The power of positive thinking can be found everywhere from Oprah Winfrey to evangelical churches to books like The Secret. But Seth Lepore is critical. “Do we need to be happy all the time?” he asks about the movement, which encourages people to be perennially cheery. “Those people scare me.”…
In its four years of existence, Colorado Springs burlesque troupe Peaks and Pasties has established itself firmly in its southern niche, and now founder Lola Spitfire (aka Lindzey Martucci) wants to take things to the next level. “We’re trying to incorporate more higher education for burlesque dancers,” she explains, “so…
William Shatner has done many things during his eighty years on earth, including make out with alien women, sing like a stilted, tone-deaf parrot and get everyone really good prices on airline tickets. In fact, there is almost nothing he hasn’t done, including perform on Broadway, which is where Shatner’s…
Sprout City Farms manages the nation’s first on-site farm-to-cafeteria growing space, the Denver Green School Community Farm, which provides kids with learning opportunities and fresh (organic!) food year-round. And any farmer can tell you it’s not easy to make hay when the sun isn’t shining, so think of the second…
Maybe you had to be there, but one of the most poignant moments of my own excitable high-school years was seeing the Frederick Wiseman cinema verite High School, a documentary filmed in an urban Philadelphia school that plainly exposed the oppressive atmosphere of the place while unfolding slowly and unwaveringly,…
Although Roger Ebert’s health problems prevent him from participating in the World Affairs Conference, the annual intellectual orgy that’s coming to Boulder from April 9 through April 13, the film critic’s interruptus program is still a featured attraction — and is now named after him. This year’s film? Tinker Tailor…
Curious to know how you could “date better”? Not sure how to talk to a new partner about safe sex? Are you clueless about the basic art of flirting? If you’re a gay or bisexual male pondering such things, Boyfriend University is the program for you. Element, the Colorado-based nonprofit,…
The University of Colorado Denver is firing up its College of Arts & Media this week by bringing in iron sculptor and performance artist Matt Toole for a lecture tonight and live pour tomorrow…
Feminism isn’t a ladies-only club, Bree Davies pronounced yesterday. Feminism is for everybody. Including two very supportive male friends: one of whom attended the Rally to Protect Women’s Health at the Capitol Monday, both of whom earned a shout-out in her piece…
CREEP! is a movie about the making of a movie whose biggest star is a phallic monster made out of a rug. The monster is from outer space and it’s hungry. Oh, and its mouth? It looks like a vagina. The CREEP! crew, including Colorado Springs-based director Pete Schuermann, launched…
Sandra Fettingis has been creating art for over a decade. In her new series of sketches and 3-D wall sculptures, which debuts tonight at City, O’ City, Fettingis says she “explores confusion in conversation and in life’s agendas — specifically, through the patterning and layering of the art.” The title…
Naropa grad Seth Lepore will bring his newest one-man show, SuperHappyMelancholyexpialidocious, to Boulder this weekend. The new show targets the happiness movement, humorously critiquing everything from Oprah Winfrey to those Texas megachurches that all insist we need to be constantly chipper. We recently spoke with Lepore about the happiness movement,…
I started writing this piece by reiterating my usual spiel about why I’m a late-blooming feminist and why it’s important for all people to be feminists. But no one wants to hear that. No one likes to be told what they aren’t doing, even if asking that all humans to…
Several nationally renowned artists and musicians are Denver natives: Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind and Fire graduated from East Denver High School; The Fray’s Isaac Slade and Joe King were schoolmates at Faith Christian Academy. Now Denver’s First Lady Mary Louise Lee wants to promote Denver’s notable cultural legacy with…
And the kudos keep coming in for Dominique Ashaheed, the Slam Nuba member who just won the 2012 Women of the World Poetry Slam, held in Denver…
To make a sweeping generalization, all art has to do with nature, because it is, at its core, an extension of the human hand, eye or brain. But some artists go further in expressing this underpinning by either literally or figuratively referring to natural processes or settings. This is what…
Clyfford Still. For the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum, founding director Dean Sobel has installed a career survey of the great artist. Clyfford Still: Inaugural Exhibition starts with the artist’s realist self-portrait and features his remarkable post-impressionist works from the 1920s. Next are Still’s works from the ’30s, with…
If I said “Eskimo hip-hop crime tale,” would that send you running to the nearest sunny beach? Shot on location in far northern Alaska with a native cast and writer/director (Andrew Okpeaha MacLean), On the Ice is a marvel of concentrated, classical storytelling. The flat, snowy landscape strips away all…
The television show 21 Jump Street, about cops who go undercover as high-schoolers, debuted on Fox in 1987 — one year after the network premiered — and ran until 1991, launching the career of Johnny Depp (who cameos here along with former castmate Holly Robinson Peete). As a sign of…
It’s obvious that Jason Segel has a face for comedy. He’s got a lumpy, sad-sack mug with a dozen inflections to register disappointment, confusion and self-doubt. But as the basement-dwelling hero in the Duplass brothers’ new quest movie, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, Segel works his entire posture for laughs…
The role of the Man in the Chair is the spine for The Drowsy Chaperone, and it’s the primary reason that this lighthearted, inconsequential and very silly show is so much fun to watch: Without him, it would just float off into the ether. But with him, we’re invited in…
Seven of Colorado’s most colorful sports personalities could be headed for the White House if representatives of Team USA Roller Derby — the 2011 Roller Derby World Cup champions — get their way. Over the weekend Team USA issued a call to action asking President Obama to honor the team’s…
