The Museum

As anyone who's been through the site in December knows, I'm crazy 'bout Christmas. So I figured I m'ise well collect the photo essays, gift guides, and Christmas cards that I put together for the 2005 Christmas season together here in one place. Also, it makes it look like I've done something for the Museum, which has been woefully ignored for about eight months now.

Your table of contents:

1. The 2005 Five Bucks to Friday Gift Guide
2. My Department Christmas Tree of Hideousness
3. The New York Public Library
4. Bryant Park
5. The Pagan Stump
6. 2.0's first tree
7. Five Bucks Knickknacks
8. Jade, the Christmas Jade Plant
9. The most carefully decorated tree in Brooklyn
10. The Official Christmas Tree of Five Bucks to Friday
11. Christmas cards from 2005

2005 Five Bucks to Friday Gift Guide

That's really cumbersome if you say it out loud - two thousand five five .. Bleh. Next year, it won't be a problem.

Pete, taking a break from studying for his illegally attended law school classes, just downloaded the Boulevard of Broken Songs and a few other mashes from Party Ben's site, and has now decided to become a DJ himself. First and foremost, he'll need a copy of How to DJ Right. Then he'll need the iDJ. It allows you to plug two iPods in and mix them together, perfect for the aspiring masher and those of you out there who just need stuff, expenses be damned. For when this hobby escapes Pete's two-second attention span and he returns to squatting Columbia Law, help him fit in with another t-shirt and a rockin' office set from the MoMA Design Store. Jen, for her part, is getting Pete In Defense of American Liberties in hopes that she can get him interested in the ACLU with his fancy degree. Also, because Pete's a follower and it seems like this is one of the hot Christmas gifts this season, check out this weird and completely useless robotic chimp head. And because Pete believes money is no object, m'ise well get him this ridiculous thing from the ND store, and this shirt, just so he can burn it. And, the height of uselessness, a jewel-studded Winnie the Pooh Pez dispenser.

Ron's list is kind of a hodgepodge of helping others and crap that he wants himself. As far as the former goes, he'd love anything from the Cliff Notes body of work, largely to give to Pete and force him to get his literary allusions right. Also for Pete, but only because Ron's not quite an XL, m'ise well look at this super-fly shirt. And showing that his grasp on the appropriate is rock solid, he actually asked Lissa to get him the Flowers in the Attic design from Threadless. It's all but sold out, which saved Lissa from having to tell Ron he's really sick. She bought him the Diabolical Hot Dog instead, but you should all check Threadless out because they've got a massive sale going on right now. Several readers would've been getting gifts from their stockpiles, if only just about everything weren't already sold out. Ron would also like the bundle pack from McSweeney's of their comic book issue and the other issue that comes with it (he's mostly interested in the comic issue), and a power drill would be handy to fix up the damage that Pete inflicts on a domicile. And not that he needs the excuse anymore, but a Starbucks gift card would give him ample reason to get away from the office and go see what Kelly's up to.

Just like Faith No More, Jen cares a lot and she's out to save the world. She's taking the very Lisa Simpson stance of forgoing gifts of her own in hopes that people donate to some worthy causes, instead. The Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation is one. Catholic Charities is another. Because SKT reads Jen as Jewish, the American Jewish World Service is another. MoveOn, to help take the country back, and the Disabled American Veterans, to thank those who were lied to in order for Not-my-president's cronies' stock to go up. In a completely different vein, Penny-Arcade's annual Child's Play drive provides toys, games and cash for children's hosptials across the country and now the world. And if you must get Jen something, this dress is her style, as is this shirt. And with all that good-doin' in the course of a day, doesn't the gal deserve to snooze in a set of Wonder Woman underwear? Oh, and in case you're rich and really want to impress Jen, she'd dig a Vespa. Eggshell blue, please.

Lissa, having lived through Jen taking up guitar and knitting both in the past twelve months, needs a drink. Lots of them. And she therefore needs relief from hangovers. Help her get it with this egg and muffin toaster and some Gatorade. After that, help her knock Pete by sending him this card instead of one where she's dressed up like the Mariah Carey Christmas album cover. And since Jen's a fair way off from being able to create any bags or clothing or anything, maybe a nice bag from Sew Darn Cute would be in order. Tweet and Cake are both pretty rockin', and not beneath the fashion sensibilities of our glamour gal. Some pillows would help class the joint up, too. Oh, clothes are pretty friggin' sweet, too. A top from Antropologie, a skirt from Burberry, and some lacy unmentionables from Wolford. And, yes, Lissa will ask for lingerie every year that I do this thing.

So, there we go. Some people ask for more than others, and some don't really honor the bounds of normal wallets, but don't judge them for it. It's the holidays, and flights of fancy are more common in the coming weeks. Oh, and, hey - I took an ornament from the chruch tree. I need to give a six-year old girl something. Any ideas, folks? (Quick shout outs to Maxim and New York magazine since I pinched a few things from their lists.)

