Regardless of your political affiliation, religion, or economic status, we have something in common that brought you to A Reel Cinema @ Home. A love of watching movies and concerns about a potential economic depression.
If you have watched the news for longer than a minute in 2020, you know the economic “sky is falling.” Millions are currently unemployed, the stock market is volatile, and businesses are closed. Daily the stock market warns an economic depression is coming. This depression will affect everyone from Wall Street to main street.
The greatest depression predictions make us wonder what we can do to spend less money and save even more money in anticipation of tough financial times ahead. We love watching movies but always do so on a budget. Our home theater budget is 100% discretionary spending. Entertainment spending is always the first budget item we cut when our money is funny.
Our home cinema improves our mental and physical health so we will continue to enjoy our humble space. However, we are adjusting our spending to reallocate our income to basics like rent, food, medical, and transportation. We have already purchased the big equipment necessary to make our home theater run. New theater electronics or furniture purchases are completely unnecessary.
Creating new activities outside of movie watching will help us increase the entertainment benefit of our theater space.
Many have the impression we sit at home all day watching movies and television. That assumption is far from the truth! We are working poor class folks. We work full-time jobs and part-time side hustle jobs. Our humble home theater is the result of God’s grace and mercy.
We have worked second jobs in an Amazon warehouse for the past 16 months. Warehouse work is hard labor, but the people are friendly. We are not middle class by any means. We do what we must do to survive which means working two jobs. With millions unemployed because of COVID-19, a regular paycheck is a blessing. We stay humble, grateful, and prayed up.
Working second jobs allows us to adjust seamlessly to any inflation hikes that effect food and gas prices. We’ll cook 99.5% of our meals at home during the greatest depression. Income from our second jobs will allow us to keep our bills paid so we have a roof over our head to enjoy our theater. We plan on working overtime to shore up our home theater movie collection, concession snacks, or theater organization supplies in preparation for tough economic times ahead in 2020 and 2021.
Any upgrade fever that might have existed has been cured with a strong dose of common sense. We are very happy and satisfied with our current home cinema setup. Our current picture and sound are fantastic.We have reduced our 2021 home theater budget to only accommodate refreshing concession items. We will not be upgrading any electronic equipment or furniture in 2020 or 2021. We will use our current stash of home and holiday décor to refresh the room throughout the seasons and holidays.
We already use coupons when purchasing groceries. We will continue couponing to stock up our concession stands in anticipation of the greatest depression. We will also use coupons to stock up on beverages and liquor. Coupon shopping helps us ball on a budget.
We will research our favorite restaurant menus online. We will recreate those dishes at home spending less money. This will give us the same tasty experience but allow us to spend less money during the upcoming depression. We will vlog our meal creations and share recipes via our YouTube channel after the move. Virtual cooking is a good way to connect with like-minded home theater fans.
We will shop retailers for movies on clearance with our existing 2020 budget. We are always looking in Walmart’s $5 bluray bin for deals. Online websites like Hamilton Books offer great discounts on blurays. No new movies will be purchased in 2021.
What’s better than clearance movies, free movies we can watch online via our public library. We will continue to utilize our local library’s free and online resources.
We will incorporate fun karaoke entertainment into our home theater. Singing off key can be extremely fun and entertaining. This doesn’t require any additional equipment. We can play the lyric video from YouTube on our home theater screen and sing along. We can search for any song, by any artist, adding the word “karaoke” to find a lyric video and music to match.
Our theater is not that big, so we don’t need a microphone. Although a fake microphone will be fun to work with during our performances. How can we channel our inner Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, or Janet…Ms. Jackson if you nasty into a fun night of entertainment without a microphone? We will make it work. Now everybody…
Gimme a beat!
Sittin’ in the movie show
Thinkin’ nasty thoughts
Better be a gentleman
Or you’ll turn me off
That’s right, lemme tell it
Nasty, nasty boys, don’t mean a thing
Oh you nasty boys
Nasty, nasty boys, don’t ever change
Oh you nasty boys
Now that Janet is out of my system, we can have movie marathon events to make old movies and television shows new again. A lot of television shows and movie franchises are worth a second viewing. Do the math first to calculate run times. Some movie franchises are extremely long. Create a schedule to break up some of the watching. Incorporate special meals, special drinks, or special snacks to align with the movie theme or foods from the movie.
Family fun weekends can be created by watching the entire movie franchise from beginning to end. Movie franchises like James Bond, The Dark Knight, Fast and Furious, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jason Bourne, Mission Impossible, Transformers, Toy Story, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and John Wick. From a television stand point That 70’s Show, Martin, George Lopez, Friends, Family Matters, Donovan, Shameless, Power, Billions, Downton Abbey, and Law & Order SVU are binge worthy and our local library has the entire series available for check out completely free of charge.
We can use Netflix to watch some new series we have never seen before. We hear Orange is the New Black, The Wire, Ozark, Black Mirror, The Last Kingdom, and The Crown are extremely binge worthy.
We love our old school Wii and PlayStation games. We have a large collection of old video games we can project onto our home theater screen creating a fun family game night. Wii Sports & Sport Resort, Wii Carnival, and many other games we have never played can offer many nights of free entertainment.
With a 135 inch screen complete with 7.2 surround sound, we can be immersed in a performance like we have front row seats. We can bring Broadway shows, Cirque due Soleil, music concerts, and live comedy performances to our home cinema. The only tickets required is a library card which is free and depression proof.
