Notes From a (Black) Friday Afternoon

(busting the doors of my mind)

For your holiday-weekend consideration: another curious collection of thoughts, reactions, and observations, culled from and inspired by this morning's headlong journey into the heart of Black Friday darkness:

• When I was a kid, most stores would open for Black Friday shopping at their regular time. Others would get the jump by opening an hour early. By the time I was in college, most stores were opening at 8, a few as early as 7. No one ever went out at 5. Or at 4. Much less at midnight. And yet, somehow, we still managed to get all of our shopping done.

• It’s only a matter of time before Black Friday, like the rest of the Christmas season, starts about two months too soon.

• If last night’s live remotes were any indication, the people pitching tents at Best Buy weren’t there to shop; they were there to eat, to get on TV, to have a good story to tell tomorrow, and to hang out with people whose lives are as sad and as lonely as theirs.

• If I ever reach the age when anyone considers slippers or after-shave lotion a suitable Christmas gift for me, I will stop accepting presents. Or kill myself.

• Once again, CVS Pharmacy locations were touting their Black Friday Sales. This year, they were even open on Thanksgiving. I'll give ten bucks to anyone who can sufficiently explain why. And I'll give twenty to anyone who actually went and bought a gift there.

• The Best Stocking for Sale Award goes to this little two-sided gem I spotted hanging on the wall at Target:



It's almost enough to make you want to be naughty.

• For the third year in a row, the boys were barely able to pull themselves away from the Kapoosh Slotless Knife Block. I don’t know how it would work or look in your kitchen, but if you’ve run out of toy ideas for your kids, it might be worth a look.

• Among the many reasons I am happy to be the father of a fifteen-year-old boy is the realization, never more heightened than on days like these, that it is difficult to find clothing for a fifteen-year-old girl that does not make her look like a ten-year-old kid or a twenty-year-old whore.

• Door-Buster Bargain of the Day: the now almost ubiquitous 32" flat screen TV. Everywhere we went, people were toting them, carrying them, snatching them, grabbing them, guarding them — and then trying to figure out how the hell they were going to stuff them into their cars and get them home. There were at least a few tense moments outside Best Buy, when I'm pretty sure that a Dad with a half-crazed look on his face realized that if he had one less kid to drive home, he could get that Samsung LCD to fit.

• Most Unexpected Item of the Day, spotted on display at Barnes & Noble: the Guggenheim Museum Lego Architecture set.

A bit expensive per piece, but undeniably cool.

• Most Unsettling Item of the Day: the five-foot-tall undulating Santa that speaks when touched and that, when it speaks, sounds exactly like a demonically possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

• The Step Right Up, No Waiting, This Sure as Hell Isn't Wal-Mart Award goes to Target, for having seventeen of their twenty checkout lanes open. I saw some shoppers walk right up to an open lane, and I only saw one line go more than two carts deep. The registers and baggers and bar-code scanners were working double-time. Just as they should have been.

• I will know that I've officially gotten old when I no longer feel the urge, the pull, the inexplicable need to go out and experience the mania, the madness, the miscreant misanthropy of a Black Friday shopping trip. There's no other day of the year that better reminds me why I love Christmas. Or why I hate people.