Arts & Culture

Thanks to eighteenth-century astronomer Charles Messier, amateur stargazing can be a marathon experience. Over the course of his life, Messier catalogued 110 deep-sky objects such as nebulae, galaxies and star clusters. “An amateur astronomer would really have to stay up from dusk till dawn to pull off the Messier Marathon,”…

The Project Space at MCA Denver, where artists-in-residence are ensconced, has rapidly become one of the state’s most prominent venues — not just because of the high quality of the offerings here, but also because those offerings are often the work of Colorado artists. Since its launch last year, the…

If you’ve ever felt like a stranger in a strange land, you’ll completely grok Frolics and Frippery, a new exhibit of “intimate objects for the body” created by area artist Janice Jakielski, opening today at Vertigo Art Space. The soft-sculpture objects — cloth goggles, hearing devices and other wearables —…

You would’ve had to have made a very conscientious, hermetic effort for the past few years in order to avoid having any notion of the popularity of a particular made-for-TV movie called High School Musical. Disney continues to milk its unexpected cash cow with countless spinoffs, merchandising and sequels. Now,…

What do soda pop and extreme death rituals of Borneo have to do with each other? Is there any connection between craft beer and Renaissance polyphony? Not on the surface — but then, the Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar has a reputation for delving deep beneath the obvious…

Metal bands that transition from the underground to the overground can suffer painful backlashes. Thus far, though, Mastodon – part of a massive Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival lineup that includes Slipknot, Disturbed, Machine Head, Underoath, Dragonforce, Five Finger Death Punch, The Red Chord, Suicide Silence, 36 Crazy Fists, Airbourne, Black…

“My Lord,” you might be saying, “Ween is still around?” And how, brother. Dismissed for two decades as a joke band, Ween has labored in sorta-obscurity while somehow simultaneously selling out shows and winning die-hard converts. How do they do it? Easy: Ween rules. In fact, the Pennsylvania group is…

The first 10,000 fans at tonight’s Rockies game will get a coupon that lets them buy a hot dog for a measly buckaroo. Hebrew National is gonna hook you up with the cheap eats, and who are you to argue, when rival goods such as brats at Coors Field will…

Reyna Von Vett didn’t have to look far for inspiration for her brand-new show, Leadville or Bust! She lives in Curtis Park, and “got to talking to some of the members of the Curtis Park community. I was chatting with Ken Miller, who lives right around the corner, and we…

Something scary is going on beneath St. Mark’s Coffeehouse. Once a week, a group gathers to pay homage to the darkness in preparation for the spookiest night of the year. “We all love Halloween over there,” explains Gio Toninelo. “We figured we’d do a countdown with a film every week.”…

Tom Petty is perpetually underrated. He debuted too late in pop music’s historical continuum to seem deserving of full classic-rocker status (although he’s certainly earned it by now) and came across like an apprentice rather than a peer when collaborating with Bob Dylan et al. (a result of his modesty,…

There are few movies that are as effective at making the undead simultaneously scary and funny as the 1985 horror-comedy Return of the Living Dead. Written and directed by Dan O’Bannon, on the heels of his hit Alien script, the movie pits a group of nihilistic punk kids, two hapless…

Shopping for vintage and retro clothes can be fun and rewarding, but it can also be frustrating. Like when you find something you absolutely love and purchase it on a whim — only to discover that it doesn’t actually fit. Well, Cynthia Joye has a solution to that problem: a…