The Most Magical Place Just Outside of Denver

 Here in the Denver Metro area, there are a lot of people awaiting the reopening of one of the most unique and memorable restaurants you can experience.

Casa Bonita.

It closed up due to COVID and had a great deal of issues reopening, until the South Park guys bought it and invested in fixing it up. Last time I was there was for a free tour that they were doing regularly while trying to work out the details to open it for business.

It really is hard to describe Casa Bonita in any manner that would give a person the real feel of the place, but I will give it a try. It is an old Mexican village with all manner of areas to explore, which fully feels like you are in a different world from the strip small off a major street that you entered by. There is a massive waterfall cascading into a clear pool in the middle of it all, with divers regularly taking plunges into it as silly skits get performed on the small stage, with them normally ending with at least one person ending up in the pool. There is a puppet plaza with animated rocks that talk. A theater with a stage for magic shows and such. You can explore an outlaw's secret cavern, where you will get eaten by a dragon. You can be seated in caverns or the mines or behind the waterfall. Don't forget to throw a coin into the wishing well and listen to the creature in the well.

And I know I've missed some stuff there.

Casa Bonita is an experience.

I've been going since we moved out here in 1980, and most likely have been around 200 times, give or take.

As a child I loved it and had my birthday there twice. We took all my cousins there and family from out of town. Once I had kids of my own, we of course took them. My oldest boy's first trip there was when he was five days old, as we took my cousin there for his tenth birthday. And both of my boys have celebrated their birthday there, but didn't get the T-shirts to commemorate it, which I swear I still have my two (Long since outgrown) that say 'I Celebrated My Happy Birthday at Casa Bonita', in boxes somewhere in the storage room.

Gonna talk about the food here briefly.

A lot of people really are critical about it. And yes, it was a step-up from cafeteria food for the most part, with a few better options. I always enjoyed it, as it was edible, and I found it filling. With the reopening however, this should not be an issue, as they have invested highly in getting a new menu together and making sure to move beyond the old reputation.

Of course no one ever went there for the food.

I have never heard anyone complain about the sopapillas, which were the free dessert. There were fresh and hot and so good with honey. It would be a huge mistake to change them.

In my Georgie and Armand's Place stories I have the Bonita Lobby, for a subterranean wing of The Hotel which is connected by a sparkling lagoon of water fed by a waterfall to the Aquarian Casa lobby, for an underwater wing. You will find many such homages in those stories, some more hidden than others. That is one that those not familiar with the restaurant will not see, but I hoped that those who know would be amused. Even the head of the Bonita Lobby, Novick, has a connection to the restaurant.

Casa Bonita is the kind of place that has inspired many of us who grew up here in the Denver Metro area. Its pink tower, which has been repainted and is brighter than ever, is a true landmark, breaking up the monotony of the area. Just go across the parking lot to the Next Gallery that regularly features Casa Bonita inspired art to see just how much it means to so many of us.

It is supposed to reopen at some point in May and chances are it will have huge lines, with hour long waits to get in. But the people will be there as there are so many of us ready to see experience all the new as well as embrace all of what made Casa Bonita such an incredible experience for us. I am also looking forward to the idea of being able to take the next generation of my family there once they come along and see them get filled with the wonder and excitement of it all.

They All Seem So Young

In a batch of comic books I got a hold of recently was Giant Sized Fantastic Four issue six (A reprint of FF Annuel #6), which ends with the birth of Franklin Richards, the son of Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) and Susan Richards (The Invisible Woman). The date of the original comic was 1968, which means that Franklin is a few years older than I am...

Right now in the comics Franklin is a teenager. His age had jumped around a lot over the years and we have seen various older version of him from alternate futures a few times now. It seems he was trapped in the age of a little kid somewhere between four and eight years old for several decades, ageing and de-ageing in that range as needed. In the last few decades, they decided to let him hit puberty finally and have not trapped him at that age for the time being.

So a few decades later he gets a little sister, Valeria Richards, who originally would have been born in the early 80s, except this is the comic book world and she was miscarried at that time in the comics. Jump to the early 2000s where she was revealed that Franklin, using his reality altering powers, had somehow sent her to an alternate reality then she returned to the Marvel 616 reality to fulfill her destiny and somehow had to be reborn. Age-wise she is presented in the comics now as almost the same age as her big brother, sometimes seeming older than him.

Of course, age has always been an oddball issue in comic books.

When the Fantastic Four started, Reed Richards and Been Grimm (The Thing) had fought in WWII together, then a few decades later that was changed to being Vietnam. Now they just fought in an unnamed war whenever the issue is mentioned.

When I started reading Spider-Man comics in the mid-80s Peter Parker was late 20s early 30s. Today, forty years later, Peter Parker still comes off as being late 20s early 30s. He was not actually a teenager for long in the comics, finishing High School only a few years after the series started. He was then in college for a good chunk of time. Now he is a perpetual young man in the main Marvel Comics universe and most likely will remain at that undisclosed age from here on out, as do most of the adult super-heroes, even as the children in his stories get to age little by little.

Then you get characters like Aunt May, who was an old lady sixty years ago and actually seems younger now. She has nowhere near all the crazy heath problem she had for the longest time. For the first few hundred issues of Spider-Man Aunt May was in the hospital because of her heart dozens of times. Now she is an older woman, who is very active and healthy, even though she should be over a hundred now.

