Jef Otte

HuffPo idiot: Colorado is fifth most overrated travel destination, Denver is "weirdly bland"

At Westword, we're all about hometown/home-state pride -- hence, posts such as "50 reasons we're glad we live in Denver and not the United States" and "Happy Colorado Day: Here are 50 reasons you should be glad you live here." So you can imagine our befuddlement over a Huffington Post article calli ... More >>

Reader: Can't we do better in 21st-century America?

Reader: Blockbuster is a completely different animal today

Blockbuster has joined forces with Dish, and with that move Colorado gains a new corporate headquarters: This week Governor John Hickenlooper cut the blue ribbon to Blockbuster's shining new offices in Douglas County. In her piece reporting on the Blockbuster ceremony, Natalie Gonzales linked to an ... More >>

Happy Colorado Day: Here are 50 reasons you should be glad you live here

It's been a tough summer for Colorado -- the toughest in memory. But on this August 1, Colorado Day, there are still many, many reasons to celebrate life in the Centennial State. And Missy Franklin's gold medal is just the most recent. The oldest? Just take a look to the west. Can't think of any? W ... More >>

Reader: Attachment parenting creates crybabies

Time magazine started the whole thing, with a cover that featured a toddler smirking like a teenager while latched onto his mother's breast. The cover story, on attachment parenting, inspired a response from both Westword writer Jef Otte, who thinks attachment parenting sucks, and local comic Andrew ... More >>

Reader: This younger generation should not be permitted to have a child!

.Creeped out by last week's TIME cover story about attachment parenting, Jef Otte penned an essay for the Village Voice about how much attachment parenting sucks and posted it to his wall. As it happened, local comic and 2012 Westword MasterMind Andrew Orvedahl had penned his own essay on how much n ... More >>

Babies are assholes? Jef Otte and Anderw Overdahl debate attachment parenting

As we noted in a recent post about a new Metro State policy, breastfeeding is suddenly a hot topic thanks to a Time magazine story about attachment parenting featuring a hot mama with a toddler craning up to dock with her nipple. This prompted our own Jef Otte to rip attachment parenting in a Villag ... More >>

Reader: Urban-camping ban would put profits before people

Photos: Weird fun with Westword boxes

What is it about Westword news boxes that make people want to do strange things to and with them? Dunno -- but in the last year or so, several readers have shared wacky photos of them staging their own version of Boxing Day. Here's the first one, taken outside Bushwacker's Saloon last summer and pu ... More >>

Urban camping: A timeline of how the ban began -- and where it's headed

Although there have been rumblings about it for months, Denver's proposed urban camping ordinance has only been circulated in draft form for the past few weeks. In this week's feature, "For the homeless, 'urban camping' is no picnic," Jef Otte took a look at its direct implications by spending a nig ... More >>

Reader: Breaking Away deserves to be on the best bike scene list

We're on a roll! In honor of the upcoming Bicycle Film Festival, yesterday Jef Otte and Kelsey Whipple got the wheels turning with their list of the twenty best bicycle scenes in cinema, ever. "Bike porn, sweet," says bpsycle. But there was one sour note.

Reader: David Lynch films are a life-changing experience

Tonight the Mayan is screening Wild at Heart, part of a series of David Lynch films it's featuring in April. That program inspired Jef Otte's list of David Lynch's ten weirdest scenes.

Video: With Whitney Houston, the only difference was that everyone knew her name

The only difference between Whitney Houston and the guy who pissed himself in his cot and died last night in the Salvation Army shelter is that nobody knew that guy's name," says Jef Otte in this week's video sidebar to his "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" weekly column, After Whitney died, pundits ... More >>

Video: To Johnny Cash, we destroyed a 1979 Volvo in rural New Mexico

This week's video sidebar to Jef Otte's "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" column -- "Johnny Cash's covers album has the gravity that Paul McCartney's doesn't" -- talks about country music and destroying a 1979 Volvo 240 in rural New Mexico with the "Murder" cassette from Johnny Cash's Love, God, Mur ... More >>

Video: Why Nickelback is poised to take Creed down a peg

Today marks the debut of a new weekly video rant from our resident loudmouthed rabble-rouser Jef Otte, who does his level best each week to break your heart. In the video-version of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, monsieur Otte attempts to make a compelling case for why Nickelback is poised to knoc ... More >>

Reader: "Big money draws thieves as much as a cow patty draws flies"

Reader: I came, I saw, Ikea -- art is in the eye of the beholder

Last week, Susan Froyd offered the "Fifteen best Denver ART moments in 2011" -- a compendium of seriously praiseworthy events over the past year that elicited precisely one comment. Meanwhile, the comments keep coming in for Jef Otte's "Ten best moments in Denver arts: 2011."

