Hit the Road with the Yard Dogs

About twelve years ago, just after Denver native, author and former hobo Zebu Recchia (aka Eddy Joe Cotton) started the Yard Dogs Road Show, singer and trombonist Lily Rose Love joined the troupe. Since then, she’s watched the group grow from a traveling three-person hobo jug band into a visually…

She’s Cho Funny

Margaret Cho manages to bring the funny even when she’s talking about not-so-funny issues — like beauty standards that demand impossible things from women. In her new standup show, Cho Dependent, she merges music with her comedy. (Maybe it’ll help prepare you for Cho Dependent, her album featuring collaborations with…

Museum studies: The CU Art Museum is among a museum-building boom

Over the last decade or so, Colorado has seen an incredible museum-building boom that is completely unprecedented in the state’s history. New structures include the Kirkland Museum, the Hamilton Building of the Denver Art Museum, and MCA Denver. In addition, a substantial yet subdued addition was made to the iconic…

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Exposure. Eric Paddock is the Denver Art Museum’s first full-fledged photo curator to head up his own new department. To unveil the permanent gallery for photography in the Ponti tower, he’s put together Exposure: Photos From the Vault, highlighting a range of gems from the DAM’s collection. Collected in fits…

Secretariat’s shmaltzy script cannot save it from the glue factory

Horses make lousy protagonists, what with their inability to speak, emote, or do much of anything other than run or stand around. No surprise, then, that Secretariat employs its subject as merely a vehicle for a human-victory-over-adversity story, which, in this based-on-real-events case, involves owner Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) triumphing…

Cuckoo chic: It’s Kind of a Funny Story

A film seemingly designed to get every New York City honors student face-punched at college, It’s Kind of a Funny Story chronicles a privileged Brooklyn high-schooler’s super-cool institutionalized mental-health break. Hot for his best friend’s girlfriend, stressed out over an application to a prestigious summer school and audaciously neglectful of…

Freakonomics: Not exactly the sum of its parts

A quartet of uneven TV pilots posing as a full-length documentary, Seth Gordon’s anthology Freakonomics pulls case studies from Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt’s best-selling book of pop math and hands them over to famous doc filmmakers to make their own. Gordon (King of Kong) knits together the resulting shorts…

This version of The 39 Steps is an uninhibited romp

The 39 Steps is uninhibitedly silly — a romp, a trifle, a takeoff on a 1930s Hitchcock film (which, in turn, was based on a novel by John Buchan) The plot, which didn’t make much sense in the previous versions, has something to do with an attempt by foreign spies…

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Art. Yasmina Reza’s cool, witty, much-celebrated and much-performed play is ostensibly about art, but it’s more about friendship. At the center of the action is an all-white painting, purchased by Serge, a dermatologist, for a huge sum of money. Perhaps he feels a genuine affinity for the piece, perhaps he’s…

A Theatrical Pas de Deux

Cultural programming at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities has long been the product of partnerships with other arts organizations, something executive director Gene Sobczak credits with the center’s growth over the past couple of years. “So I wanted to see if the same model could fit with…

Style Local: Andrew Novick

Andrew Novick is known in this town for many singular reasons — a big one being his artfully out-of-control need to collect things, any things, nay, all things, and another his involvement with the legendary band the Warlock Pinchers — but his spot-on fashion sense is probably not one of…

Gratuitous Randomness: Cats that look like Hitler

​Because it’s a slow news day, each Wednesday, we bring you the best of our weird internetz world in a collection of loosely related items about whatever topic we happen to come up with. Today, we’re bringing you Kitler: Cats that look like Hitler, because animals that look like people…

Browser game of the week: Word Bubbles

Do you like words? What about word games? If just thinking about Scrabble makes you hot, you might want to check out our browser game of the week, Word Bubbles. It doesn’t have anything to do with Scrabble or words inside bubbles, but it is a word game that gives…

Contest: Comment on this and get a hardcover copy of Me, Myself and Why?

Last week, we told you about MaryJanice Davidson’s new Me, Myself and Why? a veer into left field from an author noted for veering into left field. The self-proclaimed “inventor of paranormal chick-lit,” Davidson made her name with her Undead and Unwed series about a vampire who’s also into shopping…

Free jazz: Ron Miles performs at the Mercury Cafe tonight — for free

There are a lot of great jazz musicians in Denver, but perhaps none so acclaimed as trumpeter Ron Miles. Internationally noted for inventive compositions that stay well enough within the bounds of convention not to alienate, Miles also boasts considerable chops as an arranger (his credits include an adaptation of…