For this one, I started with the iconic Saguaro cactus, a popular symbol of the Southwest and an indigenous plant of the Los Cabo desert region.  From there, I began adding in Laotian influences, such as the Lao flag draped over one arm holding a fruit-filled coconut drink and wearing a conical sunhat.  Rather than the typical saguaro blooms, I replaced them with the Dok Champa, the national flower of Laos.  Also, for some reason, it plays the guitar, because Los Cabos.  Finally, I put it all in a desert setting with Asian temples lining the horizon, and capped it all off with the classic header BE THERE. BE LAO'D.  I came up with that - That's mine!

Since the Corona Party Parrots are essentially cultural appropriations already, it made sense to make these guys the focal point of the Cabo Pagoda poster.  Here they don Lao flag hats and clutch the fictitious beer BeerLaoCabo (more on that below) .  To round out the infusion, the setting is the mountainous Northern region of Laos, with a beautiful pagoda standing on one of the peaks.  The word above the temple is Thai, I think, and I've since forgotten what it means.  Anybody know?  I'm sure I used it for a reason.  Looks cool up there though, and the color scheme balances well with the cactus poster above.

It's not a typo - This mock cover of National Geographic magazine is rife with awful puns, and is worth mulling over just  to take each and every single one of them in.  There's even one rather risqué  double entendre, depending on how you look at it.

Beerlao is a fantastic rice beer brewed in Laos, and getting it in the states is exceptionally difficult. There's one or two bars in New York that will serve it, but getting a hold of a bottle to walk out with is a much taller order, particularly if the order is two cases of it.  After scouring the five boroughs, I found a Lao/Thai shop in Queens that, as luck would have it, had exactly two cases.  I bought them all.

Once I had the bottles, the next step was getting the old labels off (itself not an easy task) and applying the new BeerLaoCabo sticker labels and neckers I had made prior to the party.  After holing up in a hotel near the event and spending several hours scraping off old labels with a razor blade and GooGone, I had 24 freshly-labeled BeerLaoCabo bottles, ready to be enjoyed!

Quite possibly (backed by a quick Google search) the first Laotian Pinata in existence, designed by me and custom-built by the talented Pinata artisans at Raquel's Party Land in Austin, Texas.  Using the colors of the Laotian flag, and topped by the classic sunhat, Laotian Pinata's height and width was pre-conceived to fit perfectly inside my suitcase for smuggling purposes.  It isn't easy getting these guys into New York from Texas.