Sales of Crappy Christmas Gifts Reach Record High

collective Charlie Brown-style "Auuuuugh!" sounded around the world upon the release of the newest economy figures Friday. In addition to the disappointing early returns for the Christmas season, and spending figures falling below already-low projections, initial reports suggest that one industry not suffering this year is lousy Christmas gifts.

Lousy Christmas gifts, a sub-industry all its own, is notorious for maintaining steady sales from year to year, apparently never suffering from the effects of recession. However, 2003 marks the first year, if early indicators are correct, that crappy Christmas gifts will actually be on the uprise.

"The old adage about the recession," said some hobo who claimed to have a background in economics as we fed him a can of creamed corn, "is that the fluff industries are all the first hit. Luxuries, things like that. But there are rock-like reliables in all areas of the economy, and Christmas gifts are no exception. When the country hits on hard times in the yuletide season, cool gifts are the first things to go. No one's going to shell out for costly electronics when cheap, affordable, crappy gifts are available. Most Americans are tightening the belt—which, ironically enough, is one of the first crappy gifts to see a boost in sales."

Most holiday shoppers bear those theories out.

"I would have liked to bought my son that MP3 player he's been talking up all year," said Syracuse, New York-area housewife Mabel Donner. "But with things looking so bad for the economy it doesn't look like a good time to buy some new-fangled radio. So I'm getting him that book of inspirational sayings I saw in the mall."

Books of contrived sentimentality are not the only Christmas gifts with a sharp rise in sales this year. Also seeing an increase are socks, underwear, courderoy slacks, snow pants, gay sweaters, suspenders, and T-shirts and hats certifying they were purchased by grandparents.

Outside of clothing, food is also seeing a sales boost, especially cheese and sausage gift packs and giant tins of caramel-covered popcorn. Sales of advent calendars featuring dried, nasty chocolate alone have provided a much-appreciated lift to the German economy. In addition, minor sales increases have occurred in virtually every area of the economy for crappy gifts; even crappy video games like Pokémon Pro-Skater and Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen Virtua Fighter are seeing a sales spike.

Most kids have yet to experience the nightmarish reality of Christmas morning, 2002 as of yet; but some, like Craig Sharmet of Ledervehn, Pennsylvania, have already seen early warning signs.

"Grandma gave everybody their Christmas gifts yesterday," said Sharmet. "I got a Jesus calendar. It's a calendar. And it has pictures of Jesus on it. For every day of the year. All next year. Jesus."

Alice Keeler of Tumasca, Arizona, can sympathize.

"Aunt Sandy showed up Wednesday with presents for everybody and said we could open them, and we were all flipping out 'cause we were so happy. Then we opened them. I got a glitter puff T-shirt with the American Idol logo on it. I'm not sure what's worse—that people would think I like American Idol the TV show enough to wear a T-shirt of it or that people who don't know the TV show think I'm saying I'm an American idol or something. The possibilities are terrifying. And I had to thank her for it."

On the brighter side of the story, all forecasts indicate that shopping traffic will increase significantly just after Christmas, when the stores fill with the countless consumers attempting to return Shania Twain CDs and subscriptions to Teen People.

Venezuela Adds Itself to ‘Axis of Evil’

Orleans Refugees at Home in Disneyland’s French Quarter

Merck: “Crazy-Ass Brazil Giving AIDS Drugs to People With No Money”

Poison Probe Reveals 90% of Packaged Foods Actually Dog Food

"There was a roar of the crowd, the chilly wind blowing, the rattling of the weak bleachers we all sat on. It was the biggest game of the year, and our high school was involved. It was Oscar Wilde High School vs. the state champs, Karl Marx H.S. for the title of greatest football team of all time. Though I could be mistaken on the details, my mind grows weary over the years.

I was not a football player myself, but a cherished member of the Oscar Wilde Yahtzee Team. My school pride knew no bounds, including legal ones. I shouted and cheered for the home team through the match, touting our strong defense and lack of homosexuals on the team. I made numerous allusions to the murder of loved ones of opposing team members, but nothing could shake them. They had ice in their veins, or at least freon, if they had drunk from the sports drink I offered the players before the game.

Our boys were not daunted, though. Everyone wanted a piece of the other team, even the guys on the bench and the guys who had been kicked off the team for befriending non-caucasions. So many wanted a piece of the other team that the other team would have to bring in many more players just to have enough pieces to go around, even cut up into many small pieces.

The game was tough, and even playing our best we could only come within mere points of the opposing team in the last few minutes. Then, as contrivance would have it, my brother Goose was brought in off the bench to score the deciding field goal in the last few seconds.

Goose knew the pressure was on, as every fan on every side had yelled to him as he came in from the field. He didn't have a regulation helmet, but fortunately a hairstyle he wore at the time qualified as a helmet by the lax rules of the era. Goose sized up the goal, huffed and puffed like a wolf at the door of a pig house, and ran up to kick the goal.

He caught the ball with the side of his foot and it rolled just a few feet before stopping. The game was over and our team had lost, which was fine with me. As much school spirit as I had, it was a thousand times more satisfying to see Goose humiliated in a way I would forever lord over him. Even to this day. How you like them apples, Goose?"

