I’ve been starting and stopping my rundown of “Return of the King” all weekend, and I just can’t quite get any headway on it. Part of this is due to the sheer scope of the endeavor, part of this is due to the fact I need to see it again to really get my head around the movie, and part of this is due to the fact that Jennifer Garner simply will not put on any clothes and leave my apartment. It’s been 48 hours already, and she simply won’t get dressed. So I’ve been distracted, is what I’m saying.
Trying to get away from her absolutely insatiable appetite (and who can blame her, really…I’m moist AND delicious), I spent the majority of the day yesterday finishing up my holiday shopping. It’s not exactly my ideal use of time: spending the Saturday before Christmas at my favorite French boutique, Targét, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet, especially when you’ve slacked on your shopping and have nothing with which to actually wrap them.
But it was that or yet ANOTHER strip tease from Ms. Garner, so I started up the ol’ Camry and headed out.
If you were like me…you know, a hip 20-something in the Middlesex County in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, you were asking yourself one question and one question only: “Where did all the white trash go?” And your answer would have been: “The Target out in Everett.” Now, I don’t mean to be hatin’ on nobody, but hot damn, this place was the land that mullets forgot. Look, I’m not talkin’ about poverty level here. I could care less about your income. Even plain ol’ meanness I can handle. What I can’t handle is ignorant peeps working in seeming concert to make sure I can’t actually move my cart inside a store that’s larger than most small towns. That, friends, turns me into Sean Penn in the presence of paparazzi.
I never been accused of being the most sensitive SOB on the planet, but in general, I’d like to fashion myself a fairly tolerant person. You do your thing, and so long as you’re not setting something on fire, I’m generally OK with your lifestyle and/or beliefs. But if you insist on loudly telling your daughter that she’s, “about to be popped in the mouth” while I’m shopping for wrapping paper, I’m sorry, but that gets my goat. By all means, think 400, 000 blinking, colored lights on your front lawn is the pinnacle of decorative tastes…just don’t park your cart at a 45 degree angle in the aisle and then give me the stare of death because I dare ask you to move it so I can get by you.
In short, what should have taken 10 minutes took forty-five minutes, in that the aisles and even main pathways of the store resembled downtown traffic at the height of the Big Dig construction. All I needed was wrapping paper, boxes, tape, and any last-minute gift ideas that tickled my fancy as I went through the store. So I try to wade through Homewares, Bedding, Kitchen Supplies, Electronics, Torture Devices, Ferret Furniture, Wicked Ugly Lamps, and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Find what I need, get into a mercifully short line, and get the heck out of Dodge.
Here’s a quick aside and public safety announcement. I feel I owe this little warning as a concerned consumer. I like the product I am about to discuss, so the company shouldn’t think about suing or nuttin’, but I just want t make sure y’all have the forewarning I myself did not.
So, a few months ago I bought one of those super-cool butane lighters. Looks like a pistol designed by Dr. Seuss, replete with trigger. It’s nominally child-proof, but if your kid’s played “Duck Hunt”, he could light something on fire with this bad boy. Anyway, I hearted this little lighter. I could never get the hang of matches. For one thing, I’m not a smoker. Even during those days when I smoked crack, I always had someone else light the match for me. Just not terribly handy with them. Couple that with the fact that the matches I currently own cost 99 cents for approximately 4 million of them, and you’ve got a lot of slightly charred fingertips.
So I have my lighter, and yea, verily, the heavens shone upon me, and candles were lit. Rooms were fragranced. Metrosexuality in a brief way was achieved. Passive verbs were thrown about like Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensemen. And life was good. But lo, darkness crept upon the land. The lighter began to fail. And first, it took merely another squeeze of the trigger to provide the warm glow. But soon, our hero found it more and more difficult to achieve the fiery blaze from his tri-wick jasmine-scented living room centerpiece. And sadness swept through the apartment.
So like, I had to buy a new one, is what I’m saying.
So I got this seemingly innocent replacement.
Took me a while to find this in Target. I looked in “Really Dangerous Things That You’ll Forget to Keep Out of the Reach of Children and Will Later Sue Us for Carrying But You Won’t Win the Lawsuit”, but that section only featured sharp, pointy things and objects that prominently featured a skull and crossbones logo. Eventually, after wading through a six-cart pileup near Home Appliances, I found the above bad boy in the Grilling aisle. So OK, that was my first warning. “Grilling”. I don’t own any grille that doesn’t have the name “George Foreman” on it, and even that I use sparingly lest my entire apartment plunge into darkness due to the electric overload it would provide. (You have to make a lot of choices in this apartment. Microwave or toaster? Air conditioning or television? Television or a lamp? Lots of choice. Stupid apartment.)
So my heart’s a bit ambivalent about this purchase. But it’s $3.50, and even if it’s not quite what I really need, at least I won’t be losing my shirt on this item. And yes, my wallet generally wins over my morality. It’s a problem, I know. But maybe, I rationalize, I found my first lighter in the Grilling section. Then I remembered that Star Market doesn’t have a Grilling section. Oh boy.
