chili dog, denver, drinking, drugs, glory days, kaye, l-i-v-i-n, music, sg crew, sports, the greens, weekend that was, wife

The Weekend That Was

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Friday. The wife and I attend the 2008 Punk Rocks show at Red Rocks. The band lineup includes NOFX, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Bouncing Souls, Street Dogs and young Denver skate punks Frontside Five (the Circle Jerks are a no-show). I soon recognize how old I am when I breeze through beer lines in mere minutes. I soon learn that new punk kids like smoking weed way more than old punk kids. NOFX, Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Bouncing Souls are still awesome. The Street Dogs are the opposites of awesome due to an hour and a half set and a fifteen minute dissertation on who the Ramones are and why they are so important to punk music. The only way to make their set less cliche would have be for the lead singer to not remove his shirt before his Ramones tribute song only to reveal a strategically planned Ramones shirt underneath. I conclude that six hour concerts and $7 beers are not nearly as fun in my thirties as they were in my twenties.

Saturday. Enter the annual neighborhood pool luau. We represent a respectable drinking crew and my next door neighbor’s classic rock cover band melts faces. Our HOA is awesome because they allow (tolerate) my next door neighbor to wheel an ice-cold keg over to the pool to serve free beer. I soon realize that inflatable monkeys cannot sustain the belly-flop weight of a grown man from a diving board. Post-luau we torch a fire in the backyard pit and the wife provides ingredients for ‘smores. Three people fall asleep in their chairs. I conclude that staying up late and drinking until intoxication two nights in a row is not nearly as fun in my thirties as it was in my twenties.

Sunday. My annual fantasy football draft goes down in the living room. Being as this is the fifteenth year of my league’s existence and the same team owners have been in said league for the past six years, I expect the draft to take no more than two hours. Four hours and eight cases of beer later, the draft concludes after much humor, animosity and stupidity (this sums up my fantasy football league perfectly: upon the draft’s conclusion one team owner loudly proclaimed, “I have to get going. I am late for marriage counseling.”) Steak, potatoes and a gigantic apple pie from Costco are then decimated in less than twenty minutes. I conclude that sports gambling and NFL football viewing are not nearly as fun in my thirties as they were in my twenties.

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chili dog, dj, drinking, family, food, gluttony, health, kaye, l-i-v-i-n, movies, pop culture, the greens, weekend that was, wife

The Memorial Day Weekend That Was

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Friday. The wife and I attend a homemade rib bonanza at Team Muff’s house where we drain shitty Mexican beer and play a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit 90s Edition. Proof that we have all turned into our parents: we began questioning the “correctness” of card answers and commenting on how staying up until 11:30 seemed “late.”

Saturday. The wife and I attend a barbecue at DJs which we learn upon walking into his house is actually his birthday party. The wife gets angry at me for not knowing it was his birthday (even though it was on the Evite) and I explain to her that knowing when your guy friends birthday is is totally gay, and if I bought a gift for him we would have to move in together and begin re-decorating his house in the finest tapestries and velvets. I down a homemade chili beer that I regret four hours later, eat some swine and watch some UFC fighting. The wife and I decided to duck out early to get some sleep. When we arrive back at home, Team Hofkamp stops over with a twelve pack of shitty Mexican beer and cigarettes. We hang out in our backyard for an hour until my neighbor invites us over the fence to share in his raging backyard chimenea fire and more shitty Mexican beers and cigarettes. Four hours and eight beers later, we go to bed.

Sunday. The wife and I walk over to the movie multiplex to catch the new Indiana Jones joint. On the way, we stop to view the recently dedicated (but unfinished) Armed Forces Tribute Garden. We grab a burger and some Lumpy Dogs at the Rock Bottom Brewery before watching yet another abortion written by George Lucas. Why do you hate me George Lucas? Aliens and UFOs? Shia LaBeouf as some sort of 1950s hood with a Pompadour and switchblade swinging on vines with monkeys? Next thing you know, you will be telling me that the force is some kind of blood disorder. Oh. Right.

