Back in 1994, Vernon Bellecourt and the national American Indian Movement asked the University of Colorado to investigate whether Ward Churchill obtained tenure through deception, “billing himself as an American Indian writer, scholar and artist,” Bellecourt told Westword. He added that the university should get rid of “this man whose…
May is “sweeps” month, when ratings help determine advertising rates for TV stations — and according to a knowledgeable insider, Channel 7’s newscast numbers, particularly at 5 p.m. and 10 p.m., aren’t pretty. Granted, disaster can be averted if the rate of viewership increases over the next two weeks or…
Frankly, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is a lousy book, with ridiculous characters (really — an albino monk into self-abuse?), page after page of tedious exposition, and dialogue so clunky and unbelievable that it makes Jonathan Livingston Seagull seem like the height of realism. Yet the tome’s provocative premise…
Denver author (and former Rocky Mountain News staffer) J.R. Moehringer’s star began to rise following the publication of his best-selling memoir, The Tender Bar — and judging by this morning’s episode of Good Morning America, he currently shares a constellation with some mighty bright lights. In a segment about sons…
On May 8, KHOW talk-show host Peter Boyles called for “a day without newspapers” because of his displeasure at coverage of the immigration controversy in the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post. A day after this declaration, and mere hours after he got into a self-described screaming match with Rocky…
Zacarias Moussaoui is heading for Supermax, the federal prison in Florence. At 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. today, Alan Prendergast will discuss Supermax with KCFR’s Ryan Warner on Colorado Matters. For a collection of Prendergast pieces on prison, see our “Crime and Punishment” archives…
Last week, Lawrence Argent was out scrubbing down his sculpture called “I See What You Mean,” but better known as the Big Blue Bear. Since the piece debuted last July outside the Colorado Convention Center, it’s quickly become the city’s most popular public artwork — although the piece’s popularity wasn’t…
Mike Nickels was closing up shop when he saw a crack deal going down right outside the door. “I can’t have drug deals going on out there,” says Nickels, owner of the Twisted Sol tattoo shop at 1405 Ogden Street. “I’ve got soccer moms bringing their sixteen-year-old daughters down here…
“Kick his ass! I want to see some blood!” a woman shouted from her front-row seat at the two men circling inside a cage. “Fight like a man, not like a bitch!” “Fight. Fight. Fight. Fight,” chanted the crowd gathered for the American Championship Fighting bout at the Denver Coliseum…
Colorado Springs’s High Plains Messenger is both an Internet newspaper and a fiscal experiment. “There’s nothing like what we’ve done in the United States so far,” says Joseph Coleman, the site’s co-creator and resident moneyman, “and that can be dangerous. But if things go well, and we think they will,…
At any given time, a handful of community gardens across the city are under fire. Like the endangered Emerson Street Community Garden on Capitol Hill, plots located on privately owned land are vulnerable to developers eyeing the spaces for new construction or future parking lots. But the Fairview School Garden…
“The ratio is absurd…That’s all of Denver. MENVER. If you are a guy I feel bad, just don’t leave.”
Late in March, the honorable Sir Michael of Bennet, Superintendent of Denver Public Schools, met with a ragtag group of young civic boosters known as Leadership Denver’s Class of 2006, with one goal in mind: winning the state leadership softball classic. Every year at about this time, all the bizarre…
No one but Dr. Phillip Mallory himself will ever know why he wanted to buy a Bushmaster AR-15 so bad that he lied about a felony when he filled out the required purchase forms a year ago. But his guilty plea to that federal charge will spare him a potentially…
The University of Colorado wants you to know that it “remains committed to promoting and maintaining an environment free from sexual harassment.” CU is so committed, in fact, that in 2004 it fired Igor Gamow, a controversial professor and inventor who’d been a fixture on the Boulder campus for nearly…
There was no reason to delay Timothy Kemp’s sentencing after he was convicted of first-degree murder on May 1. On that point, both the prosecution and defense agreed, since judges in Colorado have no discretion when sentencing first-degree-murder cases. Life without parole is the only option. Kemp was eighteen when…
Vail Unveiled It’s all downhill from here: Regarding Jared Jacang Maher’s “Vail at the Crossroads,” in the May 4 issue: I am a 35-year resident of Colorado and was at one time a frequent Vail visitor. However, I stopped skiing and visiting there years ago after tiring of the inflated,…
Ask most folks to name Colorado’s next celebrity resident and they’ll likely namecheck terroristic wannabe Zacarias Moussaoui, who’s expected to take up residence at Supermax, the Florence lockup that’s the current home of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and plenty of other well-known psychopaths. (Here’s the Los Angeles Times’ piece about what…
In most legal disputes between big business and the general public, business has a huge advantage when it comes to resources and the ability to sustain court challenges over the long term. But that’s not the case in the ongoing quarrel between local TV and radio stations and folks who…
On Thursday, the Arapahoe County District Attorney announced that she was sending the case of Aarone Thompson to a grand jury. The girl was first reported missing last November, but may have been killed up to eighteen months earlier, and her body hidden. Aarone was just a year old when…
The University of Colorado wants you to know that it “remains committed to promoting and maintaining an environment free from sexual harassment.” CU is so committed, in fact, that in 2004 it fired Igor Gamow, a controversial professor and inventor who’d been a fixture on the Boulder campus for nearly…
The three tourists stare at the sculpture in front of a fur boutique advertising Black Diamond female mink for “only $3,488.” A life-sized bronze of a young woman holding a sun hat and flowers, the piece has a classical vibe — but the woman’s metal dress is dyed a bright,…
