RegularOccurrences

4 La Vida Local

5 Land Desk

6-7 Soap Box

8-9 Top Story

10 On Stage

11 Kill Yr Idols

12-13 Stuff to Do

13 Ask Rachel

14 Free Will Astrology

15 Classifieds

15 Haiku Movie Review

On the cover

Last call for desert adventuring before the heat forces us all up into the high country./ Photo by Andy High

Ear to the ground:

“I think I have La Croixanoia.”

– The fear of running out of bubbly water, which compels a person to stockpile the stuff like a Y2Ker

Goodbye, cowgirl in the sand

There it was, so close you could almost touch it – two, possibly three, nights of Neil Young playing live in Telluride this August. His people had reached out to the town of Telluride to hold the multi-day event Aug. 16-20. It was all supposed to work out.

But then – Telluride Mushroom Festival.

According to a report in the Telluride Daily Planet, after hearing the news of Young’s proposed shows, organizers with the Telluride Mushroom Festival – which is planned for the same weekend – were up in arms, concerned about the crowds the legendary rocker would bring into town.

This year, the Telluride Mushroom Festival is expected to bring in somewhere around 800 to 1,000 attendees. By contrast, Young’s show could have upwards of 8,000 people packing into town, stressing Telluride’s limited infrastructure and lodging.

“We do feel that it’s important for the community to honor not over-doing it with how many events come into town,” an organizer with the mushroom festival told the Planet. “The overlap dilutes the value of each event. Even if each event is valuable in itself, when there is an overlap it creates a disruption and shifts the energy of the event … We think it’s about quality over quantity – more is not better.”

As a result of the pushback, Young’s team decided to cancel the shows. As of Wednesday, it’s not clear whether Young – who splits his time between Malibu and a ranch outside Telluride – will reschedule or not.

STAR-STUDDED CAST: Zach Hively, Jonathan Thompson, Jon E. Lynch, Rob Brezsny, Lainie Maxson, Jesse Anderson & Clint Reid

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It should be noted, too, that the Telluride Mushroom Festival, which has been going on for four decades, had first dibs on that particular weekend. And we get it – Telluride is a sh*t show in the summer, with a festival on nearly every single weekend. For mushroom festival-goers, what would have been a low-key event celebrating the wonders of the fungi would have turned into absolute chaos of stoned dads trying to remember the words of “Cripple Creek Ferry.”

But, at the same time, we can lament not having Young play live for a couple nights so close to Durango (especially because this writer, for reasons that remain unknown to this day, missed the last time he played in Telluride in 2016, and ever since, has had to endure stories of how “absolutely amazing” that show was).

And who knows? Maybe Young will reschedule. In the meantime, keep on rocking at the free box.

Belly up

There are a lot of guys I never thought I would be. One of these, among many, was Fishtank Guy. That changed when I figured out my dislike of mosquitos is greater than my disinterest in becoming Fishtank Guy. So now, lo and behold, this guy has an indoor breeding program for mosquitofish.

Like a great many slopes, this one was slippery. It all started with taking clover for granted.

I could not have been the only kid growing up in America who thought all honey came from clover. That’s what every squeeze bear had written on its belly sign: PURE CLOVER HONEY. It didn’t matter that, growing up in New Mexico, I did not see enough clover to sustain even a single beehive. Somewhere, there grew vast meadows with wide acreage sprouting clover and only clover, because that is the only way to ensure accuracy in advertising.

I never examined this worldview until I encountered a jar – just some regular non-animalshaped jar – labeled “wildflower honey.” My mind exploded like… well, like wildflowers. This sounded much more enticing than honey made merely from clovers and also much easier to enforce among the bee workforce.

Wildflower honey also made honey sound much more accessible to those of us without reputable clover sources. I became Beekeeping Guy with the same gusto and naivete that other people become Homebrewing Guy. Like Homebrewing Guy, I developed an excessive adjective vocabulary to discuss flavors. I also cultivated comparable concerns about my water supply.

