THE DENVER CATFISH FESTIVAL

I am a well-healed Giant Catfish, and I visit your dreams to grant wishes for more refrigeration capacity.

Greetings, Fellow Catfish Enthusiasts, 

It’s Catfish Festival Week! 

We at The Denver Catfish Festival were hard at work this past weekend in the ongoing effort to make absolutely sure that your Tenth Annual Denver Catfish Festival Experience is a transcendent spiritual journey, unbound from the toils of meager daily existence and buttressed by the uninhibited ingestion of The Catfish, that extraordinary, piquant freshwater delicacy, acting in subtle but absolute harmony with his able amigo, the steadfast and rhapsodical hush puppy.

To that end, a few updates:

1. The Denver Catfish Festival inaugural Half-Marathon was run on Saturday.  Participation was high; however, the half-marathon was revised down to a 1/64th marathon due to widespread physical exhaustion.  While puzzling, we believe that this abbreviation of stamina could have been caused by the ongoing heat wave coupled with the realization that “fry-loading,” while similar in philosophy to “carb-loading,” did not result in the elevated physical performance we expected.  We are as baffled by this outcome as you are, and have ordered additional research.  Still, we offer our congratulations to all who participated!

2. The Merry Catfish Festival Carolers were out en masse over the weekend, performing at the 7-11 on Havana and I-70, EZ Pawn at Colfax and Uinta, and U.S. Plasma Services in Globeville.  We’re happy to report that there were no negative interactions with patrons or police, and that the Catfish Carolers were able to raise donations of $4.79 for ongoing fry-loading research.

3.  This year’s Catfish Festival MVP Luncheon, held at Jose’s Burrito Cart at 17th & California in downtown Denver was highlighted by a keynote address from Max J. (Co-MVP ’06) and Paul B. (Co-MVP ’08) entitled “Catfish Absenteeism and Excuse Cultivation–How to Not Be There and Still Claim to Be From Louisiana.”  The jocular group of local dignitaries and Festival Elders in attendance were appropriately regaled by colorful tales of festival avoidance.  

4. In an ongoing effort to minimize the staggering amount of cans and bottles that we (and our neighbors) deal with every year, we’re getting a couple of kegs of really excellent premium top-notch local micro craft artisan cheap beer this year and will provide stack upon stack of cheerful plastic cups with which to imbibe.  So, come thirsty and hungry and let’s try to reduce our  fin-print.

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If you’re still reading at this point, you are most likely puzzled by the title of this post and are thinking to yourself, “Dearest Chairman, none of this literary handiwork would, by even the most optimistic reader, be viewed as a miracle or even slightly miraculous in any way shape or form, outside of the more general miracle that is each new day in our wonderful world.”

I understand your confusion, and offer the following:

The Denver Catfish Festival Grounds are extremely well-equipped to handle our ardent event; however, there has been something missing, something that has bothered your Chairman for quite some time. 

I should first mention that I’ve been quite happy with all of our equipment over the years, and although our tiny beer fridge would be more suited to a dorm room than a festival setting, the old girl has been a steadfast performer, cooling items with ardor and aplomb and nary a complaint.  However, she’s just not big enough.  To that end, I’ve searched for months–nay, years–for the perfect, larger fridge, one that truly befits our festival and its patrons. 

Sure, Craigslist occasionally offers some interesting possibilities, but due to my general cheapness and lethargy over having to actually go somewhere and pay some stranger upwards of $80 then move something back to the Festival Grounds and clean out that stranger’s accrued fridge nastiness, I’ve been unable to find the perfect match.  I’ve tossed and turned.  I’ve awoken in cold sweats, trembling and gasping.  I’ve begged the Giant Catfish, occasional visitor to my dreams, to change my fortunes with regard to household refrigeration capacity. 

And finally, on Saturday, The Giant Dream Catfish granted my wish.

Due to the peerless conversational acumen of Mrs. Chairman, who learned of  a perfect fridge’s existence at a Saturday birthday party and which led to its generous donation from The Patterson Foundation (striving to create a more just and verdant Catfish Festival,) we now have a beautiful, clean, full-sized Kenmore Elite on the grounds!  She’s big and lovely and up to the challenge, currently humming along and keeping multiple beverages and a freezer full of ice cream treats happy and cold.  This miracle of free refrigeration could not have been realized without the help of my neighbor and friend Jared, who offered the use of his strong back and new pick’emup truck in the endeavor to bring her on home. 

She descended from heaven (well, Golden) on the bed of a mighty Toyota truck.

So you see, Dear Festivalgoers, miracles do take place.  I think the main point is that if you whine about something, I mean really whine about it and wallow in a fetid pool of your own laziness long enough, good things really can happen in this life!

Sincerely,

Joe T., Chmn.

“Ask me about added leftover space at The Tenth Annual Denver Catfish Festival!”