today: 12.21.99
every day

(For optimal effect, please read the following question in the exaggerated manner of comedian Jerry Seinfeld:) Have you been to Toys 'R' Us lately?

Toys 'R' Us is Dresden, without the historical charm. Poor holiday planning and a personal boycott of eToys forced me inside a T'R'U this weekend, and only my wits, brute strength and BlackOps survival training got me out. Remember that delightful little scene in the film "Big" when Josh and the president of MacMillan Toys are dancing out "chopsticks" on a giant keyboard in the center of NYC's FAO Schwarz? (Little known fact: while that scene is probably the most memorable in the entire film, it was excised from the novelization of Big. The novel's author, Anthony Burgess, exercised his contractual final-edit privilege, and removed the giant keyboard scene, as he felt it was "incongruous with the...dystopian emotional landscape I struggled to paint throughout". As a concession, Burgess permitted 20th Century Fox to include an image of the keyboard scene in the glossy photo insert bound into the middle of "Big: The Movie Tie-In" with the following caption: "Eine Reise der sorge, ein selfish Gedicht." ["a voyage of sorrow, a selfish poem"] Some said the exclusion of this scene essentially defiled the story, while others believe the scene's absence is solely responsible for helping Big: The Movie Tie-In achieve its masterpiece status.) Would you like to know why that scene wasn't filmed in a T'R'U? Because they couldn't figure out a way to film around the bullet holes.

T'R'U is a completely joyless environment. Toy stores are meant to fill you with a childish giddiness, no matter what your age is. T'R'U has a completely opposite effect. After spending a few minutes in one of their Manhattan stores and wading through the discarded Pampers, peeling walls, ransacked shelf displays and knee-deep piles of hypodermic needles, most adults and children take on the mannerisms of a Vietnam veteran after three consecutive tours of duty. On my way in, I saw kids begging their mothers and fathers to take them somewhere else; one child even suggested that perhaps his braces needed tightening. And for good reasons.

All I wanted was a lousy iZone camera. Finding where the cameras might be displayed with difficult. Fortunately, after being unable to locate any employees, one of the store's live-in transients was able to direct me to Electronics. (And, if you've turned your life around in the last three days and you're reading this on a home computer with online access, thank you Shitty Tony. To me you were a sane man in an insane world.) Upon reaching this section, I discovered that all the desirable electronics were hidden behind bullet-proof glass - and nothing says "indulge your inner-child" more than bullet-proof glass. Worse yet, they had no cameras; just the name of the product laser-printed on pieces of paper stuck in a plastic sleeve hanging from meat hooks above the Electronics display. This is not how toy shopping is supposed to work.

No one would help me. To discuss the gang beating of poor service I had to endure would just infuriate me again. Suffice it to say, even though some of the employees were sure there were iZone cameras left in the store, they still recommended shopping somewhere else because I would have an easier time getting to them. After being subjected to their version of shopping, I suggested they cease playing Christmas music throughout the store and find something more appropriate to the T'R'U shopping experience - like the love theme from Michael Radford's filmed version of "1984". (Which was 100 times better than the novelization of the film, by they way. Why they chose to add a scene in which Winston and O'Brien play "Root beer Rag" together on a giant keyboard is unfathomable.)

I am sure T'R'U has toys in there somewhere; perhaps even some toys you can take home and play with. But I couldn't find any. Which is just as well because not three days after my trip to T'R'U, in true O'Henry story-telling fashion, I received a lovely iZone camera from a friend of mine, as a gift. And I was so surprised and grateful for this gift that it wasn't until two days after receiving the camera that it occurred to me to loiter in one of the aisles of T'R'U and sell the camera to frustrated parents, at a black-market price so heavily marked-up it would make Shylock wince. Because that's what Christmas is all about .