More Messages: Fortunate Son

When does a regular-season high-school football matchup receive as much coverage in these parts as a Denver Broncos game? When the prep contest features the debut as starting quarterback of Jack Elway, son of Broncos Hall of Famer John Elway. Too bad the media’s coverage of Cherry Creek’s August 31…

The Impersonator

It was near midnight on Friday, July 14, and the blue and red lights chased each other across the intersection in a delirious rotation. The cause of the hustle was a blue SUV that lay on its side like a tin mailbox that had been kicked down the street and…

Canceled

It’s all over but the blaming — and while the blaming could drag out for a long, long time, we should all be grateful that John Mark Karr’s role in the seemingly endless JonBenét Ramsey saga was mercifully brief. Already, many of the cable-news programs delving into Karr’s background were…

Student Council

See if you can figure out this dream. I’m in the swank penthouse of a mammoth New York City hotel, and my whole family is there: mom, dad, both sisters. They’re occupying themselves the way peripheral characters in dreams tend to, and I’ve got my eyes glued to the horizon,…

Top of the Town

Kersten Hostetter commands attention with words so soft and slow they’re almost a whisper. It’s as if she’s always about to share a secret. Today her secret is Micro Business Development’s new Center for Economic Independence. She knows this building is not what a non-profit organization’s home typically looks like,…

Follow That Story

The girl was twelve on August 7, 2004, when she told Aurora police how four men, all immigrants from Honduras, had overpowered her at the Heatherwood Apartments, pulling off her clothes, fondling her, penetrating her body with their fingers, then raping her. The cops found the girl’s shoes, socks and…

X Marks the Spat

Maxim magazine wants to tighten the straps on its scantily clad brand, and the lad rag recently filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit in Florida District Court against Maxxim Men’s Club and Steakhouse, a Tampa strip joint. But while this might seem to bode bad news for the Maxim, a “show club…

Letters to the Editor

The Mouth That Roared Talk is cheap: Regarding Adam Cayton-Holland’s “Lord of Discipline,” in the August 24 issue: The article about Rory Vaden was fascinating. I wish him well, but I also worry about him. An obsession with any one concept, including discipline, is sure to have a shadow side…

More Messages: JonBenet Hits Wall Street

Now that even the Boulder district attorney’s office agrees that John Mark Karr’s confession in the JonBenet Ramsey case was bogus, media consumers thoroughly tired of the topic are looking forward to a well-deserved respite from coverage of the nearly ten-year-old murder investigation. They shouldn’t expect this break to be…

More Messages: The Invited

Shortly after revealing that John Mark Karr had been cleared of complicity in the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, Boulder authorities announced that Boulder district attorney Mary Lacy (pictured) would star in a press conference at 10 a.m. today — and restrictions placed upon attendance immediately raised the hackles of…

Who’s Got Games?

Although Sunday’s preseason pairing between the Denver Broncos and the Houston Texans aired locally on Channel 31, coverage was actually provided by the NFL Network, a venture owned and operated by the National Football League. This fiduciary relationship may explain why the broadcast team of Spero Dedes and Sterling Sharpe…

More Messages: Scouting Report

Many mistakes in newspaper stories are minor: misspelled words, transposed numbers on an address, etc. Others rise to a more elevated level — but precious few scale the heights of unfortunateness reached by an item in the August 24 Rocky Mountain News. The gaffe in question was contained in a…

More Messages: Flighty

John Mark Karr finally made it to Colorado yesterday, thanks to a Beech King Air turboprop that Governor Bill Owens sometimes uses — and for connoisseurs of foolish media behavior, the way he got here was half the fun. As documented in this amusing Rocky Mountain News article, much of…

More Messages: The Write Stuff, Mark III

The JonBenet Ramsey-obsessed Denver dailies have spilled more ink about handwriting in the past three days than they probably did in the previous three years. On August 22, the Rocky Mountain News published a piece that ballyhooed Texas-based handwriting pro Curt Baggett’s near-certainty that suspect John Mark Karr had penned…

Lord of Discipline

Rory Vaden does not believe in luck. More than anything else, he believes in discipline. It’s his mantra, his ethos, the single factor responsible for everything that he has achieved so far in his young life, and for everything that he will achieve. In a blog entry on www.disciplinedynamic.com, his…

Rapping With Rory

You might think it’s hard for a 24-year-old who doesn’t binge-drink or do drugs and is staying celibate until marriage to relate to the rest of Gen Y. But Rory Vaden is down, as evidenced by this April 12 entry on his blog, titled “Discipline of Rap”: Believe it or…

She’s Back

There was never any danger of the Rocky Mountain News underplaying the August 16 arrest of alleged child-porn fan John Mark Karr in the 1996 slaying of JonBenét Ramsey. After all, the paper’s previous coverage of this tragic episode had exhibited all the quiet subtlety of Celine Dion at a…

You’re My Boy, Blue

As the rest of the country watched Last Comic Standing, fell in love with Josh Blue and on August 9 voted him the winner, the people of Denver thought one thing: “Isn’t that the same Josh Blue who appeared on the cover of Westword a year ago?” Trust me, that’s…

Viva La Slammer

Viva La Slammer Although the folks at ManiaTV! haven’t stopped inviting guests to appear on their Internet-television station, no one would blame them if they did. On August 14, the Denver-based outfit abruptly canceled a telethon with former Saved by the Bell oddball Dustin “Screech” Diamond; ManiaTV! reps had been…

McDogooder

“That was a perfect ball!” exclaims Steve Bigari as his bowling ball, customized in orange flames, rockets up his lane and sends all ten of his pins pirouetting through the air with a satisfying crack. “There’s a lot of move to it, man!!” Bigari’s eyes gleam, just like they used…

One for the Home Team

Slam Bam It was the ultimate steel-cage death match — but with performance poetry. “It’s all these eccentric artists that get together, and a lot of times there are some pretty big egos that get involved,” explains Ebony “Isis” Booth, one of the five members of the Denver Slam Team…

Letters to the Editor

Ziggy the Pinhead Marley’s ghost: In the cover blurb for Joel Warner’s Evan Hecox story (“On Target,” August 17), you list several people who’ve recently inked deals with Target. But you forgot the most offensive one. As anyone who is forced to listen to KBCO knows, the money-grubbing, talentless son…