ladymag & co. had its holiday party the other night; i estimate that i had 350 separate occasions to consider the crime that is footless tights. technically, they don't make everyone bovine - the highfashionladymag types looked just as underfed as they usually do - but they still make no sense. one wears tights because they 1) make shoes more comfortable, 2) keep the sticks warm, and 3) allow one to slack on shaving. footless tights? no good for any of that. the non-tighted folk popped up along the standard holiday bell curve - a handful of women rocked the awkward colleague cleavage, an older handful had christmas light necklaces, and everyone else wore slacks instead of jeans and reapplied their makeup. i was right in the middle, as usual (i wore my peer pressure pants and three pounds of liquid eyeliner), but i think i'm going to aim for the center by hitting both of the extremes next year. like, this by itself bores me; slap a dozen of these on it and you've got something, boy.
elsewhere in holidayland, i'm waffling about whether or not to purchase a christmas tree (we are not christian and we already have a tiny live tree, but i'm addicted to that fir-in-the-living-room smell, and i've been working on ornaments for weeks). i covet something like jen's live tree - it might not support ornaments, but it's a good size nonetheless, and she'll get to plant it someday. the live tree my parents bought when i was 2 became a monster fort in the twenty years we had it in the backyard,* and i'd love to start a similar tradition - but no yard, baby.** the missus and i have discovered that we both had traumatic tree experiences as kids: in sixth grade i lost my shit when we passed on an ugly tree, thinking that no one else would buy it and it would spend christmas alone. joe, in turn, couldn't handle the fact that they were all dead. if we could use a cut tree afterward, that would be more acceptable - but we have no fireplace, and people don't eat trees nearly as well as goats do. the best compromise i've got thus far is to get a tree on christmas day, when everything still at the lot*** is bound to be trashed the next day anyway. then we'd...sort of be saving a tree from a meaningless demise. but we'd still be encouraging the industry. and, well, i wouldn't get my smell fix. what to do?
*when mom sold the house, the new owners promptly axed the tree. i wish them ill.
**and besides, if i had a yard, i'd have a goat. no baby tree could withstand a hungry goat.
***that is, the sidewalk in front of the deli.
hmm, footless tights: my mother didn't let me wear em in 1990, so I get an illicit thrill from wearing them now.
ReplyDeleteok, that's a pretty lame defense.
that's one of the reasons i have tattoos and keep putting holes in my head, so i'll buy it.
ReplyDeleteon a totally unrelated note, i just went to a beauty sale at a girls' magazine and scored a tom waits cd for fifty cents. what was that doing there?
Of course, you could pop over to Urban Outfitters and pick up a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. I have gone treeless since 1996 (from dorms or sloth or whatever reason), but I saw the box in the window. "This Tree Needs You," it said. Comes with its own red ball ornament, too, for the full effect.
ReplyDeleteIt speaks to me, in that I am, in many ways, Charlie Brown. Hell, I'm almost down to two hairs on the top of my dome. But the line near the end of the special always gets me. "I killed it. AARRGH! Everything I touch gets ruined!" (Exit stage right, "O Christmas Tree" plays him out.)
tom - they just re-issued vince guaraldi's charlie brown christmas album, in case you want that non-rockin- around-the-christmas-tree sort of holiday.
ReplyDeleteon tights, they got dakota fanning. on trees, my willpower is circling the drain - my ornaments are really cute...
ReplyDeletethe guaraldi album is pretty much the only crimmus music i can tolerate. it's always a relief when the fam throws it in the cd player, breaking up what would otherwise be an all-Burl Ives, all the time nightmare.
ReplyDeletejust to be clear, i too was sad that some trees don't find a home. the fact that they were all dead didn't really move me one way or the other.
this is what i'm talking about - just got back from the office holiday party, complete with yankee swap. scored myself a small rosemary bush shaped in the conical christmas tree mold. it's alive, it smells nice, it makes my food taste better, and it's small enough to be acceptable to this non-christian.
ReplyDeleteget thee to the flower district.
joe - what, you no like phil spector christmas album?
we have the rosemary bushes up here as well - i spied one on 9th avenue in midtown when i was shopping for roses. that's a solid alternative as well, and one i forgot to mention - but the size thing still gets me. i don't know if 2' will hack it with all the shit i need to hang.
ReplyDeletespeaking of ornaments, i'm giving myself the sketchy shopper award for picking up 50 hooks and 50 pairs of latex gloves at the hardware store on the way to work this morning.
Already have the album, btw. And I too don't like Burl Ives that much.
ReplyDeleteBut the iron-clad veto must reign over Mannheim Steamroller, and no other band. It has been enforced by me since I was eight--a sign that I knew from an early age that my musical tastes were different from that of everyone else in my family.
(Of course, they'd pop in an Elton John CD to replace the Steamroller. Or, worse, Manhattan Transfer. It was the 80s, so there was certainly different degrees of suck--overplayed suck, done way too much coke suck, positively sucktastic, etc. You had to endure some wretched stuff back then, especially if the knobs on the radio were not yours to control.)
Did I say CD? I meant record. We had records back then, you know.
ReplyDeletelooks like i'm totally late to the party, but i'm commenting anyway. i had totally forgotten that on the east coast they say "yankee swap"; in cali they call it a "white elephant" gift exchange. and i got away with a kozmo.com fleece! remember kozmo?
ReplyDeletealso, a friend helpfully provided a link to the "charlie brown pathetic tree."
i think a yankee swap and a white elephant swap are slightly different things: though the gift-stealing goes on at both, yankee swap (at least the way we do it here) is for new gifts. swaps out here tend to be full of gift cards, which get yoinked back and forth pretty furiously. i'm actually pretty stumped about what to do for ours, since i don't want to do a gift card - suggestions? we're supposed to spend $10. last year i brought a cutting board, which is fairly unsexy but turned out to be popular.
ReplyDeletebottles of wine were quite popular here (i.e., they were the most frequently "stolen"). though the most amusing was when ms. lily, a very nice lady in her 70s, opened her gift and discovered a 6 pack of amstel light.
ReplyDeletethere were also a lot of homemade baked goods, which were fairly popular. one word of warning: my office probably skews older than most. thus, only one gift card (blockbuster - $10), which i actually picked and then exchanged for the rosemary holiday bush.
our yankee swap was as lauren described, not a white-elephant swap. though the person who brought the christmas-themed socks may not have gotten the message. or more sadly, maybe he/she did.
what is it with new homeowners axing beloved former live Christmas trees? We had a pine tree in our yard that my folks planted their 2nd or 3rd Christmas together, and when the family house-swap occured, my BROTHER chopped it down. And practically crowed about it. Turns out it was problematic for the power lines to the house, but dude.
ReplyDeleteWe have a teeny balsam fir, and it is nice (& aromatic). The moral and environmental ambiguities of tree-purchasing stood no chance against the charming Quebecois guy manning the tree stand at 110th, nor against my desire to have the first Christmas I host the folks for be sort of normal.
But I stand by the idea to rescue a poor little tree on Christmas day. My environmental efforts this season are directed toward turning off lights and chargers that drain power.
Hey, Jake, a friend of Josh's friend works at Annenberg in Bklyn...by the way.
at our white elephant, we exchanged mostly new (but rather odd) items -- this one was a particular favorite. our price limit was $25, so i can't really help with yours, lauren. maybe some good coffee beans?
ReplyDelete