A Nerd’s Guide to gift-givery for Nerds

We all know at least a handful of nerds. Maybe your office has some nerds skulking about, avoiding the gazes of you and your coworkers. Perhaps these nerds are your children, whom you wish didn’t exist. You may even be dating a nerd right now and not know this nauseating fact. Well, honoring these nerds with gifts is the best way to keep them from getting restless and annoying you endlessly with trivia questions you don’t care about. You’ve got to empty your coffers to keep the nerds from a’bothering you. But you can’t just give your average outcast crony a copy of the Watchmen paperback. C’mon, he already has the Absolute Watchmen oversize hardback, you idiot. If you like your nerds enough to spend money on them but not enough to think about what those people want, just pick something off this list and your thoughts can shift back to makeup or your career. Obviously, much of this stuff is going to be Star Wars-related, since merely thinking about Star Wars is like taking a break from the stresses of day-to-day awfulness. PS If any of the manufacturers of the products mentioned in this list want to give me free shit I won’t put up a fight. My parents died when my planet blew up so no one gives me presents anymore.

GLOOMY ARM

www.kidrobot.com, $50

It’s a big, soft, cute, pink arm with bloody claws at the end! Put it on and beat up your girlfriend in a way that is playful and without tears or bruising. Beat up your dad in a way that causes rifts! This is a good gift for girls. Girls are really into pillows and stuffed animals. At least the ones who like me are.

THE PRISONER COMPLETE DVD SET

www.amazon.com, $49

The Prisoner

is the nerdiest TV show of them all. Some people think it’s Star Trek or something like that, but nope, it’s

The Prisoner

. The fans are rabid and will corner you at parties to explain this amazing show. This exact moment, I’m fighting the urge to go on a rantful rampage where I just jabber on about how amazing this show is. I am going to describe it now without losing my shit. Urrrnggghhh…

The Prisoner

is… a show about an island where people go when they… when they… know secrets… It stars Patrick McGoohan as a secret agent who’s a prisoner on this island that has a rad mixture of Victoriana and 60s psychedelia. Many of the questions the show raises are never answered, but it is intensely satisfying nonetheless. It also makes you think about whether any member of society can ever truly be free. Give it to someone and run away like you do after tossing a grenade before they start jawing off about the show.

DEATHWISH 40 OZ CRUISER DECK

www.empiresk8.com), $45

Imagine how awesome and retarded you’ll look riding around on a board that looks like a giant 40. It’s pretty corny, but so is life. Go ahead and be “that guy.”

JEDI BATHROBE

www.find-me-a-gift.co.uk, $94

This is pretty much just a big brown bathrobe with a hood, but for Star Wars fans it’s also an opportunity to play dress-up in the time between getting out of the shower and putting on your clothes. If the person you give this robe to recently lost their job, that playtime could stretch into hours. This is also great if you and your boy/girlfriend want to cosplay a scene where Ben Kenobi teaches Luke about dongs falling out of robes.

R2-D2 STUFFED ANIMAL

www.shop.starwars.com, $40

R2 is one of the cutest movie robots ever. Perhaps his only flaw was his low cuddle factor, which isn’t even his fault because we can’t choose who we are. But finally you can get a good squish on your favorite astromech* and enjoy his company. This is great to hug on when you’re watching Star Wars by yourself or when you’re desperately alone.

*Don’t come at me with some shit about how R5-D4 is better, liars.

KNOCKOFF AIR YEEZYS: GAY FISH EDITION

www.airyeezyworld.com, $90

It’s been impossible to get real Air Yeezys for so long that the bootleggers aren’t even trying to make them look legit. The real Yeezys were limited to something like 9,000 pairs and three colors, but the bootleg Yeezys, more commonly referred to as Neezys or Feezys, are limited only by Chinese factory workers’ imaginations and ability to keep working. They’ve been making these shoes in all sorts of awesome and ugly color combos. They even made a style nicknamed the McFly that kind of looked like the future Nikes from

Back to the Future 2.

(Dear Nike, when are you going to release a pair of sneakers that look exactly like the shoes in that movie? Are you waiting until the year 2015?) And somehow it’s come to this: Chinese bootleggers turning Kanye West’s own sneaker against him while referencing that

South Park

episode. Amazing. If you present a pair of these to the sneaker cretin in your life his eyes may bug out of his head, so maybe put some goggles on him first.

STAR WARS: 1,000 COLLECTIBLES BY STEPHEN J. SANSWEET WITH ANNE NEUMANN (SIGNED)

www.shop.starwars.com, $35

There are many people in this world throwing away their time, money, and free space collecting Star Wars garbage, and Steve Sansweet is our king. He owns a barn that he named Rancho Obi-Wan, which houses almost everything that ever had the words “Star Wars” written on it. This book contains nice photos of 1,000 of those objects, and you can even get a signed version from him and some lady I never heard of before. This isn’t just pictures of the same old action figures and posters you’ve seen a million times. There are things like unreleased prototypes of products and a few pages dedicated to the revolting wave of merchandise centered around Jar Jar Bink’s giant tongue. Remember that Star Wars lollipop where kids were sucking on Jar Jar’s candy tongue and it creeped out the Christian right really bad? That’s in here! They might have been right when they claimed he was a demon. This book will have you oohing and aahing at beautiful objects and laughing and wincing at the ridiculous and perverse.

MISHKA MARINER PEA COAT IN GRAY

www.mishkanyc.com, $284

If you are in college, then you’re probably really stupid and really wealthy, and as the winter months commence you’re going to get cold as hell. Jack Frost won’t be nipping just at your nose but also your nips. Also he will be gargling your balls and sexually humiliating you in other ways that are cold. Being not bright, you probably forgot to bring a coat with you to college. Every nerdo who thinks they’re different is going to be strolling down to the army surplus and buying the standard pea coat. One up the other collegiate cretins by getting something that won’t disintegrate before you’re done with higher learning. Mishka makes good, good cold-weather garments.

HEADPHONES

www.eskucheme.com, www.skullcandy.com

$55-$130

Headphones were getting uglier and uglier for a while, looking like cheap Transformers that snapped into pieces the moment you shoved them in your knapsack. In the past couple years, though, pretty headphones started happening. If Panasonic RP-HTX7s are getting too common, jump to the next style of pretty old tyme headphones by Wesc. These ones are square and come in black, white, and marshmallow. Eskuché is also making some beautiful headphones of metal and leather that make you avoid looking like a drive-thru attendant. If you need some headphones that aren’t going to fill up your satchel then look to Skullcandy’s FMJ earbuds. Unlike the ones that come with iPods they aren’t made of rattly garbage.