Monday. The wife, myself and 52,000 other people run the Bolder Boulder under the cover of cool mist and fog. My back (almost fully healed from the bulged disc) feels great and I finish in just over an hour. We retire to the homestead for a much needed shower and nap. Later we attend two more Memorial Day barbecues that feel like autumn barbecues due to the inclement weather. I play ping pong. I play foosball. I play 3-square with a beer in my hand. I go to sleep wishing I celebrated three day weekends more often.

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chili dog, colorado, hockey, jake, nels, sports, unemployment

In The Lap Of Luxury Boxes

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Last night I watched the Avs home opener from a luxury suite at the Pepsi Center (the boys lost to the Stars 2-3 in OT). The old man, Jake, Nels and Aaron were also in attendance. My pops was responsible for the hook up as he procured the tickets through assorted work connections. The suite came equipped with a private bathroom, assorted domestic beers, food platters, period-by-period stat sheets and a computer with internet connection. Our luxurious time was surrounded by famous radio personalities with fake cans (Clear Channel suite next door), one drunk fan trying to start an “AVS RULE!” cheer (seats below us) and silver bucket of ice, Coors products and sunshine. The life of an unemployed artist is glamorous and fulfilling.

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chili dog, kaye, mons, nels, wife, xmas

Xmas 2005: Epilogue

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The future wife and I have been wallowing in our own filth and muscular atrophy (Read: on vacation). When presented with the choice of showering, posting to the MB or watching three-star movies on cable television for the past three days, we have been going for the latter. Here is an incomplete list of the Christmas booty I tallied this year:

  • New golf bag.
  • Dark brown Donnie Brasco leather jacket.
  • Assorted sweaters not of the seasonal print and Cosby design variety.
  • Assorted button down shirts of the striped, metrosexual variety.
  • Colorado Avalanche hooded sweatshirt that will magically fix the team’s goaltending woes and teach Patrice Brisebois how to play defense.
  • The books Freakonomics, Teacher Man, Angels and Demons, Slapstick, His Excellency and Idiots At Work.

I will not be posting any 2005 retrospectives that include major news events, major life changing events, places I traveled to, New Years resolutions and any other end of the year bullshit cliches that populate most blogs. I will be spending the upcoming New Year holiday playing in an ice hockey tournament and toasting warm Canadian Hunter with a hirsute family member, his wife, Mister and Misses Chili Dog, Monica, her pretty boyfriend Matt and my beautiful future wife.

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chili dog, drinking, nels, open letter, summer

An Open Letter To Nels Re: The Horsehoe Pit

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With our stomachs full of barbecue and cheap domestic beer, we made our way to the southernmost area of your backyard to throw horseshoes this Monday last. We defeated the Chili Dog and Nebraska Sally four times in a five game set. I urge you to revisit the exhilaration of our matches in your mind, recalling how we were hurling the shoes with pinpoint accuracy and standing on a cloud amongst the horseshoe gods. Now, envision feeling these thrills all summer long; the faint clanging sounds of horseshoes finding their mark, the soft flame of Tiki torches and citronella candles flickering along the border of the pit, the drunken banter of gentlemen poking fun of their opponents penis sizes and abnormal birth defects, the classic rock anthems being played loudly from outdoor speakers and most importantly, the beer; the endless cans of cold beer wet with condensation that we suckle from like swaddling babes from their mother’s teat. I understand that your wife wants a garden where we throw the horseshoes. May I remind you that the most successful marriages are those in which couples make compromises (may I also remind you that I was the best man at your wedding, perhaps the most important day of your life, entrusted with the safekeeping of your betrothed’s ring, delivering an emotional toast at the reception and holding a handful of cash during the dollar dance without stealing any of it) and in which case I have a compromise for you and your wife. Plant her garden in between the stakes, while we raise the back of the horseshoe pit up with landscaping boxes and fill said boxes with sands from the various deserts of Asia Minor. I will gladly help with any labor that becomes of this endeavor because we need this horseshoe pit. We deserve this horseshoe pit.

