For aging bachelor cousin Craig, who consistently gets shot down by women who don't appreciate his love of the Diceman: Playboy's Playmate Bloopers (Playboy, $9.95). This weird collection of nudie garbage is not only shameless sexist fun for the macho pig on your list, but also a piece of found-object arcana so regressive and stupid that it's hilarious. Fifty bouncy models trip over set props, struggle while unfastening tricky lingerie, get swept away by strong currents, and in general bring nearly poignant human goofiness to an endeavor that would otherwise be sheer plasticity.
For brother Josh, the ultra-ironic Bohemian Generation X film student who aspires to become the next Spielberg or at least the next Tony Bill: The John Waters Collection (New Line, $54.84). This boxed set collects three of the idiosyncratic auteur's most wryly outrageous films-1977's gender-blending gross-out Desperate Living, 1981's domestic farce Polyester, and 1988's kitschy dance kick Hairspray. It's not The Godfather Saga, but it provides a nice, if slightly rancid, taste of one of the most subversively funny filmmakers around.
For Bob, the guy next door whose rottweiler, Fluffy, rips up your tulips, pees in the birdbath, and dances with your mother-in-law's leg: Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way: The Blue Ribbon Collector's Edition (A*Vision, $89.95) collects ten 25-minute lessons on five cassettes from Barbara Woodhouse, the steel- willed doggie dominatrix of Great Britain. The tapes are slightly dated (since they originally aired on BBC in 1980), and Woodhouse's resemblance to one of Monty Python's guys in drag is good for a few giggles-but she gets the hounds to behave.
For your childless Uncle Dan, who really takes the tots to Disney matinees so he can watch the cartoons: Let him indulge his not-so-secret passion with the unbelievably huge Aladdin Deluxe Collector's Edition (Walt Disney, $99.99; most stores sell it for around $80). He'll be forced to keep the thing on display-there's no bookshelf big enough to hold it-but there are so many extra goodies here, he can talk about them instead of the movie. Get him going, for instance, on the original lyric-"Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but hey, it's home!"-which is intact on the enclosed soundtrack CD but altered in the movie itself. A making-of paperback examines all the production details, and then there's a junky lithograph of the Genie in a cave-but Uncle can just rewrap that for your kid's next birthday.
For Jake, your slacker-wannabe 12-year-old nephew, who thinks Wayne and Garth constitute the high-water mark of bitchin' comedy: Car 54, Where Are You? (Republic, $59.98). Way back in the paleolithic era-that would be 1961-the late Fred Gwynne and the even later Joe E. Ross starred in a dumb, sweet sitcom about two dumb, sweet New York City cops. This four-tape box collects eight misadventures of Officers Toody and Muldoon and offers conclusive evidence that Ross' trademark "Ooh! Ooh!" was a direct precursor to Butt- head's "Heh-heh-heh."
