Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

So I was at the dentist this morning for the fourth of five scheduled visits. No mouth-guard fittings today, though. Just a cleaning. My first in three years, I think.

After the lady picked the little bits of tartar off my teeth, she reached for the high-powered dental “polisher”. She offered me a choice of polish flavors (peppermint or cinnamon) and we had a quick chat about the wide variety of flavors available today.

I told her my favorite as a kid was grape, and she said nowadays there are all sorts of kid-flavored polish flavors. Grape … raspberry … lemon/lime … and the new “cookie dough” flavor.

Wait a minute. Cookie dough flavor? What happened to the days when the dentist preached the evils of all things sugary to kids in the chair?

I guess it”s a sign of today”s society determined to endulge the every wishes of kids. I imagine the logic goes that kids will be happier at the dentist if they can get their teeth cleaned with a cookie dough-flavored paste. The hygenist said the kid flavors today are like “Baskin-Robbins”.

Yes, I know the paste isn”t actually cookie dough, and I imagine it has no sugar, but if kids get the “sugar is good!” message from the freaking dentist nowadays, no wonder they”re all fat.

I got a letter in the mail yesterday from my mortgage company, ABN-AMRO. It was addressed to “Fulton County Tax Commissioner” at my home address.

No, I”m not the Fulton County Tax Commissioner. In fact, I don”t even live in Fulton County.

The letter seeks to recover $3,881.06 in taxes ABN-AMRO paid “in error” on Fulton County properties the company “has no financial interest” in. As proof of this mistaken payment, the letter also includes eight pages of properties the company paid taxes on, including the payments made “in error”.

As further proof, the company included copies of two canceled checks - one for $6,255,363,64 and the other for $2,017,985.71.

Now, y”all know the Cap”n is a fine, upstanding citizen, and that”s a good thing for ABN-AMRO. I imagine there are a fair number of folks who”d be more than happy to get the routing and account numbers for a checking account that can clear more than $6 million.

And this is actually the second time I”ve received this letter (it”s marked “second notice”). The first time - being the fine, upstanding citizen I am - I spent 15 minutes on the phone trying to reach somebody at ABN-AMRO to tell them the Fulton County Tax Commissioner does not actually work out of my house. I had to leave a message at the number provided in the letter, and I figured that would be the end of it.

But no.

This time, I”m not going to call them. I figure I”ve done my part. I let them know about their screw-up the first time, and if they can”t figure out that the address they are mailing the letters to is not the address shown on the checks they provided copies of, I really can”t help them.

For the record:

Fulton County Tax Commissioner
141 Pryor St., SW
Suite 1100
Atlanta, GA 30303

Tonight, the wife and I watched Intolerable Cruelty, the Coen Brothers” divorce-lawyer flick starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones. True to its press, it wasn”t a great movie. The Clooney character was sharp and entertaining, and the film had its moments. But overall, not a top-notch Coen effort.

The backstory (as presented in the “making of” part of the DVD) is that the Coens wrote the screenplay under contract some years back, never intending to direct the film. The script fell in to the hands of Ron Howard”s Imagine outfit, and somehow after the success of O” Brother, the brothers were talked in to directing it as an Imagine production.

And therein lies the problem. A Coen film without Coen control isn”t really a Coen film at all. And it showed.

But what I found amusing about the DVD (the last in my now-canceled Netflix free trial) was the “bonus material”. The Coens are well-known as directors who care very little about DVD bonus material, and it says a ton about their work that I buy their DVDs anyway.

Obviously, however, their Imagine contract called for the brothers to provide “bonus material” for the DVD.

Thus we have a section on the disc called “Filmmaker Approved and Assembled Outtakes”. Not really an A+ marketing tag, now is it? After watching it, I figure Ron Howard and Brian Glazer decided they had to distance themselves from this piece, thus tagging it unquestionably as a Coen work.

The section features four parts, two of which are blooper reels from Clooney (90 seconds) and Zeta-Jones (60 seconds). The other two parts are as follows:

1) “Paul Adelstein in “Everybody Eats Berries”" - Adelstein plays Clooney”s sidekick/lackey and this bit is an outtake reel from a wedding scene where Adelstein is talking up his gift: berry spoons. The reel is 35 takes (yes, I counted) of him saying “Everybody eats berries”, intercut with a few takes of Clooney”s response “And nobody needs berry spoons.” And that”s it.

2) “Rex Rexroth”s Home Movie” - Rex Rexroth is the first husband of Zeta-Jones” character, and he has an odd association of trains with sex. So his “home movie” is a three minute, thirty-three second loop of silent, black-and-white train footage (a bit of the footage is playing during the movie in his death scene). Again, that”s it.

