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Holiday Giving 2013
By
Published: Nov 27, 2013
Category:
Beyond Classification
A Note from the Marketing Department: We often get e-mails like this: “You’ve said that Head Butler’s financial goal is to earn enough commission from Amazon so The Child can go to a community college. How can I help?” There’s no better time than the holiday season to explain how you can contribute: Because Head Butler’s business model is simplicity itself — sell stuff on Amazon, get commission — we encourage you to begin your Amazon shopping on this site. Click on any Amazon link on Head Butler and then go nuts, because every purchase you make during that session — not just the book you clicked on, but also a Marc Jacobs tote, an 85″ flat screen, or whatever — earns commission for Head Butler. (Here’s what doesn’t: putting items in a shopping cart and leaving them there for 24 hours. Do that, and Jeff Bezos pays not a penny in commission.) We know some of you have moral and political objections to Amazon’s bid to crush the publishing industry, its heartless exploitation of warehouse employees and its apparent plan to turn any local business not already ruined by Walmart into road kill. That’s all the more reason to start your shopping here — every penny of commission that Amazon pays Head Butler is one less penny for Jeff Bezos.
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Abbé Mugnier – the society priest of Paris and a friend to Proust — believed that there was indeed a Hell, but no one went there. I’m not that compassionate. I believe there is a Hell. I believe it’s right here. And I believe that its residents are people who don’t get the wisdom of Ram Dass: “We’re all just walking each other home.”
You are not those people. You care. You give, especially now, when the cruel close their wallets and their hearts to the poor and hungry. And because every single second of your life is not about you, I’ve assembled a gift list for the people whose hands you hold as you walk.
Nothing too expensive. (Well, there is one gift that is $200,500, pre-tax. But worth every penny, I feel sure.) Nothing too impractical. (Okay, the $200,500 gift.) The priorities are, as ever, useful and nurturing and not boring. And, whenever possible, beautiful.
Have at it.
STOCKING STUFFERS
Egyptian Magic
If there’s a skin problem this stuff can’t deal with, I can’t find it. We swab it on the kid’s wounds at night; in the morning, she’s well on the return trip to flawless. Burns, scrapes, skin irritations, diaper rash, sunburns, eczema, psoriasis — it’s the go-to cream. Dry skin? When an exceptional moisturizer is needed, we open the Magic. Some use it on their hair as a conditioner. As an anti-wrinkle cream, it’s a comparative bargain. After surgery, it’s said to reduce scarring. It’s… magic.
Pu-erh Tea
Alice Waters says this tea lowered her cholesterol. Others say it promotes weight loss (the health claim is that it dissolves fat cells) lowers blood pressure and calms the nerves. Pu-erh, one of the higher grades of tea grown in Yunnan province, has been fermented, aged, then pressed into an inch-thick circle. You break off the leaves you need, crumble them into a pot, douse them in very hot water for 30 seconds, pour off that first steep, and then brew your tea. Bonus: you can use the leaves for as many as eight steeps.
Timex Easy Read Watch
This is official watch of Head Butler’s editor. In a list of “best watches for Spring,” Esquire rates the Timex #1: “It works just as well from the workday to the weekend. Not to mention the simple retro face looks cooler than some watches that cost six times as much.” The cost: $26.
La Roche Anthelios Fluide Extreme for Face with Mexoryl
What’s so great about Anthelios with Mexoryl? Dr. Vincent DeLeo (Chairman, Department of Dermatology, Founding Director, Skin of Color Center, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and Beth Israel): “This product gives us almost perfect protection against sunshine.” And Mexoryl is convenient: It doesn’t degrade in sunlight. One application, and you may be good for 24 hours — even if you swim or exercise.
“Maybe You Touched Your Genitals” Hand Soap
On a long shelf in a Vegas gift shop were liquid hand soaps and sanitizers. They had “fresh meadow scent.” They were “fortified with Aloe Vera.” Mostly, they had terrific labels. I was especially taken with “Maybe You Touched Your Genitals” Hand Soap, which features an attractive woman in a crisp white blouse and a neighborly smile shaking hands with a man in a suit. But you might consider “Bitch Slap Those Germs” Hand Sanitizer.
Dead Fred, Splat Stan, Dead Mark, Hanging Harry
Just one look…
HOLIDAY MUSIC
A Christmas Gift to You
Critics say it. I say it. You will too: Fifty years ago, Phil Spector made the greatest Christmas record ever. A French horn. A monster string section. A choir of backup singers. Bells. And in the center, Darlene Love — Aretha before there was Aretha, testifying, begging, urgent as a holiday prayer. “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)” — is that not one of the greatest expressions of the holiday spirit you have ever heard?
