Author: Joe Zimmerman
Local man relieved to learn mysterious obstruction in upper field of vision caused not by degenerative eye disease, but by two increasingly aggressive shrubs growing directly above his face A 41-year-old local man who had spent several increasingly concerned weeks wondering whether he was beginning to lose his eyesight announced Monday that the mysterious dark objects creeping into the upper portion of his field of vision were not cataracts, glaucoma, retinal damage, or evidence that the warranties on his major sensory organs had begun expiring. They were his eyebrows. Specifically, several eyebrow hairs that had apparently spent the first four…
Alaska reportedly discovers democracy becomes considerably more difficult when everybody is named Dan Sullivan I have a simple question for the State of Alaska. Will the real Dan Sullivan please stand up? Actually, everybody sit down. We’ll start over. One at a time. State your name clearly. VERSE ONE: THERE APPEARS TO BE A DAN SULLIVAN PROBLEM For years, Alaska voters lived relatively peaceful lives under the assumption that there was one politically relevant Dan Sullivan. That was manageable. You turned on the television. Dan Sullivan. Opened the newspaper. Dan Sullivan. Looked at the Senate ballot. Dan Sullivan. Nobody needed…
A Halloween Editorial Halloween is finally here, which means Americans everywhere are participating in one of our country’s finest traditions: purchasing $40 worth of candy so strangers’ children can knock on the door and complain that you bought the wrong kind. Or at least that’s supposedly how it works. Around here, Halloween follows a slightly different format. We decorate. We buy candy. We turn on the porch light. We wait. And then absolutely nobody comes. Not one child. Somewhere in this neighborhood, children presumably exist. I’ve seen bicycles. There are basketball hoops. Occasionally a small person appears outside before mysteriously…
Every now and then a product comes along that makes you stop, look at the price tag again, and ask: “Wait… this costs HOW much?” That was pretty much my reaction to the Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom 1957 SJ-200. Because I was expecting a very nice Epiphone. What I wasn’t expecting was to pick it up and immediately start wondering what kind of black magic Epiphone used to get this much guitar into this price range without somebody from Gibson accounting showing up and shutting the whole operation down. This isn’t one of those guitars that’s “good for the…
Tonight, generations of Star Trek fans are mourning their captain, while remembering the extraordinary life of the man who brought Jean-Luc Picard to the bridge. Not “celebrating.” There will be time to celebrate the remarkable life and career of Sir Patrick Stewart. There will be time to rewatch the episodes, quote the speeches, remember the laughs and appreciate just how absurdly fortunate we were that one of Britain’s great Shakespearean actors somehow ended up sitting in the center chair of the Enterprise. But tonight? We’re mourning our captain. Patrick Stewart died at the age of 86 at his Los Angeles…
Colorado is one of the best places in America to go camping, which is convenient because camping itself is an objectively strange activity. Human beings spent thousands of years figuring out how to build houses. We invented plumbing. Electricity. Refrigerators. Furnaces. Memory-foam mattresses. Toilets that whisk our business away to some mysterious location where it becomes somebody else’s problem. And then summer arrives and millions of us look around our perfectly functional homes and announce: “Screw this. Let’s go live in the woods.” So we load half the house into an SUV, drive into the mountains, sleep on the ground,…
WASHINGTON — On the eve of Election Day, millions of exhausted Americans reportedly gathered around their televisions Monday night, filled with childlike anticipation that when they awoke the next morning, the magical season of being repeatedly informed that democracy would end if they voted for the wrong county treasurer would finally be over. Across the nation, families dimmed the lights, silenced their phones, and stared wistfully at televisions that had spent the previous four months alternating between pharmaceutical commercials and ominous black-and-white photographs of politicians standing next to words like RADICAL, DANGEROUS, and WRONG FOR COLORADO. Parents reportedly tucked their…
There are guitar amps you buy because you need an amp. Then there are guitar amps that make you start wandering into the room for absolutely no reason, notice your guitar sitting there, and somehow lose the next 45 minutes. The Mesa/Boogie Mark V:35 is that kind of amp. I’ve owned mine long enough to get past the honeymoon period, and I still think it’s a downright lovely amplifier to own. Not because it does one spectacular trick, but because seemingly every time you think you’ve figured out what it’s good at, there’s another switch, mode, slider or jack sitting…
WOODLAND PARK, CO – What initially appeared to be a cheerful text announcing his niece’s upcoming wedding in Italy was later determined to be a preliminary financial notice informing local man Joseph that he may need to come up with somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 to prove he loves a family member. The message, sent by his sister-in-law, reportedly contained a beautifully designed digital Save the Date, a link, and absolutely no indication that the bride’s attorney parents had accidentally attached a check for airfare, lodging, meals, transportation, or the several thousand other dollars necessary to attend a wedding on…
Would you come to lunch with me?The meal is free.My treat, you see. No, I would not come to lunch.I’d rather stay at home and munch. Would you come and have a beer?I’ll buy the drinks.The place is near. No, I would not have a beer.I’m perfectly content right here. Would you like to see a show?I’ve got the tickets.Front row. Free tickets, huh?That’s quite a score. But still I’d rather scrub the floor. What if we went away somewhere?Fresh mountain air!A weekend there! I’d rather weed the driveway cracks.I’d rather organize my tax. What if I paid for everything?The…