Won't You Take Me To, Rockie Town!

Memorial Day Weekend = Baseball!


So we head off to Coors Field, because it's Memorial Day Weekend, and that means sun, beer and baseball and beer!

Well, cheap, anyway. Section 317 is where they put the VIP's.

Whoa, we had to pause at base camp, then our guide led us up to the NEXT TO THE TOP ROW! Can't, breathe ... gasp. Hey, look, Rock on Sir Edmund!





But look at that view!




Yep, this is MY town!




Proof?

Oh, sure, it's right here.

Rock on.

Oil Storm: NOT the movie

In ancient times, when I had a newspaper job ...

I was a TV critic. I adored this little English TV movie, a fake "real" movie, that came out, "Oil Storm." It was a "what if" story about a bunch of things befalling the oil industry and affecting gas prices. The call this stuff "mockumentary."

My review is here. I love this stuff.

Here's what Wikipedia says, "The crisis finally eases a year after the hurricane, with Port Fourchon back onstream, with oil prices dropping from $130 per barrel to $77 per barrel and with gas prices just below $4 per gallon, but the country has been through a stress as great as the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and will never take cheap oil for granted again."

Uh. Guess what, we're above $130 a barrel. And this flick never saw the growing Indian demand, the decrease in Mexican capacity and the refinery shortage. And it wasn't made in the '80s. It premiered in 2005. Three years ago.

Oil Storm.

DU Rocks!

It's May Days, music fest on campus!

So, after catching a lecture on chemical inventions and NO2, etc., I stroll across campus to catch some rockin' roll. Here's the Flobots, making a big national spalsh with the hiphop hit "Handlebars" and appearing on Carson Daly. I'm not really into hiphop, but I do love the viola. Yep, rap and viola!

And my guys, The Kinetix, who hoo, rock and roll. That's Josh and his hair. We've got tix to see them again Friday night at the Bluebird. Dude, they wail. Seriously.

I said hey to the guys after the show. They're very cool with the old guy in the blue blazer at a rock show (that'd be me) and even got a how do ya do from someone in the audience, rocker Randy Ramirez from another fave act, The Heyday. Rock on guys!

Watching Other People Play Sports?

Well then, let me get you some lard ...

Local paper, The Rocky Mountain News, held a contest for fans of the local triple a ball club, the Colorado Rookies, to come up with the perfect snack to enjoy during the game.

Vegan chili? Some celery sticks? Fruit? Peanuts and Cracker Jacks? (120 calories, 2g fat)

Uh, no. Thanks anyway.

Here's the winning entry:

Colorado Rockies Blue Cheese Chips: Parmesan cheese sauce scooped over kettle-style potato chips and sprinkled with blue cheese and bacon.

This horror will be served at Rookies concession stands, because what says "athleticism" more than fried potatoes smothered in cheese sauce and pork? Ahh, that's how I like my parmesan cheese: "Scooped."

Shoes Life ...

Arg, shoes cost money ...

But my trusty Vasques have some kind of seam in the heel that gives me a blister on the side of the heel. This last time was by 25 miles, can't have that in a 100.

So I pulled the trigger on a new pair of chooze! Goodness, they're purty!

Brooks Cascadia. They are light and comfy. The one drawback is one of my biggest peeves: Crappy Toe Bumper. I liked the Vasques because I could pretty much kick a building and not feel it. These? They're going to cost me some toenails.

But I figure they're strictly aimed at the Western States. And for that sandy, smooth trail, they should do the job.

"I know they can get the job, but can they do the job? .... I'm not arguing that."

Holabird Sports online, $76, no postage. And a neat shade of RED!!

Mmmm, Colorado!

I saw fox on the way home from school ...

No, I was the one coming home from school. I think the fox was coming back from the gym.

Mmm. Spummer in Colorado (Spring + Summer) not really either season, but warm, in the 80s, and sunny and dry. And the grass turned green and the leaves came out pretty much all at once, and driving home from class tonight, a gray fox (not a Foxy Brown) trotted across the street in front of me, in the middle of the city.

