THE DENVER CATFISH FESTIVAL

Note the deeper, more mellow gold, the warm purple, the hint of mossy green.  It’s the Catfish Festival-Unplugged.  Not that it was plugged in before, because we use propane for frying purposes, but you get the general idea.

Greetings, Fellow Catfish Enthusiasts,

In the group sessions, Doc Schwartz says that it’s important that we speak concisely and get right to the point, so I reckon that’s what we’ll do.

The fair sun again ensconces us in her summer warmth.  And as the wee cherubs exit their stoic schoolhouses and the soccer moms return to their neighborhood pools, we while away the hours wandering through peaceful thoughts of fried catfish and spicy hush puppies. 

The countless therapy sessions have ended on a fragile yet successful note.  It turns out that spending six to six and one-half hours per day making little pipe cleaner craft animals (focus: catfish) for sale at Muddy Point Sanitarium’s Bi-weekly Saturday Craft Market truly is a positive and focused way to exorcise the persistent and debilitating demons of January 9^th, 2012. 

Uncontrollable trembling has given way to lively motor function.  Vicious elephant and hot wing nightmares have conceded to happy Tiger and Catfish dreams.  Drooling has given way to less drooling.

Therefore, we are proud to announce that, having discarded our terry cloth robes and puffy slippers, our comfy padded wheelchairs, and those darling little plastic cups overrunneth with all of the pills of the rainbow, we are back on our collective feet, ready again to approach the world with the a measure of the dignity and motivation necessary to bring you the Tenth Annual Denver Catfish Festival!

With this being the TENTH ANNIVERSARY of that fateful night in 2002, we’re planning…we’re planning…well, we’re not planning much.  

In homage to that first magical hot August night, that gathering of like-minded aquatic aficionados (and several severely inebriated people that came over after a golf tournament,) that first technology-deprived “Fish Fry,” we’re going back to the basics.  Gone are the massive corporate sponsorships.  Gone are the executive perks, the limos, the “planning meetings” in Ibiza.  Gone are the back-office political deals and massive Denver Catfish Festival lobbyist presence in Washington.  Gone are the lavish production values which have made The Denver Catfish Festival the envy of countless catfish festivals across the metro area.

This year, it’s all about the hearty catfish and his delicious second cousin, the Hush Puppy.  It’s about a massive propane-fired fryer.  It’s about a quaint and occasionally off-color Catfish-inspired Haiku Contest.  It’s about standing around discussing Catfish, admiring Catfish, eating Catfish, burping Catfish.  In short, This One’s For The Fans.  

Doc Schwartz says we can even have beer, as long as we attend the College Football Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Therapy and Healing Symposium at Muddy Point before the end of next month.  We have agreed to attend, but only if we can get just one more leetle beety refill on our Lithium prescription.

So it is with the greatest pleasure that we offer our most gracious invitation to… 

The Tenth Annual Denver Catfish Festival

Denver Catfish Festival Grounds

July 21^st, 2012

The first filet-hits-oil at 1:12 PM Mountain Standard Time.

Sincerely,

Joe T., Chmn.

“Ask Me About The Tenth Annual Denver Catfish Festival!”

Counting down the moments to enlightenment.

 

Max's Banner remains timeless, due in no small part to a healthy supply of address number decals.

The Early Afternoon Session gets underway, complete with dogs, babies, and sweaty people. (Thanks to Brooks C., from whom I stole this and several other photos.)

Greetings, Fellow Catfish Enthusiasts,

The overwhelming scent of stale beer, cornmeal, cigarette butts, and rotting watermelon has finally exited the Catfish Festival Grounds and settled somewhere near Limon, and another fabulous Denver Catfish Festival has now receded into history.  And what a fantabulous day it was. 

 We had a whole bunch of people, on par with DCF7, and fried up 40 pounds of Itta Bena, Mississippi’s finest farm-raised catfish and hundreds of hush puppies.  The first filet hit oil at 1:12 PM MST, and we finished up the last of the Natchitoches Meat Pies at around 4:30 PM.  Catfish Festival After Dark ended (for the Chairman) at around 4 AM, but apparently things continued on until just before sunrise. 