Christmas with the Tallis Scholars
Founded in 1973 by Peter Phillips, this English group has released 50 CDs and given 1,600 concerts. Over the decades, the Scholars have become the gold standard of Renaissance music — I hear them every chance I get, and I am always transported. I’m hardly alone; several generations of music-lovers around the world have learned about Renaissance music’s gorgeous arcs of flowing sound from the Tallis Scholars. A 2 CD bargain.
FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES
The Polar Express
On Christmas Eve, a father tells his son that there’s no Santa Claus. Later that night, a train packed with children stops in front of the boy’s house. He hops on and travels to the North Pole, where Santa offers him the first toy of Christmas. The boy chooses a reindeer’s bell. On the way home, he loses it. How he finds it and what that means — that’s where you reach for the Kleenex. Says Chris Van Allsburg: “We can believe that extraordinary things can happen. We can believe fantastic things might happen. Or we can believe that what we see is what we get. But if all that I believe in is what I can see, then the world is a smaller, less interesting place.”
DESIGN BOOK OF THE YEAR
Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible
At last: a picture-and-text book that chronicles the career of Dieter Rams, the German designer whose work for Braun is clearly the inspiration for just about all of Apple’s products. He designed coffee grinders, toasters, pocket calculators, radios and hi-fi equipment on the same principle: “Weniger, aber besser” (translation: “Less, but better”). More than half a century later, Apple designer Jony Ive acknowledges that Rams is The Man.
DESIGN BOOK FOR ALL TIME
The World of Madeleine Costaing
She was French — born near Chartres in 1894, dead at age 98 in 1992 — but you can’t really say she was a French decorator. “I can take inspiration from a scene in Chekhov as from a dress by Goya,” she said, and she wasn’t kidding. In one of her rooms, you could be in Russia, in another room London. Most of the time, the mood she created was timeless, poetic, a fantasy. Her shop in Paris was on the first floor; from the street, it looked like an apartment with picture windows. Madame was often on the scene. She was as idiosyncratic as her antiques — her lips were flaming red, her eyelashes were pasted on, and she wore a wig that announced itself as a fake because she kept it on with a black elastic chin strap. And as she had for decades, she would dress to match her upholstery. As she said, “There is always beauty in mystery.”
STILL THE ONE
The Fault in Our Stars
When Hazel, the 16-year-old narrator, was 13, she almost died, and there was that grim scene in the ICU when the cancer was joined by pneumonia and her mother asked “Are you ready?” and she said she was and her dad was trying not to sob and then — surprise, surprise — her cancer doctor managed to drain her lungs and she got admitted to a trial for a drug that didn’t work 70% of the time but it worked in her, and now she’s 16 and going to Wednesday night Support Group meetings. Is Hazel going to narrate a cancer book? No way. Because cancer books suck. This is a love story. And a great one.
BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR
Eleven Rings
Phil Jackson’s new book takes you through his greatest games as a basketball player and coach, but “Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success” is not a book about basketball. It’s about leadership. Really, it’s a book about vision. First, having one. Then, selling it. In Jackson’s case, it’s not an easy sell, for he’s telling stars to forget about stardom and play as a team of equals — a team of brothers.
FOR WOMEN ONLY
I’m On My Own, And So Are You
Jusy Resnick loves to help “women in transition” — women who are undergoing a major life change. Widowhood. Divorce. Unemployment. A career reassessment. Anything that says: “From now on, you must live differently. Now you must rely on yourself.” Some of these women are rich, but they don’t feel it. Suddenly they’re only half as rich as they used to be. Or they’re less than rich and contemplating life on a fixed income. Either way, they do the math — or Judy does it for them — and see that their old way of life is unsustainable. This book is for all of those women.
SO IT’S NOT LUMINOSITY
Mental Clarity
I’m reluctant to be writing about anything you put in your mouth that isn’t food. Herbal supplements aren’t regulated, and high standards depend on the conscience of the people who own those companies. If you’re the sort of person who buys these supplements and doesn’t read up on the possible side effects, you could damage your health. So this may just be me: I’ve been unusually calm. I’m dealing with situations with less of the hysteria and desperation that used to afflict me when I didn’t get my way. And the main thing: The idea factory is working overtime.
BEAUTIFUL AND USEFUL
Zojirushi Stainless Steel Vacuum Insulated Mug
Hot stays hot. Cold stays cold. What is astonishing about the Zojirushi is how long hot stays hot and how long cold stays cold. Fill it with 16 ounces of steaming coffee in the morning, and six hours later, you can still burn your lips. Put ice cubes in a cold drink, and, six hours later, there’s still ice. Stylish? It’s a sleek 9.5 inches.
Yamaha Micro Component System
Reader review: “The Yamaha system is the best I’ve ever heard, and easy for a low-tech person such as myself to install. When my high-tech brother visited and said ‘What’s this?’ and popped his iPhone in to test it, his only comment was ‘Wow!’ Great system, great price for a boatload of features. Had to thank you!”
