Presidentress Gift Guide 2016

If this November hadn't been such a crappy, hectic month I would have had this post up and ready in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and whatnot. Sorry. But better late than never, right? If you're looking for the perfect gift for the history nerd in your life, you've come to the right place. (You might also want to check out last year's gift guide, as most of it is still relevant.)

The Amazon links contained here are affiliate links. Shopping through them helps support this blog, so please do me a solid and use them. The other links are not affiliate links, so if you don't like me you can still feel good about clicking on them because they won't support me in any way.

Without further ado, here are my 2016 Holiday Picks:

If you don't already have the Broadway cast recording of Hamilton, you should really get it. Really. And if you already have it, your next purchase should be the Hamilton Mixtape. It puts a new spin on those "old" beloved favorites from the show, with artists like Ja Rule, Kelly Clarkson, Alicia Keys, and Jimmy Fallon & The Roots. You can preorder it right now (some tracks are already available) but the whole album will be released next week.

Do you want to act out the musical while listening to the soundtrack? Then why not pick up some Hamilton, Jefferson, and Washington finger puppets?

We also have the Lincoln and Poe ones. (The Poe can represent John Wilkes Booth if you want to do any other theater reenactments.)

Or get a little radical with an Emma Goldman finger puppet. Think of all the fun you can have!

Maybe you're looking for something a little more sophisticated? Perhaps a nice, world-leader-scented candle to set the mood? Then you definitely need to check out JD and Kate Industries' shop on etsy. They're the folks behind Hottest Heads of State, and they've recently expanded their expertise into the candle-making business. You can select from candles that smell like Justin Trudeau, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump.

I have the Justin Trudeau-scented one, and it smells just like a warm, tender, Canadian hug. Also, it comes with a Justin Trudeau temporary tattoo!

If you like supporting independent artisans, and if you also like presidents overrun by rodents, this next item might be perfect for you.

I got this Andrew Jackson-hamster magnet last year from The Atomic 50s Housewife shop on etsy. I don't see it listed there anymore, but if you really, really want one, maybe you can contact her and she'd make one?

Next up are some great shirts from Amorphia Apparel. They have a ton of nerdy/geeky/funny shirts, but my favorite series are their History League shirts, which take historic people/events and turn them into pseudo-sports logos, and the Hirsute History shirts, which feature famous historical hair.

I couldn't decide which History League shirt I wanted, so I have two. The nice thing is that you can get a single logo or you can get two on a shirt to represent a "matchup." I have one shirt for the Muckrakers of the 4th Estate, and the other shirt is a matchup between the Roosevelt Trustbusters and the Robber Barons.

I don't yet have any Hirsute History shirts, but Chester Arthur is high on my list.

Or if you really want to stick with that Justin Trudeau theme, they've got him covered, too.

They also have the hair of actors, musicians, authors, philosophers, and more. Shirts are available in unisex and women's cuts.

If you're looking to support some non-profits, here are some ideas for you.

This year's White House Historical Association Christmas ornament honors Herbert Hoover and the four-alarm fire that occurred at the White House on Christmas Eve 1929. I'm planning on picking mine up at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, but you can order one online.

And while we're talking about Chester Arthur (we were, a minute ago), last year I created a picture of Chestnut A. Arthur. I had kind of forgotten about him until I recently read that the chestnuts we eat in America have been imported ever since a blight wiped out American chestnut trees in 1904. The American Chestnut Foundation is trying to reintroduce blight-resistant chestnut trees, and for a $10 donation, they'll plant one in honor of a person of your choice. It seemed fitting that I should have a tree planted in honor of Chestnut A. Arthur, and you can, too. (Or pick someone else...Chestnut A. Arthur won't be offended. In any case, help make American chestnuts great again.)

Oh, and if you want a presidential ring for that special someone? Let's talk.

Happy shopping!

Separated at Birth, Pt. 15

Rudy Giuliani and the alien from Alien.

A Tale of Two Podcasts

A few weeks ago I decided to try listening to some podcasts instead of playing the Hamilton soundtrack for the 34,000th time (not that there's anything wrong with that). I'd never listened to podcasts before, mainly because I didn't think I could. I'm more of a visual person than an auditory one, and I've never done well with audiobooks because my mind wanders too much. But I'd heard about the Presidential podcast from the Washington Post, and I rarely pass up an opportunity to engage in presidential stuff. Obviously.

The Presidential podcast started back in January with the goal of exploring one president per week leading up to the election. Because I didn't start listening until September I had a lot of catching up to do, but thanks to a few long drives and a couple long flights, I finished just a few days before the election. Whew!

Presidential looks at each president in chronological order. I know of several people whose goal is to read a biography of every president, and I commend them for that because I could never do it. There are some presidents I just don't find interesting enough to devote that kind of time to (I'm looking at you, James Monroe). But I could easily and happily devote 45 minutes of drive-time to learning about them.

Host Lillian Cunningham interviews experts from the Library of Congress, award-winning biographers, journalists, staff members (for more recent presidents), and even some family members to help give listeners insight into the presidents' lives, their terms, and their legacies. Although the episodes are largely serious, they're not at all stodgy. I think the podcast would feel approachable to presidential history newcomers and long-term aficionados alike.

Best of all, the episodes I thought would be the most boring often turned out to be the most interesting, particularly the ones about William Henry Harrison and John Tyler.

As I said, I finished that podcast (other than the post-election wrap-up episode) just days before the election. After the election, I desperately needed something to cheer me up, and that's where the next podcast entered my life.

