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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 19, 2003)
_______________________________________________________________________________________ to a m b tt 19, — i J u t M t, 53 HUMOR .............▼ ............ E very year my partner, Floyd, and 1 rack our brains to come up with gift ideas for the relatives we love (hut avoid) and always end up sending food packages at the last minute as if our families were Don’t get me wrong; I love starving refugees in Afghanistan. jewelry. But I love a good bargain We’re partial to fudge made by more. On a recent visit to Tijuana I the Brigittine Monks of Amity, part bought a gorgecxis silver bracelet for ly because we like supporting local 6 bucks. vendors but also because we like say So I called a friend in the dia ing we’ve bought our gifts from mond business and asked him how fudge-packing monks. much it would cost to re-create the As our relatives age, however, diamond collar that costs more t(X\l has proven a less reliable gift. by Marc Acito than my subdevelopment. For instance, Floyd’s mother has He told me he could proba inexplicably lost her sense of smell, bly do it for $400,000. “Only $400,000?" and his stepfather keeps his digestive system in a I exclaimed, “I’ll take two!” plastic bag attached to his side, so I don’t really With the money I’ve saved I can feel comfortable making culinary choices for them now afford to buy a London taxi anymore. cab for $58,900 (because you know Luckily, last year Floyd bought himself a how hard it is to get a cab when you pair of $40 earrings at Neiman Marcus, and as need one) as well as a 42-inch a result we now receive a 158-page full-color plasma TV, just $8,930. (I’m guessing catalog that’s not only the size of a coffee table it’s so expensive because it takes a lot Kx>k, it’s the size of a coffee table. The catalog of derelict street people donating alone must cost more than the earrings— blood to make a 42-inch plasma TV.) which, incidentally, we returned. They certainly don’t call the place Needless eiman makes gift buying even easier by Markup for nothin’. Neiman sells jewelry that organizing the pages by family member. costs more than my house and my neighbor’s For your mother, for instance, it suggests a house combined. But who really needs a home burberry plaid bag, an ornament for the tree when you can have a dazzling 60-karat diamond and a pair of lovely carved crucifixes. collar? Then there’s the 18-karat diamond- Meanwhile, for your mother-in-law, they’ve encrusted watch for $50,000. That’s right, FIFTY actually suggested a restored 1940s slot machine TH O U SA N D DOLLARS, and it only has the numbers 12 and 6 on it. That’s $25,000 per num from the Golden Nugget, a corkscrew/bottle opener and a set of martini glasses. Really, what ber. I’m thinking that for 50 grand they could’ve better way is there to engender family harmony thrown in the other 10 numbers for free. The search for the perfect gift The Gospel According to Marc N than to tell your mother- in-law she’s an alco holic with a gambling problem? (Next year we’re giving her an intervention!) As the uncle to 14 children, naturally I was interested to see what Neiman had in owning rolled Dominican cigars or a baseball signed by Joe DiMaggio. No, for shopping advice you’ve got to stick with the gay boys, and so I turn to my friend BoBo, the guru of Retail Therapy. Each year, every member of BoBo’s family goes out and buys gifts for themselves and then calls the other family members to thank them for what they’ve bought. You can spend as much or as little on yourself as you like, and everylxxJy gets exactly what they want. It’s a perfect system. This year I accompanied BoBo to a fancy- pants boutique for some fancy pants— y’know, the kind of place where eager retail queens pour you glasses of scotch while they pick out $300 sweaters for you. BoBo got himself $2,000 in clothes, and I got pleasantly buzzed. The only people for whom BoBo actually buys gifts are people he’ll never know. Every year he “adopts” ___ _ a family from a battered Jk t fft 1 women’s shelter. Most of these women escaped from their abusive husbands with only the clothes on their backs and their chil dren in their arms. It’s only because of the generosity of people like BoBo that these families have toys at Christmas, as well as sheets, towels and everything else they need to start a new life. So while the rest of us are mnning around trying to fig- M ure out what to buy g f o r people who don’t really need anything anyway, BoBo’s taking care of the people who need the most. Now there’s a man who really knows how to shop. And that, my friends, is The Gospel According to Marc. J H AciTO’s first runnel, How I Paid for O il lege, will be published in September 2004. Write him at marc@marcacito.com. 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