“This PeaceJam is amazing,” my friend said. “I was just hearing about them on Colorado Public Radio.” She’d been hearing about them from me for months — since last November, when I interviewed founders Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff, and wrote about how PeaceJam would mark its tenth anniversary by…
“I’m a conservative Republican,” Michael Brown says. “What am I doing here?” Still, on the list of tight spots where Brown, former head of FEMA, has found himself in the last year, the Westword office should rank low. For starters, there was that emergency-response photo op on September 2, 2005,…
Disaster is Lori Peek’s specialty. When Hurricane Katrina struck, she was fresh from the University of Colorado, where she’d earned her Ph.D. with a thesis on 9/11, and just beginning her first semester as an assistant sociology professor at Colorado State University. Still, she somehow found a week last October…
Dear Mexican: I heard that Mexicans at an Orange County candy factory think they saw the Virgin Mary in a pile of melted chocolate. Why do Mexicans always see the Virgin Mary in the stupidest things? Non-Believer Beaner Dear Wab: It’s not just Mexicans who find the Holy Mother in…
A year ago, Michael Brown was at the center of the storm. Today, the former FEMA head is back in Boulder, where he’s set up a disaster-consulting business. So far, he hasn’t been asked to consult on the disaster in his own back yard — but over the past two…
Apparently the Boulder County Jail didn’t get PETA’s memo. On Tuesday, People for the Ethical Treatment of animals sent a note to the jailer in Los Angeles, urging that John Mark Karr be served a cruelty-free diet, one free of animals, because “unlike the humans in the prison system, all…
Just when you thought the JonBenet Ramsey murder case had everything — a pint-sized beauty queen, a bogus Santa Claus, a ransom note right out of Matlock and, finally, a suspect with a yen for confessing and wearing eyeliner — another player enters the picture. PETA. Yes, People for the…
Boulder has never been particularly kind to Republicans, but Bob Beauprez owes District Attorney Mary Lacy a box of chocolates. Because without John Mark Karr, Beauprez’s running mate might still be stumbling through the headlines. Last Wednesday morning, the media was all over first-term Mesa County commissioner Janet Rowland, whose…
Dear Mexican: What’s with Mexican-Americans who live in New Mexico claiming they’re Spanish and not Mexican? Many actually get angry and combative if you ask them if they’re Mexican. But if you look at them, they look more Indian than Spanish! Why have so many developed a deep-seated embarrassment of…
Just when the University of Colorado was starting to resurrect its reputation, journalism professor Michael Tracey, long a sideshow in the JonBenet Ramsey circus, hits (or is that creates?) the news with his creepy e-mail exchange with John Mark Karr — in which Tracey (pictured) looks about as much like…
The People’s Republic of Boulder isn’t known for supporting Republican causes, but gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez should send a big bouquet to the DA’s office there. Because yesterday’s announcement that the Boulder DA finally has a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder may have been the only thing that could…
Dear Mexican: Why do Mexicans forget about great beers like Tecate, Negra Modelo, and Bohemia and start drinking swill like Bud Light when they come to the United States? I always remember John Steinbeck’s immortal line –“Ah, Bohemia beer and the Pyramid of the Sun; entire civilizations have created less”–…
Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez seems to have picked his running mate as he would a tie — an accessory that’s complementary, and not too loud. Something he can embrace in an unctuously innocuous manner, as he did yesterday when announcing that Janet Rowland is his choice for lieutenant governor…
Dear Readers: My July 20 column advising Enamorada Gabacha to improve her relationship with the Mexican who invaded her heart by giving him “an old-school blow job” drew many letters — starting with one from Gabacha in Love herself: Dear Mexican: Well, of course I thought of a good old-school…
Dear Mexican: The last two movies I attended were rated R. Sitting around me were Mexican families with very young children. Why do Mexicans bring their eight-year-old kids to see a movie like Hostel? Do Mexican parents just not give a shit, or can they not afford a babysitter? Plus,…
Dear Mexican: The Mexican presidential elections have been a freaking mess. I voted for the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderón, who almost everyone agrees won the election. But the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador is making a mess out of this by claiming electoral fraud. Does the Mexican have an opinion…
Back in June, Bill Clinton’s handlers didn’t think he’d answer a question about whether his wife was running for president. (Although answer it he did — twice — and one of his lines even rated a laugh on Leno.) But in Denver yesterday, when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled the…
What if you gave a protest and no one came? Yesterday, the Colorado Republican Party staged a protest outside the Grand Hyatt Denver on 17th Street to illustrate the “Tug of War” between Democratic factions. “The radical wing of the Democratic Party, led by the likes of Howard Dean and…
In cyberspace, everyone can hear you scream. And the sound echoes on…and on…and on. The fireworks started on July 4, when Deborah Frisch decided to troll the Web and toss a few firecrackers at conservatives. She came across a post that Jeff Goldstein had made on his blog, proteinwisdom.com, criticizing…
Pressing Engagements Last Friday’s papers were all over Katie Couric’s visit. And that very morning, The Early Show broadcast live from Civic Center Park, extolling the Front Range as the Napa Valley of microbrews (the timing was a bit unfortunate, given former Senate candidate Pete Coors’s imminent date with a…
Dear Mexican: I just don’t get Mexicans and their grooming. The men slick their hair with baby oil, gel or Vaseline, or just shave it all off. The women wear it in ponytails with a neon-green hairband or in pigtails, or wear bangs created with the biggest curling iron in…
The wheelchair-bound fellow rolling his way up Broadway just after 7 a.m. this morning, an icy-cold six-pack of Bud Light in his lap (3.2, of course, but your convenience-store options are limited), knew how he was going to spend another 100-degree day: drinking in Civic Center Park. Too bad The…
