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.

Caught a great Beastie Boys show at Red Rocks last night. I was pretty impressed with the whole crew but it was Mix Master Mike that blew me out of the water. He made each of there songs sound spankin’ new. Even instantly recognized songs like “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” were reworked with different beats to create a song that was fresh yet familiar. You can tell the boys were having a lot of fun and relishing their time on stage and that can really make or break a show to me.

I also forgot to mention I was in Salt Lake last week for business and got to stay at the wonderful Snowbird Cliff Lodge. I also made my first ever visit to an Ikea store. To describe it in a word - overwhelming.

Cirque Du Soleil’s show Corteo was gravity defying amazingness - completely brimming over with incredible acrobatics requiring superhuman coordination.

I have never been to a Cirque show before but I had a bit of an idea of what I was in for and it didn’t let me down, it fact it far exceeded my expectations. This was nice. Basically the show is a rumpus of gymnastics, costumes, emotion, live music, and humor.

Tickets are pretty expensive but worth it and there really isn’t a bad seat in the house. I’m really excited to see love in vegas sometime in the not-too-near future. There are a few youtube clips of favorite acts after the jump.
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These girls are WORKIN’ IT.

I created this video last night. The music is a song called “Zukunft” by Estonian band Fuck Yuo I Am A Robot, which I also discovered while surfing around the web last night. Fuck Yuo I Am A Robot’s newest release “Compensator For The Accelerator” is available for download for free (as in beer) on their website, which, of course, is worth an additional 100 cool points. Their cover art states:

We praise the mp3 for giving the creative mind an opportunity to unleash itself from the established hierarchies of music distribution and bypass spoonfeeding by opinion leaders.

The website also contains a .pdf download of the cover and CD art that actually folds into a sleeve that will protectively hold your newly burnt disk. Anyways, cool music, nice design, and great attitude.

The video is of Gwen Verdon (Cacoon anyone?) shaking it to a dance choreographed by her husband, the talented Bob Fosse. The original dance was choreographed to a song called “Mexican Breakfast” by Pat Williams. As you can see Gwen really knew how to move and Fosse was way ahead of his time. Seriously, did Bob Fosse invent the bootyquake? Now go rent “All That Jazz” and “Caberet”, or just watch these videos.

As a bonus, here are three additional Fuck Yuo I Am A Robot songs courtesy of Jazzotheque:
Fuck Yuo I Am A Robot - Nina Robots That Shoot Laser Beams And Stuff
Fuck Yuo I Am A Robot - The Ride Ripoff
Fuck Yuo I Am A Robot - T.A.T.U. Remix

On Saturday I went to a backyard BBQ/ summer kickoff party. It was a lot of fun. Tons of good grub, and beer, and all you can drink mojitos with fresh crushed mint. It was a little bit of a different crew than I see normally so it was great to mix it up that way too.

Our wonderful hosts booked Gypsy Swing Revue to play for the shindig. Their sound is a throw back to the 30’s and 40’s with large influences from Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli (they played songs by both of these artists), and the like. If you’re so inclined, you can check them out most Wednesday nights at the Snug. It was the perfect music for dancing through a late, sweltering, Denver night. The band was talked into playing till 12:30 in the morning, allowing everyone to get there dancing shoes well greased.

On Friday after work I headed over to My Brother’s Bar to meet up with a few peeps. After a couple of beers I was able to talk everyone into going to my favorite secret bar. I’m not sure why I wanted to take everyone there, I guess because I don’t want to go by myself. When we arrived, G and I climbed the apartment stairs and knocked on the door. I could see the dim bar lights in the small gap of space between the door and it’s jamb. A high pitched woman’s voice screamed from the other side:
“What do you want?”
“We came for a beer.”
“We ain’t open.”
“OK. But we brought Mattie”
Silence.

So my plan was spoiled but I’m not surprised because, as everyone knows, secret bars are only open during weird hours. Anyway, I’m not gonna talk about my secret bar on this blog anymore for fear of other people finding out about it.

Somehow we ended up at the new Quixotes. I hadn’t been to its (semi) new location yet so it was worth checking out. The place was huge. There was free ping pong. We also got to check out a little bit of Great American Taxi. They were all right I guess, just really typical for a place like that. In the back of the place is this tape trading room/smoking lounge. The dude who worked back there was so creepy it was freaked me out a little. G didn’t want to go back there by herself. This guy refused to answer any question I gave him with more than one word, never left his computer station, and never greeted anyone who walked in. He would only engage in conversation (if you can call it that) if someone asked him a direct question. He was probably just too cool for everyone but it sure did come off sort of disturbing. It didn’t stop me from buying a live (Oct. 10th 2003) Ween CD off him though.

It’s been an eventful week. I’ve been up to a lot but don’t really feel like writing about any of it so I’ll just type out some quick highlights. Thursday evening was spent having cocktails in the old neighborhood - it was great for that reminiscing part of my brain. Later we headed over to the Oriental Theater (nice blog, great venue) for this “420″ thing that was a bit of a dud, but a decent cause.

Friday was rough but after work I rallied and met friends over at the Funky Buddha for a bit and then went home to watch movies.

Slept in Saturday and did tons of yard work (hmmm I guess that’s not a highlight). I then went off to a birthday party at Ogden Street South. It was a complete blast. Highlights include karaoke and the soon to be infamous “Nobody calls her that you fucking bitch!” episode. I’m beginning to determine that me and karaoke don’t mix well.

Sunday consisted of a 24 hour long headache (not hangover induced), another birthday celebration at the West End Tavern, and some serious couch time.