Cinefour theaters & the goodreads.com pricer

ByJohn Brown

I think I could write a horror novel about some dollar movie theaters. The unsuspecting movie goers are lured in. They blindly walk into the theater and take a seat, but, no! When they sit down, they find they’re trapped, their feet glued to the sticky soda floor. The doors close behind them. Outside the theater a man walking by thinks he hears screams. He pauses, alarmed. Those sound like REAL screams, people dying? But no, he thinks, it’s just a movie theater, just a scary movie, and he walks away. Moments later blood begins to seep out from underneath the theater’s exit door.

Too gruesome? Okay, how about this. You go in, swim through a sea of popcorn to your seat only to find that all the seats flop back and leave you staring at the ceiling. This means that while you could listen to the movie, you actually have to crane your neck forward for two hours to see it. By the time the ending credits roll, you can’t walk. Instead, you have to hobble out like a troll. When you finally reach the exit, you swear you can hear the theater owner cackling. A man in a doctor’s coat shows up and slips the owner a manila envelope full of cash. Suddenly, it all becomes clear—it’s not a theater but a medical scam perpetrated by those who sell orthopedic suits and chiropractics. Mwuhahahaha!

So you can see why the dollar theater dread fell upon me when I went up to the ticket counter at Logan, Utah’s Cinefour theaters and found out the tickets were only $3 each. Sweat began to bead on my brow. I looked around for signs of monster cockroaches that might carry me and my family away to feed to their young, but, to my surprise, the theater was, well, clean. When we entered, we found no sea of trash. No sticky floor. And the seats didn’t flop back into the dentist chair position (unlike another theater on the other side of the street). They actually supported our backs nicely.

We sat in the dimly lit theater like the old days when you didn’t watch a steady stream of commercials. We chatted. Then the previews started up, the film ran, and nobody came out to murder us. It was great.

Cinefour. Cheap movies. Nice little theaters. You can take the whole family out and still have money left over to buy a sink at Angie’s.

***

If you love books as much as I do, you can easily spend your mortgage on them. Which is why libraries are so very nice. But even though libraries are great, there are still some books I want to own. One of the fab things about the internet is that it allows lots of companies and individuals to sell new and previously read (but in great condition) books for cheap. The bad news is that it’s hard to do comparison shopping to find the deals. But no longer–www.goodreads.com has solved that problem by doing the searching for you.

Simply go to the site and search for a book title. When the search results display, click on the book you’re interested in. When the book’s page comes up, you’ll see a little button below the cover that says “buy for” and lists a price. Click that button, and you’ll see a list of all the main vendors and prices. You can then link to one of the vendors and make your purchase.

So how much can you save? Sometimes a lot. For example, I looked up my own book. Its hard cover list price is $25.99. However, by using the goodreads.com feature, I found a brand new copy for $4.89. I could get a good used copy for one buck. ONE BUCK! Holy schnitzel, that’s a 96% discount. If you want to buy a book, go to goodreads.com to find the deals.

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  • Good Stuff! News of the World and two for the Downton Abbey crowd

    ByJohn Brown

    I recently watched a move and two British TV mini-series that were just terrific.

    The movie is News of the World. It’s a Western set in 1870, starring Tom Hanks as Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a former Confederate officer who makes a living traveling from town to town in Texas and reading newspapers to local residents for an admission fee of ten cents.

    After departing Wichita Falls, Kidd comes across an overturned wagon on the road and finds the driver, a black freedman, had been lynched. He also finds the stray, young white girl who only speaks Kiowa (the language of an American Indian tribe), that the freedman has been transporting.

    Kidd learns from the girl’s paperwork that she is Johanna Leonberger, who had been kidnapped and by Kiowa six years earlier. She doesn’t speak English. Doesn’t want to go with Kidd. But Kidd is tasked with getting her to safety. Of course there are all sorts of perils and issues along the way that threaten that goal.

