Michael Burnett is an accomplished painter, but unlike most of the city’s artists, he also runs his own exhibition venue, Space Gallery (765 Santa Fe Drive, 720-904-1088, www.spacegallery.org). Not surprisingly, the style of choice for the artists he showcases is the same as the one he uses in his own…
Adam Helms. This solo in the MCA’s Paper Works Gallery is the New York artist’s first museum show anywhere. In his works on paper and in a monumental sculpture that conjures up a shooting blind, Helms explores political themes, especially armed struggle. He takes images of different radical and extremist…
Girls Only. The trouble with Girls Only, a two-woman evening of conversation, skits, singing, improvisation and audience participation, is that it’s so relentlessly nice. Creator-performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein have worked together for many years; at some point, they read their early diaries to each other and were transfixed…
The night after I saw Shining City, I had a dream. It started with some reassuringly everyday stuff about working in a kitchen with a small, spry, hyper-conventional and hyper-competent aproned woman — we seemed to be covering a toaster with lavish decorations and a thick coat of frosting. But…
The first time I saw The Toxic Avenger — possibly on HBO or Cinemax — in the late 1980s, I was floored. It was absurd, graphic, gross, and fit into none of the movie archetypes I was familiar with. Needless to say, I was hooked — and I wasn’t alone…
Notorious, about a crack dealer who becomes an iconic rapper who becomes a tragic legend, is the first film George Tillman Jr. has directed since 2000’s Men of Honor, about a sharecropper’s son who becomes the first black diver in the Navy who becomes the first amputee to return to…
Although playwright David Lindsay-Abaire is known for his absurdist humor, impossible characters and unexpected quirks, his Rabbit Hole is a serious and entirely conventional drama dealing with grief — perhaps the worst grief possible, the death of a child. Bereaved mother Becca is a rigid perfectionist, given to baking sophisticated…
One of the most persistent legends about the Chinese martial arts is that their world-famous crowning glory, shaolin kwan (Shaolin temple boxing), was actually invented by a visitor from India. Admittedly, it wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that the story began to get around that in the mid-500s CE, during…
Joseph Priestley invented soda water, discovered that plants emit oxygen, co-founded the Unitarian Church in England, wrote what was possibly the first popular science book, befriended Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, had breakfast with George Washington, influenced the writing of the Jefferson Bible, became a target of the…
Yale grad turned software developer turned geek comedy songwriting icon Jonathan Coulton had me at the line “Welcome to my secret lair here on Skullcrusher Mountain.” It’s the first line of the first song I ever heard by Coulton, and it kicks off a first-person love letter from a mad…
Boy, those folks at the Arvada Center’s annual Colorado Cowboy Poetry Gathering really know how to end a run. This year’s fest, which each year assembles rural bards from across the country (and, occasionally, from around the world) for an intensive five-day celebration of poetry and music inspired by ranching…
If you’re happy about no more Bush, clap your hands. If you’re happy about our first black president, clap your hands. If you’re happy and you know it, then your plans will surely show it. And if you’re not happy today, well, there’s always conservative talk radio. The rest of…
On this date 35 years ago, the political and cultural landscape looked almost as bleak as it does today. Disco saturated the airwaves, and Nixon was about to become entrenched in the Watergate scandal. Thankfully, the good people at Buffalo Exchange remember 1974 ending with real promise: Not only did…
Want to get your (coffee) buzz on? Then come watch some of the best and brightest in the Rocky Mountain region’s baristical scene as they grind, press, steam and pour at the second annual Mountain Regional Barista Competition. Event organizer Michael Strumpf says the competitors will prepare three drinks: cappuccino,…
You wouldn’t think a book about surviving on Mars would begin with Mark Twain, but according to author Robert Zubrin, a hundred years from now, Mars may be very much like the Wild West. “The book that I was reading when I wrote How to Live on Mars was Mark…
Grab your cowboy boots and hat for some country fun at the fourth annual Country Showcase, a fundraiser for local children’s charities, at the Cowboy Lounge, 1941 Market Street. But beware: There’s a Headache waiting for you. Yes, Headache the mechanical bull will be on hand to toss about twenty…
Catch up with the author of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, a New York Times Bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club entry that was easily one of 2008’s most celebrated books, tonight at An Evening with David Wroblewski. Colorado resident Wroblewski will read from, discuss and sign copies of his book,…
Facing possible torture and death at the hands of the warlords tearing their country asunder, the women of Liberia stood up and resisted the violence through non-violent means, helping bring an end to their country’s civil war. The story of those women is told in Pray the Devil Back to…
Did you ever stop to wonder exactly when it was that folks began to wrap themselves in animal skins? My guess is that it first happened when some hairless missing link got cold. After that, clothes became a cornerstone of civilization: cover-ups for the modest, gilding for lilies and just…
Todd Snider, the Tennessee-based troubadour who has spent nearly fifteen years and more than twelve proper releases perfecting the humorous talking folk song, is, to put it simply, a strange guy who records and performs strange songs. His ironic eccentricity, however, is his charm. Part satire, part serious, part song,…
Remember snow days? What it felt like waking up in the morning and anxiously turning on the local news to see if your school district’s name was on the bottom scroll, inviting you to waste the whole day sledding or doing doughnuts in the school parking lot? Well, playing hooky…
Oh, you young folks, with your Ocean’s Eleven and all that. There’s nothing to compare to the original Rat Pack, who collectively starred in the original movie. And anyway, who today could be as suave, classy, footloose and, okay, a little bit sleazy, as Frank Sinatra, one of the redoubtable…
