Auto Tags

Wyoming
Say what you will about Wyoming, but their license plates are pretty damned cool. The design is an embossed rodeo cowboy with Devil’s Tower in the background. In fact, this is probably the most awesome of all the license plates. Wyoming should change its nickname from "The Equality State" to "The Cowboy State". Not that equality isn’t a noble idea, but I mean come on....the cowboy is waving his hat and everything!




New Jersey
New Jersey State license plates commemorate smog! The perplexing thing is not just that the fading urine-yellow background looks like grimy smog on a summer day, but that it’s hard to imagine what else it could possibly be meant to evoke? I wonder if the next design evolution will see the state nickname "Garden State" removed from the plates, replaced with a factory billowing smoke and the phrase "Secaucus: Processing America’s Chemicals for over 70 years".







Indiana
Indiana is a boring state. Very boring. Indiana license plates, while colorful, are equally boring. They show fields of green (which are actually green) with a barn in the background. They used to include the state motto, "Crossroads of America", but that apparently was too exciting for the good folks in the Hoosier state so it was replaced with the state government website (www.in.gov). You can write your own jokes from there. I always hoped they would put something cool, like "Birthplace of James Dean". But if the Indiana DMV follows the trend it will replace the state’s address with "Got Corn?"




Oregon
The Oregon plate has a Douglass Fir tree on it. This is called "playing to your strengths." If there’s one thing that Oregon has a lot of, it’s trees. Oregon could probably bump Wyoming out of its "best license plate" ranking if it included the state nickname "The Beaver State". If you aren’t proud enough to put your state’s nickname on your license plates, then you should have picked a less "funny because it has dual meanings" nickname.





Florida
These are pretty straightforward. The state outline in the background, an orange in the foreground, the state motto "Sunshine State", and the computer generated letter-number combo that make up the tag numbers. Yes, in the south we call them "auto tags", not "license plates". I remember when they used to also include the county your car was registered in, but apparently cops from the North Florida counties would routinely pull over (and even harass) cars with South Florida tags. The rationale was "anyone from Miami who is driving through Chattahoochee must be a drug dealer". Honestly, with the way the Miami PD operates, they should just issue special "drug dealer" license plates that you buy an viola!...you can move whatever you can fit in your car anywhere in the state without harassment by the cops. It’s cheaper than a bribe, and we could use it fund the "Dear God no more Jeb Bush" fund. Who says there is no such thing as a win-win situation?




Virginia
One of the most scenic states in the country also has the blandest license plate in the country. Virginia plates are plain white with blue letters. Period. Nothing else. No aircraft carriers docked at Norfolk. No Blue Ridge Mountains. No Hokie Bird! I am not sure why I expected anything more from a state whose entire population is either a slack-jaw yokel or a government stiff.

Musicians who changed their name

MC Hammer
Stanley Kirk Burrell, aka M.C. Hammer, Hammer, or Hammertime. His decrease in popularity was directly proportional to the number of times he changed his name. Hammer may have been too legit to quit; but not, apparently, too legit to pitch British Knights shoes. Fame is a fickle bitch, and we can all learn a very important lesson from Hammertime…no matter where you are in life, it never hurts to have a diversified investment portfolio.

Prince
Prince Rogers Nelson, aka the artist formerly known as popular. He changed his name to a symbol which bears a canny resemblance to the path that positrons take in a high-speed nuclear impact, or, for the less educated, the hobo sign for danger. This guy was just weird for the sake of weird; there must have been some kind of brain disease going around in the 90’s… one that made people think the “Macarena” was cool and caused Madonna to charge $50 for shitty self indulgent soft-core porn.

P. Diddy
Sean Combs, aka Puff Daddy, aka P. Diddy…is just the latest in a long line of famous Puffs, following in the footsteps of such trailblazers as: Puff the Magic Dragon, HR Puff’n’Stuff, the Powder Puff girls, and the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man. And just like his predecessors, he helped make the name “Puff” socially acceptable for everyone, not just the gay community.

