He’s a Riot! Rush to Judgment II

Rush Limbaugh is something of an expert on the incitation of riots. Of course, he isn’t inciting riots when he dreams of them disrupting the Democratic National Convention in Denver and destroying the Democratic Party, but was he dreaming of nailing Obama with the charge of inciting riots on his…

Rush Limbaugh Defense Leaves Dan Caplis Twisting

On April 25, Denver’s mainstream media weighed in on syndicated yakker Rush Limbaugh’s recent wisecrack about dreaming of riots in Denver at the time of August’s Democratic National Convention. In the Denver Post’s piece, for example, interview subjects included Glenn Spagnuolo, spokesman for Recreate ’68, an organization whose moniker specifically…

Rush to Judgment

Denver, we have a problem. Blubbermouth Rush Limbaugh of advocating rioting in Denver during the Democratic National Convention. For the record, on his April 23 radio show (which airs from noon to 3 p.m. weekdays on 850 KOA), Limbaugh was responding to comments from Al Sharpton, a Barack Obama supporter,…

East Meets West at BMoCA

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (1750 13th Street, Boulder, 303-443-2122, www.bmoca.org) hosts a panel discussion tonight (April 24) called “Mickey, Mao and the State of Contemporary Chinese Art.” It will take up the topic of why and how Chinese art has become such a major force in the U.S…

Shmuck of the Week

State representative Doug Bruce won’t have to suffer any official consequences for remarks he made during a House floor debate Monday in which he called migrant farmworkers “illiterate peasants” – and why should he? After all, without the Colorado Springs Republican in the Capitol, Denver politics would be a little…

Professor Rickshaw

If you didn’t get your three-wheeled fix from “Wheels of Fortune,” here’s even more of everything you wanted to know about pedicabs but were afraid to ask. I would’ve been remiss if I’d written the story without trying to interview Tony Wheeler, one of the global authorities on rickshaws. While…

Letters to the Editor

Westword, April 10 Snark Attack For many years now, I have been coming across variations on the word “snark” in journalistic pieces, used by scribes writing for a wide variety of publications, ranging from Newsweek to Westword. Most recently, in the April 10 edition of Westword, Michael Roberts uses it…

Leave Us Alone

Denver’s big green PR machine has been running on all (solar, renewable and hamster-powered) cylinders as the city administration counts the days (probably on a calendar made from recycled pulp-fiber paper) to the 2008 Democratic National Convention — supposedly the most environmentally friendly one in history, according to Mayor John…

Put Me In, Coach

I don’t really care for many of my friends, so generally I do not support their extracurriculars. Oh, I’ll pretend to stand behind them. I’ll show up at their concerts or attend their company picnics, but this is really a false sort of support, a passive-aggressive means of pushing them…

From the Blogosphere to Politics

Most politicians spend their lives trying to get people to know their name. But Jason Bane, the Democratic Party candidate for Jefferson County commissioner against incumbent Republican Kevin McCasky, isn’t most politicians. In late 2004, when he helped launch the ColoradoPols.com website, Bane did so anonymously, and he left his…

Wheels of Fortune

The sales pitches are assorted and relentless, shouted to an endless flood of pedestrians bedecked in Colorado Rockies attire streaming down the 16th Street Mall. “How about a ride to the game, folks?” “Lighten your load a little bit!” “Give your kids a thrill!” One man in a Red Sox…

The Family Tricycle

Joe Polara and his four-year-old son, Luka, cruise through northwest Denver, past the Victorians topped with solar panels, the dogs yipping through the fence posts and the old men poking at their lawns — many of whom gape at Polara’s shiny black pedicab. “It’s definitely a good conversation-starter,” Polara says…

Free and Easy

Tim Blumenthal, executive director of Bikes Belong, a Boulder-based bicycle-advocacy group, has a dream for the Democratic National Convention, and it’s a big one: “I imagine Newsweek or Time, and on the magazine’s first photo spread of the convention, you see a sea of cyclists pedaling on the Cherry Creek…

Keystone Hangover: Will the Clinton/Obama Race Ever End?

Democrats, God bless ‘em, love the underdog. Maybe it started in 1960, that magical year when the country put aside 0.1 percent of its prejudices and a few dead-body-ballots in Chicago to elect a young, idealistic Catholic to the White House. Maybe it was his untimely death, maybe the pain…

Q&A With Daily Show Creator Lizz Winstead

Lizz Winstead, the subject of the following Q&A, is headlining five shows over two nights at the Comedy Works (click here for details), but she’s hardly the average standup comic. She co-created The Daily Show, one of the most influential comedy programs of the past decade-plus, serving as the production’s…

Head for the Hills

Coming down from the mountains, I was eating tafelspitz with my fingers. I was scooping up spaetzle — sticky with gravy, dyed purple by the pickled cabbage it’d snuggled up against on the plate — and shoveling it into my mouth. Like a caveman (or just another unprepared culinary day-tripper),…

CU Solar House Opens for Earth Day

Slide show of the CU solar house as well as other houses from the 2007 Solar Decathalon. Just in time for Earth Day, the 2007 University of Colorado Solar Decathlon team is opening their house up for tours from 4 to 7 p.m. tonight. A team of CU architecture and…

Life in the Florence Prison: It’s a Riot

Note to self: Avoid extended stays in federal high-security penitentiaries, especially on weekends. Most prison riots tend to happen on weekends, when staffing is bare-bones and the week’s grievances have heated to a boil. Last Sunday’s melee at the U.S. Penitentiary Florence, in which guards fired on inmates and killed…

Channel 4’s New Look

April 21 was a day of introductions at KCNC-TV/Channel 4. The CBS affiliate broadcast its newscasts in full HD for the first time, unveiled new graphics, and welcomed recently hired anchor Karen Leigh, an Arkansas native most recently seen in the Minneapolis market, who takes the place of male co-host…