Around 5 a.m. the morning after another wacky election, 9News’s Gary Shapiro expressed delight at being rid of political ads for the season. Smiling co-anchor Gregg Moss added that viewers should expect a lot more station promos in the days ahead. Ordinarily, this prospect would have struck me as singularly…
That pointy brown thing that turns up in the U.S. of A. every autumn is a football — a fact that has escaped most of Colorado’s major colleges and universities this year and has dawned only occasionally on the Emperor of Invesco, Mike Shanahan. Herewith five ways of looking at…
We’ll Drink to That! Thirst amendment: “Through a Glass, Darkly,” your special drinking report in the November 4 issue, was the only thing that got me through the dark days of last week. Now there’s even more reason to drink! Larry Peterson Denver Moral majority: Westword’s celebration of drinking was…
They’ll Drink to That Foam, foam on the range: Denver’s long and liquid history. By Patricia Calhoun Before it toasted Denver as the “Drunkest Big City in America,” Men’s Health studied the number of drunk-driving arrests in the country’s 101 largest metro areas, as well as the number of alcohol-related…
Just a week before the election, David Hakala, the first Coloradan to sue a telemarketer for violating the “do not call” list, unveiled his latest public service: the No Political Calls List. “I got my first robo-call from a politician — the Colorado Republican Party — on October 12, slamming…
Government is often derided as being slow and ineffective — but the local office of the Federal Communications Commission is anything but. Just ask the man who calls himself Carl Nimbus. He’s involved with Denver Free Radio, an unlicensed collective that wants to provide a musical alternative to the corporation-fueled…
Carmelo Anthony received a summons Oct. 15 at Denver International Airport after a small amount of marijuana was found in his bag as the team prepared to travel to Milwaukee for an exhibition game. Anthony’s lawyer, Daniel Recht, said the marijuana belonged to James Cunningham, who often stays with Anthony…
Escapable Humor Making the grade: I am a registered Republican, and I enjoy reading Westword. I appreciate many of the excellent articles done by talented writers. I have found Kenny Be to be often entertaining with his “worst-case” imagination, and I really liked the building-department exaggerations. When Kenny ventures into…
The Hell Ride Crew took one look at the pictures of freshly troweled concrete and put out a call to the tribes. It would be the Sturgis of skateboarding, a weekend of ripping, raging, beer and bands. No big contest money, corporate sponsors or swooping ESPN camera cranes — just…
It’s easy to pinpoint the suckiest public skateparks in Colorado: Just count the number of skaters who aren’t at them. But even the best skaters don’t agree on the best concrete rides. When Westword asked twenty locals to name the state’s top ten parks — based on design, layout and…
On Sunday, September 19, David Stark landed at Denver International Airport on Frontier Airlines flight 447, which had originated in Philadelphia. Stark had checked two pieces of luggage in Philly: a box of clothes and a black suitcase that, when he packed it, had contained a Hewlett-Packard laptop computer in…
Finally, the Unsinkables have either realized their fondest dream — or had their worst nightmare come true. Because this past Tuesday night, the 7-Eleven at 13th Avenue and Pearl Street (right) closed for good. And so far, there are no plans to fill the black hole that’s earned a black…
The Rocky Mountain News’s October 16 endorsement of George W. Bush was hardly a shock, since the paper’s editorials tend to tilt rightward. Not so the Denver Post, whose editorial page generally slants to the left of center — except on October 24, when the broadsheet formally backed Bush via…
The good thing about the hockey lockout? Todd Bertuzzi is looking for work. The bad thing? Nobody gets to drive the Zamboni, big lovable galoot of a vehicle that it is. Otherwise, who the hell cares? Not many. Except for the good citizens of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, the people who…
The Turn of the Screw Inquiring minds want to know: I really enjoyed your October 21 “Alternative Voter’s Guide” In The City comic strip in that same issue, Derf states that in order to enforce church voting choices on Roman Catholic voters, bishops are authorizing the use of the Inquisition,…
With November 2 less than two weeks off, you can’t turn on the TV without sustaining collateral damage from one attack ad or another. But the biggest danger to your safety may be those innocuous-looking booklets you’ve already gotten in the mail, describing the issues that will be on the…
Eight major-party candidates. Four congressional districts. One metro area. The Queen City is at the center of this election-year battle — and 2004 hasn’t disappointed fans. The fight card has been full of trash-talking and chest-beating, particularly in the heavyweight championship fight between Congressman Bob Beauprez and Jefferson County District…
He’s a writer, musician and artist, so naturally, Denver’s Gregory Hill is plagued by Life’s Big Questions. Questions like: What would happen if the leader of the free world parachuted onto a desert island populated only by ravenous prehistoric beasts? In the comic “Dinosaurs Versus the President,” Hill attempts to…
Members of the freakin’ media are supposed to accurately convey what’s going on in the world, but, as usual, they’ve got it all wrong. Although commentators and analysts insist that TV commercials associated with the 2004 election in Colorado are among the meanest, ugliest and most misleading in recent memory,…
Voters have had plenty of opportunities to gather information and pass judgment on President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. Most, however, are unsatisfying — staged debates, advertising swill, convention hoo-ha, editorial folderol. It makes you wonder: Is there really a way to measure the cut of a man’s…
Big Smack Attack Putting the cartel before the horse: After reading David Holthouse’s “The Chiva Game,” in the October 7 issue, about the illegal aliens selling heroin to the yuppies downtown, I just had to write in. Holthouse worked diligently to make sure we understood that Enoc wasn’t a bad…
There’s a strange pantomime going on inside the basement of a Capitol Hill high-rise: A group of eight grown men are pretending to sing in unison. As their mouths move, their chins and chests lift and fall as if in song. But there’s no sound coming from anything but a…