MAJOR THANK YOU’s to the following amazing Festivalgoers:

• Vanessa, Lindsey, Megan, Barbara, and Dalton, for once again being the greatest staff a festival could ever hope for.
• Lindsey, for making an amazing catfish pinata!
• Sous Chef Pilar D. for preparing all of the hush puppies and receiving RAVE reviews from the crowd, and sister Rochelle for helping with all of the food prep.
• Mike Y. for bringing homemade Natchitoches Meat Pies.  They were incredible. 
• Brooks C. for coming in all the way from Atlanta (Georgia, not Texas) and helping out tremendously with both setup and takedown.
• Lisa H. for providing delicious Gulf coast boiled shrimp.  Also incredible.
• Stephen T. for coming in with a homemade, home-grown Raspberry Pie. 
• Jared D. for helping us clean up the piles of garbage and refuse on Black Monday.
• Chris and Mike for the use of patio furniture, sawhorses, lumber, staples, and anything and everything else I can think of. 
• Jon M. for repeatedly launching a giant water rocket thing hundreds of feet into the air to the joy of throngs of children.

The Catfish-Inspired Haiku contest was won by Tommy L., who tearfully took home “the first non-team trophy I’ve ever gotten” with this inspired and worthwhile gem:

Some flakey fish love,
that fits like a wonder glove,
with no glove no love!

Tommy has always insisted on making his Haiku rhyme.  While we’ve told him time and time again that rhyming is not a requirement, the judging committee felt that he’d stricken the perfect balance between responsibly-sexy hip-hop and concisely minimalist Japanese verse with this year’s entry.

Baking is for sissies--Pilar's badass hushpuppies get the full Death Star treatment.

VIP Lanyards, designed by my shockingly talented eight year-old staff member and daughter.

Thanks Chairman,

Cris

The two Ad-hoc VIP lanyards were awarded to Mike Y. and Tommy L.for bringing awesome meat pies and a very thoughtful birthday card.  Tommy had the added benefit of somehow convincing me that he deserved a lanyard because he is a very important person in every possible way.

Catfish Festival After Dark, from my somewhat spotty recollection, was a weird and blurry as always with many a colorful character providing laughs and confoundingly bizarre behavior.  There was also dancing and one or more broken bottles.  In any case, it was a blast.  Major thanks to everybody who stuck around, especially those who stuck around after the massive mosquito attack.

Many apologies to the Oklahoma and Ohio State fans who seemed a bit frustrated by our choice of video programming, but who doesn’t want to watch continuously-running National Championship DVD’s of LSU kicking the poo out of your respective schools while enjoying delicious catfish? 

This year’s Festival MVP goes to….The Bayou Classic Bayou Fryer 700-701.  Not only was it up to the task, but in a drastic and unforeseen turn-of-events, we actually found that we couldn’t prep food fast enough to keep up with it.  That thing is a monster.

We would be remiss if we didn’t offer our praise and admiration to the territorially-blind festivalgoers who tossed bottles into our elderly neighbors’ back yard.  It’s your can-do spirit and rugged individualism that conquered the West and continues to keep the American Dream alive and well!  Nothing says Catfish Festival like neighborly 8 AM apologies after three hours of sleep!

Thanks to everybody who came out and made this the best Denver Catfish Festival ever!!!

Still Life with Catfish.

Who knows?  Maybe you’ll be able to tell your grandkids that you attended the last of its kind.  For its tenth anniversary, The Denver Catfish Festival might be in need of some sort of major overhaul. 

Until then, football starts very, very soon.  The Bayou Classic Bayou Fryer 700-701 is cleaned, primed, and ready to fry Autumn Itself if necessary!

Sincerely,

Joe T., Chmn.

“Ask Me About Still Being Hungry for Catfish Even Though We Just Fried Forty Pounds Of It.”

I'll confiscate that damned Iphone if I see you messing around with it in the middle of my story.

Greetings, Fellow Catfish Enthusiasts,

At this most special time of year, when the Denver Catfish Festival is closing in fast, my eyes tend to cloud up a bit and gaze longingly  back to the simpler time in Festival history, back to those heartwarming days of the Shreveport Catfish Festival and the magical memories they created. 

