[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Sloane Crosley, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $57.66.]

Alec Baldwin never had a Bar Mitzvah. The non-fact of this, the bloated lack in the calendar of his mind, haunted him. How could he be a sterling example of manhood to little Billy, Danny and Stevie if he wasn’t even a man himself?

Then, in 2002, Alec attended the International Conference of Music and Theatre in Chicago, Illinois where the keynote speaker was one Michael Jackson. The conference, previously held in The Drake hotel, had moved to the Marriott. But Alec, who had ignored e-mails regarding the venue change, showed up at The Drake.  Furious, he called his then-4-year-old daughter just to bitch about the situation.  That’s when he heard someone shout his name. It was Michael Jackson himself.

Michael too had gotten the right address wrong. Or the wrong address right.  He urged Alec to join him in the bar, where they ordered sidecars and a ramekin of Kahlua for Michael. The two men, as they would come to find out over the next few hours, both turned 13 in 1971.  As celebrities do, they kinda sorta knew each other from being famous. Though one was more so than the other.  In 1971, Jackson went solo.  In 1971, Baldwin walked to the 7-11, got a Slurpee, and drank it while doing his homework.

As the night stretched on, it came out that Michael had also never been Bar Mitzvahed. He also wasn’t Jewish, a fact which saddened Michael almost as much as it did Alec.

“Let’s do it tonight,” said Michael, dipping his pinky into the Kahlua and sucking on it, “let’s have a joint, belated Bar Mitzvah. I can arrange for us to have a rabbi and a caricaturist here in 10 minutes.”

“Tonight?” chuckled Alec. “Who’s bad?” He shook his head.

In the end, they compromised. If they couldn’t have an actual Bar Mitzvah, they at least wanted the trappings. Maybe a sombrero or a pair of boxers that read “I Danced My Pants Off At Michael & Alec’s Bar Mitzvah!” They journeyed to the gift shop, and found exactly what they were looking for: A whole shelf of rainbow sand-filled horses. Beautiful plastic stallions with long necks that reached above the snow globes and miniature Sears Towers. They each bought one and took them outside.

“Now what?” said Alec.

“Now,” said Michael, unscrewing the cap of his rainbow steed, “we write two things on slips of paper: our hopes and dreams and how we think we’re going to die.”

“Isn’t that three things?”

“And then we put the paper in this horse and shake it down to the middle and bury it in our backyards, and say a Jewish prayer when we do.”

“Jesus, you’ve really thought this out.”

“It’s just how my mind works,” said Michael, ripping a piece of scrap paper from his day planner.

He borrowed a pen from the doorman, which Alec kept. Alec finished first.

“Caught on your hopes and dreams, huh?” said Alec.

“No,” Michael scribbled solemnly, “it’s just that I know exactly how I’m going to die and I want to get every detail in there.”

And so they shook their notes into the sand and parted ways, promising to bury their horses.  Which Alec did as soon as he got home. But Michael, whose motivations were more about a good party than a spiritual reckoning, completely forgot about the entire episode. He wasn’t even unpacking his own suitcase by this time.  A Neverland butler took the sand horse down to the basement, and threw it in a cardboard box marked “MICHAEL’S RANDOM CRAP.”

There it sat for 7 years, gathering dust. I know, it was in a box. But whatever, there was dust. It’s a big house to clean. The sand horse was not among the pricey Access Hollywood-exposed gems of the Neverland auction. It was simply overlooked. This is not only a beautiful specimen of kitsch, but it contains the hopes, dreams, and death visions of Michael Jackson. The sand, it should be noted, has never been poured out.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jessica Helfand, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $24. This story was part of a special collaboration with Design Observer, where it was co-published here.]