    There’s suspense, action, drama, bad guys, and some poignant moments that will move your heart strings. If you like westerns or Tom Hanks, I think you’ll love this movie. It’s the best western I’ve seen in a long time.

    ***

    Those of you enjoyed Downton Abbey will be very happy to hear that Julian Fellowes, who was the executive producer for that series and wrote many of the episodes, is back and has written two more historical dramas with that same type of feel.

    The first is Dr. Thorne,a three-episode miniseries based on the novel by Anthony Trollope.

    It’s set in the late 1800s. Mary Thorne and Frank Gresham, the only son and heir of the squire of Greshamsbury, fall in love. However, Frank’s parents want him to marry wealth because they have very little to leave their son. Mary is penniless and of suspicious birth. She’s not anything at all that would help Frank in the world. And so the drama begins. You get to enjoy the historical setting, the manners, and romantic suspense.

    The second is Belgravia, a six-episode miniseries set in the 1800s and based on the novel by Julian Fellowes himself.

    For you geography buffs, Belgravia is an actual place, an affluent district of London. And the story set there is about two couples. The first, the Richmonds, are part of the aristocracy. The other, the Trenchards, are from the business class.

    The Richmond’s had one child, a son. The Trenchards had one child, a daughter. The two fell in love. But the son was killed in the battle of Waterloo. And the daughter died in childbirth. However, it was an illegitimate childbirth that the Richmonds don’t know about. The Trenchards thought it best, to retain the reputation of their daughter, to have someone else raise him.

    Twenty-five years later, however, both couples still feel the hole those deaths left in their hearts. Mrs. Trenchard feels it’s time to reveal the truth to the Mrs. Richmond. But it does not go as planned. Especially not when the Richmond’s nephew wants the Richmond’s inheritance and is willing to remove all obstacles in his path.

    It’s a story full of manners, heartbreak, suspense, hope, and, well, I won’t tell you the ending. But I will say that if you like these types of historical dramas, you’ll probably love this.

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  • Best Buy, Samsung, and Sony

    ByJohn Brown

    I am not an early adopter. I do not rush out to buy the latest and greatest of anything. If I have something that works, then I keep using it until it absolutely won’t work anymore.

    For example, Nellie and I bought a Honda Accord when we were first married. Fourteen years later, we had put almost 300,000 miles on that car and would have tried to put on another 300,000. Unfortunately, it met an early demise when it encountered a herd of black Angus cattle on a very dark country road at one a.m. in the morning. So long, brave companion.

    We have a computer we purchased thirteen years ago which is still running Windows 98. Computers evolve about as quickly as fruit flies, which means that in human years our computer is like 450 years old. This is like going to war with first-generation muskets while everyone else is using Predator drones. And we’re okay with that, even though it appears we’re going to have to retire the old fellow this year.  Alas.

    I have these fine olive green dress pants that are fifteen years old. When the rise finally wore out, I had Nellie fix it.  She put in a bright Kermit-The-Frog green patch, which draws a lot of attention to an area that’s been down-played ever since the codpiece went out of fashion in the late 1500’s. Was this sweet revenge for eating her stash of chocolate? Or a cleverly planned source of constant enjoyment? I do not know. But as a result, I do not wear these pants to church and important business meetings. I wear them hiking. They protect me from bushes and mosquitoes, yet breathe with perfection. Why would I ever get rid of them?

    As you can see, I’m not a buy buy buy guy. Which means that when I get something it better darn well be a fine product because I know I’m likely to be using it for a very long time. And this brings me to our recent television and blu-ray player purchase. Two years ago some friends who had just purchased a big flat screen TV saw that we were still using our twenty-three year old 15″ RCA, took pity on us and gave us the 21″ TV they were replacing. It is one of those big suckers that weighs 475 pounds, but still a fine TV, and we watched it with joy.

