black friday

I See A Friday, And I Want To Paint It Black (Black Friday pt. 2)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

It’s here once again… The most wonderful time of the year.  Another year almost over and a new one about to begin – A new sales year that is.

I see the end of November dear readers, and I get excited. Excited about the prospect of making good buying decisions that will positively impact your personal business as a creative professional, and at this stage of the game, I really don’t think you can afford not to consider Black Friday as part of your business strategy. Whether you are just getting started making and selling your form of art or well into the thick of it, there are peak sales periods where retailers are offering massive savings in order to make enough business for the fiscal year and stay afloat.

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I would say its a rather symbiotic relationship in fact. You get items that you’ve been putting off buying because of the expense, and businesses make enough money so that they can continue to keep the lights on for another year or two.

I wrote another post about this day last year, a more in-depth overview of what Black Friday represents historically and from a cultural standpoint, but this year I wanted to spend a little time on the significance for you, and to give a timely update from my own perspective.

Black Is The New Black

I’ve always been tight fisted with my money. But there have been occasions here and there, where I decided against my impulse to spend money on myself. It’s the paradox of thrift, a theory of economics.

The idea states that an increase in autonomous saving leads to a decrease in aggregate demand and thus a decrease in gross output which will in turn lower total saving. The paradox is, narrowly speaking, that total saving may fall because of individuals’ attempts to increase their saving, and, broadly speaking, that increase in saving may be harmful to an economy.

To put it simply and rather gravely – saving for a rainy day is prudent, but penny pinching breeds a lifetime of poverty. Learning the difference between always living within your means versus always spending more than you have is a difficult lesson, but I will give you this advice, he who never takes risks is guaranteed to stay within his comfort zone.

It’s your responsibility as a creative professional to at least try for your dreams. You’ll never regret trying. To quote one of my favourite movies of all time, Richard Linklater’s Waking Life, “things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It’s not dead it’s just that it’s been forgotten, removed from our language. Nobody teaches it so nobody knows it exists. The dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well, I’m trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming, every day.”

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So dream big and dream often, you creative cuties. I might not be doing much tonight because I’ll be up at the crack of dawn for this sale, but I’m truly living my dreams, so I don’t sleep as much as I used to. But that could just be a theory.

Tim!

Raise A Little Hell (timotheories November 2016)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

 

You know what they say – if you don’t like what you got, why don’t you change it. If your world is all screwed up, rearrange it. Raise a little hell of your own.

That’s been my modus operandi ever since I broke up with my long-term partner in October of 2014. Just over two years ago, I found out she had been cheating on me, and it broke my heart into a thousand more pieces than had happened when I first learned she had a mental illness and would be living with her parents indefinitely a year prior. To put it into perspective, my life got flipped, turned upside down in the summer of 2013, and then once more in the fall of 2014 for good measure.

But from the infidelity and trust broken, I was given the gift of looking at my life as an individual once more. And an opportunity to realize that I could fight it, nay, I could right it. Not the relationship lost, but the identity regained.

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So I raised a little hell, and it’s been one of the best things I could have ever done. My life purpose is back on track, and I’ll be rolling ahead at full steam ever since. Don’t stop believing dear readers. That’s right my friends, I’ve got more improvements to make with the timotheories brand, and lots of theories to share.

Let’s tackle that sumbitch named November with a great vengeance and furious anger.

*Disclaimer* As always, every week I purchase an album and movie one week ahead of the actual review release and while I have the best intentions, I don’t always get what I want… so if you follow me on instagram (@timotheories) you can actually see what’s coming.

timotheories summarized – November

Stimulating Sundays – (11/06) Cross Talk Ep. 13, (11/13) Georg Rockall-Schmidt preview interview, (11/20) Georg Rockall-Schmidt interview, (11/27) Cross Talk Ep. 14
Melodic Mondays – (11/07) Tove Lo, (11/14) Common, (11/21) Martha Wainwright, (11/28) Justice
Theatrical Tuesdays – (11/01) The Rocky Horror Picture Show, (11/08) Star Trek Beyond, (11/15) Morris From America, (11/22) Finding Dory, (11/29) Hell or High Water
Wisdom Wednesdays – (11/02) Accelerated Learning – 20 Hour Rule, (11/09) Facebook, (11/16) Housing, (11/23) Scott Snyder, (11/30) Income
Timely Thursday – (11/03) timotheories November, (11/10) Remembrance Day, (11/17) Artwork update, (11/24) Black Friday part 2

The year of all killer, no filler is on it’s last legs friends. Let’s make a final push and ensure that we live fast and die young. We have the capacity to see some really great things if we stick with our regimen. For instance, I already shared the Accelerated Learning theory from Josh Kaufman, but I’ve got some thoughts on Facebook, comic book writer Scott Snyder, and a further consideration of the principles outlined in my previous Postconsumers post.

