Office Experiment #5 - KFC DOUBLE DOWN

This is what I look like when I'm on the go!
On the way to an adventure of epic proportions!
See the spring in my step! The intent purpose of my gait!

I was headed for a dire place.

In pursuit of the Colonel.

On another Office Experiment mission!

THE DOUBLE DOWN!

Yep. That's right...
Don't know what the Double Down is?
Well, here's the breakdown (straight from the KFC website):

The new KFC Double Down sandwich is real! This one-of-a-kind sandwich features two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe® or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel's Sauce.

Unsure of what I was getting myself into, in a gastronomic sense, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just order the meal...with the fries and root beer.
It felt like a good idea at the time.


These were my co-pilots on the trip.
Eric and Jake are some of the bad ass graphic designers I get the pleasure of working with...and they are always down for exploring some sort of fast food atrocity for the sake of SCIENCE!

However, they are total smart asses who insinuated that the gentleman behind the counter, who was shockingly similar to a robot, may have impregnated me.
I'll let you know if the encounter was that life changing...

Ah, the beauty of mosaic.

As we waited for our orders, we joked about root beer wells, meth labs, and our colons.

Apparently, Eric wasn't too terrified at the proposition of eating a Double Down. He said, "My colon is strong!" - a ringing endorsement for trying one of these beasts!

We spent more time than any of us had really expected to spend in the this dual KFC/AW...

and made a real production out of ourselves.
Alright, Eric wasn't really into it. I forced him to take this picture with me!

The ride back to the office was a sort of a mix of anxious excitement and fear.


But clearly, the smiling, happy faces welcomed us and our deep fried booty back!
Michelle was ready to tackle this monster!

So, we settled in...

Got down to business...


And here's what I'll tell you about the Double Down...
Have you had Chicken Cordon Bleu?
If you have...then you've essentially eaten a Double Down.


It's fundamentally...a chicken breast sandwich.

I guess it could be gross, but if you think about it...it's not that weird.

Scott was into it!
There was even talk of him needing more than one if he were to eat the Double Down again.

Eric and Jake are totally in love with this kind of shit.

They both gave the sandwich a thumbs up.


Eric also drank this retarded orange thing.
I think it looks like more of a nightmare than the Double Down does.

For me, it was alright.
I mean, it tasted fucking good. It really did.
But it's also not something I would ever eat unless it was for the sake of an office experiment.
When I go to KFC...I exclusively want mashed potatoes and gravy - so, this was a little over the top.

When the gentleman working the counter originally wrote my name on the receipt, he wrote it as "McKey".
Does Becky sound like McKey?
Weirdo.

Interestingly, there's been a lot of talk about how disgusting and gratuitous this sandwich is...if you can call it an actual sandwich.
But Eric made a fine point...
He said, "If I got a bucket of chicken from KFC, I would eat way more than what I've eaten here.".
Which sort of puts it in perspective - it's not that much food or anymore caloric intake than what a normal dude might put away.

I think Jake might have been in an MSG induced pleasure zone.


Overall, Michelle was down with it.

Scott approved.

Jake would do it again!


And Eric simply closed his eyes and dreamed of his next encounter with the Double Down.
That's the face of satisfaction, my friends...don't you dare mistake it for anything else!

To read another review of my super amazing friend Chris LaTray's Double Down experience...please go to his blog: Stumbling the Walk
Actually, read his blog all the time and follow him on Twitter @chrislatray , please and thank you!
He's crazy smart, super talented, and he's just one of those Montana people that you wish you knew more of!

Is This The Road To Heaven That You Wanted To Take?

DJ, Blow My Speakers Up

[This episode brought to you by Release The Kraken Please's first ever guest blogger Baby S!]

This week has brought some amazing revelations, so I decided to take a weekend off and celebrate a little, and of course Madame Kraken, my life partner in crime, was along for the ride. The weekend culminated in a trip out Colfax to the Bluebird to see A Place To Bury Strangers and The Big Pink. Weirdly, Becky left her camera at home (I know! Totally out of character), so I made do with my iPhone to document the blessed event.

