On Knowing Your Audience

Several years ago I was invited by the attorney for the Colorado Bikers Association to screen the film Unconstitutional: The War On Our Civil Liberties at their monthly meeting. I agreed and when I arrived there were around 150 diverse bikers at the VFW. Many were brandishing evangelical Christian and…

UFC Returns to the Front Range

Hate it or love it, the Ultimate Fighting Championship is making its Denver homecoming. After the UFC was born in Denver in 1993, and returned to the city for its second bout in 1994, UFC matches began to spread to other states. And after 1995, when the UFC’s Ultimate Ultimate…

2005 Best of Denver Winners

How does a city change in four years? A look at Westword’s twenty-second Best Of Denver awards, bestowed in 2005, give a sense. We called Devil’s Food Bakery the Best Waffle joint, “a dangerous place firmly dedicated to helping those with a weakness for the venal wrongs of gluttony to…

Vowing the Crowd

Happily ever after is indeed the case for five of six men who went to Thailand in search of love and marriage two years ago as part of a ten-day trip with Richard Beals’ Denver-based Thailand Romance Tours. The company was founded by Richard and his wife, Seow, who guided…

Single Mom Still Missing

Five years ago last week (February 17, 2003), a Denver stripper disappeared. Jennifer Marcum was a single mom working at Shotgun Willie’s to support her child. She got involved with a drug dealer who was running tens of thousands of hits of ecstasy into Colorado from Europe. He got busted…

Previous MasterMinds: Brian Colonna

Buntport Theater’s Brian Colonna doesn’t feel like his group is often recognized for the original work they do – at least not until their 2006 MasterMind award. “The way we promote ourselves is word of mouth and recognition in the paper. It’s a great boon to have your name in…

Previous MasterMinds: Jessica Robblee

Winning MasterMind last year gave Jessica Robblee hope, and enabled her to continue the tRUNks project – a live comic book that’s based, in part, on audience suggestions – at Buntport Theater. “When you’re trying to do something unconventional and outside the lines of how people typically make their living,…

The New York Times Breaks Up With John McCain

Dear John, The New York Times would like to endorse John McCain. And all of his affairs, scandals and conflicts of interest. They are totally breaking up. What a difference a few weeks makes in a political love triangle. Before Super Tuesday, the NYT was smitten, relatively speaking, with moderate…

Pundit Watch: Amy Holmes

Amy Holmes holds the pundit trifecta ticket: she’s black, she’s pretty, and she’s a Republican. Or so she’s espousing these days. She’s gone on record in the past to say that she’s registered as an Independent, and that she privately harbors some fairly liberal views, including being strongly pro-choice…

Vlog the Impaler Takes on Veramyst

This week, on a very special Vlog the Impaler, Jim Hickox calls up Glaxo Smith Kline to find out just how his medication Veramyst works, thusly resolving the age-old battle between Magik and science…

Student Provacateur Max Karson Strikes Again

University of Colorado student and past Westword profile subject Max Karson is an accomplished button-pusher, and this week, his school and the media reacted as anticipated to his latest provocation — an opinion column for CU’s online Campus Press entitled “If It’s War the Asians Want…” Only someone who’s had…

Letters to the Editor

“Reminders,” Patricia Calhoun, January 3 It Could Have Been Us On December 22, my family (my husband and I, our two kids and our two dogs) were driving on I-80 by Rawlins. The blowing wind made the road conditions treacherous. We were right there; the horrific accident could have been us.  …

Absinthe Absent From Shelves

Liquor news is all over America’s drunkest city (thank you, Men’s Health), whether it’s speculation on the future headquarters of Molson Coors (Off Limits, February 14), the dastardly hops shortage hurting craft breweries, or a proposed state law that might finally, blessedly, allow alcohol sales on Sunday (thank you, state…

Superdelegate to Rescue Obama

I was recently fortunate enough to travel to Tanzania with my family. Our first morning there, we were loading our bags into a Jeep when a man on the sidewalk took one look, sized us up as Americans and yelled “Obama!” with a thumb up and a smile. How he…

A Post Reporter’s Jerry Maguire Moment

In the 1996 Cameron Crowe film Jerry Maguire, the title character, portrayed by Tom Cruise, is a high-powered sports agent who begins to feel guilty about the avaricious, unfeeling way he and his colleagues treat the athletes they represent. Then he has an epiphany. “The answer was fewer clients,” he…

The Magnet Mafia Sticks to Street Art

The city looks different when you have a pocket full of magnets. Bricks, concrete, glass and anything containing organic matter recede into the background, leaving only metal. So what Matt Feeney and Harrison Nealey see are dumpsters, light poles, air conditioners, electrical boxes and LOADING ONLY signs. Even in the…

Denver Envisions the Art Scene in 2028

Lauri Lynnxe Murphy: Hopefully just as vibrant and bigger, with international attention regularly and lots of cultural tourism. However, if we don’t have good stewardship for the scene we have now, that won’t happen. Ken Hamel, denverarts.org: It would be beautiful to see Denver as an international destination on the art scene, playing…

The View From Here

The Denver Office of Cultural Affairs is thinking very hard about what this city’s arts community will look like in twenty years. At the Cultural Visioning 2028 town hall meeting at the Denver Art Museum on January 29, DOCA director Erin Trapp led a couple dozen artists and arts enthusiasts…

Final Sentence

Convicted killer Alberto Valles will be sentenced Friday, February 22, to life in prison without the possibility of parole, likely becoming the last juvenile offender in the state to receive that adult sentence. He will bring the number of Colorado inmates serving life for crimes that they committed prior to…