I was born on April 15, which means that, most years, when my birthday doesn’t fall on an Easter Sunday it falls on the United States anti-holiday that is income tax day. Being an ides of April baby also means that each and every year I am also reminded of the sinking of the Titantic and the death of Abraham Lincoln.

This year, we all get until 4/17 to turn in our taxes. However, as Saturday becomes Sunday 4/15, I’ll be at the Turner Classic Movies festival in Hollywood where I’ll have a choice between an actual movie about the sinking of the Titanic (1958′s “A Night to Remember”) or I can contemplate my mortality via an avant gardish science fiction movie in which character actor John Randolph has a mid-life crisis and becomes Rock Hudson. (That’s John Frankenheimer’s 1966 “Seconds.”) Movies are about escape, you know.

All of which is a long-winded and self-indulgent way to get to this week’s cocktail, named for a day most of us agree is far worse luck than a Friday the 13th like today but which most of us agree is necessary in some form. Thus, the cocktail classic represents the healthy orange sweet of it — the roads, bridges, schools, fire and police protection we get in return for our taxes — and the bitters of actually paying them. If you note a strong similarity to another drink covered here, you aren’t hallucinating. Believe it or not, Income Tax is both the bitter and the better of the two.

Income Tax

2 ounces gin
1 ounce orange juice (fresh squeezed, for sure)
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
1-3 dashes aromatic bitters
1 orange slice (optional garnish, but since you’re squeezing the orange already…)

As with the Bronx, people are over the map on proportions, and I certainly encourage readers to experiment to their heart’s content with more or less sweet and dry vermouth, OJ, and gin. Nevertheless, especially with the addition of bitters, I found this easy to remember and straight forward version was actually quite the best.

A few notes on ingredients. I’m using Tanqueray (94.6 proof) right now, though I’m sure this will work as well with most other high proof gins such as Bombay Dry or Beefeater. With an 80 proof gin like Gordon’s, it might be a bit sweeter which can either be a good or bad thing. I tried making my Income Tax using both traditional Angostura bitters as well as Fee Brother’s aromatic bitters and it came out fine with both.

I even ran out of my usual Noilly Pratt sweet vermouth — which for some reason Bev-Mo in Orange County, CA has stopped carrying, darn them — and went to an inferior brand that I had sitting around. Still very nice. Like tax day itself, this drink can be attacked but it will never be killed. Would that that were true for the folks on the Titanic and, of course, Old Abe. Fortunately, the magic of cinema can take care of that.

Click here to listen to Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion on Spotify

So, you might have heard about this – Axl Rose is asking the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to leave him out when it comes to inducting the band into the Hall in Cleveland Saturday night. And to be fair, we can see both sides of this. The Rock Hall wants to honor one of the most unique and ferocious rock bands to come from a very stale period in rock history (whatever you do, don’t call them hair metal, because they’re not), and they should. The problem is that as far as Axl is concerned, he has a band, and Slash, Duff, Steven and Izzy aren’t in it. Never mind simmering tensions between Rose and various former members of Guns ‘n’ Roses; to attend the ceremony would be akin to stepping out on his current band mates, which is the last thing Axl wants to do at this point. So bowing out in this manner makes sense.

Having said that, it’s silly for him to dismiss the fact that, naming rights aside (it’s my band, I decide who’s a member of Guns ‘n’ Roses, blah blah blah), it was the combination of those five guys that made history. Guns ‘n’ Roses is not, nor ever was, the Golden Palominos, where Axl can just pick and choose people with whom to collaborate from album to album. They were a band, and like it or not, they were at their best when Axl had Duff, Izzy and Slash flanking him. It’s great that he wants to continue to do great things as Guns ‘n’ Roses, but he’d be wise to remember what got him here.

Given the open hostility between Rose and some of his old mates, it seemed fitting to go with “Estranged” here, since he is just that. Happy Friday, everyone. Try to avoid ending up estranged from the people you love, if you can.

