My Trip to Santa Fe, NM. Part 2

If you missed it, part one is here.

• We slept late due to our hangovers and got up around 11am. We headed back to the plaza for lunch only to find the place we were going to go to so busy that there was a corpse on the list ahead of us. We settled on the Sleeping Dog which is this dark lit bar and restaurant under the Blue Corn Café. There I had a chicken alfredo type dish with green chilies in it. I got to say, green chilies and Italian food don’t mix well. Might as well have eaten an ice cream sundae with ranch dressing.

New Mexico and Italy are easily confused for one another

• While shopping in the plaza, one thing became apparent real quick. Every store is either an art gallery or a kitschy shop with tourist trap junk. It’s like every store in Times Square selling T-shirts, coffee mugs, and other crap that says “I Love New York” on it.
  
  Jewelry was in every store too. My eyes can no longer see the color turquoise since I have seen so much of it my brain has reached a new plane of consciousness. There was so much jewelry in fact that if I ever set foot into another jewelry store I am going to strip off all my clothes, put on war paint, fashion a primitive club out of a chair leg, and scream nonsensical gibberish at random patrons. Nobody would be able to buy an engagement ring while I’m transformed into Ranak, Lord of the Wolves, I can tell you that! “Female no want shiny rock,” I would tell the likely frightened prospective ring buyer. “Give female slain elk carcass. Good for eating. Female will give you sexing”

• We went to the New Mexico History Museum and the Santa Fe Art Museum Friday evening for free. We would never have gone when we had to pay as they were absurdly overpriced. $20 for two exhibits at the history museum? What the hell? Do they have Hernando Cortez in there? (No, no they did not). The history museum was admittedly better than the Colorado History Museum but that’s the ticket price for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science which has many exhibits including dinosaurs. Prehistoric monsters makes the ticket price reasonable.
  
  The art museum was alright but it was one of, I think, 23 million art museums in Santa Fe. Why is everything spread around? Why not put it all in one massive art museum and charge one price? The way it’s set up here is to charge tourists a new ticket price for every museum which is bullshit. I didn’t know Santa Fe was into art extortion.

The art museum, in the Santa Fe plaza, has it's own plaza.

• On our way back to the car from the plaza, we stumbled upon a street performance by Polyphony something-or-other. They were an all marimba band and they kicked ass. The not so cool part is once we headed for the car in the parking garage after the performance, I found out I nearly drained the battery by leaving the headlights on all day. I must have forgotten about them during my amazement of finding a parking garage without fake hours posted on the entrance. Also, I almost left without paying the attendant since he didn’t have the gate down at the exit and I didn’t think about stopping. The dude seemed annoyed with me like I did it on purpose. If there is anything I have learned from the board game Monopoly is that free parking magically gives you lots of money. Of course I did it on purpose.

I believe this is "GO" and that is the line to collect your $200.

• On the last day, we left the hotel and headed to Taos, NM since it was kind of on the way back to Colorado. On the way to Taos we passed through the town of Hispanola at the blistering speed of 35mph. This is the same type of highway that would have a speed limit of 45 or 55 here in Colorado. Why did I have to go thirty-fucking-five on a highway in a trashy commercial area? Do children play in the street out in front of liquor stores? Do they want cars to drive by slow enough so people can test out their new gun from the gun store? I honestly don’t know why anybody would willingly live in Hispanola. I can only assume all of the town’s residents have given up and are just waiting to die.

• Taos was a cool town though the traffic jam around it’s plaza is like getting teeth pulled. The shops were the same jewelry and tourist trap crap. My main complaint is the public restrooms without locking stall doors. I just ate a heavy enchilada dinner Taos. I need a quality toilet stall. Next time I will just take a dump in the bushes until you fix your restrooms.

The native metallic plant life of Taos.

• The weirdest part about Taos is the Taos Pueblo, the oldest, still occupied pueblo in the United States. These peoples homes were a tourist attraction and they make money by selling arts, crafts, and OF COURSE, jewelry from what is basically their living rooms. It felt really awkward and I’m not sure why. Oh wait, yes I do. The only other people who do business this way is drug dealers. I felt like I was being set up while buying pottery laced with heroin from an undercover cop.
  

