The parallels are uncanny: two abstract impressionist painters who lived more or less during the same time, whose work developed along similar lines, both with strong ties to Colorado. One was Vance Kirkland, who lived and worked here most of his life, the other, Clyfford Still, who ended up with…
There is only one real rule in life: When things are free, you must take them. And so it is tonight at Starz FilmCenter with a free screening of Gosford Park, Robert Altman’s excellent 2001 murder-mystery, which, as is typical of Altman, largely ignores the murder-mystery part in favor of…
Far be it from us to make sweeping generalizations about gender and sexual preference, but when you gather Denver’s largest lesbian social group at Tracks for a First Friday party, it’s pretty much inevitable that it’s going to get weird. On Friday, it did. Intrepid photographer Kate Levy brings back…
There is a holiday for everything. Sure, there are the big ones that everybody knows — Christmas, the Fourth of July, Patriot Day — but what about those obscure days and weeks of recognition and remembrance that fly under the radar, like National Pasta History Week, which may or may…
When Dean Kamen debuted the Segway in 2002, he predicted the two-wheeled electric vehicle would be the future of transportation — and indeed, the Segway, capable of speeds of up to 12.5 miles per hour and boasting serious maneuverability and ultra-low fuel consumption, is practical. There was just one miscalculation:…
When we discovered last week that our Tony’s Market 10-percent-off coupon excluded “meat bundles,” the editor’s meeting pretty much went downhill from there — so much so that we thought, “What the hell? Why not have a contest?” So we decided to give away one meat bundle to the reader…
Normally, it takes about six beers before there’s any real danger of drunkenness-related public humiliation. But under normal circumstances, drinking, a stage, live broadcast television and a gong don’t mix. That’s why, tonight at Denver Open Media’s first-ever Gong Show, you may find your beer-count-to-public-humilation ratio decreasing dramatically — at…
It doesn’t get much more intense than it got this week on Project Runway for Mondo Guerra. He won the competition two weeks ago, he won again last week and this week, he pulled out a hat trick with yet another win — with six designers left in the running…
When we go to see horror films, we already know basically what’s going to happen: There will be teenagers feeling each other up, those teenagers will die because of their immorality, then the black guy will die because the black guy always dies, then there will be some gore, then…
When you’re local weirdo who’s spent the last decade running around in Times Square in your underpants and a cowboy hat, it’s probably hard to know where to go with your next career move. Waiting tables? Too servile. Middle management? Too bourgeois. Really, the most logical option is probably to…
Just the other day, when a friend of mine and I were arguing about Virginia Woolf, I told her that, however good it may be, you just can’t write with that kind of acrobatic Victorian ornament anymore. “You’d sound like a dingleberry,” I remarked. She disagreed — and if Stephanie…
The necessity of government secrets versus the public’s right to know: It’s a perpetual American debate that perhaps never had a more succinct case study than the story of Daniel Ellsberg, who took off with a sheaf of top-secret “Pentagon Papers” during the Vietnam War and passed them off the…
Imagine, if you will, sweaty, scantily clad men groping each other inside a cage until one is dominated: If you’re thinking “gay bondage,” then you’re only partially right, because what we’re really talking about is World Extreme Cagefighting. And if you’re into that sort of thing — not that there’s…
For her latest book, Ape House, author Sara Gruen spent a lot of time hanging out with the bonobos at the Great Ape Trust, an Iowa research facility devoted to understanding the past and future of culture, language and intelligence by studying apes. The six bonobos there communicate with humans,…
Well, this is awkward. Earlier today, Joel Warner wrote a post about the stupidity of blogs about memes, and now here we are with a stupid blog about memes. But by gum, it’s Wednesday, and Wednesday is the day we bring you the best of our weird internetz world in…
There you are, minding your own business, innocently chatting up a transvestite, when you’re confronted by a dreaded raver girl. She stares at you with her cool eyes and pastied nipples, sizing you up, coiling as if to pounce — and suddenly you black out and awake an indeterminate amount…
For Mark Zuckerberg, the creation of Facebook was a meteoric rise to the top that involved ego, cunning, a whole lot of betrayal and — as meteoric rises to the top so often do — hookers and cocaine. Like the Behind the Music of computer geekery, that’s the subject The…
In the pale light of dawn yesterday, an odd thing appeared in front of the Westword office: a sculpture, roughly four feet tall, made of wire and duct tape. Crafted to resemble an open hand, the sculpture sported an array of colors and textures, along with a couple of painstakingly…
The tip came in the form of a note, evidently a page torn from a Bible, with only a black spot drawn on it, left mysteriously in my mailbox. Well, really, somebody just told somebody else who told me — but it’s confirmed: This March, an exhibition about pirates, curated…
Like the dough-faced nerd in middle school who becomes visibly upset when you explain your theory about the homoerotic undertones of the relationship between Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, Glenn Beck is basically incapable of taking a joke. That’s why it was only a matter of time before the tandem…
There is only one real rule in life: When things are free, you must take them. And so it is with Remains of the Day, an Anthony Hopkins vehicle the Starz FilmCenter is showing tonight as part of a tie-in with the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs’ One Book, One…
When I got up Sunday morning, zipped up my skirt, slipped into my lacy stockings and sensible black pumps, did 50 one-armed pushups and ate a raw steak, I had one objective, and one objective only: to win. Sure, Running of the Gays was a jokey charity event to benefit…
