Hello! We have returned from a whirlwind vacation with my parents, siblings, and their families in our home state of Colorado. Whereas my husband’s family vacations horizontally (relaxes on the beach), mine vacations vertically: lots of hiking, lots of rock climbing, a little driving mountain ATVs hard enough that their batteries die.
For me, the highlights were: 1. Simply being in or near the mountains, which calm my body and mind like nothing else; and 2. CASA BONITA, which does the absolute opposite.
In case you are uninitiated: Casa Bonita is a 50,000-square-foot restaurant/acid trip in a strip mall in suburban Denver. When I was a kid, its neighbor was a Big Sur Waterbeds; now it’s a Dollar Tree. It’s a Mexican(ish) restaurant + an immersive experience, where every corner is designed within an inch of its life, and there is no possible way to visit every corner. It once featured in an episode of South Park, and when it finally went belly-up in 2020, the South Park creators bought it and meticulously restored it to the tune of $40 million. This NYT article (gift link) does a nice job of capturing Casa Bonita as much as it can be captured by the human mind and/or language.
Here are some of the things we did during our visit: wandered the “streets” and requested tunes from the mariachi band. Lounged in the pink governor’s palace, where the chandeliers mark acoustic hot spots. Watched a puppet show featuring a burrito who sings in Italian. Crowded into a gilt bordello for a horrid, lucha libre-themed magic show. Received tiny squishy animals from a mermaid’s pearl, delivered to us on a red velvet pillow. Watched cliff divers from behind a waterfall. Bathed in the singular fragrance combination of refried beans + chlorine.
Does the paragraph above read like a seven-year-old recounting last night’s dream? CORRECT! NOW YOU GET IT!
Perhaps the best way to convey Casa Bonita's magic is to say that, despite years’ hype on my part, my two teenage children—both prone to ennui—were still bowled over and grinning/shrieking the entire time. (My 14yo daughter said, "this is my love language.") Put yourself on the email list now, so if you ever find yourself with a trip booked to Colorado, you can cadge a ticket.
Oh right, the debate
I could write about Casa Bonita all day! At Casa Bonita there's no presidential campaign to make you sad!
Are you watching the debate tonight? I don’t want to, but I think I will: engaged citizenry, and all that. I still feel cynical and anxious about the whole thing and would rather re-watch the Bridgerton carriage episode (IYKYK). BUT I do think tonight will be instructive in two ways:
- Sometimes I conveniently forget how important this election is, and seeing these two side-by-side will remind me that (a) one is light years better than the other and (b) if we don’t want to see two white octogenarian men duking it out in future elections we can choose not to;
- We’ll hear them talking, from their own mouths, not through spokespeople or memes or Russian bots or whatever.
I’m not particularly a CNN fan, but honestly, its setup for tonight seems like the best possible non-circus situation:
- Both candidates will stand at podiums, not wander;
- Microphones will be muted throughout, except during a candidate’s turn to speak (so, less performative cross-talk);
- There will be no live audience to boo or cheer;
- Candidates will have no notes or props, just pens, paper, and water;
- There will be two commercial breaks, during which candidates can’t talk with their teams.
I suppose a fly could intervene (I haven’t seen rules against it). Otherwise, this is the closest we’ve gotten to anything resembling straight talk.
In any event, McSweeney’s has designed a drinking game!
So: are you going to watch? Why or why not? I'm genuinely interested in what y'all think is the utility of a debate. (Or if you’re seeing this Friday and you watched…what’d you think?)
The details: 9pm EST on CNN, C-SPAN, CNN.com or PBS.org (streaming for free), some network channels, or THE C-SPAN NOW APP, if you have it (and if you do have it, you have to tell us).
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