The cheap issue

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The last man on earth (with a flip phone)

By Ty Forquer

Smartphones are everywhere. From children barely old enough to eat solid food to elderly folks too old to eat solid food, it seems like everyone is packing a tiny touchscreen computer these days. And we are willing to shell out more and more money for expensive data plans, driven by the need for constant connection. What am I outraged about today? What stupid thing did a politician do this time? Which 12 cat gifs best explain the Iran nuclear deal? We need to know these things, we need to know them now, and we’re willing to pay for it.

I just finished watching “Breaking Bad” this year. (Yes, I’m way behind. At this rate, I’m hoping to start “Orange is the New Black” in 2025.) As I watched the series, Walt’s flip phone seemed delightfully dated. It’s the same way I feel when I see Dick Van Dyke dial a rotary phone. (My wife is on a big “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” kick. At this rate, she’ll probably be ready to start “Cheers” in 2025.)

When I met Peter Luttrull last year, he seemed like an ordinary guy. He had a good sense of humor and a solid Midwestern work ethic. As we approached that 21st century friendship milestone — the swapping of cell phone numbers — I was taken aback. Luttrull pulled out his phone and flipped it open. For a second I thought we had ripped the space-time continuum. In 2015, Luttrull still has a flip phone.

Not even Blackberry or a one of those fancy mid-2000s phones with the slideout keyboard. An honest-to-God flip phone. Luttrull lovingly refers to it as his “dumbphone.” While smartphone addicts like myself may laugh at his outdated phone, Luttrull is laughing too — all the way to the bank.

“Seventy percent of my motivation is financial,” Luttrull admitted, explaining that his monthly bill is only $10. “Thirty percent is that it’s nice not knowing what’s going on all of the time.”

In today’s information-obsessed culture, taking in all of the streams of information can be like drinking from a fire hose. With Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and a myriad of other social applications vying for our attention, we are doused with a steady stream of information from the moment our alarm goes off in the morning until we set our smartphones down to go to bed. Resisting the smartphone revolution is Luttrull’s way of slowing the intake.

“Wi-Fi is everywhere, and I have a computer. I still feel plugged in,” he said. “But it’s nice to have a break.”

Luttrull, who is working towards a master’s degree in jazz studies, said he doesn’t take much ribbing from his colleagues about his ancient cell phone.

“It’s like an ice-breaker. People think it’s crazy,” Luttrull said. “I might be the only one (in the jazz program) with a flip phone. Even Uncle G has a smartphone!”

“Uncle G,” of course, is the jazz program’s 80-year-old elder statesman and instructor of drums, Randy Gelispie. A seasoned jazz cat who has traded drum licks with the likes of Max Roach, Gelispie now carries much of the legendary drummer’s discography in his hip pocket.

He does, however, see the smartphone as an inevitability. His wife, also a longtime smartphone holdout, caved and bought her first smartphone a few months ago. Luttrull is hoping to hold out a bit longer, but suspects his upgrade might be looming as well.

“I think they’re trying to phase (the flip phone) out,” he said, noting that his service provider keeps raising the rates. “Eventually I’ll probably have to get a smartphone.”


Clif-hanger

By Lawrence Cosentino

My household has added a new secular holiday in recent years: Expiration Day. Oct. 26, 2011, is the day that great heaps of Clif Bars, on display for years at Vallarta Super Market in north Lansing, went out of date. These delicious, nutritious, 240-calorie energy bars (“built on the spirit of adventure”) usually retail for about $1.59, or a buck if they’re on sale. At Vallarta, they’re a quarter apiece, or $2.99 for a box of 12.

And they are always the same flavor: Macadamia Nut White Chocolate, which happens to be my favorite.

In the past three years, I’ve probably eaten hundreds of the expired treats. I’ve had chewy white moments with them at my desk, on my front porch, in rolling Atlantic seas, on crags over glacier fed lakes, even in the parking lot at Frandor. Yes, they are a bit stale, but 10 seconds in a microwave and they taste like a home baked cookie. (Beware: more than 10 seconds and the frosting turns to napalm.)

I’ve eaten them for breakfast so many times it would take an elephant-sized mainframe to calculate my savings, compared to, say, so many morel and Gouda omelets at Golden Harvest. It has to be in the thousands of dollars by now.

Every so often, the stock looks like it’s dwindling, and I get very nervous, until another pallet of 1,000 or so suddenly appears. This fall, the basket looks like it’s dwindling again. The checkout lady told me she’d check to see if there was more at the warehouse.


Cut the cord

by Ty Forquer

At some point a few years ago, I realized that cable TV is a scam. Cable packages have become bloated and unmanageable. Hundreds of music channels. Twenty versions of the Home Shopping Network. Movie channels that replay the same seven movies I never liked but always seemed to end up watching. A block of “inspirational” channels featuring handsome man with perfectly coiffed hair, standing at clear plastic podiums explaining how they need my hard-earned cash to do God’s work. (God’s work always seems to involve a lavish estate and a fleet of Cadillacs. If memory serves me correctly, Jesus was a homeless guy who rode a donkey, and he made a pretty good name for himself. But hey, I’m no theologian. Where was I? Oh yeah, cable TV.) I was giving away a good chunk of my paycheck each month for just a few channels that I actually watched. I realized that I was paying more and more for a product I barely liked.

So I decided to end my decades-long relationship with cable TV.