Bees, like most living things, require fresh water. But they can also drown in it, because there are too many in a hive to outfit with arm floaties. So in order to give the bees a safe place to land in my water trough, I became Aquatic Plant Guy. I installed a variety of water hyacinths and water lilies and water bottles with just enough rocks in them to hold them steady while they floated.

These ultimately worked, for the bees. But I had a new problem: standing water. Unlike its counterpart, running water, standing water is lazy and prone to developing a thin layer of nacho cheese dust. Standing water is slow enough for mosquitos to catch, and when they do, they lay eggs.

If you think this is how I became Fishtank Guy, you’re only half wrong. You must also account for my ability to mess things up.

Thumbin’It

Joe Biden going full power to the people, saying the rich must “pay their share” in taxes to help lift up lower and middles classes. Heck yeah! Unless, of course, we become rich. Then this is a thumbs down.

The Federal Trade Commission suing Amazon for tricking customers into signing up for Prime subscriptions. As people who definitely, absolutely, never got duped by this, good on the FTC.

A federal judge striking down Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care for kids. Oh Arkansas, why are you still a thing?

Mosquitofish are hard to mess up. Ranchers put them in horse troughs, where the fish survive on mosquito larvae and horse saliva. But my water lily oasis kept offing them like … well, like fish in a barrel. Sending them to swim with the fishes, as it were.

Maybe this was normal? Maybe I had a bad batch of fish. Maybe bee spit is deadlier than horse drool. Maybe they just kept hiding under lily pads, giggling like toddlers, whenever I went outside to stare into the water. Whatever the cause of their struggles, winter left no doubt and killed whoever survived.

The Guilty Conscience Guy on my shoulder laid it out like a philosopher with his postulates: You want bee water. You want to minimize contributing to skeeter overpopulation. You need mosquitofish. You don’t want to kill them off.

QED: you must spend many dollars on plastic plants and a rock with a tunnel through it for “enrichment purposes” and dedicate an entire portion of surface area in your home to a tank for growing algae and still killing off the mosquitofish you stock it with, mere moments after the return window on all the fish tank apparatus has closed.

I gave up. I had a fish tank, but I was not Fishtank Guy. I was not when I was young and had a fish tank until my dad got tired of keeping it going for me. And I was not now, when I had no one to blame but everyone involved in the water supply chain.

I offered my tank, algae and all, to my brother-inlaw, who is an actual qualified zookeeper. He started asking questions, like how often had I changed the water, or treated the water, or cleaned the tank, or fed my fish, or left them unattended when I skipped town for a week.

He’d take the tank, he said, or – or! – he could show me all the things I needed to do to keep my next poor batch of fish alive, unless they swim up the filter, in which case that’s their own stupid fault.

Being a Guy, I realized, means more than acquiring the right stuff. I could only be Fishtank Guy if I paid attention and cared enough to sustain a minimally functional habitat. Lucky for the algae, I hate admitting I can’t.

So I brought my fish tank up to code. I stocked the outside bee-water trough with mosquitofish, and I kept some inside, most of which are still alive as I write. One is even pregnant, though I suspect she’s willing her little fry to fight the current as long as possible.

Once I prove I can do it, I think I’ll give it all up and take on another challenge. Something more forgiving and less, you know, alive. I’m thinking Standing Guy – complete with nacho cheese dust.

– Zach Hively

SignoftheDownfall:

A wildfire breaking out near Ophir, in an area that should have gotten plenty of snow this winter, showing we’re not out of the drought yet.

TSA reporting a glitch in its new security system that flags only Colorado driver licenses. Well, at least they can still search through our shoes and packed lunches.

Russia apparently using a beluga whale as a spy? (Not a joke). Come on, man, at least leave whales out of this.

Gross Busters

Bill Murray, who was born before superglue was invented and then got famous while we were kids, is reportedly dating the singer Kelis, who was also a kid when Bill Murray got famous. Neither star is commenting publicly about the allegations that first appeared in British tabloid The Sun last week. But, the controversial 29-year age difference has social media awash in rumor and intrigue. Regardless of your opinion, however, it’s now impossible to argue with Kelis: her milkshake really does bring ALL the boys to the yard.