    However, a few weeks ago our antenna converter box broke. Our church’s semi-annual worldwide conference was coming up, which is a feast we love to watch, and so we were faced with choice: buy another converter box or pay a few more dollars and move into the twenty-first century with a flat screen. Now, while it’s true I’m not a buy buy buy guy, it is also true that I have been longing for a manly TV lo these many years. This was my chance. When Nellie agreed we should look for a new TV, I went into immediate action.

    We started our search at Best Buy. The sales guys there were incredibly helpful. But we wanted to shop a bit more. So we went to a discount club, and thinking we’d save thirty bucks, purchased our TV there. We took it home, and I did not like it. I looked up the reviews on Consumer Reports and liked it even less. So I took it back. Sam’s has a great return policy, and gave us a full refund. Good bye, piece of crap.

    I went to Best Buy again. After talking with the floor guy there for some time, I purchased a 32″ Samsung LN32D Series 4. No, it’s not 60 inches of gorilla manliness, but a 32″ TV does have a bit of hair on its chest. And it was bigger than what we’d been using. And it was only a few hundred bucks. I found this TV’s picture much better. Excellent, in fact, with the TV stations. However, my DVDs didn’t play so well on it.

    I took it back to Best Buy. The folks there spent an hour testing other TVs and demonstrating that the issue was not the TV but my old Sony DVD player which could only use RCA cables. I needed a new player with the new HDMI cable, which is able to deliver much better quality. So I purchased one, a blu-ray player, brought it home, and found that the picture was indeed much better, but I hated the player’s remote controls. For example, I want to push one button to bring up the disc menu. I do not want to click options, over, down, down, down to do this each time.

    I took it back. The folks at Best Buy were as friendly and helpful as ever. There was no hassle returning it. We spent another thirty minutes test driving different players and their remotes. I finally settled on a Sony BDP-5390 which is fabulous, not only because the remote and on-screen controls were helpful and it remembers where I was with movies I don’t finish, but also because it has a number of apps that allow me to connect to my wi-fi and watch things like YouTube, listen to internet radio, and pipe music all through my house.  There are so many cool features that I’m going to be enjoying discovering them all for a number of weeks. In all of this, the folks at Best Buy were cheerful, helpful, knowledgeable, and willing to work with someone who was very particular in what he wanted. I am now a Best Buy believer. If you want excellent customer service and good prices, go to Best Buy. I’ll be going back there for my next TV . . . when this one has racked up two gajillion viewing hours and at last gives up the ghost.

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  • Some 101 for Congress and the President

    ByJohn Brown

    It’s not really rocket science.

    1. If you have loans outstanding and the payment is due, you owe the creditors a payment. Payables for Idiots 101.
    2. If you have received goods and services, then you owe your vendors a payment. Payables for Idiots 102.
    3. You pay your bills. End of story. That’s what grown ups do. If you have to float some debt for a few months, you do it. And you staple a note to your head to stop spending like a slot machine junkie. Payables for Idiots 103.

    The debts we have are for goods and services we’ve already received. So increase the debt limit and pay your damn bills. What about spending?

    1. You do not spend more than you take in year after year. If you do, that’s called running your business into the ground. In the case of the Congress (primarily Harry Reid’s Senate at this point, although many, but not all, of the Republicans were happy to go along with dumb spending earlier) and the President, it’s the country they’re running into the ground. Spending for Idiots 101.
    2. If you’ve got all sorts of cool things planned like Acorn subsidies for pimps and Antarctica Jell-O wrestling grants for scientists, but you can’t afford them—i.e. you have to go into debt to get them–you cancel those plans. Spending for Idiots 102.
    3. The problem is that Congress and the President buy all sorts of crap and expect to put it on a credit card when it comes due. And there’s nothing to prevent them from doing it.
    4. They’re like irresponsible teenagers. They need controls that won’t allow them to overspend. Kind of like putting limits on a teenager’s cell phone minutes. Or forcing them to use a debit card. When they’re out of cash, they get a card denied response from their vendors.
    5. So you set spending limits, debt limits, and force them to balance the budget each year, except in extreme emergencies like when space aliens try to wipe out humanity. Spending for Idiots 103.

