Entertainment Budget

The New York Times had an article this weekend about how to save money on entertainment. Except that it barely mentioned any advice about how to save on entertainment. It was more about how much we spend on entertainment like cable, movies, and DSL.

The only two obvious and only slightly useful tips were:
1) bundle services together (like phone and DSL service) for a discount.
2) use services like Netflix and the similar one for video games if you rent or buy a lot of them

Note: I mention both these tips in Party Like A Rock Star, along with a hell of a lot more ways to save on entertainment.

Lifehacker linked to this article, and the discussion on their message board has a lot more tips than were in the NYT article.

Note: So far in the discussion, I've mentioned all these tips in Party Like a Rock Star as well. So if you just went out and bought it, you'd have no need for the Internet at all!

Indulgences

Blender magazine has a list of ultimate rock star indulgences. Unfortunately the list isn’t online, but some of them are mentioned in this USA Today article:

Topping the list in the December issue, on newsstands today, is Elvis' well-known cravings for peanut butter, jelly and fried bacon on a buttered loaf. In 1976, he spent $3,387.28 for 22 "Fool's Gold" sandwiches, which included flying to Denver with some pals.

•No. 4. Mick Fleetwood estimated that a line of all the cocaine he ever ingested would cost $8 million and stretch about 5 miles.

•No. 12. Bono paid a mere $1,700 to fly his favorite hat from London to Italy for a 2003 benefit with Luciano Pavarotti. The rocker's chapeau rode in the cockpit.

•No. 36. Tommy Lee paid $4,000 in 1999 to put a Starbucks franchise in his home for Pamela Anderson.

In what kinds of things do you indulge?

I tend to indulge more in things that are bad for me than on the everyday basics. For example, other people may blow $100 on a Chantal tea kettle that they’ll use every day. That’s a lot of money for a damn tea kettle, but it’s not horrific if you use it a lot. I spent nearly $300 on a custom made set of flasks with its own leather carrying case that I’ve used about four times, so that’s pretty dumb.

I’ll spend $120 for a pair of Lacoste sneakers but won’t buy a clothes for work that cost more than 20 bucks each, (including pants). And I would more readily shell out hundreds of dollars for an ashtray when I don’t smoke than a bus pass for transit I ride daily.

I thought I was retarded, but seeing this list makes me wonder if I’m just a rock star in training.

Links for drinks

I'm too good to you people. When going through this month's stack of magazines, I took notes of which liquor companies were advertising. These will be the companies most likely to offer tasting events in major cities. Sign up for their mailing lists (with an email account you use just for annoucements, club listings, and contests so that it doesn't clog up your regular mail account) and hope they're throwing a party near you soon:

• Beaujolais
• Guinness
• Chivas
• Mount Gay Rum
• Cabo Wabo tequila
  
• Jack Daniels
• Patron
• Wild Turkey
• Smirnoff
• Budweiser
• Jose Cuervo
• Absolut
• Maker's Mark
• Chambord
• Woodford Reserve
• Appleton Estate
• Bombay Sappire
• The Glenlivet
• Evan Williams whiskey
• Three Olives vodka
• Corona
• Siku
  

What's the 411?

There is no need to pay for directory assistance from your cell phone or anywhere anymore. The following services provide nationwide ad-supported directories. Just listen to a 10-second ad then get the usual assistance.

1-800-411SAVE

1-800-FREE411

1-800-SANFRANCISCO (I'm guessing this one is local.)

Source: This Chronicle Piece.

No Way, San Jose

This is unbelievable. The wise City Council of San Jose, California created a law that says they can shut down any nightclub on the spot.

The ordinance lets the [police] chief immediately suspend or revoke a bar's or club's permits or licenses when public safety is at risk. It increases the duration businesses can be shutdown and also lengthens the time to schedule an appeal of the police action.

They just made this up and passed it into law. That's some serious bullshit! Bars and clubs are continually discriminated against and punished for infractions more harshly than other businesses. San Francisco had a similar situation to this one in San Jose. Luckily the club owners got together, formed a coalition, and caused a wave of negative publicity against the police department's tactics. The police chief in charge of the club district was demoted to airport security because of it. Now we have an Entertainment Commission whose job it is to grant (and I think revoke) entertainment licenses. They took the power out of the hands of the police, who can't be trusted with it.

San Jose's nightlife is notoriously low quality as it was. They all drive up to San Francisco for better entertainment choices. Now the city sucks even more.

The Lame Guide to Los Angeles

Here is a pretty boring guide to LA on a budget. He mentions a few cheap hotels and public transit info, so I suppose it's useful. It always seemed to me that a lot of the good stuff in LA you have to be 'in the know' to know about. It sucks if you don't know anyone who lives there, but it's great when you do.

More Money Reading Material

I went a little link-crazy on MSN.com today and found a bunch of articles:

- We're idiots for buying luxury items like $200 jeans.

