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THE UNCANNY VALLEY Colorado’s San Luis Valley is a hotspot for UFOs, cattle mutilations, and more
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DGOMAG.COM Editor: Angelica Leicht – aleicht@bcimedia.com Staff WritEr: Nick Gonzales – ngonzales@bcimedia.com SalES: Chandler Sommerfeldt – csommerfeldt@bcimedia.com
DGO Magazine
STAFF
What’s inside Volume 5 Number 19 Thursday, September 10, 2020
Editor
Awww, Zookie, Zookie now
Angelica Leicht aleicht@bcimedia.com 375-4551 Staff writer
Look at that beauty. We got to try her out this week for Prohibition Herb, and let us tell you ... looks aren’t all this little strain offers.
Nick Gonzales ngonzales@durangoherald.com Sales Chandler Sommerfeldt csommerfeldt@bcimedia.com 375-4553 Contributors
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From the Blog
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Eat & Drink
San Luis Valley Brewing 5
Del Norte’s Colorado Grille 6
7 Travel
Get Outta Town 7
CO beaches
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9 Film
Telluride Horror Fest 9
Amanda Push
Bill & Ted
Laraina Hailey
New Mutants 10
Erin Brandt Megan Bianco
Reader Services 375-4570
11 Art
DGO Pufnstuf for DGO
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Jamie Opalenik
5 Alamosa’s brewing scene is surprisingly badass When we think of Colorado towns with cool downtown pubs, Alamosa doesn’t typically come to mind. But given our recent experience with the San Luis Valley Brewing Co., maybe it should. 9 Throw a terrifying Telluride Horror Fest from home
DGO is a free biweekly publication distributed by Ballantine Communications Inc., and is available for one copy per person. Taking more than five copies of an edition from a distribution location is illegal and is punishable by law according to Colorado Revised Statute 18-9-314. DGO Magazine is published by Ballantine Communications Inc., P.O. Drawer A, Durango, CO 81302
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18 A salve to help your raging case of the olds
Reviews
Weed news 19, 22
We don’t know about you guys, but we’re aging out of being able to bend over without pulling a muscle. Any time we drop something on the floor, we think twice before deciding whether or not to pick it up. Fortunately, this salve helps our case of the olds.
23 Puzzles/ horoscopes
As per usual these days, the in-person version of the Telluride Horror Show is canceled, much like the town’s famous film festival. However, unlike the less terrifying fest, the Horror Show is creeping its way onto the internet.
/dgomag art en drin tertai nm km usic ent fo nigh od Sept tlife embe r 10 -23, 2020
Col o for rado’ UFO s Sa s, n cat Luis tle V mut alley ila tio is a ns, ho and tspot mor e
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ON THE COVER An alien hub with a portal to other dimensions in Colorado? We’re there. Nick Gonzales for DGO Mag
Thursday, September 10, 2020 | 3
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[news]
From the blog
News from our site on the interwebs you may have missed All hail the TikTok-famous bipedal dog from Ouray
(1982-89) and “Back to the Future” (1985). The two play an unlikely pair of siblings, with Jett
We’re not sure if it’s because we’re outside the Gen Z, 16-to-24 demographic, or because we have attention spans well over a minute, but we don’t find ourselves watching TikTok videos very often. That may change, though, because we just discovered @dexterdogouray.
as Patti, a single mom who doesn’t make good decisions, and Fox as her responsible brother Joe, who has steady gigs at both an industrial factory and as the guitarist in the popular, local rock band which is also fronted by Patti. Both Joe and the sibliing’s mother, Jea-
Dexter has three things going for him in the entertainingness department: He’s a cute Brittany Spaniel, he lives in Ouray, and he thinks he’s people. That is, he walks upright on his hind legs. The dog developed his unusual gait as a result of an accident in March 2016, according to the Denver Post’s The Know. After escaping from his yard, Dexter was hit by a truck and had his front legs pinned under a wheel. The San Juan Veterinary Clinic in Montrose was only able to save one of them, amputating the other.
nette (Gena Rowlands), are worried about the upbringing of Patti’s fiveyear-old son Benji (Billy Sullivan) while she leads her reckless lifestyle. Jason Miller, Michael McKean, and Cherry Jones fill out the rest of the recognizable cast. On
end up stuck in obscurity as time goes on. A lot of the time it’s for copyright As long as the pooch’s hind legs reasons, like with licensing for the use remain healthy, his long-term prognosis is good. And as one can imagine, the skill of songs featured on the soundtrack. Or and endurance required for an otherwise sometimes a disagreement between the four-legged creature to do what he does filmmaker and the studio causes a film to just be stuck on the shelf. Paul Schradare immense. er’s “Light of Day” (1987) was a modest Life was difficult for the dog at first, “He’s developed massive, weight-lifter success when it first came out, mostly but by May of the same year, his owner, thighs,” Dr. Chris Franklin, Dexter’s vet, because of the A-list cast and the heavily Kentee Pasek, noticed him navigating told The Know. “He accepted that he has prominent soundtrack which appealed to from the yard up five steps onto the this adversity and that he’s not going rock music fans of the time. But now you patio using just his hind legs. That’s when to let it get him down. He has amazing can’t even find it on DVD. Fortunately, Pasek began documenting Dexter’s resilience.” as I discovered over the past weekend, if achievements and posting them to social If watching the dog waltz around his you dig around enough, you can find the media. The dog’s Instagram account mountain-town home on several social full-length film on less sketchy parts of (which we also somehow failed to notice media channels isn’t enough for you, you the Internet. until very recently) now has over 5,200 can also cover yourself and your own After dissecting the seedy, gritty followers. canine companion with products from streets of New York City and Los An“He’s a showman. He knows when Dexter’s Etsy store. Many items include geles in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” people are watching and he’ll start the inspirational message, “Be Strong / (1976) and “Raging Bull” (1980) as a walking” upright, Pasek told The Know. Be Brave / Be You.” scriptwriter, and in Schrader’s own “People want to meet him. They either — — Nick Gonzales penned and directed “Hardcore” (1979) take pictures or get a picture with him.” and “American Gigolo” (1980), the Dexter’s fame went nationwide after filmmaker takes on the lower ends of Arizona resident Mallory Gilbert record- “Light of Day” gets another Cleveland, OH in “Light of Day”. This film ed him in June on a visit to Ouray and day in 2020 is primarily famous for being rockstar posted the video online. The footage of For whatever reason, sometimes there Joan Jett’s first acting experience, and his ambulation eventually led to the dog are movies that do fine on release with also one of the better movies of co-star getting to appear on “The Tonight Show audiences and critics, and yet somehow Michael J. Fox beyond “Family Ties” 4 | Thursday, September 10, 2020
with Jimmy Fallon,” Yahoo! Life writes.
the page and with any other moviemakers, “Light of Day” could have very easily been executed like an after-school TV special you would commonly see back in the 1980s, but with a legitimate budget and cast. But because Schrader is intriguing and talented enough as an artist, the story and characters feel a little more authentic and nuanced. Though it’s always interesting to see Fox out of his light-hearted comfort zone in a family drama, it’s Jett who is the most impressive part of “Light of Day”. One of the most successful female musicians of all time, as proven here singing ‘This Means War’ and the title song (the latter even written by Bruce Springsteen), Jett is also a surprisingly good actress. It would have been nice had she explored this side of her career more. “Light of Day” isn’t near the masterpiece of “Taxi Driver” or “Raging Bull,” but it’s a solid viewing choice for anyone who is a fan of Schrader, Jett, or Fox. —— Megan Bianco
[eat & drink]
San Luis Valley Brewing Co. has good beers in a hip downtown setting in Alamosa Brews pair well with local sausages
Nick Gonzales/DGO
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» A sampler of Gosar sausages (from left: green chile, andouille, and Bavarian) at San Luis
»» The Green Chile Guacamole Burger at San Luis Valley Brewing Co.
