Officially, Aspen sits in Colorado’s Pitkin County, but in reality it sits in a little reality of its own creation, where modest homes go for pornographically immodest prices, where celebrities live but tend not to be seen, where money flows like melting snow, but definitely doesn’t tend to trickle down to the person waiting on your table or pouring your beer. Aspen does not fit into Colorado, not really. Colorado fits around Aspen. Colorado is Aspen’s venue. Aspen is, always, the star.But as we know, stars can be bitchy. What makes the good folks of Aspen grumble? Well, for starters, the universal truth that money can’t buy happiness. But aside from that? These eight.

There’s an old Chinese curse (or so it’s said) that goes like this: “May you live in interesting times.” The saying is apocryphal, of course, and, like chop suey and fortune cookies, may not be authentically Asian in origin. But the point stands: 2016 was too damn interesting for words. Traditionally, we make resolutions for the betterment of ourselves and our lives in the coming year: lose weight, stop smoking, eat more vegetables, make America great again, stop the rise of authoritarianism, whatever. This year, there are things that we in Colorado can resolve to do that will make everything — our state, our neighborhoods and our quality of life — better. Happy New Year, and here’s to 2017 being refreshingly unremarkable. Or at least remarkable for all the right reasons. Here are our top ten resolutions to help make it so.

The holiday season can be overwhelming and stressful. Nothing — not church or the TV specials or the holiday episodes of our favorite sitcoms — can solve everything that pops up and threatens our jolliness. But follow these rules and you might actually survive Christmas and make the season that much…

December is one of those months that tends to fly by—you think you have all the time in the world, and then all of a sudden the end-year holidays come and go, and all of a sudden it’s January. This year has been something of a bitch, but we have 31 more days of 2016 (ugh), and we might as well make the best of it, Denver-style.December in the Mile High City isn’t too dissimilar from December in the rest of the country, but there are a few things that both natives and transplants could benefit from remembering in this hap-hap-happiest time of the year.

We’re not one to believe in jinxes, but it sure seems like there’s some bad juju lingering around RTD’s vaunted A Line. The “Train to the Plane” was designed to connect the airport to downtown, with a few stops along the way that would make some neighborhoods (perhaps most notably…

We all know it: Daylight Saving Time sucks. Like Columbus discovering America and diamonds coming from coal, the story of daylight savings—that we did it for farmers—is complete bullshit. The true origins lie somewhere between wartime, energy conservation, and politics; farmers, in fact, were staunchly against it as a practice, so the fact that they became blamed for it is insult to injury.Daylight Saving Time isn’t the only thing that remains part of American culture out of sheer inertia. The great John Oliver has a superb occasional feature called “How Is this Still a Thing?” that covers ridiculousness like Daylight Saving Time, including everything from Columbus Day to the popularity of Ayn Rand to pennies. But it’s not just tradition that sometimes sticks us with a terrible and yet still voluntary mess—sometimes, we see the pothole, and we drive over the damn thing anyway, wrecking our national alignment. Here’s a list of other disasters we’ve gotten ourselves into…you know, if we really insist.

Halloween is over; November is in full-swing. That means trick-or-treating is done, the leftover candy is all yours, and everything will start to move indoors. You might think that November is pretty much just like October, only with fewer zombies and a lot more turkey. But November carries with it its own rules here in Denver, many that have nothing to do with cranberries, stuffing, or flightless birds. The responsibilities of November are more than just Thanksgiving—especially in these ten ways.

If the Angry Neighborhoods series has proven anything, it’s that living in different parts of Denver can mean completely different experiences—and perhaps no other neighborhood in the city exemplifies this than downtown. Downtown Denver resembles the city living of other major metropolitan areas in some ways—high-rise buildings, bars and restaurants, that low hum of the city center that lets you know that yes, there are other human beings living all around you. There’s comfort in that.But city living isn’t all roses—aside from the high cost (which isn’t so much an annoyance than it is a fact of life), there are definitely some downers to living downtown.

It’s almost Halloween, which means that you probably already have a jack-o-lantern out on your stoop, or you’ve resigned yourself to not-bothering for yet another year. Instead of carving up large veggies and stuffing a candle in their scooped-out hulls to light them up, you should probably focus more on getting a costume together for that party Saturday night.But what to wear? You want it to be clever, sure. Creative is always good. Locally themed would be great. But don’t get carried away—just because something is home-grown doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. Here’s a top ten list of Denver costumes in the face of which you should just shut the door.

A surprising number of Coloradans work in Denver but live in unincorporated Douglas County…although they generally refer to themselves as residents of local townships: Deckers, Sedalia, Castle Pines Village, etc. These are towns that Denverites know from their local news, places where weather happens, fires rage and citizens live…but where…