We once had a boyfriend who sent his sister an Alien doll for Christmas – with a note that read “Thinking of you.” It didn’t go over well.
There was another friend we knew who received the signature red-and-gold Cartier watch box for Christmas – with a Timex inside.
Or how about the friend we know who brought bodega brownies to a Secret Santa office party?
And we’ll own it: we’ve offered a few gifts in our lifetime that weren’t exactly gifts from the magi. The ones where you feel a sense of shame creeping up your neck as everyone witnesses the opening of…The Diary of Anne Frank. “Oh, how perfect; it’s just what I wanted to read.” Not. Total humiliation.
The truth is, we all know holiday horror stories. We could write a book: Good Intentions, Bad Gifts.
That’s why we’re here with this year’s Home for the Holidays Gift Guide, the second of our annual holiday gift guides.
Head home for the holidays with any of these items – and you’ll be a holiday hero.
Some candles, like some guys, are all about packaging: gorgeous vessel, nice box – and then…fizzle. Some candles (and some guys) make you wonder why you bother.
And then there are the other candles (and other guys). Those candles you’re aware of as soon as you enter a room. That fragrance permeating the space: it’s transcendent; it’s ethereal – and you just have to ask the host/ess where she lifted them.
Chances are, it’s an Atelier Cologne candle. The master perfumers behind Cologne Absolue, the signature formula in Atelier Cologne with long-lasting sillage (that’s the tail of the cologne, in case you don’t already know), have created a line of candles with a percentage of fragrance oils much higher than the industry standard.
Atelier Cologne’s signature citrus blends use a concentration of 15-20%, which is the equivalent of eau de parfum. Using a cotton wick, and a custom blend of vegetable and paraffin waxes, with French candle-making techniques, each Atelier Cologne Candle burns fifty hours. That’s enough to make your bedroom smell as luscious as a lemon grove all winter. Now that you’ve found the right candle, go find the boy.
Available in Orange Sanguine, Grand Neroli, Bois Blonds, Trefle Pur, and Oolang Infini. Lead-free, cotton wick. Made in France.
PRICE: $45.00 / 6.7 oz. candle
LINK: Atelier Cologne Candles
Using the name of a Leonardo Da Vinci drawing for an iPod/iPhone speaker system might smack of hubris – and yet, Coby’s Vitruvian Speaker System CSMP175 brilliantly evokes the iconic “Vitruvian Man” drawing done by Da Vinci of a male figure inscribed in both a circle and a square. You know it; you’ve seen it in every art history text – as well as in countless cultural references – and the Vitruvian Speaker System makes you see it anew.
The Vitruvian reference is to the rotating, motorized iPhone/iPod dock: with a touch of the button atop the unit (or by using the full-function, infrared remote control), your iPhone/iPod rotates ninety degrees onto its side, thereby switching to Cover Flow to enable the browsing of your albums or the viewing of movies in widescreen video playback.
Meanwhile, a built-in universal dock charges your iPhone/iPod (as well as any other portable) during play – and there’s also a safety arm to reinforce a horizontal iPhone.
Sleekly designed, with adjustable ambient light in bluish-purple, the Vitruvian has power, volume, and lighting buttons on top, and auxiliary and power ports in the rear, and comes with a 3.5 mm stereo input for use with any portable audio device.
As for the quality of the sound, the Vitruvian boasts full-range speakers with 20W total output power (thanks to two one-inch tweeters and two 2.75″ full-range drivers), as well as bass boost. By attaching the auxiliary cable, the Vitruvian can also be used as computer speakers.
Perhaps best of all? The Vitruvian is about the least expensive iPhone/iPod speaker system out there (it won’t even cost you a Benjamin…) and yet, with its solid performance and chic styling, the Vitruvian looks like it belongs in a glossy, shelter magazine – as well as in your home.
PRICE: $59.99
LINK: Coby Vitruvian Speaker System CSMP175 for iPod and iPhone
No doubt you’ve been using Verbatim, the pioneer in information storage, for years: to back up your files while traveling. (And don’t even tell us that you don’t back up – but if you don’t, get to Verbatim’s website right now, without reading any further.)
From our experience, Verbatim’s portable hard drives have been lifesavers while on a cruise – particularly when we’ve photographed three thousand Speedos and square cuts. Those are the photos that you definitely don’t want to lose.
Now, to help raise funds to fight breast cancer, Verbatim has partnered with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Fund to create a special palm-sized, pink edition of the Verbatim’s performance-driven Acclaim™. In case you don’t already know, one in eight American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime – and nearly 40,000 women will die from breast cancer this year alone.
Enclosed in shiny pink (Pink! Think Pink! Wouldn’t Kay Thompson have been proud?), the Acclaim USB portable hard drive is one of the smallest in the industry – as well as one of the most powerful. Compact and stylish (as an object, it’s downright chic!) and compatible with all USB connections (Windows and Mac), this special edition Acclaim has a storage capacity of 500 GB. That’s right: 500GB – that’s a helluva lot of Speedo photos…
With a seven-year limited warranty, the pink edition of the Acclaim also includes Turbo USB software and Nero BackItUp & Burn Essentials software for full-system backup and restore functions, as well as a special bonus 60-day trial of Norton Online Backup (5GB). Pre-loaded with backup software for file, folder, and complete system backup and recovery, the Verbatim Acclaim is packed in a limited edition box with pink ribbon and dove design.