Harriet squeezed the last flecks of lemon pulp into her Diet Pepsi and thought about all the men who had loved her. She counted chronologically, beginning with kindergarten, and moving forward year by year, class by class by class. In kindergarten, Steven had given her penny candy sticks — a whole box of them — lemon-lime and tutti-frutti and root beer, which was called sarsaparilla and made her gag. There was Robert in middle school who baked her muffins, and Danny in high school who spiked Harriet’s seltzer with miniature vials of vodka he’d swiped from home. (His mother was a flight attendant on Aer Lingus.) In college, there was Luke, who smiled at her in the library stacks and read her sonnets. Later, he broke up with her over shrimp cocktail. “I don’t have room for you in my life anymore,” he said to her casually one evening — as if he were discussing something mindless like the menu or the weather or her shoes.

She’d hated shrimp cocktail ever since.

Harriet associated each man in her life with a word — tall, skinny, bald, funny — and each of these words with a taste — bitter, sour, herbal, sweet. Flavors were personality-specific, each a connection to a particular face, or voice, or an experience she couldn’t possibly place without a cue. Lavender, licorice, popcorn, pesto — the list was long and as time wore on, largely interchangeable. Like so many things in life.

But not chocolate. Chocolate was Elvis: Harriet’s most guilty pleasure. She loved that Elvis was an anagram of Lives — his lives, her lives, did it even matter? Harriet prided herself on being the farthest thing from sentimental, but where Elvis was concerned, all bets were off.

She’d met him once as a child. It was Valentine’s Day at Graceland, and Harriet had shuttled down with her family. At five, she was by far the youngest, and her older sister had bought her a milkshake to occupy her hands and keep her quiet. Wedged in among legions of fans, she stood quietly between miles of grownup legs, nursing her drink, when suddenly — the crowd parted.

Harriet felt the ground tremble, heard the click-buzz of the Polaroids, and held her breath. And there he was: the King himself. She gazed up at his massive face, framed by that huge mane of black hair, thick and shiny as an oil slick.

He grinned, pointing.

“Chocolate?”

Harriet nodded, then held out her hand to offer him a sip of her milkshake. He smiled and leaned over, sending this astonishing aroma — a hypnotic blend of Tareyton and Brylcreem — cascading into the air, and kissed her on the cheek.

It was her first kiss.

Strolling through a flea market some years later, Harriet had spied an old Russell Stover chocolate tin in the shape of a heart, a youthful portrait of Elvis on the front. She’d bought it instantly, and had then misplaced it, only to rediscover it sometime later through a random online search. Lives indeed: unlike all those boys who broke her heart, Elvis could not, would not disappoint. And neither, it appeared, could chocolate.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Adam Harrison Levy, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $15.50. This story was part of a special collaboration with Design Observer, where it is co-published here.]

Now that Budd Schulberg has died, the story of how I stole this plate from him can finally be told. I was researching a documentary film and I had taken a bus out to his house on Long Island in order to interview him. Schulberg wrote the screenplay for On The Waterfront (“I coulda been a contender”), named names for the House Un-American Activities Committee and, during World War Two, arrested Leni Riefenstahl, the famous filmmaker. Not many people know that.

In my capacity working on documentary films, I’ve met a lot of famous people and stolen great stuff from them — Harry Belafonte’s precise V5 roller ball pen, Liza Minnelli’s ashtray, and a used Kleenex from Debbie Harry’s red leather handbag. Some people collect autographs from famous people. I collect things.

These things represent the defining moments of my life. By stealing objects from people whose lives have been important, I celebrate my encounter with them (at least that is what I tell myself in order to explain what otherwise might be termed theft). A Kleenex is a Kleenex (even when smeared with lipstick) but when its Debbie Harry’s Kleenex, it becomes truly important, and it gains even more importance when it joins Belafonte’s pen and Minnelli’s ashtray in my collection. Right?

So it was a crisp fall afternoon and I had taken the Hamptons Jitney out to see Schulberg, who lives near the ocean. He picked me up in his car. He was ninety-two at the time, and his head just about cleared the dashboard. We made it back to his house more or less in one piece.

