Now that the Merrell Oyster Racing Series is turning the advanced age of six, people may not remember that the mother of all scavenger-hunt-slash-adventure-races got its start right here in Denver in 2003. In fact, the race is named after Colorado’s most famous dish: Rocky Mountain oysters, of course, because…
The good folks of Salida are pulling out all the stops for the inaugural Salida Riverside Fine Arts Festival, and the result should be worth the several-hour drive south. “I’ve been an officer on the Visitors Bureau in Chaffee County, and I became aware of how an event like this…
The AIDS battle never ends, even if the issue has slipped from the forefront of national attention as the disease continues to spread around the world. For the Colorado AIDS Project’s Michael Lee, that’s where the real battle lies in modern times, especially when planning another Colorado AIDS Walk and…
Love it or hate it, the classic Star Wars franchise is a multi-generational geek-culture touchstone. And given its status at the very top of the sci-fi heap, it’s no surprise that over the years, the series has been lampooned by just about everyone. One of the very best of these…
One of the interesting things about the art world is how open it is. I’ve been at many events where the attendees ranged from the classic starving artists who lived in their studios to zillionaire donors, along with lots of people like me, whose circumstances lie somewhere in between. A…
Childsplay. For this show, the floor of Walker Fine Art has been covered with rough-hewn playground equipment made of wood and bronze. And despite the show’s title, all of it has been made for, and scaled to, adults, who are meant to interact with the individual pieces. The mostly kinetic…
Annie. Boulder’s Dinner Theatre is at the top of its form; it has to be. How else could the company make Annie — its mandatory summer family show — anything but a smirking sentimental bore? As everyone knows by now, the story of Annie concerns a little red-haired girl’s rough…
The cult that’s assembled around 2001’s Donnie Darko, which gets the Film on the Rocks treatment on Wednesday, August 12, seems motivated more by the size of writer/director Richard Kelly’s ambitions than by the goals he actually achieves. Simply put, the story of a troubled teen (Jake Gyllenhaal during his…
It was the best of movies, it was the worst of movies — which is to say, there’s half of a great movie in Julie & Julia. But since Meryl Streep has already starred in one titled Julia (Fred Zinnemann’s penultimate feature in 1977), perhaps it was merely necessary to…
In the Loop doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the know. In Armando Iannucci’s movie, a satire of the run-up to war with a Middle Eastern country, it means that all the poor bastards are stuck in a loop, making the same bad decisions and tragic mistakes over and over again…
I’m a sucker for reality shows such as Wife Swap and Trading Spouses; I love the scenes when you see unlikely people — a farmer and a socialite, a disciplined black family and a droopy, guitar-strumming hippie — suddenly understand each other, even if only for a moment. Every now…
William Cody’s travels with his Wild West Show took him all over the world — Buffalo Bill even did two performances in Croatia in 1906 — and across the continental United States. But he never made it to Alaska or Hawaii. “Interestingly enough, in our collection is a poster —…
What do cupcakes and the Horndribbles — those fantastic furry creations invented by Lucas Richards — have in common? Nothing, really, but the little monsters are coming for one night only to Colfax’s best cupcake and cereal bar — the Shoppe — for The Horndribbles Present Tote-Tacular. Shoppe owner Tran…
My first “fringe” festival experience involved KKK members, Satan, transsexuals and adults in diapers singing and dancing in Jerry Springer: The Opera. I learned that anything can, and probably will, happen when actors, dancers and musicians are allowed to perform completely uncensored. So expect the unexpected at the Boulder International…
Of all the things that can get a person killed, singing and dancing are generally not on the list. Unless, of course, you lived in Afghanistan while the Taliban was in power. When that regime fell, bans on TV, dancing and singing were lifted, opening the door for Tolo TV…
Like the microbreweries that began dotting the landscape in the 1980s, small urban wineries are now showing up in cities around the country. They typically buy their grapes from a supplier and then make their wine on site. Denver’s Infinite Monkey Theorem, which makes both reds and whites, is a…
The first annual Dog House Music Summer Block Party came together in such a way that it truly seems it was meant to be. “We have this special focal point coming, the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus,” explains Dog House’s Gary Lennox. Lennon was Lennox’s idol, and the latter’s been…
When Denver-based comics artist Amy Reeder Hadley started her manga series Fool’s Gold in 2006, her hip, fresh take on romance, action and magic brought her to the attention of Vertigo — the DC Comics imprint that launched Neil Gaiman’s career. Vertigo paired Hadley with veteran comics creator Matt Wagner,…
Artists and poets have long sought and found inspiration in the natural world and they way humanity fits into that world. Anne Waldman is no different; her new investigative hybrid poem, Manatee/Humanity, was conceptualized while looking at an old, scarred female manatee in Miami’s aquarium. “It was just an epiphany…
“With so many film festivals that are run around the country and so few documentary film festivals, I felt strongly that there should be a documentary festival here in Colorado that can hopefully become the preeminent documentary festival in the West,” says Wade Gardner, artistic director of the inaugural DocuWest…
Experience film and the urban environment in novel ways at Displacement: Cinema Out of Site, a collaborative project between TIE (The International Experimental Film Exposition) and the Gallery of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Atop a public parking garage, filmmaker Christopher May of TIE will…
You want to convince a kid that science is cool? Well, is there any cooler application of the intensely nerdy study of physics, aerodynamics and engineering than the intensely awesome reality of a working jetpack? Tell said kid how they’re going to get airborne in one of those puppies. That’s…
