Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Retirement

Here’s the question: should, in fact, old acquaintance be forgot? Has the venerable New Year’s Rockin’ Eve run its course? This isn’t so much about Dick Clark, or whether he’s ready for the pasture. He’s not. He never will be. Despite a massive stroke in 2004, which caused him to…

There Will Be Blood

A great brooding thundercloud of a movie, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood arrives as if from nowhere on a gust of critical acclaim, lowering over a landscape of barren mesas and hot, scrubby hills. Anderson’s epic, no less than his career, is both fearfully grandiose and wonderfully eccentric…

Grand Design

The story of how The Kite Runner’s Homayoun Ershadi got into movies is a bit like those fanciful tales of stars and starlets discovered by casting agents while sitting at the soda counter in Schwab’s Pharmacy. Only, in Ershadi’s case, he was driving his Range Rover through the streets of…

Jack Kerouac Shlepped Here

The fiftieth anniversary year of On the Road, Jack Kerouac’s classic, is officially over — but Jack is back. From 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. on Tuesday, January 8, the Denver Public Library’s fabulous Fresh City Life program will host the inaugural session of Stories That Could Be True, a…

Wedding Bells

After all the subtle hints, secret wishes and midnight prayers, it finally happened: Your man proposed. It was so romantic. The dinner that night was delicious, the wine was heady and the ring was perfect. And now that you’ve gotten your heart’s desire, the hard part begins. You have to…

Let There Be Light

Light is insubstantial and infinitely dynamic, rich with emotional associations and relatively easy to manipulate under the right conditions. such properties make it a fascinating artistic medium, one that Sliding Door Gallery, 554 Santa Fe Drive, explores in an offering titled In the Light of Thought: a Winter Celebration. The…

Life, the Universe, and Everything

“I’m always thinking in shapes and colors,” says ceramicist Judith Cohn. “It’s who I am; it’s how I think.” Cohn’s Dust to Dust exhibit at Spark Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive, is a ceramic installation made up of about 300 abstract pieces layered in an archeological dig of a piece…

Mystery Machine

“You know Buntport — they’re kind of insane,” says Norma Moore, artistic director for Stories on Stage. Maybe that’s not what attracts you to a night out, but I can’t think of a better reason to head down to Buntport Theater, 717 Lipan Street, tonight at 7 p.m. for the…

Beyond the Cowboys

Today’s Heart of the West: New Art/New Thinking symposium at the Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, is one arm of an overall program dealing with the past, present and future of Western American art. The George Carlson: Heart of the West exhibit and its accompanying publication, New…

Eat, Sing and Be Jewish

Holidays, shmolidays! They’re over, fartik! And what better way might there be to get past them completely than with an event as fresh as the year is new? While our Christian brothers and sisters drag out their half-dead trees and pack up the ornaments for another year, we Jews can…

Fair Game

Local Bush-administration whistleblower Sean Shealy, who’s penned a book called Corruption and Cover-Ups of the Bush White House Unmasked, is alarmed that most people — even the ones who already long to see W. unseated — don’t really know how unlawful our national leader has actually been, or why. Shealy…

Trivial Pursuit

I grew up on a steady diet of Jeopardy, part of a family so competitive about trivia that we produced a University of Colorado at Boulder Trivia Bowl champ/Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? contestant (not me) and warped the rest of us for life. To this day, my kin…

Life of the Liberator

You may have heard of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist known for saving hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust. But you’ve probably never heard of Varian Fry. After Nazi Germany invaded France in 1940, Fry, a New York City editor, volunteered to travel to Marseille to help anti-fascist refugees. He…

Rabbit Season

For most of us, our first concert involved a rock band or maybe a hip-hop act. But the initial gig witnessed by my son, Nick, was more unusual: Bugs Bunny on Broadway, which returns to town tonight. And it could hardly have been a better experience. During the early ’90s,…

The Good Word

As the first lesbian drama series, The L Word had to package itself very carefully to stay afloat in the cutthroat world of television ratings. Writer Ilene Chaiken and director Rose Troche (both bona fide lesbians) used the glamour gimmick, giving audiences a cast to drool over. Even the now-transgendered…

End of an Era

When Lauri Lynnxe Murphy opened Capsule Gallery and Event Center at 560 Santa Fe Drive in 2004, it was one artist’s gift to the Denver community: a place to show, sell and make art. Unfortunately, the evil forces of real-estate development will soon knock down and pave over Murphy’s beloved…

Kings of the Road

If you have better plans tonight than being filmed for indie television while participating in a bicycle scavenger hunt that ends with free beer and metal, party on. As for the rest of you, show some support for the courier class by riding down to Union Station around 7 p.m…

The Fight Is On

Veteran gamer and Colorado Cutthroat Connection founder Gregory Richardson expects the second annual Fall Fighter Frenzy to be among the biggest tourneys he’s staged to date, with two full days of play and more than $10,000 in prizes up for grabs. “Last year we had mad turnout,” he notes, in…

Riding High

Despite their completely impractical nature, RVs hold a special place in my heart. Part of it is nostalgia for childhood adventures, but part of it is the sheer, ridiculous audacity of driving a house around. I love the big, stupid things, and I dream of owning one before the oil…

Questions and Answers

Who wouldn’t love to get a little glimpse into the future — or even just some new perspective on the present? The new year has just begun; surely you have some questions about what the next twelve months hold. Will you get that promotion? Will you finally stick to your…

Climb Every Mountain

It’s no lie to say that the Ouray Ice Climbing Festival is the premier event of its kind. Although scrambling up ice isn’t as popular as hiking or rock climbing, it takes a lot of skill to navigate an ice waterfall. And the Ouray Ice Park comprises both natural and…

Stage Stop

As winter break comes to a close, four out of five parents agree that it’s way better to get out of the house than follow through on those dark urges to muzzle the next kid who whines “I’m bo-ored” one more time. There’s no need for boredom, after all, when…