This week’s feature is the beautiful and elegant Lauren Anderson, who was Playboy’s Miss July for 2002. You can see much more of her at LaurenAnderson.net. Check out the video below as well of Lauren in a sexy bikini.

If you’re new to the dating game, or have just recently been reintroduced, there’s no doubt about it; dating can be one of the more awkward and trying things in all of manhood. Trying to figure out what a woman wants and giving her that while being yourself can be tricky. They want you sensitive but firm, consistent but spontaneous, talkative but attentive, yada, yada, yada, pretty much any two juxtaposing ideals you can think of. But dating really doesn’t have to be all that hard. With these five easy tips and ideas, dating can actually be an enjoyable experience.

- Give Online Sites a Try

Oftentimes the hardest part about dating is just getting a date. While there still seems to be a lingering stigma for some surrounding dating via the web, it really does work, and it can take a lot of the random guesswork out of the equation. There are sites for all types of guys, even those who fit the sugar daddy definition. Giving these sites a try can really make your life a lot easier. Remember: don’t knock it ‘till you try it.

- Go Some Place You Know

Now that you have a date, taking her to a restaurant or any other destination that you’re familiar with instantly increases your comfort level. It can also give you some great conversational topics if you know certain things about the place or the surrounding area.

- Be Ready

It’s wise to have a couple different conversation topics or points stored in the memory bank, just in case you find yourself in one of those awkwardly long silences where neither of you can think of anything to say. In this same vein, while it’s important to be prepared, over-planning or overthinking things can be a huge turnoff for women, who somehow seem to have a sixth sense for these sort of things.

- No One’s Perfect

If you’ve ever seen the movie Good Will Hunting, you’ll probably recall this fitting quote from Robin Williams’ character: “You’re not perfect, sport. And let me save you the suspense… this girl… she isn’t either.” Don’t expect perfection on a first date, or any date for that matter. Things will probably get awkward once or twice, but that’s all part of the game. Just knowing and expecting that can be the difference between success and failure.

- She’s No.1

Women aren’t the only sex that likes to talk about themselves, but when it comes to dates, you should make it as much about her as possible. Ask her questions, compliment her hair and outfit, and let her know that you’re generally interested in her as a person, not just a potential mate.

Well, that’s pretty much it boys. With these simple tips you’ve really got all the tools you need to be a regular Cassanova. Now go out there and get her.

I’ve been going to Las Vegas for over 25 years, so I’ve stayed in every type of casino Sin City has to offer, from the high end resorts to the $25 per night temporary motel rooms behind the old Stardust when they were renovating it years ago. No matter where you’re staying, Vegas has so much to offer that you’ll always have a blast. But my recent weekend in Vegas staying at the amazing Aria Resort & Casino was a very pleasant reminder that a first class weekend in a luxurious hotel makes all the debauchery Vegas has to offer that much more enjoyable. It’s also so much easier to nurse a hangover in a comfortable bed in a beautiful room where you can shut the curtains and get total darkness with the press of a button from your bed!

Bullz-Eye was invited by Aria to cover the Michael Jordan Celebrity Invitational that was being held at Shadow Creek. Naturally I jumped at the opportunity to cover MJ and his celebrity pals while experiencing a weekend at Aria with everything it had to offer. I was lucky to have a fun and beautiful companion with me so everything was teed up for a great weekend.

The first thing I noticed about Aria was the amazing architecture and design. Everything about this place has been meticulously designed with a modern and original look. Of course Vegas has always featured upscale resorts and hotels, but they always had that gaudy Vegas feel. Instead of going with a themed hotel, the style of Aria is much more like a trendy, luxury hotel. The amount and different types of glass used at Aria is just stunning. The Jean Philippe Pâtisserie is just one of many things that stand out, with the artistically packages chocolates and gourmet pastries in an ultra modern corner of the casino. If you’re with a date the visual stimulation alone will set the mood for a memorable trip.

Like many of the large resorts in Vegas, Aria has practically everything you could need from an entertainment point of view. The pool is amazing and the attached shopping mall offers the best shopping in Vegas. The spa also offers a perfect getaway for couples, with the “Ganbanyoku” heated-stone bed and “Shio” salt room, outdoor therapy pool, Las Vegas’ only co-ed balcony with a stunning view of our beautiful pools. Your wife or girlfriend will love it!

