Albuquerque, New Mexico

Albuquerque (ⁱ/ˈælbəˌkɜːrki/ AL-bə-KUR-kee) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. The high-altitude city serves as the county seat of Bernalillo County, and it is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population is 557,169 as of the July 1, 2014, population estimate from the United States Census Bureau, and ranks as the 32nd-largest city in the U.S. The Albuquerque Metropolitan Statistical Area (or MSA) has a population of 902,797 according to the United States Census Bureau's most recently available estimate for July 1, 2013. Albuquerque is the 59th-largest United States metropolitan area. The Albuquerque MSA population includes the city of Rio Rancho, Bernalillo, Placitas, Corrales, Los Lunas, Belen, Bosque Farms, and forms part of the larger Albuquerque – Santa Fe – Las Vegas combined statistical area, with a total population of 1,163,964 as of the July 1, 2013 Census Bureau estimates.

Albuquerque is home to the University of New Mexico (UNM), Kirtland Air Force Base, Sandia National Laboratories, Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, Central New Mexico Community College (CNM), Presbyterian Health Services, and Petroglyph National Monument. The Sandia Mountains run along the eastern side of Albuquerque, and the Rio Grande flows through the city, north to south. Albuquerque is also the home of the International Balloon Fiesta, a large gathering of balloons from around the world. The event takes place during the first week of October.

Albuquerque (song)

"Albuquerque" is the last song of "Weird Al" Yankovic's Running with Scissors album. At 11 minutes and 22 seconds, it is the longest song Yankovic has ever released on any of his official studio albums.

With the exception of the choruses and occasional bridges, the track is mostly a spoken word narration about Yankovic's made-up life in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after winning a first-class one-way airplane ticket to the city. According to Yankovic, the song is in the style of the "hard-driving rock narrative" of artists like The Rugburns, Mojo Nixon and George Thorogood.

Song and lyrics

Yankovic set off to write the lengthy song, considering it as a final track for Running with Scissors. The long meandering story was not expected to be popular and instead Yankovic wanted to compose a song "that's just going to annoy people for 12 minutes," making it feel like an "odyssey" for the listener after making it through to the end. Yankovic described writing the song as "free flowing," writing down a great deal of material he thought would be funny including previous ancedotes he had recorded, and trimming it down to form a lengthy "semi-cohesive story." The lyrics were too long to include in the liner notes for the album (it literally ends midsentence and goes into a written apology by Al), though full lyrics were posted to Yankovic's website.

Albuquerque (film)

Albuquerque is a 1948 American Western directed by Ray Enright and starring Randolph Scott, Barbara Britton, George "Gabby" Hayes, and Lon Chaney, Jr.. Based on the novel Dead Freight for Piute by Luke Short, with a screenplay by Gene Lewis and Clarence Upson Young, the film is about a man who is recruited by his corrupt uncle to inherit his freight-hauling empire in the southwest, and who eventually defects to his uncle's honest business rival.

Plot

During a stagecoach holdup, Celia Wallace is robbed of $10,000 and little Myrtle Walton is saved from the runaway horses by a passenger, Cole Armin.

Celia is grateful until she learns Cole is coming to Albuquerque to work for his uncle, John Armin, a ruthless freight-line owner who stops at nothing to put competitors Celia and her brother Ted out of business.

Concluding that his uncle was even behind the robbery, Cole switches sides to work for the Wallaces. Armin uses a woman, Letty Tyler, to spy on his adversaries, but she resents being used when a mine is blown up and Ted is wounded by gunfire.