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Best performance by a Coloradan in a national magazine

Jessica Biel

Desperate to dump the goody-two-shoes image she'd earned as one of the stars of 7th Heaven, seventeen-year-old Jessica Biel, a healthy (very) Boulder girl, took off both those shoes -- and everything else, and posed for a raunchy cover and nude spread in Gear. The pictorial earned the mag a $100 million lawsuit from Aaron Spelling, producer of Biel's TV series, which prompted this response from publisher Bob Guccione Jr.: "As for his assertions that Gear is sleazy, it's like the pot calling the kettle black. We are an entertainment magazine with serious journalism. But I must have missed the serious cultural references in Melrose Place and 90210."

Best print reporter vs. print reporter feud, first place

Mike Klis vs. Tracy Ringolsby

Mike Klis and Tracy Ringolsby, baseball writers for the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, respectively, have been on the outs since last summer, when Ringolsby knocked a Klis article about the impending departure of Rockies general manager Bob Gebhard not once, but twice during appearances on 950-AM/The Fan. But the situation boiled over in late May, when Ringolsby told Klis, who was engaged in a heated conversation with the News's Clay Latimer in the Coors Field press box, to "get the fuck out of here." Klis responded by jumping on Ringolsby from behind and punching him in the head. No charges were filed, but relations between the two remain as icy as a snowcone in Antarctica. Brrrrr.

Best print reporter vs. print reporter feud, first place

Mike Klis vs. Tracy Ringolsby

Mike Klis and Tracy Ringolsby, baseball writers for the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, respectively, have been on the outs since last summer, when Ringolsby knocked a Klis article about the impending departure of Rockies general manager Bob Gebhard not once, but twice during appearances on 950-AM/The Fan. But the situation boiled over in late May, when Ringolsby told Klis, who was engaged in a heated conversation with the News's Clay Latimer in the Coors Field press box, to "get the fuck out of here." Klis responded by jumping on Ringolsby from behind and punching him in the head. No charges were filed, but relations between the two remain as icy as a snowcone in Antarctica. Brrrrr.

Best print reporter vs. print reporter feud, second place

Lynn Bartels vs. Mark Obmascik

After the media mag Brill's Content published a puffy piece about how the News covered Columbine, the Post's Mark Obmascik fired off a letter noting numerous gaffes made by the News along the way. A month later, the News's Lynn Bartels, along with colleague Kevin Vaughan, shot back in the same publication and subsequently suggested that Obmascik's own Columbine writing was riddled with errors. Hope those Pulitzer Prizes calmed everyone down.

Best print reporter vs. print reporter feud, second place

Lynn Bartels vs. Mark Obmascik

After the media mag Brill's Content published a puffy piece about how the News covered Columbine, the Post's Mark Obmascik fired off a letter noting numerous gaffes made by the News along the way. A month later, the News's Lynn Bartels, along with colleague Kevin Vaughan, shot back in the same publication and subsequently suggested that Obmascik's own Columbine writing was riddled with errors. Hope those Pulitzer Prizes calmed everyone down.
He probably won't appreciate the wording of this accolade. He prefers the designation "city reporter" to "gossip columnist" -- and his regular offerings are indeed skimpier on dishiness than those of his colleagues and competitors. But in his good-spirited way, Dick Kreck does a better job than anyone else of demonstrating why Denver is an interesting, historical and fun place to live and play.
He probably won't appreciate the wording of this accolade. He prefers the designation "city reporter" to "gossip columnist" -- and his regular offerings are indeed skimpier on dishiness than those of his colleagues and competitors. But in his good-spirited way, Dick Kreck does a better job than anyone else of demonstrating why Denver is an interesting, historical and fun place to live and play.
It's still kind of small -- distribution is about 10,000 copies around the city -- but this Denver-based magazine chronicling the area's many professional African-Americans is developing quite a following, and plans are afoot to distribute it across the country, in the U.K., and as far away as Africa. Covering topics as diverse as the resurgence of actress Pam Grier, the business of black history and the best black investors, In the Black gives a measure of hope that Denver is becoming as diverse a city as its boosters and politicians claim.
It's still kind of small -- distribution is about 10,000 copies around the city -- but this Denver-based magazine chronicling the area's many professional African-Americans is developing quite a following, and plans are afoot to distribute it across the country, in the U.K., and as far away as Africa. Covering topics as diverse as the resurgence of actress Pam Grier, the business of black history and the best black investors, In the Black gives a measure of hope that Denver is becoming as diverse a city as its boosters and politicians claim.

Best collaborative underground comic strip

"Hector"

"Hector" is surreptitious and confused and underappreciated, and, therefore, everything great art ought to be. The cooperatively drawn comic strip is the pet project of Tom Motley; the collective (also called Hector) shifts shape regularly, losing some participants and gaining new ones, inviting guests and kicking out the old ones, but, hey -- that's what keeps it fresh in the first place. "Hector" strips have appeared in a wide variety of magazines, including Brazilian and Belgian zines, in Steve Rasnic Tem's High Fantastic Colorado sci-fi/fantasy/horror anthology, and in local indie publications The Hooligan and The New Censorship. The group even had its own two-week show at the ILK gallery. One thing's for certain: All Hector members and guests have wonderfully twisted perspectives on life, which, when intertwined, provide the most unbeatably perverse underground humor and general weirdness this side of a page of S. Clay Wilson ink from 1969. That's scary. But it's the good kind of scary.

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