Valley Brewing Co.
Bavarian sausage, an andouille sausage,
When we think of Colorado towns with cool downtown pubs, Alamosa doesn’t typically come to mind. But given our recent experience with the San Luis Valley Brewing Co., maybe it should.
and a green chile sausage served with sauerkraut, pita bread, and mustard. The way we just listed those sausages also doubles as our rankings of them.
The brewery, which opened in March 2006, was the valley’s first, at least according to the newspaper-styled menus they’re currently using. Even before we sat down, we were impressed by how cool the place looks. The building was apparently built in 1897 and was a bank in 1912. Its 5,000-pound vault door is now a part of the back bar. Since then, though, it has all been transformed into a brewpub with the help of local artist and sausage-maker Kris Gosar. It has tall windows and a cool turn-of-the-century feel, but it’s also full of local art, it seems, at any given time.
The andouille and green chile ones were great, but in a twist, the one that wasn’t spicy allowed the most meat flavor to come through. The appetizer did its job, making us hungry for another course. They always say that the best thing to pair a sweet wine with is a sweet dessert, and by this point we were drinking a green chile Nick Gonzales/DGO
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» The Alamosa Amber ale at San Luis Valley »» The Valle Caliente green chile Mexican Brewing Co.
We followed that up with the Valle But enough about the architecture, Caliente, which is Valle Especial, the we visited the brewery for the beer. brewery’s Mexican lager, flavored with The first brew we ordered was the Hatch green chiles. We’re fans of both Alamosa Amber. We like the alliteration, Mexican lager (who isn’t?) and green we love amber ales, and it never hurts chile, but as followers of the Colorato try the beer named after town you’re do-New Mexico chile war, we found it in (unless you’re in Booger Hole, West interesting that the beer is specifically Virginia). The beer itself was true to its flavored with Hatch chiles. Alamosa is name — a deep red color — and it was about 390 miles from Hatch, New Mexperfectly balanced between hoppy and malty flavors. It was also quite crushable, ico, but only 120 miles from Pueblo, the and we can imagine enjoying it in virtual- chile capital of Colorado. Just sayin’. Anyway, the beer definitely carried ly any context, summer or winter.
lager at San Luis Valley Brewing Co.
the flavor and a bit of the bite of the chiles, but more so than many green chile beers, you could very much taste the underlying brew. It was quite refreshing, with a strong taste of lager-iness. Gosar Ranch sausages are somewhat famous for their quality, at least in Southern Colorado, so when we saw a sampler of them offered as an appetizer, we had to supplement our beers with it. What can we say? We were feeling Bavarian. Speaking of which, it came with a
beer, so we got the Green Chile Guacamole Burger. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. If anything particularly stood out about it, it was the delicious Angus beef patty. If we’ve learned anything about food in the region, it’s that the San Luis Valley really knows its meats. If and when we find ourselves in Alamosa again, we’ll probably be back. We’re still very curious about SLVBC’s oatmeal stout and American wheat brews, and we didn’t even get the chance to look at the brewery’s seasonal beers. —— Nick Gonzales
Thursday, September 10, 2020 | 5
[eat & drink]
Del Norte’s Colorado Grille & Tap House has interesting sandwiches and tasty beverages
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» The Colorado sandwich (prime rib, mushrooms, bourbon onions, diced chiles, and cream cheese on toasted jalapeño cheddar bread) at the Colorado Grille & Tap House in Del Norte.
On a recent trip through Del Norte, a street-corner restaurant caught our eye. We’d only ever really stopped in the town near the eastern end of Wolf Creek Pass for beer and pizza at Three Barrel
Brewing Co., so we pulled over and went in.
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» A lavender vanilla milkshake at the Colo-
Tap House.
rado Grille & Tap House.
Grand Ave. We were there for a drink and a sandwich, though, so we stuck to the restaurant side of the equation.
The Colorado Grille & Tap House opened in April 2017 and is connected to After taking in the aesthetics (lots the Mystic Biscuit Coffee House at 590 of wood, the color red, machinery parts, and a COVID-suspended bar) we checked out the menu. The first thing that lept out at us was the first thing listed under lunch dishes: The Colorado. It was not only an interesting sandwich — sliced house-roasted prime rib grilled with mushrooms, bourbon onions, diced chiles, and cream cheese on a toasted jalapeño cheddar bread — it was the only item we saw that cited its creator. We don’t know who you are, Miriam Falbo, but we like your sense of taste. We also found the boldness of naming this unusual sandwich after the state amusing. It was certainly a creative invention — like a Southwestern version of a prime rib sandwich bitten by a radioactive tea sandwich. It worked, but we could see how it might go awry if it was missing any of its components. We can’t imagine enjoying the prime rib and the cream cheese with nothing else, but the other ingredients (the chiles in particular) combined with those two strong flavors to bring them together in a cohesive whole. You get a huge savory aura from the meat and mushrooms and some sweet spiciness from the onions, chile, and cheese. To wash the sandwich down, we ordered a Mule Deer — a mixture of Deerhammer whiskey, ginger beer, and a squeeze of lime. Deerhammer Distillery,
6 | Thursday, September 10, 2020
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» The Mule Deer at the Colorado Grille &
by the way, is a must-visit for whiskey fans passing anywhere near Buena Vista. They take great care in turning out tasty spirits. Despite the heavy flavor of the whiskey, which brought just a hint of caramel, the cocktail at the restaurant was refreshing on a summer afternoon. Finally, before we left, our server asked if we were interested in ice cream or a milkshake. We hadn’t been thinking of it beforehand, but all of a sudden, we very much were. So we got a lavender vanilla shake. We don’t think about it often, but we appreciate how much lavender has entered the culinary world over the years. It adds a delightful herbal quality to whatever savory or sweet item it’s in, and the milkshake was no exception. The pleasant nature of the beverage, which we got in a to-go cup, calmed our nerves when we realized construction was going to significantly extend our trip back over Wolf Creek. If and when we return to the eatery, we’re not sure we’ll get The Colorado again — if only because there’s a lot of other dishes to check out on its menu. We appreciated the use of regional ingredients in the drinks, though, and look forward to trying more. —— Nick Gonzales
[travel]
Get Outta Town: Drive-ins are great and all, but at Movie Manor, they come with a bed Motel was built as an add-on to a Monte Vista cinema in the 1960s
Courtesy of Best Western
»» Movie Manor, built adjacent to the Star Drive-In in Monte Vista, combines the drive-in movie experience with a motel stay.
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» The view of the first screen from Room 108.
There’s no way that anyone could have predicted it more than a few months in advance, but when it comes to movies, this was the summer of the drive-in. As naturally social-distanced pods, cars turned out to be the perfect way to watch films – albeit old classics – outside the house. Communities like Durango and Farmington that had drive-ins in the past found ways to improvise temporary new ones. But not terribly far away, drive-ins never really disappeared.