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boise, career, chili dog, data slaughterhouse, denver, how design, kaye, travels, vegas, wife

Brozovich World Tour ’04

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For the next two weeks I will be going on tour like a trashy hair metal band in 1988. Early tomorrow morning, my lady and I are off to San Diego where we will walk on the beach, eat fresh sea bass, patronize the new Padres stadium, visit the San Diego Zoo, watch a live donkey show in Tijuana and drink our body weight in margaritas. Sunday night, my lady flies back to Denver and I will stay in the OC for the 2004 HOW Design Conference. The HOW Design Conference lasts three days and I will be attending sessions, chilling with my old boss Michael and last year’s partner in crime Scott from Minnesota (who won a free pass to the event and will be crashing in my room, assuring me he will not go all Fear and Loathing up in that bitch) and kicking it California gangsta style by the pool with chocolate honeys and bottles of Courvoisier.

After the HOW Design Conference wraps up, I will be catching an afternoon flight to Las Vegas where my good friends Kaye and Aaron will be getting married. I will be staying in Sin City for one night, winning big at various gaming tables and drinking free watered-down whiskey as I insult professional card dealers for giving me trash.

I arrive back in Denver Thursday evening, only to catch a plane to Boise, Idaho the following morning. In a state that is synonymous with potatoes and the white power movement, I will be attending my lady’s grandfather’s 95th birthday celebration.

On Sunday, May 23, I finally make my way home to Denver exhausted and battered from almost two weeks of traveling where I plan on crawling into my king size bed and sleeping until Armageddon.

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/mark, birthday, chili dog, colorado, drinking, hockey, johnny ballgame, kaye, mons, the fairways, weekend that was, wife

The Weekend That Was

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Friday. It is my birthday so I take the day off. I wake up, make some scrambled eggs and bacon and watch Clash of the Titans on the digital cable. My sort of lady and I play nine holes of golf. My sort of lady gives me clothes and candles that smell like pumpkin musk. We crack a Michelob Ultra and toast to my 28th year. After killing three Michelob Ultras each, My sort of lady and I realize that Michelob Ultras go down very smooth. My sort of lady departs to get ready for birthday festivities at Old Chicago. Kaye, Aaron and Johnny Ballgame stop by to check out the town home improvements. We leave for the pub where I drink the night away with family and friends, consuming only two shots (thanks to Monica and an old high school friend Rachel). For the first time in three years of birthday celebrations, I do not wind up face down in some skeezy parking lot in downtown Denver dry heaving on a tree.

Saturday. My sort of lady and I drive to Redstone (20 miles outside of Glenwood Springs) to attend the wedding of a childhood friend she has not talked to in six months. I soon find out why my sort of lady does not talk to aforementioned friend (the term bourgeois princess comes to mind.) Together, we know a total of three people at the wedding. We sit at our table and drink ourselves half blind. I begin to spin yarns to the gullible and uppity wedding guests. My best story begins when someone at the table asks me, “How long have you and your wife been together?” I reply “Six long years,” and then proceed to tell them how we met on the frozen sea ice of Antarctica where we were both studying botany and the psychoactive effects of blue-green algae on the human brain. I am sure to include my harrowing smack addiction and how my wife supported me through the dark times when I brought home filthy drug addicts to fuck and spike the vein with in our basement. I conclude the story with, “I am going to get a drink, anybody want one?” (I told you I am good at weddings.) My sort of lady and I dance. On the drive back to Denver, my sort of lady falls asleep somewhere near Glenwood Springs. She wakes up when I nudge her pulling into our town home complex. She stretches and proclaims, “That drive was so short.” I drove three hours in solitude.

