Christmas (and the Jewish Chanukahs) are almost upon us! People are literally making a killing at the discount stores. But you, bedraggled and drunken procrastinator, you probably won't get started with your shopping until the 23rd or so. And then it will be a mad dash. What to buy? And for whom?? Well, after the jump I'll give you a few helpful suggestions that ought to help expedite the process a wee bit. Print the list out, file it away, then go back to lying on the rug and drinking spiced eggnog from a mug with a straw and laughing dimly at George Lopez reruns.

For the boy who...

...likes to imagine he's walking in slow motion and furtively writes screenplays about things like a bookie who falls in love with a hooker and has to shoot his way out of a bad situation: Um, duhhh. The complete Sopranos series on DVD. It comes, of course, with a bunch of extras that he can watch and bone up on so when he's not showing off his new leather coat or talking about the time he went clubbing "in the city" and Vin Diesel was there, he can "impress" ladies with mob minutiae. And it only costs $399.99!

...hung some beads off the rear view mirror of his VW Bug, waits tables at the Cheesecake Factory and calls everybody Miss Thang out of the house but back at home mostly stays in his room, from which muffled sobs and/or singing can be heard: Christmas with a Z, naturally! Buy him tickets to Liza's at the Palace..., the indefatigable Minnelli's latest well reviewed cabaret act cum Kay Thompson homage. It closes on the 28th, so make it an early present. He'll wait by the stage door, meet her, and then drive around town in that silly car of his, feeling a little bit special for a few days.

...always has a slight orangey Cheetos tint to his hands, doesn't shave (if he even needs to shave) a lot, and kinda smells. The whole 'girl' thing seems to elude him thus far, but not in the same way as his Bug-driving cousin. Sometimes when you're driving with him in the car he'll start to say something and you think "this is it... he's finally going to open up" but then he seems to think better of it and you keep driving in silence and you wonder where your little boy went: I dunno, there are a whole lotta videogames for sale, I'm told. Our younger brother site Kotaku has a whole holiday list.

For the girl who...

...will only glumly kick the ball once when it's soccer day at gym, who writes long secret things (poems? songs? love notes?) in her big, well-protected spiral bound notebook. On Friday nights she'll usually make a bowl of Kraft Mac n' Cheese and retreat to her room, where she'll spend hours on internet messageboards and fan sites, listening to the William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet Soundtrack, Volume 2, because it's the one with the sad opera aria on it: Give her something new and contemporary and with it to listen to. Like the Twilight movie soundtrack! There's some Muse, some Paramore, some Black Ghosts. Grim and romantic, just like the vampire teen romance books she can't get enough of. Then tell her she's not allowed to eat in her room anymore.

...looks at the boy with the leather jacket and the clubbing stories and smokes her long cigarette and smiles a little bit and figures, hey, sounds more fun than giving Vinnie Meloni handjobs in his Durango out behind the All City Diner: How about some delicious Sopranos wine which she can drink on the squeaky leather sofa in big gulps while the boy rewinds the scene yet again and says "I mean, he just cuts Ralphie's head right the fuck off, crazy huh?"

...the girl... the girl who has... everything:
 Forget gadgets, gizmos, whoseits, whatzits, and thingamabobs. If my research serves me correctly, the girl who has everything only wants one thing: legs. And since you probably wouldn't be friends with someone who didn't have legs (shallow asshole) we suggest the next best thing, stilts.

Happy holidays! (And by that I really only mean Christmas.)