    This means you pass Cut, Cap, and Balance and quit spending money you don’t have. Really difficult stuff. What about getting out of debt?

    1. You eat rice and beans until you’re debt is gone or down to a manageable level. That means you cancel crap you can’t pay for. Sorry earmarks, you’re gone. Sorry grants for nude artists in trees, you’re gone. Sorry subsidies for PBS, you’re gone.  Finances 200: How to Not Be A Money Moron.
    2. You figure out how to reduce your current cost structure. This means you figure out a way to reduce the costs of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and every other service or product you provide, cutting those that aren’t essential. You hire someone like Mitt Romney who knows how to go through every line in a budget and turn a bloated ship around.  Finances 300: No, You Can’t Pay For Your Sister’s Hair Implants with My Money.
    3. You remind people this is the freaking U S of A. A place where a man or woman can make themselves. Not where the government changes your diapers and feeds you mush three times a day. Communism and socialism have failed. They were badly conceived utopias, much like multi-level soap and vitamin marketing schemes that are supposed to usher in the Second Coming.  Finances 400: The USA Buried the USSR for a Reason.
    4. You increase your revenues.
    5. However, if you raise taxes, you’re actually going to depress your revenues. Think about this. Which car company has bigger revenues–Lamborgini or Honda? Who is going to put out, if they’ve got Louie the Fingers and his buddy Jockstrap taking increasing amounts of their money in a protection racket? Don’t be a thug. Be an enabler.  Do what Wal-Mart does and go for volume.  Do what Ebay does–create the environment that entices tons of commerce, entices people to dramatically increase their transactions. Transactions go through the roof; you take only a tiny cut, and, shazam, you increase your revenues.  Finances 500: Um, Do You Want People to Work to Become Rich or Do You Want Them To Pick Up Torches and Burn the Houses of the Rich Down?

    Cut spending, reduce cost structure, and increase your revenues. That’s getting out of debt.

    Is this really that hard?

    EDIT: 8/1 Seems that “wacky” Ron Paul actually has a simple commonsense approach that doesn’t sound crazy. Why couldn’t we do this?

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  • Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover & Brown Cow Yogurt

    ByJohn Brown

    Wear some financial underpants

    I graduated from BYU with a Master’s degree in accounting. BYU’s accounting program is regularly ranked as one of the top three schools in the nation.

    Whoa. Go, John. I ought to be some kind of financial superstar, right? You’d think I would have come out of that program with all my crap put together, living within my means, investing wisely, making a bundle of moo-lah. I’d have a tidy stash.

    Yeah, nope.

    That program taught me how to account for money, but not how to use it. Or maybe I was just too dumb to get it. We came rolling out of school with thousands of dollars of debt. So instead of graduating and building our wealth, we worked to pay off the man.

    Dumb, dumb, dumb.

    I can tell you right now my daughters aren’t going to do the same. They will pay as they go. I’m not co-signing any loans. They’re not going to use credit cards. If it takes them a few years longer to graduate, then it takes them a few years longer.

    But they’ll be free when they finish. No shackles for my girls.

    I always thought it was a good idea not to send them out into the world without underpants. Or knowing how to brush their teeth. It’s equally important I don’t send them out there not knowing how to build wealth and reap all the security and peace that comes with it.

    This is why every child of mine is going to get a copy of Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover. It’s a goofy title, but the principles in it are sound. I can’t tell you how much I wished I’d known and followed the steps he outlines there on how to build wealth when I was just starting out.

