ThisNext Blog

Waiting for your table, Mom and Dad are arguing about whatever suburban issue they’ve nitpicked for years, in between asking you about when you’ll start dating the elusive Mr. Right.

Though your boy’s on your arm.

Totally charming.

Well, at least your James Perse v-neck dress is. 

...continued: Holiday Chic: Partying with the Parents

Although I sort of wish Jay-Z had stayed “in retirement” just a little longer – so as to enhance the dramatic effect of his inevitable comeback - it’s really almost criminal to complain when you get hit with such awesomeness as his new record’s first single, “Show Me What You Got.” Turns out that Kingdom Come may be “the best hip hop album to come out so far in 2006,” according to Thirty Three Jones (“It doesn’t reach the same heights as Reasonable Doubt or Blueprint, but it’s still a solid offering from Jay-Z,” our blogger adds.) ThisNexter jessicaok concurs that “the king of hip-hop is back,” which should come as good news to those of us who’ve already shown big love for The Black Album (that would be myself, alioudia, and Kristopher, who simply heralds that masterpiece as “the sound of genius”).

If you’re working out for more than an hour, you need to get 500 to 700 mg of sodium for every liter of water you consume, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. But most sports drinks offer about a third less sodium - plus lots of sugar. To get your 700 mg of sodium and zero sugar, ThisNexters micradot, John Stamstad, Gordon, and Alyson recommend dropping a nuun hydration tablet into your water bottle. Micradot, for one, loves the product’s simplicity: “I can fill my bottles at the start of a ride and reload them wherever I end up,” he says. “Tastes are mild and way better than the sugary drinks you’re usually forced to drink/buy and it doesn’t upset my stomach.” The easy-on-the-tummy effect is also key for Gordon, who notes that those who use nuun “don’t have to swill quite so much after you enduro sweat-a-thons. I hate having water slosh around my belly.”

Although a good deal of my record collection might suggest that I’m somewhat of a joyless music snob, I’m actually a complete sucker for the sugary, sappy fluff that turns up on lite-and-easy and oldies stations around the holidays. Case in point: I just heard Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time” on the radio and became so ridiculously happy and probably even sang along loudly (mid-traffic, windows rolled all the way down). But while that song’s a great big slice of holiday cheese, so many of this season’s soundtrack staples are more like candy-cane-striped pop confections – sometimes with a little bit of genius hidden inside their gooey centers.

Nobody does Christmas classics better, I do believe, than the 60s girl groups showcased on A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector. And while the title may be slightly scary in this day and age, you can’t deny the giddy sweetness of songs like Darlene Love’s “Marshmallow World” and The Ronettes’ “Sleigh Ride.” Ronnie and Co. have certainly charmed Pogo A Go-Go blogger Phil, who recently shared an MP3 of one of the album’s highlights (“Although we have a moratorium on Chrimbo music in our household until December (enforced unflinchingly by Dearest Wife), I couldn’t resist posting The Ronettes’s sublime version of ‘Frosty the Snowman,’” Phil confesses).

Another early-’60s Christmas must-have, The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album always seems to hop into my CD carousel the day after Thanksgiving and stay put till the end of December (and “Santa’s Beard” just gets me every time). I grew up hearing that record over and over every holiday season, just as I did the first volume of A Very Special Christmas. To this day I’ve still got a major soft spot for the Pretenders’ rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and U2’s “Baby, Please Come Home,” and it makes me giggle to find that a recent reissue of the 1989 release replaces Bon Jovi’s “Back Door Santa” with a much-tamer “I Wish Everyday Could Be Like Christmas” by the same poodle-haired band.

...continued: Couldn't miss this one this year

We know you’re dressing up your mantle with candles, your trees with lights, and hell, if you’ve got a Rudi the red-nosed flamingo staked into your front lawn, we’re all for decking your halls for the Holidays, however you like to do it.

Here at ThisNext, we’ve got ways for you to spread the Holiday cheer as well. Our designers have created a set of special edition art bars just for the Holidays that you can use to dress up your profile and your lists. We’ve added them as options to the list of standard art bars where you create or edit lists, or edit your profile. 

...continued: Deck Your Halls with Holiday Art Bars