Q&A With Rome 1960 Author David Maraniss

David Maraniss, who speaks at the LoDo Tattered Cover on Thursday, July 31 (click here to learn more), is a staffer and Pulitzer Prize winner who’s penned some acclaimed political books, including First In His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton. But in recent years, he’s also established his reputation…

Some Notable Facts from the DNC Security Trial

The courtroom of U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger was packed on July 29 for the all-day trial over whether the Democratic National Convention security arrangements being planned by the city and the Secret Service pass the Constitutional smell test. The lawsuit was originally filed in May by the ACLU on…

The Westword.com Blog Shortcut, July 29

Denver-based indie film Skills Like This nabbed a distribution deal. Drowning in the white caps of westword.com’s blogworld? Have some floaties: Here at the Latest Word, Joel Warner reports that Skills Like This, a locally produced indie film, has been tapped for nationwide distribution, the first Denver film to do…

Newly Discovered Photos of the Steel/Fontius Building’s Origins

As work continues on refurbishing the long-dilapidated “Fontius” building on the corner of 16th and Welton, passersby are starting to get a sense of what the glory days must have been like for this historic structure, which went up in 1922 as the Steel Building, home to a Steel’s department…

Wanted: Clint Eastwood on Black Velvet

I’ve had Clint Eastwood on the brain recently. Not the new, really old, Oscar-winning, Hollywood-Teddy-bear Clint Eastwood, but the bad-ass, cigarillo-smoking, gun-toting, Orangutan-loving, two-kinds-of-people-in-this-world, make-my-day Clint Eastwood. The reason is because I keep seeing him around, first on an awesome The Good, The Bad and The Ugly lightswitch plate at…

I’m Not Don Cheadle or Judy Collins, But Still…

Like any Hall of Fame – Baseball, Football, Rock and Roll, Robot — it’s more fun to talk about the people (or robots) who are left out than it is to discuss those who made it in. And this week’s news that General Robert T. Herres (pictured), the first head…

Slideshow: The Many Faces of the Pleasures Dudes

Denver’s Pleasures Dudes – late-night TV bandits and the subjects of a 2007 Westword feature – hit the red carpet last week for a porn-tastic event with Wicked Pictures, and they brought their camera. Head to the slideshow page for a bizarre slideshow of the Pleasures Dudes and the women…

Local Film Skills Like This Nets U.S. Distribution Deal

Score one for Colorado’s film scene. Skills Like This, the Denver-based indie caper film helmed by local Oscar-winning producer Donna Dewey and longtime Denver commercial director Monty Miranda, has clinched a U.S. distribution deal with Shadow Distribution, the first such deal for a Denver movie in a long, long time…

Unreal Estate: The $1.6 Million White Box

Asking price: $1.6 mill. Home sales across the metro area may have all the momentum of a Nader presidential campaign, but developers along the Platte River continue to be manically upbeat. The glass boxes keep multiplying, and a penthouse in the Flour Mill Lofts has an asking price upwind of…

Bustin’ Out

Elizabeth Welch (Citrine), Reyna Von Vett (Madame Reyna), Melinda Smart (Sapphire) and Michelle Sergeeff (Amethyst) star in Leadville or Bust. Photo by Kellie Coughlin. I wasn’t prepared to be enchanted by Leadville or Bust, which runs at the Crossroads Theater on Tuesday and Wednesday nights through August 13. I’d spoken…

Meet Us On Alameda — Windsor Gardens

From Red Rocks to the big white balls of Buckley Air Force Base, Alameda Avenue runs through Lakewood, Denver and Aurora, collecting a series of religious, cultural and ethnic hubs along the way. Westword drove Alameda from one end to another for the fifth in our ocassional profiles of metro…

Dueling Press Conferences at the Courthouse!

That was awkward. Unconventional Action, the anarchist DNC protest group, just held a press conference on the steps of the Denver City and County Building even as local religious and political figures, members of We Believe Colorado, were setting up for a press conference of their own. What’s a reporter…

The Westword.com Blog Shortcut, July 28

Chris Andersen, aka Birdman, aka Empty Wallet Guy. Below lies your somewhat trusty guide to Westword.com’s five sort of trusty blogs. Use as directed. Kenny Be takes his weekly convention cartoon, Delegating Denver, down that old country road, to West Virginia. The Cat’s Pajamas cruises the aisles at Perpetual, the…

Local Lady Finger Blog Scratches at Gender Dynamics

The gloves have long been off for local scribe Naomi Zeveloff. As an editorial fellow here at Westword, she unleashed fury on the likes of Republican House District 56 hopeful Muhammad Ali Hasan in an article ColoradoPols.com called “quite possibly the single most damaging piece of press that we have…

Kennedy adviser Ted Sorensen on Colorado Matters

From Colorado Public Radio: Colorado Matters this morning aired a great interview with Kennedy adviser Ted Sorensen, who addressed the potential impact of Obama’s acceptance speech. Hear the interview — and Kennedy’s “New Frontier” speech — at kcfr.org…

Idle Thoughts about Denver International Airport

The City of Denver just loves to stare at itself in the mirror and marvel at how green it has become. “Mirror, mirror on the wall: Who’s the greenest of them all?” it asks, while turning around to see how its ass looks in these new post-consumer-material jeans. No matter…

Dear DNC — Wish You Were Here

It’s possible I’m getting swept up in DNC fever. As a journalist, I’m paying extra attention to it for sure. But as a Denver native whose father is an historian, I appreciate the pomp and spectacle the event will bring, as well as the ground-breaking significance of a black candidate,…

An Ill Wind Blows the DNC No Good

The Rocky Mountain News’s “Bet made on carbon offsets” article on Saturday started with this: “Thanks to a windmill that tolls day and night producing clean electricity, the tiny eastern plains outpost of Wray has landed in the center of the fast-moving, carbon-offset world.” When he read that, Brad Jones,…

Chris Andersen, man of the $900 bar bill, back with Nuggets

Denver barmaids were surely rejoicing last week when the Nuggets signed a one-year deal with Chris Andersen, the troubled forward who earned his nickname, Bird Man, as a flailing rookie forward with the Nuggets in 2001. In his time here – about two and a half seasons – Andersen’s impact…

Denver Art Museum Kills Film Series

The Denver Art Museum’s film series, which has provided area film buffs with a wonderful opportunity to see classic cinema on the big screen for over a decade, is dead. DAM film curator Tom Delapa, who took on the film programming role in 1998 and joined the curatorial staff in…