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Last Minute Gift Guide By Matt Brady If you haven't started or finished your Christmas shopping, it's high time to get cracking, because when it comes to the holidays, "It's the thought that counts" flies about as far as a flung-fresh snowball. There's no time to waste, so I've devised a guide to help complete your gift list. Let the magic of the season begin. The gift of Fart Spray is out again this year, as are Wooden Birdfeeders, Coffee Mugs with Clever Sayings, Metal Flashlights, Discount Flannel Shirts, and the 6pc. Electric Screwdriver sets you've given or gotten every year since Christmas became more frightening than fun one hell of a long time ago. I urge you to avoid even considering making homemade greeting/gift cards with any of the "Free $900 worth of Valuable Software!" that comes installed on the computers we've all been buying the last couple of years. Leave this ridiculously embarrassing activity to the pre and post geriatric moms, aunts, and family friends whom after taking a year and half learning how to reliably send an email, have now ever so slowly begun pointing their mouses in new, painfully hesitant and tentative directions. I can tell you from experience that the only individuals benefiting from these cards are the bedridden, who enjoy anything that takes their mind off the fact there's a cotton sheet up their crack. I recommend starting out in Bay City. Mill End, which bills itself as "The World's Most Unusual Store", is a great place to shop, watch people, and get your mind into a "thankful for what you've got" mood. Browse amongst its collection of orange knit hats, studded belts, cowboy boots, camouflage, and early seventies concert posters, and then head on down to the basement. It's here you will find table after table of sun-faded and browning items subject to flooding so many times many are offered at the reduced rate of one cent per item. Fill your arms with these bargains; this stuff is great for the Secret Santa arrangements popular in so many office settings today. For all your gift cards and tags stop at Paperworks on the downtown drag. They play good Irish music and have a selection of humorous cards reminiscent of Midland's Paper Moon before they got more into selling Monica Lewinsky lips, Costumes, Balloons, High-Powered Dildo's, and Wind-up Hopping Genitals. Down the street is A Man in the Moon. Any woman over 64 on your list will adore the sheer knick-knacketyness of everything in the shop, up to and including the smell of the item. The entire store and its contents smells of candles dipped in embalming fluid. By the way, quick question- Does anyone have any idea who volunteers to man the Salvation Army holiday buckets and shake those bells? I have a hunch these are the same folks who are cooking and serving drinks at the Eagles, Elks, Masons, Kiwanis, and American Legion Spaghetti dinners on alternative Friday nights, and I'm glad I guess to know that's where they are so as to avoid contact. If you don't think their displays of sacrifice and spirit smack of a profound divinity, just sit for a minute and imagine shaking that 97 decibel bell from 8:30 to 3:30 in your spare time in front of everyone you know in the small town you live in. These are the truly gifted, whoever they are. By now it's lunch time, and there are number of great places to stop in Downtown Bay City. On the West Side of the river, all of the chat and chew places feature great lunch plates. While lunch is digesting, start making your way toward Midland. For the single males on your list, the Green Spa in Kawkawlin specializes in the present that is always appreciated around the often lonely holidays. Just ask for a gift certificate for the "Yeah ah, hi, how you doing, um, I'm ah, here to get a massage?" massage. They'll know which one you mean. For any stepparents on your list, Target stores are featuring an electric facemask that with slight modification makes the perfect gift. Out of the box, the Salton Rejuvenique Facial Toning System intermittently delivers a small electric current to the wearers face, improving circulation, loosening saddlebags, and encouraging meaningful smiles and facial gestures during interactions with non-biological children. With slight modification however, the Rejuvenique system will provide the type of therapy most often needed by stepparents. By removing the 300 ohm resistor in the control unit, your loving stepparent is given the gift that he or she will truly remember- 110 wall socket volts sparking and crackling epidermally in tune with the chestnuts roasting over the open fire. As you open their gift to you- usually cheap sweaters, tea service sets from their dead aunt's estate or stolen corporate golf balls, think about their soon to be opened Rejuvenex systems and you'll once again know the feeling confirming tis' truly better to give, than receive. To wrap things up, I recommend two visits not because of a proper gift, but for the simple pleasure of who you will meet while there. The first of which is Midland's Peel n' Pare. Located downtown, this is the shop for warm holiday feelings. It starts with free fresh-brewed coffee and those little Pepperidge Farm cookies laid out Martha Stewartly on a platter of fine silver. Resonating throughout are the lovely Yanni and Zamfir Christmas melodies we have all come to love. A constant stream of attractively aging women emerge from and retreat to the back room, acting all giddy like they just got back from road-tripping to Canada and stuffing twenties in the shorts of oily bo-hunks while singing and swaying along to Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy." Lastly, if you have a chance to swing by the Bay City Mall, check out the "Your Name in Gold" kiosk just outside Waldenbooks. You will see a kind woman sporting eyebrows twice the size of Gene Shalit's. They're perched atop an elongated forehead shinier than a plain glazed donut, and set off by a tightly swirled cone-tail of hair not unlike Rapunzel's. Only after bearing witness to the prolonged stares, finger pointing, and frequent mutterings of "Oh my God!" from the large number of patrons strolling by her booth can you fully embrace the spirit of the season we celebrate in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ Almighty, amen.
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