(Note: We’ve been testing the new Bayou Fryer 700-701 Death Star for about a week now, and are proud to report that it is a marvel of modern frying engineering; however, I must admit that this update might be brief, as it is quite difficult to type with my fingers as swollen as they are from ingesting all of the delightful fryable objects we’ve procured over these last few wonderful days.)

…

I lay awake on the wooden floor of our room, my cousins and siblings filling the damp air with light snores and long, deep breaths.  The still, pre-dawn humidity dangled the heavy scent of the back yard’s catfish entrails just above my nostrils; I tried to be still, to sleep, but only shuddered with excitement.  Today was the big day: I was going to drop the first catfish into the oil at 1:12 PM, as was tradition. 

Aunt Harriet's '74 Citroen. Perfect for housing blind feral rabid cats, but impossible to get parts for.

This was my passage into manhood: two days earlier I’d been thrown shirtless into Aunt Harriet’s ’74 Citroen Wagon with two blind, rabid feral cats and had to fight my way out in order to earn the honor of starting the Festival.  The multiple abrasions were still fresh and tenderly painful, but nothing fixed up wounds like Momma’s nutria rat and turpentine gauze wraps.

Suddenly, a rustling from the backyard.  I popped my head up and squinted through the open window.  I knew what it was before I saw it: possums in the catfish bucket (it was tradition to let the catfish sit out on Catfish Festival Eve to bring good luck to the family.)  I jumped out of bed and limped to my trusty badminton racquet then out the door. 

Uncle Wap, who was supposed to have been on guard duty, had fallen out of his hammock and was face-down snoring, empty fifth of Dr. Tichenor’s by his side.  Two possums were tugging at his right pocket with their teeth; they instinctively knew that this was where he kept his Skoal Oreos.  Four more of the little thiefs were hunkered down in the catfish bucket eating the fine, delicious catch two at a time. 

I swung my trusty racquet downward time and time again on the possums, but I was far too late.  They’d eaten Uncle Wap’s complete haul of Caddo Lake catfish.  As the summer sun rose over the family plot, I sat despondent in a haze of flies as we salvaged what we could and, being the industrious folks we were, made lemons out of lemonade.  Or in this case, possum out of catfish. 

It was too late to change the shirts, cups, and beer coozies, but we didn’t care.  It was the first and last Shreveport Possum Festival ever.  It was also the day that I became a man.

Greetings, Fellow Catfish Enthusiasts!

We’re a mere one and one-half weeks away from the Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival, and herein lies information that is crucial to your ongoing happiness.

In our endless and dogged pursuit of next level innovation, we at The Denver Catfish Festival are proud to announce our alliance with what can only be described as the Death Star of outdoor frying apparati: 

The Bayou Classic Bayou Fryer 700-701. 

Tell us the location of the rebel base, or Alderaan gets deep-fried to a flaky golden brown.

This angry customer is equipped with the latest in V-channel fryer technology:  it both rolls its four gallons of oil to evenly distribute heat AND safely discards cornmeal shrapnel to prevent overheating.  The Bayou Fryer 700-701 is the Paragon of Catfish and Hush Puppy Cookery.   Says one of our catfish-frying brethren to the South,

“This is the biggest, baddest SOB you’ll ever cook in!”

To say that we at Catfish Festival Headquarters are as excited as LSU’s Marcus Spears when he returned a Jason White interception in the 2003 Sugar Bowl would be the understatement of the decade. 

In these remaining few days leading up to DCF9, we will be putting the Bayou Fryer 700-701 to the test with any and all manner of fryable media, including small woodland creatures and unruly neighborhood pets in order to insure that we are fully schooled in its nearly infinite capabilities by Catfish Festival Day. 

Items of Grave Importance:

–The latest “Ask the Chairman” Q&A has been posted here.  Technology rules the day at DCF Headquarters. 

–The VIP Raffle drawing will take place tomorrow (Thursday) night, with the announcement of the lucky winners coming on Friday morning! (After the announcement, each winner will be contacted via email with information regarding eligibility requirements, registration, legal waivers, orientation, drug testing, and physical fitness.)

