It’s a scene as iconic as any ever recorded of the Great American West, the meeting of two railroad lines from the east and west at Promontory Summit, Utah, punctuated by a last golden spike that completed the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869. These days, nobody travels by railroad…
They just don’t make ’em like they used to. Well, actually, they just don’t make as many of them as they used to, but when it comes to vigilante/exploitation B-flicks, apparently, it turns out they make ’em exactly like they used to. Case in point: Hobo with a Shotgun, the…
When it comes to Astronauts, Bruce McCandless II is a straight O.G. Selected by NASA in 1966, a mere eight years after the agency was founded, he got right down to business as the CAPCOM — the astronaut NASA designates as a mission-control liaison to the astronauts in space –…
This summer, don’t forget that it is important to hold onto at least one thing you’ve got, because it does matter if it makes it or not: The 88-Drive-In Theatre needs you to stay alive. So says Joel Warner, who, in his post about the 88 Drive-In yesterday, makes an…
The no-wave movement of film-making, which used ultra-low budgets and a punk sensibility to produce films heavily steeped in mood but with generally incoherent story-lines, had a big impact: Besides being heavily influential for directors like Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch, it pretty much single-handedly launched the career of Steve…
Hal Gould has done a lot in his 91 years. And when we say “a lot,” we mean, like, a ridiculous amount. For starters, he’s an accomplished fine-art photographer in his own right; he was one of the first wave of photographers to see the medium for its artistic possibilities…
A lot of people in America don’t know much about Cinco de Mayo. One popular perception, for example, is that it’s Mexico’s Independence Day; in fact it’s not — that would be September 16 — so it’s no surprise that, when we’re celebrating Cinco de Mayo, many of us have…
Back when she was working as a music promoter in Denver, few probably would have believed that Tig Notaro — who had at that point never even performed on a stage, let alone comedy — would go on to the phenomenal amount of success she’s since achieved: Besides numerous high-profile…
The Kentucky Derby may well be the cufflink-sporting James Bond of horse races, but it’s still held in Kentucky, which means one thing: Gather the kinfolk and load up yonder jalopy, because it’s time to party like hillbillies. Preferably at the White Trash Derby Bash. “I’ve been doing it for…
Descending from the Spanish verb rodear, to “round up,” the noun “rodeo” encircles a lot of territory — and while the 22nd annual Poetry Rodeo probably won’t include any bull-riding or bucking broncos, it’s sure to rope in a diverse representation of Colorado’s poetry scene. “It’s a roundup of extraordinary…
Denver’s Cinco de Mayo celebration is one of the biggest — if not the biggest — in the country, maybe the world (but then, the holiday is not that big a deal in Mexico). That’s the claim, at least, of NEWSED, the community-development nonprofit that runs the festival in Civic…
When Superior Donuts director Bruce Sevy, associate arts director at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, first saw the play at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, he wondered if it was too particular to the Windy City to translate. It is, after all, heavily steeped in one of the…
A little over four years ago, Frank Bingham’s entire family was killed at the corner of 15th and Arapahoe streets downtown when he, his wife and two children were struck by a drunk driver while crossing the street. Only Bingham survived. At the time, Bingham was the director of the…
A couple of years back, University of Denver grads Mardana Mayginnes and Colin Michael Day set out from Denver and headed to Los Angeles to chase the dream of making it big in the film world — and now, they return to accomplish that goal with a film about that…
It’s been not much more than a month since The Book of Mormon, the sweet and dirty musical send-up of Mormonism from South Park creators and Denver locals Trey Parker and Matt Stone, opened on Broadway to the adulation of everybody — and now its dominance is official: Yesterday, Book…
This weekend, America proved once again that no matter how far you run, no matter how well you hide, or possibly don’t really bother to run or hide at all, you can’t escape the badass eagle-sword of eventual justice! Osama bin laden is dead, and to celebrate — and also…
Circuses are creepy. At least, clowns are creepy. On a philosophical level, the subtle menace of clowns is partly the result of the mask that separates them from the realm of normal society; basically, the clown is not quite human, but rather a grossly exaggerated caricature of one aspect of…
What with Free Comic Book Day coming up and all, there are plenty of events and activities this week dedicated to nerd-core man-children who never gave up the comic books they loved as children — but there’s also at least one devoted to actual children. Tomorrow night brings BASH, the…
Eating lunch at Olive Garden (and I will say only that my regrettable choice to dine at the Olive Garden was both predicated heavily on free breadsticks and not worth it) after a trip to Toys ‘R’ Us to get a remote-control helicopter and some LEGOs on Saturday, I was…
Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest chess players of all time, and he was also one of the craziest — not that he didn’t have competition on both counts. In fact, the history of chess reveals a long legacy of crazy-ass chess masters, a legacy Thorin Klosowski took a…
Admittedly, “Obama” and “Osama” are pretty similar names, so you can understand slipping up a little — the big difference, really, is that one of them normally gets “president” in front of it, while the other is followed by “bin laden.” Also, the former would probably be unlikely to declare…
It seems like just a couple of days ago we were making out the rent check for April, and next thing we know, it’s already time to pay rent again and we hardly remember anything we did in the last thirty days, mostly because we were drunk the whole time…
