Hot Pink Thai Cuisine – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Black socks and sandals, mixing plaids and polka dots, middle-aged men wearing trousers up to their nipples, T-shirts that accentuate the “spare tire” look, fat guys wearing culottes… If there’s a fashion faux-pas out there, you can bet some of us XY-chromosome-enabled fashion Luddites have committed it and then some. When it comes to fashion, many of us are as clueless as a pirate wearing two eye patches. There is, however, one fashion statement we won’t make. Among the six to seven shirts hanging (wrinkles and all) in our closets, none will be the color pink. Nor will they be salmon, carnation, rose, Amaranth or any other shade of pink fashionistas invented in an effort to get us to wear pink. For men, the only pink thing that’s really cool (despite what we tell our wives and girlfriends about their pink “unmentionables”) is the Pink Panther. You know, the Pink Panther…the “one and only, truly original, Panther-pink (panther) from head to toe.” Men have a very special affinity for the “rinky-dink” Pink Panther. “He really is a groovy cat and what a gentleman, a scholar, what an acrobat!” He’s everything we want to be, but aren’t cool enough to pull…

Hanmi Korean-Chinese Fusion – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Popular culture is defined as “commonly known information that briefly holds the public interest. It is typically discussed in various mass media, including TV and the Internet, and becomes a topic of everyday conversation (what used to be called a “water cooler conversation” before that term fell from popularity).  Apparently you’re out of touch with pop culture when you believe Game of Thrones is a video game and that Taylor Swift is a sprinter, the female equivalent of Usain Bolt. Approaching forty years of youth, I’d probably be completely out of touch with pop culture were it not for our interns at UNM Information Technology.  They do their best to educate this old fogey on what’s lit, cool, on fleek or whatever their generation’s version of groovy may be.  My lack of pop culture knowledge puts me in the same company as their parents and grandparents, all of whom are clueless as to what’s important.  While they might be less patient with their parents, they find my ignorance humorous.  For example, when I walked in on a conversation they were having and overheard the term K-Pop, I asked if it was a Korean dish similar to bibimbap.  I still haven’t…