Oh and you know, I ain’t gonna leave you on the flo, when you want some mo! My first ever international interview is on the books and ready to integrate itself into your nooks. And crannies. Featuring one YouTube personality in the form of Georg Rockall-Schmidt.

What about Cross Talk you say? Episode 13 and 14 are well on their way, already recorded and preparing for the cutting room floor. Maybe we’ll talk about spoofs or maybe we’ll discuss movie breakthroughs, but you can be sure it’ll be a good time. I got an AV guy helping us out for the first time. Oh yeah.

And those are all of the theories I can come up with for now friends. Please leave some comments, to let us know what you want to see in coming months and subscribe to the blog too! Love you creative cuties, keep it real for me.

Tim!

Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé… Olé… Olé (Goal Setting)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

In December of 2014, I wrote about a longstanding goal of mine and efforts I had made to set it up so I could eventually achieve it!

That goal was The Watch List.

I’ve referenced this goal a few times on this blog, because it’s a fun topic and seems a little silly, but mostly because it directly ties in with my bigger and longstanding goals of writing about the connections between pop culture, human behaviour, and living a successful life (which I’ve slowly been sharing with you, but will continue to build on as we go), I decided it was crucial to become a proper cinephile in order to contribute to the conversation.

Hence I went through the effort of visiting lists of the most popular as well as the most critically acclaimed movies ever made and committed to watch the best of the best.

The conditions I set up for myself were to sample from every film genre known to man, and use IMDB as a reference point for genres – 22 of them to be precise.

I removed movies that I had already seen from the lists, and created my own list to avoid duplicates. How I accomplished building this master list was by identifying all categories for each movie as I added it, that way when I would move on to another genre and look at the top 10% or top 25 movies if the genre was smaller, I didn’t add a movie twice or three times by accident.

Now The Watch List makes just a little bit more sense, right?

Today I want to share with you some developments in this project and a particular component of timotheories – Theatrical Tuesdays. Theatrical Tuesdays is my opportunity to either review a play or piece of theatre I’ve recently watched, a film which is currently in movie theatres or a movie that has been released on Digital HD, DVD and/or blu-ray.

I am choosing to do this for a few reasons.

  1. I want to stay on top of culture as it happens,
  2. It’s important to provide you with my perspective on it
  3. This forces me commit to the practice of viewing new content as it comes out, rather than just watching or purchasing what I am comfortable with when I feel like it

Some of you dear readers might think that this is an easy process and does not take any effort on my part – trust me when I tell you that it does. I have to commit to being available once a week within a certain window of time so that I buy the film (and often the album for Melodic Mondays), and then committing to a window of time to watch the film, and finally setting aside the time to write about the film.

This means I need to maintain discipline and say “no” to certain activities OR prepare posts well ahead of posting time so that I am consistently releasing these posts on schedule. As a consequence, my personal film collection grows by at least 1 film a week. Which is cool, but doesn’t necessarily guarantee I am watching a film that fits into those top rated lists, especially because the content on webistes like IMDB are curated over weeks of time and the top movies aren’t necessarily in said list exactly when they are released.

And this process also fights with my progress on The Watch List. Which is why I only watched a handful of movies from the list in 2015.

Another challenge I face with completing The Watch List is that I purchase blu-rays en masse during Boxing Day, Black Friday and during closeout sales or special events where movies are on sale. At those times I am buying releases I missed over the course of the year and movies I want to add to my collection.

With those types of purchases (bulk buys, not weekly review buys) I have decided to file the movies away once I’ve opened them and watched them. That way I’m not only collecting, I am also making use of my purchases. Because of this method of collecting, my collection is currently sitting at about 650 movies, and approximately 350 of those are blu-rays.

