Audio By Carbonatix
Q:
What does the Institute of Drinking Studies recommend after a monumentally bad week? A week that leaves you bruised, battered and trying to get the footprints off your back from life running roughshod over your carcass? A week where the only thing that keeps you going is the thought of ordering a drink every ten minutes until you pass out, and then every fifteen minutes thereafter.
Dr. Etiquette: Our official stance is not far off from your plan, although we recommend that you maximize your initial alcohol intake so that you blow right by the new 0.08 limit and end any question of driving your own sorry butt home and putting the greater Denver area at risk. Obviously, the only remaining question is where to go.
Q: Have you ever been to Miami?
Dr. Etiquette: Yes, we often wake up screaming and thrashing in bed at the memory of it, although it was more than two years ago.
Q: Can you think of any good reason that people in Denver would try to emulate Miami? Cite examples.
Dr. Etiquette: We can’t even think of a good reason why Miami would try to be like Miami. After our visit there, we’re still afraid of neon lights and Cuban food. We saw such disturbing things there that we might as well have been on Mars — things like guys in thongs, eighty-year-old women with so much plastic surgery that they smiled as convincingly as mannequins, bodies so tanned that they looked like they’d escaped from the taxidermist, a paunchy Vince Neil and Fabio.
Q: Is it true that in Miami a local woman asked if you liked to “party,” which you, as a denizen of Earth, assumed meant going out to the bars and drinking instead of snorking a pound of cocaine into each nostril, which is what she did without batting an eye? Explain.
Dr. Etiquette: Yes, and we bet she is still having a hell of a time getting the skid marks from our very unstylish shoes off her hardwood floors.
Q: So why does Rise (1909 Blake Street) think it can pull off a South Beach-style bar scene when even Miami doesn’t do it well?
Dr. Etiquette: We really don’t know, but we do know that Rise is one of the oddest bars we’ve ever been to. Exhibit A: the futons out on the patio, called the Sky Bar, which are supposed to make the place seem chic, but instead just give you someplace convenient to get the bed spins early. Exhibit B: go-go dancers inside who appeared to have more stimulants and hallucinogens in their bloodstreams than blood, and techno “music” played at a volume sufficient to cause permanent brain damage and rattle loose any fillings you might have.
Q: Were there any highlights to your visit there?
Dr. Etiquette: Our waitress, who was wearing an outfit that caused us to question whether she was wearing underwear. Also, the lack of people at Rise that night allowed us to change seats several times, the better to escape the migraine-inducing “music.” Finally, an aerobics instructor who obviously had gotten lost, then trapped permanently in the bar after his brain was melted by the “music,” danced in a seizure-like trance for better than an hour by himself, displaying a performance that encouraged us to hone our sarcasm to a razor’s edge.
Q: Did you find any good use for the outdoor futons?
Dr. Etiquette: Unfortunately, most are placed so close to the street that only a professional would be able to have sex on one without feeling self-conscious. And the few futons not near the street are so close to the sound system that any couple utilizing them will be unceremoniously bounced onto the floor by the arrhythmic bass. But then, we did get to drop a major flying-elbow smash, a la Ric Flair, onto the Head of Drinking Regrets as he sprawled on one of the futons.
Q: So you got out of there pretty quick?
Dr. Etiquette: It is rare that inebriated Institute researchers are able to reach a consensus so quickly, but we soon determined that man does not have the technology to survive on Mars or in Miami.
