Dear Mexican: Looking back recently on my distant youth in northwest Ohio, I came to the realization that the sweetest, most beautiful girl this gabacho ever went out with (indeed, in my entire senior class) was the pure-blooded daughter of Mexican immigrants. Am I under the sway of 1) simple…
Colorado’s longest-running reality show could be drawing to a close. Today, Ward Churchill will get another day in court, when Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves considers whether he should get his job back at the University of Colorado — or be paid to go away. Naves presided over the…
Architect Ed White changed the way the world looks at Denver — not just through his architectural designs, but through his friendship with Jack Kerouac. That friendship is documented in the form of Tim Gray, a White-like character in On The Road, as well as in the structure of the…
Dick Kreck will be reading from his book Smaldone: The Untold Story of an American Crime Family tonight at the Tattered Cover in LoDo, with Chuck and Gene, the sons of Clyde Smaldone, on hand to answer questions about their infamous relatives. But for a real taste of what the…
A moment of silence for the passing of a pop-culture icon, gone so young at the age of fifty. Yes, that’s right: Billy Mays, star of Pitchmen on the Discovery Channel, has died, silencing that big voice that had become ubiquitous on late-night infomercials. Mays got his start on the…
Read between the lines: The rationale behind the city’s vote for the next One Book, One Denver selection became clear yesterday, when the Department of Cultural Affairs revealed that the city had received a $20,000 Big Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. That NEA program is designed…
Dear Mexican: You once asked why Mexican bands don’t hit it big in the good old U.S. of A. I think the simple answer is that there are no Mexican Mouseketeers. You don’t get to be Justin Timberlake by picking a guitarrón. Slater from Saved by the Bell doesn’t count…
I’m about to head to Denver International Airport, which is suddenly in the shadows. Not because of the storm cloud that dumped a record amount of rain on DIA last evening — but because Republic Airways’ $109 million bid to buy Frontier out of bankruptcy could mean that Denver will…
Get in line, suckers. Clear, the private program that let pre-registered (and pre-paid, at $199 a year) customers use special fast lanes to get through airport security once their iris scans were on file, has closed down, its parent company “unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to…
Independence Institute chief John Caldara lost the battle of the sexes shoot-off at the organization’s annual ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — but not in that order) event at the Kiowa Shooting Club on Saturday, but he’s still a master at shooting from the lip. “I always aim for the…
Governor Bill Ritter took a break from his budget-busting business last week to pop by the Paramount Theater, where he presented Loretta Lynn with a plaque commemorating her induction into the Colorado Country Music Hall of Fame. The Colorado Country Music Hall of Fame? Yeah, I hadn’t heard of it,…
For decades, Denver could boast the largest Juneteenth festival in the country, an annual commemoration of the day that slaves in Texas finally learned they’d been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation — celebrated in Five Points, the heart of the city’s African-American community. But over the years, Juneteenth in Denver…
Dear Mexican: I write to you with a doubt similar to the one that Incensed in Chicago felt a couple of weeks ago, when her friend couldn’t believe that Mexicans worked in professional, white-collar jobs. I live in Tijuana, and of the gabachos who put roots here, you can’t find…
Back East for a conference, Mayor John Hickenlooper popped up to Canada, where his cousin, George Hickenlooper, is filming Casino Jack, a movie based on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff that stars Kevin Spacey. John Hickenlooper was the inevitable star of another George Hickenlooper project, Hick Town, a sweet and savvy…
Both Governor Bill Ritter and Lieutenant Governor Barbara O’Brien were out of town yesterday (he to the Western Governors’ Association meeting in Utah, she to an education confab in North Carolina). And who did that leave in charge? By the Colorado Constitution, the State Senate President. But Brandon Shaffer, who…
The White Way Grill, a classic diner created by Valentine Diners, a Wichita, Kansas-based company that produced “portable steel sandwich shops,” is back in business in Lakewood. Sort of. The White Way was an Aristocrat model, purchased for $3,300 back in 1948 (Valentine made diners between 1938 and the late…
Today’s the last chance to vote for the next selection in the city’s sixth One Book, One Denver reading program — and no, despite the wacky weather lately, not to mention yesterday’s funnel clouds over downtown Denver, the Wizard of Oz is not one of the possibilities. The 27 eligible…
Two decades ago, Simms Landing was still a dining destination, because the view overlooking Denver was so spectacular you could almost ignore how mediocre the food was becoming. (That view even rated a few pre-web archive Best of Denver awards.) And in the intervening years, the place was still packed…
The film stories keep unrolling in Denver, where the Denver Film Society is trying to rebuild after a morale-deadening miss at installing a new executive director, and the just re-established state film office starts the process of luring moviemakers to Colorado. Still, as Imagine That, the Eddie Murphy filmed here…
Late Monday, the Denver Film Society announced that a search was already under way for a new executive director to take the place of Bo Smith, who’d finally been dismissed just two days before. “We are looking for a permanent replacement,” DFS board chair David Charmatz told me. “We’ll decide…
Dear Mexican: I was riding the local light rail when two female Mexicans sat down and started talking rapid-fire Spanish non-stop for 45 minutes! It seemed as if neither one stopped to take a breath of air. They were loud and could be heard the length of the train. Question:…
In retrospect, the new executive director’s on-stage debut at the screening of Slumdog Millionaire at last November’s Denver International Film Festival should have been a clue. Bo Smith, who’d been selected by the Denver Film Society board to take over from retiring founder Ron Henderson and two interim directors, had…
