The Vine, Anniversary Edition: April 24, 2010
Dear Sars,
I have been looking and looking and looking for a reproduction of the “Thinker of Hamangia.” I have scoured the nets for this thing, hoping a museum shop or art gallery would have it in an online store, because while there are many fine museums in my part of the Midwest, none of them feature large collections of prehistoric figurines that they might want to sell copies of in the gift shop.
So far I’ve found two galleries that once upon a time had reproductions, but sold them. The National Museum of Romanian History, which is where the original is usually kept, has a website (in Romanian) and appears to offer copies for sale in its gift shop — but doesn’t have a way to order online, at least that I can tell.
So I’m asking the readers: Short of going to Romania myself and buying a copy from the museum, does anyone know where I can get my hands on this thing? Are there any shops out there that specialize in reproductions of prehistoric/Neolithic art? Or if someone out there knows Romanian and can figure out how to buy something off the gift shop’s Web site, that would certainly be awesome.
I’m attaching a picture of the statue (the Thinker is part of a pair, and I’m willing to buy both if I have to, but mainly I’m interested in the figure on the right). It’s little — maybe 6 inches high. He’s also sometimes called the “Thinker of Cernavoda” or the “Thinker of Ganditorul.”
Don’t Care How Much It Costs, It Will Be Mine. MINE!
*****
Hey Sars,
I remember reading this one circa maybe 1989 or 90. It seemed to be a one-off, not a series, about a girl whose name was Wallis, “like the Duchess.” And she didn’t have any friends except a girl nobody else liked? The cover had really egregious ’80s-wear, like high-top puffy sneakers and a Billie-Jean mullet.
Googling “Wallis + Friends” is really only bringing up Madonna links.
Scholastic Whore
*****
Dear Sars,
I have recently starting dating a man who is extremely difficult to shop for. His birthday is in three weeks. He has a lot of interests, but none of them translate into any great gift ideas! I’m usually pretty good at thinking of SOMETHING, but I’m stuck with this one.
Let me describe his interests: history, Bob Dylan, good movies, sports, and Ireland. Seems easy, right? Get ‘im a good documentary or a vintage record and I’m set! If only.
The problem is that after a few months, I don’t know him well enough to figure out what he has and doesn’t have. He’s seen a LOT of films and read a LOT of history books, so I feel that it wouldn’t be a safe bet to go that route. I know absolutely nothing about Ireland, and he’s been there multiple times and owns plenty of Irish things, so again, same problem.
He enjoys playing and watching sports, so I’d think, “Baseball game tickets!” and while that’s a great gift, he’s lived in this city for nearly his whole life and attended many baseball games, and I don’t know if it would be that special.
I’d think about doing the homemade cookies thing, but I already did it for the holidays. My friend wrapped herself in nothing but a trench coat, but I’m not sure I’m that brave.
I’m trying to find something creative, fun, not extremely expensive, and appropriate — nothing that implies SERIOUS RELATIONSHIP!!! as we are still seeing where things are going.
Do you or your readers have any ideas? Why is it so hard to shop for a man?
Go Go Gadget Giftless
Dear Gadge,
A romantic dinner and tickets to a minor-league game, if there’s one nearby? A gift certificate to a theater chain like Loews (or whatever’s near him), or a few free months of Netflix? Can you check his bookshelves to see if he owns specific baseball-history books — or do you think he’d enjoy Josh Wilker’s latest? (Full disclosure: 1) Wilker and I are agent-mates, and 2) I haven’t read the book yet, but I’ve read his blog and I cannot WAIT to start the book. But first, I have to finish this baseball tome, which your gentleman friend might also like.)
I’d also recommend checking his Amazon wish list (or ordering him to start one), but if you really can’t think of any specific thing, any activity you plan and treat him to will probably go over well; it’s the thought that counts.
Readers?
*****
Hi Sars,
The title I’m looking for has confounded me for years. I probably read it in the mid-1990s. A teenage girl returns home from summer camp (maybe?) to discover her mother has become obsessed with health food and has thrown out all the “junk food” in the house.
This girl hates the health food her mother makes her eat and tries to make herself throw up by drinking milk-and-mustard and milk-and-orange juice concoctions to persuade her mother to let her eat the food she likes. All of her friends find they really like the health food and start a club with the acronym, G.H.O.S.T., which stood for “Granola, something, something, something, Tofu,” I think.
I don’t have much more to go on and years of Google searches have yielded nothing. Thanks so much if you or your readers can help me find it.
M.B.
*****
Hello Sars —
I saw Avatar last night, and it made me think of a science fiction book that I read a long long long time ago.
The book is set during a time when mankind is expanding into the moons of Jupiter and the asteroid belt. It’s about a man who suffers an accident — it’s serious enough that it would be fatal, but they now have the technology to transfer a person into a different body. He’s transferred into a female body with the body mod of a prehensile tail — the story is about him adjusting to living as a different gender and having a (useful!) tail.
