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In This Issue

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Ghetto Reporters Bone Thugs’ Layzie Bone on staying hungry, gangsta rap and working with Phil Collins

Sonic Reducer David Thomas and Cheetah Chrome on Pere Ubu and Rocket From the Tombs

What Makes Bob Holler New compilation testifies to Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys’ determination to create music that uplifts

The City That Lost Its Country LA’s last country radio station goes pop

Transitory Monument Watkins College remembers artist Will ClenDening with a show of work he left behind

Another Kind of Rapture Some salvation for married couples in search of God-approved sex toys

¡Ask a Mexican! Glossary

Our Critics Picks Bar-B-Que Weekend * Saturdy 2nd, Sunday 3rd, Labor Day

 

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The Dillard’s store at Hickory Hollow Mall began putting up Christmas decorations last week. Lights, tinsel, brightly wrapped packages, Christmas trees, elves and sugarplums filled a substantial part of the first floor.

Some people think it’s too early to be thinking about the holidays.

“What ever happened to waiting until the Tuesday after Labor Day?” asked Erma Tyler of Antioch, who was at the store to take advantage of the 18th Clinique free gift special of the year. “When I was small, we would all anticipate seeing all the decorations in the department stores in early September. August just seems too early.”

There’s a simple reason to put up the decorations now, says store manager Ron Croft: to use temporary summer workers before they go back to school.

“We needed to get the trees and reindeer and everything in place while our summer help was still with us,” he says. “Most of them leave by the last week in August, so we had to get moving.”

Croft says it was a real challenge to decorate for Christmas during one of the hottest Augusts on record. “We had one of our guys faint while carrying all the elves up from the storeroom. We had to constantly remind people to hydrate.”

The decorating project attracted the attention of so many young people and teenagers that the mall had to begin a policy of having nobody under 18 at the mall without an accompanying parent or guardian.

“The kids were just gathered around, their eyes shining with anticipation, all excited about the holidays,” says a mall security guard. “But there were just too many of them, and there needed to be some parental supervision going on.”

As to the criticism that by putting up the Christmas display in August, the store is violating the traditional holiday shopping period, the manager is philosophical.

“We would have put all this up by Labor Day anyway, leading up to the traditional Sept. 9 arrival of Santa. What’s an extra couple of weeks of tinsel and lights?”