- Secrets of superstar grocery shoppers. On the second page they list 10 tips that are pretty good, and the author says she saved 90 bucks for one hour's worth of coupon clipping. In Party Like a Rock Star I advocate not using coupons at all, but I may just incorporate this piece of advice into my routine: Track the non-perishable items that you spend the most money on or are the most expensive (in my case that would probably be pasta sauce, coffee, and peanut butter) over a three-month period by checking the store prices and coupons in the Sunday paper. Then you'll know how low they can go. From that point on, when an item's price hits the lowest point, you'll know it's time to stock up and buy three month's worth of it.

- How to look rich without spending much. I'd rather look poor and be rich, but to each his own. (Note: Currently I am poor and I look poor, so why don't you go buy 300 copies of my book?) This article gives tips on buying fancy stuff, taking high-end vacations, and a few entertainment options for cheap. One tip I may incorporate into my life (well, I'm also incorporating "don't have kids" into my life as recommended, but that's more to save my sanity rather than money) is "purge the poverty from your life." In other words, make your apartment neat and clean and fix things that are broken, because living in squalor is also a mindset. I think it's time for a winter cleaning around here...

Money Freaks

On MSN.com today there is an article about people obsessed with saving money. I think it's hilarious. Some of the tactics include:

• Hunting squirrels for meat
• Buying 40 cans of tuna at a time because it's on sale
• Reading entire books in the bookstore without buying them

In comparison, my cheapness seems rather sane.

Comparison Shopping

The website Pricenoia will compare the price of a book on all of the international Amazon.com sites where it is sold. It also lists the shipping from that country in US dollars, so you have a perfect comparison of how much it will cost. Many books, especially textbooks, are less expensive to buy in another country and have shipped to the US. (I mention this in the book.) Pay attention, college students!

Here is an example. The book "Elementary Differential Equations with Boundary Value Problems, Fifth Edition" costs $103.20 in the US, including free shipping. You can get the same book from Amazon.co.uk (England) for $45 plus $12 for shipping, making the grand total only $57.24- almost half price!

Props to LifeHacker

Finding Free Booze Tasting Parties

In San Francisco and probably most other major cities, there is a free liquor company promotion a few times every month. While these events are often held at bars and clubs (in SF I see the most at Ruby Skye, Dolce, and Mr. Smith's), increasingly liquor promoters are throwing high-end tasting parties in other venues.

Last week I went to a Chivas tasting held at the Merchant's Exchange building downtown. The evening began with an open bar of cocktails (all made with Chivas, of course) in a huge fancy lounge suite on the 15th floor. Though there were a lot of people there and only two bartenders, the wait for drinks didn't get too out of control. Then we all sat at small tables in a ballroom while we were lead through a very short tasting lesson including comparison whiskies of both the Islay and Speyside varieties. (I'm not really a big fan of the Chivas 12 they were promoting, but I like the 18 year-old variety we tried.)

Anyway, I was worried that this and other tasting events would be a giant crowded mess of moochers pushing and shoving to get to the liquor, so I was very pleasantly surprised. The next one I've signed up for is a Guinness tasting event.

How do you find out about these events? When you're reading magazines, newspapers, or whatever, rip out all the liquor and beer ads. Any alcohol company that's getting the budget to promote through big advertising often promotes through tasting events also. When you're bored and doing nothing (you know, at work) find the websites for those products and look for a mailing list- that's where you'll hear about the parties.

And for open bar events at nightclubs, you'll hear about them through the clubs' mailing lists rather than the liquor companies'. Sign up for the mailing list of every nightlife venue in town. That takes a while, so save it for a hungover Friday at work.

The Ten Levels of Hangover

Here's a funny blog post about the 10 levels of hangover. I concur with his assessment and would say that today I'm at a Level 5 after last night's whiskey fest. I think I need a beer.
props to Toby

Reminder- Alameda Book Faire Saturday

Remember folks, I'll be at the Alameda Book Faire tomorrow- Saturday, November 5th. I'm speaking on the Music Writers and Reviewers panel at noon, and selling the book all day. For more information and directions, check here.

Assassin

Streetwars is an assassin game coming to San Francisco. Armed with a water gun and a photo of your target, you stalk your victim and try to kill him or her any time during a three-week period. If you're successful, your victim (also an assassin)'s target becomes your next target instead. You continue to kill or be killed and work your way up the chain. The winner gets a cash prize. Sounds fun- killing always is!

props to DailyCandy

Viva Evangelina!

A woman in Texas owes $76,039 for 2,953 toll violations (she ran through the tracking lane without a pass and it took a picture of her license plate) since February 2004.

At first, I thought this woman was reckless and crazy, but then I did the math:

Each toll violation comes with a $25 "administrative fee," which comes to $73, 825 of that amount. This means that she skipped out on $2, 214 worth of tolls in less than two years. (And that each toll cost an average of 75 cents. )

It was about 20 months of driving and toll-skipping, which means that her normal toll fees would come to $110 per month, or $1328 per year. Damn, that's a lot of tolls. What is this, France?

Perhaps Ms. Evangelina Gonzalez is skipping tolls out of protest of the high costs. Or perhaps she is skipping them out of political protest- one of the highways she scammed is the Bush Turnpike, after all.

Either way, this woman is my new folk hero.