December 6th, 2006
Some gifts have broad appeal: For instance, almost anyone would appreciate being given a big-screen television. But some gifts only suit certain types, and some very specific types are extremely hard to shop for. Fortunately, The A.V. Club knows these types, and knows just what you should get them. (Note: All prices are approximate suggested retail; shop around and/or get lucky, and you'll likely find many of these items cheaper. Except for Vincent Gallo's carnal services, which are obviously a bargain at any price.)
For Fretful Looking People Forever Sitting On The Edge Of Chairs In Wallpaper-Covered Rooms
Theories Of Everything: Selected, Collected, And Health-Inspected Cartoons By Roz Chast, 1978-2006 ($45)
New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast operates in the space where the absurd meets the anxious. Her standout cartoons for The New Yorker and other publications find the odd truths just beneath the surface of the everyday. She's too easy to take for granted in periodical pages, but this mammoth collection—alternating panel gags with extended autobiographical pieces chronicling, for instance, trips to stores selling abandoned airline luggage—is a reminder of her consistent, wryly acidic skills.
Find it at: General-interest bookstores
For the Guy Who Cleans His Sneakers With A Toothbrush
Where'd You Get Those?: New York City's Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987, by Bobbito Garcia ($35)
DJ, label head, rapper, writer, television personality, and all-around renaissance man Bobbito Garcia has produced a sneaker-head's wet dream in Where'd You Get Those? Garcia's book tells the story of New York's sneaker culture through the B-boys, basketball players, and hipsters who lived it. But the real draw is the giddy abundance of lovingly reproduced photos and ads of several generations of sneakers; it's guaranteed to make shoe collectors drool. Where'd You Get Those? is mostly about shoes, but it's also a loving document of the energy and electricity of graffiti-scarred New York street culture in a pre-Giuliani era.
Find it at: General-interest bookstores
For People Who Don't Have The Patience To Collect A Classic Television Show One Season At a Time
Get Smart: The Complete Collection box set ($199)
Just how exhaustive is Time-Life's Get Smart DVD set? It compiles every last episode of the spy spoof Mel Brooks and Buck Henry created. It comes in a phone-booth collector's box. All the episodes feature introductions from Barbara Feldon. Just about the only things missing are the little-loved 1980 Get Smart reunion movie The Nude Bomb, 1989's even-less-loved, depressingly titled Get Smart Again, and the unofficial animated knockoff Inspector Gadget. Buy the set before the upcoming film version (starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway) taints your memory of the show forever. Get Smart: The Complete Collection is like last year's ginormous 1st & Ten complete-series box set, except that it isn't total crap.
Find it at: wouldyoubelieve.com/dvd.html
For The Unsaveable Soul Who Doesn't Believe In Christmas Anyway
A Selection Of DVDs From Fall Thru Entertainment ($20 each)
Along with the Bank Of America viral video (you know, the guy singing U2's "One" with new, corporate-friendly lyrics) and the aborted O.J. Simpson book, here's another sign that America has truly hit cultural rock-bottom. This series of DVDs, including such titles as Ghetto Fights Vol. 3, Bar Brawls Uncensored, and Hood Life 2, features exactly what it promises: real people, from gangstas to jocks (though mostly gangstas), beating the shit out of each other. The fisticuffs range in tone from light and ridiculous to scary—there's a hearty difference between girls clawing aimlessly at each other and brawny dudes landing solid blows to the face. It's voyeuristic fun for a few painful minutes, but you won't feel like celebrating in the morning.
Find it at: ghettofights.com, many DVD stores
For The Hardcore Film Buff With A Spare Grand Laying Around
Essential Art House: 50 Years Of Janus Films ($850)
Bargain-hunter alert: Buying the original Criterion editions of the 50 movies comprising this massive box set would set you back around $1,500. Buy them in bulk, and it's just over half that. Granted, these discs are devoid of the extras included on the Criterions, but the set does include a handsome hardbound book that explores the history of one of the most important arthouse distributors ever, as well as the history of arthouse cinema in general And what a lineup! Antonioni, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Lean, Powell, Renoir, Tati, Eisenstein, Ozu, Truffaut, Polanski, Lang, Fellini, De Sica, Buñuel, Fellini, and more. Janus and Criterion are calling it "a film school in a box," and while it's an incomplete education, it'd make for a hell of a first semester. (And a cheaper one than most colleges offer.)
Find it at: deepdiscountdvd.com (where it's around $250 below list)
For People Who Think The Funny Pages Have Gone Downhill Since The '30s
The Complete Dick Tracy Vol. 1: 1931-1933 ($20)
Popeye Vol. 1: "I Yam What I Yam" ($20)
Continuing the happy trend of repackaging old comic strips with the kind of loving care once shown to museum exhibitions, IDW Publishing and Fantagraphics respectively offer the first two years of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy and the first two years of Popeye-centered strips from E.C. Segar's Thimble Theater. The feel of '30s comics takes some getting used to—the jokes are drier, the action rowdier—but Gould and Segar were master cartoonists, who drew weird little men with blank expressions and singular quirks. Once readers get a handle on the characters, these stories zip by so quick that it's hard to imagine how anyone 70 years ago could have stood reading only one a day.
Find it at: Online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or in your better local comics shops
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