10 Things to do for $10 this weekend, November 19-22

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, which means many people are in store for one hell of a four day weekend. Before that happens we have to deal with one of these pesky two day weekends, or “the bane of Western society” as we like to call them. Two days…

Groucho Marx, the original gangsta of smartassery

Frank Ferrante does a Groucho Marx so convincing he doesn’t even rehearse his show anymore; it’s all ad-libbed. And while Ferrante does incorporate some classic lines into An Evening with Groucho, his Groucho Marx tribute show, it’s not so much a rehashing of Marx’s material as an embodiment of it…

One chapter book reviews: Pukka

Much like God dictated the Bible to its various writers, a dog named Pukka dictated Pukka to its author, Ted Kerasote. Or at least that’s the conceit. The follow-up to Merle’s Door, a book someone named Elizabeth Marshall Thomas called “The best book ever written about dogs” (so the book…

Harry Potter midnight insanity: It’s not too late to join

Harry Potter is only barely trailing Star Wars as the highest-grossing movie franchise of all time, and that won’t last for long. The seventh movie in the series, which comes out tonight at midnight, is expected to do north of $100 million in revenue this weekend. We’re less than twelve…

Style Local: Jil Cappuccio, One of a Kinds, Limited Lines

Denver designer/seamstress Jil Cappuccio lives by a credo of constant reinvention; it’s how she lives her life, makes clothes and runs her business: by trial and error, the occasional epiphany and a wild imagination. Her trademark designs – yoked shifts and blouses, retro-inspired shirts for men, sassy carpet bags, easy…

Local filmmakers and local films galore at EFPalooza, starting tonight

Today is a good day for local films — like, a ridiculously good day. On top of the Adventure Film Festival starting today in Boulder and tonight’s one-time screening of the locally shot Our Good Friend, Jesus Christ, this evening marks the opening of EFPalooza, the Emerging Filmmakers Project’s four-day…

Foursquare profiles: Michael Mulhern, mayor of the 15 Bus

Michael Mulhern would like you to know that he is “not a crack whore.” Apparently, that’s the first thing people assume when you’re the mayor of the 15 Bus via East Colfax. “Yeah, I got a lot of weird comments when I posted that I got that mayorship on Facebook…

How to get my job: Mixed Martial Arts Instructor

Bashing someone’s face in, locking their arms down, kicking them in the stomach — it’s all in a day’s work for a mixed martial artist. Of course, every fighter has to have a teacher to learn technique from, which is where Billy Hendricks, a former MMA fighter, comes in. As…

A Fine Sense of Spell

Amanda Lueck Grell, a language arts teacher at Trevista at Horace Mann, has seen her share of spelling bees. And one day, as she was describing her middle school’s most recent bee for fellow boardmembers at Metro Denver Promotion of Letters, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for kids ages…

EatBar Bazaar

“I don’t think there is anything similar to this in town.” That’s the word from founder Becky Swiney, aka “Rockabettie,” on Jonesy’s Art Bazaar. And she has a point: For one thing, this bazaar takes place in Jonesy’s EatBar, a restaurant; for another, it’s squarely alternative in nature. “I only…

Rare at the Blair

The Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library’s Seldom Screened Cinema film series is exactly what it sounds like. “We wanted to feature films people hadn’t seen before or for a long time, films that aren’t shown on TV all the time” says the library’s Erin Lally of this fall’s ongoing screenings…

2010: A Sculptural Odyssey

Mike Whiting’s pixel-inspired minimalist sculptures are all about the evolution of a concept, says Plus Gallery’s Ivar Zeile. “Ever since the first day he entered the gallery carrying this little square plate of steel, he’s really had a full-blown concept in his head that evolved very slowly, which is so…

Excellent, Mr. Holmes

More than a hundred years after his first appearance, fans and writers are still compelled to study and perform the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and his resolute sidekick, Dr. Watson. It’s this very hunger for mystery that brought about Sherlock Holmes and the Spinsters of Blackmead, an original new play…

Paragon’s W(hole) is more than just a sum of its parts

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan tends to steal God’s thunder; as depicted, he’s much more interesting than the Creator. The same is true of the wickeder of the two main characters in local playwright Tracy Shaffer’s W(hole). The play, receiving its world premier at Paragon, concerns the twisted, symbiotic relationship…

A Gem of a Show

It’s been a long, strange trip for Chicago native Amelia Deleon and her Stranded Jewelry collection, which lands at Illiterate Gallery to-day for its first trunk show. The line got its start when Deleon began re-stringing necklaces to fit her petite frame. Compliments from friends convinced her to market the…

Be Here. Aloha!

Time traveler Sarah Vowell pops briefly back into the present for the Denver Post’s Pen & Podium lecture series tonight, taking a break from Hawaii circa 1898, which she’s been researching for her next book, Unfamiliar Fishes, due out in March 2011. In The Wordy Shipmates, her unlikely bestseller about…

Oh, Brother!

Although they call themselves the Flying O.H.N.O. Twins, Alvin Gregorio and Donald Fodness were not actually born as conjoined twins, separated at birth and then reunited later in life. That’s just the story they bring to Face Off: An Endurance Challenge, which starts today at 7 p.m. at the Boulder…

And Snow It Goes

A lift ticket cost just five dollars when Keystone opened forty years ago. An adult ticket this weekend will set you back as much as $67 (order online for best discounts), but instead of the four lifts on the hill in 1970, you now get access to twenty lifts and…

Stand and Deliver

Improvisational comedy is a risky business — both for the performers, who must create art on the spot, and the audiences, who some-times must suffer through skits that fall flat. But that won’t be a concern when the Upright Citizen’s Brigade brings its zany antics to town tonight. The UCB’s…