I just did gift inventory, I’m about 50% done with Christmas shopping. It’s December 22, which means for about the eighth straight year I’ve set myself up for a Christmas Eve and Festivus filled with last-minute shopping agonizing pain. For those of you who are like me and have had that part of your frontal lobe (the part that triggers around Thanksgiving and says: hey, jerk, go buy gifts for your loved ones) removed, I’ve put together a last second gift guide to help you out.
And since I’m vastly under-qualified to give this sort of advice, and there were no elves around to kidnap and hold hostage in return for information, I’ve enlisted comedian Heather McDonald (The Chelsea Lately Show) to give advice as well.
Being the last second gift guide, all of our suggestions are from easily accessible places like CVS, Walgreens, Lowes, or can be bought online. If you want really good advice, check out the MasterCard Priceless Gift Finder, where you can earn free MP3 downloads on the purchases you make.
Heather:
This is the perfect gift because if your kids are anything like mine they don’t sit at tables so why not let them play games instead of lying on the germ-infested floor. Also Dave and Busters has the kind of food my kids like — void of vegetables. That’s right. My kids don’t eat vegetables (how they are surviving, I have no idea). I also have no idea why they are not obese to point where their only means of transportation is forklift, but they are not, so therefore I don’t worry about it until I’m at someone else’s house and am forced to bring my own bag of frozen corn dogs because I know they won’t eat what is being served, which is really embarrassing.
Heather:
I love Connect 4 because Beyonce claims to be a champ at it and Beyonce and I are a lot alike. Since there are five of us in my family I like that four players can play and only one person will feel left out as opposed to three. It looks a little difficult but I feel confident that I can still beat my seven-year old son because I take losing pretty badly.
Mike:
Here that bustling in your hedgerow out back? That’s a Lowes being put in. Where’d they all come from suddenly? Is this company Canadian? There’s three in Queens for godsakes - not exactly the home & garden capital or the World.
Anyway, walk down the block to one of your local Lowes and pick up a slow cooker.
Parents, nothing says I have a 40% confidence in your kids (between the age of 20 - 35) to fend for themselves like a crock pot. Slow cookers are also like the home goods equivalent of the Red Rocket BB gun. There’s a level of special adolescent danger. Just this past Sunday morning at 4 a.m. we threw 11 lbs. of pork shoulder in the thing and then passed out for nine hours - we had delicious pulled pork and a story to tell later that day.
Heather:
I think this is the perfect because my husband leaves to play golf every Saturday morning for anywhere between three and 13 hours, and his cell phone doesn’t work so maybe this could help me find him. I am assuming this gift is for golf widows who want to find their husband and yell at them. I am definitely putting this at the top of my list.
Mike:
I’ll be honest, I thought Heather was going to take this one. Then she went and selected the range finder. Awesome.
All I can say about this is for years I’ve thought, what do my Christmas tree ornaments need? And the answer: more sexy sex. Which of course is barely achieved by a vibrator disguised as a rubber ducky in a Christmas orb.
Also, if you’re still pondering clicking the link, the last line of the description reads: “…and Grandma is none the wiser!”
Creepy sidebar: Every chain drug store website has a sexual wellness section.
Heather:
This book is the perfect gift because Sarah Palin has great hair. I’m sure there has got to be at least one chapter on how to get the perfect carmel highlights or at least a “tell all” chapter about how she wore a “Bump-it” hair piece on the infamous Katie Couric interview.
Mike:
All the parents who love their angst-ridden tweens unconditionally have probably already snatched up all the Twilight rubbish, but I’ll wager that many lack the vision to go to Big Lots to procure it.
Without even an inkling of intel into the gameplay, I can only hypothesize that after a Monopoly-sized duration the winner turns into a vampire who will then jealously feast on the blood of their friends who got the video game on blu-ray for PS3.
Heather:
This is the perfect gift especially if you choose to take the test right after you consume a huge Christmas dinner just so you feel extra disgusting. It tells you in that special way that you are in fact slowly killing yourself. It is also fun to take to the DMV and test out on total strangers in the hopes of making you feel better about your own cholesterol number providing theirs is higher. It should come with a tub of “I can’t believe it’s not butter” and some Egg Beaters. Then it would really be a package.
Lotto Tickets (Various prices at your local gas station)
Mike:
Heather may not agree with this, but I find the commercials advertising lotto tickets on par with the Zales commercials in terms of romance. Nothing says I love you so much, I stopped at BP on the way over like a Pick 4, Cyrano.
Mike:
Equally common to sexual wellness at pharmacies, is the gifts for him and her, which is all perfumesque product. This is my perceived worst of the bunch - that $12.99 price tag is like a cancer warning.
Sidebar: If I could wax philosophical on perfumes and colognes in pharmacies and drug stores. They keep them mostly in front of the store by the register, why? That’s your point of purchase display strategy, CVS? Just something to think about next time your searching far and wide through the store for the combos.
