Goop, glorious goop. (Or, the well curated shopping experience.)

For a while there, I had almost (blessedly) forgotten about the existence of Gwyneth Paltrow, the perfect avatar of wacky luxe consumption. And then my niece Molly went and texted me a link to an article on this year's holiday gift catalogues from Goop, Paltrow's lifestyle company. "Might be good for your blog," she added. That girl sure knows me.

Ah, there is so much there there, that I could devote a week's worth of Pink Slips - perhaps more - to exploring them. Instead, I decided to pick my favorite gift from each of her sub-catalogues. Which will occupy just two posts, today and tomorrow. So let's go window shopping!

Well, I'm no one's idea of a Wellness Junkie. Nevertheless, I plowed right in. Those cute little cinchable bags for veggies (organic cotton) and grains (hemp) caught my eye, but at $24 they barely qualify as a stocking stuffer. Then I spied the darling little indoor sprouts garden for $799 (subscription to seeds: $29 per month). While I do like sprouts on sandwich or salad, $799 + $29 monthly to grow my own? Ah, no. So, since I'm just window shopping, I settled on the $222/month (6 months minimum) online group coaching aimed at "awakening & empowering the sacred feminine within." I'm 70. About time I started "manifesting the life you want." And, as someone who is just so sacredly feminine, I'm rarin' to go.

The Under $100 Gift Guide represents a nice change of pace. Many of the items were make-up-ish. And $13 for a deck of Go Fish cards seems excessive, when you can use any old playing cards to do the deed. Not to mention that $34 is a bit much to fork over for a navy blue bandana. That's a price that's way anti the bandana ethos. And anyway, I'm happy with the 50-year-old bandana I probably got at an Army surplus store for 99 cents. 

I must say I was tempted by the Barbie pink and green flowered rolling papers - just in case I ever have reason to do some rolling; you never know - but $28 is steep, even if the kit comes with filters. (Filters? Huh?) Between the price and the filters, I'm wondering what the Zig Zag man would say? (And, by the way, I wouldn't have figured Barbie as an herb-smoker, even though she is partial to pink.) In the end, I'll go with the $25, weather-predicting storm cloud.

No need for the Men's Gift Guide. The couple of guys I buy for get books. Period. But it can't hurt to look. Which I did and found all sorts of guy stuff, much of it related to drinking, hanging around in comfy pants and shirts, manly cooking out, and grooming, including beard wash. (Somehow, I don't think the men who Goop folks are buying for have those grodie beards with the food stuck in them. Now those fellows could use a good beard wash.) But my favorite was a subscription to salami - $13 per salami. 

For pure goopiness, it's hard to beat The Ridiculous but Awesome Gift Guide, because if there are two words that come to mind whenever the name Gwyneth Paltrow is uttered, they would be "ridiculous" and "awesome", no? $99 might seem like a lot to pay for a dehydrated caviar bar, but when compared to $16,000 for a 1 kilogram tin of fancy-arse caviar, it's a ridiculously awesome bargain. Us nobodies, if we so desire (I don't), can purchase Norman Mailer's MoonFire on Amazon for $15. But if you're a booklover with too much money, you can go for the Lunar Rock Edition:

Limited to just 12 copies, one for each astronaut who walked on the Moon, the Lunar Rock Edition of Norman Mailer's MoonFire is designed by Marc Newson. Each book is contained in a case inspired by the Apollo 11 LEM (Lunar Excursion Module)—its surface an actual 3-D topography of the Moon—and comes with a unique piece of lunar meteorite. Accompanying this edition is a Basalt-Bearing Mingled Feldspathic Breccia, fresh and solid, it is a rare main mass of a meteorite.

Maybe the guy who paid $120K for the duct-taped banana is still doing his shopping...

If you don't want to settle for a book written by and about someone and something else, for $75 K you can hire two photographers to trail you on your vacation and turn the trip into the ultimate personal coffee table book.

I have no more business on the Cooking Gifts Guide than I do on the Wellness one, but I can look, can't I? There are a lot of cook books on there. And cookware. And utensils. And jars of stuff. And items like an organic waffled dish towel ($36 for a dishtowel? really?), and paleo and vegan chocolate chips. I'm going to venture an opinion that anyone who buys the blush-colored cookware set is going to live to regret it. I did like the looks of the portable grill. Way cute. But my fave is the $400 a year "Adopt an Olive Tree" subscription, which lets you help an Italian farmer and entitles you to 3 liters of olive oil from your tree (sure...) and an artful ceramic jar into which to decant the oil.

I'll be shopping the other Goop catalogues tomorrow.

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A feint with the Pink Slip shopping cart to my niece Molly for sending this one my way.