Synechdoche, New York

If you traveled the length of John Malkovich’s medulla oblongata, hung a sharp left at the desk where Beckett’s Krapp recorded his last tape and walked through the adjoining door of the interstellar hotel room at the end of 2001, you might end up somewhere in the vicinity of Charlie…

The Edge

It’s that time again. The white stuff is building into a thick blanket over Denver’s backyard playground, and Westword is here to remind you how lucky you are to live in Colorado. In The Edge, area insiders offer advice on where to find the sickest powder stashes you never knew…

Talking Shop

Some people just bask in the golden glow of old stuff; Jeanne Connolly’s one of them. A New Jersey native and former Crate & Barrel visual designer, Connolly, who longed to learn the ropes of upholstering, had one of those turning-thirty moments and moved west, on the advice of a…

Yellow Elephant

If the City of Lost Children was a real place, this group would certainly hail from there. With an aesthetic that recalls Self-Non-Self-era Cranes with elements of early Laurie Anderson, Yellow Elephant’s hypnotic drones and musique concrète/found-sound take on pop is not like much of anything today, but rather artistically…

Flick Pick

Everyone can agree that firefighters are all heroes — but we don’t really understand exactly what goes on in a fire. You might have seen Backdraft a million times, but it still doesn’t quite capture the feeling of being in the midst of a blaze. “A lot of people know…

Turkeyball

When touting the awesomeness of adult dodgeball leagues and tourneys, organizers and participants always talk about reliving the glory days of gym class. They talk about totalitarian school districts that have banned the game from recess and physical education classes. Sometimes they even talk about how good it feels to…

A Cut Above

Fine art and craft curve together in a delicate tête-à-tête in Jennifer Falck Linssen: Beyond Katagami, a new exhibit opening today at the Longmont Museum and Cultural Center, 400 Quail Road in Longmont. Linssen, inspired by the Japanese craft of katagami (or cut-paper stencils) used for the printing of intricate…

Talking Shop

Nobody’s going to be taking any chances this holiday shopping season. Purse strings are tight, and a rosier future seems possible but still far away. But this mid-November weekend is bursting with thoughtful, homegrown and unique shopping opportunities at non-commercial venues where your hard-earned discretionary budget won’t be wasted. Imagine…

Indie Rocks

It was 1995 and I was fresh out of college, interning at an indie record label and talking to my work crush. He shoved a Q-tip into each nostril and proceeded to act as if nothing overtly weird had just happened. I giggled and blushed. I was easily amused. Eventually,…

Road Trip!

Buntport Theater’s latest example of its consistently original performances is a timeless road trip set somewhere between ancient Rome and the modern world. “Anywhere But Rome is the story of Ovid and two characters from Greek mythology: Tiresias, a blind prophet; and Io, a woman who has been turned into…

Silence is Golden

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra has gone to the movies before, it’s true — but, notes CSO spokesman Andrew Mathis, never quite like this: During a rare full-length, intermission-free CSO Goes to the Movies evening, the city ensemble will perform the live score during a screening of Charlie Chaplin’s comic tearjerker…

The Space Between

In the husband-wife team of Lemon Sponge Cake, Jennifer Sher takes care of the business end so her husband can concentrate on the creative end. In his latest piece, Liquid-Space, Robert Sher-Machherndl’s choreography focuses on the space between him and his collaborator, Simone Messmer, a member of the American Ballet…

Rockin’ Obama

Local sculptor Meagen Svendsen couldn’t get a ticket to Obama’s DNC speech at Invesco Field last August, but that didn’t stop her from going down there. “I still wanted to do something to be there, so I came up with the idea of documenting it, of fossilizing all the people…

A Shark and a Spark

Spark, one of the city’s oldest alternative art spaces, will present a variety of print work from Front Range artists in the Spark Gallery Print Show, which opens today and continues through December 7. The gallery snagged famed master printer Bud Shark to jury the exhibit, which will put upwards…

Photo Realism

Sebastião Salgado has documented the plight of people around the world for more than three decades. The Brazilian-born photographer has circumnavigated the globe, taking heart-wrenching images of everything from Brazilian coal miners to sufferers of African famine — and, recently, the few still-untouched wilderness areas on Earth. “We have some…

Checkmate

Years before the entire world got wrapped up in Da Vinci Code fever, I was enthralled by The Eight, a book about a fictional chess service given to Charlemagne that possessed mystical properties. The author, Katherine Neville, follows the tale of the fictional Montglane service when it is unearthed from…

Big Band in Town

One of the Denver jazz scene’s favorite sons, saxophonist Fred Hess is in fine form on his new recording, Single Moment, with elegant backup from trumpeter Ron Miles Trumpet, reed genius John Gunther, guitarist Dale Bruning, bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Matt Wilson. But tonight, he’ll have an entire big…

Sports Authority

In a sports-mad city like Denver, it’s easy to make friends — and enemies — at any sports bar: Just sit down and make a statement about the best, worst or most ridiculous coach, player or call to the guy next to you, and you’re off. Now Denver sports fans…

Toy Mechanics

This Saturday, more than 100 do-gooder scooter enthusiasts will weave through the streets of Denver in support of the fifth annual Scoot for Toys ride, presented by Erico Motorsports and SQREAM Scooter Club; proceeds benefit the Ronald McDonald House, which provides temporary housing for families with hospitalized children. This year’s…

Free For All

Get on the bus tonight — and bring the family! During Night at the Museums, nearly a dozen of the city’s museums will stay open from 5 to 10 p.m. and offer free ad-mission and special events in conjunction with Denver Arts Week. None of it will cost you a…

Snow Blast

Movies? Check. Music? Check. Snow? Check. That tasty trio is at the heart of Copper Mountain ski resort’s fourth annual opening-weekend celebration, Lift Off. Tonight, after a hard day on the mountain, Copper presents a free Lift Off Movie Tour Pub Crawl, with films screened at various stops around town…

Om Time

What happens when you take a group of inmates at an overcrowded, maximum-security Alabama prison and introduce them to meditation via a Vipassana retreat — in which they must sit in complete silence for ten days, breaking only for meals and sleep? A new documentary, The Dhamma Brothers, chronicles just…