    1. Save $1,000 in an emergency fund
    2. Pay off all your debt except the mortgage using the debt snowball (and don’t go into debt)
    3. Complete your emergency fund by saving three to six months’ expenses
    4. Maximize retirement investing
    5. Save for your kids’ college
    6. Pay off the home mortgage early
    7. Build wealth and give like crazy
    8. Live like no one else

    The book starts out by talking about the debt myth, i.e. debt is a great tool and should be used to create prosperity. Sometimes a little debt can be helpful. But in the vast majority of cases “debt adds considerable risk, most often doesn’t bring prosperity, and isn’t used by wealthy people nearly as much as we are led to believe.” Ramsey goes on to say, “Your largest wealth-building asset is your income. When you tie up your income, you lose. When you invest your income, you become wealthy and can do anything you want.  How much could you give every month, save every month, and spend every month if you had no payments? Your income is your greatest wealth-building tool, not debt. Your Total Money Makeover begins with a permanently changed view of the Debt Myths.”

    After tackling debt, Ramsey outlines other money myths and wealth-destroying attitudes and then explains each of the principles of the steps outlined above.

    I love this book so much it’s part of my gift package to every couple that invites me to their wedding reception. I hope those new couples follow his recommendations. It will bring them peace. If you want to give your children the gift of financial peace, if you want that peace yourself, I recommend you buy this book today and start following those baby steps. You can get the book for a mere $10 bucks at his website http://www.daveramsey.com.

    While you’re waiting for it to come, you might want to go over to Larry Correia’s site (another accountant and fiction author), and read his hilarious comments on some real folks who actually were sent out without any financial underwear: http://tinyurl.com/3zx9tbo.

    Thick and Creamy

    I love thick, creamy yogurt.

    Mix it with some raisins or fresh fruit, and I’m in heaven.

    The problem is that most of the yogurt on the shelves today is weird Splenda- or NutraSweet-filled crap. Or it’s full of sugar. And none of it has that thick mouth feel.

    I had some great yogurt up in Oregon a few years ago, but could never find anything like it here. Then a little while ago I hit the jackpot.

    Hello, Brown Cow Greek Yogurt.

    Thick. Oh, baby is it thick. Creamy. And full of goodness: 23 grams of protein, 9 grams of sugar, 0 grams of fat, and active cultures of more of our belly friends than any other yogurt I’ve found—give a big welcome to S. Thermophilus, L. Bulgaricus, L. Acidophilus, Bifidus, and L. Casei.

    I get the plain style. This allows me to mix it to my taste with fruit, granola, or a little bit of sugar or honey.

    If you’ve been looking for some good yogurt, let me recommend Brown Cow.

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  • |

    Good Stuff! The actual Christmas story

    ByJohn Brown

    It’s interesting how many things we’ve added to the accounts we have in the Bible.

    For example, nowhere does the Bible say that Mary rode a donkey. Mary might have walked. Or rode in a cart. Or gotten piggy back rides. We don’t know. We do know that there is no donkey mentioned in the record.

    It also doesn’t say she had the child the night they arrived.

    It only says she was “great with child” when they made the roughly 80-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And that “while they were there” in Bethlehem “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.”

    So she had the baby sometime while they were there. That could have been during the first hour. But it could have also been a week or month later. We just don’t know.

    It doesn’t mention anywhere the word stable.

    Christ might have been born in a stable, or he might have been born in a cave, or inside the house, or out on the porch, or on the roof (lots of those places had flat roofs where they hung out). We just don’t know. What we do know is that he wasn’t born in a palace. And that they laid him in a manger because there wasn’t any room in the inn. An odd circumstance for a king.  

    Notice as well that there weren’t multiple inns.

    It just says “the inn.” And if you look up that word in the Greek, it’s translated as “guest chamber” in the other spots where it’s used in Luke. So they could have been talking about the one guest room in the house where they were staying. Either way, we don’t have anything that says there was a mean innkeeper who later regretted turning the couple away or that Joseph went door-to-door looking for a place.

    We have no record in the account of three wisemen.

    It just says “wisemen.” So there might have been two of them. Or twelve. We don’t know. And it appears they came sometime after Jesus had been born because they first saw the star of his birth in the east and only then set out to find him. They might have been coming from Persia, hundreds of miles away. Or they could have been living in Bethphage, a mile to the east of Jerusalem. Either way, they didn’t know they should travel to Bethlehem because it says they went and talked to Herod first, in Jerusalem, and asked “where is he that is born King of the Jews?”

