latest morning-radio rant, complete with the traditional dumping on Air America)

by Ken

I suppose I should really check it out before going into a public whine, but I'm wondering if the powers that be have really thought through the scheduling of The Takeaway, the alternative public radio morning show produced by PRI and WNYC in association with the BBC World Service, the New York Times, and WGBH Boston.

Here's the thing: As I've mentioned countless times here (well, I'm not about to try counting them), I've been adrift for media support for my morning get-out-of-the-house routine since Air America Radio cut us New Yorkers adrift. (It appears that AAR hasn't been able to figure out any way of muscling its way into the cutthroat New York radio market except by finding the 90-pound weaklings among local stations and strong-arming them -- with the gift of a few bronze coins, I assume -- into giving up their airways.

The last time they did one of these mind melds, it was with a station so puny that many of us in the metropolitan area can't even get it, and in the morning there was no reason to try, since they seem to have been unable (or uninclined?) to shove the station's old programming off the air, leaving us stuck with right-wing scumbucket Armstrong "Army" Williams. Yes, in the country's No. 1 media market, morning drive time on the progressive radio network was held down by a wingnut sleazebag who got caught taking money from the Bush regime to flog its wackadoodle No Child Left Behind racket in his newspaper columns.

Up till then, however, the morning drive had been the glory of AAR -- although it was probably no thanks to the succession of boneheads who ran the network. After they somehow allowed the creation of the gloriously irreverent, high-voltage Morning Sedition, a show that started building a fanatically loyal fan base, instead of nurturing and promoting the shit out of it as the potential franchise-builder it was, they sabotaged and finally pulled the plug on it. And even then, probably again by sheer dumb luck, they turned a couple of those hours to a host who had been exiled to the 5am time slot, where to her credit she had continued toiling, developing her on-air format and skills for the time when she would get a real chance.

You may have heard of her. Her name was Rachel Maddow. It was totally different from Morning Sedition, a smart and outrageous progressive comedy show, with genuinely talented comedy writers and performers, including a fellow named Kent Jones who landed a spot on Rachel's show. Rachel's morning show did an amazing job of informing and entertaining and, as I've said here before, providing a barely awake progressive with the basic briefing he/she needed to face the world on near-even terms, or at least get through the day.

Rachel deserved her promotion to the evening slot, but that didn't do me any good. It was a morning radio show I needed. (In fact, I wasn't able to listen to Rachel in the evening.) Even before that switch took place, we in New York lost her -- and Air America mornings -- to the station shuffle. I was barely able to get the new station, but after a week or two of Army Williams (see? I really tried to give the show a chance!), I fled in horror. Since then I think I've made one attempt to tune the new frequency in. As I recall, it failed.

I won't bore you with the litany of media alternatives I've tried to plug into this hole in my mornings. For a while USA's JAG reruns worked,but then we got back to the point where I'd come in.

Without a lot of enthusiasm I sort of settled in with NPR's Morning Edition. It's not a terrible show, and occasionally there's some really alert reporting or commentary. But so much of it is well-meant time-filling -- the sort of tedious, mealy-mouthed stuff you're always afraid of being choked with on NPR.

But now, at least in theory, we have a public radio alternative in The Takeaway, with personable hosts John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji. For a while I was setting my alarm for 6 or 6:30, and I got to hear a little of the show, and it wasn't bad. But then I pushed the alarm back to 7, when WNYC-FM switches to, yes, Morning Edition! No more Takeaway for me, unless I'm up before 7 and ambitious enough to turn the radio on manually.

I just checked the scheduling online, to make sure I wasn't making it up. Sure enough, I'm not crazy. This is the way the show is really scheduled:

New York
New York, NY 820 AM WNYC-AM 8 a.m.–10 a.m. Mon–Fri
New York, NY 93.9 FM WNYC-FM 6 a.m.–7 a.m. Mon–Fri

Do you notice anything odd about here?

Let's look at it another way. Wouldn't it be fair to say that many if not most people have to be at work at 9am? And that all of those people consequently spend some if not all of the preceding hour traveling to work? (Actually, since my company moved all the way downtown in Manhattan, it now takes me about an hour and a quarter, maybe an hour and a half. But who's counting?) So for those of us who fall into this demographic, what would you say would be the most crucial hour of the morning schedule?

(a) 6am - 7am
(b) 7am - 8am
(c) 8am - 9am

Am I crazy, or is the answer not (b)? And if you look again at that schedule for The Takeaway in New York, when between 6am and 10am is the show not on the air? It's like it was carefully planned. Has WNYC been hiring some of the AAR program scheduling talent?

I'LL BET YOU THOUGHT I FORGOT ABOUT
THE CHANNUKAH PART -- WELL, HA!

As it happens, this morning I did flip the radio on early, and they were doing a sort of Channukah show. John and Adaora's guest, I figured out gradually, was New York Times food writer Melissa Clark, and she had a take on the holiday I've never heard, or at least never heard put quite this way.

After running through the historical event being celebrated, the miracle by which the insignificant amount of oil remaining in the Temple, needed to light the Eternal Light, lasted eight days, Melissa explained that that's why we fry stuff at Channukah, like potato latkes (and she provided two crucial latke-making tips: grate the potatoes coarse, not fine, and above all be sure to squeeze the moisture out of the grated potatoes before making your pancake mixture and frying), and that in fact frying anything counts as Channukah celebration, as long as there's lots of oil and grease.

That's why they do doughnuts for Channukah in Israel, Melissa explained. (Jelly or jam doughnuts, apparently. Not my favorites, but okay.) And why in Italy they fry chicken, and in Morocco something else. Anyway, you get the idea. For these eight days, frying stuff is practically a religious obligation.

This isn't the sort of thing you would want to carry through 365 days a year. But for eight days, knowing that you can fry any damned thing you can think of and get into appropriate oil and you're commemorating a religious observance, well, isn't this the sort of thing that gets people involved with organized religion in the first place?

Melissa had some other decidedly unfamiliar takes on Channukah celebration. Like she had apparently brought in "golden gelt cookies" she'd baked (not fried, eh?), for presumptive use in that fast-paced, high-stakes dreidel play common during Channukah. Normally we would use those golden-foil-wrapped chocolate coins, the way it says in the Bible. But Melissa explained that she's always looking for alternatives to the old chocolate coins, and the way she kept talking about those golden cookies of hers, the more I thought it would be churlish not to at least try them.

#

Sorry, George, no giant cracker, just a really big dufus. And a happy and healthy Channukah to all!

No, this isn't the photo, but it gives us Chimpy and a menorah together.

If I had a scanner and could, you know, scan stuff, maybe I would have scanned the photo on the front of the Channukah card I bought for my mother before I mailed it. She's 88 now, and failing in more ways than we have time or inclination to talk about, but I'm thinking it'll still give her a charge. Usually greeting-card shopping is a protracted agony. But yesterday I plucked this one off the rack, took one look, and whisked it straight to the checkout counter. (She should get it tomorrow, so we'll see.)

The actual picture shows our Chimpy the Prez standing next to a giant menorah, facing the camera, wearing that dopey grin we know so well. And the card has him thinking, as best I recall it:

"I hope this is the holiday where they hand out the giant cracker."

No, George, it's not. Maybe Mrs. George could rustle you up some potato latkes?

Happy Channukah to all.