This Weekend In Stoke: Copper, Keystone, Roller Girls and more

Where to get some action this weekend? Where to begin? For starters, you’ll want to call in sick this morning and make it a three-day weekend: Copper Mountain opens today with its annual Lift Off party running through the weekend. Hit the slopes all day then stop by Jack’s at…

10 things to do for $10 this weekend, November 5-7, 2010

It’s the start of a big week for film buffs, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of non-movie related activities to partake in this week. Of course, if you’re inclined, you can certainly weasel your way into a few of the films for the Starz Denver Film Festival. If…

One chapter book reviews: The Wishing Trees

You can’t judge a book by its cover — and it just goes to show you, because the cover of The Wishing Trees, by John Shors, is pretty awful. Decked out in pink with an apple blossom and a soft-focus photo, it might as well be an advertisement for a…

The OED quaeritates us to help save our labascating language

It’s a sad but true fact: Neglected words are continually falling off the back of this montivagant English of ours, making room for such gems as verbs like, ‘tweet’ and ‘google,’ and such kexy nouns as, ‘staycation’ and ‘frenemy,’ as we march boldly into the unknown territory of the twenty-first…

Dana Cain’s Art Collection: Mark Penner Howell

Dana Cain is the lady with her thumb in a million pies: The local maestra of event-planning throws several well-attended collectors expos, art shows, parties, chocolate fests each year. Her latest — and biggest — project is next summer’s Denver County Fair. But Dana is also an avid art collector…

Five reasons Denver needs an extraterrestrial commission

Yesterday, we learned the sad news: Denver Initiative 300, which would have created an official, government-approved commission to prepare our fair city for a visit from extraterrestrials, was soundly defeated, garnering hardly fifteen percent of the vote — meaning hardly fifteen percent of the population has any sense of humor…

Talking Shop: Benjamin Ballerina takes a bow tomorrow at The Other Side Arts

Dylan Scholinski and Maggie Evans had a dream. It wasn’t political, a dream that would change the world, or even necessarily a money-making scheme, though the latter wouldn’t hurt; they just wanted to make and sell adorable children’s clothing, made from reclaimed fabrics and set apart by Dylan’s screen-printed graphics…

Pot Heads at the CVA

Japanese ceramics have had a tremendous impact worldwide, and their aesthetic of elegant simplicity has been especially influential on artists in the United States. That means that Soaring Voices: Recent Ceramics by Women From Japan, at Metro State’s Center for Visual Art, is something worth checking out for anyone interested…

Not So Itsy-Bitsy

Get a leg up on the titans of the spider world tonight at Legend of the Tarantula, a class for adults created to complement the Butterfly Pavilion’s new exhibit of the same name. That show is a Victorian-themed peek into the life and times of everyone’s favorite giant arachnid —…

Veterans’ Day

The plight of the returning war veteran isn’t a particularly new theme — really, it’s as old as war itself — but it’s an enduring one. And Tom Cole’s harrowing 1976 play Medal of Honor Rag, based on the true story of a black Vietnam vet, remains vital on a…

Dancing Queens, Redux

The fluffy songs of Swedish ’70s sensations ABBA are all about giving it up and feeling good; even the pleasantly good-looking, disco-dressed singers themselves — Frida, Benny, Björn and Agnetha — gave off a placidly sweet aura that just plain made their millions of fans feel happy. The Broadway musical…

JAAMM Session

It used to be that with every November, for many years, you could begin to count the days until Chanukah, like clockwork, by arrival of the Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center’s Leah Cohen Festival of Jewish Books and Authors. But three years ago, the JCC’s in-house Mizel Center for…

Another Side of Tibet

If the “Free Tibet” stickers on every Subaru within a thirty-mile radius are any indication, we’ve been there, done that, seen the documentary. And Brit Withey, artistic director for the Denver Film Society, knows we’re hip to it. “Everybody in Denver, and especially Boulder, has probably seen documentaries about Tibet,…

Get Wimpy at Borders

If you know the names Greg Heffley, Roderick, Rowley and Fregley, then you know about the mesmerizing combination of snarky, sometimes off-color stories and adolescent drawings that make up the immensely popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. The four books — which are aimed at the seven-to-twelve-year-old crowd but…

The Snow Flies at Wintervention

Skiers and snowboarders have learned to count the passing of years — 61 of them — by the steady thrum of new films from Warren Miller Entertainment, the surest sign out there that a new winter season is upon us. The latest can be seen at the Wintervention film tour…

Dancing Machines

One Hip in the Grave might be a strange title for tonight’s belly-dance extravaganza, says Chris Keating, aka Chaya, who helped produce the performance and teach the students who are performing. It came about, she explains, because, “We were just thinking of a clever, Halloween-themed belly-dance name, and we thought…