super superlatives

The Hammacher Schlemmer component of the SkyMall catalog contains an impressive quantity of items that out-perform all others in their class. I imagine the crack HS field team spent many days scouring the chaotic markets of Burma, wiping the dripping sweat from their brows and calling mission control on their satellite phones, before they fulfilled their quest to find and sell the best-ever electronic pants presser. How their eyes must have lit up at the sight of it when they finally found that device in some steamy back-alley. "It can be wall-mounted," they exclaimed, exhaustion forgotten. "By God! It includes a pants-stretching mechanism!"

On the other side of the globe, an HS executive and his wife on holiday in Quebec City take a wrong turn on their way back to the Sheraton. They're returning from a long, pleasant evening at a particularly well regarded and well secreted opium den hidden in the converted upper story of an old firehouse in the shadow of the old fort. Their minds fogged by poppies they turn right when they should have gone straight and enter through a low-brick archway into a small courtyard where once French fur traders would gather to drink rum and reminisce. Now it's empty, with a light snow covering the frozen ground, with the exception of a small fake tree. Catatonic as he is, the executive immediately sees that plastic shrub for what it is, and he cries out as he falls to his knees. "What the hell, Jasper," drools his wife, annoyed, but he doesn't look at her. He gazes adoringly at the thick flame and crush resistant branches, the PVC needles, and sighs, "The world's best pre-lit Christmas tree..." Then she sees it, and her annoyance melts into astonishment. "Oh!" she cries, "But it can't be!" "Yes," he says, quaveringly but resolutely. "It does have 135 percent more commercial-grade lights than ordinary trees."

These finds and others, brought back by weary, khaki-clad teams from around the world, slowly accumulate behind the cast-iron gates at the Hammacher Sclemmer ranch (or "The Bunker," as it's affectionately called). The world's largest inflatable play pen (220 square feet!) gathers dust next to the best space-saving TV wall mount and the first digital picture-taking spotting scope. A special vault that opens only when three different vice-presidents simultaneously insert small keys and twist (to the left) contains two special superlative gems, entrusted to the company by a top-secret subcommittee of the United Nations: planet Earth's largest crossword puzzle ever devised and the biggest write-on map mural of all time.

It must be a great honor to store these national treasures, but also a great burden. SkyMall, we salute you.