I can’t remember anything about the author or the cover of the book, just the basic story line. Does this sound familiar to anyone (including James Cameron)?
Thanks!
Who wouldn’t want a prehensile tail anyway?!
*****
Hi Sars,
I am hoping against hope that you and the Tomato Nationals can help me find a book that has haunted me since I was reading books from the “young adult” section.
The reason it sticks in my mind so vividly is because it was a slim hardcover, illustrated with photographs. People in a small town seem to be changing into cactus plants, like instantly. No “morphing” or anything. (I only remember the cacti, but other plants may have been involved, too.)
In the end, the conversion turns out to be happening only to people who are cruel to animals. I can distinctly remember a photograph of a large cactus with a slingshot hanging off one of its big green arm/branches — that used to be a bully kid who shot stones at stray dogs (…the explanation of the photograph may have been part of the story, or possibly just some backstory my mind filled in).
I really hope someone, somewhere, saw this book and can confirm its existence, because my husband thinks I dreamed it.
Maybe In My Nightmares
Tags: Ask The Readers Bob Dylan James Cameron Josh Wilker Madonna popcult
The only thing I’ve gotten so far out of this thread is that I really, really want a prehensile tail.
Mine, if you’re near a large city or college with a languages department, perhaps they could hook you up with a Romanian speaker who could navigate the website for you? Or, heck, a Craigslist ad: “Wanted, speaker of Romanian to locate The Thinker, but not that French one.” At the very least, you’d get some interesting replies!
Gadget – It doesn’t solve the present question but could be a fun addition. This site let’s you use a Dylan video but put your own message on the cards he’s holding.
http://www.dylanmessaging.com/create
@M.B. – Could it be Liver Cookies?
I read it in the early nineties, and it looks like it’s out of print now. Parts of the description sound way off; for one thing, it’s the protagonist’s brother who hates the health food. But it does feature a group of girlfriends starting a “healthy junk food” business.
Gadget: Does the boyfriend like basketball? Bill Simmons’ new book on the history of the NBA is pretty interesting. I gave it to my boyfriend for Christmas and he’s much more of a college basketball fan than the NBA, but he liked it a lot. http://tinyurl.com/2bcf7hw
@Gadget: Is there an Irish restaurant or pub in your town you could take him to? How about going to a fancy wine/beer shop and buying a 12 pack of an Irish beer?
Or maybe something from here:
http://www.irishshop.com/index.html
Giftless, Dick Hayhurst’s The Bullpen Gospels is brand-spanking new, and getting great reviews (and I’m gonna start it the minute I finish what’s on the nightstand now). I’ve read and can recommend the Turbow Sars linked to, as well.
Gift-giver: If you are a cooking kind of person, perhaps you could make a special birthday meal with soda bread and Guinness and a nice lamb stew? It seems to be a good tie-in to his love of Ireland, and it’s something nice and out of the ordinary without being too long-term-girlfriend-y a gift.
Tail,
Check out The Beyond Series by Justin Leiber, I’ve never read them but according to the description on Amazon the main charachter is a woman named Sally Forth who used to be a man and has a three foot prehensile tail. If that isn’t it try looking at John Varley. People moving their mind into a body of the opposite gender is a common theme of his. I don’t remember a tail but it sounds like something he might do. You might also look here http://www.susans.org/reference/tsbooks.html it is a page of stories with trans-gender themes.
MB,
I want to say that it’s called Fifth Grade Secrets. Not 100% sure though. A quick google search isn’t turning up anything though.
I totally remember the Wallis book, because I remember the reason the character was named Wallis was because of her mother’s fascination with Wallis Simpson. I can’t, for the life of me, remember the book, though.
Nightmares – This is so close to a book I read in the 7th grade that gave me nightmares for literally years afterward that I have to wonder if one of us is misremembering some details… The book I read was The Plant People by Dale Carlson, but in that the people changed slowly, and it was only the people who were cruel to plants who were affected. But they did change into cacti, and it was illustrated with photographs. Any chance this is the same book you’re after, and you’ve mixed up a few details?
Scholastic Whore,
I bet the book is Anything For a Friend by Ellen Conford. The girl’s name is Wallis, and I remember having no idea who the heck Wallis Simpson even was when I read the book. :)
Tail,
Could it be Poul Anderson’s novella “Call Me Joe”? Here’s the wikipedia for it. It’s a very similar storyline to Avatar and takes place on Jupiter. There were a couple of articles about it when Avatar was first released. This one from io9 Did James Cameron Rip off Poul Anderson’s Novella? has a pretty good summary of the similarities.