What’s nifty about watching a first-run from a motel room is that you can do whatever you want with complete privacy. Having an alcoholic drink that would get you in trouble if you were in a car, doing yoga, typing your own screenplay loudly on an old-fashioned typewriter ... you can do pretty much anything while mainNick Gonzales/DGO
Perhaps the most versatile »» The view of the second screen from Room 108. drive-in is located in Monte Vista. Mostly because it’s also a second movie screen that can also be a motel. seen from the rooms. Every room has a The Star Drive-In opened in 1955, built-in mono speaker that replicates the with spaces for 300 cars pointed at a sin- audio portion of the drive-in experience, gle screen. This wasn’t terribly notable but the audio tracks can also be found on in and of itself as that was the heyday the radios in the rooms. of drive-in theaters. But in 1964, owner The fact that there are two screens George Kelloff came up with a way to means that during the season from transform the summertime attraction mid-May through September, there are into a larger business opportunity — by usually two movies running — new ones building a semi-circular hotel with piceven, when Hollywood is churning them ture windows behind the parking spots. out. During our stay, they had “IncepThe Movie Manor motel has since tion” (2010) and “Unhinged” (2020). expanded, but in its original 14 rooms, They play on both screens at the same you can see the original screen from the bed. From the others, a bit of maneuver- time, not back-to-back like a double ing or repositioning of chairs is required. feature. And in response to the initial success of the inn/cinema combos, the Kelloffs built
In addition to the usual number, the rooms also bear the name of a famous
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» “Attica! Attica!”
taining a full view of the
screen. (We’re assuming
actor. This doesn’t mean they’re themed, mind you. When we stayed there, we got room 108 ... the Al Pacino room. And yet inside we found neither guns nor a mountain of cocaine — just a Gideons bible, coffee, and the usual motel room stuff. That’s probably for the best. Instead, there were two identical paintings (you know, the kind you’d find at a mall kiosk about 15 years ago) with a bunch of early- to mid-20th century film stars hanging out on a patio. Entertainingly, a number of the celebrity names on the rooms and in the cement outside the lobby, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre-style, are misspelled. We like to think that “Arnold Schwartzennager” is the star of “The Terminater.”
nobody is going to come and stare into your window — if that’s happening, you’ve got bigger problems.) And if you want the usual popcorn and refreshments, you can walk out to the drive-in’s snack bar and back to your room. The Star Drive-In is now a Best Western, which makes it pretty easy to reserve a room, and the rates are typical for the area. Finding out what movies are showing is a pain on Best Western’s website for the motel, however they are listed on the website for the Star Drive-In. —— Nick Gonzales
Thursday, September 10, 2020 | 7
[travel]
Not over summer? Here are four Colorado beaches you should visit before the season ends
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Ridgway State Park
Zapata Falls
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summer fun before it’s over and we’re stuck with snow. Again.
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Blue Mesa Reservoir
One of the worst parts about summer wrapping up, however, is that there will be no more visits to swimming holes and beaches. No more drinking hard seltzer in your tube. No more burning your ass while out in your swimsuit because you forgot to apply sunscreen. What a bummer. That being said, there’s still time to fit a few last-minute road trips before the season of sun is over and done. Pack your six-pack of crappy beer and hit the highway to visit these four Colorado beaches.
Blue Mesa Reservoir Location: Curecanti National Recreation Area Blue Mesa Reservoir is a true hidden gem of a beach despite it being the largest body of water in the state. If you’re looking for a spot that’s quite socially distanced and away from the crowds, this is your jackpot. This lake spans 20 miles, along with 96 miles of shoreline, so plenty of space to get your swim on and chug that hard seltzer you packed.
Medano Creek Location: Great Sand Dunes National Park If you take a day trip out to Great Sand Dunes National Park, you may find yourself at Medano Creek, a shallow 8 | Thursday, September 10, 2020
river that pops up every spring for your swimming pleasure. Medano Creek is unique not only because it’s only around certain times of the year, but it’s a river beach.
Zapata Falls Location: 3 miles south of Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve This secluded, 25-foot waterfall offers a breathtaking view of Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, but you do have to trudge through water and slick rocks to get there. Luckily, the falls are only a half-mile from the parking lot. Zapata is the perfect respite from the sun, especially given that temperatures at Great Sand Dunes can reach up to 104 degrees.
Ridgway State Park Location: 14 miles northeast of Ouray Buried in the San Juan Mountains, you’ll find a large sandy beach with beautiful, calm waters. It even comes complete with locker rooms, outdoor showers, and a grassy expanse where you can make use of picnic tables and grills. The perfect place to wrap up your summer fun. —— Amanda Push
[film]
This year, the Telluride Horror Show is coming ... from inside your house! Scary movies and any other events will be streaming this time around
As per usual these days, the in-person version of the Telluride Horror Show is canceled, much like the town’s famous film festival that would have happened the first week of September. However, unlike the less terrifying fest, the Horror Show is creeping its way onto the internet.
eliminated the chance that once you get there, the best programs will be sold out.
This year’s “Shelter-in-Place Edition” will be held 0ct. 15 to 18, with passes going on sale in mid-September. The festival is still coming together – it’s still accepting film submissions through Sept. 20, if you happen to have just finished one — but it’s already got some neat things going for it. For one, it’s already planned advanced screenings for a couple of films before the festival even begins. [video:1]“Alone” follows Jessica, a recent widow who leaves the city in an attempt to cope in a more rural environment, but naturally get kidnapped and imprisoned in a mysterious man’s cabin. You can watch it from your own cabin for $12 on Sept. 15, three days before its official release. In “12 Hour Shift,” opiate-abusing nurse Mandy is trying to get through a shift at the clinic where she works for a black market organ-smuggling ring when her cousin misplaces some merchandise
Courtesy of HTC Media
»» “12 Hour Shift,” which will have an advance screening before the Telluride Horror Show, stars Angela Bettis as a nurse involved in the black market organ trade.
– forcing her to find a new kidney to replace it. It’s showing for $12 on Sept. 29, also three days before its official release. At noon the same day, viewers will be able to watch a live interview with director Brea Grant, who has also starred in a number of horror and thriller films. (The recorded conversation will also be available later as part of the digital film rental.) [video:2]As for the festival itself, the three-day Horror Show typically includes at least 20 feature films and 50
short films, along with Creepy Campfire Tales (which involves a book signing with an established horror author), a Pig Roast, an I Scream Social, a Killer Karaoke Party, and a Dread Central Horror Trivia competition. Obviously, not all of those will translate well into an online format, but hopefully, we’ll at least get the films and maybe the campfire tales. In some ways, the fact that the festival is now on the internet makes a few things easier. Sure ... you no longer have to book it to Telluride, but it’s also
“We’ve always had five, six, seven shorts programs at the Horror Show, and they’ve always been huge crowd favorites, we always have to run our shorts programs at least twice to accommodate the crowds,” festival organizer Ted Wilson told the Durango Herald. “There are films in there that are really actually – they’re a short film, but they’re pretty scary. People will still be able to get their jump-scare fixes and all that stuff. We’ll also have the wide range of horror-comedy to the just flat-out frightening.” It also means that the festival might be able to expand its roster of guests, he said. After all, like you or me, it’s way easier for a celebrity to sit down at a computer for an hour than to make the trip here from Hollywood. Three-day passes for the in-person Horror Show typically cost about $150, but the festival has yet to announce what the online festival will cost. They will go on sale, though, in mid-September and will be available at telluridehorrorshow.com. —— Nick Gonzales
Bill & Ted are the throwback heroes we need during this dark, dark 2020 timeline For the past three decades, the famous movie characters known simply as ‘Bill and Ted’ have endeared with original and even newer fans of their sci-fi comedies. What began as Stephen Herek’s “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” in 1989 might have been considered a lesser-tier cohort of Robert Zemeckis’ “Back to the Future” (1985), but it grew to hold its own as a cult classic. The sleeper hit had the time travel logic of “Future,” combined with the tone of a John Hughes teen flick — not in the least, “Weird Science” (1985). When a sequel was greenlit only two years later, the follow-up could have very easily gone the way of most sequels to popular goofy comedies like “Caddyshack 2” (1988) or any of the “Airplane!” (1980) sequels — not good and
incredibly unfunny. But instead of being redundant or lazy, Pete Hewitt’s “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” (1991) went the complete opposite direction and became bizarrely entertaining and surprisingly existential. Now, nearly thirty years later and a decade in the making, a third installment is upon us in the form of Dean Parisot’s “Bill & Ted Face the Music”. After their first two adventures — which included a time-traveling phone booth, meeting some of the world’s biggest historical figures, and later visiting the afterlife — Bill Preston (Alex Winter) and Ted Logan (Keanu Reeves) are now middle-aged, out of work, and each on the verge of divorce. Right when the lifelong BFFs are at a loss as to what to do, Kelly (Kristen Schaal), the daughter of their former time-travel mentor Rufus (previously
played by George Carlin), randomly pops up to inform Bill and Ted that they need to save the universe by composing the greatest song ever written. So now, 29 years after “Bogus Journey” was released, how does “Face the Music” compare to the first sequel? Well, I think it might depend on the viewer. As someone who was never a big Bill & Ted buff growing up, with my first viewing of “Excellent Adventure” being in high school and my intro to “Bogus Journey” only recently viewed in preparation for the new film, I was just fine with “Face the Music”. What’s great about these movies is that not only do Reeves and Winter consistently return as the leads but so do the original screenwriters, Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson. “Face the Music” has all the same themes, atmosphere,
characteristics, and spirit of its predecessors, making this a rare instance where a sequel, produced over a decade later, isn’t along the lines of “Zoolander 2” (2016). Bill & Ted’s latest odyssey will be most appreciated by the series’ fans, and probably some casual viewers too. If there’s one thing that didn’t fully work for me with “Face the Music it’s that I didn’t laugh out loud at any point on my first viewing, as I did with “Excellent Adventure” and “Bogus Journey,” except for maybe the post-credits bonus scene. The new epic romp isn’t exactly mind-blowing or brilliant, but it’s amusing enough to end the driest summer movie season so far in history. —— Megan Bianco
Thursday, September 10, 2020 | 9
[film]
We finally saw a new movie — “The New Mutants” — in a theater It wasn’t quite the film we expected to see
the spirit of the characters in the comic books that debuted in 1982. Also on the positive side, the franchise finally moved the LGBT subtext (watch the scene from 2003’s “X2: X-Men United” in which Iceman comes out to his parents and tell us they’re only talking about him being a mutant) into the text itself in a touching way. (We’re not counting Yukio and Negasonic Teenage Warhead in “Deadpool 2” because the Deadpool movies seem tangential at best.)
