I tried to chat with Betsy Tobin by phone, I really did — but her cell signal dove in and out like a shadow creeping across a rock as she traveled through the expansive desert southwest toward a gig at the Grand Canyon. Our conversation wasn’t meant to be, perhaps,…
Bits of scrap metal, pins, woven Tyvek, chopped paper maps, an unraveled sweater, recycled plastic, wool felt — this is the discarded and forgotten stuff of our times. However, any archeologist can tell you that this trash holds the key to how we live. It’s a smelly reflection of who…
“August is one of the most heavily attended First Fridays, so we wanted to take advantage of that and have a party,” says Andrea Barela, development director at NEWSED Community Development Corporation, the driving organization behind Santa Fe Drive’s revitalization and purveyor of premier Latino cultural events such as the…
The 26-year-old Chicken Lips comedy troupe is as busy as ever. This month marks the first time that the group’s members have performed an original show in the Avenue Theater since 2005, when they took it over. Free Gas: Chicken Lips Gives It to America, which opened last night and…
“Out West, people don’t parade their eccentricities. Down South, we put them out there for everybody to see,” explains former Southerner Charlotte D’Armond Talbert. Six years ago, the North Carolina theater teacher got together with former student Tessa Carr (now a fellow theater Ph.D.) to create an annual show that…
I just don’t understand the current administration. To wit: After suicide bombers take down the Twin Towers and put a hole in the Pentagon, George W. Bush swears up, down and sideways that Iraq is fully behind al-Qaeda, that Saddam Hussein has been secretly manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, and…
Modern Muse Theatre Company, created by Steve Lavezza and Gabriella Cavallero and dedicated to mounting daring and relevant works, has completed its third year and is about to announce its fourth. Tonight the company presents Back to the Muse, a major fundraiser featuring Jamie Horton, who for decades was one…
Despite recent efforts to curb usage of disposable bags, “Paper or plastic?” continues to be a question that echoes across grocery-store checkout lanes. Rik Sargent, curator of the new Paper or Plastic? exhibition at gallery910Arts, hopes to turn the query into a call for change by making shoppers aware of…
My science-fiction roots go deep. One of my first memories is of standing in line to see Star Wars when I was four. I grew up watching Star Trek reruns with my dad. I discovered and subsequently devoured Robert Heinlein’s juvenile novels in grade school and graduated to his adult…
Best-selling scribe David Maraniss, who visits town tonight, has written about politicians (most notably President Bill Clinton) and major sports figures, including coaching legend Vince Lombardi and baseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente. As for his latest, Rome 1960, which chronicles the 1960 summer Olympics, he says, “To some degree,…
I was nine years old the first time I saw Blade Runner, and at the time, I didn’t care that it was a thematically complex, multi-layered homage to film noir based on a masterwork of science fiction by Philip K. Dick. I just thought, “Wow, Han Solo is in a…
Brad and Libby Birky’s vision of feeding fresh, organic food to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, brought SAME Cafe to Denver. SAME (an acronym for So All May Eat) utilizes local, sustainable food sources, and the cafe features a simple, healthy menu of pizzas, salads and soups. Diners…
America owes a lot to her dreamers, the people who stayed true to their beliefs, building personal empires — and anti-empires — that helped shape what’s come to be known as the American Way. Which, if you think about it, is really a story of multiple roads taken. Iconoclasts, romantics,…
As everyone knows, Andy Warhol (seen in a Jamie Wyeth portrait) was one of the most important artists ever. Less well-known was his private career as a writer. Every day, Warhol recorded his activities in diary entries, and it was only after he died in 1987 that the contents of…
Sao Paolo is a colossus of a city that boils and roils with a multi-culti influence that would make even Americans do a double-take. Enter the electronic duo Telepathique, whose synthed-out sound speaks to its hometown’s status as a cosmopolitan party palace— albeit one designed by a Soviet-era architect smoked…
I was thirteen when Stephen Sommers’s 1999 remake-in-name-only of The Mummy came out — just about the ideal age. Sommers is definitely some kind of junk-addled auteur, and if The Mummy didn’t achieve its obvious goal of topping Raiders Of The Lost Ark, it was close enough as far as…
Swing Vote is an election-themed comedy that’s about twice as smart as you expect it to be and still only half as smart as you wish it was. The clever premise, which would have seemed like pure science-fiction no more than eight years ago, concerns a U.S. presidential election whose…
A few weeks back we received a press release introducing us to the wonders of the “fresh, new color from KitchenAid.” This color, while called “pear,” looks decidedly more like the pukey green avocado color that was all the rage in the ’70s. Even if this new green shade is…
While “Secondhand Sartorialism” is technically a street style blog, I simply have to share the incredible taste and style of my dear friend, Naomi Kelly. Naomi, who has a strong sense of personal style and an excellent eye for what suits her, has long been one of my personal style…
Summer is slowly coming to an end, and we are all racing out to do our back to school shopping. It’s important to keep in mind your own unique style, while also nodding to the fashions and styles of fall. If your style is: “Urban Hippie” Look for Hippie inspired…
One thing I have always loved about fashion is watching the ebb and flow of styles. Sure, every season there is some crazy trend that may stick — a la the skinny jean — or culminates in total disaster, like the popped collar. But there are always staples, pieces that…
The other day I was driving up 14th Ave and saw a young man out for a jog, sans shirt. Based on his physique, I would say this young buck is an aspiring Abercrombie model. So yummy. So, so yummy. I couldn’t keep my lecherous eyes off him. That was…
