If you haven’t had the chance to check out this totally rad New York Times map of Netflix queues by zip code, you must. Click on the map and it’ll take you to a Times page where you can find out the top 10 rentals in your neighborhood with a roll of your mouse. The fix seems to be in for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which claims the most #1 spots among BK zip codes, followed by Milk (Brooklyn Heights, Sunset Park and Fort Greene) and Rachel Getting Married (Red Hook, Park Slope); Twilight (Ditmas Park, Canarsie); and Tyler Perry, the Family that Prays (Brownsville, East Flatbush). There’s lots of overlap among the lists, but who knew Paul Blart: Mall Cop was such a blockbuster? (No. 7 in Bergen Beach; various cameos elsewhere). Anyway, we’re not even going to kid ourselves that you’re still reading this post anymore, so we’ll leave the rest to you and your mouse…

Life before cable. Photo by Getty Images.

I canceled my cable a few months ago. It had to be done—my Cablevision bill was $124.67 a month. But you can’t expect a girl to live without TV: If you prick me, do I not bleed? Yes, I can stream many, many things on my laptop, but I have a lovely—and massive—32” Sony Trinitron across from my couch. Also, I have the bad habit of checking my email while I’m watching things, and that’s hard to do when everything is happening on one screen.

With a little maneuvering, however, I’m getting most of my favorite programs and an almost unlimited trove of films for roughly $18 a month, which means I’m saving around $1,250 a year. Read on for my easy three-step-no-cable survival strategy. (more…)