And that is pretty much it. The drive back was mostly uneventful (other than not being able to find the onramp to I-25 in Walsenberg, a town without a single new resident since 1957) except my driving arm sunburn getting worse. We made it back in just about 4 and a half hours. I returned to work the next day and already feel like I need another vacation.


Disclaimer: This article is based on opinion and first hand accounts. I claim nothing as fact. Hispanola still sucks though. That is not opinion.

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My trip to Santa Fe, NM. Part 1

From July 14th to the 16th, my girlfriend and myself took a road trip to Santa Fe, NM. We enjoyed good food, good scenes, and good times. But not all of it was smooth and there were a lot of weird quirks about the town and the trip in general. I never intended to write about this but there was just too much weirdness witnessed in just three days for me not too share.

Mushroom cloud? Is this 1940's New Mexico?

• The drive down was largely uneventful. We got to Santa Fe in about five and a half hours. The only mishaps here was getting a wretched sunburn on my left arm, making one arm much darker than the other, and running into a large thunderstorm on a stretch of highway that resembled the surface of Mars. If we had been killed, authorities wouldn’t have found our bodies for months.

• We got into the hotel fine and I picked up one of those touristy books. While flipping through the pages I saw some ads for a few restaurants and noticed something peculiar. They all closed at 9pm. I didn’t think much of it at the time thinking it was only these few that closed early, which were a bit too high society for my “dollar beer night” tastes . And surely most bars wouldn’t advertise in this magazine considering dive bars don’t spend money on maintenance and sanitation, never mind advertising. Little did I know, this is what storytelling refers too as foreshadowing.

Best in Santa Fe as written by a 10 year old. 9pm is bed time.

• We went to the Santa Fe plaza to check out the live music festival and get dinner. After driving through narrow one way streets with almost no stop lights and having to dodge pedestrians with a death wish, we found a parking garage at 5:30pm. The garage had a sign up that said it closed at 6pm. I thought we would be okay considering a lot of cars were still inside and a garage couldn’t possibly close that early in downtown. We parked and headed up the elevator into what appeared to be an office building and went outside. After walking toward the center of the plaza, I began to become concerned about the hours of the garage thinking that maybe we parked in a garage reserved for the office. We headed back to the garage to ask the attendant when they closed. His answer? They don’t. He would be there late and even afterwards we can pay a machine to get out.
  
  So it begs the question, why the fuck does it say the garage closes at 6pm? That is negative false advertising. They are lying about what they provide in a way that hurts them. Is it mandated like the warnings on cigarettes? If so, why not go all out? “WARNING. Parking in this garage may result in brain tumors, unknown rashes, and male pregnancy.”

• In the center of the plaza is where the live music was happening. I use the term music loosely here because we sat down in the grass and listened to one and a half songs before nearly falling into a coma. City sponsored concerts always suck though and we should have remembered that going in. They always want musicians who play non-offensive songs but that typically means musicians who play songs which are as engaging as a training video for Subway. I don‘t want to listen to a lullaby about how pretty the desert is. There are rattlesnakes and scorpions in the desert. The last thing I want to do is fall asleep around them.
  
  

This is not our scene at all

• After ditching the music festival for old people who don’t like music, we ate dinner at the Blue Corn Café. Other then spending too much money there, it was nice. Afterward, we decided to hit up the town for some drinks. We searched online for some good nightlife spots in Santa Fe and came up with a few hits. The few hits being reviews of Santa Fe saying how bad the nightlife is.

• We headed to a liquor store to buy some post bar drinks for the hotel. Inside the liquor store, we asked where a good place to get drinks was. Their answer? The Blue Corn Café. Oh awesome. The place we just came from which didn’t have a great bar feel anyway. We told the liquor store dude that and he responded, “Oh. You’re looking for a nightlife spot. Hahaha. No. There isn’t really anything like that.” That’s right. The liquor store guy laughed at us.
  