–NEW CULINARY ATTRACTIONS THIS YEAR:  We at the DCF are proud to announce the addition of a DIY Po-Boy station and a Crawfish Etouffe smothering station to this year’s festival.  While we do believe that catfish and hushpuppies are more than adequate served ‘neat,’ we have decided to expand and offer these additional attractions this year as exhibition items only.  Final votes on whether they’ll become permanent Festival Fixtures will take place at the Denver Catfish Festival Winter Meetings next year.

–I toss and turn, sleepless and immersed in cold sweats, over your lack of haiku contest entries.  Winning haiku are what today’s dynamic employers look for.  How can you add this great honor to your resume if you don’t compete? 

It’s almost Catfish Festival Week!  My tail wags to the point of hip separation!

Sincerely,

Joe T., Chmn.

“Ask Me About The Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival!”

Oh—And Happy National French Fry Day.  How the French Fry Lobby was able to procure July 13 while National Hush Puppy Day is relegated to April 14^th is beyond me.  National Hush Puppy Day on Tax Day Eve?  It’s a crime!

Each star represents the nine brave and courageous souls who have entered the Denver Catfish Festival VIP Raffle.

Greetings, Fellow Catfish Enthusiasts!

 Like finely-ground cornmeal through a flour sifter, so are the days ‘til the Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival.  Time is passing quickly now, Enthusiasts, and there is much to report!

• Your ”Ask the Chairman” questions have been coming fast and furious over the past month; luckily, I’ve been able to respond to 50% of them this week.  I will answer the remaining question as soon as humanly possible.   Click here for the latest.

• The Denver Catfish Festival Steering Committee is back from last weekend’s three-day retreat at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.  Most notably, Sunday’s Practicum on Tailgating and Auditory Entertainment had the participants truly enthralled and proved to be the highlight of the weekend (with enormous apologies to certain committee members who only attended on Friday and Saturday.)  Certainly, we were there to have fun, but we were also there to learn; and learn we did.  And did.  And did.  Major thanks to that aged and wise band of minstrels from Athens, GA for their euphonious contribution!  

• Catfish Festival Merchandise: Due to child labor-related problems with our suppliers in Southeast Asia this year, Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival merchandise will be exclusively available at the Festival itself!  Please conduct yourselves in an orderly fashion at the Shwag Table; our Staff Pettifoggers representing Festival Security have spent a good portion the last year defending those pesky brutality charges after the koozie melee at the Eighth Annual Denver Catfish Festival.  Thank goodness those things are foam and not metal…

• The Denver Catfish Festival VIP Experience Raffle: Entries have been pouring over us like a cascading waterfall over a sunbathing Giant Nile Catfish; if you want the opportunity to be one of the most important people at a given place/festival, this is your big chance!  Email denvercatfishfestival (at) gmail (dot) com with “ENTER ME” in the subject line, then cross your fingers, pray to what or whomever you prefer to pray to, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be very important!

• We have received countless stunningly impressive Catfish-inspired Haikus to date!  But, as Andrea True (avid catfish enthusiast, pop singer, and film star) would say, “More! More! More!” Please send us your entries as soon as you can!  (You can still enter up until 3:00 PM on Festival Day, but you risk the Judging Committee being unable to make out your scribbling due to your, or possibly our, level of ‘festival happiness’ at that particular time.)  

• Note: The Festival Management Staff is off to The Festival Fatherland, Shreveport, Louisiana, for the next several days on a research mission to locate the finest, most delicious catfish in the Ark-La-Tex and to arrange their safe passage back to the Festivalgrounds in Denver.  We’ll also immerse ourselves in the local culture, which essentially involves excellent company, damn good food, cold, cold beer, drive-thru daiquiris, and military-grade firework munitions (our search for Catfish-shaped fireworks is ongoing.)  Here’s to hoping for only minor burns this year!     

 Want a Free DCF9 beer coozie?  Be the first to email me with the name of the modern poet I’m respectfully ripping off below!

The Festival comes

On little catfish fins.

It sits looking

Over propane fryers

On silent flippers

And then moves on.

(The answer is Carl Sandburg.  Way to be lightning-fast, David L.!)

Sincerely,

Joe T., Chmn.

“We’ll see YOU at the Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival!”