Perhaps most important, Verbatim will donate up to $8.00 of the retail sales price of the Acclaim Hard Drive pink edition to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Fund, with a minimum guaranteed total donation of $35,000. Do something good for all the women in your life – and make yourself look good in the process. A glossy pink portable hard drive! Are you kidding!!! What are you waiting for? Order it now!
PRICE: $83.00
LINK: Verbatim 500 GB Acclaim USB Portable Hard Drive in Pink
LINK: Susan G. Komen for the Cure®
Since its founding in 1991, Coby Electronics Corp., headquartered in Lake Success, New York, has been producing some of the more innovative consumer entertainment products on the market – and then offering them at extremely competitive prices. With a number of design awards, as wall as US patents, Coby’s team of inventors, engineers, and designers have proven that a company can price competitively, without sacrificing quality.
A prime example of that innovation is Coby’s revamped LED TV line, which is focused on smaller screen televisions and TV/DVD combo products. Coby’s extremely portable 15.6″ LED TV (LEDTV1526) features a brilliant picture, as well as HDMI digital connection and a PC VGA connection for use as a television or computer monitor. With built-in dual ATSC/NTSC tuners for exemplary reception of digital signals, this baby is DTV-ready. Connect the Coby LEDTV1526 to Apple TV, via the HDMI cable – and you can stream Netflix and iTunes into your bedroom, bathroom, or doghouse…
This is one of the more portable widescreen televisions on the market (weighing in at about seven pounds) – and one of more sexy with a super-slim profile of less than one inch. That’s the difference between LED and LCD televisions: the LED televisions are lighter and thinner, and way more environmentally friendly, thanks to being mercury-free, and utilizing about 40% less energy that LCD televisions. Furthermore, LED televisions provide a much more dynamic contrast level than LCD televisions. (Herein ends the lesson.)
With two speakers, multi-language on-screen display, headphone jack, and sleep timer, this Coby baby might be following you everywhere you wander.
PRICE: $169.99
LINK: COBY 15″ Class LED High-Definition TV
For those of us who recognize the antecedents of Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts in the 19th-century works of Thomas Eakins and other visual artists who champion the male form (and particularly in natural settings in various stages of undress), it’s fascinating to come upon Mark Beard’s monograph of Bruce Sargeant.
Ostensibly dedicated to the work of his great-uncle, Bruce Sargeant, a gay painter whose canvases appear inextricably linked to the idealized male forms photographed by Weber, Beard’s tome is ultimately far more than a homage to an overlooked painter.
And while Bruce Sargeant’s work is featured prominently in Abercrombie & Fitch’s flagship stores, thereby evoking an even deeper connection between Bruce Weber and Bruce Sargeant, the truth is that Sargeant exists within the imagination of Mark Beard.
With a foreword by Thomas Sokolowski, Director of the Andy Warhol Museum (and how Andy would’ve enjoyed this literary trompe l’oeil…), Bruce Sargeant and His Circle is a loving rendering of the life of Sargeant and his circle, including photographs, articles, and letters about his lover, Yip. This is a life well-examined, with incredible detail and emotion (and arch humor: apparently, Sargeant met his untimely death on the wrestling mat…), all supported by paintings of strapping young, bare-torsoed men in towels, swimsuits, and suspenders, with surfboards and footballs, rowing and reclining in the company of one another. The paintings represent some of the most idealized homoerotic fantasies in the history of civilization – and there are very few of us immune to the call.
And yet Beard goes beyond Sargeant’s work to show us the influence of Sargeant on the works of those around him – and in so doing, Beard tips his hand, showing us his own virtuosic talents as he plays with several styles of painting over the course of subsequent decades.
Apart from Abercrombie & Fitch, Beard’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Whitney, in New York, as well as numerous other museums and universities around the world. This book is a splendid introduction to a painter whose imaginative skills go well beyond the canvas and deep into the homoerotic psyche. You’ll want this one for the study – and the bedroom.
PRICE: $45.00
LINK: Bruce Sargeant and His Circle: Figure and Form
Let’s face it, the Great Recession soured your interior re-design schemes. Out with the architect and designers; in with the glue gun. Not to worry, JC Penney’s new Studio line insures that you don’t have to sacrifice your love of luxury – or your wallet – for a little more style at home.
So you can’t afford a new sofa? Freshen up the one you have with a couple of faux fox fur pillows. These 18″ square pillows, in either black faux fox or mocha faux fox, are made of acrylic/polyester, and easy to spot clean. Cheap and chic: today’s new mantra.
And if you’re feeling particularly Hollywood glam (or even just Gaga outrageous), pair the faux fox pillows with a luxuriant faux foxtail throw.