  So, again, another question. Why the holy fucking hell fuck is there no nightlife options in a town with a lot of tourists? Oh, don’t get me wrong. There was a jazz club with an obscene door cover and a “sophisticated” club with “high class” (aka. meat market). But almost no good option to get a few drinks without going broke or worrying about getting a ruffie in your drink.

• The 2nd street brewery was going to be our savior. It stayed open later and was not located in the plaza so paying for parking was not an issue. We looked up directions, headed down there…and couldn’t find the place. According to our GPS, we must have passed the place 6 times before calling the bitchiest bitch bartender since those ladies from the Miller Light commercials for directions. After giving her far more details than should be needed for somebody who lives there, we are told to turn right immediately after the train tracks. So we did that, only to end up in some industrial park where I think arms dealers where hiding the rail guns from the movie Eraser.
  
  We did manage to find the bar when we turned left after the train tracks. (And yes, it was from the direction we told the bartender we were coming from). The bar itself was behind a warehouse with absolutely no lighting on their signage which also happened to be obscured by tall trees. It’s like this bar got tips on how to attract customers from the parking garage earlier.

These trees are taller now

• Once inside the bar, my girlfriend orders a beer and is quickly ID’d. I order a beer and my ID is taken to a more well lit area of the bar about 20 feet away and examined by our wash out of a server as if it was evidence in the Casey Anthony trial. Seriously, this dude was weird and possibly on Quaaludes that expired in 1996. After ordering our beers he said absolutely nothing and just appeared a few minutes later with beer like some sort of liquor fairy.
  
  The entire bar scene was absolutely pathetic. It was a sauna in there. There were about three dudes sitting at the bar, two of which were staring at the wall, the third on his laptop. The bar looked like a dumpster. I may have contracted a rare virus from my bar stool. The worst part was the bill. We decided to call it quits after just one beer for each us. The total? Nine fucking dollars! For two fucking beers! Why in the fuckity fuck-shit mara-fuck-thon of a search for a fucking late night bar is each 12oz. beer four fucking fifty?
  
  Actually, I think I know the answer to this one. Out of the eight beers they make, a mind destroying six are IPA‘s since variety is for capitalist pigs. They are also expensive beers to make. They are basically sodomizing peoples wallets with the disguise of quality while some, like myself, think IPA’s taste like a rotting badger corpse. Ed. - I don’t want to hear it beer snobs. So having the price of my Kolsch inflated by a beer I hate angers up the blood and produces F-bombs the way Starbucks produces unfinished screenplays.
  

Are we having fun yet?

• We finished the night by getting drunk in the hotel room and watching Futurama. A good ending to a strange day. The next two days aren’t nearly as difficult but I still have some bizarre observations I would like to share. Part two coming soon.

Disclaimer: This article is of a satirical nature, based on opinion and first hand experiences. IPA's still suck though.

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4 Misconceptions About Colorado

I have noticed over the years that people who have never been to my home state, Colorado, have some misconceptions about this state. That is fair, considering I have misconceptions about every state I have never been too, including a few I have been too, but here is four of the most common claims.

The yellow represents the state's egg yoke-like center

1. The weather is a never ending blizzard hurricane.

It’s almost as if Colorado is being confused for Alaska except Colorado is not known for daily bear attacks and giving our former governors crappy reality TV shows. Yesterday was 95 degrees. That is more Arizona than Alaska, the state that is actually close by. Arizona is close enough that Colorado can feel the sandy boner in Arizona’s pants rubbing up against Colorado’s ass.

At least it's not a cacti boner

Colorado seems to dip below zero for about a week in the winter but averages around 35 to 45 because Colorado is too laid back to give it‘s friends the cold shoulder. Hell, I think it was 70 for a few days last December. It's rarely too hot or too cold since Colorado doesn't like the Goldilocks fairy tale as much as other states.

