The Name Game

Late word from Greg Goldfogel over at Ristorante Amore in Cherry Creek, who took possession of the former Sambuca address at 1320 15th Street (shown above) after New Year’s Eve. Goldfogel had already started a massive turn-around of the space (redoing the bar, tearing up floors, re-covering or replacing most…

The Name Game

Late word from Greg Goldfogel over at Ristorante Amore in Cherry Creek, who took possession of the former Sambuca address at 1320 15th Street (shown above) after New Year’s Eve. Goldfogel had already started a massive turn-around of the space (redoing the bar, tearing up floors, re-covering or replacing most…

The Shrining

A few hours after news broke that Darrent Williams had been shot dead, people started leaving tributes to the Bronco at the scene of the shooting — hats, signs, cards, flowers. Keith Schrum, associate curator of manuscripts at the Colorado Historical Society, decided to take a look at the unofficial…

Talkin’ Trash

At seven last Friday morning, as I shoveled my walk — again — I watched a city trash truck coming down a nearby street, pause so that the driver could contemplate the right-hand turn that would have led to my rutted, iced-in block — and then continue on in the…

Va Va Room With a View

I have realized the greatest dream of every attention-starved American. I was on reality TV. It wasn’t MTV’s booze-fueled LoDo soap opera, but rather the home-improvement show that refuses to die: TLC’s Trading Spaces. That’s how Westword contributor Michelle Baldwin starts her account of being a Trading Spaces star –…

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Vonnegut Thursday is the new Friday. You got the memo, right? That said, here’s some kick ass shows worth checking out tonight… Vonnegut, Epilogues, (die) Pilot and All Capitals comprise a kickass local bill at the Bluebird, while former Against Tomorrow Sky guitarist/vocalist Mike Stephens’ new band Sedalia shares the…

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Vonnegut Thursday is the new Friday. You got the memo, right? That said, here’s some kick ass shows worth checking out tonight… Vonnegut, Epilogues, (die) Pilot and All Capitals comprise a kickass local bill at the Bluebird, while former Against Tomorrow Sky guitarist/vocalist Mike Stephens’ new band Sedalia shares the…

Waxing Rhapsodic

I’m listening to Billy Joel right now, and it’s all Chuck Klosterman’s fault. That prick. Prompted by a passage that I read earlier this morning in one of his books, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, I’m sorting through several of Joel’s deep cuts, among them a…

Waxing Rhapsodic

I’m listening to Billy Joel right now, and it’s all Chuck Klosterman’s fault. That prick. Prompted by a passage that I read earlier this morning in one of his books, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, I’m sorting through several of Joel’s deep cuts, among them a…

Double Header

A short side note before we get into Episodes 8 and 9. Talking to my brother, who was in from out of town, I realized that he knew the guy who was dogging Davis for wearing eyeliner in Episode Four — he’s my brother’s best friend’s little brother (got that?)…

Give Her a Hand

Spotted at Moontime: Bartender Gillian Gertridge’s new tattoo, done by Ben “Chase” at Th’ink Tank, in honor of her new home. (The area code of her hometown in Massachusetts is on the inside of her other wrist.) The sight inspired this haiku: Location at hand 508 left, mile high now…

More Messages: Have an Al Jazeera Christmas

Among the items that awaited me in the e-mail directory I largely neglected during two weeks of vacation was a note from the press office of Al Jazeera English, the latest spinoff from the controversial Al Jazeera network. The copy within the e-mail avoided association with any specific faith. It…

Ditching the Deal in Lakewood

The mayor was all for it. The city council blessed it twice with unanimous approval. The developer was on board, and so was a group of local residents who stood to benefit from the deal. But somebody forgot to ask the citizens of Lakewood whether they wanted to swap 22…

A Legendary Outing

Despite Link’s green tunic and Peter Pan hat, he remains Nintendo’s most respected badass. In the long-awaited Twilight Princess for the Wii, the elf hero begins yet another quest to save the world with his trademark bombs and boomerangs. Minor déjà vu aside, Twilight Princess becomes nothing short of an…

Weird and Wonderful

Robert Wilonsky and Jordan Harper recap their top DVDs of 2006: Eraserhead (Absurda/Subversive) — Finally available on DVD, David Lynch’s debut film is as captivating and frustrating as it ever was. The print looks great in its own weird way, and the feature-length doc shows Lynch speaking more clearly about…

Sketches

Breaking the Mold. In 2003, Connecticut collector Virginia Vogel Mattern donated some 300 pieces of contemporary American Indian art to the Denver Art Museum. For one of the special shows inaugurating the new Hamilton Building, Native Arts curator Nancy Blomberg has selected over a hundred works for the impressive Breaking…

Now Playing

The Big Bang. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to think too much, to just settle back and watch a couple of frenetically energetic guys working really hard to earn your good will — and your entertainment dollars. Oh, and to make you laugh. The Big Bang posits the following…

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

A multimillion-euro adaptation of a best-selling German novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, relates the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), born in eighteenth-century Paris with a uniquely puissant sense of smell. He begins life as an orphan, sold into servitude to a brutal tanner, but in Toucan Sam…

Off the Black

Movie actors of Nick Noltes clout (and gender) get to decide right down to the last wrinkle and half-ounce of muscle or flab how they want to age on screen. Nolte, weary and grizzled even in his youth, seems to have been prepping for his twilight days since 1976, when…

Little Children

Little Children, a second excursion into middle-class unease by Todd Field after his intelligent but overrated In the Bedroom, opens with a slow pan around a living room whose shelves are crowded with cheap china figurines of… little children. Twisted into insidious grins, their blood-red lips ooze a comic horror…

Notes on a Scandal

N on a Scandal, brilliantly adapted by Patrick Marber from the darkly comic Zo Heller novel, is a grim piece of work — Fatal Attraction for the art-house crowd. Set in a dreary London where a gray funk of fog and cigarette smoke hangs over everyone’s head, Notes fits perfectly…

Pho 79

I love some restaurants (like Pho Saigon, reviewed on page 39) because of the way time stops just inside the front door. I love other restaurants for the way they predict the future. And then there are places like Pho 79, which are all about the moment, this meal. Pho…