Smoothies to go! I tried the BlendJet 2 portable blender. It's $50; here's how to get one for $35

PLUS: The best Peacock streaming deal yet; I'm coming for your soda (your wallet will thank me); beware this shady Amazon practice; my reviews of 'Lessons in Chemistry' and 'Smartless: On the Road.'

DISCLAIMER: Some of the links included herein are affiliate links (usually those in bold type), meaning if you make a purchase via one of them, I may get a small commission. I promise you, now and forever, that I won’t choose deals based on whether there’s an affiliate option available.

🌳 I’m not the Lorax, but I’d like to briefly speak for the trees. Yesterday I learned that both the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Land Management are actively seeking public input on federal forest lands — specifically, what do with them. I invite you to read this report on vanishing mature and old-growth forests, then send this letter to both agencies urging forest preservation. The latter will take maybe 20 seconds of your time, and it could actually make a difference. Remember: We have only the one planet. We should probably definitely try to keep it in good shape.

✈️ Ever wonder if there’s a “right” time of year to take a trip to a particular destination? There absolutely is, and Kayak’s new Best Time to Travel tool will give you the details. Just input where you’re leaving from, where you want to go, and the length of your trip; it’ll spit out a recommended month along with expected airfares, hotel prices, temperatures, and so on. Super-handy, worth bookmarking!

See this? Super-deceptive. This laptop never sold for $959 (at least, not on Amazon), so you are not, in fact, saving 56%.

💵 Amazon tip: Don’t be swayed by artificially inflated discounts. Any seller can specify any “list price” for a product, then reap the benefits for selling it at some ridiculous percentage off. For example, I recently spotted a no-brand massage gun “on sale” for $79, a hefty 70% off the $260 list price. Just one problem: That massage gun has never sold for $260. And I’ve seen bigger brands do this as well; there’s a Lenovo laptop that is perpetually “on sale” for around $380, down from $959 — but it was never priced above $550. I don’t know how Amazon could stop this practice, but shame on sellers that practice it. My advice: Use The Camelizer to see any product’s actual price history.

📺 NBC’s Peacock streaming service no longer offers a free tier, but for a limited time you can get a whole year of it for just $19.99 — the lowest price I’ve seen. Unsurprisingly, this is for new (and possibly returning?) subscribers only. I feel like Peacock is sort of underrated, with some pretty good originals, lots of exclusive content (The Office, Yellowstone, etc.), a decent helping of sports, and so on. You do have to watch a few commercials, though.

(Pro tip: If you use cashback service Rakuten, you’ll get $6 back on this purchase, bringing your total outlay down to just $13.99. (New to Rakuten? Sign up here — it’s completely free — and you’ll get $30 back on your first purchase of $30 or more. For real. I recommend using your PC for all this; much easier than trying to do it on a phone.)

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A deal secret that’s also a health secret: It’s time to think about ditching soda

Skip this. Your wallet will thank you, and so will your body.

Soapbox time… feel free to skip ahead if you think I should stay in my lane; I won’t hold it against you. 😜

Recently I had lunch with a friend who couldn’t understand why his bill was so much higher than mine; we’d ordered the same exact menu item. The culprit: His “soda” (we call it “pop” around these parts), which had added another $4 to the tab. That was on top of a food bill of around $12 — he’d paid 33% more for a glass of chemicals.

Never mind that charging $4 for a beverage, any beverage, is outrageous. Shame on you, restaurants. Estimates put fountain-soda markups at anywhere from 400% to over 1,000%!

At the risk of sounding like a superior jackass, I gave up soda years ago — and back then it wasn’t even about the money. I don’t like the idea of drinking my calories, but I especially don’t like all the artificial junk that’s in there. Surely you know how many studies have linked artificial colors and sweeteners to a panoply of serious health issues. And the “real” stuff is no better than diet; it’s packed with sugar.

