I remember my favorite present. I was about 7 and woke up one morning to find three new and shiny things next to my bed. A hip little doll baby with caramel skin, freckles, lashes and blue eyeshadow. She sported matching shorts and tunic in Fuchsia pink with jewel-tone Scottie dogs in turquoise, emerald and […]
Archive for the ‘Shopping’ category
Inconspicuous consumption
Welcome to Black Friday, Whatsiters. I hope you are curled up in a post-Thanksgiving haze, browsing your favorite news sites, sipping coffee, and giving a second round of thanks that you are not battling crowds at the mall. In October, I went to the Washington City Paper’s Crafty Bastards craft fair, which turned out to […]
Son of and it’s only a dollar
I like records. You knew this already, many of you. Records are making a big comeback, too. In my house, they never went out of style, but now many brand-new releases on vinyl also come with a free digital download of all the songs. You can have the large-format artwork, the analog warmth, *and* the […]
Alien fresh jerky
About a three-hour drive northeast of LA, on the road to Las Vegas, you’ll come across the World’s Largest Thermometer. It’s mighty impressive, but it’s not my favorite roadside attraction in the town of Baker, California. That honor goes to a little jerky store down the street. Not just any kind of jerky: Alien Fresh […]
The deed is done
Some readers — notably this one, this one and this one — thought this day would never come. After the catastrophe of discovering its soft top leaked like Aldrich Ames, after the horror of finding the top wouldn’t go up and down properly, after the fright of the ill-fitting valve cover, I have finally seen […]
Early Christmas presents for you, or last-minute gift guide? You decide.
Have you noticed that low-cost 1980s-era gifts are back all over the tee-vee set? I know that they re-appear nearly every Christmas season, but this year they seem really ramped up. Is it a sign of the recession, or simply cheesy nostalgia? Who knows? Who cares? But those annoying commercials everyone loves to hate are […]
The finer things
I’m beginning to understand that one of the benefits of being in a relationship is learning a whole new set of consumer skills. It is no doubt my relative paucity of relationships that has left me unaware of many of the finer things in life. Like Whole Foods. WF became a phenomenon when I was […]