Chris Gaines
Garth Brooks didn’t really change his name so much as he created an entire new persona. And when I say he created a persona, I mean he put on a wig and played shitty songs. I’m not even kidding, they were pure grade A horse shit! I have to wonder, though, how often the double-identity trick is used in the recording industry? Maybe Pete Townshend was really just Peter Frampton with a wig? Perhaps Alice Cooper hit his head on the toilet, but instead of envisioning the flux capacitor, he slurred his speech and became Ozzy Osborne? At any rate, I count anything that gets Garth to stop singing about lighthouses and high school football as a win.

Take my advice...

Various tidbits of advice I was given througout my life.

“Always wear a condom”
–Nancy smith, Health Teacher
It took a while for me to figure out she meant to do this only while having sex.

“Aim for the head, always assume he’s wearing a vest.”
– Derrick McIntyre, Army drill sergeant
Extremely useful or completely worthless, depending on which side of town you live.

“Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear, well he eats you. "
– The Big Lebowski
As far as I’m concerned, the zen-like wisdom of The Dude has rendered the Tao Te Ching completely obsolete.

“Wear Sunscreen”
– Baz Luhrman, director
The long term benefits of wearing sunscreen are well documented.

“The key to avoiding hangovers is to keep drinking”
–David Thoma, college buddy
This actually works....sorta.

“This ‘Wine for Dummies’ book will answer all your questions”
– Sandra Levitt, wine store owner
I like being a dummy....it means I can buy a $4 bottle of wine with a cartoon character on the label and not think there is anything wrong with that.

Somebody set up us the bomb!

Judas Iscariot
The story of Judas shows that everyone has their price. Once, a drunk biker sitting next to me at a bar was one coherent thought away from figuring out I had been fucking with him all night. For $100, I would have kept at it, urging him to “go talk to the blond bartender, I happen to know she has a thing for 300 pound dudes in tight leather!” A paltry 30 pieces of silver to effectively murder the Son of God sounds like a ridiculously low ball offer, but then again the Jews have always been famous for driving a hard bargain.

Marcus Brutus
The story of Caesar's death reminds us to never underestimate the power of peer pressure. It can make even the sanest of freshman drink a tabasco sauce-vodka cocktail, upside down and naked, while reciting the pledge of allegiance, all to gain the acceptance of complete strangers. Murdering your best friend and inciting a civil war is one hell of a way to get punk'd (which is still better than getting stabb'd).... it makes Ashton Kutcher look like a 3rd grader with a whoopee cushion by comparison.

Benedict Arnold
There were many reasons ol' Benedict switched sides, but it's funny that what really brought his piss to a boil was America's alliance with France. Being a former Army man myself, I have to admit I can sort of see his point. I can just imagine his thought process....“You mean to tell me that our key to victory is the French, who have never won a battle against anyone, ever!? Game over man, Game over!” It is almost always the French who end up acting like little bitches, so I can't help but to appreciate the irony.

Mata Hari
Her story shows how being naive can have fatal consequences. She was executed by firing squad during Word War One...supposedly she had been recruited by a charming German officer who got her to spy for him. Something just doesn't add up. German military officers excel at many things, but sweet talking the garter belts off exotic dancers is NOT one of them. You almost feel sorry for her, like the just-turned 18 year old girl who honestly thinks she is going to “just model”. There are many things worth dying for, but a g-string lined with singles is not one of them.

Cartoons: Requiem

Sponge Bob Square Pants
Sometimes, cartoons characters are popular when by all rights, they really shouldn’t be. An ordinary, pre-formed rectangular synthetic sponge (sporting equally rectangular pants) would not have struck me as particularly entertaining. Said sponge performing menial duties as a fast food line cook sounds even less fun. Especially when the restaurant franchise contains the word "Krusty" in its name. But kids love him! I guess if kids can find a special place in their heart for deformed Ogre who’s only companion is a donkey, then why not a household cleaning implement brought to you by the good folks at Dow?

