How I did my Christmas shopping in one weekend

My family is far away in North Carolina, so last night a Friend and I went to two Thanksgiving parties and ate and played games and had a generally good time. On the way to party number two we passed the Best Buy on La Brea in Hollywood.

Good lord. It was 6:35 p.m. and there was a line of people literally camped out. They had tents. They were sleeping there.

I went to the same Best Buy today at 10:30 this morning and didn't really see what all the fuss was about. They still had plenty of copies of Rock Band.

Which, by the way, is one of the games Friend and I played at party number two. Fun! I did really well on the Garbage song "I Think I'm Paranoid" but discovered that "Should I Stay or Should I Go" is completely out of my range and I should never attempt to sing it ever again for the good of society. I sounded like a caterwauling monkey.

But the good news is after one trip to the aforementioned Best Buy and the Target next door I am almost finished with my Christmas shopping. This Sunday I'll go the Larchmont farmer's market and pick up some spicy peanuts for an uncle. I also have to drive to Santa Monica this afternoon to a British pub where they sell British foods that please my British grandmother. I gave her figgy pudding from that place last year and I think she creamed her pants.

Haha. I made you think of my 80-year-old British grandma creaming her pants.

Anyway, I survived the day by having a really laid back attitude. I discovered last year that if I just wake up in a good mood and decide not to let anything get to me all day then I'll be fine. While people were stumbling all over themselves trying to get to the $3.98 DVD shelf I waited against the wall and selected my DVDs from a distance so when the crowd briefly cleared I just walked up, grabbed what I wanted and threw it in my bag. And I always bring a cloth bag so I can throw it over my shoulder and deftly breeze through the aisles. Never get a cart if you want to maintain your sanity.

But about those $3.98 DVDs, right now Target and Best Buy both have DVDs for cheap as hell. Target was selling Memoirs of a Geisha and Blood Diamond and Batman Begins and some other movies that I didn't care about for $3.98. Seriously. And Best Buy had The House of Flying Daggers for $5. So I stocked up on DVDs, some for me, some for people. So now everybody will think I spent way more money than I did, which is great because I spent my Christmas shopping money on making a movie.

Know what else is good about buying people lots of movies? Easy to pack in a suitcase.

I bought my people other stuff too, though. I'm not that stingy.

But now comes the really fun part. My stepdad is buying me a new laptop for Christmas, so he wants me to scour the Internet to find my top ten laptops so he can choose one. How awesome is that?

Any recommendations?