The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day 5

On the third day of Gheorghemas 

Big Gheorghe gave to me...

Five golden auctions

Four Teams for Bitching

Three Tiny Scrappers
Two books for your Gheorghemas wish list
And a doofus to lead this country

Gheorghemas Day 2 commentators insinuated that I did not muster sufficient Gheorghemas effort for that post, so I'm pulling out all the stops on Day 5.  As you know I enjoy looking at online auctions, and I have five of them from which to procure gifts for all the Gheorghies on my Gheorghemas list.

1. The Mark Knopfler Guitar Collection

As the title suggests, Mark Knopfler is auctioning off over 120 guitars and amps.  Knopfler says:

It’s time to take some of these treasured six-string companions out of their cases and leave them in the care of Christie’s to allow them to have new adventures with new owners. You can be sure I’ll be sad to see them go but we’ve had wonderful times together and I can’t play them all. To you fellow players, enthusiasts and collectors, I wish you many good times with these old friends of mine.

Notably, "[t]wenty-five percent of the total hammer price will be divided equally and donated to The British Red Cross, Tusk and Brave Hearts of the North East."  

This auction is only available as a limited preview and I know nothing about guitars but it's Gheorghemas so I can't take myself too seriously.  For as long as I've known rootsy he had a guitar, including the time I scooped him and his baby Martin up along the Appalachian trail.  I'm picking (puns!) this one for rootsy:

No idea what's going on with my screencap tool.  That's an obscure, old-timey looking instrument from Arkansas and rootsy plays obscure, old-timey Roots music so it will serve him well.  

Dave makes music too, but it's pretty much the opposite of rootsy's.  Dave is a contrarian (and he will argue against this assertion) who revels in his quirkiness.  You would think he wants an acoustic guitar because they don't use electricity, and Dave likes to look down on people who consume energy and other natural resources.  But he owns a minivan and an SUV, big heavy cars that scarf gas and kick up shredded tire debris, and he likes to play sports that require outdoor courts, which requires cutting down trees to clear a space for the courts.  He disposes dead squirrel carcasses carelessly.  And he lives in NJ, one of the most polluted states in the country.  So he doesn't really buy into any of that environmentalist stuff.  I'm getting Dave this Rudy Pensa by John Suhr guitar for Gheorghemas.

It's obscure and modern and purple and from New York so it should hold Dave in good stead.  I look forward to a Greasetruck song about me recorded using this beast.

2. Selections from the Geddy Lee Collection and Important Baseball Memorabilia

That's a long name!  Rush frontman Geddy Lee is, apparently, an ardent baseball memorabilia collector and he's auctioning off a bunch of stuff.  There's something for almost anyone.

If you ever find yourself in the emergency room of Boston Medical Center, find the guy in charge, slip him the grip and present this Reggie Jackson World Series home run baseball and he will take amazing care of you.  He will take amazing care of you anyway, but he will bump you to the head of the line because he's a tremendous fan of Rush and the Yankees.

But I digress.  Whit will get married soon and I couldn't be happier for him.  His lady is a peach--she put up with Whit and me, at the same time, after we drank a bunch of bourbon and dragged her around Manhattan in a rain storm.  I wish them all the best and no rain the next time they visit NYC.  In the meantime, our overgrown friend needs a ring, so for Gheorghemas he's getting this one originally made for the 2000 NL Champs.  Amazin' again indeed.

I used to have a friend named TR.  I always thought that he and I would someday write a book chronicling all the stupid stuff we did together.  Maybe we still have a chance to do so.  It makes me sad not to see his comments.

Anyway, if TR is still lurking around out there, I'm getting him this Lou Gehrig card.  That dude loves baseball cards.

I always find it intimidating to publish my ill-conceived ideas and mangled prose alongside OBX Dave's professional quality posts.  As our resident expert sports scribe I think he would like an autographed copy of Cap Anson's book "A Ballplayer's Career."  The book was published in 1900 and the autograph still looks sharp 100-and-some-odd years later.  I hope OBXD enjoys it for another 100.

3. Pop Culture Then & Now

This one is a banger.  I don't know the auction's full backstory but it looks like someone won a storage locker previously owned by an old Hollywood producer.  All sorts of great stuff in here.  Right off the bat, this Centurian costume from Ben-Hur called out saying "Teedge needs me!!"

Can't you see Teedge traipsing around the District in this thing, stopping random people and demanding of them "Are you not entertained!?!"

Pee-Wee Herman's bike might seem ideal for Teedge too, and Danimal could use it in a triathlon, and if you remember TR's college beach cruiser (and the shenanigans he pulled on it) you'll argue that he's the right person for it.  But I'm giving it to Mark.

Mark lives at the beach so he needs a beach cruiser.  He's also the only one of us with a cool enough style and mien to realistically pull this off.  And have you watched Pee-Wee Herman's Playhouse recently?  Dude was totally on one.  It's as if David Lynch teamed up with Cheech and Chong to make a kids' show.  Mark fits right in.