SURFACE MATTERS
Clarisonic Skin Care System
How good is it? This good: You may never need to visit a dermatologist again. You may never need a facial again. [Which is why, for the price of two or three facials, you can call the Clarisonic a bargain.] Why it is so great? Because it doesn’t scrub. It cleanses — a sonic frequency of more than 300 movements per second works on your skin to clean it, then smooth it.
SEXY SEXY
C.C. Adcock
This CD is just plain lewd. It’s got a boogie beat, atmosphere goopier than Louisiana fog, production that emphasizes the beat, molasses-thick lyrics that don’t aspire to profundity — it’s the good times music you’ve been looking for. Late-night transport to a sexy mystery.
A Sport and a Pastime
For me, James Salter is the most elegant writer in America. Surgical and swift, he can do more in a sentence than most of us can do in a paragraph. In 1967, he wrote an erotic 192-page novel set in France. It’s about a rich young American and a French shop girl, and you can smell the wood smoke and see the expensive sports car as it turns off the leaf-strewn road into the small French town….
ATTITUDE CASE
Bad Monkey
When it comes to madness in South Florida, Carl Hiaasen is your man. This time, his hero-of-sorts is Andrew Yancy, a disgraced cop now inspecting restaurants. Yancy has a human arm in his freezer. The result of a boating accident — or a murder? That investigation is just one of the balls Hiaasen juggles. How he does it is beyond me — I’m a simple sort, and one subplot completely lost me — but veterans of his bestsellers will find plenty of hilarity.
ADMIRABLE
Churchill
This short book is not about Churchill the God, but Churchill the extremely interesting man. Yes, Churchill drank whiskey or brandy all day — “heavily diluted with water or soda.” Yes, he stayed in bed as much as possible, for as he told Paul Johnson (who interviewed him at the tender age of 17), the secret of life is “conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.”
MEN’S MEN
The Tender Bar
J.R. Moehringer’s father was out of his life before J.R. was old enough to remember that he was ever around. His mother, suddenly poor, moves into her family’s house in Manhasset, Long Island. In that house: J.R.’s mother, grandmother, aunt and five female cousins. And Uncle Charlie, a bartender at a Manhasset establishment beloved by locals who appreciate liquor in quantity. Well, a boy needs a father. If he doesn’t have one, he needs some kind of man in his life. Or men, because it can indeed take a village…
Johnny U
In Johnny Unitas, we are talking about a genuine hero — and not just because he is regarded, almost universally, as the greatest football player of the first half of the twentieth century. Unitas is thrilling to read about, and to think about, because his struggle took place in the open, in real time, with the outcome uncertain and physical pain guaranteed. Unitas never complained. He never made apologies. He had a job to do, and it was his responsibility to get it done.
The Unit
These warriors are better trained than any soldiers on the planet. They’re so slick they seem to be reading each other’s minds. They’re brutally efficient with every kind of weapon. And when the killing’s done? Poof. They vanish. No medals. Not even any identifying marks on their uniform.
Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans
In the early 1960s, Henry Ford II decided to build Ford’s market outside of the United States by kicking ass in European competition. His idea: buy Ferrari. And he had a deal — almost. When it fell apart, he had a rival and a mission: beat Ferrari at Le Mans. The odds against Ford were ridiculous. An American-built car had not won a major European race since 1921. Ford would have to build the most technologically advanced racing car in history. You don’t have to care about cars to love this story of crazy courage and over-the-top commitment.
SMART AS A FIFTH GRADER
Ready, Steady, Shoot: The Guide to Great Home Video
Dad is never in home videos because he’s the one behind the camera. So maybe he should get better at it? What Roger Sherman has done here is conduct a kindergarten class. (Don’t feel patronized — remember: everything you need to know, you learn in kindergarten.) And these basics read as much like guides to life as to video.
FOR THE COFFEE TABLE THAT HAS EVERYTHING
A Village Lost and Found
Brian May — lead guitarist of Queen — went on to earn a PhD. from Imperial College, London. He wrote some learned books, and then he took a lifelong interest in stereoscopic photography and produced a picture-and-text book that is at once a historical chronicle and a work of art. (The book comes in a slipcase; in a separate folder, you get a 3-D viewer.) The pictures are of small English village in a magical, soon-to-vanish 1800s moment. The book has about 80 scenes, some in color. Intelligently, the left hand page offers a large single image. On the right, you’ll find two panels of that image. Slip the page into the 3-D viewer, let your eyes relax — and enter a world that’s 150 years old.