The casino is also laid out nicely and I like the vibe on the casino floor. The beautiful venue definitely attracts the beautiful crowd! Having a nightclub like Haze at Aria also helps as gorgeous women in tight skirts and heels invade the casino around the midnight hour. Of course we also ventured out and indulged in the debauchery that Sin City has to offer, from a strip club to a cheesy after-hours lounge for late night food and more alcohol. But we always came back to this fantastic casino and resort where we could party some more or relax in the luxury rooms.

With all the amenities at the Aria, the restaurants stood out as some of the most impressive spots. We had the opportunity to try out many of them throughout the weekend as we indulged in a wide variety of incredible dishes. We started out the first night at Sirio Ristorante for some Tuscan-style Italian food created by chef Sirio Maccioni. We were tempted to go with one of the incredible veal or beef dishes on the menu, but we knew we had a big weekend ahead and we didn’t want to start off with serious food coma. So we ordered some delicious appetizers of jumbo prawns and seasonal oysters along with seafood entrees, including a pan-fried breaded Maine lobster that was incredible. If you’re a wine lover you’ll appreciate the selection of Italian vintages.

Sirio gave us the perfect start to the weekend and we were ready for our first night of heavy drinking. By lunch the next day we were ready for our first recovery meal, and lunch at Lemongrass was the perfect remedy. This modern Thai restaurant was incredibly comfortable and offered a variety of dishes. After some great appetizers including delicious pot stickers, we stuck with our seafood strategy and order several lobster dishes, including a special prepared by the chef. I can never get enough lobster so I was more than happy with this light lunch, and the specialty cocktails helped get us back in fighting form.

On Saturday night, after shooting machine guns (more on that in a later post) and getting a much-needed nap, we had dinner at American Fish by Micheal Mina as we geared up for Viva ELVIS and another night on the town. Our seafood diet was treating us well, and now wasn’t the time to change things given the name of the restaurant. We started out with succulent Tuna Tartare and I went with the Daily Shellfish entrée. Throw in some fun sides like Truffled Mac & Cheese and specialty cocktails and the entire meal was perfect.

We were full and buzzed and ready for our Elvis experience. Cirque du Soleil has had a string of hits in Vegas, and Viva ELVIS is their latest show. If you’re into Elvis’s music then I highly recommend it, as they covered his entire career from his early years, to his military service, to the movie years to the later years with the jumpsuits and the lamb chop sideburns. The show was visually impressive as we’ve come to expect from Cirque du Soleil with incredible acrobatics, and it’s in its final season so Elvis fans should be planning their trip! After the show we stopped for a cocktail and 80s music at The GOLD Lounge as we geared up for another late night. The lounge features a concept and décor that pays homage to the celebrated life of Elvis Presley. You can’t miss it with all the gold monkey imagery (Elvis was a fan) and it’s just another of the visually stunning venues in the Aria.

By our last night in Vegas we were completely spent, but we rallied to make it to dinner at Sage, which was one of our favorite places from the weekend. I knew I was probably going to pass out soon after dinner, so I went with the Snake River Farms New York Strip as switched from seafood. We also ordered the Wagyu Beef Tartare as one of our appetizers, which may have been my favorite dish of the trip! You’ll love the New American menu of Chef Shawn McClain’s first Las Vegas restaurant, which spotlights seasonal ingredients from neighboring California, just-picked produce, artisanal meats and sustainable seafood. The décor in Sage is also stunning and it’s located near the entrance of the resort.

You should check out the Aria whether you want a high-end place to party with your friends or a weekend that your wife or girlfriend will never forget. Located in the heart of the Strip, everything you could want is either in the resort or close by. You’ll definitely be able to party in style!

They’ve both had incredible careers, but this video from Mick Jagger and David Bowie is just brutal. You’ll cringe and laugh out loud . . .

