Should He Stay or Should He Go?

Dear Readers: Muchas, muchas responses to my March 8 column asking whether I should keep the gold-toothed, mustachioed, sombrero-wearing fat Mexican logo and, if so, what should I name him. The overwhelming majority of ustedes support amnesty for the wab, but a few folks also made articulate arguments in favor…

Funny Money

Marva Livingston Hammons Marva Livingston Hammons, head of the Colorado Department of Human Services under former Governor Bill Owens and one of the primary culprits behind this state’s benefits mess, collected quite a goodbye gift on her way out: Eight hundred twenty-three hours of unused vacation time, which netted her…

Fashion Statement

Dear Mexican: I’m perplexed. I just saw a middle-aged wab wearing tight pink stretch pants with the phrase “Pink Taco” emblazoned across her misshapen buttocks. In my experience, Mexicans of the Mexico-born variety seem to wear a lot of clothes with odd/tacky slogans. My question is simple: Do wabs know…

High Fidelity

The Colorado Legislature may not have known that “Rocky Mountain High” references drug use (ha!), but John Denver sure did. Because here are his lyrics for another song, “Poems, and Prayers, and Promises”: And I have to say it now It’s been a good life all in all It’s really…

High Anxiety

In today’s New York Times piece on the Colorado Legislature adopting “Rocky Mountain High” as a second official state song — “Colorado Has Song in Its Heart, and Not Drugs on Its Mind” — reporter Kirk Johnson offers this gem: “A lot of people probably think it’s already the state…

Coors, of Course

Wow — dope really does affect your memory. Because in all the yapping over making “Rocky Mountain High” a second official state song, no one at the Colorado Legislature mentioned a potential snag. Back in 2005, Coors Brewing Co. bought the rights to the song — the lyrics and music,…

Denver…Why I Love Her

Rounding the corner at DIA Monday morning, I ran smack into artist Gary Sweeney, who moved from Denver more than a decade ago, but left plenty for this city to remember him by. “America…Why I Love Her,” for example, the airport’s most beloved public-art piece, complete with a map of…

Star-Crossed

Dear Mexican: I have a major crush on a worker with the Mexican Consulate aquí en Tucson. But I fear that, like two star-crossed lovers, we’re destined for doom. I’m a gabacha yaktivist and against governments in general. He represents the PAN or PRD or PRI or whatever Mexican political…

Pennies for Peace

Give PeaceJam a chance. On March 8, a handful of celebs — including Nate Corddly and Martin Sheen — will launch Refunds for Good, which aims to take $20 billion collected over the past 108 years through a federal telephone tax — the “War Tax” — and redirect it to…

Its a Steal

Dear Mexican: I grew up with Mexicans who stole things just to steal. As an adult, I see much of the same behavior from adult Mexicans and their children. And I don’t mean just the poor Mexicans. Why is it in their nature for Mexicans to steal? Larcenous Lester Dear…

Denver Restaurant Week, Day 1

Denver Restaurant Week, Day 1 (an eyewitness report from Patricia Calhoun) Saturday, February 24: The numbers are staggering. Restaurants participating in the third annual Denver Restaurant Week, which starts tonight, are booked solid. At Prime 121, a Cherry Creek steakhouse that hasn’t exactly been packing them in, they have reservations…

The Governator

Dear Mexican: Why does Arnold Schwarzenegger keep putting his foot in his mouth and talking smack about Mexicans? To my understanding, his wife Maria is of Mexican descent. He’s not only humiliating nuestra raza, but his wife, too. Deep Sea Angler Dear Wab: You’re confusing your degenerate Catholics, cabrón: Maria…

Don’t Be An Ash!

The controversy came out of almost-thin air. After Barack Obama announced that he would give up smoking, The Hill asked other presidential contenders about their vices. “I smoke the occasional cigar,” said Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo. And then, in passing, he told the reporter a funny story — about how…

Ladies’ Plight

Steve Horner leans in for a hug. But I do not hug on a first interview. Not even if the subject of the interview has already left me a lengthy voice-mail warning that I, and this newspaper, “have been totally insensitive to the needs of this egalitarian society” — not…

Tortilla Flats

Dear Readers: Muchos comments about my February 1 column regarding Mexican names morphing into seemingly wacky nicknames — Nini from Alejandrina, say, or Chely from Araceli. I wrote that such changes occurred thanks to linguistic laws; some of you had other theories. Here’s what a Chicano Studies professor at East…

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Mike Jones is having a bad week. The Capitol Hill apartment building where he lives suffered a fire, and he’s out of his place and in a hotel — with just one week to go until he has to turn in his book on his three-year “relationship” with Pastor Ted…

More Snickers

After a few weeks of counseling, Ted Haggard — who just reached a settlement with the New Life Church that dictates he never talk about the Mike Jones scandal that led to his resignation from the church he founded — insists he’s “completely heterosexual.” Never mind the gay porn, the…

Hard to Swallow

Dear Mexican: Why can’t I get a Mexican woman to swallow my cream? Curious Jorge Dear Mexican: Why don’t Mexican girls swallow? My girlfriend is Mexican and she gives great head, but at the penultimate moment, she chokes and spits. Gross! So, she won’t fuck because she wants to be…

Short and Sweet

Dear Mexican: I want to know why Mexicans have such incongruous nicknames. In English, people have nicknames that have some relation to their given names — for example, Kenny is the nickname for Kenneth, and Jenny for Jennifer. Granted, there are some nicknames that seem like a stretch of logic,…

Help Is at Hand

“I can no longer, with good conscience, tell my neighbors and consituents that ‘the city is on its way,'” Denver City Council President Michael Hancock said in an e-mail to the Hickenlooper administration. Almost six weeks after the first flakes fell, the natives are getting restless. But just imagine if…

The Checkmate’s in the Mail

As of nine this morning, the Denver Election Commission had received 40,039 ballots — and those are ballots filled out by voters, not returned by the U.S. Postal Service as undeliverable (another 30,000 or so), after the DEC had already given itself an A+ on its performance with this single-ballot…

Beating the Tom Tom

In this Miami Herald column, Dave Barry takes off after Colorado representative and perhaps presidential candidate Tom Tancredo. Among other things, Barry calls Tancredo (the subject of a recent blog) an “ignorant yokel blowhard” and a “xenophobic dimwit.” And I am not making this up! “Back in November,” Barry writes,…