º Last Column: Fiddle
º more columns

Everyone loves seeing movies in the theater, because the screen is so freakin' huge. Plus when you throw shit at the screen at home, usually you're the one who has to clean it up later, unless you're smart enough to throw something the dog's not too proud to eat off the floor, like steak. But regardless, Omar Bricks has always had one major problem with seeing movies in the theater, and it's not the rule about discharging firearms during the exciting parts or the mandatory frisking for fireworks. No, the real pain in my remarkably-tolerant ass is the way they keep the movie playing like fascists even when you've really got to piss but don't want to miss the best part of the movie, which filmmakers strategically place right at the optimal time for a piss break to ensure repeat business.

Normally I just end up pissing in a trash can in the back of the theater, where I can still see the screen, but that's not a perfect solution either. Sometimes the trash is really full and you get splashback like from a cheap Korean urinal, and other times some 90-year old woman chooses that moment to pop into the theater to check and see if this movie has that delightful Kevin Costner in it, only to grab a stroke-inducing eyeful of your man-monster. So this was clearly a national problem worthy of serious scientific inquiry.

That put me at a slight disadvantage, since the only thing I know about science is that you can't freeze gasoline. But God never slams a door without kicking out a window, and my lack of technical know-how has always been made up for with ingenuity, which is another word for balls. And that's about as good an explanation as any for how I came up with the Movie Theater Remote Control®.

Because when I started thinking about it, not being able to pause a movie in the theater was only one of a number of problems with our antiquated movie-projecting systems. You also couldn't rewind to see cool parts of movies again, or fast-forward through the lame parts to get to something good. And the lack of a volume control was a ridiculous oversight. Only an idiot would try to sell you a TV without a volume knob, but we've been buying that same bullshit from the theaters for years. It was time to wise up and kick the man in the pants.

Most of the tech for the MTRC® came from plans I found in a dumpster outside of NASA. Did you know NASA locks their dumpsters? True as shit. And did you know you can pick a dumpster lock with a Bic pen and a Zippo lighter? That's one to grow on, kids.

The early prototypes didn't work exactly as planned, in fact the first one ended up blacking out most of Flatbush during a screening of The Country Bears. Not that you heard anyone complaining. Version 2.0 was far more effective, only too much so, if such a thing is possible. The problem was that while I was fast-forwarding through one of the many lame parts of Hidalgo, the MTRC® was actually controlling all the projectors in the multiplex at once, so although at least half the people there were being saved from lame bullshit, the other half were missing the best part of Starsky & Hutch, or at least seeing it at twice its intended speed. That's when I learned that as cool as a car battery can be for ultimate juice, sometimes AAs get the job done more appropriately. Plus you don't have to design a special harness to sneak a couple of AA batteries into a movie theater under your jacket.

Version 3.0 was actually a step backward, but for some reason it ran the Icee machine in the lobby just fine, so I kept that one for future experimentation. Version 4.01 was the real winner, and came in a sweet lime-green finish as well. I was set.

And for a few months, I was in movie-going heaven. Even with the rewinding for cool parts, and pausing for a couple of piss breaks, most movies only ended up taking about 45 minutes, since you didn't have to sit through any of the trailers or bullshit "character development" parts of movies. Sure, there were always a couple of whiners in the audience who wanted to see Barbara Streisand crying in her soup, but those knobs were in the minority and they didn't know who to whine to anyway since it wasn't like I was advertising my role as the dude with the remote. But eventually, I have to admit I got a little cocky and people started to catch on since I was the guy yelling "Bo-ring!" whenever Michelle Pfeiffer came on the screen and suddenly the movie would zap forward to a ninja fight or whatever.

I guess word got out, since things really came to a head last year when I paused The Bourne Supremacy so I could take a leak and when I came back, those fuckers were looking at me like I just ate the baby Jesus with Vidalia onions. I swear, these pious motherfuckers don't piss? Am I watching a movie with the cast of Waterworld again? Well excuse me, you inconsiderate dicks, but not everyone here can recycle their whiz and drink it again. Some of us have to pay eight bucks for a Mr. Pibb that's at least three times the size of our own bladder, and some of us are too modest to piss it down the aisle like Southern royalty. Next thing you know they're going to tell me these egomaniacs have never intentionally thrown up in the sink of the men's room at a fast food restaurant to make room for seconds.

Even getting banned for life from that theater wasn't a huge deal, since disguises are half the fun of going to the movies anyway. But what really sunk my battleship was that after the word got out, everybody wanted me to make them a MTRC®. First my neighbor Mitch, then Red Bagel, and then Roland McShyster. I don't even know what that guy wanted with one; I don't think he's ever been in a movie theater in his life. I asked him if he wanted to go see Star Wars last week and he thought I was talking about a reality show cross between Star Search and The Running Man.

At first things were going great, and I was making some nice coin to dick around in my garage, which has always been a dream of mine. But before I knew it, everybody had a MTRC® (or Griswald Dreck's knock-off version, the JapZapper®) and going to the theater, even in a fun disguise, became a total nightmare. Nobody could agree on what were the cool or lame parts of movies, and with 300 people in the theater there were so many piss breaks that watching a movie was like trying to play Quake on a Commodore 64.

Hence the sad but valuable lesson I've lived and learned to pass on to you, commune flock: If you ever find yourself in a position of absolute power, don't fuck it up by assuming that everybody's got good taste in movies. Bricks out.

º Last Column: Guanica
º more columns