.FLYINGHEAD HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE
.TITLE Super-expensive gifts for the rich and excessive
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY This year, we’re doing things a bit differently. Rather than just the dull recitation of popular products, we’ve turned to the ZATZ editors, to a bunch of experts in the Internet Press Guild, and to a bunch of tech gaming enthusiasts, my own gaming buddies in the Iron Phoenix gaming community. Together, we’ve put together a series of articles that take you from the wildly super expensive to the incredibly cheap. From the taste and style of a Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR to the incredibly sad $1.99 English Soldier Mini Massager Vibrator (yep, it’s sex toy). To feed your inner Bill Gates, we defined the super-expensive category as anything from about $5,000 up to, well, absolutely no top end. You ain’t gettin’ it, but you can dream.
.FEATURE
It’s early December. In Valentine, Nebraska, the temperature’s a bracing -9 degrees Fahrenheit. Back in North Brunswick, New Jersey, the "blue room" is a temperate 35 degrees. And, of course, here in central Florida, it’s a happy 76 degrees and sunny. Yeah, that’s pretty much why we moved here.
I bring up the weather report because when it’s 76 degrees outside, it seems just a little weird to be thinking about holiday gifts. But ’tis the season to be silly and, as you well know, whenever there’s silly in the air, CU is right there, in the thick of things.
This year, we’re doing our gift guide a bit differently. Rather than just the dull recitation of popular products, we’ve turned to the ZATZ editors, to a bunch of experts in the [[http://www.netpress.org/|Internet Press Guild]], and to a bunch of tech gaming enthusiasts from the Iron Phoenix gaming community, my own gang of online gaming buddies. Members of each of these groups have been kind enough to nominate products for our gift guide. Since some of these folks are a bit sick and twisted, so are some of our gift recommendations (wait ’til you read our cheap gifts list in a few weeks!).
Together, we’ve put together a series of articles that take you from the wildly super-expensive to the incredibly cheap. Over the course of the gift guide articles, we’ll take you from the taste and style of a Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR to the incredibly sad — and yet somehow still included in our recommendations — $1.99 English Soldier Mini Massager Vibrator (yep, it’s sex toy).
To feed your inner Bill Gates, in this first installment we’ve defined the super-expensive category as anything from about $5,000 up to, well, absolutely no top end. You ain’t gettin’ it, but you can dream.
.TEASER You’re probably not getting any of these, but tap here and you can drool over the very best.
.BEGIN_KEEP
.H1 West Bay SonShip motor yacht
When it comes to fantasizing, one of our Iron buddies topped the list with the [[http://www.yachtworld.com/core/listing/pl_boat_detail.jsp?hosturl=offshoreeast&checked_boats=1599802&featuredon=yw-en&slot=5&slim=broker|82′ West Bay SonShip custom dual-station raised-pilothouse motor yacht]], as shown in Figure A. This georgeous water craft is available for a cool $4,950,000.
.FIGPAIR A This is one pretty boat.
It’s quite simply a custom motor yacht built for a discriminating buyer. Chock full of contemporary, yet traditional styling and classic craftsmanship, her interior design and furnishings are truly one of a kind. A Riff-cut American Cherry interior is featured throughout the yacht.
This pretty little present has many upgrades including engines (always a good feature when you’re spending your millions), twin generators, water maker, stabilizers, bow and stern thrusters and electronics that include a night-vision camera.
There here boat’s a wonderful platform for all sorts of water-related activities.
.END_KEEP
.H1 Let’s take over the world!
While we’re on the topic of boats, I’ll share with you the item that tops my personal wishlist year after year. What can I say? I’ve always dreamed of owning my own Navy fleet, like the [[http://www.c7f.navy.mil/|United States Seventh Fleet]] shown in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B Now this is one seriously large radio-controlled toy.
With a new aircraft carrier costing nearly $4 billion, and the annual upkeep and maintenance costs in excess of $250 million, my big hope is that the citizens of the United States wake up in a few years, realize I’m just the guy to lead them, and give me six or seven fleets that’ll help me float my boat.