Bugs Bunny
I wonder how Bugs’s creator came up with the idea of a wisecracking rabbit with a Brooklyn accent. Whatever the method, it worked...brilliantly. He taught me not only that rabbits and ducks not only despise each other, but their respective hunting seasons vary wildly in time and length. Good ol’ Bugs, with his pragmatic outlook on life, gave everyone the best advice they will ever get, period. "Don’t take life too seriously, Doc. You’ll never get out alive."

The Little Mermaid
Apparently cartoon mermaids haven’t figured out how to keep their hair covering their breasts at all times (like Daryl Hannah in "Splash"), so the use shell bras. Kind of like the Red Lobster waitresses in this one re-occurring dream I have. But I digress. I find it funny that the people who go into thermonuclear meltdown over cloned sheep because it crosses a line that mankind was never meant to cross, are the very same people who see no problem in letting their young children watch a romantic relationship develop between a human and a mutant human/fish hybrid.

Skeletor
He-Man’s arch nemesis, Skeletor, seems to come right out of some sort of Barnes and Nobles "Evil Villains For Dummies" bargain book. Raspy voice?...check. Megalomania?..check. Incompetent henchman?...check. I do have to admit, though, that the ram’s head staff was a nice Satanic touch. And you have to admire the chutzpah of anyone who introduces himself as the "Evil Lord of Destruction", even if it eventually is the ultimate letdown.

Wolverine
The De Facto Leader of the X-Men is also my favorite. What is not to like about a 130+ year old man with a metal skeleton and huge knives that extend from his knuckles? The sideburns only add the ambiance. Well, I can think of one thing: he is Canadian. Canadian!! Dear God, all my childhood heroes are letting me down! First I see Captain Kirk making Priceline commercials, now I find out Wolverine is Canadian! What’s next, finding out that Spiderman has an extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia?

80's TV

Miami Vice
Arguably the best show to come out of the 80's. I learned more history (from the original expedition of Ponce de Leon to the Vietnam war) by watching this show than I ever did in school . This show was actually ahead of its time in a lot of ways...using the "flawed hero" concept for Crockett, multi-season story arcs, and Castillo even predicted the fall of the Soviet Union! Sadly, real life in Miami is nowhere near as cool as this show made it out do be. You just don't see a lot of the stuff the show depicted: cars with gull-wing doors, European bikini models willing to having drinks with complete strangers, good honest cops...But what it lacked in authenticity it more than made up for in the sound track department. 80's music is probably the pinnacle of perfection, proven by the fact that since around 1992 all music has progressively sucked worse and worse. I dare not think about whatever evil awaits us at the end of this black hole we call musical evolution. Judging by the quality of the "American Idol" winners (and the very existence of that show for that matter), I fear the cataclysmic apocalypse...the one referred to in ever holy scripture known to mankind...is upon us! ....wait a second....Jesus! How did I go from Miami Vice to this?

A-Team
After a military tribunal found these special forces veterans guilty of a crime they didn't commit, they were forced to hide in the Los Angeles underground. When you consider the enormous amount of war crimes and atrocities committed in Vietnam (by both sides), you have to believe they pulled one hell of a doosey. I doubt the government would bother hunting for water buffalo poachers."Howling Mad Murdoch" was mildly entertaining, with his mediocre impressions. As for "Face"...listen, if your going to nickname yourself after a body part then you should put a little more thought into it. There are so many creative directions I would have gone...Mr. T, the heart and soul of the entire show, was the best. Without him, the show might as well have been called "Buncha white guys in a van". I'll admit, though, that When you're trying to remain inconspicuous, hanging around a black bodybuilder, with a mohawk and 10 pounds of gold around his neck, is NOT the way to do it. He stands out as eccentric even in LA. If nothing else, I take great comfort in knowing that wherever there are fools who don't floss or save for retirement, Mr. T is there to take pity on them.