But there’s too much to be done. I leave Target, Death Machine in hand, hit three more stores, and 3 hours later, make it home. I carefully unpack all of the items from the bags, in case an errant touch between said lighter and another object could start an explosion that would put the Hindenberg to shame. After putting on the Haz-Mat suit, I open this tool of evil carefully, making sure not to point it at any of the gas-powered radiators in the apartment. The instructions are the equivalent to those of a Kodak camera: point and shoot. I figure the tri-wick is the best place to test this puppy out, as it’s nearing the bottom, and any errant flames would be absorbed into the side of the candle.
All I got to say is, why the word “flame-thrower” doesn’t appear on the packaging of this item will rank up there with “How does Jennifer Love Hewitt have a career?” in terms of things I’ll never understand.
Now, my old lighter had a very small, cute, adorable speck of fire come out of its tip when I pulled the trigger. My Weber Torch of Doom emits a roughly 4’ tendril of death from its fiery mouth. Lighting a candle with this example of Man’s Folly is a bit like using a John Deere riding lawnmower to shave. It’s just simply overkill. I could light candles while standing across the room from their waxy selves. I actually pointed this towards a candle, and it lit of its own volition. Just stunning.
So, in short, just be careful if you get or give this as a stocking stuffer this Christmas. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Great product, but only in the hands of the pure and pious and “not scared to die a fiery death if not used properly” types.
OK, there’s my “short aside”. Onto gift wrapping.
In this life, there is a natural distribution of skills, be they mental or physical. There are carpenters and painters and welders and poets and physicists and masons. In total, they support the life that we know as humans in the early 21st century. We have these skills not in total in the single person. We rely on others to supplant that which we lack, and vice versa, and as such form a lattice-like framework through which we can achieve the combined knowledge of our brethren.
Which is all a way of saying that I for the life of me cannot wrap a present.
Practice makes perfect, they say. Bull. I can’t get certain things, first and foremost supply-side economics. But running a close second we have gift-wrapping. Every year I pray for the “it’s that thought that counts” sentiments to kick in full force whenever someone receives one of my oddly-wrapped gifts. At least they know I didn’t have someone wrap it for me, I rationalize. My gifts always have that “wrapped by an elf with the shakes” charm affixed to each and every one.
My mother, on the other hand, could wrap a ceramic giraffe, life-size, and make it look like a compact disc. Simply stunning. Nary a crease, nary a torn piece of paper, nary a piece of tape out of place. Puts yours truly to shame. Hell, puts most professional wrapping stations to shame. So I didn’t inherent the dominant “wrapping gene” in this genetic soup that is I. I inherited a “looks like I wrapped it with my feet” recessive gene, so near as I can. Need examples? Glad you asked.
So here’s a wide shot of a typical scene last night. I’m in the dining room, ruing yet another wrap job, with the sights of a bachelor pad at Christmas time abounding.
OK, so now that we have the faux-arty shot out of the way, let’s zoom in to see the real damage here.
Note the anarchy that reigns supreme on this side of the gift. Notice the bulges from the resplendent creases that sit under this terrible triangle. Notice the “prison break action” in this top left corner, as if the present inside was desperately trying to wiggle its way out from the cocoon I had placed upon it. Notice the haphazard tape job near the bottom, as if I ran out of time and had to flee the country due to shame. Notice how you’d never guess that beneath this wrapping is a perfect rectangle, instead of what looks like a lopsided cake.
I can’t wrap. I can’t rap, either, but that’s besides the point here. 28 years old, a college graduate, by all accounts a fairly intelligent individual, and gift-wrapping is to me as difficult to grasp as basic common courtesy to anyone in Target on the Saturday before Christmas. At least I had fun with the tags.
Another tradition I’ve inherited from my family…the kooky tag addressing. Around gift 12, you just go bonkers. OK, I go bonkers, and simply putting, “To: Mom/From: Ryan” is like, totally wicked lame. Example: each year, my dad will give a gift to my Mom from “Marleena Avis". Marleena is the name of my Mom's Cabbage Patch doll that she got in '87. No one's really seen her since, but she still gets Mom a present every year. She also gets a present from "Elmo Sippie”.
Elmo is a fictional, adopted brother my parents made up to explain random phenomena in the house, such as toilet seats falling or doors slamming shut. So until we were like 10, my brother and I would run like the wind every time a door slammed shut in the house to catch a glimpse of our brother who didn’t actually exist.
And you wonder why I turned out the way I did? I'm still waiting to get a gift that says, "To: Ryan/From: Your Actual Birth Mother". Just to spice up the holidays a bit more.
So, in closing, sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad. Sorry, Casey. Sorry to anyone else I wrapped a gift for this year. Elmo’s done a better job, I’m sure.
Then again, if you don’t like it, I have a trusty flame-thrower at my disposal now, so I’d watch the sass, if I were you.