Pictured on the first page of this gift guide (go back and look at it right now), the Studio Faux Foxtail Throw comes with a full six-inch (!!!) border of faux foxtail. Available in black fox or mocha fox, this super soft, micromink 50×70″ faux fur throw is polyester – and washable, just in case your fantasy gets carried away.
According to JC Penney, the faux foxtail throw provides endless decorating possibilities; we won’t argue that the possibilities are endless; we’re only saying that they’re not restricted to merely decorating…
All this fun and fantasy for the price of two cocktails. Are you kidding? All you need is a bottle of champers – and you’re set for Christmas morning. Who says luxury went out the door with the Great Recession. Not us.
PRICE: $16.99 / Faux Foxtail Pillow
$19.99 / Faux Foxtail Throw
LINK: JC Penney Home Lookbook
Pillow: JC Penney Studio Faux Foxtail Pillow
Throw: JC Penney Studio Faux Foxtail Throw
The first thing we want to say is that we know someone who hasn’t taken these headphones off his head for over a month. Well, okay, maybe two months. And that’s saying something because this brand-new, collaborative effort from two pioneers of lifestyle innovation has only been on the market since October.
You’ve probably heard of Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (sales of 23 billion euros in 2009), one of the global leaders in flat television and portable entertainment. As for O’Neill, that’s the original snow, surf and lifestyle brand, founded in 1952 by Jack O’Neill to sell the world’s first neoprene wetsuit. In September 2010, these two innovators in style and technology launched a new line of durable headphones designed to withstand – well, almost anything.
Tested on the toughest O’Neill team riders, the Philips | O’Neill Headphones were inspired by the styling and heavy-duty materials of wetsuits, thereby guaranteeing high performance while impact-resistant. The toughest of the four models, The Stretch, is both flexible and strong, with a retro, no-tangle cord, and a wetsuit-inspired super-stretch headband that hugs the head comfortably. As for the sound, we’re talking high-fidelity, quality sound delivered by powerful 40mm drivers and super-soft, noise-isolating, ear cushioning – which is, arguably, why that person we know has been seen wearing these phones for the past sixty days and nights.
The entire four-product line of Philips | O’Neill Headphones is a consummation of Philips simplicity and innovation, married to O’Neill’s core values, resulting in products that are definitive in their category. As the marketing has it, “Tested on animals,” by which they mean the toughest O’Neill riders the world over. If these phones work for the most daring boarders the world over, then there’s no question that they’re going to make you an action sports animal, too – in the bedroom.
Once these are around your head, you won’t be seen with anything else.
PRICE: $99.99
LINK: Philips | O’Neill Headphones : The Stretch
Caravaggio brought the boys into the shadows. It is Caravaggio as muse whom we thank for the nearly innumerable depictions, on canvas and in photography, of nubile Lotharios and street hustlers. Not only a master of chiaroscuro, Caravaggio depicted boys (and Cupid) as sexual provocative beings. And now Michael Fried, Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins, has brought Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610) out into the light in a thrilling exploration of the sixteenth-century Italian painter.
Based on the National Gallery’s Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, The Moment of Caravaggio examines the work and life of the Baroque master, focusing on Caravaggio’s groundbreaking use of realism and chiaroscuro – and his impact on his followers, as well as his great rival, Annibale Carracci. The ensuing account is as riveting as witnessing Antonio Salieri fume and connive at the mercy of Mozart’s genius.
At more than three hundred pages and with nearly two hundred color illustrations, The Moment of Caravaggio brings to life the world of Caravaggio and his circle, including Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, Bartolomeo Manfredi, and Valentin de Boulogne. For those who have wandered the streets of Roma, Firenze, or Venezia, long after the dogs have curled on their thresholds, this dazzling depiction of Baroque Italy will return you to an epoch where the night remains poised on the precipice between promise and folly.
Initially, you might place this book on your coffee table; don’t be surprised, however, to find yourself curled in an armchair, a bottle of Chianti at your side, reading late into the night – and marveling, not only at Carvaggio’s genius, but at Fried’s majestic rendering of the man and his world.
PRICE: $49.50
LINK: The Moment of Caravaggio
Sometimes a picture is worth more than a thousand words – and particularly when it’s that meaningful photograph that captures you at the peak of perfection: the lighting, the angle, the smoke, the mirrors – everything was right. If you could, you’d turn that photograph into a wall-sized testimonial to your own Narcissus.
You can. With J Gallery, all you need do is scan that photo and send it to their website. J Gallery specializes in transferring photos onto canvas – of nearly any size. Take a photo with any digital camera (5 mega pixel or higher) – and then get started on the J Gallery website. The resultant images are museum quality canvas prints.
Or maybe it’s that flea market find of that incredible oil painting of Blue Hill, Maine, circa 1968 – but the canvas is slightly worn and there’s a little rip in the corner. Take a photo of that painting – and send that photo to J Gallery. What you receive in return will be a museum quality limited reproduction of what might well be one of Edward Hopper’s last paintings.
The truth is, your own imagination is the only limitation with J Gallery. With more than six years in the business, J Gallery knows how to make art out of your photography.
PRICE: $50.00 and above, depending upon size
LINK: J Gallery
