What started as a somewhat edgy film by the raunchy and iconoclastic John Waters morphed into a sugar-sweet, much-loved, Tony-winning musical about self-acceptance and the need for all of us to also accept others. Now Hairspray has taken over the stage at the Arvada Center, where the year is 1962,…
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince has been an integral part of my thinking for a long, long time. It seems at first so simply written, so straightforwardly sentimental, that you hardly notice how deep and wise it is, but then scene after scene lingers in the imagination. For example,…
Earlier this month, local community garden The GrowHaus was one of ten organizations in the running for a $50,000 award from Maxwell House, as part of the coffee maker’s Drops of Good contest — and we are happy to report the nonprofit has won. “We’re still sorting out the logistics,…
At 11:00 this morning, an asteroid 5-20 meters in diameter came within 7,800 miles of Earth. Asteroids and meteorites (ever wonder the difference?) make close calls with Earth all the time, but no time in the history of the world was so harrowing as 1997 and 1998, when the Earth…
First, imagine 300,000 lbs. of tomatoes. Now, imagine those tomatoes are overripe and mildly rotten. Now, imagine all of those tomatoes in a humongous pile at Copper Mountain and a crowd of people gathered for no other reason than to throw that third-of-a-million-pound heap of tomatoes at each other. Can…
Summertime should be kaleidoscopic. The days are slow and the nights are warm and the living is lush; at the risk of sounding cliche, there’s a solar saturation about this time of year that other seasons just lack. On some level, this vividness permeates damn near everything, clothing included –…
I like to go running. There, I’ll admit it. I’m not what you would call a running junkie, but boy needs his cardio every once in a while. My favorite place to run? Wash Park. Because of all the eye candy. That’s right, my eyes like to wander. That’s not…
As the Denver edition of SlutWalk approaches, the comment threads on the event’s Facebook page — and on my post about the SlutWalk event page’s comment thread (shit’s getting meta here, but stay with me) — are gathering steam. In that piece, I elected to use unedited screen-shots (which included…
Lakewood’s Thunder Valley Motocross Park has been not-so-quietly making itself into one of the premiere destinations on the motocross racing circuit: The park has been hosting the American Motorcyclist Association’s AMA National events since 2005, and after hosting the Motocross of Nations in 2010 it’s now considered one of the…
Look, you’re not fooling anybody with all that talk of a “rare photo-sensitivity condition” — we all know you wear sunglasses inside because you’re a douchebag. But while that’s not the only facet of your douchebaggery, we’ll forgive you for at least that one today, because it’s Sunglasses Day, and…
The actual headline from this story, “Amish man accused of sexting Indiana girl, 12, arriving for sex meeting in horse and buggy” was too good to be true. “Sexting” and “horse and buggy” in the same sentence? No way. But then, we clicked the link and found something even better:…
A God-send to every kid with a mildly sadistic urge to make drawing, like, a hundred times harder than it needs to be, the Etch A Sketch has been around for more than half a century, proudly complicating the shit out of tasks as normally simple as making a diagonal…
When it comes to commuting via bicycle, there are thrilling upsides and harrowing downsides: the Don Henley-esque feeling of wind in your hair, for example, versus the sheer terror of a million one-ton boxes made of metal trying to kill you. On Bike to Work Day, created to encourage people…
Back in 1948, a group of European-inspired artists known as “The 15” shook up the Denver Artists Guild with abstract work far removed from the Western-themed art Coloradans typically get associated with. This week, that group is getting recognized at the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art with an…
The Colorado Cocktail Project, with its mission to create the official Colorado Cocktail, will celebrate this state’s most liquid assets at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 1485 Delgany Street. on Sunday and Monday, June 26-27. Dozens of bartenders submitted entries in the Colorado Cocktail Contest; the ten finalists will pour…
Since Fear of Flying was released in 1973, Erica Jong has been a force to be reckoned with in both the literary and feminist worlds; she’s published twenty books, including eight novels, six volumes of poetry, six non-fiction works, plus articles in an array of prestigious publications. In her latest…
Push On! In the seven months since Clayton Brown opened his Pusher BMX shop at 5777 East Evans Avenue, “Colorado’s Only BMX Rider-Owned and Operated BMX Shop” has been getting props from the likes of TransWorld Business and ESPN, doing double the business Brown projected for himself and attracting pro…
When a movie rakes in enough green, green, filthy money to necessitate a sequel, there’s a pretty standard set of solutions studios employ to resolve the cognitive dissonance of basically repackaging the same movie — the villain returns from hell, for example, or there’s another mystery to solve — but…
We’ve passed the Summer Solstice already, which means the season is in full swing with the blazing hot sun, outdoor parties and a nice, easily maneuverable city to cruise around in. That’s a good thing for this weekend, because there is a ton of stuff going down in a variety…
“Mom, look it’s a belly flop contest!” The boy’s mom looks down at him, then at the competitors. She utters only one word: “Ouch.” And ouch is right. At the 15th Annual Belly Flop Splashdown, which took place this morning at Water World, college students from across Colorado (and even…
In an effort to ward off the persistent tagging of its building, The Matchbox on Larimer Street hired a group of some of Denver’s biggest-name artists — with funding from Pabst Blue Ribbon — to cover its walls with odes to that storied hipster beer. Last night, those artists –…
There’s no LeBron in the group, or Kobe, or Dwight Howard, or even a Kevin Durant. In the upcoming NBA draft, Ian Thomsen writes on SI.com, there’s no standout star, and there’s very little certainty about who will be chosen when. To clear up all the confusion, I’d like to…