Let’s be clear and serious for a moment though. Established in 1943, the Seventh Fleet is the United States’ largest forward-deployed fleet. The men and women of this distinguished fighting force are not only on the front lines, protecting and serving the citizens of the U.S., they were also key to lending assistance to the devastating Indonesian tsunami. Seventh Fleet units began providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to many countries during Operation Unified Assistance.
We wish all our men and women in uniform a very happy (and safe) holiday.
.H1 Virgin Galactic Charter To Space
DominoPower contributing editor Nancy Hand came up with the next item on the list. Here’s what she says:
.QUOTE Number one on my list is almost out of this world. This year Neiman Marcus’ Christmas Book offers a Virgin Galactic Charter To Space for a measly $1,764,000. This is a trip into space, 63 miles above sea-level, aboard the Burton Rutan-designed SpaceShipTwo for you and five guests.
.QUOTE It also includes astronaut training and a stay on Sir Richard’s estate for the newly fledged astronauts and their guests. Sadly, though you might book the flight today, it isn’t scheduled to lift off until 2009.
Since the [[http://www.virgingalactic.com|SpaceShipTwo]] hasn’t been built yet, you’ll have to settle for the little model shown in Figure C.
.FIGPAIR C Sir Richard and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson play with toys.
.H1 Bugatti Veyron
If you have to ask how much a [[http://www.bugatti-cars.de/bugatti/choice_en.html|Bugatti Veyron]] is, you can’t afford it. At a recent auction in London, this supercar sold for about 1.55 million Euros, or a little over $2 million. My gosh, this car is hot. Looking at it in Figure D, it’s almost hard to breathe.
.FIGPAIR D This is truly a dream machine.
If there was ever a completely self-indulgent reason to become incredibly wealthy, this car is it. The Bugatti Veyron is the most powerful, most expensive, and fastest street-legal production car in the world. Want to test the speed limits of your favorite interstate? This beast has been clocked at more than 253 mph.
Bugatti is a subsidiary of Volkswagen, making this one heck of a VW.
.PAGE
.H1 Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR 617hp
For those of us who can’t quite fit into an F1, the [[http://www.mbusa.com/models/main.do?modelCode=SLR|Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR 617hp]], shown in Figure E with a carbon fiber body is Senior Editor James Booth’s idea of "oh yeah!".
.FIGPAIR E Gull-wing doors make the car even more spectacular.
At about $453,000, the McLaren SLR is one of the fastest automatic transmission cars in the world. Sadly, for a vehicle capable of running at 200 mph without a stick, the car’s brakes have been criticized as "binary" — either on or off. When you’re spending that much and going that fast, it might be nice to have a little subtlety in your braking system.
On the other hand, there’s nothing particularly subtle about this stunner.
.H1 Save the environment and get a TWIKE
It’s time to throw some water on our vehicular wet dreams and do something good and silly for the environment. OK, so what the heck is a TWIKE? According to Nancy Hand:
.QUOTE Slightly more reasonably priced, for the more athletic techies, Neiman Marcus is offering His & Hers TWIKEs (human-electric hybrid vehicles) for $40,000 US. I’m not sure if this is for two TWIKEs or only one, I neglected to inquire. Each TWIKE seats two and can reach speeds of 55 mph.
Apparently, a [[http://www.neimanmarcus.com/store/sitelets/christmasbook/fantasy.jhtml?cid=OCBF7_NMO2202&gid=&/catalog_neimansholiday/holiday2006/custom/Redirect.aspx|TWIKE]], shown in Figure F, combines some of the energy efficiency of the bicycle with the comforts, performance, and safety of a car.
.FIGPAIR F Your TWIKE will put a twinkle in your eye.
These teeny little vehicles are three-wheeled, all-weather containment vessels for you and a friend. The TWIKE’s an electric vehicle, powered by battery and very slightly augmented by pedal power. When fully charged, it’s actually capable of speads up to about 53 mph and can go 25-50 miles on a single charge.
You drive this wacky little device with a joystick, leading many TWIKE owners to call themselves "pilots". However, it appears the U.S. Department of Transportation isn’t a big fan of these babies. There are less than 10 in the U.S. and the government requires them to be registered as experimental vehicles.
