Tag Renewal

Helpful reminder: you can assess your Arkansas property tax here. And you can renew your Arkansas tags here.

Which reminds me. I’m 30 years old and I still have no idea what an assessment is. As far as I’m aware, it involves me going to the revenue office, saying who I am, and being handed a piece of paper. No money changes hands. I don’t even have to show an ID. But I have to be handed this piece of paper to take to the another desk where they’ll give me a new sticker for my license plate. And while I’m certainly glad that this process has been simplified by the use of the Internet, I still have no idea what I’m doing when I get my property assessed.

And while I’m at it, the concept of a warranty is somewhat mystifying. Basically you sell me a car, and then you sell me a piece of paper saying that if particular parts of it fail, you’ll pay for it, because apparently you’re not confident enough in the quality of your workmanship that you have to have ME pay a little extra JUST IN CASE something goes wrong and YOU have to pay me. And the specificity of the things a warranty covers seems to be getting ever more narrow, such that they approach the level of Steve Martin’s weight guessing prize shelf in The Jerk – “Anything between the ashtrays and the thimble. Anything in this three inches right in here in this area. That includes the Chiclets, but not the erasers.”

What I Learned This Weekend

  • The Allman Brothers are a lot better than I ever thought. Side 3 of Eat a Peach is a revelatory experience. And then there’s “Melissa,” one of the best ballads ever. Magical stuff.
  • David Lee Roth will never change. He will always be a vaudevillian egomaniac. Even while playing state fairs. I was playing with Superflux at the fair on Friday and checked out Dave’s set during a break. He leaned on his musicians’ backing vocals a lot, but he’s still a showman, although his age is catching up with him. Less kicks, less high notes, and he started losing his pipes early on. Still, it’s Dave. You either appreciate his complete lack of self-awareness or you don’t.
  • Playing guitar in cold weather makes it hard to play, and if you’re bleeding, you may not realize it for some time.
  • Biking is fun! I don’t know when the last time was that I rode a bike. I inherited Matt’s mountain bike and have only now gotten around to buying the necessary bolt cutters to remove the lock, and getting the tires aired up. I rode across the Big Damn Bridge yesterday. It’s a beautiful thing. My legs need to get into shape if I’m going to be walking all over NYC next week.
  • Marie Antoinette was a beautiful film, but kinda boring. Apparently there was this girl from Austria and a lot of stuff happened to her in France, but I’ll be darned if I really learned anything about what separated her from any other aristocrat of the same period. Maybe she’s supposed to be unknowable. Maybe that’s why she was so appealing to so many. Anyway, I thought that Sofia Coppola was going to break some rules of time and fashion, but if she did, I didn’t notice. Given the 80’s post-punk New Romantic soundtrack, I was expected a more stylized treatment a la Romeo & Juliet. To me it just seemed like a movie about the French artistocracy spoken in modern colloquial English with a soundtrack by Bow Wow Wow.
  • A house with no heat really bites. My heater’s motor died last week and Airmasters won’t be able to get the part until Monday or Tuesday. As I am typing this, I am very cold.

Travolta, Shatner, Borgnine

No, it’s not the name of a new Mr. Bungle CD, it’s 1975’s The Devil’s Rain starring John Travolta, William Shatner and Ernest Borgnine. Plus Tom Skerritt, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino, and technical advisor Anton LaVey. I’ll leave you with The Onion A.V. Club’s article, but before I do, know that it contains the phrases “Borgnine’s ring of satanic evil” and “Satan is real and really has it in for William Shatner.”

Bringing Sexy Back

This is all very hush hush, but I heard through the grapevine that Justin Timberlake is “bringing sexy back.”

Of course this begs the question….when did sexy leave? And further, if it is true that sexy did in fact depart, what makes Justin Timberlake, a man[1] whose target demographic consists entirely of females under 18 and gay Republican Congressmen from Florida above 40, think that he is qualified to bring sexy back? Wouldn’t someone with a broader appeal, say Bea Arthur or Abe Vigoda, be a more likely candidate for the job? Timberlake is the woman Michael Jackson wants to be, and frankly that’s just not appealing to most Americans.

1.) in name only.

P.S. Angel would like to point you to this far more scathing indictment of Timberlake for presuming himself sufficiently competent to retrieve “sexy” from wherever it has been banished.

David Grahame

If I had to recommend one artist recently added to my collection for everyone to listen to, I would say, David Grahame. Here are three good examples of this unassumingly amazing songwriter. Right click to save as…

Steady Thing – Might as well be Big Star
LA at All – How can you live in a town where everyone is writing a song?
Each First Kiss – Someone give this to Faith Hill and let Nashville gloss it up and make millions

As far as I’m aware, Grahame’s only major contribution to pop stardom was co-writing Mr. Big’s “To Be With You.” But don’t hold that against him. In other news, I think he has retired from the music business out of frustration. Please buy his CDs from the good people at NotLame.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

So Aaron Sorkin, the creator of my favorite TV show ever[1], starts a new show that rolls together actors from over five of my other favorite TV shows: Matthew Perry from Friends, Nate Corddry from The Daily Show, Steven Weber from Wings, Evan Handler from the short-lived It’s Like…You Know, Christine Lahti from Chicago Hope AND an actor from my one of my all-time favorite movies[2], Carlos Jacott.

I’ve only watched one episode, and so far it seems OK. It will take some time before I start to see these familiar actors as actual characters and not that guy from that show.

One thing I will say is that, between this and 30 Rock, My Name is Earl, and The Office, I’m giving my Comcast digital cable a stay of execution. I had been planning to cut off my cable TV until the new fall season started.

1.) Sports Night
2.) Kicking and Screaming

Reflections on Texas

It has probably been said that Dallas is to LA as Austin is to San Francisco, but I would go a step further to say that Dallas is Los Angeles without all the fun stuff to do.

When I think of Dallas I think of heat, bright sunlight, traffic congestion, pavement, urban sprawl, no major natural water source, SUV’s and superficially-dressed women with breast implants. In other words, LA minus the movie and music industry.