Today, with $3-4 beverages becoming the norm, it’s definitely about the money as well. Let’s do some math: Suppose you dine out just twice per week and typically pay $3.50 for a soda with each meal. That’s $7, which may not sound like much — but it works out to $364 per year. Personally, I’d rather have that money in my pocket.

Your friendly superior jackass has this suggestion: Drink water instead. It’s free, it doesn’t rot your insides, and it doesn’t cause weight gain. Plus, you can be smug like me: “You’re not ripping me off today, restaurants!”

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The BlendJet 2 portable blender makes killer smoothies for one — here’s how to save 30% or more

Speaking of beverages, need a Father’s Day gift? Or a way to make smoothies that doesn’t involve a big, pain-in-the-butt appliance? The BlendJet 2 is a portable blender I didn’t expect to like, but suddenly find myself using almost daily.

It sells for $50 at stores like Kohl’s, Target, and BlendJet proper (weirdly, Amazon doesn’t stock it), with occasional sales knocking a few bucks off. However, as you learned a couple months ago in my story on discount Fitbits, eBay sometimes yields bigger savings.

For example, here’s a top-rated seller offering the BlendJet 2 for just $35 shipped. It may be sold by the time you read this, but if you search eBay for the BlendJet 2, you should be able to find one that’s brand new, from a U.S. seller, for the same price — maybe even a few dollars less. (Note: Beware brand-new sellers that have zero customer ratings. Also, make sure you’re getting the model that has a 16-ounce tumbler.)

The machine relies on a battery-powered rechargeable base with a water-resistant USB-C charging port. Expect up to 15 “blends” on a charge — probably enough for 2-3 individual smoothies, depending on whether you use fresh or frozen fruit.

Here’s my go-to recipe right now: a Tropical Smoothie Cafe Island Green copycat that’s pretty darn good — and without any added sugar. (Personally, I find coconut water fairly gross on its own, but it works here.) I use a little less banana than the recipe calls for, in part because the blender sometimes struggles with frozen fruit.

But I have a fix for that: Pour the coconut water in first, then add the spinach, then the frozen stuff. Even then, you might have to give a few shakes to dislodge any frozen chunks. But once it gets cranking, you should be good.

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PLAYLIST

📚 How long do you stay with a book you’re not enjoying before cutting bait? I ask because there were several times while reading Lessons in Chemistry (by Bonnie Garmus) that I was tempted to toss it, but the story was intriguing enough that I ultimately plodded through. I can see why it’s so popular, why it’s being made into a TV series, but I struggled to like it. Make no mistake, I love stories with female protagonists, especially when they’re triumphing over evil men-folk (see: Bad Sisters on Apple TV+ — no, really, see it). To me this felt cartoonishly overwrought, with mediocre writing and a very predictable outcome. The less said about the sentient dog, the better. Rick’s Rating: C+

📺 I’m a huge fan of the podcast Smartless, so I was excited to see HBO’s — sorry, Max’s (ugh) — documentary about last year’s multi-city tour. Two episodes in, I’m not all that eager to continue. This isn’t so much a documentary as a travelogue, with long stretches of the guys (Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes) sitting on a plane, riding in a car, hanging out in a hotel. Sure, the banter is amusing at times, same as on the podcast, but where are the interviews? Where’s the backstory? It’s all show; there’s no tell. Eventually we get to the actual live show in each city, but those segments are brief — and, whoa, the second show in Boston? Actually painful to watch. Rick’s Rating: C

📺 As a rule, I don’t like TV shows and movies about unlikeable people behaving badly — but there are exceptions. Succession (Max) is one of them; I just completed the fourth and final season. First: Kudos for not dragging it out any longer; there was a story to tell here and they told it. Second: Season 4 was, I think, the best of them, with some utterly brilliant moments that felt true to everything that came before. (My favorite, a blink-and-you-miss-it scene: As the siblings walk into the Waystar Royco building, an animated billboard overhead advertises a movie called “Morons.”) Third: Emmys all around. For the entire series, Rick’s Rating: B+

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