Thank You Baby Jesus
music: Rilo Kiley, y'all
mood: who's on fire? i'm on fire.
I work in a fairly sociable office environment, so when the holiday season arrives we all get excited for the annual Holiday lunch and gift exchange. My first year at the company we did the standard White Elephant thing, which let's face it, kinda sucks because some douche decides to be a jerk and get a crappy gift that no one wants and the lazy people get gift certificates and everybody fights over those, as opposed to scented candles (which I receive my first year).
So in an effort to step things up last year, we decided to change it up and implemented a new game - it's basically White Elephant except with DVDs - and it works surprisingly well. If you're office is looking into somehting like this, I highly recommend it.
Below is the email I sent out outlining the rules and stuff. Feel free to use it yourselves and change the language according to your office environment, like if you work at a place that has a lax sexual harrassment policy. most of the restictions below would not apply.
[begin]
All,
The Holiday Season is upon us and we here at [your copmpany here] like to celebrate by stealing each other's gifts at the annual White Elephant (with a twist) Gift Exchange, happening at lunch time (1pm abouts) on [specified date and time]. This year we're going to restrict the gifts to DVDs (my vote for books was quickly rejected, as usual because some of don't/can't read).
SO HERE ARE THE GROUND RULES:
Bring in a NEWLY WRAPPED DVD of $15- $30 retail value (this is to include those nice shiny Criterion Collections, hint hint). Here ares some general guidelines:
1) The DVD should be something you would want in your collection
2) The DVD should be something you would honestly recommend to friends and relatives of all ages and personality types.
3) The DVD should NOT be offensive in any way. We'll include R-Rated for language and violence, but not for sex.
On [specified date], bring in the wrapped DVD and place it in the provided drop box. DO NOT TELL ANYONE WHAT DVD YOU GOT (I'll explain why later). This year, let's all wrap our DVD's using newspaper to save the environment and to make it more uniform.
At lunch we will draw numbers for the picking order. Then the fun begins. Someone picks a DVD. The next person can either steal someone else's DVD that's been opened or pick one from the unwrapped batch . . .blah blah blah. You'll catch on once the game is being played if you don't understand the concept.
HERE'S THE TWIST: After all the DVDs are distributed and opened - a BONUS prize pack of DVDs will be given to the person who can guess who bought which DVD. The list of DVDs will be compiled and then printed and you have simply fill in the name. Person who gets the most right wins the prize pack. You MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN.
The PRIZE PACK will be chosen by yours truly and NO it will NOT include weird foreign films or "film school-type" films. The films will be broad, yet enjoyable (I hope).
HERE ARE SOME MORE GUIDELINES FOR THE KIND OF DVD YOU SHOULD BRING:
NO concert films. While films like Stop Making Sense, Gimme Shelter and The Last Waltz may be appreciated by some, they will not be appreciated by most. This includes comedy concert films too, like the one with the 4 black guys. Hey, I'm not being racist, I'm Asian, How can I be a racist? We've had this discussion before guys . . . . (sigh)
NO Drug Movies - This includes Half Baked, Cheech and Chong films and Friday. Becuase nobody here does drugs. Druing the week. During work hours. Um, I'll quit.
NO Team-Oriented Sports Movies. Generally these movies are fun and uplifting, but would a Yankees Fan really appreciate Fever Pitch? Despite the immense chemistry between Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, my answer is no.
No BOX SETS. Remember The Office's Christmas Episode where Michael buys the video Ipod for his man-crush, despite the rule that gifts should not cost more than $20 dollars and then everybody fights for the iPod and then they have to get drunk to make themselves feel better after the dismal experience?
No ANIME films. Seriously, who wants an Anime film for Christmas. Buy Spirited Away with your own money.
No Films from Eastern Europe. Like you know of any, but still these films are generally BOR-RING.
NO Political Documentaries or Michael Moore films. Um, not in this house [ed. note - I work witha bunch of left wingers].
NO Christmas Movies. This would be on par with getting a bad Christmas sweater or Fruit Cake. Don't be that guy/girl. If I wanted to see It's a Wonderful Life, I'll tune into to TBS on Christmas Day. Bad Santa also falls into this category, unfortuantely.
Seriously, this is a supposed to be fun and shed some light on the cornucopia of personalities in the office. Pick a movie that you would recommend to 10 of your various friends of all nations.
[end]
Last year I got the Big Liebowski as a gift and me and my co-worker ended up splitting the bonus prize pack (I got Talledega Nights and Changing Lanes, he got The Devil Wears Prada and Edward Scissorhands).
If you're bad at picking DVD's just get The Bourne Ultimatum or Transformers.
terry on 12.12.07 @ 07:04 PM PDT [link]
My name is Terry and this is my blog. 