Saturday, July 23^rd, 2011

The Denver Catfishfestivalgrounds

3156 Geneva St., Denver, 80238

Gates: 12:30

First Filet-hits-oil at 1:12 PM MT

It was a Vision Quest, not to be confused with the stellar '80's Matthew Modine/Linda Fiorentino film of the same moniker.

Greetings, Fellow Catfish Enthusiasts!

We at Your Denver Catfish Festival Steering Committee utilized the now-departed Darling Month of May to travel, both physically and metaphysically,  in the Name of Fried Catfish.  As Chairman, I’ve had the pleasure of going forth on enlightening spiritual quests and reemerging rested, rejuvenated and reinvigorated in our committee’s ongoing mission to make The Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival the most awe-inspiring Denver Catfish Festival EVER!

It was in the wild and dangerous beauty of the Southern Utah desert,  exposed to the rugged elements  save a loincloth, several Miller Lites and a pack of smokes (and a bic, of course) that I tread for hours upon the rocky firmament through searing sun and into starlit darkness.  I sat upon a rock, dry winds enveloping me; I considered the vastness of the Universe, and I wondered at the myriad of catfish species who swim there.

Deep into the lonely night, when the last Miller Lite was exhausted and with but one smoke remaining, and with the ongoing frustration of only sporting a loincloth (and therefore having no convenient place to put my lighter) rapidly easing away from my mind, a spirit guide appeared.

This Guide, who I would soon know as The Official Spirit Guide of the Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival, slowly materialized from the vast ether of wind and darkness.  The dust clouded my eyes; at first I couldn’t make out its shape, enveloped in stars as it was, but as it hovered closer, I was able to capture the vision of what, or who, was before me:

A three-foot, 26 pound Walking Catfish with slick skin and dark, shining eyes, clad in a little purple and gold Evel Knievel jumpsuit.   He wore Yellow Diamond slippers on his front walking flippers, and a tiny purple baseball cap with the following words etched on the front in gold leaf:

I MET

YO MOMMA

at CADDO LAKE.

He floated forward and greeted me with a hand/fin shake.  “The name’s Vern,” he muttered in a gravelly, low voice, ” short for Veronica.  Mom always wanted a girl.” He smiled, nodded to himself and paused.

“I’d be awfully pleased if you’d consider giving up that last Marlboro.”

“Well, this is my last one,” I responded sheepishly, “but I guess I could share it with you. No hot-boxing, though, OK?”

“Fair enough.”

After fumbling for the lighter and cursing the lack of pockets afforded my loincloth, a brief silence ensued.   I then summoned the courage to ask my question.

“What is our Path, Vern?  What’s next for the Denver Catfish Festival?”

“Well,”  he replied with an surefooted confidence, “I’ll keep this quick.  You don’t have a logo yet.  You’ve screwed around for months because you’ve got the image software loaded on Mrs. Chairman’s old Dell, which is on its last legs, and you’ve been too lazy to download the free version of PrintShop from CNET onto your laptop.

The 2011 DCF Logo is within you.  It is your happy delusion that Catfish Enthusiasts identify the logo with The Festival.  Without it you are all lost, alone in a sparse desert, devoid of seafood and hush puppies.

You must go forth from this wilderness.  Remember what you’ve learned here.  And for the sake of all that is Festive, get your ass in gear.”

He mustered a fart, exhaled a drag, and, back into the ether from whence he’d appeared, was gone. 

He left only a rapidly dissipating cloud of powdered cornmeal behind.

I awoke snug in my Vanagon the next morning, bewildered as to whether or not any of that madness had really, truly happened.  I reached into the hem of my loincloth (it’s a nice loincloth) and found, hanging by a loose thread, one extinguished cigarette butt–with brown muddy lip marks on the filter.

*************************************

A week later, back in the desert and just prior to celebrating the nuptials of Festival Elder (and DCF3 Haiku Contest Winner) Dave and lovely bride Alma, another Festival Elder Dave and I sat on a patio overlooking the beautiful Colorado River.  We pondered, based on the flow of the river at that time, how many Channel and Flathead Catfish were racing past us at any given moment.

