Denver or Bust

I am in the midst of a move to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. My weekend was spent sorting clothes, shoes, coats, and toiletries into piles of yes, no, and maybe. How many bottles of shampoo and conditioner does one woman need? I didn't realize how out of control my fragrances had become, either. Expensive designer perfumes and lotions purchased over the past twenty years that I have been stubbornly hanging onto even though they probably smell like hell now. Three contractor bags later, I feel like my personal belongings are manageable and moveable.

After move number seventy, I vowed to quit counting...and I did. This move is hovering somewhere around ninety, but I am not sure. The very first time I left my home state of South Dakota I was nineteen years old and I landed in Denver. I am now moving back. Have I come full circle in my travels? Is this where I will weather out my final years? I have no way of knowing at this juncture. Oglala Lakota nomadic blood still courses through my veins, pumping adrenaline along with red and white blood cells, promising excitement, challenge, and change. Where will I unpack this time? House? Condo? Townhome? Apartment? I don't prefer the latter, yet a tiny voice keeps whispering "Downtown loft"—a lifestyle I have yet to try. This thought has been nagging me since my trip to New York City in January. Moving to Manhattan is not financially feasible, but the notion of not having to drive everywhere appeals to me. I can see me walking out of a newly renovated historical warehouse into the heart of the arts district, drinking mocha latte and reading the morning news perched upon a stool in the local java house, returning after work to eat Eggplant Parmigiano at an Italian bistro, and then walking a block to my spacious loft to watch the sun slip behind the Rockies. These romantic ruminations fuel the fire that is necessary to perform the drudgery of purging and packing.

In reality, where I live in the Denver area will depend on where I find employment. I have numerous resumes floating in cyberspace and have had several promising phone interviews. There will be no change in my career path. I am sticking to what I know and where I excel—construction, architecture, and design—and with Denver currently booming in the energy market, ranking fourth in the world after Dubai, Calgary, and Rio de Janeiro,* there are new positions being created in my field.

The job market may be hot for me, but the decision to relocate to Denver came from my heart. I miss my little family who moved here earlier this year. In their absence, my inner joy has gradually subsided. I can’t bear to be separated from my granddaughter’s smile, laughter, and contagious enthusiasm for life, and I know the cure for this temporary melancholy. And so, a new chapter unfolds.

* Colorado Energy News, July 5^th, 2011. Denver Top Five Hub for Oil and Gas Professionals. Staff reporter.

Sheen Sheen the Winning Machine

In the late seventies, one of my favorite underdog television shows was The Gong Show produced by Chuck Barris with special guest "Gene Gene the Dancing Machine." I would imitate Gene's chug-a-chug dance step and never tired of amusing my niece and nephew with my impersonation. The Gong Show was a belly laugh for me and listening to Gene's signature dancing music after all these years put me in a happy place. The Gong Show judges were well-known comics of the decade who provided unscripted comedic chaos and combined with Barris' zany antics and the amateur talent contestants, you were presented with thirty minutes of sheer silliness.


I, along with the rest of the world, have been following Charlie Sheen's vulgar rantings on television, while reading about his court appearances, hospitalizations, and cocaine-fueled porn star-attending hotel trashing escapades in magazines, newspapers, and Hollywood blogs. In the beginning it was mildly entertaining. Not ha-ha-ha entertaining like watching The Gong Show, but scary entertaining like watching a flying trapeze artist perform without a net. What is happening to Sheen Sheen the "Winning" Machine is not really funny at all.

As if his media circus was not enough, he has invited us inside his "winning" world via his webcast, Sheen's Korner. After watching Episode 1 of Sheen's Korner, I was no longer entertained by any definition of the word - just bored to tears with his repetitive dialogue of winning, trolls, epic, gnarls gnarlington, tiger blood, goddesses, and more winning, winning, winning.  To make sure we got it, Charlie stated, "I'm not bi-polar, I'm bi-winning." For 50 minutes, I watched absolutely nothing happen except Charlie drinking a liquid out of a child's plastic Sippy cup, minutes later breaking into a profuse sweat that required mopping his face with a rag. Twenty-eight minutes into the video, Charlie hides behind a picture, takes off his hat, opens his desk drawer and bends over it face down, and after a long audible snort, pops back up with an exuberant, "Okay, we're back."

I had to pass on Episode 2 because I was still reeling from the stupidity of Episode 1. Five minutes into Episode 3, after viewing an unkempt Charlie who is unable to sit still for one second, his hair standing on end while he stutters about trolls and his "odyssey of epic, epic proportion," I conclude my research. I offer nothing more than my own unprofessional, unsolicited, personal opinion on Charlie's condition - it is highly likely that massive quantities of illegal substances exist in Charlie's skewed world and combined with the massive quantities that he has already consumed in his lifetime, they are taking a toll on his sanity. His erratic behavior is reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson during Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but his webcast production of Sheen's Korner bears no resemblance to Thompson's brilliant Gonzo journalism.


