Off Limits

Hundreds of people attending the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center fundraiser on Thursday went home disappointed. It seems that Thunder, the white Arabian stallion, isn't well. According to the brochure that went along with the event, Sharon Magness, socialite, benefactress and widow of cable magnate Bill Magness, was supposed to make a grand entrance by riding in on Thunder, as she has done several other times at fundraisers, including John Elway's retirement dinner, which raised $350,000 for the Elway Foundation and the Denver Broncos Charities Fund. Magness had to apologize to the crowd, however, telling them that she had hoped to make a grander entrance but that "Thunder is a little under the weather."

When he isn't on the charity circuit, Thunder is, of course, the Denver Broncos mascot who gallops around Mile High Stadium after every home-team score.

Rumors floated that perhaps Thunder, who has been the Broncos mascot since 1993 and is reportedly sixteen years old, was more than just a little under the weather, but neither Magness Arabian Farms, the Fort Lupton stable where Thunder lives, or Broncos spokesman Jim Saccomano returned Westword's phone calls to confirm or deny anything.

If Thunder truly is on his way to that big pasture in the sky, perhaps the Broncos would consider stuffing and displaying him at the team's new stadium in the same manner as Roy Rogers's horse Trigger, which was stuffed in 1965 and can now be seen at the Roy Rogers/Dale Evans Museum in Victorville, California (along with Evans's horse Buttermilk, Rogers's dog Bullet and another horse, Trigger Jr.). After all, the fiberglass bucking-horse statue that towers above Mile High was -- with persmission from the singing cowboy himself -- made from the same mold as a statue of his pal Trigger, which is also at the museum.

Former Seinfeld star Michael Richards, who played Kramer, is going to star in a new NBC sitcom in which he plays a bumbling detective, according to published reports. Although Entertainment Weekly magazine's question -- Will it be based in Boulder? -- was tongue-in-cheek, the pilot for the series was apparently so bad that it had to be completely revised, which leaves open the question: Why not Boulder? A typical episode could go just like Boulder police chief Mark Beckner's pathetic reaction to a press conference in which John and Patsy Ramsey announced the results of their privately taken polygraph tests.

"We did receive a fax this morning from the Ramseys' attorney at the same time the press conference was happening," was Beckner's pouty pronouncement. "We will accept any information they are willing to provide regarding the polygraph examinations, just as we're happy to receive any information from others who come forward. That's part of our job, to collect information, no matter what the source, and add it to the investigation."

The Boulder police -- masters of their domain.