COOL KIDS OF 2013
Beth Hart
In past CDs, Beth Hart has channeled Joplin, Aretha, Etta, Billie Holiday, Otis Redding. On this one, in her notes, she also acknowledges “the great Amy Winehouse.” Not doomed Amy, but the Amy who, in her music, hoped love would redeem her. And so, on “Bang Bang,” her songs sometimes even touch on… happiness. But really, the words don’t matter much. The performance is. Innovation? Not her thing. Passion is. Rage. Abject, on her knees, devotion. Think: If Janis Joplin could sing on key…
Bombino
This protein-rich music is great for parties (you will come to be bored by friends asking “What is that?”), a lifesaver on rainy mornings when you don’t want to get out of bed, a good candidate for serious listening, a caffeine hit for long sessions of work when your friends are getting buzzed on Adderall, and, so far from least, an essential ingredient for ecstatic couplings at midnight. What’s so great? First the writing: it’s all hooks. Hooks upon hooks until you are locked in a groove. But it’s mostly Omara “Bombino” Moctar’s guitar. It slithers. It buzzes. It’s round like Knopfler, spacy like Hendrix, concise like Ali Farka Toure.
Lou Doillon
She’s the daughter of Jane Birkin (yes, the inspiration for the Birkin bag). She started acting at 5, and has appeared in 80 movies. Tall, stick thin, she is the face and muse of Givenchy. And, last year, at 30, she launched a music career with a CD called “Places,” which astonished its creator and the French audience alike when she was named best female performer of the year at Les Victoires de la Musique, the French equivalent of the Grammys. Great French pop music? Hey, it happened.
COOL KIDS (IMMORTAL SECTOR)
Cesaria Evora
Cesaria Evora’s specialty was morna, an intensely melancholy, minor-key music, sung mostly in Portuguese. But for Evora, Cape Verde’s musical tradition was only the first reason that her songs were odes to longing and regret. Although she was a local star by 20, she never left the islands until she was in her mid-forties, when she finally made her first recordings. It wasn’t until her 50s that she became the darling of the world-music crowd. But she never veered from the music she’d made for decades.
Otis Redding
Otis Redding’s genius was in his voice, easily the most distinctive in the history of soul music. “Rasp” doesn’t begin to convey how rough it was. Imagine someone who’s been yelling for hours, whose vocal cords are so ragged he should really be home drinking tea and honey. Instead, he goes on stage and shouts out his songs until he reaches a pitch so desperate he dispenses with lyrics entirely and barks: “Got to/got to/got to/got to….” No wonder Janis Joplin attended every Otis Redding concert she could, standing close to the stage and, in essence, going to school on Otis so she could learn how he made his songs — to use her word — “visible.”
Miles Davis
This soundtrack was recorded in a single, champagne-fueled session as Louis Malle looked on. At one point, a bit of Davis’s lip blew into his mouthpiece; he pressed on. There were repeated takes of certain ideas; a number of tracks on the soundtrack are variations of earlier cuts. No matter. This is one of the greatest jazz soundtracks in film — some say the greatest. The trumpet couldn’t be more evocative: mostly slow and breathy, thoughtful and tender, lonely and okay about it. In a word: cool. The quintessence of cool.
Nick Drake
Nick Drake has a cult. And has had it ever since he did or didn’t kill himself in 1974 at age 26. It’s a sad story, and that, of course, is part of its attraction. Nick Drake was a riveting character — six feet, three inches tall, with broad shoulders that he hunched up, like a turtle preparing to hide its head. He started playing guitar at an English boarding school, where, in the mid l960s, he could not help but be influenced by the Beatles. He moved on to Cambridge University, where he was an indifferent student — all he cared about was writing songs and perfecting them.
JJ Cale
The titles suggest simplicity: “Call the Doctor,” “Crazy Mama,” “Don’t Go to Strangers.” But the songs are not at all simple — they defy categorization. Country, blues, jazz, shuffle, Okie rock: Cale’s music cuts across genres. The common thread: you have to tap your feet. “He’s good in a studio,” a Tulsa friend said. “But you really want to hear him when he’s playing on the back porch…”
KNITTED BEANIES (AND MORE) THAT DON’T SUCK
Lucy Nathanson started knitting when she was 11. Never divulge a woman’s age, so let’s just say she’s been knitting long enough to become a brand — and a go-to source for knitted hats, scarves, gloves, berets, classic ribbed hats, cloches, caps with ear flaps,
a 4-sided number, some slouchy caps, and caps in shapes that defy description, crafted in cashmere & merino wools, tweeds, ombres, even soft acrylic blends for those with aversions to itchy foreheads. Sample her wares at Chapeaux de Lulu. Do tell her the butler sent you.
FOR SOMEONE WHO HAS EVERYTHING
The Bentley Flying Spur
The 6 litre W12 engine can take the Flying Spur from 0-60 mph in 4.3 seconds and achieve a top speed of 200 mph. Inside it’s calm, thanks to the specially-designed soundproofing installed in the floor and the doors. Think of a limousine. Think of a sports car. Think of a Flying Spur. Think of $200,500.