Our local library has a huge selection of classic Broadway shows, all the Cirque du Soleil shows, and many concert performances online. Checking our local library’s online catalog the following Cirque du Soleil shows are available for checkout: “O”, La Nouba, Worlds Away, Quidam, Delirium, Corteo, Ka, and Tote.
We can bring New York’s Broadway and 42nd Street to our home cinema. Live performances are available online for classic Broadway shows: The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Rent, Fosse, Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Memphis, Dreamgirls, Newsie, Legally Blonde, and Hairspray. Playbills for these performances can be printed and placed on each cinema seat as an added touch to each performance viewing.
Netflix is also streaming the following Broadway shows online: Jersey Boys, Springsteen on Broadway, West Side Story, and Shrek the Musical. Amazon Prime is currently showing the following Broadway musicals: Carousel, Fiddler on the Roof, Hamilton: One Shot to Broadway, King Lear, and Kiss Me Kate.
Good seats at a live concert performance can cost $350+. Good seats for a home cinema concert cost $0. We will use our 7.2 surround sound to bring concerts to life for a wonderful entertainment experience. Concert performances by Mary J. Blige – Live in Los Angeles, Usher Evolution 8701, Usher Truth Tour, Beyoncé Coachella Homecoming, Rihanna: Loud Tour Live at the O2, and B.B. King Live at the Royal Albert Hall. Other music genres such as country, gospel, jazz, etc. are also available online.
Who doesn’t love to laugh? Live comedy performances by Dave Chapelle, Kevin Hart, Dane Cook, George Lopez, Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias, and many more comedians are available online.
Netflix is a FANTASTIC resource for comedy content. Netflix recently increased its number of exclusive comedy specials. If you want to laugh so hard you pee a little, we strongly recommend the following comedy specials on Netflix:
Katt Williams
- Great America
- The Pimp Chronicles Part 1
- Kattpacalypse
- Live
- American Hustle
Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias
- One Show Fits All
- I’m Sorry For What I Said When I was Hungry
Kevin Hart
- Irresponsible
- Seriously Funny
- What Now?
- Laughing At My Pain
- I’m A Grown Little Man
Sommore
- Chandelier Status
- The Reign Continues
Dave Chappelle
- The Age of Spin: Live at Hollywood Palladium
- Deep in the Heart of Texas: Live at Austin City Limits
- Equanimity
- The Bird Revelation
- Sticks and Stones
Trevor Noah
- Son of Patricia
- Afraid of the Dark
D. L. Hughley
- Contrarian
- Clear
- Kings of Comedy
Mike Epps: Only one Mike
Wanda Sykes: Not Normal
Ray Romano: Right Here, Around the Corner
John Leguizamo’s: Latin History for Morons
Chris Rock: Tambourine
Dean Cole: Cole Hearted
Eventually the world will resume business activities again. Hopefully, one of those activities includes the 2020 Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Tokyo was scheduled to host the XXXII Olympic Summer Games on July 24 – Aug 9, 2020. The events have been rescheduled.
We were mesmerized by the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Hands down the best opening ceremony for all time will be the Bird’s Nest performance. The beauty, culture, storytelling, choreography, the precision of the drummers perfectly in sync, and flawless production of the Beijing ceremony is a tough act to follow. The Beijing production will remain the best Olympic ceremony today, tomorrow, next week, next year, next decade, and next century. If you had any doubt that China is now the world leader, that doubt was removed with this performance.
We are excited to see the Tokyo performances for opening and closing ceremonies. We plan to watch previous opening ceremonies prior to the 2020 performance. Other notable opening ceremonies include Sydney 2000, Atlanta 1996, and London 2012 Olympics.
We will create a fun sports bar in our home cinema. We will watch big game sporting events and boxing fight nights. We add team spirit to our home theater using the team swag and decorations we already own. We will wear our team colors and invite friends and family to do the same. We can coupon and create a delicious buffet of homemade sports bar food such as pizzas, lemon pepper wings, barbecue ribs, chili, fries, and onion rings. What’s a sports bar without liquor? We will turn up and stock up our liquor bar.
We have learned a tough lesson from this virus. We are slowly recovering from COVID-19. Our lungs suffered so much damage doctors predict we will need months to recover. Our family agrees we need to continue social distancing long after the official stay at home orders expire from our state governor. There is so much unknown about COVID-19; especially, how it spreads or mutates.
We will only venture out when necessary after quarantine. Our outdoor endeavors will only consist of our home move, trips to work, household shopping, and doctor’s visits. We are limiting our outside physical interactions to the tasks necessary to obtain life essentials. If we had the financial means we would stay in the house for the rest of 2020. We have beer pockets with champagne dreams so that is not financially possible.
We will connect and party with friends and family via Instagram Live. #clubquarantine and #verzuz are recent proof of great times and social interactions online. Ain’t no party like an Instagram Live Party! BTW, I know #verzuz is spelled wrong. This is how the organizers spelled the word because the #versus hashtag was already in use.
During the greatest depression, we will need fun moments to balance out the negative news projected online and across our televisions daily. As home cinema fans with economic uncertainty, we will cut back on discretionary entertainment spending and expensive home theater component purchases. We will self-entertain using as many online resources as much as possible.
Check out our YouTube channel as we vlog our home theater adventures. We encourage you to subscribe in anticipation. We would love to know how you plan to make your media room or home theater budget friendly in anticipation of the greatest depression.