It was a gorgeous day. I snagged Miss Becky from her place and we car-danced to Lady Gaga remixes and a stupid-sick track by Ke$ha (yeah, the dollar sign is dumb, but the song Tik Tok is infectious!) while we beelined to Mezcal for what are usually awesome Dark-n-Stormies and some pre-show nosh. Becky and I made the acquaintance of this little dude on the way in:

And an older gentleman told me I looked like his Uncle Sidney. Mazel tov!

I could spend the whole post bitching about how lousy the service was at Mezcal, but I'll let some Twitter extracts do it for me:

NePlusUltra Mezcal w/ @hauntologist...he looks handsome! Pixies pin!

hauntologist The vast incompetence of our waiter at Mezcal is a good argument against legalizing marijuana.

hauntologist We just had a "moment" with our waiter. Free round of Dark & Stormies? Yes, please. 

NePlusUltra  Mezcal service sucks, but the tortilla soup just blew my brains out!

We got through that misery with full bellies and free drinks, and mozied across the street to the Bluebird, one of my favorite tiny theaters in Denver (which is something Denver does well that other music towns I've lived in like Minneapolis and New York don't even have. Maybe it's a Wild West thing?). Oh, and by the way, if you read this blog and you're not following Becky & I on Twitter, what are you thinking? Losers.

Anyhoo, we get in and are met by the inept musical stylings of the inexplicably ubiquitous DJ Boyhollow. We've been annoyed by him at more than one alternative/electro show and we'd like for him to retire, please. Becky said it best:

NePlusUltra DJ Boypussy bores the shit out of me...

The crowd was cool. Older, a little more mellow. There were parents with their teenage kids rocking out together. Our people, really.

Of course there were some scuzzie weirdos too, and some totally amazing freakshows and fashion disasters:

NePlusUltra At the sight of an albino 'fro having hunchbacked hipster, @hauntologist says, "Wow, that's sort of NEAT!"... 

hauntologist What is that poor girl wearing? Is she doing penance? Bagging potatoes?

hauntologist Inexplicably, I think it's weirdly hot when sort of doughy hipster dudes wear horizontal stripes. @NePlusUltra is with me on this one.  

And the dude standing in front of me during the first band, Io Echo, had the flippiest hair. Io Echo were o.k. Their most notable feature was their smoking hot bassist (in all senses of the word, I wish my iPhone took better pictures). Come to think of it, all of the bands had hot bassists. Hmmm. Anyway, here's Io Echo. Apparently one of their songs is in a commercial or somesuch:

Things really started to heat up when A Place To Bury Strangers took the stage and fucking took over our brains.

I told Becky they sounded like if Echo and the Bunnymen kidnapped the bunny-cute boys from The Drums and made them do acid with Martin Atkins in a basement for a month and then put them on tour.

 

But what they really sounded like was themselves, tearing the world apart and putting it back together again.

They were amazing. People danced, Becky swooned, and the tinnitus was totally worth it. If they venture to your neck of the woods, it'd be an evening well spent if you go see them.

 Becky is good for many things. One of them is fetching cocktails. 

The Big Pink were up next and we weren't sure what we were in for. What we were in for was something pretty effing amazing.

The lead singer is tiny, elfish, mohawed, with the rippedest arms I've seen on a boy in a while. Like if Brian Molko had a butch younger brother. Or something. He had a cool, yelpy voice and definitely held the crowd's attention, even though he had, yes, a hot bass player and the coolest lady drummer to compete with. They're a tight outfit, and I want to see them again.

They made magic. And we were caught up in it. As I so often find myself, when I'm out with Ms. Becky, I felt at home in the chaos, making our own little eye of the storm. The one disappointment was that none of the bands had buttons. Honestly.

I don't know if The Big Pink did an encore because we scampered out during the last song to head home to our respective beds and dream of our evening and plot other adventures. See you next time.

XO

Baby S.

GUEST BLOGGER!

Baby S accompanied me to the Place to Bury Strangers/Big Pink show tonight and he's in charge of the blogging!

Welcome my first guest blogger who is totally cute, smart, and one of my all time faves on the planet!

Thanks, Baby S!
xox

Oh, Golly, Where Could That Girl Be?

Just living the awesome life.
Rad hangout with Tim, delicious dinner at La Loma, beers and deep discussion, laughter, more friends, piano bar - people, I'm talking serious heavy hanging!

