I hate opening toys. The packaging is usually a nightmare of cardboard, plastic, and tens of twisties twisted thousands of times. And meanwhile the baby/toddler is sitting right there ready to eat or impale himself on the bits of detritus flying about, so you better get the guts freed soon. Very occasionally the box is more interesting than the toy itself, a phenomenon I previously thought was limited to felines. (via kathryn)

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.

This year’s Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is from Ridgefield, Connecticut, not too far from my home town. About eight years ago a representative from Rockefeller Center contacted Robert Kinnaird to inquire about the large Norway Spruce next to his driveway. They’ve been keeping track of his tree since then and this year its time came. The tree was bundled up and attached to a giant crane before it was cut and transported to New York. Kinnaird’s parents bought the house in 1946 and the tree was there back then, large, but not as large as it is now. The official measurement from Rockefeller Center is 88 feet high by 56 feet wide.

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”.