THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IDLE: Look! Up in the Sky!

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's my hastily thrown-together Halloween costume! Not bad for 5 minutes of digging in my closet. I got dressed up this year because I went to the Robert Randolph and Gomez show at the Fillmore Auditorium on Halloween night. Aside from me getting my Clark Kent on, there were some great costumes at the show, but the best was a guy who dressed up as Bender from Futurama. He even used real metal for the body. Aside from the Halloween-related tomfoolery (or maybe because of it), the show was fantastic. This was my second time seeing both bands, and both confirmed my first impression: they put on a pretty sick show. Gomez was highly entertaining (also way drunk and in crazy costumes), covering a lot of ground from their five albums. I still don't really know any of Robert Randolph's songs, but that didn't prevent me from enjoying myself immensely as he and The Family Band proceeded to tear the house down, playing in excess of 2-1/2 hours and including a wild cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" in the encore. From top to bottom, the group are some pretty talented musicians, and at one point they jammed a song out for 35 minutes. Normally, I'd be bored out of my skull if a typical jam band noodled a song out that long, but given the combination of a few drinks, an excited audience, and the energy level of a band that was very happy to be onstage enjoying themselves, I barely noticed. All in all, it was a great night, made even better by the fact that by the time the show ended, it was my birthday.

My parents were in town for a visit this weekend, and we checked out the new wing of the Denver Art Museum today. Good stuff in the exhibits, but the main attraction is the building itself, designed by Daniel Libeskind. Housing your collection in an interesting building definitely adds to the experience, and it's nice to see in a city like Denver. In this country, you don't get much architecture like that outside of LA and NYC.

We also went out for quite a few meals, and it led me to the conclusion that this city really loves its breakfast/brunch spots. There are a ton of good ones, and they all seem to serve a mean breakfast burrito. Not really a bad thing... except maybe for my waistline.