    The question freaked Herod out (if you’re the current king, you kind of want to know who else is claiming your throne), and so he gathered all the chief priests and scribes to discuss it, and those guys said the prophecies said it would be Bethlehem. And so Herod met with the wisemen again and told them to go there. And only then did they go down to Bethlehem. So it doesn’t appear the wisemen were there the night of the birth.  

    There’s no record of camels hanging out with the baby either. Or sheep. Or goats. There’s not a lot there. But what is there is interesting.

    Now, I want to go on record stating I have no problem speculating about the event and imagining what it might have been like. I love to do it. Good grief, I write fiction.

    In fact, for many years I figured I needed to get in on the Christmas noun gig. You know what I mean. Every year we get heart-warming books about new Christmas nouns. We’ve had Christmas sweaters, Christmas jars, Christmas boxes, Christmas candles, Christmas carols. This year I see there’s one about Christmas fudge and other about a Christmas train. So I figured I’d do one. Mine would be about the Christmas rat. A little fellow who decided to snuggle up with the babe instead of giving him a nibble. One of these days I will get that hungry rat story written.  

    In the meantime, while there’s a lot of good stuff we’ve added to make the event special, it’s also nice to know what the record actually does say. Whether you’re Christian or not, it’s helpful when dealing with others to know what was recorded about this event that is so significant to the largest religion in the world.

    And so the last bit of good stuff I recommend this month are the two brief accounts we have. The first one is in Matthew 2:1-16 and tells the story of the wisemen. The other is in Luke 2:1-20 and features some shepherds.

    Merry Christmas!

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  • Good Stuff! The Man Who Invented Christmas

    ByJohn Brown

    If you love funny, feel-good movies, today’s you’re lucky day.

    Because I’m going to tell you about one that will help brighten your Christmas season.

    The movie is The Man Who Invented Christmas.

    It’s about Charles Dickens, the author of A Christmas Carol.

    Now some of you might already be groaning. Please, no, not another story about Scrooge.

    I felt the same way. I haven’t enjoyed a movie about Scrooge for a long time. No, not even the one featuring Scrooge McDuck.

    So I didn’t want to watch this, but I kept hearing so many good reviews, I finally caved and gave it a shot. I’m so happy I did.

    This delightful movie reinvigorates the story with a whole new twist because it’s not about Scrooge. Not directly.

    Instead, it’s about Charles Dickens. It’s 1843 and Dickens is suffering financial hardship because his last three books bombed in the marketplace. He determines to write a new book and publish it himself to restore his finances. That book is A Christmas Carol.

    Dickens needs to finish it in six weeks so it can be ready for Christmas. That’s difficult enough, but will anyone read it? His friends and publishers keep telling him that the book will be a failure because, at the time, many thought Christmas irrelevant and didn’t celebrate it. Furthermore, the story isn’t developing as it should.

    Now the movie does take some dramatic license, but, by the end, I think you’ll agree the message of Scrooge is never more poignant. I watched the final scene with Scrooge multiple times and thought about it for days afterwards.

    If you want to laugh, be inspired, and feel the spirit of Christmas, I think you’ll love this movie.

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6 Comments

  3. John,

    I hope it didn’t stress you out to see your book listed at a low price. If it makes you feel better, I’ll be picking up Curse at full price when it comes out. 🙂

  5. Ah, that makes sense. I bought your book because Lord Sanderson commanded it… in a round about, “This guy is good so we have him on Writing Excuses” kind of way. Perhaps when Curse comes out you can do another guest appearance? I always enjoy listening to you talk about the craft, particularly the hardships you faced and overcoming them.

  6. I’ll be on again around November. And I’m sure again when Curse comes out in 2011. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve learned a lot this last year with the release of book 1 and writing book 2. A LOT! Of course, won’t be able to share it all there. Happy to hear it helps, Andrew.

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