The Givenchy Breakfast at Tiffany’s dress I posted about earlier went for £467,200 (including fees), well beyond its auction estimate. There’s speculation that Victoria ‘Posh Spice’ Beckham picked it up (a “European” phone bidder prevailed) since she’s a big Audrey Hepburn fan, but we may never know.

Kennedy Center Honors this year went to Andrew Lloyd Webber, Zubin Mehta, Dolly Parton, Smokey Robinson, and Steven Spielberg. Paying tribute to the honorees were Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, Jessica Simpson (you may have already read about her 9-5 fiasco), Tom Hanks, Liam Neeson, Reese Witherspoon, Corey Glover, John Williams, Itzhak Perlman, Sarah Brightman, Christine Ebersole, and Elena Roger. As usual, CBS will broadcast the gala the day after Christmas.

Symphony Silicon Valley, which rose from the ashes of the bankrupt San Jose Symphony, has a business model worthy of its techie startup environment. After five seasons the orchestra is surviving with a rather outrageous arrangement. It has no permanent musical director. Each program has a guest conductor, saving the group a hefty yearly conductor’s salary (Michael Tilson Thomas up in San Francisco costs that symphony over $1 million), and bringing them a fresh musical perspective each time. Audiences are enjoying the variety, as are the musicians who don’t seem to be suffering from the lack of a musical figurehead. The guest conductor model is common in Europe, but perhaps could become more typical in the U.S. as other struggling groups try to find new ways to keep making music.

After the additional dredging of 39,000 cubic yards of mud to free the hull and propellers, the USS Intrepid finally escaped its Hudson River pier on Tuesday. The first attempt to move the 36,000 tons of aircraft carrier failed a month ago. This time around it got stuck at the same point, but some clever tugboat maneuvering freed it for its journey to dry dock in New Jersey. The Intrepid is scheduled to return to Pier 86 in November 2008.

Target has the Hello Kitty toaster and waffle maker on sale for $15 each. I wonder what her face would look like on a bagel. I’m just sayin’.

Two home renovations from recent issues of the Seattle Times’ Sunday magazine that I keep thinking about: a glorious cook’s kitchen, carefully designed, each appliance tested before selection (she actually poached a fish in the appliance store’s dishwasher). A beautifully high-ceilinged home that was formerly a chapel. Truly a sanctuary, it features radiant heating underfoot so the vast space above doesn’t need to feel so cold.

I love finding stories like this one. Dave Johnson, 73, makes wooden apple boxes. He’s been doing it since he was a kid, back when Washington apple growers actually used the boxes for shipping. Now he’s one of the last commercial wooden apple box makers in the U.S. (a web search turned up this other outfit in Indiana). Johnson has considered retiring but he doesn’t want his craft to die out and business is good. Since apple growers started switching over to cardboard in the late 1950s (because pine for the boxes was becoming scarce), Johnson has supplied crate slats to California vegetable growers and made specialty crates for companies who sell gourmet smoked salmon, sausage, cheese and, yes, apples. He’s currently making 3,000 display crates for the QFC grocery stores. Back in his youth he made about 2 cents per box. Fast workers could nail down the 24 nails in a box in less than a minute and Johnson says he averaged 800 boxes a day.

Among the trying-to-be-clever headlines reporting on the ABBA museum being planned in Sweden: “See that girl, watch that scene at the ABBA museum“, “ABBA museum to say Thank You for the Music” and way too many variations on “Mamma Mia, an ABBA Museum”.

It’s Elephant Polo time! Teams from Britain, India, Scotland, Sri Lanka and Nepal are competing in the 25th World Elephant Polo Tournament. The host country is Nepal. Tournaments are also typically held each year in Thailand and Sri Lanka. There are two riders on each elephant. One is the “mahout”, the trainer who directs the elephant, and the other is the player with the polo stick. The sport uses Indian elephants (African elephant ears get in the way) and their trainers claim the animals quite enjoy the sport, that in fact it can be a nice family reunion for these very social animals. But PETA is in Nepal to protest the game, particularly the use of bullhooks to train the elephants. Bullhooks are not used during the game itself.

A Seattle woman has an interesting photo of the crane that recently collapsed in Bellevue. Taken on October 10, the crane appears to be leaning. Jana Downing snapped the shot from a relative’s room at The Westin. The Department of Labor and Industries would like to see any photos or videos of the crane before the collapse.