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.

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

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!

Labels: im convos, kaye, pop culture

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 (see second gangster from the left directly above Bruno Kirby).
  
• 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.

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

Everybody loves kittens because they are cute, lovable and affectionate. It is tragic that they cannot stay kittens forever. Well they can I suppose, but I meant without stuffing them into a bottle and super gluing their asses shut.

Update: The Bonsai Kitten is an obvious hoax so rest easy future wife and Kaye. I just could not resist the golden opportunity for a super-glued cat's ass joke.

Labels: kaye, kitty, tomfoolery, wife

Me: Too bad Dubya didn't crack his stupid head open when he wrecked on that mountain bike. He just irritates me, is all.
Kaye: They all irritate me.
Me: Yeah.
Kaye: I am voting for Bush.
Me: I am voting for Kerry. Bush's daughters are hot, though, and they could be showing their twats to the American voter sometime soon. That could sway me.
Kaye: Ha! I could see them doing that.
Me: This is how I vote, Kaye. I weigh the important issues.
Kaye: Yes, Matt. Bush is quirky and I like that about him. I like his dumbness. It keeps me amused. I will read a story about him and shake my head. Crazy George.
Me: Yeah, but Kerry killed some people in the 'Nam, Kaye.
Kaye: True.
Me: I like Bush's wife more than Kerry's, though. She reminds me of a lonely, alcoholic Southern belle in a doomed marriage. For some reason, that makes me happy. I can just imagine how inappropriate she is when her daughters bring home some college beefcake for Thanksgiving Break. She comes stumbling into the living room blasted out of her mind with a martini in her hand, full of prescription drugs, hair all disheveled and loudly proclaims, "You boys want me to take off my shirt for money?"
Kaye: Ha! Goddamn. We are fucked up.
Me: Yes we are.

Labels: im convos, kaye, politics

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.

Labels: boise, chili dog, denver, how design, kaye, travels, vegas, wife

Me: I was at Cheerleaders one night and a stripper was doing her routine in some little panties, twirling around the pole and shit, then she stopped, looked at me and screamed "Matty!" It was a girl I went to high school with. I was so drunk I did not even recognize her. I think her stage name was Glass Tyger or something. Not Tiger with an "I" but Tiger with a "Y."
Kaye: Fucking strippers. I hate all of their stage names. Glass Tyger. What a dumb ass name.
Me: I love stripper stage names. They make me happy. I asked her why she did not go for something like Sindy and spelling it with an "S" because you can take out the "DY" and then its just "SIN." Plus that goes with the Motley Crue song "Same Ol' Situation." Then again, I was always partial to the stage name Erotica.
Kaye: How about Electric?
Me: That is good. There is always an animal in there, too. And a spice.
Kaye: Yeah. Like Cinnamon or Cheetah or something.
Me: If I were stripping I would call myself the Bald Eagle and come out in a bird head-dress, squawk all obnoxious and flap my arms up and down like a dickhead.
Kaye: Ha!
Me: Your stripper stage name could be Raven. That would be a good.
Kaye: Because I am dark haired. Like a raven.
Me: Then have a bunch of babies out of wedlock and squirt breast milk out of your nipples at customers when you are lactating.
Kaye: Okay, that is enough.

Labels: im convos, kaye, strippers

Kaye: Do you remember that robot's name from Short Circuit?
Me: Johnny 5.
Kaye: That is right. Johnny 5 is alive!
Me: I hate that motherfucker.
Kaye: I hate that fucking dumb ass movie. Johnny 5 was all rolling around like he was a tank or some shit. Where are your fucking legs Johnny 5?
Me: I wanted to take a crowbar to his stupid ass. Or disconnect his shit and roll him down a hill. Fuck you, Johnny 5.
Kaye: Johnny 5 is not alive.

Labels: im convos, kaye, movies, pop culture

Kaye: We were on the road Saturday afternoon and we saw a clown driving in a car.
Me: Oh yeah?
Kaye: Yeah. It was some funny shit. I am glad clowns have to drive around all dressed up like fucking morons.
Me: Ha! Goddamn, you are fucked up.
Kaye: It is a prejudice I have. I hate clowns. There is something seriously wrong with you if that is your job.

Labels: im convos, kaye, tomfoolery

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 (Mark recounts the event here). Much like Claude Lemieux after boarding Kris Draper in 1996 and destroying his face, I stand by the hit.

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