And then it trotted off between a couple houses. It was nice. Going to sit on the balcony now and enjoy a ceegar.

Worst Movie Ever ...

"Awful" has a new name ...



For decades, we joked about the "worst movie ever." Was it Ed Wood's master work, Plan Nine From Outer Space? Heaven's Gate? Ishtar? (Hey, I actually liked Ishtar!)

Oh, no, my friend. It is the new Indiana Jones flick, Indiana Jones and the something about a Crystal Skull. I just saw a sneak peek.

Oh, sweet Jeebus. This movie made NO sense and burned through millions in pointless special effects, interesting no one. The dialogue is silly, the premise involves space aliens (seriously, space aliens), and there's a 40-minute car chase through the jungle where they were just trying to cut a road, and then, when the road cutting things gets blowed up (bing! special effects) they just keep roaring through the jungle at top speed, where the hell did the road come from? Not to mention the fist fights (about 72 percent of the movie is fist fights), and Harrison Ford looks positively annoyed.

Meanwhile, John Hurt gamely channels Geoffrey Wilkonson's portrayal of Ben Gunn in the 1955 version of Treasure Island, Cate Blanchette plays a soviet spy who either wants to steal the alien's skull to use as a mind control weapon or plot the demise of Moose and Squirrel, and the key to the aliens' secret vault is a dead alien's skull. Who makes a door that opens with the skull of your dead relative?

There are too many crimes against moviedom to list here. Trust me, this movie stinks. Do not waste your money. It's really terrible.

Snowman, You Got Your Ears On?

'Cause this here's The Bandit!

Yep, taking yet another stand against The Man, I declined the invitation to pay more than $100 to run on my own city streets.

So I stuck an old race number on my leg, and hopped in to the Colfax Marathon, whoo hoo! I'm a bandit!

Not a bad course, but certainly not worth no C-Note, much of it is in a commercial part of town, so you're running past Wal-Hell and McKillya, and then it loops through an industrial park, like big steel buildings and stuff. But parts of it are cool, too, we ran around a pretty lake and through the skyscrapers downtown.

I ducked out of the race and into the crowd just before the finish line, then walked up to the finish line in stealth mode, so I could say I did the whole thing. Took my time, felt fine throughout, 4:10. Not my fastest, but fast enough. And a fun way to get in a long run.

As the wife, "Saralee," says: "So you've decided to steal marathons."

Jeeze, when you put it that way ... "What we're dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law"

And not a bad run, seeings how I had a ton of beer Saturday night, along with this giant buffalo burger, modeled here by "Saralee." Yep, nothing I like better than hopping out of bed at 4:30 a.m. still woozy from a gazillion brewskis and a giant chunk of meat. Mmm.

Declare we won, pull out ...

Ladies and Gentlemen: Gen. George Armstrong McCain ...

This just in from the Associated Press ...

"COLUMBUS, Ohio - Republican John McCain declared for the first time Thursday he believes the Iraq war can be won by 2013, although he rejected suggestions that his talk of a timetable put him on the same side as Democrats clamoring for full-scale troop withdrawals.

The Republican presidential contender, in a mystical speech that also envisioned Osama bin Laden dead or captured, and Americans with the choice of paying a simple flat tax or following their standard 1040 form, said only a small number of troops would remain in Iraq by the end of a prospective first term because al-Qaida will have been defeated and Iraq's government will be functioning on its own ...

"It's not a timetable; it's victory. It's victory, which I have always predicted. I didn't know when we were going to win World War II; I just knew we were going to win," McCain said.

"The Vietnam veteran added: "I know from experience, you set a day for surrender — which is basically what you do when you say you are withdrawing — and you will pay a much a heavier price later on."

.... So: We learn with Gen. McCain at the helm, we won't be losing, and we'll only be slogging through Iraq for best case scenario 5 more years. And you gotta love how this reporter took a few digs, calling his speech "mystical" and immediately referencing Vietnam when McCain invoked WWII.

BTW, didn't WW II only take, like, five years or something?