Westword art critic Michael Paglia is one of Denver’s go-to guys on the subject of regional modern art: He not only flat-out loves it more than almost anything, but he’s also a walking reliquary of regional art history and an up-to-date encyclopedia of who’s who in the present. There aren’t…
PHAMALY continues its inspiring work tonight with Steel Magnolias, performed by the company’s physically and/or developmentally disabled actors. “People who love the movie will not be disappointed,” says spokeswoman Gloria Shanstrom. “All the characters are there, most of the famous quotes are there, the whole ‘love you more than my…
If you ask me, a person would have to be nuts to willingly get on the back of a red-eyed, one-ton boy bovine with smoke coming out of its ears and go for an eight-second joy ride. But that shows how much I know. For one thing, there’s a saddlebag…
From John F. Kennedy’s blonde ambition to Bill Clinton’s cigar, Larry Craig’s bathroom footsie and Eliot Spitzer’s golden call girl, politicians across all ages, sexual orientations and political affiliations are renowned for their indiscretions and infidelities. But whether it unfolds in the 24-hour news cycle or in the privacy of…
If you like your beer big or bad or Belgian, then Vail is where you want to be today. The city is hosting the ninth annual Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines Festival, highlighting an international selection of 175-plus beers, many with more than 7 percent alcohol by volume. These include…
Tribute bands typically face some creative constraints. After all, people go to see the tribute group to hear live music that sounds exactly like the band of honor. In the case of the Rocky Mountain Grateful Dead Revue, that presents a bit of a quandary, because the Dead were known…
Time to burn off all those beer-guzzling, turkey-eating, Christmas-cookie calories. But instead of hitting the gym, how does snowshoeing in some deep powder sound? If you like being outdoors better than sweating on a treadmill, then head to Echo Lake for free snowshoeing lessons during the fun annual Winter Trails…
It’s about to get warm in a very cold place. The Breckenridge Mountain Rotary Club is organizing the second annual Chilly Chili Cook-Off today from 3 to 8 p.m. at the Riverwalk Center, 150 West Adams Street in Breckenridge. DJ DC will be spinning as people compile their best spicy…
Since 1994, the Ouray Ice Festival has been the pinnacle of ice climbing events, and it happens in a town that considers itself the Switzerland of the U.S. The festival takes place at the Ouray Ice Park, which was inspired when a leaky pipe from the Uncompahgre River diversion dam…
Tonight’s Central Hockey League All-Star game doesn’t follow the usual format. Rather than collections of all-stars facing off against each other, a single all-star squad will take on your Colorado Eagles. According to J.P. Puma, the Eagles’ manager of communication, this approach is so old that it’s new. “The idea…
Charles Barkley, the 6’ 5” former power forward for the Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets, made a name for himself by being outspoken and irreverent. Currently a TV basketball analyst, Barkley has also considered running for governor of Alabama, first as a Republican and now as a Democrat. His conservative…
Because the Arvada Center for Arts and Humanities has such a great track record for tying all the loose ends together thematically, a trio of West-inspired photography shows in the galleries today — just in time for the regional influx of National Western Stock Show visitors and next week’s returning…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed…
Comic books aren’t just for kids anymore. That’s really been true for a long, long time, from the day they started zipping comics up in plastic bags and calling them collectors’ items. But the rise in the last few decades of the graphic novel, an inventive form that covers endless…
David Shneer is a one-man dynamo when it’s come to bringing into focus the divergent cultural wings of the Jewish diaspora locally, in the past as a professor and director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver and currently in a similar role at CU-Boulder. And…
No writer ever gazed deeper or more despairingly into the prison of middle-class American conformity than Richard Yates, which may explain why none of his books sold more than 12,000 copies in his lifetime and why it’s taken more than forty years for one of them to reach the big…
Is it a sign of the Apocalypse? Something in the water? Or just the way the wind is blowing? Whatever the case, when our often-contentious quintet of film critics put their heads together about the best movies of 2008, they managed to agree (more or less) on a dozen they…
As far as Jeffrey Katzenberg is concerned, up until now there have been but two “revolutions” in the movie business: the mass introduction of sound, with 1927’s The Jazz Singer (itself a process thirty years in the making), and, a year later, the debut of The Viking, the first feature…
Michael Jacobs, a filmmaker based in San Francisco, is the director of a movie called Audience of One. It’s a documentary about a Pentecostal minister who says he’s gotten the divine green light to make a mega-budget, religious science-fiction epic. If you attended one of twenty-odd regional film festivals in…
Record company executives’ dislike of change is nothing new, as Denver-based author Steve Knopper discovered while researching Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, a new book he’ll discuss and sign tonight and Thursday. In the early ’80s, when manufacturers tried to convince…
Having just moved to Colorado from Texas, I can make a few observations about the Lone Star and Square states: Both have a thing for bovines; both like drilling for oil; both have a lot of open spaces. There are differences, too: Y’all don’t use Velveeta in your cheese enchiladas,…
Isis Books & Gifts on East Colfax Avenue was a place where a person could wander and not get lost; the paths to self-realization were manifold. It was a groovy shop, to be certain, but housed in an odd little building that — despite the beaded curtains and incensed air…
