My buddy’s opening and reception was last night at the Red Shift Gallery. So you missed out on the free beer, wine and finger sandwhiches but you still have a chance to see his photography today on the First Friday Art Walk. His work will also be showing through the rest of the month so go check him out if you get a chance.

Denver makes the nasty list again, and I’m not sure I should be proud or ashamed (mostly ashamed). That is to say - I love that Denver knows how to party, I hate that we can’t do it responsibly.

Men’s Health magazine graded each state on the deadliness of it’s drunkards and Denver ranked first. The listing took into account death rates due to alcoholic liver disease, how many citizens regularly down five or more drinks in a sitting (CDC), drunk-driving arrests (FBI), the percentage of fatal accidents involving intoxicated motorists (U.S. Department of Transportation). and the MADD report card of state efforts to cut down on excessive drinking. This is how the report card shook out:
100 Denver, CO - F
99 Anchorage, AK - F
98 Colorado Springs, CO - F
97 Omaha, NE - F
96 Fargo, ND - F
95 San Antonio, TX - F
94 Austin, TX - F
93 Fresno, CA - F
92 Lubbock, TX - F
91 Milwaukee, WI - F
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My birthday week (last week) was so full of kickass it’s hard to comprehend.

It started out last Friday by heading over to a friends for drinks and then going to the Murray Farm Massacre. I haven’t been to a haunted house since I was a child but The haunted house was certainly frightening and well designed. I’m no stranger to corn mazes though, and this one pretty much sucked - way too easy (even at night) and not all that freaky.

Saturday we threw a raging halloween/costume party at our house. G made seven crockpots worth of homemade, slow-cook, goodness. The were black lights, and costumes, and spooky sounds to boot. The night finished with a big ole dance party that devolved into everyone dancing on the furniture. This resulted in one broken kitchen chair, a burning wig in a chandelier, snack carrots ending up in mysterious places, and one skull nearly cracked open. It was all worth.

Sunday mostly involved laying on the couch and recovering from Saturday’s debauchery.

On Tuesday we got the new Tivo hooked up. This thing is absolutely brilliant. It has already started changing the way I watch TV and I haven’t watch a commercial in over a week. Not to mention I have all kinds of great movies lined up that I’ve been waiting to see.

For my birthday, G and I hand bacon cheeseburgers (from my very favorite hamburger shack down the street from us) and champagne for dinner. I am also now a real art owner. G gave me a signed and numbered Audrey Kawasaki print called “Nest Hair”. Number 55 of a limited print of 100. I’m in love with it. It’s one of the coolest gifts I have received in a long time.

Thursday we met my Dad, his wife, my bro, and pandy out for a sushi dinner. Johnny Holly’s has great sushi and fantastic service without the pretentiousness. If you are ever thinking about going to the sushi den, drive ten blocks further south and go to Johnny Holly’s instead. You’ll be glad. If you are hankering for any sort of asian food that isn’t on the menu, just ask for it, and the kitchen will fix it up for you.

Thanks to everyone for making my week be so tremendous.

The Colorado Rockies are entering into the world series for the first time ever tonight. Exciting stuff. I’ll be watching the game and cheering on the Rockies. Will you?

I too am embarrassed and a bit disgusted with how the ticket sales for the Rockies world series home games went (as many of you are). Right now there is no real way to let Rockies management know how disappointed it’s fans are with how the whole thing has been handled. Here is my idea: every Rockies fan boycott next seasons first nationally televised homegame. Simply don’t attend. This will hurt both the rockies managements ego and their pocketbooks. We’ll have to wait for the 2008 schedule to come out before we find out if this game will be opening day or not (if so, plans might need to be changed) but regardless, if enough people do this, it’ll let rockies management know how upset us true rockies fans are. What do you think? Another website to check out is Crashtober if you are interested in trying to do something about it.

In the mean time, go out and root for your favorite team!

Below is a photo I took I took while watching the Rockies win the National League Championship. Also below is a quick video I took of the scene (unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries and I only got about three seconds of video).

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Lots of fun birthday stuff over the past couple of weeks.

The last week in September was the perfect time to go to Elitches. Everybody thinks it’s closed because it only runs on the weekends and none of their Halloween advertising has started yet. Tickets are also extra cheap if you buy them at Safweay. A bunch of us rode roller coasters for five hours in a effort to reclaim our youth. We rode nothing but roller coasters. We rode every single one of them, and most of them twice. We never stood in line for longer than three minutes and always had our choice of carts. I prefer the back. Ride stats are after the jump. Afterwards we hit up Brothers Bar for some birthday drinks and such.

Last weekend I was able to round up a bunch of free tickets to Comedy Works to see Dov Davidoff (youtube link) for another birthday party. He was really funny. His demeanor was a little hard to get used to. He sort of reminded me of my brother with a few cocktails in him. Very funny. And a great evening overall.
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I’m a loser. But today I’m a winner.

I’ll start off by telling you about those that made me a winner today. They’re called “Oh Don Piano”. They’re named after this talking cat’s beautiful poetry. Oh Don Piano consists of Liz and Krista (I love the name of her blog). They’re two really funny and cool women here in Denver. They are also currently one of the few remaining survivors in the third annual Ultimate Blogger competition. Good luck girls!

As part of their competition they held a quiz that focused on blog stuff. I entered that contest. I won that contest. I haven’t decided yet if I’m happy or ashamed of my blog trivia prowess. But I do know that today I’m a winner. But I’m not writing this to brag about my winning (or am I?) but to thank Liz and Krista to for actualizing my wininngness with a prize. Yesterday in my mailbox I found this:

Thanks You Oh Don Piano, you have just provided me with an entire weeks worth of television-style entertainment and are indeed too kind. Thanks for making me feel like a star. I’m consistently surprised (oxymoron) at the generosity and well, just general fun, that the internet provides me.

Yesterday I went to see the new Simpsons movie. Definitely worth my $6.00. But I’m a fan of the Simpson and laughed throughout the entire movie, so my opinion is probably a bit biased. Still, I recommend you go see it. Stay through the credits to hear the Springfield Anthem, afterall, the music is one of the best parts of the Simpsons. In celebration here are some pictures I took a few ago of the 7-11 they turned into a Kwik-E-Mart here in Denver.

The guys down at Westword like to make fun of this security guard for some reason. He actually had a pretty tough job the night I was there, the drunks were out in full force.

By the way, the title to this post is the emoticon for “Homer”.

I guess I’ll try and catch up on some of my recent doings.

Last Friday was opening night for the Denver Roller Dolls. We got some free tickets for donating to Denver Safehouse which, of course, made the event even sweeter. Dang, roller derbies are an absolute blast. It took me a little while (about one and a half periods) to figure out the rules and how the scoring worked but it was fun to watch even when I had no clue what was going on. It was a home team match with the Bad Apples and Green Barrettes facing off against one another. I was rooting for the Bad Apples which was unfortunate as they lost. I remember the roller derby days of the early 1980’s and watching the bouts on late night television and it is so much more fun to watch live

DRD’s two home teams will face off once again in September, and it will be interesting to watch such an even-matched game once again. You should go. Donate to Denver Safehouse regardless. It should also be noted that the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls have a bout against the Pikes Peak Derby Dames (Colorado Springs league, these women look like full-on slamazons. Yikes!) next Saturday.

The Derby Dolls are heavy on the internet which is cool in my book. Just about all of them have a blog or myspace account. Azraelisa and Paisli were a referees on Friday. And Tammytoes retired.

Cassie at Wayward Panties put together a rough & tumble playlist for the bout.