Emily and I attended a band that we’re both fans of - The Dirty Nil. This young band is the glorious mixture of Classic Rock and Punk Rock. In fact, the main front man, Luke Bentham has a tradition of taking the stage wearing a star-smattered shirt in homage to MC5. These fellas know how to put on a great show. Luke is one of the most charismatic and entertaining frontman I’ve ever seen. Somehow he’s able to act like a rock star and pull off rock star “moves” while on the small stage without becoming a parody. If I was to put on my non-existant-marketing-hat for a moment, I feel like these guys are memorable, not only because the songs are hooky but because they just have their own style. For example, I already mentioned that Luke wears his star shirt, which is reminiscent of frontman like Billy Corgan who was famous for always wearing his “Zero” shirt. He also for some reason is always chewing bubble gum and blowing bubbles in between songs. And why does he always use a cord for his guitar that looks like it could have been plugged into a telephone from the eighties, when all the hip modern people are going wireless? I don’t know, but it’s awesome. All that being said I was bummed to see that there were maybe 20 people at the show. I know these guys have a bigger following than that, but perhaps the Arizona punk scene just hasn’t caught on yet - they are kind of new, they’re from Canada, and most of their releases up to this point have been only on vinyl (this isn’t hipster crap, punks have been doing vinyl way longer than hipsters). 
This month we trekked across the desert again to visit the polygamist oasis we refer to using lowbrow, cowboy accents as HurriCUHN. In between here and there we stumbled upon a stoplight in the middle of nowhere. 
Risk Legacy war briefing: The major super powers were established fairly early in the game. Emily’s dad took North America, I ruled Europe with an iron fist, Robert holed up in Australia. Emily’s brother Keaton was trying to establish power in Africa but chaos, corruption, and power struggles deprived him of his ambitions. While we were busy fighting amongst ourselves, Emily convinced us she was of no concern while she quietly built a coalition in Asia. After we completely wiped out the powers the be in North America and just when victory was in my grasp, Emily launched an offensive on my stronghold in Russia. We held on as long as we could but the onslaught was too much. Emily came away with the victory, and she was able to permanently alter the board by increasing how valuable Australia is. The rest of us who managed to not be eradicated were able to place stickers on the board, thus establishing cities. Robert named his “Sore Loser” to go along with my city named “Butthurt”. 
Look at these Fracture Prune doughnuts and salivate: 
We play games about trees 
We got to be parents for a few days. Yes, that’s right, we watched my nephew for a few days while his family was living it up in Disneyland. 
Despite Cason being a very good natured child, this experience confirmed our suspicion that being a parent is difficult. You heard it here first. Now I wanna do this: 
Pictures from the road: I suddenly have the almost irresistible urge to create a slideshow with bizarre and grotesque music. 
