Party Like a Rock Star

Magic Cyclops concedes that the main thing that makes tonight’s free Championship Karaoke at the hi-dive (7 South Broadway) the “Holiday Special Edition” is the fact that it occurs during the holiday season — but he does promise the possibility of celebrity appearances. At the very least, the ol’ MC…

Filling in for Floyd

Take a trip to the dark side of the moon tonight with Wish We Were Floyd, a local Pink Floyd tribute act featuring members of Savage Henry and several other Denver bands. The show will cover a wide variety of Floyd material, from familiar favorites to obscure early material, focusing…

Art of the State

Denver’s already unique Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art, 1311 Pearl Street, took a step in an uncharted direction when its new temporary show, Driven to Abstraction: Colorado Art From 1880 to 2007, debuted earlier this month. Switching from his usual focus on modernistic art, curator Hugh Grant expanded…

Civil Sights

It’s hard to believe that a mere fifty years ago, nine African-American high-school students had to be escorted by federal troops, past a menacing stand of Arkansas National Guardsmen, local police and white citizens, simply to exercise their dubious right to go inside Little Rock Central High and sit alongside…

For the Birds

For many people, the New Year is a time to make resolutions, think about the past and take stock of the future. For the Audubon Society of Greater Denver, it’s time to do the same for city-dwelling birds. More than 75 volunteer birdwatchers have signed up to (figuratively) beat the…

Resolution Runover

Fussy folks always say you should take it easy on the day after, when you wake up bleary-eyed with a hammering head: Eat toast, drink liquids — not the kind you indulged in last night — and sleep in. Pshaw. Or maybe you’re the sort who can’t even seem to…

Get On the Bus

“Bus trips beat the shit out of a bake sale,” says Dustin Huth, founder of the Basics Fund, a non-profit organization that raises funds to provide health insurance for artists — largely by hosting a mobile gala that will take you from Boulder to just about every jam show in…

Kwanzaa at the Mike

Cafe Nuba, the eighteen-and-up open-mike amalgamation of spoken word, performance art, political prose, indie film and tight beats that occurs the last Friday of every month at the Roxy Theater, 2549 Welton Street, is always a crowd-pleaser. But tonight’s 8 p.m. showcase ups the festivity ante with Nuba’s eighth annual…

Home on the Range

Winter changes everything. Although many of the simple pioneer pleasures offered at Four Mile Historic Park are available year-round, these activities take on a whole new sheen when frosted with beautiful snow and holiday sparkle. So Four Mile’s Pioneer Winter Camp, a four-day series of half-day programs for kids, might…

Ski School

Humans are always in such a rush; sometimes we don’t even look up while we dart from one place to another. And it seems that even with recreation, the objective is to cram in as much activity as possible. We boast about how many runs we got in during our…

New Year X 4

If one New Year’s countdown just isn’t enough, or texting far-away friends at midnight never makes it through drunk-dialing airwaves, or you’re just tired of bars that are more crowded than Times Square — try ringing in this New Year the multimedia way. Popping its cork for the first time…

Rock This Way

Guitarist/vocalist Daniel Sproul wasn’t even a zygote when Aerosmith released 1975’s Toys in the Attic, which he and his fellow twenty-somethings in Rose Hill Drive will perform in its entirety tonight and tomorrow night in Boulder. But he discovered the LP at a formative age. “I got into that when…

Et Tu, Titus?

Shakespeare scholars have been worrying away at Titus Andronicus forever because the play is so bloody bad (and we mean bloody). They’ve suggested that it’s not really the Bard’s work, or perhaps that it’s a parody. The characters are nuts and the plot is nonsensical, filled with mutilation and murder…

Mammoth Problems

The Colorado Mammoth — along with the entire National Lacrosse League — was sent to the penalty box on October 16 when the NLL and the players’ association fell short of a new collective-bargaining agreement. For considerably longer than the standard two- or five-minute penalty, the 2008 season seemed body-checked…

New Beginnings

It’s the age-old New Year’s resolution: “This year, I am finally going to get in shape.” Well, here’s an idea: Instead of waiting till Tuesday to start your health kick, head to Genesis Fitness, 1244 East Colfax Avenue, for Free Fitness Saturday, where you can participate in an intense workout…

Bruised by Fate

Life can change in an instant, and sometimes that change disrupts or even destroys the carefully wrought plans we’ve made for the future. In DarkBlueAlmostBlack — which ends its run tomorrow as part of Cinema Q’s film series at the Starz FilmCenter in the Tivoli — Jorge (Quim Gutiérrez) is…

Frock Out: The Video

Fresh City Life and The Fabric Lab are keeping the buzz around the Frock Out Independent Designers Challenge runway show alive with this video they posted recently to YouTube. Check it out, and if you missed the show, be sure to read Aubrey Shoe’s recap of the runway looks created…

Ho-Frickin’-Ho: Christmas Specials No One Should See

There’s a lot of Christmas TV. Enough that ABC Family can fill up 25 Days of it in the month of December, stack up specials one after the other in prime time, and never have to repeat a thing. That’s a lot of holiday spirit. It only stands to reason,…

It Just Needs a Little Love: A Charlie Brown Christmas

Okay, so what’s wrong with A Charlie Brown Christmas? The answer, it might surprise you, isn’t “nothing”. So let’s get this out of the way right off the top. The animation is somewhat clumsy. The voicework is pretty bad in spots. And—horror of horrors—it actually culminates in the recital of…

Project Runway: Sweet Merciful Crap

Just when it seemed like Project Runway could not possibly stage a more boring challenge, they go for something that positively screams “average.” Yes, yes, I do think that it was a great idea to make the designers create a new look for their plain-Jane models who had recently lost…

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Here’s the thing: Tim Burton pulled it off. Nearing the end of an uncommonly strong year for American movies, he’s taken a hallowed classic of the modern musical theater, hemmed in the narrative from well over two hours to well under, cast confessed non-singers in the principal roles, and somehow…

Charlie Wilson’s War

Hell of a thing, getting Mike Nichols to adapt the yer-kiddin’-me story of Charlie Wilson, the congressman from Lufkin, Texas, who damn near single-handedly helped the Afghans kick out the Russians in the 1980s. Seems about par for the course with this story, in which everybody knows somebody who can…