Help for the Last-Minute Shopper

So you’re a last-minute shopper? No shirt, Sherlock (nor tie nor socks)!

Christmas Eve may not be until tomorrow and Kwanzaa doesn’t commence until Thursday. So you may be able to dodge two bullets if you get thee to a mall right away—or use Amazon’s new time-travel delivery service (“We’ll be there yesterday, at no extra charge!”).

Well, we’re all about public service here at THE GOLDMAN STATE nerve center—in reality, a downstairs office in my condo at Campus Commons, a community in East Sacramento built in the 1960s. I think this may the only neighborhood in Northern California that, while not ostensibly earmarked for seniors, is terribly attractive to them. Example: It’s a place where I can be called “Kid” by its denizens, without a trace of irony. In fact, in homage to its clientele, I’ve rechristened it Cramps’r’ Common. But I digress.

Here are some last-minute gift ideas suggested by my personal shopper, Shia Spence Moore:

Major-Surgery Gift Cards
Sold with cash values ranging from $5 to $250,000, these versatile cards can be used to finance everything from A to Z—yes, they cover appendectomies to zit removals (or zit relocations, for those who yearn for the good old days of beauty marks).

Need a kidney, heart, lung, or stent replacement in time to watch the bowl games on New Year’s Day? These cards can be your tickets to a ringside seat in your cozy den, alongside your family, visiting nurse, estate executor and volunteer bathers from a close-by religious center. Available at most Walmarts, Kmarts and mini-marts.

Bored Games for Rainy Afternoons
No, we didn’t misspell anything. That’s really how you spell “for.”

1. Monotony, a sly sendup of Monopoly, which has players using fake money to achieve fake corporate positions and fake fortunes in just under four-and-a-half hours. In truth, it’s just the real Monopoly game.
2. Cocktail Chess, which is very much like its sober namesake except that the playing pieces are carved less to resemble medieval figures than to look like those little liquor bottles you get on some airlines or in the bar of your hotel room. The object is still to seize the kingdom of your opponent but after you empty those little bottles—did we mention they’re full at the start of the game?—you may find yourself fraternizing with the enemy, or at least swapping “war” stories. Because the game may actually prove enjoyable, it’s not recommended for children still enduring their age of innocence.
3. RISK Management. It’s just like the original game but it now involves attorneys, insurance agents, actuarial charts, a grand jury and footage from hidden videos establishing beyond a doubt that anyone who claimed to get scalded by a dropped decaf Americano entered the coffee shop in a pre-scalded state.
4. Scrabble®d Eggs. At last, a game you can play with the whole family that combines your “23andMe” obsession with genealogical research—as in, “I can’t possibly be related to these morons sitting on the carpet playing this game with me”—and crossword puzzles. Players take turns using randomly selected tiles to spell out the names of genetic traits they’re certain they don’t share with anyone in the room. Those who come up with the most traits are granted a year of estrangement, renewable every winter.

Note: THE GOLDMAN STATE will be taken from you on the day of December 25 but will be returned, along with many of the gifts you receive, on December 27. I wish you a wonderful holiday, filled with friendship, love and no political discussions.