Dukes of Hazard
This show is what living in the rural South is all about! Fat, corrupt Sheriff? Check. Prominent display of the confederate flag? Check. Hot, borderline trailer trash girl in cutoffs? Check. In Hazard county, Georgia, the General Lee was the real star. I can speak from experience that cars with doors welded shut are not especially uncommon in the South...nor are cars that have horns who play Dixie. I can also verify from experience that this show got a lot of things right....for instance: 1.) The omniscient, dis-embodied voice of Waylon Jennings knows better than you. 2.) One can never have too many cousins. 3.) "Cooter", despite the fact your common sense would tell you otherwise, is a perfectly respectable nickname 4.) Dodge Chargers can jump any ravine so long as the driver yells "Yee Haw"! 5.) And this is perhaps most important...When in doubt simply yell "Yee Haw!" and floor it. As long as you keep that in mind, the mountain may get you, but the law never will.

70's TV

Battlestar Galactica
Despite being relatively obscure, this show was the center of one the of largest advertising campaigns in television history. I don't know anyone who has never heard of it, even if they don't know anything about it. Despite the cheesy effects, the premise of the show is kind of terrifying. The plot revolved around genocidal cyborgs who commit a nuclear holocaust against humanity, then hunt down the survivors like rabid dogs. Those very same genocidal cyborgs were featured on children's lunch box's and underoo's! One thing that always struck me as odd was how humanity seemed to find plenty of time for casual dating in between combat air patrols. In every episode, someone always got heartbroken or found new love. It's comforting to know that even in the future, holocaust refugees frantically fleeing from intergalactic genocide, will still put getting laid at the top of their priority list.

Starsky and Hutch
In the 1970's, law enforcement partnerships included a by-the-book, straight laced type and a moody, "what the captain don't know won't hurt him" type. But we are too worried about hurt feelings and hostile workplace lawsuits to ever let such things happen now. And these mis-matched cops usually knew a streetwise black man to give them information about the criminal underworld of the city, but the CRIMESTOPPERS hot line cut out the middleman. And this criminal informant not only spoke jive, but dressed extravagantly and spent money like a pimp with a week to live! But the economic meltdown has pretty much ensured that isn't going to happen again anytime soon. And forget stock police cruisers. They drove gas guzzling muscle cars with high compression ratios, but the environmentalists ruined those too (along with everything else). I blame the lack of all the above conditions for our soaring crime rates in this country. That, and crack.

All in the Family
Good ol' fashioned American racism does no get any better than this, folks! Blacks, Jews, Mexicans, and even women...Archie Bunker hated them all! Name any issue that has ever gotten someone's panties in a bunch and you will find it in this show: Racism, sexism, antisemitism, crime, immigration, civil rights, economic class war. The beautiful thing was this show depicted all of this without any politically correct BS! Almost every single ethnic slur I ever learned was from this show. When this show was on the air, it was the one of the edgiest shows that was constantly pushing the boundaries of what could be gotten away with on TV. Now, it's shown on Nick at Night right after "Leave It To Beaver". The long road to panty un-bunching has begun, my friends.

Kung Fu
In the 21st century, anyone who wandered around the western half of the North American continent, standing up for justice using advanced kung fu techniques, would be considered criminally insane. But in the 19th century, this made you cool (even borderline hero). I am more than willing to overlook the fact that David Carradine is not even a little bit Asian. I am also willing to accept that "walking the Earth" was a perfectly acceptable career choice back then. But I have always wanted to know why monks need to know martial arts? Catholic priests aren't really bad ass, and even the most radical Islamic imams don't actually do their own dirty work. But monks of Buddha, the most peaceful of all religions, can kill you 3 times before you hit the ground. Awesome, but perplexing.

M*A*S*H*
Who says war can't be fun? From cross dressing soldiers to old-timey helicopters, this show had it all! It depicted a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. You heard me correctly, we actually had a war with Korea. Japan, Korea, Vietnam....that makes 3 wars with 3 Asian countries in 20 years. I would be nervous if I were China, until I realized that 66% of the time, the Asian countries won (sort of). Anyways, if I ever undergo major surgery, I want a smart ass surgeon like Hawkeye to do it. He had that witty bedside manner that could make invasive spinal reconstruction almost fun. And unlike Patch Adams, Hawkeye didn't need clown noses to do it!