So, as much as I wish the Coens would do a little commentary track every once and a while, I really dug their dig at DVD bonus material.

I guess it was also in the contract that Imagine had to run whatever the brothers came up with.

So I get home this evening to find the new issue of Rolling Stone in the mailbox. And staring at me from the cover was this image:

Yep, that”s Ben Affleck. A torn-sleeved, unshaven, big-armed, tattooed, pissed-off-looking Ben Affleck.

And he”s not shooting a remake of the classic Al Pacino film “Cruising”, which makes the cover shot that much more amusing.

Apparently Ben”s gone “hard”. The R.S. article focuses, of course, on Ben”s split with J-Lo and how he plans to get his career out of the toilet following Gigli. He”s quoted in the piece as saying:

“My plan? I”ll disappear for a good long time, and not be this person.”

You mean the Bennifer person? Or the would-be Papa Roach member on the R.S. cover?

[editor"s note: Ben"s "disappearing" act begins tonight with a guest spot on Larry King Live]

His look, though, reminds me more of Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on The Block (both Affleck and NKOB hail from Boston - coincidence?). Sure, you may look tough, but you still dance and sing, pal.

My old buddy Scott down in Baton Rouge sent me a link Friday to a piece in the Reveille, the LSU student newspaper. It was a column called “On Top” by a student writer named Jessica Pivik.

The lead of this particular column was “If diamonds are a girl”s best friend, hand jobs are a close second.”

I think I”m supposed to be offended by such crass material being published in my alma mater”s student daily. But what really offends me is that the Reveille would green-light such a lame ripoff of Sex and The City.

“On Top” apparently made its debut this semester, and according to her staff bio, Jessica fancies herself to be some kind of relationship expert. In describing “On Top”, Jessica writes “Guys, you will learn from me. Girls, you will relate to me.”

Fair enough. I imagine most LSU students are still immature enough to either learn from (guys) or relate to (girls) a sophomoric “relationship” column. And maybe pointless references to oral sex (”Valentine”s Day, it”s the oral sex of holidays”) and tortured cucumber analogies come across as clever sexual insight to LSU students.

But the five columns Jessica has written so far read less like Carrie Bradshaw than Terry Bradshaw. She”s out to shock and create controversy, but she should spend more time listening to her professors and learning how to write.

I can forgive her because of her youth and inexperience. God knows I wrote some crap back in my LSU days (for the record, I was never a Reveille staffer). But even at 19 or 20, you should know the difference between a clever idea and a third-rate ripoff.

I started up a free trial of Netflix last week (mostly as the quickest way for the wife and I to see Lost In Translation - watched it last night; damn, damn fine movie). I used to be a Netflix customer a few years ago and aside from Webvan (R.I.P.), it”s my all-time favorite Internet service.

We dropped Netflix a couple of years ago after getting the PVR and after having Eyes Wide Shut around for about 8 weeks before we watched it. The anger we felt after finally watching that P.O.S. is what prompted us to get rid of Netflix.

But now we”re back in our trial. I”m going to cancel the trial, but only to trigger the special, super-secret offer they throw at you once you cancel your $20 a month service (brilliant tactic on their part).

Anyway, the night I signed up for the trial, I got sucked in to rating movies in order to build my “recommendations” list. Netflix uses your own ratings of different movies to come up with recommendations of other movies you may like. After rating 148 movies, the film Netflix most thinks I would enjoy is:

Wet Hot American Summer

I”ve never heard of this movie, but it shows up as 4 1/2 stars (out of 5) as a recommendation for me - the single highest-rated film on my list.

According to Netflix, W.H.A.S. is recommended to me because I gave 4 stars to The Royal Tenenbaums and 5 stars to The Big Lebowski. I”m not sure how they draw that association, since these three films share no actors, writers or directors.

And here”s a sampling of critic reviews of W.H.A.S. posted on Netflix:

“I want to escape, / Oh, Muddah Faddah– / Life”s too short for cinematic torture.” … Roger Ebert (1 star)

“The writing here is rarely funny, and often trite and predictable.” … Claudia Puig (2 stars)

“Most of the scenes fall flatter than a lead souffle.” … Maitland McDonagh (1 star)

So what gives? The member reviews are much more favorable, but keep in mind that 78% of the American public is incompetently stupid.

I sent the link above to the wife, who replied “that”s not on its way to our house, is it?”

No, she need not worry about that. But it is my life”s goal now to rate enough movies to drop W.H.A.S. to no more than two stars.