My 4th of July weekend started off with a bang! Thursday evening we went to Green Gables country club for our now semi-traditional fireworks viewing. Friday morning started immediately at 9:30 with beer chugging contests for the 3rd annual beer olympics. Pictures of last years beer olympics (aquatic version) can be found somewhere around here. This year’s events consisted of:

The girlfriend and I, appropriately name team “Chugs & Kisses”, came in dead last. Though we did come in a very close second on the Blind Man’s Beer event. After the beer olympics I headed home for a nap while went to pick up friends from the airport. We then went to Dutch’s annual 4th Of July party where we celebrated the night away and overstayed our welcome. This is the party where G and I met so it’s sort of an anniversary of sorts for us.

On Saturday we had an all day BBQ at our house with new, old, and out of town friends. It was a good time. I over cooked the turkey burgers and stayed up way too late.

Sunday I slept. A lot.

Pecha Kucha is a mix of local creatives sharing their work in rapid fire format. Denver’s second run at this fun event will be held will be tonight, Monday, July 14th at Buntport Theater (717 Lipan Street), 8 PM. There is a $5 suggested donation and beer will be on hand.

Pecha Kucha is a mix of local creatives sharing their work in rapid fire format. Denver’s second run at this fun event will be held will be tonight, Monday, July 14th at Buntport Theater (717 Lipan Street), 8 PM. There is a $5 suggested donation and beer will be on hand.The Pecha Kucha Denver website has a good rundown of the presenters.

I suggest you check it out. The previous event was a lot of fun.

Today is July 11th. That means it’s 7-11. And that means it’s free Slurpee day. It is also supposed to get up 99 degrees in Denver today, so the timing couldn’t be better. Take note of the flavors in the store you went to and add it to the SlurpeeFlavors.com Flavor Map. Below is a comprehensive list of current (and past) Slurpee flavors. If you know of a flavor I’m missing, put it in the comments and I’ll add it to the list. Be careful out there kids.

Slurpee Flavors
7-Up
7-Up Green
7-Up Ice
7-Up Tropical
Amp Energy Freeze
Artic Burst
Banana
Banana Split
Black Cherry
Black Pina Colada
Blue Berry Blast
Blue Meanie (Australia Only)
Blue Raspberry Rush
Blue Shock
Blue Vanilla
Blue Woo Hoo! Vanilla
Bruisin’ Berry
Bruisin’ Berry Grape
Bubble Yum
Café Latte
Candy Cane
Cherry Coke
Citrus Splash
Code Red
Coke
Coke Classic
Cotton Candy
Cranberry Sprite
Cream Soda (Barq’s)
Crystal Light Berry Pomegranate (Sugar Free)
Crystal Light Cherry Limeaide (Sugar Free)
Crystal Light Orange Pineapple Ice (Sugar Free)
Crystal Light Passionfruit (Sugar Free)
Crystal Light Peach Mango Fusion (Sugar Free)
Crystal Light Raspberry Ice (Sugar Free)
Crystal Light Strawberry Banana (Sugar Free)
Crystal Light Tangerine Lime (Sugar Free)
Diet Pepsi
Dr. Pepper
Fanta Banana
Fanta Birch Beer
Fanta Blue Cherry
Fanta Blue Raspberry
Fanta Ginger Ale
Fanta Grape
Fanta Green Lemon Lime
Fanta Green Melon
Fanta Kiwi Strawberry
Fanta Mandarin Tangerine
Fanta Orange
Fanta Orange Cream
Fanta Pina Colada
Fanta Pineapple
Fanta Purple Berry Cherry
Fanta Raspberry
Fanta Red Licorice
Fanta Super Sour Apple
Fanta Super Sour Cherry
Fanta Super Sour Watermelon
Fanta Vanilla
Fanta Watermelon
Fanta White Cherry
Fanta Wild Cherry
Fanta Wild Cherry Reduced Calorie
Frawg
French Vanilla
Full Throttle Blue Demon
Full Throttle Frozen Blast
Game Fuel
Grape
Grapefruit
Grapermelon
Green Apple
Gully Washer
Hawaiian Punch
Hawaiian Punch Fruit Juicy Red
Hawaiian Punch Green Berry Rush
Honeycomb
Iced Tea
Jolly Rancher Sour Apple
Kryptonite Ice
Lemonador
Licorice
Lime
Livewire Orange
Mango Bango
Margarita
Mellow Yellow
Minute Maid Blue Cherry
Minute Maid Blue Raspberry
Minute Maid Blueberry
Minute Maid Cherry
Minute Maid Grape
Minute Maid Lemonade
Minute Maid Orange
Minute Maid Passionfruit Orange
Minute Maid Peach
Minute Maid Pineapple
Minute Maid Raspberry
Minute Maid Strawberry
Mocha Chocolate
Monster Black Ice
Mountain Dew
Mountain Dew Blue Lightning/Shock
Mountain Dew LiveWire
Mountain Dew Pitch Black
Orange
Orange-Pineapple
Pepsi
Pepsi Blue
Pepsi Samba
Pina Colada
Pineapple
Pitch Black Grape
Powerade Ice
Purple S-cream
Radiation Rush
Raspberry Crystal Light
Red Cherry
Rootbeer
Rootbeer (Barq’s)
Shrekalicious
Sierra Mist
Slurpucchino
Slurpurita Pomegranate
SnowBawls (Bawls)
Sobe Citrus
Sour Peach
Sour Strawberry
Sour Watermelon
Sprite
Sprite Ice
StawberrWii Banana
Strawberry
Strawberry Banana
Strawberry Cream
Strawberry-Kiwi
Tropical Punch
Tropicana Twister Berry
Twizzlers Strawberry
Vanilla Coke
What-a-melon
Wild Cherry Pepsi

Well WSP at Redrocks this year was once again amazing. They broke the record with more consecutive sellout shows at redrocks than any other band and the Mayor proclaimed Friday as an official Widespread Panic Day. No, seriously.

