The Crunchwrap's Holiday Gift Guide for Dirtbags
Presents for the glutton slacker slob in your life
Dear Crunchwrappers,
Gifting1 for people with questionable hygiene, antisocial tendencies, generalized anxiety disorders, middlebrow taste, and addictions to processed food can be challenged, nay, impossible.
This particular demographic is basically my id and, when left to my own devices, what I most identify as. Over here, the future Mrs. Crunchwrap and I have a running joke about what we do when the other one goes out of town for work. She tends to order a large pizza and eat it slowly throughout a 36-hour span (and I love her for that) and do a lot of crosswords while I tend to order delivery three times in a single day and watch big budget, clumsily executed WWII vehicles. When we each return, the house is generally in order2 and it’s as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. I may bring up that Rami Malek put on a very unconvincing Alabama accent in The Pacific in passing conversation, but otherwise, it’s as if the time disappeared without account.
Anyhow, I suppose if being a mildly depressive slob is my domestic default, I may not be alone. And in representing that group, I’m eager to help others navigate this gift-giving season.
At the heart of this guide is a question: How do you tell someone that you love, like, or tolerate them, in spite of their flaws, without buying them a present that suggests:
I need you to be better
Here’s a more presentable sweater than the one you were supposed to dry clean not cycle wash or that you stained with sour cream
Maybe this will nudge you toward a less chaotic existence
The following are some of my favorite most useful things that might make good gifts for a person with a perplexing, shiftless inner life. If I had any initiative, I’d use affiliate links and get pennies on the dollar from your purchases, but I do this from love.
Central Grocery’s Italian Olive Salad: If you’ve been to New Orleans and you’ve gone to Cafe Du Monde for beignets, you may have encountered someone smug telling you that there’s actually a place with killer muffuletta down the street. I’ve been that smug person and so I was unbelievably pleased when my future mother-in-law came back from the Big Easy with a jar of the olive salad that adorns the muffuletta at Central Grocery which, as EVERYONE knows, is just down the street from Cafe du Monde.
Honestly, this spread is great. Being too lazy to go full muffuletta, I throw turkey and swiss on some French bread or a Portuguese roll (or any spare carb really) and toast it in the toaster oven and then put this olive spread on it and I feel like a king, even when it’s just 11 AM and I’m out of my mind.
Alamo Drafthouse Gift Card: Based on Substack’s invasive tracking data, I feel safe in supposing that you might live close to an Alamo Drafthouse, the movie theater chain with the servers and the booze and occasional showings of old/niche films. Earlier this year, I signed up for their $19.99 ($29 in some markets) monthly all-access pass that lets you go to as many movies as you want each month. Did I do Barbenheimer here?
What I appreciate about the Alamo deal is that it makes something explicit that’s always been implicit: The moviegoing experience for many is often nothing more than a vehicle for popcorn consumption. And that’s how Alamo makes their money. At each showing, I order a bottomless bowl of popcorn ($9.99), have two or three refills, depending on movie length, feel terrible and terrible about myself, and then return to the real world both happy and a little depleted. It’s a nice way to get out of the house and keep current on culture. You can’t order the monthly pass as a gift, but a gift card could cover a month or two of the all-access pass. Like a monthly subway card, you’ll use it more. Highly recommend.
Fluffy Yarn Fleece Full-Zip Jacket: A tragic development in the athleisure industrial complex spawned by the pandemic is the demand that comfortable lounge clothing hew toward general presentability and aerodynamic design. That’s not the point and I resent the implication!
A few years back I found a version of this fuzzy zip-up that Uniqlo sells. Back then, it came with a hood, which is excellent to have, so if that what you want, try this more expensive one.
The bottomline and what gaunt Ed Sheeran here fails to convey in this picture – though the vacant thousand-yard stare is a worthy effort – is that this jacket is meant to be your invisibility cloak. Nobody (and I mean NOBDY) wants to talk to a person wearing this jacket, which is why you should even go one size up on it to be even less unapproachable. Gaunt Ed Sheeran has never half-watched six straight episodes of Suits while also scrolling on his phone. This is a jacket for someone who not only has, but will do so again.
UBFEN Men’s Women's Winter Warm Slippers with Fuzzy Plush Lining Slip on House Shoes: You can tell by the product name alone that no one gives a flying rip about anything other than showing up in search results. And a dirtbag has to respect that. That said, sometimes the greatest barrier to leaving the house is the specter of shoelaces and shoe heels. That’s where the UBFEN Men’s Women's Winter Warm Slippers with Fuzzy Plush Lining Slip on House Shoes comes in!
Two years ago, I bought a pair of these to wear in winter months when walking my dog around the neighborhood. Like Crocs, you just put them on and you can leave to soak up what tantalizing little vitamin D there is.
Mount Hagen Instant Coffee: Look, sometimes you don’t need to be precious about your coffee. And that’s where instant coffee can be the difference between finishing something pressing in your life and going to the couch to nap instead and then being upset with yourself later.
I need a beverage whenever I write, so in the evenings, I go with Mount Hagen Instant Decaf because if I get decision fatigue about what to drink, I’m just gonna call it quits. And then you would be deprived of crucial material like this gift guide. Tastes fine!
Finally….the self-explanatory bonus gift recs:
Cozybo blanket: For couch naps
Camino Wild Cherry gummies: For surviving holiday parties
Drive-Thru Dreams: The sprawling, historical fast-food epic that NPR, Amazon, Smithsonian, and Entertainment Weekly put on their best books of the year list…like a couple of years ago. Order this book as a gift and I will send along a personalized note for your recipient.
And that’s it for the first Crunchwrap gift guide! Thank you as always for reading.
If you have your own gift recs to share or a friend or loved one that’s hard to shop for, please reply and I may respond in the next issue.
Love,
Adam
the actual worst word ever coined
This is subjective