Money for nothing and chicks for free?

by Ted Holteen

iving vicariously through underachievers is really counterproductive. For the past few years, I’ve been kissing asses all over the Four Corners in the hopes that when someone hits the big time I’ll be able to ride their coattails to my dream career of cushy slough writing bogus press accolades while swilling Cristal and puffing on a hookah, if such a thing were to somehow become legal. (Which reminds me, I swear I’ll have that fake review to you soon, Bubba – sorry. I’m always late with these things. Just ask my editors.) To date it hasn’t happened, and if I still had a soul left after all the lies I’ve spewed, I could be threatened with a twinge or even a pang of guilt. As it is, I’m getting pissed off. So I say to my good friends (for now) The Lawn Chair Kings, don’t screw this up. The lazy power quartet of suburban-garage-ballad-slacker-surfabilly-grunge-country has finally put out a CD that they intend to sell to people, and it had better work, because I don’t want to. They’ll hold their release party at the Summit this Saturday starting around 9 p.m., and they’ll be joined by Rock & Rye and Pinhead, two bands of such disparate styles from the LCK’s that there should be little confusion as to who’s who should you arrive late. I don’t know all the hoops that need to be jumped through for a band to make it big, but there has to be a combination of luck and sodomy because otherwise there is no explanation for the fame of Blink-182 and the relative obscurity of our fair Kings. So do stop by, buy a CD and if Rick Rubin happens to be on hand, tell him you think they’re great. It’ll help me out a lot.

One of the many hazards that comes with the inexplicable addiction to professional football is the alteration of the week of which many of you are familiar with into one lasting only six days. For these autumn months, losers like myself literally remove Sundays from our calendars so that we may instead do nothing. I won’t even try to link this habit to the Sabbath or a day of rest. It is what it is – a waste of time. But I love it. And so every so often I feel a bit bad when something

cool happens on a Sunday that I would go to if those damn TV people didn’t keep putting football on. Like this Sunday, the Abbey Theatre will host a Voter Film & Forum, which includes both a film and a forum about voting. The film part is called “Invisible Ballots” and is a documentary thing about how all this electronic voting is super-easy to manipulate and could even result in the pot initiative not passing this fall. So this is serious, folks. Then this lady Claudia Kuhns from a group with a name so long even I won’t print it will lead the forum discussion about how we’re getting screwed by paperless ballots. Personally, I find it very easy to believe – these are the same people who make video poker games, and those are programmed so the owners can’t lose. Hmm. Invited guests include our county clerk candidates Linda Daley and Jean Walter. If nothing else, we’ll see if they’re true football fans or not. It starts at 4 p.m., which should be early in the third quarter of the Broncos game. As they’re playing Cleveland, it should be safe for you Bronco fans to leave at halftime feeling secure that

that idiot Plummer won’t screw up the 7-2 lead that he built watching the defense return a fumble and despite taking an intentional safety because it’s too windy.

By 7 p.m. Sunday, Jake the Snake should be deep into his 12^th martini at the Cleveland Airport Hyatt hitting on a Filipino dishwasher (yes, male), but as for you, there’s plenty of time to make it from the Abbey up to the FLC Community Concert Hall to catch the best of the Blue Man Group without the annoyance of having to see the Blue Man Group. So Percussion is a percussion quartet that falls into the category of the bizarre and downright weird that somehow manages to be tremendously entertaining in the right circumstances. Like Wayne Newton and Bob Saget. Bring your thesaurus and see just how many different ways there are to say “drum.” Should be cool.

One of those jam bands, I think it’s Phish, used to do Halloween shows where they would perform some classic album in its entirety as only Phish could, that is by taking a 53-minute long recording and playing it for 4½ hours. Next Wednesday at the Abbey, the 25^th, The Motet will do something similar. The Boulder-based band will do Madonna, not right on the stage, but rather onstage. In the past, The Motet has spent their Halloweens covering the likes of Prince, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. They dress up and everything. And so this time they’ll tackle the full discography of The Material Girl, not just one album, thank God. It’s their warm-up for a six-date Colorado Halloween barnstorming tour, and these things are usually fun in spite of themselves, so go.

Hire me as a hanger-on for your next get-together. egholteen@ hotmail.com. Please register to vote – it might even count.