The Brophisticate Holiday Gift Guide: Spun Counterguy Edition

By Spun Counterguy on December 8, 2014

If you’re aspiring to be that friend or family member whose gifts are always anticipated over everyone else’s predictable pecan logs and hand crocheted gluten-free underwear, might we make a few suggestions? Often a little forethought can provide the most meaningful of gifts, but rarely do any of us have the luxury of time. Therefore, we asked our ace reporter, Spun Counterguy, to list a few of his favorite things—guaranteed to be great guy gifts. Happy holidays!

Salomon Shoes

The first pair of shoes I ever bought that didn’t come from Wal-Mart, didn’t cost $10, didn’t hurt my feet and didn’t have to be thrown away in six months, were a pair of Salomon’s. They were a little pricey but they lasted me for four years (two of those in a third world walking-everywhere-over-broken-streets country) and put on were as glorious as having your feet held by giggling angels. The last pair I bought just for the occasion of my nuptials (see photo) and at the end of the day while all the suckers who insisted on wearing dress shoes were rubbing and soaking their sore throbbing dogs, I was running with Fred Astaire ease up and down the stairs of the hotel retrieving ice water and fresh towels for my frisky bride.

The Spun Counterguy wedding photo… Salomon style.

http://www.salomon.com/us/

Ultrasone Surround Sound Professional Headphones

No disrespect to Mr. Dre, M.D. but the best headphones this guy’s ever laid ears on are the Ultrasones. Why they’re superior to most is that 1) your ears are covered entirely and not smushed. 2) The sound is directed at the pinna (the flappy part outside your head) as opposed to the canal. This not only makes all sounds more dynamic (it’s how you hear everything anyway, sound running through all your cartilage rings) but saves your ear drum from damage.

When it’s all said and done, these babies seem to remaster everything you run through them! So not only will you hear elements of a recording lost in traditional headphones, but now even the recordings of your band you had in high school will sound not as crappy.

http://ultrasone-headphones.com/en/

Firefly BFF Bracelets

Here’s one for all the fathers out there wanting to please their princesses. The Firefly Company have these friendship bracelets which have fat decorative beads that light up when their designated buddy wearing their companion bracelet is within a 200 foot radius. Imagine the thrill for your kid of being out with you at the grocery, sporting goods shop or dog track and her bracelet lighting up, indicating her best friend is nearby with her father, also of questionable judgement.

Though obviously the bracelet is geared for girls and their girlfriends, one might look into a father-daughter set. Say for those times that you’re supposed to be out in the yard supervising your kid’s play time but you’d rather be inside watching the big game. When your own bracelet’s light goes out, you know she’s beating out a trail towards the neighbor’s pitbull or the busy highway out front.

http://fireflybff.com/

Not yet released nationwide but can be ordered by calling (615) 771-3434

The Complete Eric Rohmer Collection – 22-Disc Box Set on Blu-Ray

Rohmer is a French filmmaker who began his output in the 1950’s and continued until a few years before his death in 2010. His films are a little difficult to recommend to people because the plots often don’t really go anywhere, the characters often don’t really do anything and at times they may never say anything either. But I love them and so will that grass-is-always-greener-over-the-other-side-of-the-Atlantic Europhile in your life! Like some kind of extensive study on the male/female relationship presented on celluloid, the films capture all the rhythms, nuances, temptations and genital guillotining of the dance between the sexes. And if ever things seem like they’re about to get exciting, the word ‘Fin’ pops up on the screen and the movie’s over. I think ‘Fin’ is French for ‘Ha ha- no high-speed car chase for you!’.

Anyway, now all of Rohmer’s movies are on this 33 disk collection. It’s a bit pricey but it’s cheaper than actually going to France to get your heart teased and broke for as many hours as it’ll take you to watch all these masterpieces.

For a cheaper alternative, with added cinematic insight, we also suggest Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales (The Criterion Collection) on DVD. Anything involving classic cinema with the words “Criterion Collection” after it ensures the film will have the most clarity, most resolution, and be shown as the director intended—with lots of extras.

Dos Gusanos Tequila

I was in Mexico once and this guy came up with a tiny monkey and said for $3 I could hold the animal for a few minutes. Sounded like a good deal but the monkey ended up climbing all over me and then peed on my shoulder. I complained about this, to which the man responded that in Mexico that was good luck.

The point of mentioning this incident was it occurred right outside a shop where the front window was filled with hundreds of bottle of Dos Gusanos tequila. True to it’s name, it contained two worms laying comatose at it’s bottom and it ended up being the best tequila I’d ever drank. It has a buttery aftertaste and for a fella that sometimes eats butter sandwiches, that’s a fantastic thing. I guess monkey urine one’s shoulder really was good luck!

Recommended for your tequila loving friend who while face down in your front yard claims he’s had every great brand in the world.

The Great Courses

I’ve had this theory recently that with the higher education industry increasingly being plagued by exorbitant tuition fees, PC police censorship, tenured slugs and made up courses like “Arguing with Judge Judy” offered at UC Berkeley, employers are going to find way a to measure whether an applicant actually knows anything useful beyond how to defend the company should they end up in the court of Mrs. Sheindlin. Maybe in the future schools won’t even be necessary considering the wealth of information available on the internet, public libraries and…the next item on this gift guide: The Great Courses lectures. The way I understand it, this company had made a deal with all the top professors around the world to record a semester’s worth of lectures on their extensive subjects of expertise. Whether it be on economic theories or how Winston Churchill lead a nation while a dictator with a dumb mustache was nearly successful in obliterating it or how quantum physics applies to everyday life, you can now hear what all the ivy league brats sleep off an all-nighter to at the high brow universities. And since the professors know they’re being recorded, they don’t pass gas or make their student assistants teach the course. And I don’t know about you but the thought of getting to learn something without the threat of exams or having to sand down the teacher’s foot corns to keep from getting flunked makes me mollified (a word I learned from one of the course I listened to).

They’re vailable in MP3, CD or DVD formats, but you may also download the Great Courses App for free.

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/

HealthForce Super Foods

If your shopping for the kind of person that seems to spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to add on an equal amount of time to their life spans via health and wellness products, here’s one to stuff in their stockings: Healthforce Vitamineral Super Foods. Best for adding to shakes and smoothies, they’re basically bottles of powder ground up from vegetation found on mountain tops and deserts, all places city slickers like us might get tangled up in a nest of chupacabras if we were to try to hunt these biological rarities for ourselves. There’s a variety of blends that promise assistance with anything from weight loss, improved memory, low energy levels to post mortem depression. Personally I like their tagline, ‘Food of the Aztec Warriors’, which I assume is without those exhausting human sacrifices.