In 1999, twenty young Israelis and Palestinians were invited to Japan for ten days by the Japanese Foreign Ministry as part of a joint peace mission. The group attended conferences together, ate together, sang karaoke together, even slept in the same rooms — and left embracing what they had come…
We really ought to add an amendment to the Constitution. I don’t have the phrasing down quite yet, but it’s something to the effect that you should be allowed to say what you want and write what you want, just because. You know what I mean? Maybe it could read…
WED, 2/9 A lot of visitors to Aspen are lured by the snowcapped mountains, ripe for skiing, that surround the town. Others flock to the hills to gaze upon the city’s namesake trees as they change from green to brilliant gold in a celebration of autumn’s arrival. And once a…
French aniumaFRI, 2/4 Artists have long labored to capture the sublime through sensual stimuli evoked by visual imagery. Spend a few hours before a Bierstadt landscape or a depthless Rothko color block, and you’ll start to get it. It’s a romantic notion that survives even in our technological age. The…
SAT, 2/5 Take a trip through the West — and the past — today when Mark Klett and Kyle Bajakian, two of the people responsible for Third Views, Second Sights: A Rephotographic Survey of the American West, discuss the project that resulted in their stunning book. Klett, who’s on the…
FRI, 2/4 When Josh Levy was studying music and art at the California Institute of the Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago, he noticed that his creativity and focus heightened when he worked around other people. Years later, while teaching at a summer arts school for children in New…
With 2002’s Lifted, Omaha-born phenom Conor Oberst was elevated to mythical status among rock critics, lauded as a Dylan of the plains, the finest songwriter of his age. Although the reluctant messiah has tried to avoid the “voice of a generation” title he’s been saddled with, now, more than ever,…
After Bush staffers used finger puppets and an instructional video to explain to their boss just what, exactly, a columnist does, President Bush ordered Cabinet members to stop hiring writers to promote the administration’s policies. “We will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda,” he said at a rare…
SUN, 1/30 Boulder jazz drummer and composer Chris Lee first fell for Canadian trumpeter Kenny Wheeler’s music in the 1970s, when the percussionist, only fourteen years old at the time, listened to Wheeler’s debut album, Gnu High — a fine romp with Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette –…
Amateur card sharps get their day. SAT, 1/29 In May 2003, Tennessee amateur Chris Moneymaker won $2.5 million at the championship final event of the World Series of Poker. The victory came as quite a surprise to the poker community, as the World Series was Moneymaker’s first actual casino tournament…
New Zealand metal artist Murray Swan is thinking about sculpture a lot differently these days, thanks to his partnership with a suburban Denver music teacher. Inspired by a request from Tommy Reddicks, music director at Pinnacle Charter School in Federal Heights, Swan created “Voyage of the Dream,” an enormous copper,…
What makes a mom cool? What traits have one mother coming across as a stern taskmaster while another seems fun and easygoing? Why are some moms Georgia peaches and others Kentucky dykes? Why does one mom constantly get on your case, saying, “Take out the trash, Adam, take out the…
It’s 8:30 on a cold Thursday morning, and people are lined up outside the City and County Building, jockeying for position, eager to pass through the metal detectors just inside the door and escape the bitter weather. Marisela Aceve, a small, cheerful woman dressed in a white Lotto jacket and…
TUES, 1/25 Charismatic singer Bobby McFerrin, who beatboxed his way up the charts in 1988 with the Grammy-winning “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” brings his bebopping rhythm and jazz — not to mention that signature grin — tonight to the Newman Center for the Performing Arts. McFerrin, who studied with Leonard…
SAT, 1/22 It so happened one year that I found myself in the seaside town of Swansea, Wales, two weeks before Christmas. A friend of my good friend and traveling companion lived there, and he took it upon himself to show us around. One night he led us through a…
FRI, 1/21 Colorado aesthetes, mark your PDAs: Here comes another extracurricular activity for the creative class. Tonight, the Colorado Theatre Guild introduces Theatre Night Out, a nomadic tour of area venues and productions held on the third Friday of every month. Taking a cue from the wildly successful First Friday…
It’s not often that What’s So Funny uses the word “hero.” We don’t take that word lightly around here. But every once in great while, someone comes along for whom no other label seems appropriate. Mark Upshaw is such a someone. Shoot, he and his whole ragtag crew at the…
THURS, 1/13 Ever since Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party — an installation of table settings celebrating female figures of cultural and historic importance — was first viewed by the public in 1979, it’s been an undying symbol of feminism. But while the five-year collaboration of hundreds of artisans and assistants…
WED, 1/12 There’s nothing more American than an RV. Think about it: Here’s a car that’s literally as big as a house, equipped to the nines with every sort of modern amenity you can think of, a brazen gas-guzzler ready to tear giant swaths of land apart, highway by scenic…
Were What’s So Funny to sponsor a sports stadium, it would no doubt be the greatest venue in the land, and the funniest. Seating just under 450,000 — so we could rent it out to China for organ-harvesting, if need be — the stadium would be a bastion of humor…
“This exhibit captures the power of photography,” comments Hal Gould, owner of Camera Obscura Gallery, about the gallery’s newest show, Live With History: Photography From The New York Times Photo Archives, which opens Friday, January 7. “It shows all that photography can do — how it can capture that moment,…
Perhaps you’ve seen John Madden around before. He’s pretty hard to miss, standing at crowded intersections with his bizarre hand-painted signs. Maybe you’ve noticed him at Colfax Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, broadcasting this timely message: “Clinton Raped Juanita,” a reference to a six-year-old scandal involving Juanita Broderick and Bill Clinton…