Thinker
http://www.vendio.com/stores/visartgallery/item/sculpture/neolithic-figurines-reproducti/lid=2621201
EFFFFFFFF. I love Cardboard Gods (the blog) and had an urge to go to the bookstore today, which I resisted. I don’t know why Wilker’s book didn’t dawn on me. Maybe I’ll go in a few minutes. Hmmm.
Gadget, your boyfriend and I have similar interests (except replace Dylan with Miles Davis and Ireland with Spain). I have a considerable collection of baseball history books and would recommend the following most highly, regardless of what teams he might like:
Crazy ’08 by Cait Murphy
But Didn’t We Have Fun? by Peter Morris (who also wrote the excellent Game of Inches books)
The Catcher Was a Spy by Nicholas Dawidoff
Baseball Dynasties by Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein
A Game of Brawl by Bill Felber
October 1964 by David Halberstam
Also, if he likes watching sports so much, he’s not going to find tickets to a game objectionable. I’ve been to lots of baseball and basketball games and I’ll go to another one anytime, especially if someone else is paying, heh.
Sarah: That’s one of the galleries I was talking about–if you go to the main “sculpture” page, you’ll see that it’s out of stock (the other gallery was Floredana).
Jen S: Thanks–I may look in to that!
Mine, does this work for you?
http://www.vendio.com/stores/visartgallery/item/sculpture/neolithic-figurines-reproducti/lid=2621201
Good luck!
Gadget: I gave my husband cuff-links made from the old seats of Wrigley (as he’s a Cubs fan). I know that you can buy these for many different teams. I’m not sure if your guy is a cuff-link wearer… but it’s a different kind of gift with a neat sports history tie-in. I believe they also have tie pins and other such accessories. A google search should do it, I found these from several sites.
Gadget: I’m not sure of how much of a Dylan obsessive he is, but I bought the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia by Michael Gray for my Dad (a man truly obsessed with Bob Dylan) and it was the most successful gift I’ve ever given him. It covers things like the minute detail of significance of certain lyrics as well as the more general lesser known Dylan info.
Mine: I found the same link that Sarah did, but on the main page it looks like the statue’s sold out. Darn.
So, I also know enough Romanian to tell you that you can’t buy the statue from the Natural History Museum site either – you could, potentially, send an email to the addresses listed under ‘Contact.’ Many Romanians, especially those working at a big city museum, know English and may be able to help you out.
For your future searches, ‘ganditorul’ actually means ‘thinker’ in Romanian – so the statue’s name in Romanian is usually ‘ganditorul de la hamangia.’
MB, EB is right. It’s Fifth-Grade secrets for sure. Here’s the Google Books result: http://bit.ly/9S2A9m.
Great book! Doesn’t seem to be in stock at Amazon, B&N, or Borders, but maybe the library. Or used.
Go Go: The Irish national football team has jerseys that change somewhat regularly, especially with World Cup this summer and the qualifiers they just had recently. If he hasn’t been in a little while, I know that the new ones that I’m seeing online are really different than my old 2004 jersey.
If he has a favorite area of the country, http://www.irelandjersies.com has jerseys for each county and it looks like they ship to the states. There are US companies that have the national team jerseys and http://www.okcs.com has a limited number of local jerseys as well for a good price.
Tail,
I think Quag is dead on. I did read that first Beyond book that’s mentioned above, Beyond Rejection by Justin Leiber, and I’m pretty sure it’s the one you’re talking about.
@Tail
Possibly it’s Four Lords of the Diamond series by Jack L. Chalker? They hit a lot of your points. (Sorry, Wikipedia link, but it covers the plot/s well.)
http://tinyurl.com/26nboge
Gadget – I second the Bill Simmons “Book of Basketball” recommendation for basketball fans. Also, an autographed baseball can be surprisingly cheap (depending on the player) and almost nobody every buys one for themself. If you know his favorite player … or else, just get one from a prominent player on the best year your local team had.
@Liz — “Nightmare” here, and I think you may have hit on the book that haunts me. Yes, the details are a bit mixed up, but that may have been because I read the book nearly 30 years ago. But I do distinctly remember it being in hardcover. Thanks for giving me this lead, though — I’m off to do some research!
Fifth Grade Secrets! Thank you so much for the title, that is totally it and I was able to find a used copy on amazon. Tomato Nation readers are the best!
I don’t think it can be “Thinker of Ganditorul” — ganditorul is Romanian for “the Thinker.” :) Sorry I can’t be of more help!
Nothing useful to add, but this thread makes me wonder: whatever happened to Dale Carlson’s books? I read them keenly growing up, but now they seem to have vanished from libraries, bookstores, Amazon, everywhere. Are YA books more subject to being in or out of fashion? I thought I was the only one who remembered them; I especially liked The Human Apes and Triple Boy. Thanks for making me feel less delusional, Nation!
Giftless,
How about a DVD of an old but really influential film? Something like Sansho the Bailiff, or Rashomon….something like that? Or if you have an independent theater near you (or a theater attached to an art museum) they sometimes run retrospectives, and it would be something you could do together. Good luck!