Readers praise food writers Lori Midson and Laura Shunk

Reader: Does the opening of Ikea constitute culture? Do pigeons fly?

Does this look like culture to you?​Yes, it's getting deep around here -- and we're not just talking about the snow. If you've missed the discussion of Jef Otte's "The ten best moments in Denver arts: 2011," it's just the thing to heat you up on this cold winter day. Among the weighty issues t ... More >>

Fifteen best Denver ART moments in 2011

Bicycle vs. Homing Pigeon vs. Moped from Village Voice Media on Vimeo.We've been rolling off lists this week like there's no tomorrow, and maybe there isn't, considering that pesky 2012 Mayan prophecy and all that. Earlier this week, Jef Otte presented his 10 best moments in Denver arts list, riffin ... More >>

Reader: Is the Grinch the 1 percent stealing Christmas from Occupy Denver?

​In "Occupy Christmas: What protesters could learn from the true meaning of the holidays," Jef Otte explained how the Grinch was about to steal Christmas from the 99 percent -- unless they had secured a nice temporary job in some retail establishment, so that they could give nice presents to t ... More >>

Reader: Newlon Elementary is green, and growing

Jef Otte wrote "O, Barnum! An ode to Denver's least desirable neighborhood" as a celebration of his own neighborhood -- one that counts several other Westword writers as residents. Some of their neighbors appreciated Otte's ode; others did not. Denver School Board member Andrea Merida is just the l ... More >>

Jef Otte's ode to Barnum has the stupidest line ever by a professional journalist

​Residents of Barnum love their neighborhood, and several added their own reasons why to Jef Otte's "O, Barnum! An ode to Denver's least desirable neighborhood." Otte loves the activity, the weird stores around Federal Boulevard, even the fact that although the area's named for P.T. Barnum, t ... More >>

Kitezh's CD release show tonight at the hi-dive will be Grant Israel's last with the band

Jef Otte​Grant Israel and Cole Rudy have been playing together for a long time -- over eight years, in fact -- and the intricate guitar interplay they've developed together over the years was a focal point of this week's feature on Kitezh, their most recent project together, which releases its ... More >>

Reader: The zombie craze is far from dead

​Are zombies done? Yes, we know it's not that easy to get rid of the undead...but the commercialization of the undead? That's something else entirely. Yesterday, thinking longingly of the days when slutty nurse costumes ruled, Jef Otte declared enough with the zombies already -- and offered up ... More >>

Reader: May all of these Christian leaders fall into Avichi (look it up)

​This is it. Today is the end of the world, according to Harold Camping, the biblical prognosticator who was born in Boulder more than ninety years ago. But with age does not necessarily come wisdom: He did miss with his prediction of the Rapture -- which he'd said would hit on May 21. So perh ... More >>

Reader: Harold Camping is pushing his luck with Doomsday predictions

​If the Rapture came this past May 21 -- as Harold Camping had predicted -- no one noticed. But not to worry: Camping, who was born in Boulder more than nine decades ago and went on to found a biblical empire, now says that the real date to focus on is October 21, when the world will definitel ... More >>

Harold Camping missed the Rapture, but could he get a hit with Doomsday?

​The world will end on Friday, according to Harold Camping, the biblical clock-watcher who was born in the apocalyptic town of Boulder more than nine decades ago. Of course, Camping has been wrong before: He'd predicted that the Rapture would hit on May 21, 2011 -- and if it did, no one notice ... More >>

Reader: What kind of loser would get ugly about pugs?

Opal, one of the maligned Pugs in the Park.​It was a dog day when Jef Otte wrote his assessment of Pugs in the Park, a wrinkly, drooly display that he termed "disgusting" -- but all in good fun, like the event itself.

