by Foster Kamer

Today is Festivus. Which, if you didn’t know, is “a holiday for the rest of us.” Beyond this, I have no real idea what a Festivus is, but I do know this: Allen Salkin wrote the book on it. And Allen Salkin was laid off from the New York Times last week.

From what I can gather, Festivus was introduced to pop culture in a Seinfeld episode, via screenwriter Daniel O’Keefe, who wrote it into the show. His Dad came up with it to commemorate the first date he went on with his then-to-be-wife. Daniel O’Keefe wrote it into Seinfeld as the holiday that wacky character George Costanza (played by Duckman star Jason Alexander) celebrates. It’s intended to be a holiday free of the “pressures and commercialism” of the other holidays that people spend money on.

The holiday continued as a storyline throughout Seinfeld, and included such rituals as “The Airing of Grievances,” which is where you sit around a table and tell everyone how much they disappointed you over the last year, and vice-versa. Beyond that, I don’t know much about it, because Seinfeld only served to remind me of the people in my family I can’t stand. They all live in some proximity of Hollywood, Florida, and they all think Seinfeld was so-true-it’s-funny hysterical. I thought Seinfeld was so-true-it’s-traumatizing upsetting, the way some WWII vets couldn’t sit through Saving Private Ryan. (Aunt Roz, if you’re reading this, I’m mostly talking about you. I will marry a Shiksa just to piss you off.)

Two books were written on Festivus. One was by Daniel O’Keefe, in 2005, with an introduction by Jason Alexander. The other was written by Allen Salkin, with an introduction by Jerry Stiller, in 2008.

Festivus strikes me as a well-intended thing: it’s a broad philosophical statement on the bullshit that December holidays are wrapped in whimsical nonsense and served well by the brand recognition of a TV show as popular as Seinfeld. To write one book on it is mountain-of-molehill type stuff. To write a second book on it is to birth a skyscraper from a sandbox. It is, like many things Allen Salkin has done, impressive.

But Allen Salkin has written many things that have been considered-to say the least-unimpressive by the strident group of people who opine about media, be they amateur, professional, or otherwise. In other words: Salkin’s been the target of catty, bitchy bloggers since he started at the Times. (Before that, he was at the Post, and he was dating Lisa Loeb! Funny how those seem like “innocent” times compared to his tenure at the New York Times. )

One of his first pieces for the Styles section was about some kids who were going to have the Lower East Side reality show. It was something that we all wanted to read, right? But also something that made us all cringe. The long view, however: Here was a guy at the New York Times who might try to put some flavor in the Styles.

This interest quickly alchemized into something slightly more hostile, however, when Salkin pissed off everyone at the New York Observer by writing a softball profile of its (at the time) new young owner, Jared Kushner, that largely condescended to and slighted the efforts of the New York Observer’s writers, as well as their now-former editor Peter Kaplan.

In January, 2008, Salkin probably did a good job provoking the wrath of Gawker when he wrote that it had “jumped the snark” in the Times. He was not at the time nor has he been since the only person to write about this! But considering Salkin’s previous efforts, which included writing about how women who eat red meat are easier to fornicate with than vegetarians, curious fascination with Salkin turned to open contempt. Here was this guy at the Times whose job it was to write about trends! And from what some would consider a “lofty” “perch.” (The “argument” against “trend” pieces is always, at heart: why this thing instead of that thing?) But it was his job, and he did it.

Gawker Weekend writer Jon Liu once called Salkin the “Christiane Amanpour of Sunday Styles.” He was later referred to by another former Gawker writer as the “Seymour Hersh of the Sunday Styles.” I also took my share of shots at Salkin. For instance, when Salkin profiled a group of media personalities who have a decidedly anti-oversharey organization, he did so without mentioning his own oversharing tendencies, and also couldn’t acknowledge the irony that they let him profile them. It was not a great piece.

In any event, when Salkin was let go, this was almost inevitable.