There are a lot of gadgets out in the marketplace these days fighting for your hard-earned dollars, and one of the latest to garner serious buzz is the Nike+ FuelBand, a fitness bracelet that tracks your daily activity using a three-axis accelerometer inside the device. Nike is doing its very best to build hype for the FuelBand by releasing it in limited quantities and therefore keeping demand high, but at a rather pricey $150, is it even worth it? I was given a FuelBand to test out for one week and arrived at the following conclusion: it’s complicated.

Nike has done a great job with the overall presentation of the FuelBand; it’s simple yet stylish, and although the band is a little more rigid than expected, it’s so lightweight that you’ll forget you’re even wearing it most of the time. (I actually went to sleep wearing mine every night). Additionally, the band is water resistant, so you can feel free to wear it in the shower or the rain without worrying about it short-circuiting on you. Of course, I wouldn’t have risked it if I had actually paid for mine, but Nike says it’s okay as long as you’re not completely submerging it in water, so hopefully that’ll put your mind at ease.

In addition to the bracelet itself (which can be purchased in three different sizes: small, medium and large), the FuelBand comes with two extension links (8mm and 16mm) to fine-tune your fit, a sizing tool that makes adding and removing them a breeze, and a USB charging stand for when it’s plugged into your computer. I was a little surprised at how long it took for the band to charge via the USB connecter (which also functions as the bracelet’s clasp), but the battery life is remarkably good, running on a single charge for the entire week despite Nike’s claim that it would only last for four days.

The FuelBand works in much the same way as other fitness bracelets or pedometers on the market – tracking the number of calories burned and steps taken – but what sets it apart is the concept of Nike Fuel, a points-based system that represents your level of activity for the day. You earn Fuel for just about anything you do (walking, running, pouring milk into a bowl of cereal, etc.) and can even set daily goals that the FuelBand tracks with a strip of colored lights located just below the main LED matrix. As you get closer to hitting your goal, the lights progress from red, to orange, to yellow, and finally to green, celebrating your achievement with Jumbotron-style flair. And if that wasn’t enough, the device also has a built-in watch function, which I found to be really useful.

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The late, great Sam Kinison died 20 years ago today. Check out our profile of Sam Kinison that we published when we inducted him into our Stand-up Comics Hall of Fame.

Illustration by Brian Smith. Copyright 2009 Bullz-Eye.com, LLC. Click here for usage restrictions.

It’s another slow week for Blu-ray fans, with only two major titles being released, neither of which is worth more than a rental. Warner Bros.’ repackaging of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and the Werner Herzog documentary “Into the Abyss” are also hitting stores, but since I didn’t receive either of those for review, this week’s column is going to be brief.

Every bit the listless piece of Oscar bait that everyone expected it to be, “The Iron Lady” is essentially a made-for-TV movie with an award-worthy performance at the center. Yes, Meryl Streep is almost offensively talented as an actress, but she’s also been much better in a lot of other movies than she is here playing former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Though Streep absolutely nails her portrayal of the controversial politician (thanks in large part to some excellent make-up work), the movie itself is a rather cold and insipid biopic that isn’t nearly as interesting as it probably could have been in the hands of a more talented filmmaker. Jim Broadbent and Alexandra Roach (as Thatcher’s husband and younger self, respectively) deliver some good work in supporting roles, but this is clearly Streep’s show. It’s just a shame that her fantastic performance was wasted in such a mediocre movie, because if the actress was going to finally win another Oscar after so many years, it should have been for something much more memorable than this.

Blu-ray Highlight: Regrettably, there is none. All of the so-called “bonus featurettes” are less than three minutes long and recycle a lot of the same footage from “Making The Iron Lady,” which is more of just a standard rundown of the characters and actors that play them. It’s a bit baffling that some kind of makeup featurette wasn’t included seeing as how the film won an Oscar for it, because it surely would have been worth watching.