“You couldn’t pay me to go to a movie theatre right now.” We remember uttering this once or twice earlier in the pandemic, but it was an empty sentiment anyway. For much of the epidemic, Hollywood basically shut down, and the theaters themselves have been closed, with some of them exploring other options such as driveins. Durango’s Stadium 9 opened briefly toward the end of June, showing older movies, but audiences didn’t turn out and they re-closed. Starting Aug. 28, though, theaters reopened with new movies, including “The New Mutants” — a movie we’ve been waiting to see for much longer than COVID-19 has put new movies on hold. The first trailer for “The New Mutants” dropped on October 13, 2017, and made it seem like a straight-up horror movie set within the universe of the X-Men films, something different within the superhero genre. It looked not unlike a Wes Craven “Nightmare on
Courtesy of 20th Century Pictures
Elm Street”-type film and was originally supposed to come out in April 2018. The completed movie that 20th Century Fox was holding onto at the time, however, was not a horror movie. Director Josh Boone’s original vision for the film was horror, but over the course
of filming, it transformed into more of a young adult coming-of-age story. Because of the success of the trailer, Fox decided to reshoot parts of the film in 2018, and delayed the release date to February 2019 and then again to August 2019 so it wouldn’t compete with “Dark Phoenix,” the other X-Men film they had in production at the time. Those reshoots didn’t take place as scheduled, apparently because of difficulties rounding up the cast – stars Maisie Williams and Charlie Heaton, for example, were filming “Game of Thrones” and “Stranger Things” respectively. And by March 2019, Disney had acquired Fox, complicating things even further. By the time anyone was ready to reshoot the film, Boone had already moved on to filming “The Stand” miniseries that is coming out later this year.
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By the time March 2020 rolled around, the movie Disney ended up with was the same YA version that had been more or less filmed before the horror trailer came out. And after delaying from April to, well ... now, because of the virus, that’s the version that’s in theaters. Suffice to say by the time it was actually released, we were tired of waiting, coronavirus be damned.
It’s easily the most understated of the X-Men films, and despite the horror trappings (it’s set within an old psychiatric hospital), it comes off as the mutant version of “The Breakfast Club.” At least with the five “new mutants,” the actors come rather close to embodying
On the other hand, there are potentially problematic elements. A large part of the origin story of Danielle Moonstar, a northern Cheyenne woman played by Blu Hunt, has been changed to incorporate the “Two Wolves” legend (albeit with bears instead of wolves). The story involves a grandfather telling a child that everyone has two wolves inside them, a bad one and a good one, and the stronger of the two is whichever one you feed — and has been used in a ton of books, movies, and TV shows. We saw it most recently in the second season of “Luke Cage.” The legend is often attributed to the Cheyenne, but according to everything we could find on the internet, it was invented by Evangelical Christian Minister Billy Graham, who initially misattributed it to the Inuits. There was also backlash about white-washing with the casting of lightskinned actors Blu Hunt and Henry Zaga to play dark-skinned characters from the comics. The movie was bland compared to the horror film we were sold on almost three years ago, with many of the horror elements in the trailer never appearing in the film. But it is a better conclusion to 20 years of X-Men movies than last year’s incredibly underwhelming “Dark Phoenix.” As for our first trip back to the theaters after the COVID-19 shutdown, we felt pretty safe. At a weekend matinée showing there were only nine people in the theater including ourselves, extremely socially-distanced and masked whenever unseated. —— Nick Gonzales
[art]
Now that museums are reopening, here are our top picks of exhibitions to see Seeing art recreated as Legos sounds like a lot of fun Now that it’s September, significant chunks of public life are reopening not only in Colorado but in New Mexico as well. Down in the Land of Enchantment, closure orders shutting down all of the state-run museums just expired on the first day of the month. This reminded us of one more thing we haven’t been doing since COVID-19 put everything in lockdown mode: checking out museum exhibits and the like.
While we spend nowhere near the amount of time building stuff out of Legos as we did when we were, say, eight years old, we’re excited as heck to see someone use them to recreate something like Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss.” (What is this unusual feeling growing within us ... is it ... glee?) The Denver Museum of Nature & Science has a complicated ticketing structure and a timed ticket and museum admission are both required to see this exhibit. Check out their website for more details.
Courtesy of Denver Museum of Nature & Science
»» “Yellow,” an original work by Nathan Sawaya, is part of “The Art of the Brick” exhibition at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Displaced (SITE Santa Fe)
We don’t know about you, but to us, that sounds like exactly the type of thing the world can use more of right now — perhaps even more so now than when this show was originally planned. “Displaced” was originally supposed to open in the spring and be gone by Labor Day. Among the works featured are the documentary film “Human Flow” by Ai Weiwei and the flag and anthem created by Syrians Yara Said and Moutaz Arian to represent the Refugee Nation at the 2016 Olympics.
enous cultures. As the museum points out, tricksters have always found their way into stories, and today parody and satire play an important part in critiquing political and cultural issues relevant to Native American tribes. It also serves to combat both overly-serious stereotypes of indigenous peoples and the idea that light-hearted art is somehow less important than serious art. The exhibit only runs through Oct. 4, so if you’re interested, get on that. Admission to the museum, also in Santa Fe, is $8. The Art of the Brick (Denver Museum of Nature & Science)
Laughter and Resilience (Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian)
After taking a gander at the list of exhibitions currently at Denver’s nature and science museum, it was very difficult not to immediately hit the road and begin driving there. One, “After the Asteroid: Earth’s Comeback Story,” features fossils from the Corral Bluffs near Colorado Springs that help shed light on the changes that occurred after the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Another, “Dogs! A Science Tail,” demonstrates how dogs see, hear, and smell their surroundings and “explores why humans and dogs are best friends.” (Even this author, a cat person, really wants to check this out.)