And Gawker Media owner Nick Denton wasn’t the only one who expressed schadenfreude at Salkin’s dismissal.

The one time I met Salkin, he seemed surprised that I introduced myself. He was kind. He even signed a book for me. He handed me his business card, we had a quick talk, and I got the impression he was-get this!-a guy who was working hard at a newspaper. Working hard at a goofy newspaper job, yes-but also that his beat put him directly in the path of ongoing public scorn.

Salkin also took on assignments a lot of people would be scared to handle. One example: he suggested that MTV was at least a bit responsible for the death of DJ AM. And also, let’s not forget: he did write that article on Gawker. Whether or not it was good-or even accurate!-is almost besides the point that Salkin, always in the cross-hairs, had basically now thrown his body on the grenade.

So I considered the laying-off of Salkin, and I wasn’t happy. Salkin’s job description at the New York Times, when you get down to it, is, or was, one of the most troublesome. But like so many of the things that “media critics” spend time mocking (The New York Sun! Radar magazine’s Three Different Iterations! Etc!), I get the feeling we will miss Salkin, if for no other reason than that the opportunity for someone to take a risk in a major newspaper and fuck up (or succeed wildly) has now been further shrunk. That’s kind of sad.

So, here: the best media souvenir from the last year I’ve received. Salkin’s business card. Long live him, his reporting, and his ridiculous-ass holiday.

by The End of the 00s

Just the other night I was watching Anderson Cooper’s variety show on CNN, and right before a commercial break, Mr. Cooper showed about seven seconds of wobbling and grainy footage of a burning truck speeding down a highway. “A burning truck on a highway,” he said (or words to that effect). He looked, and sounded, very concerned. “We’ll tell how it happened, and where, right after this.”

Upon reflection I think this is the most significant moment of the past 10 years. That is because it is an event that embodies so many 21st-century events: Something is happening, somewhere, and it has no particular effect on you whatsoever. The latest details in a moment.

I do not suggest that nothing happened in the past ten years. Things happened; significant ones, good and bad. But much of what happened was not noteworthy for having happened, it was noteworthy for having been noted, despite not being particularly noteworthy. We know the space in which news can be noted is now infinite; we know the noting of news has been “democratized.” But the pace of news worth noting has not kept up.

Still, something must be noted. And so: A woman is missing, and her husband has been named a person of interest. A celebrity has turned out to be less perfect than advertised. Someone you follow on Twitter has a long delay in the Atlanta airport. A politician said something hypocritical; the politician’s hypocrisy was detected by a blogger; another blogger has accused the first blogger of dishonorable bias. There’s a new sex tape is making the rounds online. Somebody you met at a party two years ago likes your status. Breaking News Alert: A truck is on fire on a highway, somewhere. We will dig deeper with our panel of experts. Upload your pictures now. Leave us a comment. We’re flooding the zone.

Every decade has its memorable moments. Possibly what we’ll remember about this decade is all the forgettable ones.

Rob Walker is the author of Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are

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by The End of the 00s

Val Temple, the producer of Cooking the Books, reenacts the most famous hoaxes of the 00s.

OMG, you guys, the ones still on the Internet, both of you: me and Balk are totes currently losing the Mediaite poll of “top online editor of 2009.” To HARVEY LEVIN! I am never going to sleep again. (Because I am playing Yoko Ono’s Season of Glass really loud in the office, because Balk is leaving for precious family time, and that album is so upsetting!)

by Nic Musolino

I never had eggnog growing up. The holiday drink of choice was served in the basement of my Aunt Mary’s house (she just had a heart attack, so send out some love), where my uncle’s bar was filled with strange Amari that were decades old, surmounted by a Playboy puzzle centerfold carefully screened with a festive holiday kerchief hiding all the good parts. My dad made a perverted White Russian-a milkshake (made with food supply milkshake mix, not ice cream), Kahlua and any available clear spirit (rum, I think). Italians love weird liquors, so the Kahlua was the appeal for most everyone. I don’t know how they denatured it for the kids. Maybe we just got smaller glasses.

