You are not interesting or funny. A week old carcass scooped off the road with a snow shovel, sprinkled with organic garnish and served in a trailer is not a meal. It’s a misdemeanor. I am not opposed to eating meat, either. I will consume just about anything that has the misfortune of being below me on the food chain. I am just opposed to eating something whose time of death exceeds its time of refrigeration. And please stop calling yourself an artist. You are not. You are the annoying, alternative, Wiccan priestess, solstice-worshipping, patchouli-stink girl I sat next to in college who claimed to be an art major because you shit out 13 variations of the same Grateful Dead dancing bears painting in one semester. Real artists label themselves “artists”. Insecure girls who work full-time at Kenny Shoes and volunteer once a month at the community center teaching children art classes call themselves “Nomadic Shamanic Artists”.
Link Goodness
- How hot dogs are made. Just look at that delicious vat of leftover blended meat pastes dipped in smoke flavor!
- 8-Bit Jesus is a Christmas album that features classic tracks done in the style of different Nintendo game’s soundtrack. My personal favorite is “The Legend Of Noel.”
- Face. Just. Melted.
Pregnant Wife Link Goodness
- Fetal Bites: America’s number one fetus cookie cutter. Upon purchase I foresee Scottish Shortbread fetus cookies in my future.
- A giant pregnant anaconda is slain. Seeing all those dead anaconda babies strewn about gave me a Temple of Doom vibe as opposed to a JLo/Ice Cube vibe.
- A preview of Steven Colbert’s “Another Christmas Song.” Colbert has a decent voice and I am guessing the album will kitschy and mildly entertaining ranking somewhere between Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics and The Star Wars Christmas Album (the latter of which I owned on vinyl in my youth).
Link Goodness
- Confessions of a naked sushi model. Surprisingly, combining nudity and sushi do not make my balls rise in the least.
- RoboCop Unicorn. Dig the hotness. One of the best things I have linked to since Johanna’s Art Inspired by Stevie Nicks.
- A list of Manic Pixie Dream Girl characters from popular culture. I may have married Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Read this description and judge for yourself: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is stunningly attractive, high on life, full of wacky quirks and idiosyncrasies, and inexplicably obsessed with our stuffed-shirt hero, on whom she will focus her antics until he learns to live and love.
Barbecue For Jesus
DJ: Jesus in French fry format.
Me: The Son of God looks delicious!
DJ: Willy Porter does a song called “Jesus on the Grill” but he is talking about the grill of a truck…
Me: …not a grill with a rack of ribs?
DJ: Right.
Me: Brings a whole new meaning to transubstantiation. I took a lot of communion as a young indoctrinated Catholic and if Jesus tasted like a brisket and French fries? I might not have strayed so far from the church.
DJ: “I am hungry! When is church?”
Me: Totally.
DJ: You could tell how good the barbecue was at a church by the size of the congregation.
Me: We could start the Church of the Holy Barbecue.
DJ: Or at the very least a restaurant called A Religious Experience.
Me: Where all the wait staff is dressed like Jesus during the crucifixion and instead of blood they are slathered in…
DJ: …barbecue sauce?
Me: Yes! They slap down a pork sandwich in front of you and say, “The swine of Christ.”
DJ: Ha!
Me: Oh man. I just had a really fucked up thought. Have a guy dressed up as Abraham, give him a sacrificial knife and have him bring a newborn baby out to a table. Just when he gets ready to slaughter the baby have the Mexican kitchen manager yell from the back of the restaurant (like the voice of God), “No Mas!” Then Abraham picks up the baby all nurturing and loving and says to the patrons, “Only kidding! Have some more brisket!”
DJ: Wow. You are right. That was fucked up.
The Memorial Day Weekend That Was
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.
Straight Grubbin’
One downfall of the new office location is the lack of decent eateries. Despite the area being redeveloped into the fancy new architecture/design district, we are still surrounded by industrial warehouses and old cement factories that closed during the Carter Administration. Our immediate food options include two McDonalds gas station annexes, a Quiznos and a strip mall Mexican joint that does not deserve to be named. These past few days we have been venturing into nearby Five Points as it provides places to eat that specialize in food rather than Coors. For those unfamiliar, Five Points is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Denver that is renowned for its jazz history, its rich black heritage and its high crime rates (or perception thereof). Today, upon Jake’s recommendation, we rolled up on Tom’s Home Cookin’ for some soul food. I ordered the fried chicken, mashed potatoes, collard greens and corn bread and am still wallowing in its delicious glory. My boss was rendered speechless by the peach cobbler and proclaimed upon regaining his facilities that our future intern would soon be making afternoon cobbler runs. The best part of the dining experience came after the meal when we walked back to the car and caught the chef sharpening his butcher knife on a curb in the parking lot.
Unemployment Round Up
My third week of unemployment will include two web design job interviews; one in the heart of downtown Denver which is a block off the 16th Street Mall and the city’s main bus depot (I’m all about the public transportation) and one a few blocks away from Govnr’s Park which has amazing happy hour beers and a Slider Basket that would make Wimpy cry (the Won Ton Juans are equally as glorious). Keep your fingers crossed that one of these interviews will pan out before my severance runs dry and we will be subsisting only on a meager public school teacher’s income. The wife has yet to wear tattered clothing and babble incomprehensible phrases while standing over a barrel fire, but I can assure you that that time is nigh, my friends. Onto an unemployed artist’s browser history:
- Wedding cake in the form of the Great A’Tuin.
- Jimmy Dean chocolate chip pancakes and sausage; on a stick. I just threw up in my mouth a little.
- Colorado Avalanche season preview.
Boise: The Jewel Of The Gem State
The future wife and I spent the past few days in the bustling metropolis of Boise, Idaho. We visited with grandparents, caught some early bird specials (unfortunately Perkins was one of said early bird specials), attended an Idaho Steelheads game and walked around Hyde Park, Boise State and the downtown area. All you need to know about big happenings in Boise is that they usually revolve around the P.F. Changs.
Clown Girl
A bulleted list on what bothers me about this video:
- A clown can be sexually arousing.
- An advertising professional going by the nickname Kazoo.
- Den Fujita, the first McDonald’s Japan president, waxing on diet and skin color: “The reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skins is because they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for 2000 years. If we eat McDonald’s hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years we will become taller, our skin become white and our hair blond.”
I have just three words for McDonald’s Japan: Giant McSquid Sandwich.