On a lighter note, “Laughter and Resilience: Humor in Native American Art” highlights the role humor plays in indig-
The thing most likely to get us to make a pilgrimage to the DMNS, though, is “The Art of the Brick.” The exhibition
The exhibit runs from Sept. 11 through Jan. 24, 2021. Admission is free.
features works by artist Nathan Sawaya
—— Nick Gonzales
made entirely out of Lego bricks. Some,
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Starting off on a somber note, “Displaced: Contemporary Artists Confront the Global Refugee Crisis” features works from around the globe, in a number of mediums, that shine a light on forced migrations of the past, present, and future. The Santa Fe art space’s website says the exhibit “will take the visitor on a powerful, emotional journey and serve as a catalyst for human compassion and activism by reigniting a sense of common humanity, leveraging empathy, and cultivating understanding across communities.”
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Inspired by this realization, we checked out what people and institutions in both states have been putting on display and came up with the top three exhibitions we want to see in the near future. If you check any of them out, keep in mind that many places have social-distancing programs in place and may require you to make reservations in advance.
such as the 80,000-brick Tyrannosaurus skeleton, are his own creations. Others are three-dimensional re-imaginings of classic works including Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” the “Venus de Milo,” and Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.”
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A valley of strangeness Why is the San Luis Valley such a hotspot for paranormal activity? By Nick Gonzales DGO STAFF WRITER
Three miles north of the town of Hooper, Colorado — population about 100 — a white tower rises out of the desert. Centrally located between the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east and the San Juan Mountains to the west, the viewing platform provides observers with an unobstructed view of a large portion of the San Luis Valley. More importantly, though, the tower allows viewers to watch the sky above the valley. That’s where the valley’s most interesting visitors seem to originate. For as long as it has existed, the site has been a prime location for spotting unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» The UFO Watchtower north of Hooper, Colorado is, true to its name, the home of at least 254 recorded sightings.
The death of a horse The San Luis Valley first emerged on the world stage as a site of unusual occurrences in September 1967 when something killed Nellie Lewis’ horse, Lady, at her brother Harry King’s ranch just north of Alamosa. When the horse didn’t come home one day, King went looking for it and found a grisly sight. Lady was lying on her side, her head stripped to the bone. A strong odor of acetone surrounded the carcass, which upon closer inspection, had cuts to its flank that seemed so precise that King didn’t believe they could be made by a wild animal. The bones, according to the Alamosa News, looked as though they had been exposed to the sun for years. A later investigation by pathologist Dr. John Altshuler found that the animal was missing its brain, lungs, heart, and thyroid. Further, there was no material in the spinal column and there was no blood — anywhere. Lady’s hoofprints ended about 100 feet from her final resting place. Burns were found in the surrounding area, and bushes within a circle 20 feet in diameter were crushed to within 10 inches of the ground. A three-foot
12 | Thursday, September 10, 2020
Courtesy of NASA
»» The San Luis Valley in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico as seen from space.
diameter circle of indentations two inches across and six inches deep was found pressed into the ground. Lewis found gelatin-like green globs on the bushes and a piece of metal covered in horsehair. Upon touching the items, her hands burned until she could wash them. When Duane Martin, a United States Forest Service employee, tested the area with a Geiger counter, he found the burn marks, the globs, and the metal object were radioactive. According to local news reports, residents and visitors reported strange happenings in the area around that time — including a man saying his car was followed by a top-shaped object, a college student’s rear tires blowing
out as he approached an object in a field, and two sheriff’s deputies being followed by an orange sphere. The Condon Committee (a group funded by the U.S. Air Force from 1966 to 1968 at the University of Colorado to study reports of UFOs) sent another pathologist, Dr. Robert Adams, to examine the horse. Adams concluded Lady’s death had “no unearthly causes, at least not to my mind.” Several weeks after the case was publicized, two local college students claimed that they had sneaked out to the pasture and shot Lady’s carcass in the rear. The horse, Lady, which came to be known as Snippy after press coverage confused her with her sire, made international news, becoming one of the most famous cases of
animal mutilations — a phenomenon that continues to this day in North and South America, though usually involving cows, not horses. Paranormal investigator Christopher O’Brien, who has written three books on unexplained activity in the San Luis Valley and one on cattle mutilations, said over 2,000 reports of cattle mutilations have been filed by SLV ranchers but he estimates the actual number of cases may be closer to 10,000. An uncanny valley O’Brien first became interested in the valley in 1992 after hearing tales of strange sightings by locals – and then having his own. He describes an encounter in which something crossed about 250 feet from his path as
he was driving. “This thing zipped right in front of our car. It looked like something out of a bad sci-fi movie or like the Jetsons. It was a little 12-foot craft, and I just went, ‘Wow.’ It looked like a fishing lure being reeled-in and skipping through the air,” he said. On Dec. 9 of that year, there was another sighting in which at least 18 people in Crestone had the same experience. O’Brien didn’t witness that one — he was playing with his band — but when everyone at a New Year’s party he later attended was talking about the same event, he went to the Crestone Eagle and asked if he could write an article. In the two weeks that he spent investigating the sighting, he uncovered enough material to
Thursday, September 10, 2020 | 13
write a book, he said. Between then and 2002, O’Brien investigated over 1,000 paranormal events in the San Luis Valley. These covered everything from haunted sites and legends to cryptids like Bigfoot to occult crime to secret military activity. The big two categories in the SLV, though, are UFO reports and cattle mutilations. He has researched between 600 and 700 of the former and around 200 of the latter, he said. They extend to almost every geographical extent of the valley, including as far west as Del Norte and South Fork and as far south as Taos, New Mexico. “There is a variety and intensity of unexplained occurrences and phenomena unrivaled anywhere else. You name it, it’s happened there,” he said. “Anything that people were scratching their head and couldn’t explain I was interested in.” The earliest non-legendary report of paranormal activity in the valley he could find dates back to the late 1770s. During an expedition against Comanche Chief Cuerno Verde, General Juan Bautista de Anza, then-governor of Nuevo Mexico, and his troops camped at the base of Blanca Peak. There, they saw odd lights in the sky and heard a low humming sound that unnerved them enough to cause a change in their planned travel route. Instead of continuing directly north along the Sangre de Cristos, they changed course, circling out to the east and across the Huerfano River, eventually meeting Chief Cuerno Verde’s Comanches in battle near Greenhorn Mountain. Why is the SLV such a hotspot for paranormal activity? According to O’Brien, it’s the geophysical properties of the area. The strength of Earth’s magnetic field on the planet’s surface is variable, and he suggests that UFO hotspots tend to occur in places where the maximum and minimum field strength are in close proximity. He said the gravitational negative space of the valley and the layers of clay, sand, and water beneath it create a natural battery. He compares it to areas such as Utah’s Uintah Basin (the location of Skinwalker Ranch), Arizona’s Superstition Mountains, and New York’s Hudson Valley.
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» Judy Messoline originally built the UFO Watchtower as a roadside tourist attraction. It wasn’t until later that she began seeing strange things herself.