With over 60 now of continuous stories in the main Marvel Universe, there is an understanding that the aging of the characters is all just what is needed for the stories then and there, with a great deal of flexibility needed.

I guess if you are going to accept the idea that a person can get powers by being bitten by a radioactive spider, you can accept there being a disconnect to the whole concept of aging. In the end these are fictitious stories, and it would not work well for them to worry about such trivial things as age. It is one aspect of comic books that is easy enough to accept, no matter how amusing it becomes when looking back.

One Kind of a Son of a Bitch or Another

 Yes, I am quoting Capt. Reynolds today.

“It's my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of a son of a bitch or another." --Malcolm Reynolds.

The quote is full relevant to today's topic.

I really love the musical 'The Greatest Showman'. So many of those songs speak to me and the overall story is great. I get emotional just about every time I watch, which is a lot because I enjoy having it on in the background when I write. The song 'A Million Dreams' is myself and my mindset to a scary level and 'This Is Me' very much fits with what I have gone through in my life.

I also know the truth, that the story is highly, and I mean highly, romanticized account of the life of P.T. Barnum. There is really little fact or truth to be found in musical. There was a great deal of 'questionable' actions taken by the real Barnum. He very much exploited people for his own gain, openly drawing people to his shows with admitted hoaxes that he justified.

I am fully able to separate the real Barnum from the romanticized image from 'The Greatest Showman' and just enjoy the show for the meaningful entertainment that it is.

Yet I keep running across various reviews of the show that are all based on the real Barnum and being upset over him being romanticized on any level. They refuse to separate the two versions and claim it is insulting to do so.

And that takes us back to the Malcom Reynalds quote.

We romanticize so many historic characters, like the Founding Fathers, and are able to look the other way over their failings. So why is it that every so often a historic figure is not allowed to be romanticized at all? With obvious exceptions like Hitler, so many of our historic figures are easy to romanticize and turn into something greater than they were. I know whenever I see Winston Churchill being highly praised it bothers me, for while he did some great things in his time, he was a racist and held some interesting beliefs regarding imperialism. Yet I am able to enjoy the fiction that uses his character, even knowing they are romanticizing the person. It is like how everyone ignores that JFK slept around, even while being praised as a great family man.

These are men with statures to them who are one kind of a son of a bitch or another, and history is full of such people.

Looking at any period pieces with real historic figures in them, those characters will be romanticized concepts to fit with the desired story, no matter how close to reality they try to get. It is part of being human to embellish upon the stories we tell. In the case of 'The Greatest Showman' there is no doubt they fully knew they were romanticizing his life for the sake of the story.

Being aware of the accurate history should not take away from the enjoyment of a good story that is clearly not supposed to be accurate. Knowing the truth about Barnum will never take away from the joy and meaning I get from watching 'The Greatest Showman'. That is a big advantage to being able to separate fact from the fiction and understand the difference between the two.

The Benefits of Organizing Comic Books

 It has been a little while since my last post.

Lot's been going on in life.

Today I just want to talk about how my comic book collection actually serves as a great therapeutic outlet for me.  I actually find it very relaxing to bag up and organize my comics. There is something rewarding for me to get them grouped together in an organized manner, even if it is a system that others might be confused over.

I have been collecting comics for over three decades now and easily have over 10,000 unique issues in my collection. Most of them are Marvel comics. And as anyone who collects knows, most of them are not really worth much. That being said, I do have a good deal of key issues that are highly sought after. As I don't collect for value, that is information I know of but am not highly concerned about.

It is interesting to look at such a collection and see what all is there. I have some random stuff from the silver age of comics that I am not too sure where I got them from. Somehow I have at times it seems I have just acquired these comics at random and I find that amusing for some reason.

Right now when I have the funds, I find myself going after 60s, 70s and 80s Marvel comics (I have just about everything they put out in the 90s it seems), mostly Spider-man as he has always been my number 1 hero. But I do find myself drawn to most anything Marvel. The 80s Doctor Strange comics has some great cover art that attracts me them.

I have a google doc with a list of the series I wish to focus on in my collecting. I had to, once I caught myself accidently picking up an old comic I already had. I get a lot of use out of that list and have been adding to it a lot lately as I expand the series I want to work on. I already know most of those series will never be completed, as I doubt I will ever be able to afford to complete the run of Amazing Spider-Man, I am content knowing that I have at this time around 700 of the over 900 issues in that series and I keep adding to it as I can. While there are a few series I should be able to complete sooner or later depending on how aggressive I can afford to be, there will always be the handful that are just not going to happen.

While I need to get some space cleared out to really go through all the boxes of comics I have and get them full organized, I find what I am able to do to relax me greatly. Just the act of bagging them up and grouping them together has a sense of being productive that feels great. There are still boxes of comics that I have had for some time that are not as organized as they need to be because of my slacking in year past, I do every so often make some progress in them. Most of my work is newer pieces coming into my collection and rearranging boxes to keep connected series together.

I will keep working away at getting it all organized and hopefully in the near future make the space to really be able to go through them and really see just what I have. Comics are probably my largest collection in terms of actual pieces, but they do not take up as much room as some of my other collections and are harder to display, but I still take a lot of joy in accumulating them.

I am a proud collector and most likely will be for the rest of my life.