Rae McCall didn’t grow up wanting to be a cop. She didn’t dream of going undercover or busting bad guys. In fact, McCall was a wife, mother and waitress hoping to become an attorney when friend, Armedia Gordon, approached her with a tempting opportunity. According to an ad in the…
There’s something to be said about being in the right place at the right time, especially in show business. Just ask Jimmy Pardo, host of the highly successful podcast Never Not Funny. “I was ahead of the curve, when nobody knew what podcasting was,” he explains via cellphone from a…
Artists are a peculiar bunch. They have, shall we say, proclivities. As much as they make art, which they thankfully do, they also like to collect all manner of attic-leavings and dumpster-junk and weird objects and other things. Sometimes they have to sell them, perhaps to make room for more,…
Like Sting’s most absurdly protracted tantra, the Harry Potter series of books and movies (and merchandise) has for over a decade been dangling the carrot in front of its fans: What’s going to happen? Last night, the first of those fans found out the answer — a revelation that left…
Taking an obvious cue from the catalog of great Arnold Schwarzenegger films, 1994’s Twin Sitters has all of the stereotypes one could ever want out of a cast of D-list actors. Uppity white people (a real butler too!), bratty kids, a sassy black woman and, of course, the oily variety…
The name Angie Zapata is known across the country for her brutal murder in Greeley in 2008, when she was killed for being biologically born a man. It was the first hate-crime case in the country involving a transgender person, and her murderer was found guilty. While her family wanted…
A scheduled Sarah Palin visit to Denver earlier this year was canceled after the organizer complained about “safety concerns.” But there are no such concerns surrounding the “documentary” about her life, The Undefeated — especially since its showing in only one theater in the Palin-friendly burb of Highlands Ranch. The…
Kick it! Local photographer Terry “The Rat” Ratzlaff — best known for his snowboarding and action sports photography — is one of ten featured artists at tonight’s 1st annual Sole Food art show presented by Division West at Black Book Gallery, 555 Santa Fe Drive, from 6 p.m. to midnight…
Strange, intricate art projects have a way of randomly popping up around the Westword office, but usually they come with some kind of semi-frightening note with a phone number, or at least an indication of their ownership — like terrorist groups always admit when they bomb stuff. Except we like…
After a week of monsoon-like weather, it’s finally time to get out and enjoy the daytime shining sun. It seems like it’s been years since we’ve had an evening without rain, but there are so many fine events going on this weekend you’ll be more than willing to pull out…
Women’s soccer. Whoa, wait, wake up. It’s not a yawn anymore. This past week proved women’s soccer can be exciting. On Sunday, an amazing late goal put the U.S. team into a shootout with Brazil, where the Americans won and advanced in the 2011 World Cup. Since that game, ESPN’s…
Given the horrible, atrocious things people do to each other (thanks, horrible people, for keeping journalism alive!), we sometimes imagine the news actually crawling off the page like some sort of repugnant lower life form — now, thanks to this photo a reader sent in this week, we have a…
From 1988 to 1992, I attended Girl Scout camp at Tomahawk Ranch in Bailey. It was awesome. We made tie-dye T-shirts, ate burnt s’mores and hunted for Snipes (a fictionalized skunk-rat that was rumored to live in the woods and could only be captured in pillow cases by Girl Scouts)…
That bitch Gretchen may have officially taken home the prize for last season of Project Runway, but everyone knows our boy Mondo Guerra got robbed: He had the most style (none of the other designers could touch him in terms of sheer inventiveness) and the best drama (coming out as…
Interactive texts have been around since the ’70s (or earlier, depending on how you’re defining them), but the recent push of handheld electronic reading devices has exploded the potential for creating and reimagining works. Still, it hasn’t been until recently we’ve started seeing anyone make real use of the magical…
In Silver Sparrow, the latest book by novelist Tayari Jones, the story follows two girls growing up in Atlanta — but there’s a twist: Dana, who narrates the first half of the book, is the secret half-sister of Chaurisse, who narrates the second half of the book. The two girls…
With DSK (Dominique Strauss-Kahn) and his did-he-didn’t-he-rape-a-New-York-hotel-maid story all over both sides of the Atlantic, it’s not a great time to be French. The guy once seen as a top contender in 2012 presidential election pool has now become a poster-child for what Americans think is wrong with the French…
The Colorado Roadless Project and the Outdoor Alliance have a cool new campaign promoting their efforts to protect Colorado’s 4.2 million acres of National Forest lands currently designated as “Roadless Areas” for mountain biking, hiking, climbing, paddling, backcountry skiing and snowboarding, and other outdoor activities. They’re breaking out the big…
In a Freudian sense, domestication is a pretty steep trade-off: For human beings (we call our domestication “civilization”), we get the benefits of safety, security and society, the comfortable pleasure of staking out some degree of order in an otherwise chaotic, dangerous world — the price, of course, is our…
The first time the founding members of SuperBaby got together to work on their freestyle rapping skills, the results were shockingly insightful: “We like to fight,” the hook went. “We like to kick you in the dick.” “There was never really a concept that we would become, like, a legitimate…
Author and burlesque star Vivienne VaVoom, aka Michelle Baldwin, has been to a lot of singles events, but what makes the Stag Social Club different from the rest is its laid-back attitude. The monthly event, hosted by the Denver Public Library’s Fresh City Life program, offers a comfortable, relaxed setting…
Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron’s gritty and excellent film about a future where everyone has become sterile, plays tonight at the Denver FilmCenter as part of their recent sci-fi series. The film is a story about finding hope in an era of hopelessness. But gray skies and bombings aside, we…
