Austin

Your Austin Daily Deal Guide

If you’re anything like me, you’ve signed up for a million daily deal emails and they clutter your inbox each morning. Many of them don’t interest me, but I leave them there anyways just in case later in the day I change my mind. I usually don’t and then I forget about them and that is how I have over 2,000 emails in my inbox.

Daily Deal Coupons are where it’s at. In fact, they’re quickly taking over the world. Soon enough you’ll be cross analyzing your best offers for your next car, your child’s college, and your retirement condo.

Considering Austin is one of the leading American cities for technology and startups, it comes as no surprise that not only are most daily deals available here, but some even originated from here!

Below is a comprehensive list of what daily deals are out there (available for Austin and other major cities) and which ones started in Austin. Enjoy!

Please let me know who I’m forgetting!

General
Buy With Me

Crowd Savings

January 14, 2011 by
Pop Culture, Writing

How to Date an Incarcerated Pirate Farmer Who Loves Cats

While perusing one of my favorite websites, 20-Nothings, I came across a recent New York Times article about the rise of niche dating. Wanna date a old wealthy bearded Vegan who loves Macs? Well, then there are plenty of options for you. However, I noticed that a few important demographics were left out of the list and thought I’d include them below.

Pirate Passions– “Pirates Passions be a 100% free social networrrkin’ an’ online datin’ site ferrr buccanneers an’ buccanneers at hearrrt“

Free and full of people who absolutely do not look like pirates, this is a great way to get your Capitan Ron freak on. Example of what you will find: “CreepyOlGuy”, 43 years old, enjoys eating brains, currently lives on a pirate ship with his wife and children, Pagan.



Cowboy Cowgirl- “Welcome to Cowboy Cowgirl! Where Country meets Country!”

Ever want to date someone who never removes their cowboy hat (ahem, Robert Rodriguez)? Then this is the site for you! Where every match states that they enjoy the finer (more…)

January 13, 2011 by
Writing

Behind the Mask of Googly Eyes and Felt: Finding Balance Between Blogging and Real Life

It was while watching a grown woman brush the hair of a ventriloquist dummy that I realized I may have an obsession with blogging. The show was My Strange Addiction and the episode was about a sassy and pretty (in a “I write messages to myself on the mirror in lipstick” sort-of-way) young lady who has no life outside of caring for her “babies”- a.k.a. nine ventriloquist dummies that she carries around in a suitcase. Her friends and family are concerned that she is spending way too much time with her inanimate buddies and slowly becoming disconnected from the human race. Like most people in denial, she tells them that they just don’t understand and that she is happy with her life. The young woman states, “My babies let me say things I can’t get away with in real life,” so Ms. Fruitcake roams the streets with a puppet stuffed on her fist looking for people to berate. She can hide from the world behind her mask made of felt and googly eyes.

I too may hide behind a mask of felt and googly (more…)

January 12, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life

The First Time I Put A Whoopie Cushion Against My Bare Ass and Other Firsts

source

Starting a new job has left me feeling creatively drained, so I’ve been turning to inspirational websites to get me out of my rut. One writing exercise I came across is writing down a list of your firsts. So that is exactly what I did…

The First Time I Put A Whoopie Cushion Against My Bare Ass
When I was ten years-old, I came up with an ingenious idea- to put a whoopie cushion IN my underwear and sit on it in a public area. By putting it in my underwear, no one would see the whoopie cushion and think I had the most massive farts on the planet- obviously. I attempted this trick at a garage sale my Grandmother was having. I waited for peak customer foot traffic and strategically placed a chair amidst the hairless Chia Pets and romance novels. I then ran behind a bush, blew up my whoopie cushion, and stuck it in my underwear. Knowing that no one was looking at my ten-year-old bubble butt, I walked up to the chair with near paralyzing anticipation and sat down. What I dreamed of happening (more…)

January 11, 2011 by
20-Something, Hipstercrite Life

Teenage Lyrics from a Twenty-Something Poetry-Hater

 I have a secret to confess.

I don’t like poetry.

I never have and most likely never will.

However, when I was younger I used to like to write songs with very emo lyrics about boys.
Or hypothetical reverends.

Music has always been in my blood. My Dad is a pianist and I played the piano for twelve years and tenor saxophone for eight. Typically I’d write these songs about boys on the piano, for it was difficult to translate the twenty-something angst through the breathy wail of a tenor saxophone hanging around my neck.

During this time I also kept a journal equipped with stickers, pasted in Tom Ford ads, doodles of a cartoon girl who looked like me, and these lyrics I wrote about boys. Cleaning my bedroom last night, I came across my old journals and discovered that I wrote all of this teenage tripe THREE years ago when I was 24. I must have forgotten that when I was 15, I only wrote songs about dinosaurs and David Bowie.

I’m going to share some of these embarrassing lyrics/non-poems with (more…)

January 10, 2011 by
Austin

Austin’s Best Of ‘Best Of’ Lists

I’m sure you’ve noticed that Austin, Texas SHOWS UP ON EVERY GOD FORSAKEN ‘BEST OF’ LIST THAT HAS COME OUT OVER THE PAST FOUR YEARS.

