As I sit down to write, I pop open a glistening blue-and-silver can of Red Bull and sip in the sweet, sweet nectar. It’s delicious, like liquid Smarties, only crackier. As the magic elixir forces energy down my esophagus and settles warmly into my belly, I’m overcome by nostalgia –…

There are dry spells: a week, maybe two, when no cases of energy drinks arrive at his door. But Dan Mayer doesn’t sweat it. He knows that another energy-drink manufacturer will soon get in touch with him, ask for his address in Uptown, and then send a crate of its…

It’s hard to find the time to hallucinate these days. Used to be, my only real priority was ingesting some sort of mind-altering substance and hallucinating — if only to discourse at length with Huckleberry Finn. “Huck, listen, dog, there’s no way I’m painting this fence,” I would say to…

The greatest thing about the place was the phones. They weren’t cordless or modern, but a retro red-plastic take on the classic American telephone, affixed right there to the wall in your booth. There weren’t any salty waitresses to deal with, no debating whether to tip 12 or 12.5 percent…

A friend recently called me on a Wednesday evening and asked if I wanted to play Capture the Flag. His request was so flummoxing that I was forced to retreat to my regular domicile for such discomfiture: a bunker constructed almost entirely of panic, save for the support beams, which…

At this point, I’ve got the weapons, I’ve got the rations, and I’ve got the brood of buxom sister-wives knitting away at various undisclosed locations on the eastern plains, just waiting for my call. Pretty much all I’m waiting on right now is for that shiftless sack agent from Re/Max…

When Bold landed at Denver International Airport six years ago, he felt as if he’d gotten off not a plane, but a time machine. Born into a relatively well-to-do Mongolian family — his father ran the country’s largest cement factory, and his mother worked in a hospital — Bold had…

In the journalism racket, there’s an age-old phenomenon known as a “tip.” Someone out there in readerland calls or e-mails, “tipping” us off to an allegedly hot story. “Hey, What’s So Funny,” one of these “tips” might begin. “My brother Karl can swallow sixteen used AAA batteries in under a…

Teachers are fast becoming the postal workers of the modern era. There was a time back before the Commies ruined everything, back when June Cleaver made dinner and sucked Ward off and liked it, when being a mailman was as noble a trade as a young boy could aspire to…

In sports, there’s a well-known phenomenon referred to as “the curse of Dr. Z.” Every year, Dr. Z, Sports Illustrated’s renowned football analyst, predicts which team is going to win the Super Bowl, and that team is then featured on the cover of the magazine. And every year, without fail,…

In today’s America, the vast rift between the upper and lower classes grows by the second. The gap reminds me of the tale about Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigning by rail through West Virginia. Roosevelt had recently taken the nation off the gold standard and was promoting the move as he…

I’m an ornithologist. No, that doesn’t mean I sleep with orthodontists. Well, once, but that was only to get my braces off six months early. It means I like birds. Not in that way. Well, once, but that was only to get my braces off six months early. Damned kinky…

Final Testament Richard Velarde, the 29-year-old father of two left paralyzed after a shooting on Market Street last Thanksgiving, was released from Craig Hospital in late January, several weeks earlier than expected. He’d worked hard in rehab and was eager to get on with his life and find a new…

I’m not going to lie to you: I love The Real World. Always have. I loved The Real World when it first blazed onto the airwaves as a semi-noble experiment in documentary television, with an eclectic, not necessarily beautiful cast of people in New York City, all as clueless as…

New York City is an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord. The shops, the bars, the shows, the sights — it’s all laid out for you, much like the spread at a Country Buffet. And when you first walk into that Country Buffet, stomach empty, tastebuds curious, this chaotic orgy of options looks like…

Late in March, the honorable Sir Michael of Bennet, Superintendent of Denver Public Schools, met with a ragtag group of young civic boosters known as Leadership Denver’s Class of 2006, with one goal in mind: winning the state leadership softball classic. Every year at about this time, all the bizarre…

To the lone, white-faced Polack proudly waving a red-and-white Polish flag at Monday’s immigration rally at the Capitol: You were noticed. In fact, it was hard not to notice your creepily intense expression as you swayed to a tune only you could hear, back and forth, back and forth, sticking…

Of the many types of vandals in the world — the blackout-drunk-smashy-smashy vandal, the politico-Gandhi-graffiti-be-the-change-you-want-to-see-in-the-world vandal, the pump-don’t-work-’cause-the-vandals-took-the-handles vandal — perhaps the oddest is the street-sign-interior-design vandal. While most people eye an octagonal red sign at an intersection as a helpful warning to come to a stop and possibly avoid…

Looking like something out of a light-beer commercial, the two white thirty-something men spend their lunch break getting in some practice swings before their fast-pitch softball league starts up for the season. After smacking standard yellow, dimpled batting-cage balls all over the place, one decides to up the ante. “Hey,…

“And another thing,” La Liga Latina de Béisbol president Jose Acosta tells the sixty or so team representatives assembled in a small room at the Bladium on a Saturday evening in early April. “If anyone sees or knows Rolando Castillo, tell him that he is suspended for eight games.” Last…

Like me, most of my friends are the first Colorado natives in their families. Our parents are all transplants, attracted to Denver from every imaginable corner of the United States, drawn by the sense of opportunity, the allure of the West, the fact that you can get drunk quicker at…