What in the world do you get when you mix musicians and jugglers with modern and contemporary art and video games? How about if you add a record-breaking paint-by-number canvas, African drummers, Brazilian martial-arts flash dancers and a free weekend at the Denver Art Museum? Answer: You’ve got one hell…

Writing is a lonely job. Sometimes you wonder if it’s really worth it — especially when you can see your apartment’s pool from your desk. Those glistening sun-worshipers just look so goddamn refreshed and uninhibited and happy that I — er, you, that is — just have to ask yourself…

Another summer (woo-hoo!), and again, the East End Arts District is kicking up its heels with its annual Summer Art Walk. The sixteen-block area along East Colfax — between Clinton and Geneva streets — is the place to be today and tomorrow as this budding-art-district-that-could proves that Aurora is more…

Don’t laugh. Right now I’m wearing a rubber mouse nose that’s been lying around my room forever. Today it just feels…appropriate. As a means of communing with my inner Furry, this plastic appendage seems like a step in the right direction. Maybe you’re more juiced-in than I, but you’re probably…

So you’ve got a watercolor self-portrait you’re obsessed with showing people, huh? Or maybe it’s that black-and-white photo of your girlfriend’s navel, or a mosaic of Time magazine snippets forming a head shot of the commander-in-chief, or elbow macaroni pasted in the shape of a llama, or a sticky bun…

Don’t let the title throw you. The first annual Livestrong Yoga-thon is nothing crazy or contradictory, like, “I can hold my Downward Facing Dog longer than you, sucker!” “There’s nothing competitive about it,” says Kevin Joseph of Event Savant. “It’s kind of like, do whatever you want. It’s more intended…

“We kept saying we’d do Star Trek meets The Love Boat, and it’s not quite that, but it did start as a joke that we all kind of stayed with.” That’s how Buntport Theater’s Evan Weissman describes the origins of Starship Troy, Season Two: Off Duty, the biweekly live sitcom…

“The costumes kick ass!” says José Mercado, executive director of the Labyrinth Arts Academy. “I don’t think Romeo will ever look as good.” Mercado is referring to Zoot Suit Romeo and Juliet, which plays for one night only at the Buell Theatre and features Ugly Betty’s Tony Plana. It’s your…

Whenever I’m having a bad couple of days, my mom sends me a grab-life-by-the-you-know-what card. Apparently, a mother’s job doesn’t end after an ungrateful son graduates, moves halfway across the country and doesn’t call enough. Suffice it to say, we owe our moms a lot. So Celebrate Mama today starting…

After thinking long and hard, I’ve decided to quit writing. How long can I pretend I’m a “writer” before facing the truth? You’re probably all wondering what I’m going to do now. Thanks for the concern, but I’ve already decided to rob banks, which seemed to work just fine for…

According to George McGovern in a Harper’s essay titled “The Case for Liberalism,” “Virtually every step forward in our history has been a liberal initiative taken over conservative opposition.” While that should make a blue-state fellow like me smile, it actually makes me kind of sad. With the 2008 presidential…

For the past three years, eight students at the National Theatre Conservatory have studied as apprentices at the Denver Center Theatre Company. And after 35 classes, 1,095 days and countless peripheral roles in such DCTC productions as King Lear and The Pillowman, they’re finally getting an opening night of their…

Apparently, St. Patrick isn’t the guy who invented green beer. (I’m as shocked as you are.) Honestly, the beer thing is way more interesting than just driving some serpents out of Ireland. Hell, one time I chased a garden snake out of my yard with a hoe, and I don’t…

Psst. Want to hear a secret? Frame 312 wasn’t Next Stage Theatre Company’s first choice to open tonight at the Phoenix Theatre. Match, the previously slated production, hinged on cast members smoking on stage. Extinguished in the aftermath of the smoking ban, it was replaced with Frame. “We wanted to…

In Hollywood, Jessica Simpson is to blond as Chicano is to: a) lawyer, b) accountant, or c) maid. This is the kind of dominant stereotype that motivated playwright Luís Valdez to write I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges, a satire/drama about Buddy Villa and his wife, Connie,…

“It’s like the old ad says: You don’t have to be Jewish to like rye bread,” says Roberta Bloom, director of the Mellon Financial Denver Jewish Film Festival. “There are lots of films that will be loved by everyone.” In other words, don’t let your goy-ness stop you from enjoying…

What do you mean, anorexia, homosexuality and alcoholism aren’t funny?! They’re damn funny! Look, there’s the homophobic Pope, the apple-brandy-soaked Johnny Appleseed, and Ron the Ironic Anti-Semite. See them all at Right On, America, the irreverent comedy that premiered in Denver in 2000 and returns to the Avenue Theater starting…

I have enough trouble deciphering what my girlfriend thinks about something as simple as Chinese or Mexican for dinner without delving far enough into her mind to write even one sentence from her perspective. And forget kids: I have no idea what they’re thinking. My little cousins say more insightfully…

The thing that surprises me most about Denver is how there’s a rodeo for every occasion. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t it seem like cowboys are doing their respective bucking and jiving every Secretary’s Day, full moon and third Thursday of the month? It’s crazy! Are these hoedowns…

Look at any amateur photographer shooting a close-up of wet pebbles and you’ll notice that his instincts are — consciously or unconsciously — aimed at re-thinking the dimensions of everyday space and reality. Now add color enhancement, visual sculpture and any form of photographic construction, and you have more opportunities…

So you think the Denver Zoo, 2300 Steele Street, is an unusual place to celebrate Kwanzaa? According to Patrick Phelan, the zoo’s events manager, “Culture is an important part of protecting animals.” Although Kwanzaa is largely an African-American holiday, it’s derived from several African harvest, or “first fruit” celebrations, which…

Once upon a time, a friend lost everything in a fire. After that, he always said that fairy godmothers are hardest to find when you need them the most, which is why American Red Cross benefit events like Delectables for Disaster are so important. Tonight starting at 5 p.m., swoop…