There’s so much to do in Colorado during the summer, it’s almost paralyzing. There are the always-popular but always-sold-out concerts at the Denver Botanic Gardens, the KBCO World Class Rockfest, the Shakespeare Festival, the Taste of Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival, the Grand Prix, the ever-expanding number of farmers’…
While summer days are great for lounging, it’s the hot summer nights that will truly make memories. And nothing heats things up faster than a tacky theme party. Here are four summer evenings that are sure to live on in infamy — and make you the social director for summers…
I’m here at the Off Track Betting room at the sprawling Red and Jerry’s complex on Oxford and Santa Fe for one reason: to learn how to gamble. Or more accurately, to learn how to play the horses. Gambling in its simplest state is no more challenging than sleep. Want…
As the sultry musk of summer gets ready to coat our bodies like a clammy dishrag, here are a couple of homemade mix tapes to keep you cool in the midst of all that global warming, sticky sex and melted ice cream. The first tape is made up of some…
Crystal Sharp, owner, SheShe boutique KissMe mascara “It acts like a waterproof mascara, but it comes off with warm water. It’s fabulous. You can swim in it; you can tan in it and not worry about it running all over your face.” Gabriel Conroy, designer Large-scale bone, coral or turquoise…
As comedian Steven Wright once said, “24 hours in a day…24 beers in a case…coincidence?” I think not. There are thirteen weeks of summer left — and thirteen perfect drinks to get you through them. Coincidence? I think not. Here’s to a liquid tour of Denver! Mojito Cuzco Kick off…
Forget ice cream. Discriminating dessert connoisseurs know that gelato is the real hero of summer. “When I got here seven years ago, it was almost impossible to find gelato,” says Simone Parisi, owner of Parisi, a north Denver Italian restaurant and deli that recently added a gelato counter. “It’s definitely…
Every summer when I was younger, my friends and I basically moved out of our parents’ houses and into the surrounding wilderness, resorting to a primitive caste system whereby whoever had the coolest stuff dictated what we did. We spent days re-creating World War II with cap guns, fortifications in…
Gemini: May 21 to June 20 Brain power. Thanks to Mercury, you can reshape relationships and save some money with a little thinking. Those super-charged synapses can also help you heal old emotional wounds. In July, someone close needs your financial advice. Give. Just don’t sacrifice time you had set…
Well, I’ve decided to make it official and issue a formal statement on the matter: I hate juried shows. They’re the slums among group shows, and it’s hard to believe they’re still being done. I don’t even know why I still go to see them. The problems with juried shows…
There’s an extremely unusual show at Capsule (554 Santa Fe Drive, 303-623-3460) called Justin Beard: Second Hand Smoke. The handsome exhibit represents a very strong early showing for a young emerging artist who’s just out of art school. Capsule director Lauri Lynnxe Murphy describes Beard’s installation as being “very cool…
Abstractions on Paper. The current show at the city’s coziest little art shop, the Emil Nelson Gallery, is a fascinating group endeavor put together by director Hugo Anderson. The exhibit combines historic and contemporary works in the form of watercolors, prints, drawings and photos by more than two dozen artists…
Rattlebrain Theater Company consists of a group of highly talented and appealing actors with loads of stage presence. Director Dave Shirley, who also writes much of the material, keeps things buzzing along and utilizes music and video clips to great effect. In It’s Hickenlooper’s World, the troupe’s target is Denver…
Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba is a difficult play to carry off. The plot concerns a group of five daughters confined within the walls of their house for an eight-year mourning period by the iron will of their bitter, violent, widowed mother. Marriage is the only possible…
Alarms & Excursions. Alarms & Excursions is minor Michael Frayn, a series of comic finger pieces, but it can’t help bearing the master’s stamp. A group of eight playlets examines the role of technology in our lives and its impact on human communication. In the first, a friendly dinner is…
The first few minutes of Shrek 2 are cluttered with more references to the movies than David Thomson’s thick, rich history text New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Watching it is like sitting next to an ADD patient with access to a remote control and a hundred premium cable channels; you…
Samurai have never been strangers to film; in fact, an entire genre has sprung from their legend, with plenty of attendant offshoots, cross-pollinators and beneficiaries (Westerns, slasher films, Star Wars). Lately, the feudal Japanese warriors have enjoyed a particular bounty of screen time: Last year brought us The Last Samurai,…
In 2004 A.D., as the five remaining members of the legendary Monty Python comedy troupe lie in coffins in a Vanity Fair spread to jeer at their own deaths, it’s really nice to have them back together commanding the big screen. Behold anew their wonderfully wiggy Monty Python’s Life of…
Aspiring filmmakers everywhere — many of them with better access to cameras and computers than to, say, actual talent — still daydream about being Kevin Smith. That’s because Smith’s tale is the ultimate indie success story of the 1990s, a fantasy come true starring a young striver who created a…
There’s a lot more to leading an orchestra than podium skills, so if you think just anyone can wave that little stick around in time to the music, forget about it. That said, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra has had an extended honeymoon with exuberant, multi-faceted conductor Marin Alsop in the…
Thursday, May 20 It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful place to swirl, sniff and sip fine wines than the Denver Botanic Gardens, which is delicately heady, colorful and fragrant near the height of its spring bloom. The urban Eden will be its own best advertisement during tonight’s Wine on…
This past Christmas, I cleaned the LoDo Tattered Cover out of every last paperback copy of Plainsong, Kent Haruf’s lyrical novel about life, loss and love on the Eastern plains in the fictional town of Holt. This wasn’t simply some lame attempt to confine all of my holiday shopping to…
