I learned a new word a couple of weeks ago, hangin' wit' my California homey Gail in the big city of Denver. Our waitress at the Breckenridge Brewery was excruciatingly young. Literally, it made my joints ache and my jaw clench just to look at her. She was sweet, helpful and oh-so talkative, giving us directions to parks and bars. The word she taught us? Dank. Dank, you see, is the new sick, which was, and still is in some circles, the new bad, which everyone knows is good. Get it? Got it. Dank. My pal Gail and I walked the streets of Denver, 8.5 miles. This, according to a cool app loaded onto her iPhone that tells her how far and where she's gone, using GPS satellite positioning to accomplish this and displaying a map to show the exact route. Dank. One of our first assignments as fledgling MFA students (about 100 years ago), was to introduce ourselves in a representative way by describing a favorite place. The image that faded into view like a developing Polaroid was ...