Kaye: I never did Whipits but I can tell you that Whipits would not be my drug of choice. I would probably choose cocaine. Seems the most respectable of all the drugs.
Me: Agreed. Meth is too white trash and destructive. Heroin is too involved. You need spoons. Cotton balls. Needles. Basically, you need a kit to get high.
Kaye: I don’t want a kit. That’s for a professional junkie. I want to get high quickly.
Me: Yep. All I want a is a dollar bill and a mirror. Or a hooker’s ass.
Kaye: Nice.
Me: Whores and strippers go better with coke, anyway.
Kaye: Totally.
Me: I like a drug I can do in the guise of taking a piss, too. “I have to take a piss”. Go into the bathroom. Take a snort. Flush the toilet. Bam! Go back out and party.
Kaye: Ha!
Me: Heroin is all about the setup. You need some time. An abandoned stairwell. Or a urine soaked mattress in a vacant lot somewhere.
Kaye: You have really thought about this.
Me: It’s what I do.
A Different Kind Of Playhouse
Kaye: I have a playhouse that I bought for a friend’s kid for Christmas and she doesn’t want it. Interested?
Me: Maybe. What does it look like?
Kaye: It’s this thing.
Me: The Discovery Kids Playhouse?
Kaye: Yeah.
Me: I’ll tell what I would discover in that thing. My son touching himself.
Kaye: Nice.
The MB Transitions Into Obscurity
When I started the MB back in 2000, my original intent was to showcase my resume and minuscule design portfolio. I had just made the transition from print design to web design and thought the purchase of the domain name would motivate me to learn more about designing and maintaining websites. It did.
In 2002, the MB transitioned from a professional showcase to a personal one. I started posting about all manner of nonsense, because, in case you have not realized by now, I have a lot to say about a lot of shit. In 2002 there was no Facebook. No Twitter. No MySpace. No news feeds. It actually took some doing to track down links and write about them. I was happy to do this because my job was mind-numbing and management at the data slaughterhouse had no idea what the hell I was up to. Soon, links, emails and IMs started flooding in from the likes of Jake, Michael, DJ, Kaye, Monica, CH, Gay Joe and Mark. Boredom loves company? I was happy to be posting regularly as it fueled my passion for creativity in ways that my career was not.
Enter Broz Design in November 2008 and my posting to the MB fizzling out. Maybe its because I am fulfilled professionally? Or because I would rather hang out with my kid than waste my time posting about a guy that got fucked to death by a horse? Or maybe it is time to take the MB into a new direction? I go with the latter. I have always dreamed about writing the Great American Novel but am no closer to that goal than I was last year. My New Years resolution for 2010 is to start using the MB to focus more on actually writing a book and get some ideas out into the ether. It may not lead to anything other than me doing what I have been wanting to do for some time and that is fine. It is not like you want to read about a horse fucking a guy to death, anyway. Right?
The Bedroom Community For The Fourth Reich
Kaye: We met everyone before the trip at our friend’s house in Highlands Ranch. The Exterra looked out of place around all the Audis and Beemers.
Me: Fucking Highlands Ranch. A girl I used to work with told me she grew up in Highlands Ranch. I told her, “No wonder why you are so boring.” Living on streets named Wildcat Aspen Lane or Wild Mountain River Court or Bobcat Sunset Honeydew Boulevard.
Kaye: All the houses look the same, too.
Me: We went to my cousin’s poker tournament down there awhile back. “Our house is the sage green house on the left side.” Oh really? EVERY OTHER HOUSE WAS FUCKING SAGE GREEN. One house is brown, then ecru then sage green. Repeat until you want to rip your eyes out of your skull.
Kaye: Ha! It’s the crazy homeowners associations down there. Our friend had to have a shade of gray approved before she painted her house.
Me: Jesus, is it 1938 Russia down there? All bleak and ubiquitous? Motherfuckers waiting in line for toilet paper?
Kaye: Nice.
Me: Actually, that’s not fair. They are probably waiting in line for a Starbucks latte. Or some trendy plates from Crate and Barrel.
The Weekend That Was
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.
Hippy On Fire
Kaye: Where are you working from today?
Me: A coffee shop in Boulder. I am meeting with a vendor this morning and he chose this joint.
Kaye: Nice.
Me: I cannot wait to be an old man at a coffee shop. These codgers are sitting next to me and have been talking about the weather for the past hour.
Kaye: With their newspapers and their sweater vests?
Me: Well it is Boulder, so gray beards, flannel shirts…
Kaye: …and some LL Bean khaki pants?
Me: Right. And instead of a regular newspaper they are reading an alternative paper. Something that bashes Republicans and the “establishment.”
Kaye: God. Old Boulder dudes.
Me: They are not even cool old dudes wearing a Fedora, walking all slow and talking about losing their buddies during the WW-deuce.
Kaye: Ha! They are just old Hippies. The worst kind of Hippy.
Me: Yes. Because they are old enough to know that their peace-loving, cheeba-smoking rhetoric does not work anymore.
Kaye: Totally. You know what looks good on a Hippy?
Me: Blood?
Kaye: No. Fire.
Me: Even better.
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.
Let’s Get Physical
I was just informed by Team Hofkamp that the following video was playing at a neighborhood CB & Potts this past Friday during the family allotted dining hour.
You made that family dinner hour your bitch, CB & Potts.
New Years Hangover
The wife and I spent the Christian New Year within stumbling distance from the house by slogging it to a party in a foot and half of ice, slush and snow with a backpack full of booze. We welcomed in 2007 with burnt pizza, shots of Jack Daniels, warm Squirt chasers and countless games of Guitar Hero (Kaye and I rocked in 2007 with a head-to-head ax battle of Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” neither of us caring that it was past midnight). On New Year’s Day we invited the in-laws over to watch the Fiesta Bowl in High Definition and eat sweetened swine. Three native Idahoans were in the house as Boise State upset Oklahoma in overtime to go undefeated on the season and wreak havoc on BCS voting. Swept up in the heat of the win, famed running back and crochet master knitter Ian Johnson proposed to his girlfriend. In other news, Jessica Alba throws a football in a bikini.
Britney’s Crowning Glory
Me: Britney’s birthing statue from the back end.
Kaye: Why? Why would anyone do that? That is so disgusting.
Me: I think they should have made it interactive, like the fetus shooting out of the womb or something.
Kaye: Sick.
Me: The fetus dives back into the birth canal to get its Cheetoes and cigarettes. Then it shoots back out to become a terrible back up dancer that thinks it can rap. Finally, it goes back in to find its fleeting youth and shoes so it does not get hepatitis from walking barefoot across a public bathroom floor.
Kaye: Ha!