We sat down in his living room, which was a jumble of really great stuff. On the mantelpiece was his Oscar for On The Waterfront (patina chipped and damaged and way too obvious to steal), a signed photograph of F. Scott Fitzgerald (framed and therefore too clunky), and a number of seashells (too cute).

I asked Schulberg questions about his life. During World War Two, he had been a member of John Ford’s film unit. His mission was to find and edit Nazi film footage to be used during the Nuremberg Trials. It was the first time that film was used as evidence in an International Court of Law. I was impressed. My own work demands that I view video clips on YouTube.

While he was talking, I spied the plate — which contained some loose change and three paperclips — on the credenza. Something about the simplicity and modernity of its shape reminded me of an Eero Saarinen Tulip Table. The artfully incoherent placement of the stars was like a Dada backdrop. The plate was clearly mass-produced. It called out to me. When Schulberg doddered off to take a leak, I slipped the plate — change, paperclips, and all — into my bag.

[The auction on this Significant Object, with story by Mimi Lipson, has ended. Original price: 39 cents. Final price: $31.]

From AW: The Lost Diaries

Wednesday, June 13, 1979

Halston was having a birthday party for the Dupont twins, so I glued myself together and cabbed to the Pierre to pick up Bianca ($5). She’s still mad at Victor about the sweater, but I think it’s really because she found out that he went to Mick and Jerry’s black and white party at Mr. Chow’s. Bianca’s ass is really getting too wide to wear Halston.

The party was fun. Halston had a birthday cake made up that looked like a giant popper. Victor was passing out these ugly coffee mugs that said “Halston” and had sketches from the fall line on them. Mugs, like from a truck stop. They had wavy American flags on them, too, and when I asked Halston why they had the flags, he said, “Don’t you think it makes them so much more butch?” Maybe I should get some mugs made up for Interview. Are they camp?

Thursday, June 14, 1979

Woke up tired from sleeping on my back so I don’t get any more wrinkles. I’m going use to the vaporizer instead from now on, if I remember to. And I’m still black and blue from the B12 shot that Martha Graham talked me into.

I don’t want mugs for Interview anymore. I’ve decided that they’re tacky. I thought about saving my Halston mug for a time capsule, but I gave it to Brigid instead. She’s probably just going to throw it out or give it to the Salvation Army or something.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Kurt Andersen, has closed. Original price: $2. Final price: $15.50.]

Although I live now in Indianapolis, I grew up in Gas City, which is a town (not a city) about an hour and a half northeast. During the summers after 7th and 8th grades through a program run by the Grant County FFA (Future Farmers of America) I worked as the “hired hand” on a quarter section (160 acres) down between Jonesboro and Fairmount owned by a couple in their 70s named Mr. & Mrs. Winslow. Every weekend Mrs. Winslow (Ortense) baked a pecan pie, and so every Friday afternoon she’d have me crack and shell about a pound of pecans (Priester’s). And I’d use this Santa Claus nutcracker to do it.

On one really hot Friday the first summer I worked there the two of us were on their porch, me cracking the pecans and she sitting in her metal chair, and she was looking at me odd, kind of smiling but kind of sad, too. She sometimes said weird things, which I chalked up to her age (like about her “time in Hollywood”), but since she was staring with that funny look and not saying anything I asked her if something was wrong. She said, “Oh, no, dear. It’s just that seeing you, there in the afternoon light, in your t-shirt with your hair damp and pushed back, you suddenly looked to me just like Jimmy when he was your age. And gosh, he did love that nutcracker.”

I didn’t have any idea who Jimmy was, since her husband was Marcus Sr. and their son was Marcus Jr. But when I said “Excuse me, who?” she turned sort of weird, like I was making fun of her. “You’ve never ever seen Jimmy on TV?” she said. I told her we were Pentecostal, and didn’t watch television, so she explained to me that Jimmy Dean was her nephew who she’d raised from the time he was nine years old, before he got famous. “Oh,” I said “Jimmy Dean. That’s interesting, Mr. Winslow. Do you get free sausage?” I assumed her nephew was the founder of the Jimmy Dean Sausage Company. She laughed and laughed, but then the phone rang and we didn’t talk any more about him.

