Ladies and Gentleman....Miss Loretta Lynn

[applause]

So, Wednesday I got here after riding on the airplane with a nice, but stupid, father-son pair who had won tickets to Bonaroo (spelling?) in Nashville. The father, despite being ALIVE and having full use of his eyes and ears, was still stunned that they had taken his GIANT thing of shaving cream, shampoo, and etc. There are SIGNS everywhere and the boarding passes we print out AT HOME have the info about liquid restrictions on them. Yes, the restrictions are stupid and part of the "security theatre" that our government is playing, but why be surprised that they took that gallon of shampoo? Also, he mentioned that he specifically put it in his carryon, not his checked bag because last time it broke open in the checked bag. Um...does the word "ziplock" or "wrapped in a towel then in a plastic bag" mean anything to you??? Guess not. But they were nice and will probably enjoy their trip.

Once off of the plane, I met up with a co-worker's daughter who happened to be on the same flight. I had thought I recognized her so checked. She was home for a visit before shipping out to Afghanistan. Wow. She was not bitching about shampoo. Probably had bigger issues on her mind. She's a refueler.
Sam/Gary/Nancy/RandomHawbaker: What is Steph's boy doing and is he still overseas?

OK, on to MISS LORETTA LYNN! She is a riot. It's like if your mom or gramma was a famous country singer. And she still has all of her voice.
She wore an aqua dress that was made entirely of sparklies with extra sparklies from the bosom to the toot areas. It was surprisingly slimming from the front....but from the side you can see that she has a fuller figure. Some very funny moments were when she went to toss her hair while telling a story about 45 minutes into the concert and said "well, ...my hair's all down in my dress" and proceeded to sort that out while continuing to tell her story.
The Colorado governor came out and inducted her into the Colorado county music hall of fame. He choked up a bit. Something about being the 6th of 12 kids and how her music moved them...blah blah blah. Then asked to hear "one's on the way".
She sang it right away.

She sat through most of the concert. Didn't mention her back but one assumes. Also, her nose was running and she said the dry air was bugging here. There seemed to be no question of her doing any encores. And she didn't.
Opening acts: Patsy Lynn (Peggy didn't come...Patsy said "Peggy couldn't make it" Loretta said "She COULD, she just DIDN'T")
Ernest Ray Lynn. Drunk. Both did a couple of songs and Patsy hawked wares that were for sale (I got a t-shirt for each of us who went)
She sang many big hits, a few that I was less familiar with but nothing from the Jack White album which disappointed me a bit, but I'm not holding it against a woman who is pushing 80. She can do what she wants. She called her granddaughter (forget the name) out to sing. It would have been great if the girl were a singer. Jonny's friend Bernadette like that the grandkid had the most energy. I could pass on the voice though. Loretta was behind her jerking the shorty short dress down over her butt while she sang which was super funny even if it was staged.
The CREEPY part was when Loretta and Ernie (her SON) sang an old duet that Loretta and Conway Twitty used to do. I saw people filming. Let me see if it is on the youtubes...one moment please...

Here is Loretta singing the song with Conway back in the 1970s


Really, singing this with your son is ICKY ICKY ICKY.

The show in general is good. You can tell she's been touring for 50 years and is pretty much just going to do her show and get on with her life. I liked it. Bit of attitude. Her nose ran the entire show and she just got on with it.

Unfortunately the venue was only 1/2 full! What's up with that? She's LORETTA LYNN

Also, I think she should sing with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. They've all been around for a million years and I think her dresses would look FABULOUS with the semi-dead Rolling Stones around her for contrast.

AND...these were the free seats I won from texting at the "An Evening with Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest" to the jumbotron and they were VIP seats! VIP was mostly empty. But what the hell. We had seat service of booze and snacks. We had already gotten beverages on the way in but I made someone get me M&Ms from the waitress since I may never have seat service again. And, we had access to a private restroom (which I didn't use because the regular restroom was empty and I didn't want to make the cleaning staff clean another restroom for just me). AND there were little clear plastic decorative walls, about 2 1/2 feet high, between the "VIP" section (front balcony center) and the rest of the rows of seats in the balcony making me pose the ever relevant and pithy question "do the walls keep them out or us in?" No one seemed to give a crap and I eventually got tired of asking it.

And that, is the Loretta Lynn report. It was great.

Last night we amused ourselves with thrift shopping and a trip to "Casa Bonita"...a CHEEZY restaurant where you go through a line and pick up your meal as it comes out of a "food hole" in a wall. A staff member makes sure it is yours by saying "what did you order?" and handing you one of the 8 or 9 prefab meals that are available. I had a taco salad, chicken, with NO DAIRY. This was "special" so had to be specially made and brought to me at the table (along with Jonny's margarita)...it arrived with a BIG DOLLOP of sour cream on it. I just put that on the chips. At least the cheese shreds had been eliminated. The "chicken" (or "beef" if that's the type you ordered) is beside the basic "salad" in a little cafeteria dish. The kind and size that holds cling peaches at the old folks home. I've had worse food. But not at that price. The meal also comes with stale chips and sopapillas and honey. The sopapillas were the oiliest I've ever had, but I had 1 and a half anyway. They came with much needed handy-wipes to swab down with. I managed to get honey on my shirt. Nice.

Anyway, none of that is the charm of Casa Bonita, though it adds to it. There is a SHOW while you eat. There is a 2 story tall fake waterfall and fake stone thing that people perform on. We saw a woman and a guy in a gorilla suit do some crap. A mariachi band (there weren't bad) who also travelled around the restaurant and performed in various locales (it is an enormous place made to look like there are various levels of a mexican town with shops and porticoes and terraces all covered with tables and swarming with waitstaff...not surprisingly they are ALWAYS hiring...who could work in that for long?). AND we saw the two big attractions. A "wild west show" with a sheriff and outlaw or something (the acting was not stellar) where the finale is the outlaw falling off the fake stone cliff into the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. We saw the entire show except the finale because a clump of waitstaff decided to gather directly in our line of sight for 30 seconds and block this. Oh well. The "outlaw" reappeared a few minutes later in wearing only swim trunks (I must say this young man was not slender...he had pronounced man-boobs and really needed a tan) and proceeded to do some very nice dives off the fake rocks into the pretty small pool at the bottom. One dive was designed to splash people on the lowest level which was funny. Nothing makes really crap food better like the addition of skunk water from the pool.

Apparently this establishment is part of Denver history and was every bit as amusing as any creepy clown museum.

The restaurant has an arcade, gift shop, caricature artist, haunted tunnel/cave, an much much more behind and below the waterfall and show area. Even a puppet show for the kids which we missed. We got some crap at the gift shop. And went through the haunted tunnel where a kid jumped out at me and scared the poop out of me. I'd already reached out to touch a plastic skull which promptly lit up and let out an airhorn blast. Just as I turned a corner this little boy jumped out in front of me and screamed at me and a hand threw itself at a plastic window in the wall. The kid had great timing. I screamed almost as loud as Jonny.

Let me see if I can find a picture online that expresses the wonder of Casa Bonita



Here is the entrance. I can't find a picture that shows it's in a STRIP MALL with like a Petsmart and other chain stores.

And here is a good shot of one of their cliff divers doing his stuff: