Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

Fortunately for you and me out here in TV Land, The Brady Bunch was just a sunny place to visit. For Maureen McCormick (aka Marcia), Bradyville was far worse than just braces and a broken nose. After the show ended in 1974, she shed the bell bottoms and flowered dresses,…

One Book, Many Attitudes

Have you read this year’s One Book, One Denver selection, Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man? What did you think? “There’s a lot of drinking in the book,” notes Gina Rubano of the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs, “and quite a bit of misogyny, and so we wanted to talk about…

Yelle

In the video for “Ce Jeu,” a recent song by the French trio Yelle, singer Julie Budet shifts through hyper-color wardrobe changes like a snake shedding skin. One minute she’s wearing Nerf sculpture sunglasses; the next, grinding in a bold-stripe duo-chromatic body suit. Minimalism this ain’t. But it is keenly…

Gorillas in the Mist

There are very few opportunities in life to see 500 people dressed in gorilla suits, so make sure you don’t miss one today when the fifth annual Denver Gorilla Run takes place. This charity event, which raises funding and awareness for the plight of the world’s few remaining mountain gorillas,…

Running Scared

Running through Washington Park at dusk with ghouls and vampires on your coattails might constitute a bad dream most nights, but tonight it’s just the Scream Scram, a spooky way to get in shape for any actual running you might have to do from monsters (or cops) on Halloween. This…

Kicking It

Although “Kick or Treat” sounds more like a really sweet option for rogue Halloweeners — wherein costumed delinquents are either given candy or allowed to kick homeowners in the shins, then squeal off into the autumn night — it actually has more to do with soccer. To mark the last…

The beauty and ugliness of Damien Hirst

You’d have to be living under a rock — or have absolutely no interest in contemporary art — not to know that Damien Hirst is a superstar. For more than a decade he’s been one of the top artists in the world, and just about everything he makes is worth…

Jonas Burgert

When I went to the MCA/Denver (1485 Delgany Street, 303-298-7554, www.mcadenver.org) last week to preview Damien Hirst, the place was a beehive of activity. In addition to the Hirst display going up in the Large Works Gallery, another exhibit was being installed around the corner, in the Promenade Space. Called…

Capsule reviews of current shows

Braided Sorrow. No one knows exactly how many young women have been murdered in the Mexican border town of Juárez over the last decade, perhaps three or four hundred. The murder rate shot up after the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1994, when several U.S. companies set…

Dead Alive at the Esquire

Before the impressive Lord of the Rings trilogy (and the slew of Oscars he received) made Peter Jackson a household name, he was already a revered icon among horror fans for the brilliant, insane zombie opus Dead Alive (aka Braindead). The movie is probably the finest example ever of the…

Katrina, stark and surreal, in Trouble the Water

Hurricane Katrina may have driven off a large segment of New Orleans’s African-American population, the providers of much of the city’s character. But in one sense the deadly storm was a uniter, not a divider: Only three years ago, the devil wind brought together much of the country in contempt…

Now Showing

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…

The End Is Near

In six billion years, the sun will swell into a red giant and toast Earth. In two billion years, the Milky Way will collide with another galaxy. Asteroids, black holes, space microbes, supernovas and sun flares — these are just some of the ways the world could end. Where will…

Greased Lightning

Is it possible to drive across the country and never stop at a single gas pump? Author Greg Melville knows for a fact that it is possible; he and an old college buddy, Iggy, did it in 2006, driving Melville’s 1985 Mercedes station wagon powered by vegetable oil. And Melville…

Out of Africa

When Boulder-by-way-of-Canada newgrass musician and banjo virtuoso Jayme Stone blows into town tonight to perform in Swallow Hill’s Daniels Hall, he’ll arrive with more than just his five-string. Thanks to a seven-week stint in Mali, he’ll bring the knowledge and experience of two unknown musical ancestors, along with the konou…

Mr. President

Just when you thought there couldn’t be a bigger creep in the White House, along comes Charles H.P. Smith. “He’s a horrible guy,” says media contact Bob Wells. “Everything he does is bad — greed, torture, blackmail. He’s not based on any one president — wink, wink — but it’s…

Haunted House Museum

It’s that time of year again, when nothing is more inviting than a shivery, spine-tingling ghost story. And that makes the new Hunger Artists Ensemble Theatre production Haunted the perfect evening out. “I’m part of a paranormal research investigations team,” explains playwright and Hunger Artist Maggie Stillman, “so when we…

Lost and Found

Indulge your taste for the bizarre detritus of Western civilization tonight at the Found Footage Festival, a national touring act that presents some of the strangest moments ever captured on video. Curators Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett have been collecting cast-off videos from thrift stores, garage sales and dumpsters since…

Manifest Destiny

The people behind today’s Manifestation Celebration have been traveling with World Wellness Weekend and other fairs around the country, but this event is something different. “One of the big concepts that we’re presenting is the concept of conscious evolution and the fact that as individuals and on a planetary level,…

Comic Relief

Come down to Enchanted Grounds, 8800 South Colorado Boulevard in Highlands Ranch, for the fifth annual Denver 24-Hour Comics Challenge, where comic art-ists will create a 24-page comic from scratch in 24 hours. It’s a feat that tests the limits of both endurance and imagination. Organizer Stan Yan of Squid…