I bring up the weather report because when it's 76 degrees outside, it seems just a little weird to be thinking about holiday gifts. But 'tis the season to be silly and, as you well know, whenever there's silly in the air, CU is right there, in the thick of things.

This year, we're doing our gift guide a bit differently. Rather than just the dull recitation of popular products, we've turned to the ZATZ editors, to a bunch of experts in the Internet Press Guild, and to a bunch of tech gaming enthusiasts from the Iron Phoenix gaming community, my own gang of online gaming buddies. Members of each of these groups have been kind enough to nominate products for our gift guide. Since some of these folks are a bit sick and twisted, so are some of our gift recommendations (wait 'til you read our cheap gifts list in a few weeks!).

Together, we've put together a series of articles that take you from the wildly super-expensive to the incredibly cheap. Over the course of the gift guide articles, we'll take you from the taste and style of a Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR to the incredibly sad -- and yet somehow still included in our recommendations -- $1.99 English Soldier Mini Massager Vibrator (yep, it's sex toy).

To feed your inner Bill Gates, in this first installment we've defined the super-expensive category as anything from about $5,000 up to, well, absolutely no top end. You ain't gettin' it, but you can dream.

West Bay SonShip motor yacht
When it comes to fantasizing, one of our Iron buddies topped the list with the 82' West Bay SonShip custom dual-station raised-pilothouse motor yacht, as shown in Figure A. This georgeous water craft is available for a cool $4,950,000.

FIGURE A


This is one pretty boat. Roll over picture for a larger image.

It's quite simply a custom motor yacht built for a discriminating buyer. Chock full of contemporary, yet traditional styling and classic craftsmanship, her interior design and furnishings are truly one of a kind. A Riff-cut American Cherry interior is featured throughout the yacht.

This pretty little present has many upgrades including engines (always a good feature when you're spending your millions), twin generators, water maker, stabilizers, bow and stern thrusters and electronics that include a night-vision camera.

There here boat's a wonderful platform for all sorts of water-related activities.