Cable TV didn’t take the breakup well, calling me repeatedly, begging me to come back. But I stayed strong, and have been cable-free for a few years now. But I needed some help, and so will you. So here is my guide to cutting the cord.

1) GET AN ANTENNA.

Believe it or not, there are still TV stations that broadcast over the air. If you’re my age or older, you probably had a giant antenna mounted on top of your house when you were growing up. We lived in the country, so we had a fancy rotating antenna, complete with a directional control dial with stickers marking the best direction for each station.

If you live in town, you can get by with a small indoor antenna. That will cover most of your major networks —NBC not included because the regional affiliate, for reasons unknown, chose to put its broadcast hub 30 miles south of Lansing in Onondaga — plus PBS and even a few “inspirational” channels to boot. All stations broadcast in HD now, so the picture is actually better than what you get with cheaper non-HD cable packages.

Or you can pony up and buy an outdoor antenna. Antenna technology has advanced since the late ‘80s, and you can get a pretty powerful antenna that doesn’t look nearly as gaudy as those aluminum stick figure contraptions that we used to use.

2) JUMP IN THE STREAM.

The antenna is well and good, but you’re at the mercy of the network TV schedule. Plus, there’s all those great shows on cable that you’re missing. This is where streaming entertainment comes to the rescue. (Sure, I’ve cut out cable, but I still have Internet. I’m not a caveman.)

Invest a little bit in a Chromecast, an Apple TV or some other Internet TV device, and you can access more media than you ever need to consume. Some combination of Hulu, Amazon Prime and/or Netflix will deliver almost all of the content you are missing on cable, at a fraction of the cost. There will be some gaps — I’m looking at you, “Game of Thrones” — and you may need to wait a little bit (no “Mad Men” spoilers please, I’m still waiting for season 7.2 to hit Netflix), but trust me, you won’t miss much.

3) MAKE SOME FRIENDS.

There will be some times you want to watch live TV. Sporting events are rarely streamed live, at least through legal avenues, or maybe you want to catch the premiere of “Sharknado 7” on the Syfy channel. This is where it helps to have some friends — preferably friends who are not as miserly as you so you can mooch off of their cable TV.

For most live sports, you can always head to the bar. Make sure you eat before you go though: A few drinks and a sampler platter later, you’ve already blown your cable savings. In either case, its good to get out of the house once in a while.

There is an added bonus to cable-cutting: You never have to deal with the wretched, soul-crushing experience that is Comcast/ AT&T/DirecTV customer service. I suppose you have to get your Internet from somewhere, but there are local providers who will gladly hook you up.


Hidden treasure

By Lawrence Cosentino

Imagine you have an uncle who spends millions of dollars a year on books, CDs and DVDs. He gets all the latest stuff, while still keeping up on the classics, but he has a short attention span and limited shelf space.

Trade “everyone else in greater Lansing” for “uncle” and you get some idea of the sweet setup that is the Book Burrow. Many folks still don’t realize that all the discarded media from the Capital Area District Library’s far-flung empire eventually funnels into the basement of the downtown library to be avidly scavenged by book lovers and bargain hunters.

Discards are pretty ruthless at CADL lately, owing to a crackdown on clutter and emphasis on more eye-catching, bookstore-ish presentation. If stuff doesn’t get checked out, it gets chucked. Hence, there are hundreds of CDs for a buck, DVDs for two bucks. The selection is huge, from junk reads like “The Nursing Home Murders” to classics like “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” I just snagged a seven-DVD collection of Noel Coward plays and a complete set of Beethoven piano sonatas for a few bucks. At those prices, I don’t even have to listen to or watch them. I can just put them on the table to intimidate guests while I binge-read the “Star Wars as written by Shakespeare” series (also in stock at the Book Burrow as of last week).

Kids’ hardcover books are 50 cents, 40 cents for softcover. There are tons of cookbooks, just about any book about Michigan you can imagine (the story of Escanaba, anyone?), gardening books, art books, a great African-American history section, books on tape and lots of discards from CADL’s fine graphic novel collection. I’ve snagged awardwinning graphic work by greats like Chris Ware, Joe Sacco and Daniel Clowes. What are people thinking, not checking this stuff out for free?

True, some of the books are slightly out of date, but what’s wrong with learning how to tell your 1953 soda-slurping teenager about sex or finding out “All You Need to Know About the New Millennium” a fashionable 15 years late?

The Book Burrow is not the dusty dump you might expect. Librarian Patricia York, who runs the place, tirelessly tends aisles and aisles of wellorganized, thoughtfully presented brain food. The 1950s spinner rack of vintage paperbacks is a time machine and a glorious time suck.

Besides the library discards, donors bring stuff in by the boxful and York curates it well. Only last week, a summer Santa dropped two shelves worth of 2015 titles, many never read. (Judging by the local interest in many of the titles, I’m guessing that it was a certain City Pulse book reviewer I won’t name, but his name rhymes with Bill Castanier.)

The Burrow makes it easy to treat yourself, but it’s also heaven for cheapskate gift-givers. A few thoughtfully selected second-hand books, mailed media rate — or better yet, regional flat rate — yields a higher cost-to-love return than about any other token of esteem you could find.

After you leave, the things you passed up will give you a delicious itch until you return. Right now I’m thinking about “10,000 Superstitions You Really Need” and a bleak, pretentious, blackand-white book about megaliths. Beat you there.

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