head butler

now that thanksgiving is behind us, it means shopping for the holidays. i sure as hell don't do the black friday craziness at the mall. in fact, i prefer to do as much of my shopping as possible online. it bewilders me that stores have not figured out how to make shopping more pleasant for men. i recommend:

• an identifiable "dudes area" (aka "man-landia")
• manlandia should have plenty of comfortable couches
• stocked with good magazines (not three year old issues of better home & garden) like GQ, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek
• big screen tv with appropriate video game apparatus
• fridge with cold drinks

this isn't just catering to cranky dudes. the fact is because the store is hot, i have nowhere to sit, and i'm sick of looking at belts/shoes/purses/whatever, i get cranky. when i get cranky, mrs. wintermute is unhappy. she cuts short her shopping time. end result? we buy less stuff. if instead i had a place where i could just chill out, then mrs. w could take her sweet time. bad for our amex bill, but good for retailers' revenue. this is a no-brainer!

mrs. w and i also have to play the game of trying to figure which friends are going get us gifts. most of our gift giving traditions are pretty well set in stone, so it's not really a stress point for us.

if you're like me, shopping is still a pain in the ass. that's why i love head butler. it's a simple but very creative site for tasteful gift ideas. it's run by a single dude who simply shares the stuff that he likes in books, movies, products, etc. he simply has great (and by that, i mean it agrees with my own sensibilities) taste and is picky. he's not a snob about it at all ('harold & kumar go to white castle" is on his list), but there's a fair amount of intellectual stuff (read: star wars is not on there, but we all already know that episodes iv an v are the best movies ever made) and it's prety liberal-leaning.

so check him out here.