The holidays are right around the corner and you’re too busy with finals to even bother coming up with great gift ideas. Don’t worry, the Scene’s got your back. Check out the Scene staff’s favorite gift ideas and then pretend to pass them off as your own. It’s cool, we don’t mind.
Mixtape memory stick
Call me romantic, but I miss the days (and by days, I mean movies) where people made mixtapes on cassettes. I want to dance on my bed to horribly cliché music, like Kirsten Dunst in “Bring it On.”
The cool part about this cassette is that it actually has a USB Memory Stick inside, since most people don’t own a boom box anymore. The Mixtape Memory Stick is about $25 and is a cute way to tell someone that you care while showing him or her some good songs that puts the nostalgia back into sharing music.
–Kendall Breitman
Just Dance 3
By now, everyone has probably gotten over the novelty of “Just Dance” on the Wii because of the sheer number of rip-offs that the game has spawned. You’re probably even wondering when the second “Just Dance” game came out.
But for Christmas, one great holiday gift you could get for a family member or a friend would be “Just Dance 3.” The sole reason being that “Let’s Go to the Mall” is on here. Anyone who is a “How I Met Your Mother” fan would know this song. It’s a fabulously bad song by the fictional Canadian pop star Robin Sparkles that was created to parody bad ’80s songs (and to create a hilarious running gag in the show), so it’s a wonder the song even made it onto a legitimate video game.
But let’s not question it, and just put on our jelly bracelets and our cool graffiti coat and learn that dance by heart.
–Hoai-Tran Bui
Record player
So you have a friend who loves music. You’re not going to buy them a CD. An iTunes card, maybe, but both you and I know that this “friend,” more likely than not, pirates their music online. So buy them a record player.
Before you do so, forget the ignorant assumption that records are silly “hipster” trinkets. Records have been around 90 years before we were born. There’s nothing “trendy” about records — in fact, I can hardly think of something more timeless. Our great-grandparents bought and listened to records. And the key word there is they “bought” them, as you have to do with every physical album. There’s no Internet pirating scheme with vinyl records.
So please, buy your music-loving friend a record player. A cheap one will do. You’ll help introduce them to the lost pleasure of buying a record for two bucks just because the album art is awesome.
Almost all new releases today come out on vinyl, included with a code for a free MP3 version, so there’s certainly no limit in variety. You’ll be supporting independent labels and their artists, who depend in part on vinyl sales. And most importantly, you’ll be encouraging a life long pursuit and love of owning his or her music.
–Maeve McDermott
3Ryan Radio
This gift is perfect for those overtaken with retro nostalgia. 3ryan radios are vintage radios, custom-made with an iPod dock. In addition, it un-digitizes your MP3 tunes, giving it that warm, crackling sound you’d expect from a record player.
In order to purchase one, go to 3ryan.com and select a model that you like, because each is an exact replica of a radio from the ’50s and ’60s. It’s pricey (they could run anywhere from $175-$675) so set it high on your wish list and start perfecting those puppy dog eyes.
–Yohana Desta