When I previewed Chris Gorak’s sci-fi thriller back in December, I expressed my annoyance with the fact that it was being released in a month where it had virtually no chance of success. Of course, that was when I still thought the film had potential, but in hindsight, it’s easy to see why Summit showed so little confidence in the movie. Despite boasting a cool premise and a talented young cast (including Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby and Joel Kinnaman of “The Killling”), “The Darkest Hour” is B-movie material at best, marred by terrible performances, clichéd characters and a lack of excitement. The film’s only redeeming quality is the special effects, but Gorak relies on the image of the invisible aliens turning its victims to dust so often that you wonder if it’s the only card he has to play. Because when the aliens’ comically lame physical form is finally revealed, you’ll understand why they spent most of the movie hidden in stealth mode. Spoiler alert: it’s even worse than it sounds.

Blu-ray Highlight: Though fans will probably get a kick out of the short film “Survivor,” which explores the human resistance forming around the world, the “Visualizing an Invasion” featurette is an interesting look at designing the aliens, their unique POV shots and the cool “shred” effect that happens when you come into contact with them.

If Lionsgate’s new horror film “The Cabin in the Woods” had been released back in 2010 like originally planned, there’s a good chance that audiences wouldn’t have recognized any of the young faces in the cast. Chris Hemsworth’s biggest claim to fame up to that point was a cameo role as James T. Kirk’s dad in “Star Trek”; Jesse Williams had just started his recurring stint on the medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy”; Fran Kranz was working on the short-lived Joss Whedon series “Dollhouse”; and Kristen Connolly and Anna Hutchison didn’t even have a noteworthy acting credit to their names.

Though most of the actors have still yet to truly break out (save for Hemsworth, of course), “The Cabin in the Woods” is definitely the kind of movie that could put them on the map, especially with so much positive buzz leading up to its release. I was fortunate enough to see the film at South by Southwest last month and joined a group of journalists in speaking with several cast members – including Connolly, Williams, Hutchison and veteran scene stealers Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins – about their experiences making the movie. Below are some highlights from the roundtable discussions, although because of the secretive nature of the film’s story, consider this your official warning that the following may contain potential spoilers.

And when you’re done, be sure to check out my interview with co-writer Joss Whedon and writer/director Drew Goddard for more on “The Cabin in the Woods.”

Kristen Connolly, Anna Hutchison and Jesse Williams on their initial reactions to the script.

JW: Our audition sides were totally fake. I think Joss just wrote them to fuck with us. And because they’re such good writers, they could just make stuff up in two seconds and have us jump around like animals to get the part. I didn’t read the script until after I agreed to do the movie, I don’t think.

KC: I had an inkling of what they were up to because I read one of the later scenes in the movie with Fran [Kranz]… to see if we were compatible. So then I finally got to read the script and I knew it was really special right away. It’s just mind-blowing, and it’s amazing, and it’s awesome and rare to read something that makes you want to keep reading, and that you really don’t know where it’s going to go.

AH: You kind of have a bit of blind faith if it’s a project with Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, because their previous things have been so rad, you’re kind of like, “I think this might be awesome.” And you guys didn’t have much of an idea going into the film, right? But you kind of knew that it might be good, and it is. I think that’s why I was just like, “Heck yeah, get me on this bad boy,” without even reading it.

Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins on the film’s script.

BW: I’ve said this a bunch, but what’s miraculous about this is you have two guys who obviously are great imaginative storytellers, and they look at each other and they go, “What would we write if we could write anything?” And the fact that that actually got done and that that movie got made is just a fucking miracle. (Laughs)

RJ: I almost think it was a bet that they made. They wrote this unbelievably complicated story and then [Joss] turned to Drew and they flipped a coin and said, “Okay, you direct it. See if you can possibly direct something.” And you know, as good as the script is, the movie’s better, which was amazing to see.

BW: It is amazing that he’s a first-time director, because when you’re reading the script, when the elevator doors open and there’s a lot of stuff that comes out of there… How do you make that work? Modulating that kind of ridiculous horror and remaining human is really difficult. Most directors will fuck that up for you. It was a shock seeing it. Realizing that the original impulse was achieved with that kind of clarity was amazing to me.

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