Thanks Tim - you're my new spirit animal!
xox

Just Me And My Dead End Friends Again

Babies, I've been sick.
I always think of that genius poem 'Fever' by Ted Hughes that he wrote for Sylvia Plath. It begins, "You had a fever. You had a real ailment. You had eaten a baddie. You lay helpless and a little bit crazy With the fever.".
(Actually, I just read the whole poem - and it's lovely. Really gorgeous. Go read it.)

I guess the bug captured me after a couple of weeks of busy madness...sort of punctuated with a few poor choices and playing kickball in the freezing cold.

I was probably due though - haven't been sick all winter.

It really took hold while visiting Mom in Wyoming - although, there couldn't be a better place to be sick.
Still we were able to do a little thrifting where I scored a ridiculous cache of New Wave records and some cardigan sweaters.

Still, I thought I should mention that yesterday was this blog's third birthday.
Yeah, unreal, right?

Three years ago, I bought a camera and decided that I wanted to really start investigating.
Sometimes I'm enthusiastic about the whole thing - I get excited at the prospects of the adventure and thrilled with the end results.
Other times, I feel weighed down by the obligation...but that rarely lasts for too long.

To my surprise, lately, I've been getting more traffic here. Which means that, whether you love it or hate it, you're looking at it.
So...that means, I should keep 'em coming, right?

So, thanks, sweet followers and endeared haters.
And more so, thanks to those that let me snap them living in my world.
Three is the magic number.

You're Free To Be Always, Always Already Gone

Have you ever just thrown caution to the wind and met up with a bunch of people you don't know?
If you haven't...I suggest you do.
And what I hope for you is that you'll meet people like the people that I met when I took the risk.

Initially, I was nervous...and forced Spencer to join me.
Here's the deal: a handful of the people in these pictures are from Twitter. Now, I was corrected numerous times, by JBrick, that this wasn't an official "TweetUp", but it was something close.

Spencer & I hemmed and hawed, we drank several beers, were on the verge of cold feet - and I had almost convinced myself that we should just go get Chinese food and bail on the whole idea.

Thankfully, we didn't. Tim, who you'll see below - choreographed this whole meet up/Taco Tuesdy, walked straight up to me and dragged our tentative asses into the fray.


I met Grant.
This guy is fucking funny.
Seriously - I was laughing the whole time we sat next to each other!
I love a gentleman with a sense of humor.

Familiar faces.
So, JBrick is a new Twitter friend too, but I've recently learned that I adore her...so, hopefully, she'll be around a lot more often!

Of course, Baby S was there keeping me grounded.

Shaun and Amber!
Amber is a new Twitter friend too...and what I've gleaned so far is she has a razor sharp wit and a pretty formidable dirty mind.
Psyched to learn more, clearly...

Everyone turning away from me.
Weak.
So, from right to left: Bill (?), Evan, Chelsea, and Tim!

That's better!
Chelsea insisted that she pose like this! I would have liked to see her smiling face, but I'll catch her again, hopefully!

Tim - super rad and outrageously hilarious Twitter friend! We have a date to nosh on some serious La Loma green chili in the coming weeks!
Can't wait for him to carry me out of there because I've eaten myself into a gluttonous coma.

Girly and Iliana...
I think! I hope I got your names right! I didn't get to spend a lot of time with you because Grant was hogging the view!

Dustin! New friend - rugged handsome...right?

Oh, by the way, it was Grant's birthday!
He's was out of control - in the very best way!

So, yeah...we hung heavy.
We got to know each other...

We drank margaritas...

We b0nded...

And we laughed our asses off.
Clearly, my kind of get down!

Apparently, at some point, Grant's going to show me some Zelda themed tattoo he has on his ass or something...

Seriously...HOW CUTE IS DUSTIN!?

Okay. All my friends are pretty damn cute.

We ate at Benny's...by the way.
It was it's normal awesome!

And as the whole thing wound down, I realized how grateful I was to Tim for yanking us from our tidy uncomplicated corner of the bar and forcing us into this insane good time.

Yeah, it was that kind of party.

My only regret? That I didn't get a pic of my sister from another mister Sandy!
We share the same last name...and she's R to the A to the D.

Bring on the next Taco Tuesday, bitches!