It’s also sunny here about 300 days of the year, so overcast skies of rain or snow only stop by for quickies and sneak out in the morning. Only the mountains get a lot of snow but only in spurts. We could go weeks without snow. It’s pretty dry here but not as dry as Arizona who is going to get a sexual harassment lawsuit if it won’t stop humping my states leg. Actually, I think Arizona is on ecstasy. The dry humping. Asking us for water. Naming their cities after mythological birds. Yeah. I’m on to you Arizona.

2. The entire state is mountainous

Actually only about 40% or so I’d say. Most of the western half of the state is mountainous except for the farthest west parts which gradually turn into a desert with a hint of Mormonism. Speaking of which, I’m amazed Utah hasn’t ratted out on Arizona for it’s illicit drug use and sexually deviant acts. Utah is that weird kid in high school who nobody talked too and didn’t drink alcohol because he thought it would remove the magical powers of their underwear or something.

Vegas. So close yet so far from Utah

Denver is not in the mountains. It’s about 20 minutes away from the first mountains. To the east is just farmland or Kansas light. You would never know this, unless people actually bothered to look at a goddamn map, because Coloradans don’t talk about the eastern half of the state. There just isn’t anything to talk about unless you’re into farming, ranching, or meth labs.

3. The altitude makes it hard to breathe here.

If you are from sea level and you fly in then yes, at first you will feel a little short of breath. Your body adjusts though and after a few days you should breathe just fine. The air is supposedly cleaner due to the state being a mile high or more but I don’t buy into that entirely. It seems like the pollution just hangs out much lower and more in your face than in other cities.

One thing is true about the altitude though. It lowers your alcohol tolerance. I can drink anybody from sea level under the table. Anybody. The altitude also gives me superpowers where if I travel to sea level I can still out drink you due to me having to drink 750 drinks just to get a buzz. You can’t win sea dweller.

Mermaid cause of death: Alcohol poisoning due to trying to keep up with me

4. It's still the wild west

Not really. Would anyone consider the most expensive town in the US, Aspen, to be wild west? Well, maybe if Will Smith is hitting the slopes but that‘s beside the point. Denver is pretty damn modern. Boulder is for hippies, beatniks, and having the #1 party school (take that Harvard?). Colorado Springs is all about the Air Force and Christian extremism, which is actually the same thing. The mountain towns are kind of stereotypical all being ski towns, gambling towns, hot spring towns, or next to a state park. The rest still have a heavy wild west feel especially when about 12 of them are claiming to be the resting place of Buffalo Bill. Also, they're all haunted and shit.

Georgetown. All the ghosts in town are named George

My favorite, for comedy purposes, is the town of Dinosaur who renamed itself such after Dinosaur National Monument was founded. They also proceeded to rename all their streets after dinosaurs. Surprisingly, they did not pass a law banning all gas stations in town that are not Sinclairs, declare June 11th a holiday for the release date of Jurassic Park and rename all the dogs in town Rex. At least dinosaurs are real though, unlike some city in Arizona.



Disclaimer: This article is satirical and I don't actually hate Arizona. Utah, on the other hand, sucks so hard it collects all the coins from my couch cushions in Colorado.

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Faced!

This blog now has a Facebook page.

Is that lame? It's lame for a blog to have a Facebook page right? It can't be as bad as all those fake celebrity and sports star, garage bands, and fan club pages especially when it's a club for something that doesn't need it, like bacon. Then again I might have turned into a 14 year old girl just by creating it.

Even so, if you have Facebook, come over to my page and "like" it. If you are too cool for Facebook, just like this blog used to be when it was all about the music and not about pleasing The Man, then you can just continue not showing up here.

Or if Twitter is more your style, you can follow me here.

4 Songs That Should be Banned from Karaoke

"Oooohhhh, lets go to karaoke", is often the last deciding factor in planning a night out for me. It settles the debate on what to do, where to go, but not why I am doing it. I sometimes begin to regret this decision after listening to a bad song, after another bad song, after a good song with a terrible singer, followed by a great song sung by a guy so drunk that all the words sound half elvish. Then, the coup de grace, I go up to sing a song only to realize alcohol does not make me a better singer and that the lyrics actually say "sad but true" and not "sex patrol". These are not my best nights.