I had a general aversion to custards of all kinds (the word always sounds like ‘mucous’ to me), but also never realized the relationship between flan and custard. Hey! I was young. But after that became clear, the wall came down: tapioca, Pink Ladies and Béarnaise sauce. If you put an egg in it, I will come. I got late into the eggnog game, and dovetailing with this interest seems to be the complete disappearance of the stuff from grocery store shelves everywhere. Particularly those in dying industrial Ohio, where asking a former steelworker, now shelver at Giant Eagle, for organic eggnog seems a bit precious. A few years back, in very Mom-fashion, mine parried my frustration with “why don’t you just make it?”

I’m not going to pretend some family member whispered the secret word in my ear and a cookbook arose from mud-I found this recipe the same way I find decent porn: the internet. And I’m not going to transcribe it because every year it’s in the top two in Google searches (you think I bookmark this?) for ‘eggnog recipe.’ This indicates that either no one makes eggnog anymore, or that this single serving site is a mastery of SEO and anyone who makes a living running a blog deserves all the AdWords revenue they can garner.

But! Some notes: Bourbon. Yes, two cups. I won’t deny that this was the ingredient that first drew me to the recipe. Don’t be afraid in the prep when you are getting close to the brim-and using a large measuring cup is all the more fun. Seeing two cups of bourbon provides the simultaneous frisson of being a teenager doing something absurd and naughty and a middle-aged alcoholic sense of relief that whatever you did to rationalize your first drink of the day is now past and you can get to work (look-it’s a holiday! Drinking eggnog at 11:00 AM on Christmas? Practically required). Two cups still won’t be enough, but it’s a good base. For the bourbon and brandy, go cheap and strong (this year’s bourbon is Wild Turkey 101, and the brandy is whatever pint I bought and left at the ‘rents last year)-you can’t taste any notes besides cream cream cream.

For everything else: go pricey. Off the shelf eggnog-if you can even find it any more-is probably cheaper, and pasteurized and pectinized and lecithinized, so generic anything won’t help you. You are drinking raw eggs here people, and organic eggs taste better and hopefully reduce the salmonella risk.

If you intend to make and drink right away, note that it will be pretty foamy right off. If you are used to the more slightly more viscous version from a carton, let it chill a bit. Both ways have their merit. And, as noted, think of the mandated bourbon as a base, and add, individually, to taste. Turns out you can add a considerable amount to a glass without the alcohol diluting the nog. Merry Christmas, Jews.

Nic Musolino is currently: a little drunk.

Extremely racist newspaper commenters are apparently the fault of sports blog Deadspin, which is “not a serious news-gathering source,” says Chicago Sun-Times web editor. RELATED: Chicago Sun-Times web editor kind of an idiot, right?

by John Del Signore

Previously in our tale of seasonal Santa-employment: Part Two, Part One.

The P.A. system at Saks played a twenty-minute loop of holiday music, providing ample opportunity to fall in love with each of those timeless classics again and again. And then again! Have you every wondered how many times you’ll have to hear ‘Holly, Jolly Christmas,’ ‘Feed the World’ or ‘Hark! The Bells,’ before you can die? Well, put on some coffee because I’m living proof that you’ve got quite a bit more “Oh by golly have a holly jolly Christmas! This year!” to go.

I would zealously sing along to try and drown out the voices in my head. My favorite was the immortal Burl Ives classic, ‘Silver and Gold.’ Whenever ‘Silver and Gold’ played, Santa would sing and dance through the aisles, tossing candy-canes in the air, venting his joy to the world.

Silver and Gold, Silver and Gold, everyone wishes for Silver and Gold!
How can we measure its worth?
Just by the pleasure it gives here on Earth!

Occasionally a child would approach me with a request so adorable I became suspicious that a Chock Full ‘O Nuts commercial was being secretly filmed without my consent.

The most memorable wish came from a five-year-old boy. He only wanted one thing from Santa: Keys.

