MSNBC at the DNC: all aboard for goofiness

Choo choo. MSNBC’s headquarters for the Democratic National Convention can be found behind Union Station, which may explain why it looks disturbingly like part of Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. During the first Denver taping of The Daily Show during convention week, host Jon Stewart ridiculed the net for leaving…

Wanted: DNC credentials

Please give generously. Seen on Market Street en route to the Democratic National Convention festivities at the Pepsi Center on Wednesday. Hope everything worked out for this guy — because clearly, the people of the Big Easy have suffered enough. — Michael Roberts…

Elvis 4 Obama

Elvis has left the building — the hard way. After Hillary Clinton moved that the delegates at the Democratic National Convention make Barack Obama the Dems’ presidential candidate by acclimation, the throng outside MSNBC’s headquarters behind Union Station erupted in applause. After watching them celebrate for a few minutes, I…

MSNBC versus the blue elephant at the DNC

As you can see, the elephant is topless. Amid MSNBC’s coverage of the Wednesday roll call of votes at the Democratic National Convention, a truck affiliated with a conservative organization — I didn’t catch the name — rolled up to the curb opposite the net’s headquarters to deliver the message,…

Shut out of the DNC Vanity Affair party — again

Hello, you must be going. When we stopped by the visitor’s bureau booth in Pavilion 3 outside the Pepsi Center yesterday — chips, beer and hits of oxygen! — the conversation turned to an e-mail that several Denver bold names had received that day, a painful slap in the face…

MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan in time out at the DNC

That’s Pat Buchanan on the lower level of MSNBC’s Election Express. I arrived at MSNBC’s Democratic National Convention headquarters about midway through the roll call of votes that finally resulted in the formal nomination of Barack Obama as the Dems’ presidential standard-bearer. Speakers amplified the voices of co-hosts Chris Matthews…

MSNBC at the DNC: all aboard for goofiness

Choo choo. MSNBC’s headquarters for the Democratic National Convention can be found behind Union Station, which may explain why it looks disturbingly like part of Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. During the first Denver taping of The Daily Show during convention week, host Jon Stewart ridiculed the net for leaving…

DNC crowds overwhelm 16th Street Mall shuttles

The second shuttle I passed — by walking. The Rocky Mountain News’ front-page headline described the mobs that have descended on the 16th Street Mall as a “hundred-year flood of humanity,” and that’s about right. How packed with people is the area? Yesterday, I walked from Westword’s offices, at approximately…

DNC delegates who care about saving the world? Not so much

Save me. As you may have noticed, this DNC thing is all about drinking and free stuff. The open bars at some delegate-friendly hotels start serving Bloody Marys at 10:30 a.m., and the Dems can hardly sneeze without stumbling on a free shuttle, water bottle, or bike. But as for…

Obama T-shirts: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Slide show Anyone who’s cruised the streets of the Denver this week has encountered a slew of Barack Obama-inspired T-shirts, both on sale racks and on bodies. Here are 20 we’ve seen, ranked from worst to best on a scale of 1-10 Obamas. Get’em while they last! Or don’t!…

Shut out of the DNC’s big Vanity Fair party. Again

Hello, you must be going. When we stopped by the visitor’s bureau booth in Pavilion 3 outside the Pepsi Center yesterday — chips, beer and hits of oxygen! — the conversation turned to an e-mail that several Denver bold names had received that day, a painful slap in the face…

Barack Obama’s education plan gets help from Colorado principal

Slide show This week’s Westword features a cover story by Jessica Centers about Mike Johnston, principal at Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton and one of Obama’s education advisers. For photos of Johnston, his students and teachers, see Mark Manger’s slide show. And read on for the text…

Denver Art Museum’s Focus: The Figure opens in time for the DNC

Living, 1992, by Gilbert and George. C-print photographs. Denver Art Museum; funds from 1994 Alliance for Contemporary Art Auction. See the slide show. In this week’s Westword, art critic Michael Paglia writes about Focus: the Figure, a reinstallation of permanent-collection galleries at the Denver Art Museum, which opened last week…

5280 web editor turns into crime-fighting vigilante during DNC

Move over, Batman. Vanessa Martinez is on the prowl. With all the drunk and oblivious and self-absorbed people around right now, Denver is a pickpocket’s wet dream – that is, unless they have the misfortune of running into Vanessa Martinez, 5280 magazine’s web editor and, as it turns out, possessor…

Barack Obama’s education plan gets help from Colorado principal

Slide show This week’s Westword features a cover story by Jessica Centers about Mike Johnston, principal at Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton and one of Obama’s education advisers. For photos of Johnston, his students and teachers, see Mark Manger’s slide show. And read on for the text…

A big can of whoopee at the Pepsi Center

Jesus, why didn’t I think of this sooner? I mean, I know those floor passes are hard to get, but still… Thanks to my anonymous poster from gayzetteblog.com for the heads up. A quick scan of the craigslist personals proves that this isn’t the only guy looking to get a…

Letters to the Editor

“Rise of the Flobots,” Adam Cayton-Holland, August 21 Go With the Flobots Adam Cayton-Holland, what a bunch of shit. First off, great job at being an impartial journalist and letting your understandable bias toward your friends’ band not interfere with your column. Picking up the sarcasm? Secondly, OutKast and Rage?…

Michelle Malkin can’t handle the 9/11 Truth

As of Tuesday night, Denver was still in one piece. Although the carnival atmosphere downtown, the sign-wavers handing out fliers, the vendors, the riot police and the closed streets thrilled some Denverites and irritated others, nothing had blown up. Unless, that is, you were in the CELL, a multimedia exhibit…

The DNC proves it: Denver loves black people

The last time I can recall seeing this city even vaguely like it is right now — mired in a whirlwind of excitement over the Democratic National Convention — was in 2005, when we hosted the NBA All-Star Game. Then, as now, Denver was aflame with gawkers and groupies, holier-than-thou…

Max Karson bids adieu to CU

When last we checked in with Max Karson, the controversial University of Colorado at Boulder student was in the headlines for “If It’s War the Asians Want…,” a satirical essay that many readers interpreted as racist even though he says he intended to make the opposite point. Now, however, such…

The Colorado Daily changes course

Colorado Daily reporter Richard Valenty is a self-described “political junkie” who has covered the doings of Boulder’s activists and office-holders for years — so he was understandably thrilled when his supervisors managed to land press credentials in his name for the Democratic National Convention. But what he’d hoped would be…