Let’s just say at this moment I am not a huge fan of the government, But I am a big fan of The Winston Jazz Routine, but I will get to that later.

I just got through giving the government a nice chunk of my salary, which is of course on top of the chunk that they like to take on a monthly basis.

Me and some friend play volleyball every Saturday at Venice beach and we were talking about how often this weekly routine ends up costing us more than we planned because of parking tickets. Last week my friend Jason was hit with a $75 ticket for having a sliver of his bumper hanging into the red. And yesterday we walked back to another friend, Rome’s car, who had missed renewing his parking meter by a couple of minutes and he was hit with $25. And I of course had a $25 ticket of my own that day because my tags were expired. Not to say my registration is out of date, but they just never got around to sending me my new tags. And of course I have to physically go into the DMV to get my latest tags now. But the DMV only operates during the same hours that I am trying to make enough money to pay for their insesint ticketing.

My most memorable experience with parking enforcement was shortly after I got my new car. I was parking on the street at the time. I had switched my back license plate to the one registered to me, but couldn’t switch the front one yet because the bolts were very strange and needed some assistance from the dealership to switch them.

So one night I parked my car on the street and awoke to find a ticket for having the wrong front license plate. I was grateful though because they had also done me the favor of removing the front license plate too. I wish I had left the correct plate on the curb with a kind note to put it on the car because I guess the city had the magic wrench for these strange bolts. Well low and behold the next night I parked in the same spot, not having time to get the new plates on in that 24 hour period. When I awoke that morning I had another ticket, this time for not having a front license plate; touché!

I also have a bad habit of having some kind of romantic notion that I will fight these tickets. But then I end up living my life and the next thing I know the $25 ticket is now $100. And to add insult to injury I received a letter a couple weeks ago saying they were sending me my $600 economic stimulus payment on 6/13. I regret to inform the faithful reader that this never came. I guess they have their priorities in order, but I kinda hoped I could use my stimulus check to stimulate the building of new roads, or a stronger police force, or whatever the fuck they use all my money for.

So now in a mood I would call ‘bummin” I present you with some mellow tunes to help you get through your own struggle with civic obligations. I don’t know too much about The Winston Jazz Routine other than they had a song climb the Hype Machine charts last week. It was a weird selection to make the list amongst the latest in electronic music and cool remixes. The album came out a couple years ago, so I imagine the song must have been in some new movie or possibly on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, or any one of those shows that combs the internet to find what us bloggers are discovering.

The Winston Jazz Routine – A Ghost Beneath The Tower

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The Winston Jazz Routine – The Bridge Of Sighs

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The Winston Jazz Routine – Sospiri