Gadget:
If he likes history and Ireland, this is my favorite book about Irish history: http://www.amazon.com/1916-Novel-Irish-Rebellion-Century/dp/0812574923/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272300547&sr=8-1.
Also, as a baseball fan myself, I don’t think games ever get old :) You could always splurge on nicer tickets than he wouldn’t buy himself.
Another thought–someone above mentioned football jerseys, but Ireland rugby has some spiffy-looking stuff as well through http://www.irishrugby.ie.
Gadget/Giftless,
It’s not so hard to get a gift for a guy with a few serious interests and hobbies. You’re just turning it into more of a problem than it is.
As a big baseball fan, I 100% agree that getting tix to a game is always appreciated. Fans don’t think, “Well, I’ve been to a bunch of games, why would I go to another one?” It’s something that is appreciated & shows you know something about what he likes without sending any message of “warning: serious relationship.” I think the heart of your problem here is that you don’t want to send a serious message but you want the gift to be *special.* You can’t have it both ways. You want to be FUN, ORIGINAL, CREATIVE, but you don’t know him well enough to have the “perfect” idea and it would be too soon/too scary to know him well enough to have that idea, so you’re rejecting a perfectly *good* idea. Get tickets to a game. Give him cutesy voucher IOUs for beer and hotdogs. Buy him some peanuts and crackerjacks to go along with the tickets. You can dress it up in a cute way, and voila…you have a gift.
As for the book recommendations, I read many baseball books. I’ve already read Turbow’s (which Sars linked to) and I look forward to reading Wilker’s, but I don’t *collect* most types of baseball books. As a result, the gift books I’ve received from non-fans tend to range in my view from: “Ok, I’ll read it once and pass it along” to “Oh look, a random baseball book that I’m not that interested in” to the far more common “Oh, I already read that. Uhm, thanks.” It’s extremely rare for me to get a book that I haven’t read, that I’m psyched to read, and that I’m interested in having/keeping afterwards. If you don’t know his tastes or collections, getting him a baseball book isn’t a good idea, in my opinion.
And as for the people recommending the Bill Simmons basketball book, I’d caution: most fans I know have a love/hate view of Simmons. Either they love his writing or they can’t stand it. Don’t buy his book unless you know you’re dealing with a Simmons fan.
For Giftless–what about a book about Irish sports, like Gaelic Football (diff from soccer). I did a quick amazon.com search using “history irish sport” and it did come up with a book about sport and nationalism in Irish identity (appeals to the historian in me), but also books about the role of the Irish diaspora in American sports.
“And as for the people recommending the Bill Simmons basketball book, I’d caution: most fans I know have a love/hate view of Simmons. Either they love his writing or they can’t stand it. Don’t buy his book unless you know you’re dealing with a Simmons fan.”
I’m the one who first recommended the Simmons book and I almost put that in my post. I’m a copy editor at a newspaper, and the sports desk folks who don’t like Simmons still wanted to read that book. It’s definitely very much his style, which I think would probably annoy me in a column, but the book had a lot of really interesting information.
E.B.-
Granola
Hominy
Okra
Sprouts
Tofu
G.H.O.S.T.
@Don’t Care
About the little sculpture: The US has an embassy in Romania. While tracking down gifts for us is not their purpose, there are Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) who haunt the museums and shops who could help you. Try emailing the embassy, and ask to “speak” to an American who enjoys museums. Sure, it is a long shot, but that looks like the sort of search you are on.
@ Go Go Gadget My husband has lots of interests, but I can’t keep track of what albums he owns, what books he has read ( or already owns) but once he got an iPod shopping became much easier. Sometimes I buy music that Bob Dylan lists as major influences. Sometimes, I make it really easy, and just get him a hundred dollars of music credit on iTunes. I know that gift certificates may seem a cold gift to some, but he loves it.
Good luck.
@Don’t Care — Apparently, the figurines were recently (by “recently” I mean, “up until 2 days ago”) in New York. It may be worth a try contacting someone at NYU before taking that course in Romanian. http://www.nyu.edu/isaw/exhibitions/oldeurope/
Best of luck!
I too am looking for reproductions of the “Thinker of Hamangia,” and “Seated Woman.”
If anybody else finds a source, please post it here.
Thank you.
Just checked the links mentioned above, and the “Thinker of Hamangia and Seated Woman” are available from http://floredana.com/cpg14x/thumbnails.php?album=30.
I’ve been looking to get these artifacts myself, I’ve seen the originals on display at NYC, they are indeed fascinating.
Sental
Thinker and Seated Woman Neolithic Replicas / Figurines are available and ships from NYC at http://www.vendio.com/stores/visartgallery/item/sculpture/neolithic-figurines-reproducti/lid=2621201