My Department Christmas Tree of Hideousness

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The New York Public Library's display

It is awesome. Night and day from yesterday's exhibit. Not that comparing the NYPL's stuff to my department tree is even fair, I'm just saying, is all. Also, I am of the firm belief that the library is as close as I'm going to come to setting foot inside anything resembling Hogwart's, for quite some time. Especially at Christmas - the upstairs looks like the Great Hall. My apologies for the dimness and shakiness of some of these photos - no flash photography in the library.

There's no real way to ease into this, since this is actually the first
thing you see upon entering the library. A twenty-five foot tree, covered
in lights and fake snow and woodland creatures.

Here are some of the woodland creatures - there are
plenty of owls in the tree, too, but none of those pictures
came out at all.

Note also the very majestic candelabras around the tree.

Here's the other side of the lobby. You'll note some
nods to multiculturalism that are a bit more tasteful
that those seen in this space yesterday.

Sorry about that menorah one, yeeks. I guess I was
shivering or something.

Here is the upstairs. No tree, but no less beautiful!

This picture actually came out pretty well, under the
circumstances. One out of nine ain't bad.

Bryant Park

Every December, Bryant is basically a series of tents and booths selling stuff. You can get some halfway decent gifts there, but by and large most of it is crap. Since I get nervous taking pictures of people's sellable wares, these pictures are just of decorations, instead of the junk that gets sold at the booths, which would be far more interesting of a photo essay. Perhaps next week if I'm feeling brave.

The aforementioned tents of crap. Just the back of them,
though. One of the guys that mans one of these tents has
the worst frosted tips I've ever seen in my life. Brutal.

For some reason, not too much says 'traditional Christmas'
to me than a lamppost wrapped in garland. If only it were a
gas lamp, to complete the ... uh. Setting? Illusion? Shit, I stalled out.

Here's the Bryant Park tree. It's decked out in ornaments
benefitting We All Have AIDS. Or drawing attention to
We All Have AIDS - something.

The tree is more impressive - but harder to photograph -
at night. Here it is looking red.

And here it is looking blue.

Here's the cool ice skating rink. It's not as iconic as the one
at Roc Center, but it's free (although they charge you for
the skates). As this site mentions, though, the tourist-native
ratio is lower than at the Roc, so if you fall here, you'll be noticed
by someone you know instead of just some yokel waiting to say
hi to Katie Couric.

William Cullent Bryant, namesake of the park,
celebrates very somberly.

While Gertude Stein, sitting thirty yards away,
looks on in disgust at everything happening.

The Pagan Stump

Our first reader submission. #15 sent this in yesterday, and rendered me dumb with awe. Check this thing out - she and her roommates call it the Pagan Stump.

Wow, there's a lot going on there. #15 says that this out uglies
my office decorations, and I have to whole-heartedly agree.
Let's see, we've got the holy family in there, surrounded by
lights, and apparently wrapped in a protective layer of
fishing lines. Or something. The random gold ribbon is a nice
hideous touch, too. Man, seriously, this is just crazy.

Of course that's a cardinal on top - it's coming from #15, after all.
I think we've got the cover of the new Maureen Dowd book
up on the wall, too.

My dad, who is insane, and my aunt, who is also insane,
have a Christmas tradition where they give each other the
ugliest gift they can possibly find. This started when Dad
gave my aunt a pickle ornament for the tree one year, and
has escalated Cold War-style to a mutually destructive
bonzanza of Christmas hideousness. Anyway, this would
be something Dad would buy for my aunt, but only if he
could get it for less than three bucks. And he'd leave the
price tag on it to make sure she knew about it, too.

Nice work, #15.

2.0's First Tree

Not her first, first, but the first she had after moving out. Her house never had one at collitch, so right after collitch, when she was living high on the hog solo in the Big Crouton, she bought this fantastic little tree for six bucks (should've been nine, but the guy put the tag on upside down):

2.0 made all of the ornaments herself, except for the star.
Note that she chose not to turn the lights on before photographing
the tree. All in all, probably the first tree I've ever seen whose
trunk is no thicker than its branches.

But I can't mock - my first tree when I was living in what Grafe
referred to for years as "the Hobbit hole" was a little potted
jobby I bought from Target that came with bows on it.

Here's some random Christmas stuff. Nothing struck my fancy when I was grabbing pizza, so I just took pictures of the knickknacks we've got around the apartment. Feel free to question every instance of me mocking someone else's taste after you see these...

I have a lot of nutcrackers, but this is the only one that I've got
with me in Brooklyn. My parents give me a nutcracker every year, and some
that I have are really elaborate - this one I've got is an elf and Santa
set that weighs about ten tons. You could kill people with it. Oh,
the other object there is the Maltese falcon. From Malta. Seriously.
You can also see our postcard from Alcatraz, a 19th-century
edition of Dante's Inferno and an early 20th Plutarch's Lives.

This is Jack Skellington. Guarding my stocking.

And Sally, his ragdoll love. You'll never believe it,
but these came as a set. Thankee thankee, Di.