He is also quick to point out that the SLV has been inhabited for around 12,000 years and many cultures consider it and its landmarks to be sacred. Blanca Peak, for instance, is known as Sisnaajiní to the Navajo people and marks the eastern boundary of the Dinetah, the traditional Navajo homeland. If you build it ... Judy Messoline and her family moved to Hooper in 1995 to raise cattle. For four and a half years, she struggled to make a go of it as a rancher, with her animals facing a number of terrestrial, explainable problems. (“Cows don’t eat sand very well,” she jokes.) All the while, her neighbors and people in the community would tell her stories about sightings and the strange occurrences in the valley. In response, she’d giggle and suggest that the valley needed a UFO watchtower, she said. When she finally gave up her dream of being a rancher, she needed to do something with her land. Her husband suggested that she put up the watchtower she was always joking about. So she did. A ten14 | Thursday, September 10, 2020
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» According to Judy Messoline, owner of the UFO Watchtower, psychics have told her that two energy vortexes occupy the space next to the tower. The rock garden was built around them.
cigar-shaped. It was narrow, really long and it went zip, like that. It was 11 o’clock at night. We had over a dozen people here. Everybody saw it,” she said. “So what the heck was it? We’ve seen these lights that just dance all over the sky — they just don’t make sense. And our planes can’t do what they do. I’ve asked the Air Force guys, ‘Can our planes go really fast and just stop? And they said don’t even think about the plane doing that ... with the G-force on our bodies, our bodies would blow up.” Messoline’s encounters are a small fraction of the number of UFOs seen by visitors to the property — 254 as of late August. For $15 (it costs $2 to use the viewing platform), people can camp at the Watchtower, and while many UFOs are seen in broad daylight, others zip through the sky at night. She maintains a logbook in which hundreds of visitors have written down their experiences. Messoline also keeps two guest books, one for run-of-the-mill visitors and another for close encounters of the third kind. In addition to government agents, she has been visited by people claiming to be aliens themselves and others identifying as human-alien hybrids. Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» If psychic visitors to the UFO Watchtower are to be believed, the site was built above a crashed alien mothership. Along with random tourists and people interested in UFOs, she quickly started to see another type of visitor. Messoline said within a short amount of time, individuals identifying as psychics showed up at the Watchtower and explained some variation of the same idea — that the land where she chose to build the structure is more special than she thought. According to them, she said, there are two energy vortexes on the property — pretty much immediately in front of the property. Passing near them has reportedly caused people to feel things such as headaches, heart palpitations, and nausea, but it also has positive effects. Apparently, two beings that protect the vortexes have healing properties and perform miracles for those who ask. At some point, Messoline suggested that people leave something at the vortexes so they could add their own energies. As a result, an entire garden of personal items has sprung up near the Watchtower, featuring toys, pens, bits of clothing, and other trinkets.
Nick Gonzales/DGO
»» Judy Messoline encourages visitors to the UFO Watchtower to add their own energy to that of the vortexes that psychics have said exist on the property by leaving small personal items behind.
foot-high deck made from pipe and expanded metal was built over a dome-shaped gift shop, and the UFO Watchtower opened on Memorial Day of 2000. At that point, Messoline had yet to experience any of the SLV’s paranormal activity. “I never expected to see anything. It was going to be a cute little old mom and pop business to pull the tourist traffic off the highway. That was the whole idea,” she said.
And if the psychics are to be believed, the placement of the Watchtower is far from random – it’s sitting directly above a crashed alien mothership. Descriptions vary (it may be anywhere from 50 feet to a mile long), and it seems to move between 50 and 75 feet underground, and it is probably covered in moss. While the idea that there is an extraterrestrial craft underground isn’t the easiest concept to accept, the property does have unusual qualities. Messoline is quick to demonstrate magnetic anomalies, taking out a compass and showing that from certain areas it stops pointing north and instead turns to the east. And the psychics are far from the strangest visitors. Initially a skeptic, after building the Watchtower Messoine started seeing UFOs herself. So far, she’s had 28 sightings. “The closest one was between here (the Watchtower) and the mountains and partway down. I call it
Departing from the original intention of the place, Messoline now describes the Watchtower as “a place for people to go and meet with folks with the same ideas. Where nobody’s gonna make fun of them. ... Folks come here because they can tell us their experiences and not get made fun of. So many people, when you tell them you saw something, they say, ‘What were you smoking? What were you drinking?’” The future of the valley Christopher O’Brien hasn’t lived in the area for the better part of 20 years. But, not content to rely solely on anecdotal evidence, he’s part of a group that is trying to gather hard data on the valley’s phenomena. “I’m putting together a scientific monitoring program in the valley to see if we can get generate unassailable scientific data so that we can start to analyze some of the events that are constantly going on there,” he said. The program will have a variety of cameras, sensors, and radio frequency spectrum analyzers coupled with an artificial intelligence taught to discriminate between normal and unusual happenings in the valley. In the meantime, he’s very interested to hear about people’s sightings at cob@tmv.us or his website OurStrangePlanet.com, even when they’re not from the SLV. Reports of UFOs from places like Aztec and Cortez often serve as a sort of early-warning system that activity is going to spike further east. (“Chances are, if there’s stuff going on there, then there’s stuff going on in the valley as well,” he said.) If you see something, take your phone out and get it on camera, he said. If extraterrestrial visitors are visiting the San Luis Valley, its anyone’s guess whether they’re the kind that butchers animals for reasons beyond comprehension or the healing kind that inhabit vortexes atop an ancient crash site. But if you’re looking for a place to start your search for the unknown, the valley is as good a starting point as any ...especially when it already has a tower upon which you can gaze into the heavens. Thursday, September 10, 2020 | 15
[weed]
Aww, Zookie, Zookie now
We should all smoke a bowl or two of Zookies from Prohibition Herb Awww, sookie sookie, now. That’s all I can think of when I hear the word Zookies, which is the name of the strain we’re reviewing this week from Prohibition Herb. What does this strain have to do with that throwback phrase denoting excitement? Nothing, really, except for the fact that I was super excited to review this strain and the name kinda sounds like sookie. /shrug I am always excited to review new strains, to be fair, but I was especially excited to check this one out once I saw how pretty it was. This hybrid strain, which is a cross between Animal Cookies and Original Glue, has been on the floor at Prohibition Herb, but this was the first time I’d gotten to try it — or see it. I picked some up on a random weeknight from the dispensary and immediately popped open the lid. Inside the container were the most thicc, beautiful nugs on the planet. Just glance at the photo and tell me those nugs aren’t fancy as hell. You can’t! The purple threads entwined with the deep greens of the buds? I stan.
But, while they were so freaking pretty, they also stunk to high hell of diesel fuel. Every weed rose has its thorn, I guess. To be fair, though, as I mentioned in my last reviews, I caught COVID back in July, and my sense of smell hasn’t really been the same since. Some stuff doesn’t smell at all to me — RIP to my favorite Bond #9 scents — and other things smell super pungent, so there is a chance that this strain smells nothing like diesel fuel. It could actually smell like cheese and I’d have no idea. The lingering effects of COVID are weird, man. Anyway, whether or not this strain actually smells like diesel matters not, because it didn’t taste like diesel. It tasted like weed, and it got me very high. The effects were very evident with just one bowl. In fact, it didn’t take long after lighting up said bowl to feel the familiar warmth of being stoned. It took maybe three hits before the buzz wrapped around my brain like a hug from a familiar friend, and then trickled down my body in light waves. I felt good, I guess — not heavy
Details
Where to find Zookies: Prohibition Herb, 1185 Camino del Rio, prohibitionherb.com or couch-locked, but very stoned and very good. I guess the best way to put it is that my brain was relaxed. It was not clear, per se, but Zookies seemed to clear out some of the constant flow of random thoughts I deal with on a day to day basis. As someone with raging ADD, this strain seems like it could help quite a bit to stop some of the noise — provided you don’t need your hands to function right. But we’ll get to that.
