Normally, I detest being around large groups of people. But I make two exceptions: Ohio State football games and shopping the day after Thanksgiving. It has been a tradition for my wife and I to get up at 04:00 the day after Thanksgiving and trek off to Best Buy, Kohls, and whatever other store holds our fancies for the day.

The first year we went was 1999 and Best Buy was absolute bedlam. People were grabbing shit away from one another, there was no order to the lines and people were elbowing, nudging, stomping toes and behaving like general lunatics.

But Best Buy has come a long way from then. Today, even two states away, the process was orderly and efficient. We got the Illinois Best Buy at about 10 minutes until 05:00 and there were, I'm not kidding you, no less than 500 people in line. By the time we got to the end of the line, it was moving inside.
And by Gawd, it was orderly.

Now, lots of people are down on Best Buy. My parents and my grandmother have had horrible customer service experiences there which have caused them to got to Circuit City instead. And while I've never had a negative customer service experience, I have had negative product experiences there. For example, I bought a Series 1 Tivo back in 2001 as a floor model and the hard drive was completely frozen. At first, Best Buy didn't want to take it back and replace it; but after a severe tongue lashing from my soon to be wife, they agreed to give us a brand new Tivo for the discounted floor model price. I considered that to be satisfactory and represents the outcome of every product issue I've had with Best Buy--it may have taken some teeth pulling, but it's always come out right in the end.

And forget shopping at Circuit City--it's like a marketplace in the Third World and you must resort to guerilla tactics to get a salesperson's attention, orderly lines are non-existent, and good luck even finding a register. At least, this was my last experience with Circuit City the day after Thanksgiving because I haven't been back since.

In the six years I've been frequenting Best Buy on the second busiest shopping day of the year, they have become a model of consumer efficiency and I have never not gotten something that was advertised and that I went to buy (and came out with a sheeite-load of impulse purchases).

This is the one day of the year where I almost have carte blanche on DVD purchases and sometimes I even throw in a CD for good measure. Today, my CD purchase was The Legend of Johnny Cash (affiliate link).

My DVD purchases were:

• 8 Mile for $3.99
  

• beautiful girls (one of my top 20 all time movies) for $6.99
  

• The Program (no link) for $6.99
  

• Meet the Parents for $5.99
  

• Meet the Fockers for $5.99
  

• Apollo 13 for $5.99

I also picked up a sweet Time magazine collection The Making of America which looks very promising. I picked up their World War II collection last year and it was fantastic; they really do a great job compiling these articles into handsome collectible books which are well worth the $10 price tag.

All in all, it was a successful Black Friday shopping spree. I hope your's was just as fruitful.