A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud, A Miller Lite, A River, and of course, Catfish. Whitman looks down from the Little Writer's Colony in The Clouds, green with envy.

It was somewhere in these stoic moments that Vern again greeted me, this time from somewhere deep within, and plastered the Official Logo of The Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival upon my forehead.

It appeared to us in a Vivid Dream, realized in just a few moments through the magical aid of PrintShop.

Catfish Enthusiasts, The Official Logo of The Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival has been created!  Major thanks to Mrs. Chairman and Mrs. Chairman’s brother for doing the heavy lifting! 

Soon you will have the ability to plaster it on everything you own, including (but not limited to) vehicles, children, bicycles, toasters, windows, cubicles, lingerie, Trapper Keepers, and spiked leather wrist bracelets!

The Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival is only 50 days away.  Entries for the Festival VIP Experience are coming in by the truckloads, don’t get left behind!

Also, the Catfish-Inspired Haiku count is down this year, which we can only attribute to the dry winter and cold, moist spring.  Hopefully with the recent change in the weather, your Haikus will begin flowing to our inbox like the mighty spring snow melt of the Rockies!

We’ll see YOU at…

The Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival

July 23rd, 2011

First Filet-Hits-Oil at 1:12 PM MDT!

Sincerely,

Joe T., Chmn

“Ask Me About The Spiritual Path to The Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival!”

Everything on this side of the rope is average. Everything on the other side of the rope is slightly better-than-average.

Greetings, Fellow Catfish Enthusiasts,

After pouring through music archives spanning forty years, we at The Denver Catfish Festival recently unearthed this riveting story about the evolution of Rock band Foreigner’s most powerful anthem:

“…Well, the story is partly true,” says the erstwhile lead singer of Foreigner.  “I was at a Captain & Tennille show in ’75. I actually did have a ticket, but I really wanted to get backstage.  I mean, those two, with their witty melodic interplay about the bittersweet/optimistic side of life and love, really struck a nerve with me. I stood in the rain, rather depressed (head hung low, if you must,) and could hear the schmoozing of the VIP’s.  I could picture the scene: they were enjoying the catering table, the free booze, the exclusive access, the plush furnishings, the brushes with celebrity.  Years later, I wrote a song about the experience called ‘Backstage Hero,’ but the other guys in the band thought the title sounded as though I was trading unsavory favors for a chance to meet my musical deities.  So, I changed the name to ‘Jukebox Hero,’ and one of the most obnoxious songs in the pantheon of rock history was born.  In all honesty, the song never would have come to me if I’d only won a raffle for a VIP pass.”

The above anecdote illustrates the true power of exclusivity.  If only The Captain and Tennille had been blessed with the foresight to offer a VIP Raffle…

So while we do risk the possibility of spawning an entire festival’s worth of new Lou Gramms, The Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival is proud to announce:

The Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival VIP Experience!

Two lucky winners, chosen at random, will receive a package that will contain, but is not limited to:

• A Denver Catfish Festival VIP package (contents to be divulged later)
• All-access passes to heretofore-restricted areas of The Denver Catfish Festival Grounds
• A chance to Fry Your Own Catfish!!
• “First Pick” of all hush puppy and fried catfish batches as they come out of the fryers!
• An exclusive, shaded, ventilated seating area with comfy chairs and bottomless Mimosas
• For After Catfish Festival After Dark:  World-class lodging accommodations in a 1985 Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia!

More fabulous perks are being added by the hour!  Truly, there is too much to list at this point.

Enthusiasts, all you need to do is send an email to denvercatfishfestival@gmail.com with “ENTER ME” in the subject line!

(Actually that doesn’t sound right…Just send an email saying you want to be in the drawing.)

More updates to come!  And please send those Catfish-inspired Haikus!  Those which we have received thus far shine as testament to the indulgent and unbridled creativity that thoughts of the hearty Catfish afford.

Sincerely,

Joe T., Chmn.

“Ask Me About The Ninth Annual Denver Catfish Festival.  If you’re a VIP, I’ll tell the truth.”

*Odds are 1 in 80, must be present to win. Management reserves the right to boot surly contest winners, although inebriation is encouraged.  Please behave yourself in my Vanagon.