Friendly Fire

In the soccer world, the term “friendly” can be a very deceptive one. It refers to a match with no actual implications, no qualifications on the line — just a good-natured gathering between two teams with nothing to lose or gain. In reality, though, friendlies are typically anything but. And…

One-Night Standup

He’s won accolades from the Comedy Works, which voted him the best new talent of 2006, and earned the respect of his funny-guy peers by getting invited to perform in New York on Eugene Mirman and Michael Showalter’s premier alt-comedy showcase, Tearing the Veil of Maya. Now it’s time for…

Barry Fresh

If you don’t know who Todd Barry is, you should. The twenty-year comedy vet has performed all over the world, honing a dry, deadpan delivery that has allowed him to say things about himself such as “The U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen said I was the best comic once”…

As the Master Intended

“A professional football team practices and hones its skills, but when it comes to game time, nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen,” says No Holds Bard player Kate Kissingford. “Our approach to Shakespeare is kind of the same thing. There’s a sense of uncertainty that keeps spontaneity and electricity…

Pleasing Pupptery

Take some giant puppets, add a group of middle-schoolers, throw in some pyrotechnics and make it all free, and you have a fantastic event on your hands. Tonight at 8 p.m., non-profit arts organization Downtown Aurora Visual Arts presents an original middle-school production of a magical, marvelous puppet show called…

Cesar’s Palace

My dog hates children. Their loud cries, sudden moves and strange, short figures freak her out. She will happily lie on her back and beg to have her belly rubbed for any adult human, and she’ll tolerate most dogs — as long as they stay away from her food, property,…

Desert Music

Wandering artist/filmmaker and Stan Brak-hage disciple Eric Waldemar used to live and work here, showing films at the Denver International Film Festival and local galleries until he departed to study at New York University ten years ago. In between, he says, disaster ensued: His personal life fell apart and nothing…

Art Compartmets

What the heck is a Pet-o-Mat? In Colorado fiber artist Christine Marie Davis’s own words, it’s “a mini museum of tactile art contained within a rotating sandwich vending machine. It is home to 49 curious creatures that live in the remodeled pet condos awaiting visitors to touch and play with…

Revelation

In the darkest of times, some turn to faith, some turn toward science, and everyone needs a little bit of humor to lighten things up. All of these elements — particularly the humor — come together in a special summer staging of Deborah Zoe Laufer’s End Days, presented by Curious…

Get the Brews

There are two basics of summer: sunburn and alcohol. And guests at the Old South Pearl Association and Swallow Hill Music Association’s SummerFest: BrewGrass can indulge in both. The annual outdoor festival celebrates one of those summer fundamentals — beer — alongside its buddy, music. The concert features performances from…

Defying Convention

This week’s Poets Party at Naropa University — an offshoot of the school’s summer writing program and a response to the Democratic National Convention — might be inadvertently hilarious. But for a take on the DNC that makes you laugh and think without the transcendental poetry, Avenue Theater’s Convention? might…

Good for Denver

Local historian Phil Goodstein has been making history in Denver since 1986 with his walking tours, but he was teaching and writing about the city he loves long before then. The prolific author and orator will sign his new book, The Spirits of South Broadway (the first in a three-part…

Castle Crazed

Ann Westerberg first became fascinated by Colorado castles when she spotted one under the 16th Street viaduct. “There was a castle sitting in the railroad yard, and I thought that was so odd,” she remembers. She began taking notes on some of the other castles she encountered in her travels…

Girl Power

Sarah Kirwin, the mastermind behind Bovine Metropolis Theatre’s CHICK IT! workshop, “thinks that women really work well together, and that we can learn more about ourselves as women working together by exploring different relationships that exist between women,” explains Bovine’s Linnea Brutlag. “Also in this workshop, women will be taking…

It’s Only Forever

Some people have a new favorite movie every week. Mine has been the same since I was six years old; that was the year I first saw Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. I could watch that movie over and over and over again — which I did, until I’d memorized every last…

Larger Than Bike

Many thought that the fashionable devolution of transportation devices stopped with brakeless, fixed-gear bikes, but Boulder’s Captain Obvious and crew continue to defy expectations with the 27th Almost-Annual Matt Armbruster Memorial Big Wheel Rally. Forget carbon fiber: Go get yourself a plastic tricycle and head to the Walrus, 1911 11th…

Politics of Anger

“An uprising is the middle state between the disengaged stasis that we’re used to and those very powerful, well-organized social movements,” says author/columnist David Sirota. “And this current uprising is not going to dissipate. People are just too angry.” Tonight starting at 7:30 p.m. at the Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl…

Free Snarking

I’m the first to admit that Bill Maher is an asshole. He’s a sexist jerk and a foolishly staunch libertarian, and yet I love him to death and feel lost and depressed every Friday night that his HBO show is on furlough — which it is right now, until August…

Frida Files

Last year, the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council threw a party for what would have been Frida Kahlo’s 100th birthday; the bash was so successful that CHAC decided to bring it back for an entire month. “Last year was mostly Frida,” notes CHAC director Crystal O’Brien, “but this year we’ve…

French Meets West

The heart of the Wild West apparently has some Francophile blood in it. That’s what the annual French Summer Soiree, put on by the Alliance Française de Denver would seem to indicate: How else to explain a frou-frou French party taking place in our very own cowtown? Held in the…

Nashville Pussy

With their 1998 debut, the boys and girls of Nashville Pussy declared Let Them Eat Pussy. Seven years later, they’re still all about the muff. Their latest album, Get Some!, opens with the holler, “Well, all right, who wants some pussy?” The quartet’s two superhot, supercrass female members, guitarist Ruyter…

Low

Sometimes it’s nice just to call a spade a spade. Low provides just that sort of truth in advertising, easily earning high marks in the “slowcore” hall of fame. Through nearly fifteen years and ten albums scattered across half a dozen labels, including major backing from Virgin subsidiary Vernon Yard,…