I will never watch another episode of Sheen's Korner. It is disturbing to watch someone expose their fragile state on video, and I sincerely hope Charlie gets the professional help that he desperately needs. I don't like to poke fun at someone whose sanity is crumbling like a wedge of Stilton Bleu Cheese on a buffet table, but Joan Rivers made a clever comparison on E! Fashion Police when she commented on the dress that Heidi Klum wore to the Oscars. "This dress is busier than Charlie Sheen's liver."

Lady Gaga versus Cinderella

I posted a comment on facebook expressing my disapproval of Lady Gaga's devil horns at the Grammy Awards. My post generated other comments so I made a journalistic decision to find out more about this self-proclaimed performance artist. I don't want to be accused of talking out of my you-know-what.

For two years, I have been listening to her songs on the radio and, at first, I thought they were catchy (until they became annoying earworms), but I had never watched her videos until my two-year-old granddaughter brought one to my attention. I was in the kitchen fixing her something to eat when I became alarmed because she was so quiet. I bolted into the living room, nearly knocking her over because she was standing right there, in front of the TV, innocent blue eyes glued to a Saturday afternoon performance on VH1featuring Lady Gaga in her bra and panties squatting over a nearly-naked male tied to a bedpost wearing black high heels.  Alejandro, Alejandro, Ale-Alejandro. I was horrified. Bad grandma, bad grandma.I had no idea the video was so sexually explicit, but then, I had no idea what any of Lady Gaga's videos portrayed until that day. Listening to the song, I would never have connected the electro-pop tune with the disturbing video.

For the sake of research, I subjected myself to an hour of Lady Gaga voyeurism and found sadomasochism, futuristic mind control, misandry, and death to be the predominant thread linking her "short films"  that conclude with someone (usually male) being killed or burned. In Telephone, Beyonce kills a man in a diner and then Gaga kills everyone with her Cook'n'Kill poison recipe. Mass murder in the diner...lovely. All of her videos are saturated with S & M, anti-christian symbolism, and the "all-seeing eye" is so obnoxiously prevalent that it lends credence to The Illuminati Puppet theory. Another quirk she demonstrates is her love of licking, or being licked, in the face. I don't know what this symbolizes and I don't want to know. I am now even less of a fan after investigating this artist and uncovering her grandiose depiction of herself - "my destiny is to be a storyteller for the world" - "my destiny is to provide for my fans" - "my fans protect me, it's now my destiny to protect them"  - "I have a lot of fans, and they're spreading the book of Gaga around the world" - "my Haus of Gaga"." Her Haus of Gaga now simply refers to her as "the Lady." She doesn't seem to realize that she is a mere mortal and her naive little monsters, as she affectionately calls them, proliferate her fantasy. One thing that is consistent about Lady Gaga are her perpetual contradictions. She can't keep anything straight because as she has admitted in several interviews, "I lie profusely..."  The media claims that she is a fashionista, bestowing her with the title of fashion icon. That is so ridiculous, I refuse to comment. However, I loved Justin Bieber's remark about Lady Gaga's arrival to the Grammy's in an egg. He told Chelsea Handler, "People say it's artistic or stuff. I'm just like, "You're an egg!"

With all the gaga sickness being spread around the world, I think parents of young girls have a lot more to worry about than the princess complex. Peggy Orenstein, in her book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, voices her concerns about the possible negative impact that pink frills, tiaras, and magic wands have on little girls. I am guilty of buying a Disney Princess Gown for my granddaugher and she is adorable in it. She serves me tea and cake and flounces about like a ballerina in her layers of crushed velvet, pink tulle and sequins. Am I worried about her? No. It is an unbelievably sweet phase and it will pass. Her father counterbalances the multitude of pink with Frolf and basketball, I am trying to teach her to not be afraid of bugs, and her mother is an ambitious, hardworking, college-educated girlie-girl.

I am more worried about the impressionable tweens and teens who idolize Lady Gaga and her monster act. The symbolism is so complex and they are not emotionally prepared or mentally mature enough to sort through the distortion of intimacy and myriad of sexual innuendos. Diehard fans of Gaga cannot agree on who she is and what she represents. Some say she is not involved with the occult or the Illuminati, while others admit she may be, but they don't care. Still others insist she represents art in its purest form.  Lady Gaga, the artist, is not very original. She refuses to stray from her redundant themes of mind control, satanism, and death laced with liberal doses of homoerotica and, she is a copycat. Camille Paglia of The Sunday Times, said it best. "Gaga has borrowed so heavily from Madonna...that it must be asked, at what point does homage become theft?...she is a ruthless recycler of other people's work."

I say, let your child choose the color she wants to wear - it may not be pink. Provide toys and activities that represent both genders and why be alarmed about childhood phases that are based on "good"?  Then, when they dive into the world of pop culture - fine-tune your parental controls!