Eat, Sing and Be Jewish

Holidays, shmolidays! They’re over, fartik! And what better way might there be to get past them completely than with an event as fresh as the year is new? While our Christian brothers and sisters drag out their half-dead trees and pack up the ornaments for another year, we Jews can…

Fair Game

Local Bush-administration whistleblower Sean Shealy, who’s penned a book called Corruption and Cover-Ups of the Bush White House Unmasked, is alarmed that most people — even the ones who already long to see W. unseated — don’t really know how unlawful our national leader has actually been, or why. Shealy…

Trivial Pursuit

I grew up on a steady diet of Jeopardy, part of a family so competitive about trivia that we produced a University of Colorado at Boulder Trivia Bowl champ/Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? contestant (not me) and warped the rest of us for life. To this day, my kin…

Life of the Liberator

You may have heard of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist known for saving hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust. But you’ve probably never heard of Varian Fry. After Nazi Germany invaded France in 1940, Fry, a New York City editor, volunteered to travel to Marseille to help anti-fascist refugees. He…

Rabbit Season

For most of us, our first concert involved a rock band or maybe a hip-hop act. But the initial gig witnessed by my son, Nick, was more unusual: Bugs Bunny on Broadway, which returns to town tonight. And it could hardly have been a better experience. During the early ’90s,…

The Good Word

As the first lesbian drama series, The L Word had to package itself very carefully to stay afloat in the cutthroat world of television ratings. Writer Ilene Chaiken and director Rose Troche (both bona fide lesbians) used the glamour gimmick, giving audiences a cast to drool over. Even the now-transgendered…

End of an Era

When Lauri Lynnxe Murphy opened Capsule Gallery and Event Center at 560 Santa Fe Drive in 2004, it was one artist’s gift to the Denver community: a place to show, sell and make art. Unfortunately, the evil forces of real-estate development will soon knock down and pave over Murphy’s beloved…

Kings of the Road

If you have better plans tonight than being filmed for indie television while participating in a bicycle scavenger hunt that ends with free beer and metal, party on. As for the rest of you, show some support for the courier class by riding down to Union Station around 7 p.m…

The Fight Is On

Veteran gamer and Colorado Cutthroat Connection founder Gregory Richardson expects the second annual Fall Fighter Frenzy to be among the biggest tourneys he’s staged to date, with two full days of play and more than $10,000 in prizes up for grabs. “Last year we had mad turnout,” he notes, in…

Riding High

Despite their completely impractical nature, RVs hold a special place in my heart. Part of it is nostalgia for childhood adventures, but part of it is the sheer, ridiculous audacity of driving a house around. I love the big, stupid things, and I dream of owning one before the oil…

Questions and Answers

Who wouldn’t love to get a little glimpse into the future — or even just some new perspective on the present? The new year has just begun; surely you have some questions about what the next twelve months hold. Will you get that promotion? Will you finally stick to your…

Climb Every Mountain

It’s no lie to say that the Ouray Ice Climbing Festival is the premier event of its kind. Although scrambling up ice isn’t as popular as hiking or rock climbing, it takes a lot of skill to navigate an ice waterfall. And the Ouray Ice Park comprises both natural and…

Stage Stop

As winter break comes to a close, four out of five parents agree that it’s way better to get out of the house than follow through on those dark urges to muzzle the next kid who whines “I’m bo-ored” one more time. There’s no need for boredom, after all, when…

Slam Time

I remember being propelled from my seat at my first poetry slam, standing up involuntarily and pumping my fist into the air — an uncharacteristic move for someone accustomed to tapping her foot from the safety of her folding chair. But there’s something tremendous about the spoken word when it’s…

Train Gang

I’ve never had much luck with scenic family drives. I’m a Denver transplant, and my family comes in from the Midwest every so often to see me and the mountains. Inevitably, the six of us pile into my car (which seats five uncomfortably). In good weather, my mom points out…

Prefuse 73

Prefuse 73 — the production alias of Guillermo Scott Herren — pushes the outer boundaries of hip-hop into the terrain occupied by Aphex Twin and Autechre. Slippery snippets of micro-edited samples dance elegantly for a few measures, then stop and chatter away in alien tongues. Elsewhere, jittery beats unkink and…

Up and Coming

Billy Jack (Image) The Heartbreak Kid (Universal) Indie Sex: A Revealing Look at Sex in Cinema (IFC) Jimmy and Judy (Anchor Bay) Living & Dying (HBO) Resident Evil: Extinction (Sony) Seaquest DSV: Season Two (Universal) September Dawn (Sony) Shoot ‘Em Up (New Line) Solstice (Weinstein) The Tudors: The Complete First…

Black Russian

Eastern Promises(Universal)David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen are becoming a Bizarro World Hitchcock/Cary Grant combo, and the world is a better (and bloodier) place for it. Chucklehead critics too smitten by Cronenberg’s “messages” dismissed this film — a vicious and brilliant exploration of the Russian mob in London — for being…

Keep Dreaming

The inevitable challenge faced by Wii developers is this: Can you create a game so spectacularly awesome as to prompt a gamer to even consider ejecting Super Mario Galaxy from his console? The gravy train is over; good luck looking consumers in the eye while offering them another lame collection…

The Worst TV of 2007

Picking on bad shows like Viva Laughlin is just too easy. There’s enough low-hanging fruit being broadcast to fill a whole bushel of awful from 2007. And then there are those shows that represent how TV fails us, how it fails itself, how it just plain fails. In other words,…

The Best TV of 2007

The Year of our TV 2007 was something of an odd duck. It saw the end of some TV classics (The Sopranos) and the beginning of a strike that still threatens the medium as we know it. Fun year! But in these trying times, we all yearn for something to…

Up and Coming

American Pie Presents: Beta House (Universal) The Brothers Solomon (Universal) Eastern Promises (Universal) Galactica 1980: The Complete Epic Series (Universal) The Heartbreak Kid (Universal) Intimate Affairs (Universal) The Kingdom (Universal) Lost and Found: The Harry Langdon Collection (Facets) Shattered (Lions Gate) WWE: The Best of Raw 15th Anniversary (WWE)…