Kentucky Derby, Glow Party, Furry People in Salt Lake

05/08/2011

 
I arrived in Salt Lake on a Monday and tooled about town waiting for someone from SLC couchsurfing to ring my handy. Eventually Josh invited me over to use the upstairs closet which has a massage table and an excellent view of the capitol building. The building is...stately. The prophet John Smith was a free mason so much of Mormon iconography and early SLC architecture has strong influences from the Masons visual lexicon. The weather closes in and I retreat to Josh's.

The capitol building is set on a high hill over looking downtown Salt Lake and the capitol neighborhood is on its steep western slope. He's a great host and funny, but always seemed to be in a conference call or running outside to grab a quick smoke. We have good conversations and I stayed up late chatting with his awesome roommates.

Feeling a bit energized by my CS luck, I fished for some entertainment and eventually happened upon a Kentucky Derby party. I arrived just in time for the final race at 4:45, put 2 dollars on Midnight Seduction, and cut into a jar of sickly sweet mint julep. There might way to good way to mix burbon, mint, and sugar, but evidently that secret is kept in Kentucky. 5pm: my head hurts, stomach is too knotted to eat a bacon wrapped hotdog, Animal Nature has won the race, and a strange Chinese man is determined on explaining the procedures, traditions, and benefits of drinking 10 cups of green tea a day. 3 cups of tea later my co-worker, Eric, and I are ready to attack the night. 

Pictured above is our host for the evening. Tami's loud, pierced, devilishly funny, and furnishes her home with a member from every subculture in SLC. I get annoyed with some hipster artist types and open the evening to a bit of "still life photography." I'm determined to invent a program that can automatically render any photo for saturated colors and high contrast for that edgy, artistic, aren't-I-so-talented look.

11:30pm   Okay people really need to go home so I can sleep on the couch. I'm contemplating crawling in the back of my truck until this fashion nightmare walks through the door.... GLOW PARTY! WHERE?

 The party is apparently being held by the thirsty congregation of Salt Lake City Atheists. Every table is covered with sticky cocktails glasses and uncorked bottles of Rose' wine. The music has degenerated to a cacophony of flamboyant pop/dance accentuated with the writhing howls of flamboyant atheists decorated in glow jewelery and exposed by pulsating lasers. My stomach is starting to knot again.

I wake early and comb the condiments in the kitchen for something to cull the void in my belly. The only thing left untouched from last night are the sticky, tooth cracking, throat sticking Chinese candies that are meant to be consumed with tea. Lacking tea I chomp a few and immediately curl up in a ball on the couch to assess my decision making process. 

My other co-worker, Sofia, calls and I join her and a friend in the park for coffee and eggs.
 

There are grown men dressed as knights fighting with sticks and others dressed as furry animals. SLC confuses me.