“You can tell right away our flick ain’t for everyone,” begins a letter by filmmaker Penn Jillette on the website for The Aristocrats, a documentary he helped make. “Our movie uses that four-letter word that begins with “C.’ Our movie uses that word a lot.You know the word; it’s the…
Funny comes in many shapes and sizes. There’s the surly dwarf with the lisp and the meth addiction, for example; he’s just a little guy, but damned if he isn’t funny. The 7-foot-2 basketball player from Africa sobbing into the phone to his mother back home because he’s having trouble…
Kids today have it so easy. Back when I was learning to drive, we didn’t have things like the “BMW All New Series 3 Ultimate Driving Experience Student Driver Program.” No, sir, back then you learned how to drive however you could — even if it meant twenty minutes, no…
FRI, 8/5 Most people in this country don’t equate Canada with the word “exotic.” But risqué Canadian dance troupe Fluffgirl Burlesque hopes to turn up the heat on any chilly notions of our friends to the north. Fluffgirl founder and performer Cecilia Bravo started producing sold-out burlesque shows in her…
Thursdays at Hemingway’s, as any profiler of the opposite sex can tell you, usually go off. Show up there around ten, and the waft of desperation hits you like a Wiffle bat to the face. DU girls in their skimpiest textiles bump uglies with goony idiots, their fat necks obscured…
Although a riveting “Rose Is Rose” storyline — in which Pascuale’s guardian angel follows the family on a road trip — has kept What’s So Funny’s attention focused squarely on the funny pages lately, we did get wind of a recent Tom Tancredo slip-up. Piecing together overheard snippets of RTD…
Donovan Busta may just be the man who finally dethrones Sonya Thomas. The 37-year-old, 105-pound Thomas, the number-two-ranked competitive eater in the world, managed to eat 161 chicken wings — 5.09 pounds — in twelve minutes at last year’s National Buffalo Chicken Wing Festival. But Donovan, ranked number 27, is…
THURS, 7/21 The urban landscape is inundated with hard-strapped creative kids whose dreams might just be a little harder to reach were it not for ArtLab, a branch of Denver’s Arts Street economic-development program that offers paid training opportunities to at-risk youth artists at the collaborating PlatteForum Gallery. It seems…
“Hey, man, do you need some weed?” a young Hispanic man with a black eye asked What’s So Funny as we strolled gingerly through Civic Center Park, not skipping, but not not skipping, on a smoldering-hot Tuesday morning. “No thanks, man,” we responded. “But do you have any suggestions on…
Since the beginning of modern time, Denver has played catch-up with other cities. At some point, “cow town” became an unacceptable tag. This was before “fish city” was even a seedling of a thought in the minds of the visionaries, and long before Landry’s Restaurant Inc. reopened the shuttered Colorado’s…
It would appear that Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has led America astray. While the Fab Five would have you believe that the modern homosexual landscape is dotted with theater-going sophisticates, martini-sipping literati and devastatingly dressed couples with annual memberships at the Met — in short, people of culture…
MON, 7/11 “My wife a Yeti so she kind of afraid of fire,” Bigfoot grunts as the opener to one of his jokes. “She such a bad cook, we pray after meals.” Pause. “Only thing passed around our table is gas,” he concludes. The Borscht Belt stylings may seem a…
WED, 7/13 “I was at a comedy club in the Midwest once where three black comics got put on back-to-back just as a fluke,” remembers Denver-based comedian Louis Johnson. “Myself, Tommy Davidson and Percy Crews, and we killed it; it was the funniest thing. The next day the front office…
In fifth grade I submitted a poem to my school’s literary journal that, to borrow a phrase from Muhammad Ali, shook up the world. People were stunned. No one could believe that an eleven-year-old had penned such a moving poem, one that resonated with such earth-shattering profundity. My English teacher…
THURS, 6/30 There’s more to art than meets the eye. The new exhibit Beyond Visual, created by the kid-oriented Downtown Aurora Visual Arts, expands the sensory scope of artistic expression — and makes a big stink in the process. “They smell like mint, orange, strawberry, blackberry and cinnamon,” says DAVA…
In college I had a pothead friend prone to making grandiose statements. Nothing was ever merely okay with this guy; every experience was either the best or the worst of his life. That grilled-cheese sandwich we’d just eaten in the cafeteria? The worst in the history of the New England…
“You’re not going to drive us into the desert and kill us, are you?” the man asks, sliding open the door of the brown minivan piloted by the Jester. This is a fairly common concern — not always expressed with the exact wording, but with the same sentiment behind it,…
SAT, 6/25 How exactly do you outfit a dog in drag? Do you dress him up like a cat? Do you put Fifi in a muscle tee, squeeze Buster the boxer into a tutu? Anything goes, say organizers of the Dogs in Drag competition at this year’s PrideFest. So feel…
Well, it’s officially summer in Colorado. Strolling through the neighborhood, listening to the somewhere between endearing and shoot-me-in-the-face-with-a-shotgun-now chime of the ice-cream truck, you can’t help but be overwhelmed by the smorgasbord of summer smells: the fresh-mowed lawns, the backyard barbecues, the recently singed cat hair as that seasonal string…
THURS, 6/16 I am not a Sporty Spice. I don’t voluntarily play, attend or view any sporting event unless coerced by friends or a date, and not without the promise of a generous supply of alcohol. When I hear the word “golf,” my first thought is usually of windmills and…
There are far too few times in life when we’re able to recognize the significance of a moment while actually experiencing it. For the most part, we’re too consumed by the moment itself to give it any real reflection. Our synapses can’t bear that heavy lifting: Between simultaneously taking in…
WED, 6/15 In one of his bits, comedian Tony Rock discusses the need for a black president. Not a Colin Powell-type black president, Rock explains, but somebody with an edge, somebody just out of prison. “We need a president named Keef,” Rock concludes. “K-E-E-F. President Keef’s entourage would include the…