The DC Improv has a podcast called The Other Side, and one of their features this year is something called Headliner of State, a search for the funniest president of all time.

Like Presidential, Headliner of State devotes an episode to each president, but not in chronological order. There's actually not any order I can discern, but that's okay. I like mixing things up.

Despite being produced by a comedic entity, the episodes are educational and often serious, but with a good dose of humor thrown in. I especially like the formal introduction given to each president by the announcer, who plays it very straight. I laughed out loud several times and almost drove off the road during the William Howard Taft introduction.

The people interviewed for Headliner of State include a wide range of experts. Sometimes the host, Chris White, speaks with biographers or staff members at presidential sites. Sometimes he talks with television humor writers who devoted time to a particular president (like a writer for Futurama who spent a lot of time on Nixon jokes, or the woman who wrote the "William Henry Harrison" episode of Parks and Recreation). For the Chester Arthur episode, he interviews facial hair historian (there is such a thing). For more recent presidents, he interviews the presidents' official joke writers, a position I didn't even know existed and led me to wish I had taken a different path in life.

The episodes always give an overview of the presidents' lives and administrations in a scholarly way, but also spend a lot of time (as one might expect) looking at the lighter side of their personalities.

I'm only about halfway through the series right now and they're still working on more episodes, so I can't tell you yet who is eventually deemed the funniest president of all time. Lincoln certainly seems to be the frontrunner right now, and unless there's a huge upset somewhere, Andrew Johnson will likely be crowned least funny.

If you're looking for a great way to pass the time on a road trip or just running around town, I highly recommend both of these podcasts. If anyone has recommendations for other good ones, please let me know. I have no problem going back to Hamilton but I'd like some other options, too.

Don't Blame Me. I Voted for Kodos

If you don't know The Simpsons, this might not make a lot of sense. Also, if you don't know The Simpsons, I feel very bad for you.

A while back I stumbled upon some election signs reddit user potmat had created for his yard. They're signs featuring Kang and Kodos, the aliens who make an appearance in every "Treehouse of Terror" episode, including one in which they impersonate Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in an attempt to win the 1996 election and take over the earth.

Obsessed with the idea of having these signs in my yard, I asked potmat if he was okay with my stealing the idea, and he said sure. So I sent the picture to my friend Heather and asked her to create a file with quality high enough for a yard sign. She did, and then I let it sit in my inbox for several months.

Finally the other day I sent the files to Office Max to be printed on heavy poster paper, which I then planned to glue onto an existing yard sign. Unfortunately, I guess someone at Office Max knows The Simpsons well enough to know that Kang and Kodos are, technically, copyrighted characters, and they wouldn't print them.

I resigned myself to not having awesome election signs.

Then, yesterday afternoon, inspiration struck: I could just paint them myself! But then I flashed back to junior high art class and having to make a grid over a comic strip and a grid on poster board, and having to freehand each part of the grid onto its corresponding square and how deathly boring that was, and I gave up. But then my brain remembered that I have a portable projector I use for showing videos in some classes I teach, and I realized I could use that to project the image onto a blank yard sign and trace it. Of course there would also be a lot of painting (and more and more tracing) involved, but at least I'd have my signs.

I hit the craft store (with lots of coupons, thankfully) for some acrylic paint, some paint pens, and some sealer. Mr. Presidentressor had already purchased a blank sign, probably at some man-store. (Sarcasm, people. I know women like Home Depot, too.) (Except I really don't. I always worry that one of those giant saws or a coil of wire balanced on a high shelf is going to fall on me.)

I set up the projector, hooked it up to my phone, and taped my blank sign to the wall. My 7-year-old "helped" me by talking incessantly about my tracing (which I did in pencil, by the way). I did Kang on one side, Kodos on the other.

Next I headed to the kitchen table and outlined the aliens in Sharpie. I wound up painting over Kang's name because the pencil showed through the paint and I figured it would be easier to go over them in white paint than to try painting around the blank parts with red.

Then we painted the red and blue background on the first side. I wasn't happy with how splotchy the paint looked at first, but a second coat of each made them better. Filling in the alien was actually lots of fun, although I did need to go back over some of the lines with Sharpie again once the paint had dried, just to keep them bold.

For the Kodos side, I decided to change up the color scheme. Instead of blue on top and red on the bottom, I left it white on top and went with blue on the bottom. That was partially because I'm impatient, and not painting something is quicker than painting it. But it's also because the white paint pen I got for doing the large letters wasn't working very well and I didn't want to deal with it anymore. As for the blue, it just covered better than the red.

From the beginning I had planned on going back and doing the smaller lettering at the end, I just wasn't sure how. I didn't want to freehand it, but I also didn't want to project it up against a wall, especially because I wasn't sure if the paint pens would even work that way. Ultimately, I wound up using the projector, but I rigged it (with a step stool and my kitchen table) to project down onto the floor.

When it was all done, I added a few coats of varnish. Unfortunately, there were a few places where the varnish (or more likely my brush) took off a bit of the acrylic paint, most notably on Kodos. Oops. Overall I'm happy with the results. It wound up costing less than getting the signs printed (although it also cost me about six hours of my life).

Since I wound up doing these on my own, I could have customized them to be different (or more different) than the ones the reddit user created. And had I started sooner than 72 hours before the election, I probably would have. (Heather pointed out that both aliens are Kodos---I could have used a different image for Kang.) Luckily we have four years before we have to go through this again, so I've got time to work on the next one.