“Keys for a car?” Santa asked.

“No, just keys,” the boy said.

When the 30-minute break arrived at last, Santa would dash through the cafeteria like Regis Philbin, advocating Holiday Cheerfulness and flicking candy canes at employees eating their lunch.

I would usually grab an egg salad sandwich, a big bowl of frozen yogurt and another Big-Gulp half-filled with ginger ale. In lieu of paying at the cash register, Santa would just smile and spread the cane around.

Back in Santa’s little storage closet I would rip off the damp beard and fat suit and hunker down in my underwear to enjoy my sandwich and add Jack Daniels to the ginger ale. That finished, I’d inhale the frozen yogurt to lower my core temperature before re-entry.

The second set typically featured Santa loosening up and letting his hair down a little. This was also when the trouble started.

By the time I reached the last hour of my shift, I’d be on the main floor yelling above the din, in a delirious fever: “Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas, everyone! Merry CHRISTMAS! Help yourself to anything you want in the store! Tell the cashier Santa said it’s on the house!”

One morning at the end of week two, I got a phone call at home from Kathy at the temp agency, just as I was leaving for work (and struggling to stuff a new bottle of Turkey into my coat pocket).

“Hi, John, how are you!”

“I’m really great, Kathy! I’m really enjoying working with everyone on this project,” I said.

“John, that’s great! Listen, I’m calling because Patricia said reports are coming to her that you’ve been stealing food from the cafeteria. Is that true?”

“I just assumed that lunch was one of the perks.”

“No, I’m afraid there’s no such thing as a free lunch, not even for old St. Nick, ha ha!”

“It’s customary for lunch to be provided for the talent,” I tried. “What kind of amateur Punch n’ Judy show are they running over there?”

Well, if that was how they were going to be, then fine, Santa would just have to drink his lunch on an empty stomach. So instead of swinging by the cafeteria on my break, I would proceed directly to Santa’s Little Betty Ford Clinic and toss back a few.

“Yep, just you and me,” I muttered to my elf helper, Al. “You and me, Al, and Santa makes three! Can’t count on anybody in today’s crass consumer culture. I am the friggin’ Reason for the Season! But! We are going go out there spread the cheer, Alfred! You’d better not cry because Santa is here, you over-privileged acquisitive brats! Al, hombre, can you zip me up?”

Either nothing significant happened again until the third week, or I blacked out. I have no idea. By some miracle, I never found myself regaining consciousness on the F train at Coney Island, my Santa Suit caked with vomit. But it could have come to that-at best-if they hadn’t terminated Santa first.

It is important to remember that during the year 1999, New York had reached the nosebleed nadir of Rudy Giuliani’s “Quality of Life (for whitey)” campaign. Already that year he had promised that street vending would soon be illegal, gatherings of more than twenty persons would require a permit, and homeless people would be arrested if they refused to enter the city’s filthy, crime-infested “shelters.”

I personally had spent more than 24 hours in jail, and had been charged with felonies for climbing up on a crosswalk sign during a demonstration protesting the acquittal of the four police officers who killed the unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo, in the doorway of his building, by use of 41 bullets.

Also I had been arrested for putting up posters for a free concert on a temporary construction wall already covered with posters.

So, sometime about a week before Christmas, I was wandering through the fifth floor, just minding my own business, tossing candy canes to the masses, when I came upon a man with his back to me. Hearing my jolly exhortations, Rudy Giuliani turned to meet his Santa.

I proffered cane and spoke the first inoffensive comment that occurred to me.

“Ho! Ho! Ho! Well, Rudolph, you’ve been a very naughty boy this year!”

Mr. Mayor sneered and took the candy cane without saying a word.

As I watched him shuffle away, I momentarily pitied the guy. He had been taking a beating in the press! He had to face protesters who compared him to Hitler.

And now even Santa hated him.

Inevitably, while doing my shtick later on the main floor, I was approached by an unctuous man with the air of middle management about him.

