Help for the Holidays

Holiday shopping can be a lot like getting your wisdom teeth yanked out. Either you face up to it and get it over with all at once or you space it out, checking each person off your list, one by one, until nothing remains except the taste of blood and a woozy Vicodin high.

No, that’s not right. Maybe holiday shopping is like being a lab rat, juiced up with some fluorescent green injection and set loose in a crowded maze of choices—go left, find the cheese; go right, get zapped; go to the mall, lose your car in the parking lot; go downtown, blow your Christmas bonus at Duffy’s and wake up in some strange man’s trailer. It seems like every year, you either find what you’re looking for early or you end up frantically scouring the clearance shelves at Ross on the night before Christmas shouting, “You can’t close! I haven’t found anything for my boss’s estranged cousin yet!”

Maybe holiday shopping is like … Oh, forget it. Just read the gift guide already.

Giving in the past
Legacy’s box sets and reissued classics are holiday treats for music lovers

Be generous to Fido
Don’t forget your pets during the holidays

Gifts with benefits
How to give to a guy and get something back

Tech it out
Hi-tech holiday toys for him, her and whomever

For you, fellow traveler
What to get for those on the go