Tonight’s e-town installment features two acts who are in the heyday of their careers: Shawn Mullins and Puerto Plata. Mullins, a solo artist, started playing the drums when he was four and recording his tunes on a tape recorder when he was in the seventh grade. Perhaps one of the…
The Christmas before last, my significant other bought us a matching set of snowshoes, with visions of snowflakes and canteens filled with hot cocoa dancing in her head. A year later, we’ve resolved to actually use them. Lucky for us, Colorado is part of Winter Trails, a free national winter-sports…
If you have better plans tonight than being filmed for indie television while participating in a bicycle scavenger hunt that ends with free beer and metal, party on. As for the rest of you, show some support for the courier class by riding down to Union Station around 7 p.m…
As the first lesbian drama series, The L Word had to package itself very carefully to stay afloat in the cutthroat world of television ratings. Writer Ilene Chaiken and director Rose Troche (both bona fide lesbians) used the glamour gimmick, giving audiences a cast to drool over. Even the now-transgendered…
“Bus trips beat the shit out of a bake sale,” says Dustin Huth, founder of the Basics Fund, a non-profit organization that raises funds to provide health insurance for artists — largely by hosting a mobile gala that will take you from Boulder to just about every jam show in…
‘Tis the season for Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I am SAD. Perhaps we all are, at least a little bit. I’m not saying I start writing my will and planning my memorial service every time the sun goes away, but I do get a little blue coming home every night…
Just when you thought you had a week off from the festivities, Kwanzaa is here! Now, you might be one of those who puts this holiday in the festivus-for-the-rest-of-us category, or maybe you believe that anything founded in the 1960s just isn’t real. You might also think the founder is…
It takes rare ability to tell a children’s story that conveys the grace and significance of childhood without straying into the affectedly saccharine, oversimplified realm of cartoons and morality tales, but Albert Lamorisse managed to do it twice, both times winning the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or for the effort…
Longtime Colorado entertainer Timothy P. Irvin is a talented musician and, as one of this region’s early importers of the Appalachian string music known as bluegrass, is considered a Rockygrass pioneer. But what really sets the man apart is the fact that he can play a mean nose trumpet. If…
Although he never set out to be the sentinel of the season, Brian Setzer has long had a knack for revitalizing forgotten genres: Beginning in the early ’80s, he and the Stray Cats reached the height of the rockabilly revival; in the ’90s, he and the Brian Setzer Orchestra set…
It’s Halloween, and there was a time when hanging out in the same space as Allen Iverson would have given you the evening’s requisite fright. But these days, Iverson is as likable as ever. He has embraced this city: His kids call it home, he has plans to move the…
The Colorado Avalanche is thirsty, and only a really big cup can quench that thirst. After an all-time low end to their 2006-2007 season — they fell just short of the playoffs for the first time in their eleven years as the Avs — the boys in burgundy and white…
There are certain books that you run to acquire the day they hit the shelves. This summer, that book for me was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver and family. Having read nearly everything Kingsolver has written, I couldn’t wait to join her on an adventure after my own heart…
Have you ever looked up “nothing” on Wikipedia? It’s a six-part entry. Similarly, the enormously popular Seinfeld was a sitcom about nothing, yet ran for nine seasons. Today, Will Eno’s Pulitzer finalist, Thom Pain (based on nothing) opens at the Bug Theatre. Clearly, there is something to this nothing. The…
Fuel is pumping again at the Denver Biodiesel Cooperative after six members pooled their money in an effort to save the organization, which runs one of only two biodiesel stations in the city. And while the co-op doesn’t plan to turn a profit, it’s paying the rent. A mural even…
Summer marks its end this weekend with the autumnal equinox — when the sun lies directly above the equator and, for all practical purposes, the day is the same length as the night. After this, the days become shorter, the air gets a chill, and we begin our preparations for…
“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns,” wrote George Eliot. Although Eliot’s childhood remains veiled in mystery, I have seen the house where she was born, and there’s a cheery garden plot…
I played college rugby for Humboldt State in northern California. When this comes up in conversation, people are taken aback. I watch their expressions as they think, “She seemed so mild-mannered, but really, she’s a barbarian!” I treasure those moments. Nobody messes with an ex-rugger. And Colorado is a rugby…
World War III has not yet happened. But a war rages in the heart of Africa that’s killed as many civilians as World War II. Dubbed the African World War, it’s allowed usurpers to strip the resource-rich nation of the Democratic Republic of Congo under the auspices of battle. Even…
As the seventeenth of eighteen children from a Honduran-based Mexican mama and German papa, it’s no wonder that Carlos Mencia has race on his mind — and that he knows how to get attention. The first time I watched Mind of Mencia, hearing so many taboos in a row made…
If we used the same title for chefs as we do for poets, then Sheila Lukins would be America’s chef laureate. Without knowing it, you’ve probably sampled her menu on board a United flight (back when they fed their passengers) or in a recipe from Parade magazine, where she’s reigned…
The historic shopping districts sprinkled throughout this city are precious hubs where arts, gastronomy and community can come together on an intimate scale. They are the gems of Denver, so Old South Pearl Street is aptly named. Today, Swallow Hill Music Association joins forces with the Old South Pearl Street…
