free-basing: 10 date ideas that don’t cost a damn thing.

once upon a time in the year 2000, there was a really awful movie starring jason biggs. it was the truly mediocre follow up the 90s masterpiece , clueless, and for whatever unknown reason, I TOTALLY LOVE IT.  greg kinnear! mena suvari! what’s not to love? ok, probably a lot… but if you can’t find anything else worthwhile in this pitiful little love story between small town geek with a heart of gold (baby animals!) and street smart city girl who just can’t seem to scrape up enough cash to pay for school, at least give props to the big free date scene.

picture it, dirt poor love interest (played by mena suvari) offers to take adorable protagonist (jason biggs) out on a date. but OMG, she’s DIRT POOR! didn’t she just lose her job at the strip club? how will she ever do it? lemmie break it down for you:

they start out by stealing a loaf of french bread from a bakery early in the morning (do people really just leave fresh bread on the street in the city?). paired with some coffee pilfered from a hotel continental breakfast station… breakfast! then they go to the art museum, where she has a membership.  finally, they tie it all up by sneaking into a broadway show (alan cumming in cabaret no less) at intermission.

it’s all very charming, and a little illegal, and totally unrealistic for pretty much anyone who doesn’t live in a big city. that said, i am fascinated by the concept of the free date. and i started thinking about romantic days that could be had on a budget of zero dollars. here’s everything i came up with, but for the love of god, let’s get this list going.

i’m coupon goddess famous!

there are a lot of crazy coupon lady websites out there (and i do me A LOT). there’s actually even one called the krazy coupon lady, that is pretty rad. but if you’ve hung around these parts long enough, you’ll realize that in my book (and coincidentally also the highlander’s book), there can be only one.  and that one, is the coupon goddess. i love her because alongside her supernatural powers with coupons, she is a margarita swilling high-heel junky with a mouth for sass. she is also constantly blowing me away with her generosity. speaking of which, she was the one who gave me my blog start way back when in 2009, when she wrote a post about me and my irreverent (and profanity filled) coupon antics. since then, she has continued to pimp my site, and just be generally all around awesome to me. i really could not ask for more… but she gave more anyway. when melanie decided to take a 10 day blog break and jaunt off to greece (lucky bitch), she asked me if i would be one of 5 lucky bloggers to fill in while she was gone. i actually got to talk to her on the phone, and did a lot of yelling SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE! afterward. i should probably apologize to my dog, he really DID NOT appreciate that.

but i digress. i wrote two posts- with proper capitalization and absolutely no swearing even (though several unfortunate typos that i am unable to correct)! one about me and how i suck at couponing (and that’s ok), and another one about a very weird experience i had with some himalayan pink salt. anyway, humongous thank you to melanie for the opportunity, and if you’re bored and want some good clean family friendly reading, you can check them out. or, if you’re really really bored, you can print them out and try to figure out where the swearing would have been had i written the posts for this site. either way, good times!