Now you are probably wondering how many movies I own but have yet to watch correct? 89 of them.

One week has already passed in 2016, which leaves me with another 51 weeks left to watch those 89 movies – if I want to stay ahead of my bulk purchasing habits and have fresh inventory for 2017. So that means I need to up my game.

But that’s not what today was about, today was about sharing with you what is going on. You’ll have to wait until Sunday to see how I’m going to address this issue.

What a tease, am I right? It is Timely Thursday after all! So leave some comments, tell me what your goals are for 2016, and how you are personally impacting the arts. I wanna hear what you have to say!

Until next time, I’m out of theories for now!

Tim!

The Darkest Timeline (Black Friday)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Have I mentioned how much I like Black Friday shopping to you guys and gals yet? I don’t think I have, but that’s what today’s post is all about. A way for you to prepare yourself in anticipation of one of the most wonderful days of the retail year.

How timely of me, you say? Why thank you, dear readers!

First I’m going to start off with all the essential information YOU need about the biggest shopping day one of the biggest shopping days of the year, what day it is this year, and maybe I’ll share some resources you can use to get the best prices and survive the ordeal.

So what is Black Friday exactly? Well, it’s a 24 hour sales period which takes place the day after the [American] Thanksgiving holiday, which is the 4th Thursday of the November. This year Thanksgiving is November 26th, so Black Friday is November 27th.

It’s starting to gain steam internationally, but is especially popular in North America. And gained it’s name for two reasons

  1. It is a heavily disruptive day for both foot and car traffic, and over 50 years ago Philadelphia police
  2. Retailers typically have their “Superbowl of Retail” in the final quarter of the year, with the month of December being the highlight of the books being in the black

The reason why it is acknowledged as a 24 hour sales period is because some retailers start their sales day at midnight in anticipation of online sales or to get people into their brick and mortar stores ahead of the competition. Of course, you will also see “Black Friday starts early” sales, but for the most part, everyone sticks to the actual day when it comes to their best product offerings.

But that doesn’t mean the best online deals are available on the 27th.

Nope.

If you haven’t heard of Cyber Monday before, do a little reading and educate yourself.

And you really need to have a strategy for this shopping event. Which is why I’ve given you a short list of key words below to prepare you for the day.

  1. Decide – You need to decide what you need and go out with the intention of sticking to your list. And have a budget too. For example, if you are like me and are planning on acquiring more blu-rays for your collection or picking up some bath and body products, then set your spending limit before you go out.
  2. Research – You need to be careful. Because the reality is that some stores are going to advertise their weekly 2 for $20 or 3 for $15 deal, or worse, raise the prices on their inventory for a few weeks ahead of the event, and then drop the prices back down as if they are doing you a favour. If there is something you want, make sure you know how much it is worth before you go shopping.
  3. Efficiency – Don’t spend hours in one store. Have a route mapped out, get in, and then get out as quickly as you can. Sure, you might find a surprise deal at a store, but if you’ve hit your route properly you’ll be better prepared for it and you won’t waste time in line or lost in the crowds.
  4. Adapt – If you can’t find exactly what you are looking for, and you know that the item(s) are rare, then accept a compromise if you can. Unless you know you can wait for the product and find it at another store.
  5. Cool – Keep your cool. This can be an incredibly stressful exercise, but you have the ability to step back or to walk away. You won’t make good decisions if you are irritated and you’ll regret an outburst. Seriously, it won’t be worth it to lose your temper.
  6. Think – It can be a lot of fun to bargain hunt and find a deal, but remember stores have sales all the time, and a lot of the time it’s to clear out old inventory. So the hunt might not be worth it after all. It could be one of those activities that isn’t for you, in that case, stay away.

 

Why did I decide to share this guide with you dear readers?

As you know, timotheories now provides weekly film and album reviews, and while I have been buying these items at full price to share new releases, I am a bigger fan of buying items on sale. My rationale for this is that I get to experience more movies and more music by paying less for the items. My collections are fairly sizeable at this stage as a result, and whenever I want to reference something, I own the copy and have a bit more liberty in using it to make art. I also like to use these items for my social content – who does n’t like movies or music, right?

And those are my theories on Black Friday. But what do you think dear readers? Are you going to be Black Friday shopping? What are your plans for the day?

Tim!