There's more!  William Randolph Hearst's personal desk intercom is up as well.  The instrument that a domineering publisher used to rant angry missives at his minions sounds perfect for the tiny overlord of our publication.  I don't know how to connect it to anything but maybe that's for the best, rob can just rant at it and see what happens.

 

Squeaky is my guy but I had a hard time finding the perfect Gheoghemas gift this year.  Until Mrs. Squeaky asked me to confirm my mailing address and followed up with a photo of the Squeaks dressed as Barbie and Ken for a costume party (at least that's my assumption, maybe they dress up for other reasons).  Now I know that he will love this vintage 1950s life-sized early Barbie store display mannequin.  Clocking in at 73 inches tall this Barbie is a tall drink of plastic.  She comes with a swimsuit, an earring, high heeled shoes, and a blond wig.  The lot description observes that she is "[e]xhibiting expected age, wear, some cracking to seams and minor rubbing to painted areas."  Minor rubbing is right up Squeaky's alley so this doll is his for Gheorghemas.

4. Whiskey & Whiskey

If you read that quickly you might think it's "Whiskey & Whitney" which makes more sense than what it actually says, but I don't name these auctions, I just write about them.  According to Sotheby's:

The Whisky & Whiskey | Festive Spirits and American Classics auction features one of the most extensive collections of American whiskey ever assembled from what may be the true Golden Age of bourbon and rye, the years spanning the late 1980s to the late 2000s. Strangely, this was a time of cratering interest in the United States for brown spirits, particularly for highly aged, highly priced whiskey. Yet visionary distillers and producers like Heaven Hill, Julian Van Winkle III and Even turned out precisely this sort of whiskey, often for export to Japan, where a small but eager community of collectors awaited. Van Winkle and others knew the whiskey was good, but they were just trying to keep the lights on – little did they know that decades later, their bottles would become some of the most sought-after whiskeys on the planet.

There's plenty of super-expensive, super-exclusive, and super-tasty stuff listed here, but there are a dozen-or-so really old bottles that jump out at me.  In particular, this pint of Old Crow distilled in 1913:

The lot details say:

Up until Prohibition, Old Crow was among the most renowned names in Kentucky bourbon, respected as far as London and Paris as the pinnacle of American whiskey. Though it traces its roots to an innovative Scotsman named James Crow, who created the brand – and many of the techniques that shaped modern bourbon – in the 1830s, the Old Crow name came into its own during the Gilded Age, when it was produced at the Hermitage distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. This bottle represents one of the last times that Hermitage-made whiskey went up for sale; Prohibition shut its doors, and they never reopened. Today Old Crow is a bottom-shelf whiskey, a shadow of its former self, and this bottle is a testament to how glorious that former self really was.

This pint is perfect for a connoisseur, one of great taste and refined sensibilities.  Mr. KQ gets the bottle of Old Crow.

5. Watches Online: The Geneva Edit

It's no secret that I like watches.  Danimal likes them too.  This April we finally met IRL under the scoreboard behind the 7th hole at Augusta, and this confirmed my previous statement that Danimal is a fucking baller.  He knew everyone and everyone knew him.  And everyone was looking for him.  It was great that he took the time to hang out despite being in the middle of what is a major work event for him.  For Gheorghemas D-Train gets a 1968 Rolex GMT Master ref. 1675.  This reference is my personal grail, 39mm of magnificence and I'm sure the second time zone hand will suit Danimal's world traveller lifestyle.  This one is perfectly patina'ed and appears to have the original lume.  Chef's kiss.

 

Vacheron Constantin is a Swiss watchmaking company that has been around since 1755.  Along with Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe, they form the Holy Trinity of Swiss watchmakers.  And they are probably the most under-the-radar of the three.  Rocking a Vacheron is stealth wealth.  In 1977 they launched a new model called the 222, named for their 222nd anniversary.  Everything around me came to a screeching halt the first time I saw one.  Christie's has a ladies model available in stainless steel and yellow gold.

I need to say nothing more, but I will say it is exquisite and so is Shlara.  It's her Gheorghemas gift.

Another lesser-known magnificent Swiss watch manufacturer is Jaeger-Lecoultre.  They've only been around for 190 years, spring chickens in the Swiss timepiece game.  JLC (as they are known, and which is much easier to say) does funky stuff from time to time, like their classic Reverso.  Marls is funky (did you ever smell his room in the house?) and classic so he will enjoy this JLC reference E501.

This one is from 1957 and has a cool two-tone sector dial, Arabic numbers at every other (as opposed to the usual every third) hour marker, and a power reserve indicator in the subdial at 9.  It's funky because it doesn't have a crown--you wind it by moving it around as you would any other automatic, and you set the time using a little wheel on the back.  It's so damn cool that I'm tempted to keep this one for myself but it belongs to Marls at Gheorghemas time.

Merry Gheorghemas to all!