Oh, and Nancy, that NM exclusive edition is $40,000 for one TWIKE that seats two. It’s nearly twice as expensive as the TWIKE you’d get directly from the manufacturer, but this one has green racing paint, velour carpeting, and leather seats.
Personally, if I want to be in a hard-to-see, small vehicle, I’ll take my motorcycle over a TWIKE any day. Are there better vehicular uses for $40K? Of course. But if you cared about saving money, you wouldn’t be buying from our rich and excessive list, now would you?
.PAGE
.H1 Spin better platters with a laser turntable
Author Gabriel Goldberg suggests a [[http://www.laserturntable.com/main.html|$15,000 laser turntable]]:
.QUOTE Play LPs without touching them. Supposedly eliminates pops/hiss/scratches, compensates for warping. Too bad I didn’t have this when my three large boxes of LPs were flood damaged, album jackets glued to albums, etc. I looked into recovering them, it would have taken museum-quality craftsmanship, so I trashed them. I could have gotten a laser turntable for a few years to review, digitized all the records…
The ELP laser turntable, shown in Figure G, is for serious audiophiles.
.FIGPAIR G I gotta get me one of these sweet toys!
It’s designed to play your old vinyl records without actually touching them. According to Sanju Chiba, president of ELP:
.QUOTE We believe that new technology should have an additional purpose: to revitalize old products and prevent them from becoming obsolete. Music and sound in vinyl records — an invention dating back to Thomas Edison’s phonograph — should be maintained without any distortion and without wear or damage.
The devices are very expensive because each unit is hand made. They’ve sold a total of about a thousand units, mostly in Japan. This truly is an archivist’s dream machine.
.H1 Get your bling on and impress the ladies
Always the romantic, Iron gaming’s Lord Darrious recommends an Amazon-supplied one-of-a-kind [[http://www.amazon.com/Kind-Platinum-2ctw-Round-Diamond/dp/B000KFSX6I|platinum 2ctw round diamond ring]], as shown in Figure H.
.FIGPAIR H Want to impress that special someone?
If you want to impress that special someone and you don’t mind spending more on a ring than on a Harley, you should definitely consider this ring. Apparently, this is quite the deal. It normally goes for a mere $29,999.99, but now, if you act before midnight tonight, you can have it for $11,499.99. Hey, it’s chump change in the business of love.
.H1 Final thoughts
Finally, Iron’s Excess3 asks that if you’re looking to spend some serious cash, he’d like you to pay off his mortgage and send him through grad school. Hey, Excess, maybe if you buy someone that ring, she’ll be more inclined to put you through school!
This is just our first look at possible holiday gifts. If no one’s willing to buy you the wonderful items we’ve shown here, perhaps our more reasonably priced items in next week’s installment will help you get your jolly on.
.BEGIN_KEEP
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on the Internet Press Guild, visit http://www.netpress.org.
For more information on the West Bay SonShip, visit [[http://www.yachtworld.com/core/listing/pl_boat_detail.jsp?hosturl=offshoreeast&checked_boats=1599802&featuredon=yw-en&slot=5&slim=broker|http:\//www.yachtworld.com]].
For more information on the United States Seventh Fleet, visit http://www.c7f.navy.mil.
For more information on SpaceShipTwo, visit http://www.virgingalactic.com.
For more information on the Bugatti Veyron, visit [[http://www.bugatti-cars.de/bugatti/choice_en.html|http:\//www.bugatti-cars.de]]
For more information on the McLaren SLR, visit [[http://www.mbusa.com/models/main.do?modelCode=SLR|http:\//www.mbusa.com]].
For more information on the NM TWIKE, visit [[http://www.neimanmarcus.com/store/sitelets/christmasbook/fantasy.jhtml?cid=OCBF7_NMO2202&gid=&/catalog_neimansholiday/holiday2006/custom/Redirect.aspx|http:\//www.neimanmarcus.com]]
For more information on the ELP laser turntable, visit http://www.laserturntable.com.
For more information on that diamond ring, visit [[http://www.amazon.com/Kind-Platinum-2ctw-Round-Diamond/dp/B000KFSX6I|http:\//www.amazon.com]]
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.END_KEEP