Sunday. My sort of lady and I go for an early morning run as a pre-emptive strike against the assault our digestive tracts will face during the birthday celebration at my parents house. We arrive at my folks shortly after one in the afternoon and are presented with heaping plates of food. On the menu is stuffed shells (shell pasta filled with ricotta cheese and covered in homemade spaghetti sauce) and peach pie. My sisters get me candles that smell like vanilla musk, a candle holder (I begin to think the women in my life called forth a candle conspiracy for my 28th year) and a gift certificate to Old Navy. My parents float me duckets and two books: Ortho’s Home Improvement Encyclopedia and Techniques of the Great Masters of Art. We then head back to my sort of lady’s house and I fix her screen door and hang some mirrors on her walls. I play in a late hockey game and receive my first ever game misconduct penalty. Much like Claude Lemieux after boarding Kris Draper in 1996 and destroying his face, I stand by the hit.

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/mark, chili dog, colorado, data slaughterhouse, diy, drinking, gay joe, geekery, hockey, jake, kaye, l-i-v-i-n, lesbians, mons, nels, sg crew, sports, tyler, wedding, weekend that was

The Weekend That Was

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Friday. Work late to complete a corporate Flash presentation that nobody will pay attention to. After work, I play in a coed softball game where my team wins 26-4 and the opposing team’s third baseman catches a ground ball with her face and breaks her nose. Immediately following the game a torrential downpour ensues and I sprint to my car leaving my glove on the field. I roll to Tyler’s house and play College Football with the Slushy Gutter Crew. At one point in the evening Tyler pours me either a glass of bourbon, scotch, or whiskey. I drink it and proceed to kick his ass with Virginia Tech 30-14. On the way home I realize that I left my mitt on the softball field.

Saturday. I attend my company picnic and run the corporate Flash presentation I put in long hours over. Surprisingly, people pay attention, laugh and tell me good job. After the presentation the picnic continues at a nearby park with a luau theme and a pig roasting. I eat heaping platefuls of swine and mingle with coworkers. Jake, Gay Joe and I make fun of some pasty kid trying to play football. We call him “Mary” and giggle like the dickheads we are. Joe tells us about his homosexual encounters the previous evening. Hula dancers many years past their prime shake their asses for our amusement. I volunteer to dance with them, throwing my inhibitions into the wind like Kevin Bacon in Footloose. I perform a dance with pom-poms and hip gyrations. I win the grand prize in the company raffle (a $200 gift certificate to the Flagstaff House). After the picnic, I attend a lesbian wedding with Monica, Kaye, Aaron, Nels and Kerry. We quickly become the obnoxious drunk table at the reception. A plant is passed around and the recipient of said plant gives a toast. A diverse blend of people wishes the couple well including a militant lesbian with an attitude problem and a sexual predator with disheveled hair holding a kid that liked to hit people in the face. I share my toast with the happy couple, lifting my glass and saying, “Here’s to eating pussy.” They laugh hysterically. I love the lesbians and wish them the best. We roll to Monica’s crib for a nightcap. I discover Kaye does not like playing drinking games with me. Monica informs me she picked up my softball glove up after our game. This makes me happy.

Sunday. I wake up at noon with a screaming hangover. I pour a glass of water and take ibuprofen. I watch Panic Room on digital cable. I drink a glass of water. I make a trip to Home Depot to buy some sandpaper and steel wool. I drink a glass of water. I strip paint for four hours. I drink three glasses of water. My Mom calls and invites me to dinner. I drink a glass of water. I drive to my parents house and eat spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner. We discuss home improvement. I go home to play a game of College Football. Colorado State beats Wyoming 21-3. Nels picks me up for our hockey game. I tally a hat trick and an assist. I drink seven glasses of water. Mark throws a shoe at Nels’s face. I come home and take a shower. I go to sleep. If anyone asks me what I did this weekend, I will say, “Nothing.”

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