These li'l guys hold the stockings that we put gifts in, since Jack and
Sally don't have much payload. Snoopy's got mine, the li'l red and green
mouse has 2.0's. Let's see, what books are they keeping safe for us... The Concise
Oxford Companion to Philosophy. I love those Concise Companions, by the
way. I've got the Philo one and the Classical Lit one, they're both fantastic
reference books. The Catholic Study Bible, a couple of Saramagos, Three
Gospels, which I had to read sophomore year, the Prophet by Gibran, the Death
of al-Hallaj (for the same class as Three Gospels), a book I can't identify,
Roscoe by William Kennedy, who wrote Ironweed. The Roscoe in question
has a last name of Conway, which is pretty cool, and Kennedy sets all of
his books in Albany, so it's doubly cool. The Known World is a quite good
book about slave-owning blacks. New York and Other Sins by Charlie
LeDuff is friggin' fantastic. And then we've got Everything is Illuminated,
which is also a great book. So, basically, we've got our stockings on the same
shelf as a bunch of good books. So there's that.

A professor friend of 2.0's gave her this awesome gingerbread
brownstone last year, and we decided it was too awesome to eat.
I mean, look at that thing.

Then you turn it around, and there's this weird cat-ghost
thing. What the hell is that?

And here's my pride and joy as far as Christmas tchotske go.
Those are the three wise men, made out of Michelob Light bottles.
My grandmother won these in a bowling tournament when I was
four. I thought they were awesome, so Gram gave them to me.
Again, when I was four. Ohhhh, yeah.

Jade, the Christmas Jade Plant

It's your Christmas moment of Zen, starring Jade, the jade plant 2.0 keeps in the bathroom.

Jade is absolutely unkillable. Which is good, because we're
ne'er too mindful of watering the plants.

I actually like this picture better, but you don't really get a
sense of where the plant is if this is the only shot you see.

The most carefully decorated tree in Brooklyn

This is the big thirty-foot tree someone randomly has in their front yard on Prospect Ave, which is decorated with great care. Sorry for the blurry shot, can't be helped.

The biggest tree in anyone's front yard in Brooklyn.

The Official Christmas Tree of Five Bucks to Friday

This is where everyone can rag on me because of the bizarre ornaments I put on my tree, and yet still have the audacity to mock the office tree.

2.0, for our first Christmas together, started a nice tradition of buying
us a pair of ornaments each year (actually, the first year it was two). These
are last year's. I probably should've left other ornaments in for scale - these
things are friggin' ginormous.

These are the ornaments from the first Christmas. I'm pretty sure
the pink one is technically 2.0's.

And this is one of this year's. I'm listing these first because when
we get into my ornaments, the class factor drops immediately.

This is one of my favorite ornaments that I've had since I was
quite small. I think the box says it's a Red Bird of Peace,
but I've never heard of such a thing. Doves are typically white.
Whatever, it's cute.

My aunt made this for me when I was one. It's a baked-dough
ornament, and for the first six or so years of my life,
I wanted to eat it every December. My mom prevented
this from happening, though. She always ruins my fun.

I bought this at a craft fair in kindergarten for a quarter.
2.0 does not understand why such an ornament was made,
but I have always liked it. It just looks yummy.

You may not know this, but I like Charlie Brown a lot.

OK, this one is where we transition into kind of the weirder ones.
2.0 and I, two years ago, celebrated New Year's first in Harlem and
then on Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn - quite a distance, we rang in midnight
on the 1 train, but that's beside the point. We were meeting some friends
of hers at this place that was described to us, when we asked a guy
on the street for directions, as "a bucket of blood." Astoundingly, this
description was used again when we were trying to find the same friend's
birthday party the next year. I've never in all my years described an
establishment as "a bucket of blood." Oh, the ornament. We stole it
from the bucket of blood's Christmas tree. It has Barbie on it.

OK, these are all three very nice, but still, we're getting weird.
What with the nickname, I get a lot of frog things. The frog in the foreground
is painted glass or something, and has got to be the most fragile thing on
the tree. The mushroom is not much more durable. The frog in the
background is Mr. Toad of Toad Hall, actually, I believe, from
the Wind in the Willows. I have a great illustrated edition of that
book at home. I love that book. I hope it doesn't suck - doesn't it blow when
you love a book as a kid and then you read it and it turns out
to actually really suck? Man, I hate that.

This is an old Charlie Brown ornament from
2.0's family tree, and a '66 Mustang.

This would be Kal-el, the last son of Krypton,
popularly known as Superman. We've entered the
mindlessly commercial part of my tree.

This is clearly the Starship Enterprise, leaving the orbit
of a hand-darned Christmas stocking. This ornament's pretty
valuable, actually - they really under-produced it because it
was the first in a series, and it goes for about $175 to $225 on eBay.

Well, the Enterprise needs something to fight
while it's on the tree, no? I just capitalized tree
out of habit right there..

That's right - it's friggin' Joe Montana in his
green Notre Dame jersey. I can't believe they made this
ornament - how freaking random is that? I don't even
know if Hallmark made a Montana in his 49ers jersey
ornament, but there he is, ol' number 3. Fucking Leinart
doesn't have a Hallmark ornament. The sucker.

And the last photo from our little tree, so MNP doesn't feel
bad about not having a topper - this is a felt Santa head from the 70s
that somehow I left my parents' house with. Good times.

Christmas cards from 2005: