Get Buzzed at Cross Pollination

Honey, where have all the bees gone? That and other questions will be examined during a screening of the documentary Vanishing of the Bees during Cross Pollination 2011, a community-wide celebration of pollinators, bees, birds, moths and other animals, at different Colorado Springs art institutions from August to December. “After…

Neighborhood Watch

If you’re one of the 200,000 people who moved to Denver in the last three years (thank you, U.S. Census Bureau), chances are you don’t know much about your neighborhood — at least not yet. Phil Goodstein, author, historian and walking-tour guide, is here to help. “One of the purposes…

Inward and Out

Downtown Aurora Visual Arts — DAVA, for short — provides after-school and summer art workshops for children and teenagers ranging in age from three to seventeen. Practicing artists work with the students to create art based on particular themes — and this time, it’s who the kids are. “This entire…

Food for Thought

You see a lot of strange things managing a multimillion-dollar steakhouse in New York City. A woman going commando and flashing the entire front section of the restaurant is just one of the many bizarre scenes that Carolann Valentino witnessed and details in her lively one-woman show, Burnt at the…

Stupid Human Tricks

Speed-stacking cups is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: You stack the most cups in the least amount of time possible. “It’s pointless and stupid, but of course I’ve spent hundreds of hours doing it myself,” admits Christopher “Aji” Slater. Pointless, stupid talents are kind of Slater’s M.O., and…

The Dark Humor of Huffs

Performer Kelsie Huff’s one-woman show, HUFFS, is a bit hard to explain. It’s as much a monologue as it is a standup routine, but there’s also a hint of performance mixed in there. “I think because I go to a darker place in HUFFS than most standup, I will call…

Garden of the Cycling Gods

“It’s unprecedented for an American race to get all three podium-finishers from the Tour de France in the same year,” says USA Pro Cycling Challenge spokeswoman Stacie Lange. “I can’t think of a more epic place to kick off the race and welcome them to Colorado than in front of…

Jef Otte vs. Stupid Pigeon poll: Who will emerge the victor?

Update 2! The bicycle vs. pigeon vs. moped race results are in. “Victory is partially mine! How I defeated a pigeon but not a chicken on a moped (video).” Update! In the last hour, I’ve been informed to two grievous attempts to put me at a disadvantage: 1). MCA Denver…

Gratuitous randomness: Misunderstood douchebag

Douchebags: Can’t live with ’em, don’t really want to live with ’em. But what if their obnoxious behavior is inadvertent? What if they’re really just normal guys like you and me, forced into douchery by cruel circumstance? Today, because we’re so magnanimous — and because it’s Wednesday, the day we…

Ryan Gosling holds baby, looks weird doing it

Our bad. We haven’t checked our fave celeb website toofab.com in like, forever (that’s the more chill, fashion-oriented baby of TMZ.com, the best website for non-information since Perez got skinny and boring). Late last week, this photo surfaced of Ryan Gosling holding a baby. No explanation as to who the…

Reader: Perpetuating the social stigma of furries

There’s no way to offend a sub-culture, it seems, like writing silly captions beneath pics of one of their gatherings. So it goes with furries, many of whom have been upset by my Furry Field Guide, which parodied a National Geographic-style wildlife manual using photos from the 2011 Rocky Mountain…

Lee Lee’s Quest is our browser game of the week

Marcus Richert’s Lee-Lee’s Quest isn’t a game you play because it’s going to move you or impress you with its visuals or even offer a challenge — you’ll play it because it’s weird, humorous, self-referential and just plain bizarre. It shouldn’t come as a surprise seeing as how it’s coming…

Five bizarre knittting patterns to work on tonight at Knitflix

Every month Knitflix meets at the Denver Public Library’s Fresh City Lounge to hang out, craft, and watch movies. In anticipation of the showing of depression-era flick Dinner at Eight tonight for crafters, we turned to the internet to find weird crafting patterns to take with you. Between bodily organs…

Ayinde Russell on Slam Nuba’s epic win and how they did it

In the world of slam poetry, there’s no higher distinction than a win at the annual National Poetry Slam — and over this past weekend, that distinction went to the poets of Denver’s Slam Nuba, upstart arrival to the Denver slam scene (and 2011 Westword MasterMind) — if, having won…

Reader: “I don’t go home and pee in a litterbox”

Probably in large part due to the popular misconception that it basically consists of sports mascots having sex, there are few subcultures more mysterious than furry fandom. Certainly, we tried to be sensitive when we interviewed Sorin Katt, coordinator of the Rocky Mountain Fur Con 2011, about what writer Cory…

Revolights LEDs for bikes: The brightest project on Kickstarter?

Look out, Moonlight Classic 2012, here’s a product surely destined for just about every nocturnal bike in Colorado: The Revolights project is less than $10,000 shy of its $43,500 goal on Kickstarter.com, with 42 days to go as of this writing, which means fully-functional wheel-mounted cycling lights could soon be…

I’m going to race a pigeon on a goddamn bicycle

Pigeons, it seems, have at least one other use besides shitting on statues: racing. For its upcoming exhibit Thinking About Flying, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver partnered up with the Foothills Pigeon Racing Club to train a group of racing pigeons to fly from the homes of MCA visitors,…