Yesterday's front-page story on Best Buy's worries contained an interesting statistic: 19 percent of people surveyed planned to spend more on consumer electronics this Christmas. Lest you think they're all Thurston Howell III types wandering through the showroom peering at 52-inch TVs through a gold-rimmed monocle, I was considering joining that 19 percent. The ancient rec room TV flickers like the lights in a London bomb shelter during the Blitz. But on second thought, if you time your blinks right, you hardly notice.
Expect more stories like this from retailers local and national. It's just like '29, when the market for new wide-speaker radios completely evaporated. Worst. Christmas. Ever. Santa lays off three reindeer, will not give out coal to bad kids out of concern for environment, shirts that were made for $1.17 in a Malaysian factory steeply reduced to $10, and so on.
If it helps: we've been here before.
When the over-inflated tech stocks blew into a pin factory in 2000, it was the same story: CHRISTMAS DOOM. Retailers were reduced to wrapping diamond necklaces in $100 bills and throwing them at the heads of customers. Even when the economy was running so hot you could fry an egg on the appraisal statement for a one-bedroom shack between a cemetery and a cyanide factory, we were told that consumers were pressing hard for bargains. If the most popular new gift was a top-hat incinerator and the second hottest was the top-hat -- actually, the three-pack; you saved 20 percent -- the stories still predicted a slack season.
It always seems to be our fault, too. As if we made the stores put all their eggs in the basket of December.
This year, though, it seems like the warnings may come true.
Every other day they act like someone with food poisoning who saw a TV commercial for Beefaroni. The paper has headlines like "China Eliminates 140 million jobs," and gas has jumped from its 1963 price of 23 cents to a mind-boggling price just under $2. The housing market has "cooled," to use a term familiar to morgue attendants.
Everyone feels poor and nervous, and the only thing that could spur a burst of buying would be the appearance of a meteor on a direct course for Earth. (Even then, the radio ads would be telling you it's a great time to buy gold.)
It happened rather quickly didn't it? Last year's gift list: a fridge with a high-def TV embedded in the front, with in-door water, ice and liquefied brie. On-board computer automatically applies for a home-equity loan every six weeks. Apparel: llama-hair coats with lining made from dolphin placenta. Hot kid gifts: a Wii with an indentured servant who did all the tiresome gesturing while you commanded him; genetically engineered butterflies that spoke your name once before vanishing in a puff of perfume. And, of course, an iPod laser-engraved with your personal genome.
This year:
The Wide-Screen Conversion System, which consists of a single piece of paper telling you to move your chair closer to the TV. Apparel: itchy sweaters you have to hand-wash in Calamine lotion. Toys: the Youu, which is just like the Wii except you battle against someone who matches your every move (previously marketed as a mirror for the back of the closet door). My Little Gluehorse, an adorable pink pony you sell to the Sticky-Stuff Factory (sold separately) because you can't afford to feed him any longer.
This may seem heretical, and we certainly don't wish retailers ill, but perhaps a year off from shouldering massive debt because there's a tree in the living room might give us a chance to breathe deep, take stock, settle debts and enjoy the season for the reasons stated on the greeting cards.
Wide-screen high-def is great, but until the national psyche staggers out of the basement, people will not consider the ability to see Harrison Ford's individual nose hairs a necessity.
In 1080, that is. Have you seen the difference between ordinary DVD and Blu-Ray, even at 720? So you don't see all the hairs. Times are hard. We all make sacrifices.
jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/buzz