That night I asked my mom if she knew who the Winslows’ nephew was, and she explained that “Jimmy” was James Dean, who’d grown up on the Winslows’ farm in the 1940s and graduated from Fairmount High and then became a movie star. She said she’d never seen one of his movies.

A year later, Mr. Winslow died. And on my last Friday working at the farm, which must have been August of 1976, at the end of a long day, we were drinking lemonade, as usual, but this time Mrs. Winslow was putting vodka in hers. We were out on the porch again, me cracking pecans, and we’d just heard a train pass by and blow its whistle, and suddenly she asked if I wanted to take the Santa Claus cracker to keep, as a keepsake, since with Marcus Sr. gone she’d decided she’d stop baking pies. I didn’t really want it, but to be polite I said sure, and thanked her. Then in a big gulp she finished her third glass, and sort of giggled. “But don’t you ever do what I once caught Jimmy doing, OK?” When I asked what that was, she giggled again and said she couldn’t say, but I chuckled too and kind of insisted, so she told me. One afternoon in the spring of 1945, when Jimmy was 14, she’d heard on the radio that the Nazis had surrendered, so she ran into Jimmy’s room to tell him, and found him sitting on his bed with his pants off and his penis stuck in the nutcracker.

She smiled and shook her head. I didn’t reply, and at that point she seemed to realize it was, as my kids would say, “TMI,” and stood up and took the pitcher of lemonade and her glass and the vodka bottle inside.

But I did take her nutcracker home, and have kept it ever since. Until recently, the only other person I ever told about what they call its “provenance” was my wife – my ex-wife now – and I didn’t want to reveal it publicly until our kids were grown, since I thought it would embarrass them (or worse) when they were little. Plus, Mrs. Winslow has long since passed on. So when my girlfriend, who’s a Realtor, told me she’d seen on Antiques Roadshow that a jacket of James Dean’s was worth $1000, I told her about the nutcracker. And now she’s convinced me to sell it. She says I owe it to history and, in a financial sense, to myself. (I called the guy who runs the James Dean Gallery, up north of Fairmount, at Exit 59 off Interstate 69, to find out how much it might be worth, but he pretty much hung up on me.)

Although I haven’t cracked a nut with it since that afternoon in 1976, I have no reason to believe it doesn’t still work fine.

[Bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Lucinda Rosenfeld, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $26.]

My grandmother, Zippy Friedman, was an administrator at Austen Riggs Psychiatric Hospital in Stockbridge, MA, for several decades beginning in the 1950’s. She was also a close friend of artist Norman Rockwell and was instrumental in having him admitted there during a particularly gruesome bout of depression. (Yes, the acclaimed illustrator of those aggressively cheerful Saturday Evening Post covers suffered from chronic depression.)

Anyway, for whatever reason, Norman brought this golden cow creamer with him to Riggs—and then failed to bring it home. Which is how it ended up in my grandmother’s kitchen in nearby Pittsfield, where it sat on the windowsill next to a Provencal rooster (also made of porcelain) until her death in 1983. What’s more, according to my mother, at some point my grandmother started referring to the creamer as “Norman,” as in, “Let’s all have tea—someone grab Norman.”

Which makes me wonder if something bad happened between them. Why? If you can’t tell from the pictures, the cow’s got a pretty angry and unforgiving look on her face. And, depressed though he frequently was, the real Norman Rockwell was apparently a delightful, kind man. (Mysteries never cease.) So anyway, my young daughter told me she finds “Norm” scary. And we get our hot beverages to go — at Starbucks. But he really is a piece of history. No chips. Lovely glaze intact. Pours well.