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How do I know this, you ask? Well, the raging case of the munchies that came with smoking Zookies led me to raid the pantry for some junk food, and while I managed to dig up some M&Ms, I couldn’t quite get them into my mouth every time. They kept falling out of my grasp and then bouncing across the wood planks underneath me, kind of like While this was a mellow high, it was a very evident high nonetheless. I was very I was setting them free to live their lives on my bedroom floor. When I surveyed clearly stoned — my eyes were super the damage a few hours later (and by red and felt like they were as dry as the that I mean when I stepped on them Sahara, and there is no way I could have faked it otherwise. Had I been a teenager after emerging from my weed cocoon), I realized that I must have gotten more on and not a grown-ass adult, my parents the floor than I did in my mouth. would have IMMEDIATELY known I was blazed after one bowl of this stuff. It’s fine, though. I’ll gladly vacuum I snapped a selfie at one point (I’ll spare up shards of M&Ms if it means I get to you the photographic evidence of that smoke a bowl of Zookies and hang out mess) and no amount of editing would pondering why we don’t use “kooked” have cleared the dopey look off my face in daily language these days. This strain or toned down the blazed-face eyes. ‘Tis is a winner, from the fat-ass buds to the what it is. mellow warmth of the effects. I would I also found myself laughing at stuff smoke it even if it smelled like festering that shouldn’t be funny. For example, I trash — but it doesn’t. It just smells a kept thinking about the word “kooked,” little like diesel, which is a’ight by me. and made sure I wrote down that the That’s a small price to pay for a high like word kooked needs to be brought back the one Zookies offers. into the mainstream. That would be kooked, man. And, while my limbs were
16 | Thursday, September 10, 2020
still working, my hands weren’t cooperating as much as they should have been.
—— DGO Pufnstuf
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[weed]
We are open 9am - 8pm
It’s impossible to pronounce Sinsère Chocolates from Love’s Oven, but it’s fine because these THC-infused candy bars are delicious and potent
Let’s just get something out of the way up front, shall we? I have no idea how to say Sinsère, which is only a problem considering that we’re reviewing Sinsère Chocolates from Love’s Oven for The Green House in Durango this week. Is it pronounced sincere? Sin-serey? Sin-sciere? I truly do not know.
cream option because I hate bananas, and it was a solid choice if I do say so myself.
What I did not expect, however, was to be unable to taste ANY weed aftertaste in the bar. Edibles almost always have that lingering taste of weed for me, but not this one. Had I been told it was a regular chocolate bar I would have eaten the whole thing. Luckily, I knew it was a weed chocolate bar, so I did not eat the entire freaking thing, or one of you would’ve had to come and peel me off the floor.
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Before I get into that, though, let’s talk shop about these chocolates. So, as I mentioned, Sinsère Chocolates are a product of Love’s Oven, an edible brand you may be familiar with thanks to the delicious infused brownies, cookies, and other goodies they offer in dispensaries across Colorado.
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Luckily, I don’t have to say the word — I just have to write it — but it’s still a little annoying to me, considering that I love words as much as I do. I just need to chalk it up to one of life’s great mysteries and move on, I guess. But despite the puzzling name, there’s really nothing puzzling about the Sinsère Chocolates themselves. They’re pretty freaking great, in fact. I picked up these THC-infused chocolates from The Green House and got to choose from a few different flavors, including bananas foster, and Irish coffee and cream. I went with the 10 mg per dose Irish coffee and
and coffee, just as I expected.
I actually wasn’t aware that Love’s Oven was behind Sinsère before I tried them, but now that I know, it makes sense. These chocolates, as with all of Love’s Oven products, are delicious.
Details
Where to find Sinsere: The Green House, 730 S. Camino del Rio, thegreenhousecolorado.com
The package contains 100 mg of THC in total — so about 10 mg per square of chocolate. Each square of the chocolate bar is surprisingly large, and this particular option had bits of what appeared to be coffee beans layered throughout the white chocolate. It tasted like Irish cream
I only ate 1.5 pieces instead — about 15 mg of THC total — though I was tempted to eat more than that. I added in that second half-dose of chocolate after about two hours of not feeling the effects of the bar. (Note: This is probably not Love’s Oven’s fault; I smoke a friggin’ metric ton of weed and I have gained an annoyingly high tolerance in return. Thought it was just for bud, but it apparContinued on page 23
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Thursday, September 10, 2020 | 17
[weed]
Getting old is trash, but this weed salve from Mary Jane’s Medicinals makes it a little more tolerable I don’t know about you guys, but I’m aging out of being able to bend over without pulling a muscle. Any time I drop something on the floor, I think twice before deciding whether or not to pick it up. Compounded by the fact that I also have terrible posture, let’s just say my lower back and various other muscles tend to feel like cement most of the time. All this to say, thank Zuul for Mary Jane’s Medicinals Super Strength Nano Salve. I’m not alone in this opinion, either. This salve isn’t just all talk. High Times awarded Super Strength Nano Salve with second place in the topical category of the Cannabis Cup Colorado: People’s Choice 2020. (Shout out to Pagosa Therapeutics for winning first place in the sativa flower grouping with their Jabberwokie strain!) What makes this topical such a winner? Mary Jane’s Medicinals uses a natural nano emulsifier in order to break down the THC and CBD into smaller particles. This results in the cannabinoids being absorbed more deeply into yo’ skin which makes the salve that much
citrus smell that I honestly can’t get enough of. On top of all that goodness, Mary Jane also includes arnica in this concoction, a herb associated with healing properties. This means Super Strength Nano Salve is great for those of us with aches, pains, and skin ailments. A 3.3-ounce container of this topical contains a 1:1 ratio of THC and CBD, roughly 500 mg of each.
more effective. This salve is a blend of ingredients like shea butter, beeswax, essential oils, cocoa butter, jojoba oil, and cannabis-infused grapeseed oil. With these products in mind, it probably won’t surprise you that Super Strength Nano Salve smells divine. It’s overwhelmingly a soothing
I, personally, am not a very active person. I am the epitome of a lazy stoner, and yet I still somehow manage to hurt myself and experience a whole lotta soreness: lower back, knees, finger joints. Most of this can be attributed to poor posture and my career choice of constantly smashing out paragraph after paragraph onto a Word document. As a result, I get sore.
fridge). One afternoon, after having a particularly irksome day with a lot of knee pain, I decided to put this salve to use. Mary Jane’s Medicinals suggests placing a dime-sized amount on the affected area, massaging it in, and scooping out more as needed. The smell alone is enough to make someone feel better, but thankfully, Super Strength Nano Salve is more than just nice smelling. The ointment got to work absorbing into the skin almost instantly and within a few minutes, my knee felt usable once more. The pain was gone - no longer did it ache to stretch and walk. To top it all off, my knee smelled delicious!
Suffice to say, Super Strength Nano Salve is now a big part of my routine I’m always looking for ways to ease my when my old achy joints and muscles discomfort with oils, massages, stretchstart acting up, and it should be a part ing, etc. so I was psyched when I got my of your routine, too. Trust us, it’ll make hands on Super Strength Nano Salve. surviving these times a whole lot more Lately, it’s been my knees that have been tolerable and smell a lot better, too. bothering me (which is a mystery to me as I typically only use them to walk to my —— Sir Blaze Ridcully
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[weed]
Tattoo parlor and dispensary walk into a bar ... er, join forces to create killer strains and art Snacks and weed go together like pepperoni and pizza. But you know what else goes well with the ganja? Tattoos.
storm and still performing or are finding the resources they need to keep practicing. Because cannabis and tattooing grew up together in the counterculture, it made sense for us to reach into that realm and see if there was a way we could help,” Wroblewski said.
