TGIS: Crab Legs Are My New Love Language (Patreon)

Hello and happy Sunday, Patrons! I'm currently sitting in the Delta lounge in the Denver airport about to head back to LA after a weekend of making various donations to a variety of nearly identical mountain casinos. We got in on Friday afternoon and drove about an hour outside of Denver to a town called Black Hawk (yeah, I've said it out loud too and big lol) where there's a cluster of surprisingly well kept casinos tucked away in the mountains like a trashy lil treasure. 

We spent the evening bobbing and weaving through oxygen tanks and motor scooters while the ping ping ping of games called "Cha-Ching" and "Dancing Foo" and "Brazil" danced in my eardrums and the flashing lights from every direction kept my eyes suspended in soft focus for hours on end. It was tacky delight. Then we'd walk outside of one casino and bump into the next copy&pasted casino 20 feet away sitting against a backdrop of hugely brilliant mountains outlined with evergreen trees. It was like walking through one of those old timey landscape oil paintings you'd find in your grandparents home or a thrift shop. But with casinos. It was a competing feast for the senses. The fresh air filled our lungs like a cold, crisp treat before it was replaced with that familiar scent of carpet soap that's not totally pleasing, but not totally terrible, but definitely excellent at cleaning up vomit. 

It was Vegas lite...like, super lite...like, if Vegas was a non-alcoholic-beer, lite. And it was just right. We gambled like we were at a slot machine buffet, trying a little bit of everything. And a few hours later, when we had grown weary and hungry from the draining physicality of slapping buttons, slamming levers, and aggressively pointing at what could have been, we hit up the actual buffet and got CRAB LEGS. Yes, crab legs. Upon entry everyone was given a ticket for one pound of crab legs. What is gambling without a buffet and, more specifically, without crab legs??? I have learned this weekend that it's not true gambling. When we walked into this buffet we were immediately smacked with the elegant musk of crab and the wild visual of adults hunched over tables littered with plates, food scraps, buckets, and legs. Legs everywhere. There was a quiet focus that blanketed the room as people cracked open crab legs and dipped them in butter and smashed the meat in their mouths and chucked the rest in buckets. Crack, dip, smash, chuck, crack, dip, smash, chuck. Everyone was in the zone. It was decadent and disgusting and hilarious. And of course we crackeddippedsmashedchucked until our bellies begged us to stop. 

The next day we drove a little further, literally maybe 5 minutes, to an even smaller mountain town called Central City (not as fun/nasty to say) with even smaller casinos tucked into an even smaller cutesy mountainous scenescape. We gave them some of our money but they didn't give us any crab legs. We spent the rest of the weekend looking at antiques, eating Applebee's, and playing video games...like a group of REAL millennials constantly teetering between elderly-youthful fun. Overall, it was a real sweet weekend and confirmed once again how much I enjoy adventures, big and small, with loved ones and friends. 

Which, ironically, plays into the fact that I just found out there are two more love languages added to the previously established 5. Did you hear about this? Love languages, if you don't already know, are the ways we express and experience love. Just like any pop psychological self helpy personality analyzing system, you can take online quizzes that help you identify your love language (v science, much legit). It helps you understand the most effective way you understand or accept love. Some people experience love through gifts, others through words of affirmation, others through quality time, others through acts of service, and still others through touch. I understand it to be mostly helpful because sometimes we can find ourselves giving/showing love the way we want to receive it, when actually the person receiving would prefer it another way. You don't need to buy gifts for a partner that just wants to spend some time together. And stop taking out the trash for someone who just wants you to touch their feet! And now there's two new languages introduced, shared experiences and emotional security. Emotional security is rooted in conversation and happens when a person feels seen, safe, secure and accepted for being their authentic self. If you love having deep chats with your partner uncovering the intimate 'whys' behind their answers then you likely experience love through emotional security. Shared experiences, on the other hand, is exactly as it sounds, you love to create/share new memories/adventures with your loved one. From my understanding people usually have a primary love language, but can have second and third and forth runner ups as well. Equal opportunity love here, people! 

I'm mostly an acts of service gal, with quality time and words of affirmation not far behind. But these two new languages might shake things up for me. I love a good pillow talk, but I also really love making memories. Even in our Lyft to the airport just now, thinking our sweet lil weekend was coming to a close, Elliott and I had a driver that created another new shared experience for us. I'll try to be brief, because the conversation did happen so quickly, but he said something about Red Rocks, the famous theater out here, and we said we’ve never been. He then said “I have a killer story about Red Rocks..." followed by SILENCE. Finally I said “well, what’s the story” and he said “you really wanna know?” SILENCE AGAIN. I said “well, yeah, if it’s killer” and then he proceeded to tell us about taking a girl (just a friend!!) to Jason Mraz at Red Rocks 20 years ago and getting invited backstage because he was dancing so hard in the 14th row that he got on the "megacam". Before the show started his date (just a friend!) had left to go back to the car for an unknown reason and never came back so he went backstage and had a sandwich with Jason Mraz and then went back to his car and found her passed out from doing meth. Wow. A story full of emotional whiplash! He told us many writers have told him to write a book. Then he told us another "killer concert story" about taking a woman to see Frank Sinatra in the 80s and somehow he snuck on stage because he "really, truly loves Frank" and Frank sang New York, New York just to him (while Frank drank a rum and diet coke even though "he was sober at that time"). Why did he tell us that story? Because last year a guy got in touch with him asking if he took a certain woman to Frank Sinatra in 1983 in San Fransisco. That guy is his 36 year old son he never knew he had. Wow! I gotta say, he wasn’t lying, that was truly another "killer concert story". Our drive was probably 25 minutes in total and I learned so much about that man. And I loved it. Elliott and I got out of that car and walked into the airport and looked at each other and breathed like we had been holding our breath for the last 25 minutes. Another memory! 

And, come to think of this “shared experience” stuff, it's probably why Mamrie and I love doing the podcast and love seeking out adventures. Creating and sharing memories brings us joy and gives us an experience of love. Awwwwwwww. Like the explorers who originally discovered the area that would become those sweetly tacky crab leg filled casinos must have said to each other...there's a lot to mine there. But, I'll leave you with that for now, I gotta jump on a plane. What's your love language, and what are your thoughts on the two new ones? Sorry to rush it here at the end, but I hope you all had decent weekends! Thanks for your patience with the post! And thanks, as always, for being here! 💚G