“Listen, my friend,” he said, “I’ve been watching you and we’ve got to have a little talk. Basically, I need less improv and more Ho-Ho-Ho out of you.”

I was insulted. Infuriated. There I was, pouring my heart, soul and sweat out day after day-without one single note of appreciation from Saks-and then this anonymous critic, who didn’t know a thing about the process of creating a character, had the arrogance to interrupt my performance and give me notes?

“Well, young man,” I said, “you’ve got to let Santa be jolly in his own way.”

“No,” he said. “I know what I want. I’ve been getting some weird comments about some things you’ve been saying. From now on, I want you to stick to Ho-Ho-Ho and Happy Holidays, and I want it loud and cheerful. That’s it.”

“Young man, let me explain something to you,” I said. “When children come to see Santa, sometimes they’re afraid, and if Santa is too loud and boisterous, they start screaming and even crying, and nobody wants that, right? So you’re just going to have to trust old Santa’s judgment when it comes to the volume of his voice and the level of his cheer.”

Without responding, he turned and seized the telephone from the information desk. I could see him ranting, presumably about me. He would receive his lump of coal someday, I thought-the hot, steaming coal of hell.

When I arrived home that night, there was a message on my machine.

“Hi, John! This is Kathy from Final Solution Staffing! Listen, John, I don’t know what happened, but the client called me today and told me you don’t need to come back tomorrow! They said there were complaints that you were asking women to ride in Santa’s sleigh? I told them you must have been misinterpreted, but they wouldn’t believe me! I don’t know what to tell you, John! I feel terrible!”

Less than a week before Christmas and they laid Santa off. Without even a severance plate of cookies. How was I supposed pay my rent? To buy a present for my kid brother? Who would spike the egg nog?

The Corporate Overlords who owned Santa’s fat ass could not care less, and I was cast down into desperate financial straits. The next day I made the rounds at my temp agencies and was told things would be dead until after the New Year.

But it was on my way home, waiting for the F train at 14th Street, that a way out of my impending indigence appeared before me. Take heart, unemployed masses of today! There’s always money to be made in self-employment! Particularly, money to be made on subway platforms, standing immobile, with your face painted, wearing a silver unitard and holding a placard. As long as you don’t mind the occasional $50 ticket or a night in the tombs.

John Del Signore is currently employed by Gothamist.

“There was a time when ‘Yankee ingenuity’ meant inventing an airplane or splitting the atom, but that was before the eighth season of Laverne & Shirley reduced our national IQ to just a smidge over Ï€. The best we can do these days is to foist the world’s stupidest product on our former BFFs. Thus: Snuggie for Dogs!!! Yes, following on the heels of Binder Clip: For Cats!! and The Wire Season 3 DVD Box Set: For Ferrets!!, the makers of the all-fleece SfD!! would have you believe that shaving the hair off one animal and putting it on another isn’t just a hobby for the criminally insane.”

– A Gift Guide That Helps.

‘We refer to our habitat now as ‘merroir,’’ an aquatic play on the wine industry’s word of choice, ‘terroir.’”

-Apparently now oyster fisherman are total homos, just like wine people. Who knew?

In These Troubled Times, many Americans are seeking financial wisdom from an unlikely source: the Bible.

All sound professional advice, I found, … has its roots someplace in Scripture,” said Ron Blue, author of “Surviving Financial Meltdown” and founder of the Kingdom Advisors, which trains Christian financial professionals. Blue uses the Bible for guidance on everything from budgeting to long-term investing and handling an inheritance.

Some experts, however, are unconvinced.

Robert Manning, author of “Credit Card Nation,” said biblically based financial advice isn’t sophisticated enough in a world of rising health care, housing and retirement costs, where people need to learn to take advantage of complicated credit and tax laws.

“If you’re going to go pre-New Deal, 1924 America, that’s basically what this advice is driven by,” Manning said. “It sounds so good and plausible until you actually put it into reality, and it just doesn’t work.”

You don’t say!