Finally. Somebody understands the Karaoke/boning dynamic

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate karaoke. Sometimes I really enjoy it. What I can't stand is the songs I always hear and nobody can ever sing them well or even competently. These are the four songs that should be banned from karaoke.

1. Baby Got Back - Sir Mix-a-Lot.

A statement like, "99.9% of the world cannot get even half of these words right" is a pretty safe one to make without even having to look it up. People always attempt this song after deciding it would be funny 4 beers and 7 shots later. It's not funny and it never has been. Even their friends don't think it's all that funny after the first minute. It's like listening to a toddler try to recite Shakespearean poetry, it's just a jumbled mess.

The song itself isn't all that bad even if it's cheesy, complimentary to measurements that I don't think any women actually have, and was written for an easy paycheck. But the lyrics are really difficult and should not be attempted by anyone except for the most studied of students.

Restrooms for Sir Mix-A-Lot girlfriends.

Punishment for picking this song: You have to listen to this song, and only this song, every day for a year straight. That should be long enough to make somebody hate this song and also memorize the lyrics.

2. Black Velvet - Alannah Myles

The favorite song of cougars everywhere. If a woman picks this song beware, she is on the prowl and going to bum cigarettes off you. Either that, or this is a recently divorced woman who thinks this song is all about hating dudes even though it seems more relevant to a one night stand.

Look at this lyric. "The way he moved, it was a sin, so sweet and true. Always wanting more, he'd leave you longing for". Longing for black velvet, whatever the hell that is. According to the song, it's a new religion that has something to do with the south and little boy smiles. Not sure where the perceived man hate is since it almost looks like a song about some dude she met in a bar. Some dude, named Jesus.

Punishment for picking this song: 10 hours of having to talk to some philosophy major about "what it all means" for the cougar. 10 hours of watching Ice Road Truckers for the divorcee since I'm a dick.

3. Don't Stop Believing - Journey

By picking this song, this person is not so subtly implying that they don't want to do this alone and would like to unite the bar in song. Surprisingly, this has about a 50% success rate depending on the time of night. The later it is, the drunker people are and more willing to sing along or pick a fight with the singer for ruining Steve Perry's "classic".

This is the original hipster song for being a song nobody actually liked. People only liked this song ironically. Probably even more depressing is the fact that this song is pseudo-big now due to Glee, a horrifying prospect telling us that the only way to get big in the music industry is to have that show do a cover. Glee is the Oprah book club for music.

You see now that you are just a pawn

Also, it might just be the Colorado Avalanche fan in me but this song sucks even harder due to it's connection with Detroit Red Wing home games. That's right, Red Wing fans and Journey fans are one in the same. Also similar, arsonists.

Punishment for picking this song: You have to live in Detroit for a month. Wait, that might be a bit harsh. Okay, you just have to visit the city for a week.

4. Any Grease Song

I'm breaking my own rules here but seriously, every song in this movie is terrible. The movie itself sucks ass due to having one of the most improbable and convoluted plots ever. A love story about if their friends approve of dating someone from a different clique is not gripping stuff and is actually really shallow. Plus, why does the car inexplicably fly at the end of the movie? Why does Olivia Newton-John completely abandon her individuality for no apparent reason? Why could the punchline to every joke be "John Travolta"?

The song most likely picked is Summer Days, a duet usually sang by a couple in which at least one of them was forced into it and they accidentally sing each others parts. It also doesn't help that no matter how many people may argue the inverse, John Travolta cannot sing. If the person in the duet can't match the original, being Travolta's voice, it will suck. If they can, it will sound like somebody starting a car with a bad timing belt since Travolta is a Nazgul in The Lord of the Rings.

Travolta hates hobbits and corrupts good girls

Oh yeah, don't forget that screaming, whining, ear vomiting break down at the end of the song. The word "nights" is not spelled with an "uh" in the middle of it. It sounds like someone mutilating ferrets.

Punishment for picking this song: You have to watch the movie Battlefield Earth every time before watching Grease. It will give you perspective on John Travolta.


Disclaimer: This article is satirical. I hate the game not the player.

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