Good Fest, Bad Fest

A pair of events included in Saturday’s Denver Film Festival slate ran the qualitative gamut. Things started on a positive note with a tribute to Vilmos Zsigmond, 76, a Hungary-born cinematographer who made some of the most visually distinctive American films of the 1970s, and is still active today. (Don’t…

Watch Your Step

Had former New Life Church head man Ted Haggard driven along the southern stretch of University Boulevard anytime yesterday, it’s likely he would have felt a burning sensation — in his ears — while passing Calvary Temple. The church was one of the earliest and most successful to venture into…

Lower Highlands Fashion Show

Alert: While in search of culottes (see below) be sure to hit Mona Lucero’s fashion show happening tonight, from 6:30 to 11 p.m. at her boutique, Mona Lucero, 2544 15th Street. Cat loves her place and her beautiful-but-accessible pieces. She can’t wait to see what’s going down the catwalk tonight…

Sans Culottes

No, Cat has not been napping. But what with the election and the four hours and three voting lines she stood in this week, she hasn’t been feeling all that perky and fashionable. Cat thought about sending in a front-line report of the sartorial style at St. Charles Rec Center…

Breaking in the Film Festival

An air of anticipation hung over opening night at the 29th annual Denver Film Festival, which got under way on Thursday at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. Plenty of happy socialites were in attendance, clad in the sort of costumes that are seemingly de rigueur at such events; women favored…

Ed Got the Get

The untimely death of Ed Bradley at 65 from leukemia is one more sad milestone in the diminution of network news. The Wallace-Safer-Bradley team at CBS in its heyday was a gathering of Big News Guys, brimming with smarts and integrity and ferocious teams of young and unfettered producers, the…

Election Imperfection

The smoke has cleared on the elections in Colorado, and a couple of things have become clear: We don’t like Bush, we don’t like pot, and we certainly don’t like queers. But it was quite the circuitous route we took to determining these new truths. Voters around the state waited…

More Messages: Hey, Hey, Paula

One aspect of the Ted Haggard/Mike Jones story that hasn’t gotten much national-spotlight time is the way the tale reached the public in the first place. Jones sat down with 9News investigative reporter Paula Woodward (pictured) and Westword editor Patricia Calhoun over the past two months, but details of the…

Guest Wishes

A muddy path leads up to the equestrian center, where Batman, Spider-Man, pirates and princesses trick-or-treat through a haunted horse stable. Looking up from one of the 130 trash cans he’s been dealing with all day, 52-year-old Antonio Hernandez Acave smiles at the fun, then returns to his job. He…

HDNet Gains

When HDNet, a high-definition network largely based in Denver, announced that it would be teaming with former CBS anchor Dan Rather, questions about the slant of his soon-to-debut show, Dan Rather Reports, quickly bubbled to the surface. But Mark Cuban, the billionaire co-founder of HDNet and owner of the NBA’s…

Speak Now

Boulder’s Twenty Ninth Street retail district held its grand opening in mid-October, and thousands of shoppers strolled along the wide sidewalks and plazas, eyeballing the 875,000 square feet of restaurants, specialty retailers and office space. Built at the intersection of 28th Street and Arapahoe Avenue atop the ruins of the…

The Big Nix

Forty-three states regulate private investigators in one way or another. Colorado isn’t one of them, and state officials aren’t inclined to do anything about it — despite efforts by local private eyes to push for some kind of licensing requirements. “It’s crazy,” says Rick Johnson, a Denver P.I. and president…

Brave New World

I cannot believe that Tina finally punched Beth on the Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Duel! Those minxes have been angling for a catfight for three seasons, but I figured, hey, Beth is a crazy bitch, but if there hadn’t been bloodshed by now, there never would be. And then…

Free Love!

He had to pay for sex? How bad is he in bed?” That’s what Denver favorite Nuclia Waste, the first drag queen ever featured in Forbes (April 2005), wondered as the news oozed out last week that Pastor Ted Haggard had been a regular of male escort Mike Jones. “I…

Letters to the Editor

What’s So Funny?, Adam Cayton-Holland, October 26 And the Pest Is History “Life has meaning when you measure yourself against a worthy challenge.” As rodentia, squirrels, like the poor, shall always be among us. This said, the answers to Adam’s problem are easy: 1) Surrender. Yes, that’s right: Start feeding…

More Messages: There’s Got to Be a Morning After

Yesterday’s election debacle in the Denver metro area was a story custom-made for television — yet somehow, at least a couple of local stations failed to adequately report it. Based on what I was able to catch between watching national matters on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, TV types in…

At at Joe’s…Tokyo Joe’s

I witnessed the kind of chaos that would completely shatter any normal restaurant crew: dining rooms filled to double-capacity, lines stretching out the door, crowds waiting out on the sidewalks and absolutely no room to move on the floor. The Southlands outpost of Tokyo Joe’s is designed like a Ginza…

Apocalypse 2006

My meals at Tokyo Joe’s — which I review in the next issue — were among the least interesting things I found when I braved the wilds of the new Southlands development. The grand-opening festivities were like the Do Loung bridge sequence in Apocalypse Now, a crowded, freaked-out mess about…

An Election Disaster

Polling places are always scary places. It’s where you really learn about humanity and all its foibles. Where you realize that the future of our nation is in the hands of the guy behind you reading the initiatives for the first time and making instant decisions, the woman in front…

MyResults

The final votes have been cast, long hours have been logged tallying numbers, computer glitches have been carefully covered up, and we now have the results of our all-important MyRace gubernatorial election. As you may recall, in our original piece , we promised that whichever candidate garnered the most “friend…

Personal Style: Jack Finlaw

Jack Finlaw, the director of Denver’s Division of Theaters and Arenas, has a handsome collection of cufflinks. He should — he’s been collecting since he was a boy. “I got my first pair when I was nine or ten,” Finlaw says. “I wanted to copy my grandfather.” When he landed…

Pollish Joke

Iraq is arguably the major issue in today’s election — and while the vote in the Denver metro area is going better than the war in that far-away country, the qualitative difference isn’t as sizable as it should be. KOA’s morning show was filled with reports of problems in city…