Now that certain strains have big followings among stoners, dispensaries like Seed & Smith, a Denver shop, are getting creative with how they debut some strains. To do this, Seed & Smith is partnering with Marion Street Tattoo Gallery to create art and merch around the dispensary’s strain releases. “We wanted to be sure our friends in the artistic industries are weathering the storm and still performing or are finding the resources they need to keep practicing. Because cannabis and tattooing grew up together in the counterculture, it made sense for us to reach into that realm and see if there was a way we could help,” Seed & Smith community outreach director Robbie Wroblewski told Westword. The two businesses are partnering up over the next six months and will offer a collection of merchandise like hats and shirts paired with each new month-
Elsa Olafsson via Flickr
»» There ain’t nothing like hitting a bowl and then hitting the canvas (or so we hear). ly strain debut, like Grease Monkey, a pairing of Gorilla Glue and Cookies and Cream, which they recently released. “My creativity is primarily driven by coffee and Sour Patch kids. But I’m definitely pro-cannabis,” said Nate Stephens, one of the tattoo artists. “I heard the name [Grease Monkey] and immediately had an image of what it needed to be. I tell stories with pictures on a daily basis
The folks at DGO miss leaving our homes for concerts, drinks and dinners out. We don’t like cooking or cleaning the kitchen — and we certainly don’t like mixing our own drinks, all things we’ve had to do since the start of this pandemic. PLEASE wear your masks and practice social distancing so we can get back to our regularly scheduled (fun) programming.
and oftentimes develop images from a few simple words.” As COVID-19 disrupts everything and changes the business landscape — hitting tattoo parlors particularly hard — it’s hopeful to see industries and organizations joining forces to support one another. “We wanted to be sure our friends in the artistic industries are weathering the
The relationship between the two businesses started several years ago when Seed and Smith employees got tattoos at Marion Street. After the tattoo shop closed for almost two months because of COVID, the tattoo artists started selling their artwork to support themselves. That’s when Seed and Smith decided it was high time to do a collaboration. “In this instance, we are creating gigs for these guys to keep their creativity flowing as they grow their schedules again. We want this art to be as natural to the artist as if they were throwing it on some skin permanently,” Wroblewski said. —— Amanda Push
PLEASE WEAR A MASK! [correctly!]
Thursday, September 10, 2020 | 19
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[weed]
A new study shows that smoking reefer after hours won’t affect your work, so toke away, friends improved performance,” according to the study.
If someone has the nerve to tell you that your marijuana use is screwing with your job, you now have the proof you need to tell them they are w-r-o-n-g.
The study took place in order to consider how cannabis legalization would impact the workplace as a change in laws regarding its legality becomes more widespread. The study examined the relationship between three temporal-based cannabis measures and five forms of workplace performance.
In May, professors at Auburn and San Diego State universities published a study in which data was gathered from 281 employees and their direct supervisors. The study uncovered that cannabis used after work hours “was not related (positively or negatively) to any form of performance as rated by the user’s direct supervisor.” Aka, the employees’ bosses could find no change in the employees’ work performance either way. “Results indicate using cannabis before or during work harmed four of five different dimensions of performance rated by the user’s direct supervisor, yet contrary to commonly held assumptions, not all forms of cannabis use harmed performance,” the study stated. “In fact, after-work cannabis use did not relate to any of the workplace performance dimensions. This finding casts doubt on some stereotypes of cannabis users and suggests a need for further methodological and theoretical development in the field of substance use.” So, based on the study, one could even infer that cannabis is helpful and
22 | Thursday, September 10, 2020
Flickr stock image
»» The more you know ... about weed!“ may even affect work performance in a positive way. “After-work cannabis use could allow for relaxation and resource recovery to take place, which would help with
performance-related aspects of one’s work, but it may be indirect such that after-work cannabis users get better sleep, wake up feeling more energized, and this positive state is what sets the stage for
Hopefully, studies like this will continue to help diminish the stigma of marijuana use, even in Colorado. Despite recreational marijuana being legalized in 2012, Colorado employers can still legally fire employees for smoking weed outside of work hours. The arbitrary and subjective right to terminate employment is due to archaic legislation and a lack of methodology to test marijuana use with more precision, as cannabis can sit in your system for weeks. Perhaps it will be studies such as this that will inspire state legislators to pass more laws protecting Coloradoans who choose to roll a joint during their personal time. —— Amanda Push
Horoscope
ARIES (March 21 to April 19)
LEO (July 23 to Aug. 22)
You want to have a heart-to-heart conversation with someone right now. You’re not interested in superficial discussions about trivial matters. You want the skinny.
You might share a meaningful conversation with a female friend or even a member of a group soon. This conversation might help you solidify future goals.
TAURUS (April 20 to May 20)
VIRGO (Aug. 23 to Sept. 22)
You have money on your mind at the moment. However, be careful when shopping, because you might make emotional choices instead of practical ones. (Hey, money matters.)
Right now, personal details about your private life are relatively public. People notice you and are talking about you. (Be aware of this.)
GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Right now the Moon is in your sign for a little longer, heightening your emotions. However, this can also slightly improve your good fortune and your luck, which is good.
Do something soon to satisfy your urge for a little adventure. What you want is a chance to learn something new or to see something different. Can you go someplace you’ve never been before?
CANCER (June 21 to July 22)
SCORPIO (Oct. 23 to Nov. 21)
During this busy week, you need some time for yourself to catch your breath. Seek out solitude in pleasant surroundings if you can find it — just for right now.
Right now you need to focus on banking details and anything to do with shared property, insurance issues or inheritances. Spend some time wrapping up loose details.
ently extends to edibles, too.) Once I tossed back that 5 mg piece on top of the 10 I’d already eaten, it was lights out, you guys. I went from zero to really effing stoned in a matter of minutes. My eyes were heavy, my arms were cement, and my brain was putty. I was obnoxiously stoned. I was also obnoxiously hungry, which led me to eat what I can only describe as all the random things in my pantry. I don’t even know what they were. I know I dug out some hot Cheetos, which is gross and yes, I’m ashamed, along with all sorts of other things. I found the remnants not only on the side table by my couch but also on my nightstand and UNDER MY PILLOW. My stoned shame knows no bounds. I don’t remember much else, to be honest. I know I slept like a damn rock, though — what time I fell asleep is not even on my meter, but after I did, I was zonked. Woke up the next day feeling like a freaking
You will have a better relationship right now with partners and close friends if you cooperate. You might even have to go more than halfway. But in the end, it will be worth it. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22 to Jan. 19)
A family discussion might be important or you might seek personal solitude. It’s your choice. BORN DURING THESE TWO WEEKS You are tenacious and persevering. You are
Right now you might have to work on behalf of someone else to help them or benefit them in some way. This might even be your pet. (Just do it.)
also tactful and disciplined. You will stick
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20 to Feb. 18)
tunities! You will encounter adventure and
This is a fun-loving time, which means you will also enjoy playful activities with kids. Sports events and the entertainment world will appeal to you. Enjoy!
stimulating situations. If possible (maybe
PISCES (Feb. 19 to March 20)
change! Let your personal freedom be your
Give yourself permission to relax and cocoon at home right now. You need a chance to catch your breath and get your bearings.
goal this year.
with something until the job is done. This is an exciting year of change and new oppor-
not), explore opportunities to travel and expand your world through learning. Welcome
(c) 2020 King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Bizarro
From page 17
LIBRA (Sept. 23 to Oct. 22)
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22 to Dec. 21)
champ, aside from the evidence of my Cheeto binge. That part wasn’t my fav. If you like edibles, these Sinsère Chocolates should be right up your alley. How you’ll order them, I don’t know, considering the word is nonsense, but I’m sure our budtender friends are used to people pointing and grunting while ordering. Seems like I’m behind at least one or two people from other states (ahem, Texas ;)) every time I’m in there doing just that. So maybe go that route — ‘cause embarrassing yourself to order them will be well worth it in the end. ——
DGO Pufnstuf
Thursday, September 10, 2020 | 23
OCTOBER 8-31 • 2020
Pick up a map and swag-bag at The Greenhouse and start your crawl for all the best deals in town! First 200 bags will include an official Cannabis Crawl T-Shirt and a lighter. The map will guide you to awesome deals, giveaways, Q&A sessions, and other related events happening throughout the month. This year we are including businesses outside of Durango! Visit any of the businesses in Pagosa, Mancos, or Cortez between October 8th and October 31st. Drop your map off at Kinfolk Farms for a chance to win a $500 CASH PRIZE!
D G O M A G . C O M /C R AW L
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DGO does not endorse consuming of products and crawlers must abide by the law of 1-ounce purchase for the day.
