I KNOW WE ALL LOOK ALIKE BUT...

I received a letter from the Texas Attorney General's office (above) stating they "had my new address" and if I wanted to get my child support checks on time, I should notify them in advance of moving.

Now, a closer look at the letter shows it was addressed to Juan Jose Garcia... not me. Oh, and I've never lived in Texas, and don't have any children requiring child support payments.

After an unanswered email, and a few phone calls, a supervisor assured me this "clerical" error was now fixed. Since being "fixed" over $1700 in additional checks have arrived, bringing the total to just under $3000. Talk about your child support fraud!

Don't get me wrong... I'd love to cash these checks and hit H&M, but that would be wrong. Very wrong. So, each time a check for Juan Jose arrives, I send it back.

It had to be Texas, didn't it?!

TNT's "THE CLOSER" CAN SUCK IT!

As I've blogged in the past, TNT's The Closer has claimed to be, "the most watched basic cable show of all time." What I didn't say, is how much posturing and puffery like this fails to impress me. No, let's be truthful - it annoys the crap out of me.

First of all, this type of advertising (also used in marketing movies) is just plain ol' lame. I mean, if you don't want to see a film or TV show, will the fact that it did well in the ratings or box office change your mind about wanting to see it? I don't know about you, but the "success" of a project does not change my mind... if I have no interest in seeing something, it doesn't matter how well it does, or how many people it dupes into watching it. (I mean, I despised every minute of Titanic, but that won several awards and made millions of dollars... which didn't make me like it any more.)

Well, at least now, I can rest a little easier. It seems as though TNT's The Closer has been knocked off its pedestal by Disney's High School Musical 2. While I don't care for this particular brand of entertainment (the music is too canned for my tastes), I'm happy to see Disney isn't trying to brag or cash in on this record-breaking event.

AARP INSURANCE CAN SUCK IT!

Have you seen those commercials for AARP's Auto Insurance? The ones showing a bunch of young (mid 20s to 30s) drivers making horrible driving mistakes on the road, and an older, gray-haired driver as the responsible, capable driver. The commercial claims that if you're an, "older, more experienced drivers" you're more likely to be a "good driver."

Hmm... maybe I imagined all those reports of elderly drivers plowing into homes, or worse, crowds of people. Remember that elderly, "experienced" driver in Santa Monica, CA, who drove into a crowded farmer's market killing a bunch of people? It would seem, that the AARP, in their old age, forgot about these tragedies when they made this commercial.

They need to get their sh!t together before they go insulting the rest of us, and our ability to drive.

MICHAEL BAY CAN SUCK IT

There's a ton of hype surrounding the summer action flick, Transformers. I'm not sure if it lives up to the hype — the papers I read trashed it, for the most part, and it rated a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. I have no intention of seeing, mostly because Shai Labeouf annoys the @#&% out of me. I'm an ol'skool Transformers fan. I bet that somewhere, buried in some box in my parents' attic, there is a box of toys with a Transformer or two in it. I'm not sure the legacy of this particular toy needs protecting; it was pretty lame to start with. But when you're a little kid, you don't know any better, so you watch crap. No biggie, right?

Well, now that I'm an adult, and I know better, I have a bone to pick with this movie. I am pretty annoyed... no, make that insulted, at the way it is being marketed. The Los Angeles Daily News called it a 2 and a half hour commercial for Burger King an Ford, because the marketing tie-ins are so over the top. But that's not my beef.

No, I'm annoyed at the fact that it is being labeled a, "Michael Bay Film." This isn't a new trend in Hollywood. It dates back to Spike Lee, in his early days. There's been a fight in Hollywood, between producers and writers, over who has the right to put their name above, or before the title of a film. This all started when Spike Lee began branding his films as, "A Spike Lee Joint." Fine. Spike Lee often writes, stars and directs his films, so they're really all about his artistic contributions.

Michael Bay didn't write Transformers. He didn't come up with the concept, and he isn't a very talented director. (His previous efforts include Pearl Harbor, The Rock and Bay Boys I & II. ) No, his movies make money, and that's all.

Now, I know money is king in Hollywood (and pretty much everywhere else, too). But above-title credit for a movie should go to people who make extraordinary contributions to their film, and the film world, in general. Consider Brahm Stoker's Dracula. Or Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Does Michael Bay's Transformers really belong in the same group?

MYTHBUSTERS CAN SUCK IT!

I recently caught the first few minutes of an episode of the Discovery Channel's Mythbusters and nearly tossed my cookies. Now, let me back up and say that I've never really cared for this gawd-awful show: it seems to be a bunch of nerds that somehow managed to score a TV show. I'm not against nerds having TV shows — I'm a dork, myself, so far be it from me to knock a bunch of people gettin' their nerd on.

But I do take issue with the show for the following reason: they stole someone else's research and claimed it as their own. They did a show, "exploring" the "real" reason the Hindenburg blew up. When I heard this, a little bell went off in my head. Where had I heard this before?, I thought. Why do I know the outcome of this research already?

Then, later in the day, I remembered something I'd read: the research that proved the Hindenburg didn't blow up the way people thought it did (a hydrogen leak) had been performed earlier at UCLA. Yes, years after the tragedy, UCLA researchers figured out that the final report on the crash of the Hindenburg had it all wrong. And now, the Mythbusters were out to "investigate" the "truth" behind this famous zeppelin crash... research someone else had already done.