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to a m b tt 19, —
i J u t M t, 53
HUMOR
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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.
MARC
The Portland Spirit
presents
WADE
McCOLLUM
New Year's Eve Party
Star o f Batboy and H cdwig
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
L i g h t s o u t a t 10:00 p . m .
and The Angry Inch
“McCollum is brilliant.’
-The Oregonian
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