Making holiday shopping easy this year

A "Top 3" guide no shopper should leave home without

THE SONGS ON the radio are all telling us the same thing: Santa Claus is coming to town.

This reference “Santa Claus” actually serves as a metonym for Christmastime in general, and does not refer to the recent Tim Allen movie “The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause” co-starring Martin Short, written by Ed Decter and John J. Strauss, and directed by film legend Michael Lembeck.  (You may remember him as the character Mr. Shapiro from an episode of “Mad About You” and for directing the classic “According To Jim” episode titled “Cheryl’s Old Flame”).

That pretty one much came and went already.

As fellow columnist Tim Ellison pointed out in his last article, there is nothing more important about Christmas than the gifts you will be receiving from your family and from your friends and from people who think they’re your friends, but really all you’re getting them is the $1 box of chocolate candies from Target.

And so, since my goal during Christmas is to spend as little money as possible on things that look like they should be expensive, I have been spending a lot of time on eBay recently.

On the index page right now, the Web site lists the top 10 items at any given moment — this inspired me to come up with my own “Top 3” gifts of the season:

At #3, I am going to suggest the Elmo TMX. “TMX” is clever in that it stands for both “Tickle Me Extreme” as well as “Tickle Me X,” marking the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the original Tickle Me Elmo doll.

I know this because I confirmed it on Wikipedia, but as the Web site still does not qualify as a legitimate source in most classrooms, I will go ahead and just attribute it to my brain.

Toys-R-Us says that the recommended age group for the toy is about 18 months through 5 years old, though I am convinced that this would make a great gift for anybody.

The best part of the toy itself is the metallic-case thing that the toy comes in, which can also double as a cage for any small, feral creatures you find in your backyard on Christmas morning.

Really, the toy doesn’t appeal to me on any functional level.

Its rarity is ultimately the only reason it’s on this list and Tim reminded us last week, the rarer and more expensive the gift you give to somebody, the more you love them.

For #2, a gift for all the video-gamers in your life: the Nintendo Wii. On eBay right now, it is the #3 most popular gift while the PlayStation 3 system is at #1.

Despite doubling as an entertainment system unto itself, the PS3 loses out to the Wii in my book for a couple of reasons.

First, the release of the Wii did not score Fresno a spot on every station in the country’s 6 o’clock news — nobody was trampled trying to get a Wii system, at least not in this city.

Primarily though, this system is special for its unique remote-control shaped game controller, with a built-in infrared detection system that responds to the movement of the Wii remote, as Nintendo calls it.

The implications of this are enormous — the system brings, for instance, as real a simulation of tennis as we’ve ever had to fat and lonely teenagers across the world.

Coming in at #1 though, I present a great gift for the avid reader in all of our lives.

“If I Did It,” Orenthal James Simpson’s hypothetical account of how he would’ve killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman — had he done it.

Unfortunately, on Nov. 20, 2006, News Corporation announced the cancellation of The Juice’s upcoming book and interview, to the dismay of voyeurs everywhere.

This, of course, only boosts the value of the book as a gift — a copy is supposed to have been bid up to $6,600 on eBay recently before the Web site removed the auction.

The book was supposed to have contained accounts of the precise manner in which Simpson would’ve enacted the murders as well as an essay titled “What I Like About the Holidays.”

Simpson’s answer pertains to being able to buy a knife without “everybody looking at me funny.”

Any of these, I assure you, are bound to make you the favorite Christmas gift-er this year and may even help you out a little on Valentine’s Day.

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