Las Vegas Weekly

August 27, 2008 · 11:58 PM

It’s both coo-coo and bananas with Justin in Denver

By John Katsilometes

Remember Justin? That's him, on the left (my right). I'm in his kitchen.

Photo: Alex Jimenez

He keeps saying, “It’s coo-coo bananas around here.” He would know the coo-coo, and the bananas, because he spent some coo-coo bananas time in Vegas. He’s the guy who put the “him” in Jimenez, Justin Jimenez, former Las Vegas Magazine staffer and Las Vegas Weekly contributor who now lives in Aurora, just east of Denver, where tonight ToddKats finally arrived at around 11 p.m., just after the ObamaQuest ’08 transportation system (my 2004 Mazda 6) turned 100,000 miles.

So I drive a lot. The Sixer has been through four Idaho holiday winters and is ending its fifth summer in Vegas. I highly recommend the Mazda, if’n you can’t find a reliable used Ford Festiva.

Tonight, ToddKats had to split up. It’s just as well. We needed a break, having run out of rhetorical questions to ask one another (“What are the top three midsized cities you’d live in, but not on any coast, and not in the United States, but where English is widely spoken…”) Todd is staying with friends a few miles away, in Denver proper, and I’m with J.J. and his wife of 13 months, Tammy. These two kids met here in Denver when they were 12 years old and dated off an on (it’s “on” now) until getting married on the back patio at Rao’s in July 2007. Since meeting so many years ago, Tammy did grow up; Justin just got older. But he’s found gainful employment as the managing producer for the Denver.metromix Web site, which is partnering with Channel 9, the Denver-area NBC affiliate, for a pretty fruitful multimedia marriage. Justin’s team supplies video – usually celeb-heavy video -- to the TV station, which in turn helps keep the Web site “monetized” through its TV ad revenue. Everyone wins, including Ben Affleck, whom is in town for the Democratic National Convention and whom Justin interviewed today and afterward posted 611 photos, as photos of Ben Affleck (even in a beard, which is better but not by much than Criss Angel’s beard from a few months ago) generates what we in the multimedia business refer to as “traffic.” You might know “traffic” as “people.”

Affleck stopped by the Food Bank of the Rockies to lend his presence at a “repack event’ for America’s Second Harvest, commonly known as The Nation’s Food Bank Network. You can check out the Denver.metromix Web site here.

It has been a long and winding day, waking up at a largely disappointing DoubleTree Inn in Grand Junction (I’ll blog about that experience later, when I’m not still pissed about it), stopping in Aspen and snaking our way to Denver. I’ve spent scant time here, so I am looking forward poking around a little, making some lasting friendships and hitting INVESCO Field at Mile High tomorrow night. It looks like ToddKats will have to hop on an NBC shuttle to gain access to the property where Barack Obama will give his acceptance speech. Security is tight, parking scarce and the whole of the universe seems to be focused on this great Colorado city. It’s so … what’s the term? Coo-coo bananas.

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