Reader: Sounds like teen spirit

File under: Couldn't have said it better ourselves. Inspired by a New York professor's recent head-slapping conclusion that 92 percent of the songs that made it to the Billboard Top 10 in 2009 contained some form of "reproductive" messages, Jef Otte wrote up the 10 Best Reproductive Messages in Song ... More >>

A Gay Old Time

The hipster's guide to sports: an info-graphic

​If religion is the opiate of the masses, as Karl Marx once observed, then sports are, like, the meth of the masses... or something. Whatever. The point is that mainstream sports -- or "borts," as we like to call them ("boring" "sports") -- like football and baseball are for plebeian doucheb ... More >>

IKEA Centennial = hell ten days after grand opening (PHOTOS)

​I avoided attending IKEA Centennial's July 27 grand opening due to the crowds. But my twin daughters wanted to visit the store on Saturday afternoon to pick up items for the CU dorm room they're going to share, and given that ten days had passed, I figured things would have calmed down. I fig ... More >>

Letters: Readers question Charles Farrar's sentence, but a judge won't reconsider it

Letters: "If Robert Walters did these things to American women here, I can't imagine what he did in the war"

IKEA Centennial grand opening: Here's a look at stuff it was too crowded to see (PHOTOS)

Big pics below.​It was a packed house at yesterday's IKEA Centennial grand opening. Even Governor John Hickenlooper showed up -- and with so many bodies in the way, many people likely found themselves with a better view of more people than the actual items on display. Luckily, our Jef Otte att ... More >>

Closing the book on the next One Book, One Denver

​Today is the deadline to vote for the next pick in the One Book, One Denver program. Your options: Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, The Art of Racing in the Rain, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Jef Otte wasn't thrilled by the choices, following in a long tradition of Westw ... More >>

Comment of the day: "Turn Signals are Sexy"

​Officially, June is bike month. Unofficially, however, it's bike-anguish month as Denver's daring, and occasionally dastardly, cyclists mount up and move out -- into traffic. But the relationship between cyclists and motorists can be amicable. No, really, it can -- if both groups of travelers ... More >>

Cirque du Soleil's Michael Jackson show: Finally, something scarier than Circus Circus

Your guide to Starfest this weekend: Ten events not to miss

​StarFest is kicking off this weekend, and packed into the three day event are five different festivals, hundreds of activities and enough dork-power to raise Firefly from the ashes. You can pick up a full schedule here, but if it's a bit overwhelming, we've broken it down to ten events you wo ... More >>

Sh*tty connection between Durango feces spitter Paul Kausalik and MTV bad boy Abram Boise

Big pics below.​It's as if the planets suddenly came into alignment -- but in a truly disgusting way. Yes, friends, we bring you two, count 'em, two thoroughly repulsive stories with Colorado connections involving jails and shit. Paul Kausalik and Abram Boise, come on down!

Letters: Upcoming state GOP meeting will be for martyrs only

The ten most glorious and iconic mustaches of all time

All hail. ​Since it's a well known scientific fact that the mustache is the best and most manly form of facial hair, let's start with a definition: A mustache consists of hair grown in some form above the mouth -- but not below it; i.e., if you have hair on your chin, you do not have a mustach ... More >>

Westword Music Showcase 2010: Backbeat scribes' travelogue

​ Here's our massive, multi-page report/travelogue of the Westword Music Showcase from (in order) Tom Murphy, Cory Casciato, A.H. Goldstein, Jef Otte, Jon Solomon and Brain Frederick. Let us know in the comments what you saw and loved, saw and hated, or missed and hated yourself for missing. ... More >>

The Fray to release a covers album

​ It's been about a year and half since the Fray's last release, the self-titled follow-up to its double platinum debut, How to Save a Life. In between touring and writing songs for its next album, Denver's favorite power-ballad purveyors have been working on a cover album. We caught up with D ... More >>

Hot Congress and Long Spoon's party rocked our block off as expected

Jef OtteMaria Kohler as Mercuria​ Hot Congress / Long Spoon Block Party 06.05.10 | Meadowlark • Larimer Lounge The upside to a big, multiple-venue show like the Hot Congress/Long Spoon Block Party this past Saturday is that there's always something awesome to see. The downside: There's alw ... More >>

The Chain Gang of 1974, Jónsi, Wire Faces and more top our weekly playlists

​As people who think about, talk about, listen to and make music, the most common question we encounter is, "What are you listening to right now?" So whether you're looking for recommendations, trying to get a feel for our individual sensibilities, or are just curious, we've compiled a list of ... More >>

Heavy Rotation, our top spins for the week of January 4, 2010

​As music critics -- and people who generally think about, talk about, listen to and make music -- the most common question we get asked (and ask each other, for that matter) is, "What are you listening to right now?" The pervasiveness of this query is precisely what inspired Heavy Rotation. F ... More >>

Moovers and Shakers rounds up our favorite local releases of the year

Heavy Rotation, our top spins for the week of October 19, 2009

​As music critics, the most common question we get asked (and ask each other, for that matter) is, "What are you listening to?" The pervasiveness of this query is precisely what inspired Heavy Rotation, our latest feature. For the benefit of those who happen to be curious, we've compiled a list of ... More >>