If you have $5

Get off at the Friendship Heights Metro stop, and go to he American City Movie Diner at 5532 Connecticut Ave. N.W. for some food and fun. Grab a burger and a milkshake for dinner (or similarly unhealthy fare – you’re not allowed to eat something that won’t kill you at a diner, it’s like a law), and stick around for that evening’s film, the gloriously tacky “Grease.” The food will cost you, but the movie is free, so scrounge up enough change to get a bite to eat and then hand-jive the night away.

If you have $10

Grab two more, and head to Jammin’ Java, featured in last week’s Hatchet (get off at Vienna, and take a cab or a bus to 27 Maple Ave. East), to see Joseph Arthur do his best Nick Drake impression. Arthur makes music designed to be used in shows about pretty rich kids, but if you can get over this association with every heart-wrenching scene between Buffy and Chip in the past five years or so, you find some sweet songs, sleepy but lingering.

If you have $20

Beg, borrow, or steal (okay, maybe not steal, we at the $5-$10-$20 don’t advocate the commitment of felonies or misdemeanors) another $5, and get over to 9:30 Club tonight to see Method Man rock the mic. Yes, he was prominently involved in “Method & Red” and “How High,” but you’re not going to see him act, you’re going to see him rap, and well, dude was in Wu Tang Clan. Do you really need to know anything else? Yeah, we didn’t think so.