Many times Austin is ranked in the top ten. Sometimes it’s voted number one.

Now, how do you like them apples, huh?

I’ll be honest. I moved to Austin with $500 in my pocket, no job, and only what I could fit into my car based off of these lists because I’m obsessed with lists in general.

I LOVE THE CRAP OUT OF LISTS!

So, below, I’ve compiled some of the best ‘Best Of’ lists I’ve come across where Austin is named.

What have I learned from these lists? 1.) That Forbes has a big ol’ boner for Austin 2.) That if I ever join the armed forces and then retire, I’ll be very happy here 3.) That I should take up golfing again, especially so I’ll be really good by the time I retire from the military 4.) That Austin is THE BEST PLACE ON THE PLANET, DUH!

Austin is featured on so many lists, I didn’t know how to break them down! So, the list goes (more…)

January 6, 2011 by
Film, Pop Culture, Writing

Remember That I Promised I Would Write You A Blue Valentine Review?

I wrote this review back in October when I was lucky enough to see Blue Valentine at the Austin Film Festival. P.S. I write reviews like a ten year-old child.


Did you see Blue Valentine? What did you think?

It takes a lot for me to get excited about going to the movies… and by excited I mean sexually aroused when Crispin Glover has a new movie out. However, when I saw the trailer for Blue Valentine over the summer, I knew I had to see this movie.

A tragic love story named after a Tom Waits song starring Ryan Gosling AND Michelle Williams?! Hell, that is a hipster’s three-tier boner right there. The super hyped film- currently making the festival circuit with an expected release date of December 31st, 2010- was screened at the Austin Film Festival to a packed and very somber house. There was not a dry eye- from guy or gal- by the end of the movie. In fact, the girl seated next to us had to leave the theater and I had to drink more than one glass of white wine.

So why does this movie (more…)

January 5, 2011 by
Film, Pop Culture, Writing

The Time I Almost Got Punched by a Woman Wearing A Shirt That Said "I Have Issues"

 I had completely forgotten about the above statement until today, when I was online chatting with my friend Ian. Ian and I were on a reality show together and one of the characters on that show was the producer Robert Evans. If you’ve never seen it, check out the doc THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE. It is an adaptation of  Evans’ autobiography of the same name. Evans was and is a colorful character, having epitomized Hollywood cool in the 1970’s (he was married to Ali MacGraw, friends with Jack Nicholson and produced THE GODFATHER, CHINATOWN, and ROSEMARY’S BABY) and Hollywood down-and-out in the 1980’s (he was convicted of trying to buy cocaine and linked to the murder of an investor).

So here is a little backstory…
I was a featured player on a barely known TLC reality series called “Going Hollywood”. The show chronicled the day-to-day adventures of three fresh-off-the-bus interns working at Robert Evans’, Method Man’s, and my boss’ respective production companies. My (more…)
January 4, 2011 by
Music, Pop Culture

Why This Must be the Place (Naive Melody) is the Best Song in the World


I’ll never forget the moment that the film went black. A lone floor lamp is switched on as three large video panels fade into images of bookshelves. Various keyboards start to intertwine as a lanky figure in a white suit stands awkwardly onstage, about to sing one of the few windows into his heart. It was eleven years ago that I first heard “This Must be the Place (Naive Melody)” by the Talking Heads in their 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense. It is still my favorite song. The song I want played at my wedding- if I ever have one- and the song I want played at my funeral- if I ever die. If I get a tattoo, it would be simply of the first line in this song- “Home, is where I want to be pick me up and turn me ’round.” This song has been played over 10,000 times between my laptop, iPod, and car stereo. I instantly freeze and lose complete cognitive functions when “This Must be the Place” plays anywhere.

It’s hard to understand what exactly about a song strikes a listener and then lingers in (more…)

January 3, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life

Hipstercrite’s Trend Predictions for 2011

Did I just refer to myself in the third person? I sure did.
However, Hipstercrite is an alter ego of mine, of sorts, so I’m speaking in the third person of a person that I am not. What would the name of that be? Oh, narcissism? Ok! I’ll take it!

I’ve been reading a lot of “trend reports” for 2011. According to ABCNews cupcakes are totally f’ed for next year. In 2011 we should be expecting pies to take over the world. I read somewhere that books are dead too. USA Today says that a lot of people will be doing Civil War-related activities in 2011 and I say, hasn’t Civil War reenactments ALWAYS been in style?? I’ve been dressing as a Union soldier and partaking in Gettysburg battles since I was a little girl. Refinery29 predicts that the color orange, pajama-style day clothing, and futuristic military garb is in for next spring….just let your imagination run wild with that.

I have a few predictions of my own that I’d like to add to the list.

What trend predictions do you have for 2011?

1.) Travel– (more…)

December 30, 2010 by