Here’s a stream of Saturday’s show.

I had a blast. Great company. Perfect weather. Incredible set list. It’s weird cause it seems like I always get a Talking Heads cover. This year it was “Life during Wartime”. The widespread shows are always one of my favorite parties of the year. Instead of bragging about here on Artifacting (too late?), I’ll do like I did last year and let a bunch of other blogs tell you how amazing the show was:

Last Sunday probably wasn’t the last day of the ski season for me. Arapahoe Basin will most likey be open long into the spring (I once skied A-Basin on the 4th of July) and I’m sure I’ll get one last day in there. But Sunday was was the last day to ski for free on our passes. Mary Jane was much more crowded than we expected. The last two weekends have been practically empty but it seems, this time around, everyone had the same idea as us and it ended up being a lot of fun.

The entire place was a giant party/cookout/ski fest. There were at least three bands in the parking lot - a punk band that drew all the young snowboarders, an “old persons band” that rocked out the classics like America’s Sister Golden Hair (One of my many favorite songs from the 70’s), and an acoustic duo that was barely audible above all the party goers.

The entire day was a blast and the whole mountain was going off. We had bluebird skies and weather in the 60’s. We had hot dogs, beer, and a grill. We had enough snow that the chutes were open (see the photo above) and the skiing was nice and heavy and mash-potato-ey at the bottom. Lots of people were dressed up in costumes or bikinis. It was probably one of the more fun days in what was one of the better ski seasons of my life.

PKN vol 1 audience / stage right, originally uploaded by INV/ALT.

Last Friday, me and about 150 other folks went to Denver’s first Pecha Kucha Night. Pronounced “P chalk-a-cha”, and Japanese for “Chit Chat”. Pecha Kucha’s are held in cities from Amsterdam and Auckland to Venice and Vienna. The event was organized by locally by Jaime Kopke, Angela Schwab (both of whom have great blogs that are in my feed-reader, are they in yours?), and Brian Colonna.

The rules of the night, as explained on the official Pecha Kucha website, are as such:

Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each - giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

It’s a a way for architects, designers, artists, writers, and plain-old, ordinary, people to share their work in a concise and rapid fire format. It’s like show and tell for adults, with beer.

It was such a packed house lots of people had to sit on pillows on the floor. And the despite the overload of hipsters in the audience, the presenters were excellent - some of my favorites being Steve Silber’s “Greeting”, Claire Martin read a series of obituaries about interesting but unsung people, Kent Corbell displayed a knew audio frequency that is supposed to fuck with your chakras and make you all emotional (it kinda worked), Andrew Novick talked about his love for pi, and Scot Lefavor was a no-show, maybe next time.

Speaking of next times, the next Pecha Kucha night will be Monday, July 14th. If you want to share your creative project at the next event shoot an email over to pechakuchadenver@gmail.com

The last couple of months have been pretty crazy/amazing/profound. So much has happened that, I’ll probably never remember it all, and truthfully, that doesn’t bother me. In some ways I have a tinge of regret for not having taken the time to write it all down as it happened or shortly there after. If not just so I have it archived somewhere. But in reality, some of it I don’t know how to write about - i don’t have the words to fit the experience. Some of it I don’t care about. And some of it I simply don’t care to remember.

So instead I’m going to cop-out and make a list of some of the major and minor events of the past 10 weeks in no particular order and just leave it at that. I can only hope my life remains as eventful and that I take the time to write about it afterward.

I went to my first honky tonk.
I saw Built To Spill play again.
I’ve been to the hospital three times for three different individuals. Two of them in the emergency room. One fatal.
I met family members I have never met before and most likely will never meet again.
I spent a long weekend at my timeshare in Vail.
I went to a mini-family reunion and ski vacation in Breckenridge.
I suffered through a 150-hour work week.
I took a full week vacation.
A loved one died in my arms. It was probably one of the most weighty and profound experiences in my life to this point.
I did my time in the back of a cop car in Henryetta, Oklahoma.
I had the pleasure of staying in a giant mountain mansion with six bedrooms, four bathrooms, two hot tubs, and ski in ski out access.
My car was hit by a kid who had his drivers license for a measly two days. He ended up totaling his car a week later.
I Was invited over by complete strangers for a mardi gras party/steak dinner.
Somehow fit in about eight days of skiing.
Saw a friend who I haven’t seen since his wedding.
The kitchen remodel was completed.
Mom came to town for a visit.
A few birthday parties were celebrated.
I got fall down drunk with a co-worker.
And lots of other various sundriness and ephemera.

My new friend Mr Lady has challenged me to a battle of the bands. She knows not what righteous force of blood curdling death metal she is dealing with or should would have never made such a dire mistake. The sheer force of Drago Slay’s drums will destroy her eardrums in a sonic assault on the mind. Vlad Drac’s seering vocals will poison her blood stream and corrupt her thoughts till utter destruction is the only action she is capable of. Vgol Shredsalot will rip a hole in eternity with his guitar while vaporizing her soul. And let us not forget Corporal Destructo on bass who’s voluminous weight is only matched by that of the moons of Saturn or his thundering bass. She will be DECIMATED by our new album.

A few things that have recently brought me the Christmas Spirit: