Reader, It's a Pottery Wheel

Giving gifts is a force to be reckoned with. The gifts we bestow upon others are not only revealing of our relationships and selves, they have consequences. Give the gift of attending a concert with you, for instance, and you could wind up having the time of your life… or trampled on a sticky dance floor beneath a mosh pit. Much more so than with horoscopes or personality tests, I fiercely believe in gifts as omen, judgment, and revelation.

For this reason, I detect favorable fates in Courteney Cox’s choice of “pottery wheel” as a present for great pal Jennifer Anniston on the occasion of her 50th birthday. Cox told Extra on Thursday, “A bunch of us got her a pottery wheel and lessons, even though she’s a great artist, and a table, a big beautiful antique table.”

Here’s why I like the gift: it’s thoughtful, specific, useful, possibly therapeutic, and fairly reasonable in scope as far as celebrity offerings go. On a scale from money to the locket your mother gave you and you thought you’d lost but actually it was traced to a New Mexico pawn shop, I’d give it a seven. It’s the opposite of Kanye West giving Kim Kardashian a million roses and Kenny G for Valentine’s day. Way to go, Courteney! I have the Friends theme song stuck in my head now and am not even mad about it.