What’s So Funny was in a fraternity. Straight up and down, Sheldon. Can I call you Sheldon? Doesn’t matter, Sheldon, because the thing was, my fraternity was not very frat-like. There were no shirtless meatheads tossing a football around outside the house. Date-rape scandals were non-existent, and the recruitment process…
The first woman is an anti-abortion protester who Rocky Mountain News columnist Bill Johnson says repeatedly threatened him over a two-year period. The second woman is an e-mailer who thinks the protester is fictional — and although Johnson insists otherwise, he was worn down by her persistence. Earlier this month,…
Fed Up All’s well that ends oil: It was a very nice surprise to read Alan Prendergast’s “Duke of Oil” article in the September 8 issue, very reassuring to know there are federal employees like Bobby Maxwell who are dedicated to serving the public interest. His work has demonstrated integrity…
“Rise, rise, shake your hips and move your thighs. You wanna see, you wanna see, see the Bolts come alive. Do it!” Two decades after graduating from Manual High School, Anna Jones still remembers her alma mater’s pep cheer. “I was such a white girl, but going to Manual taught…
Rats. That’s what many of the neighbors remember about the early days of Chamberlain Heights. And when it wasn’t the rats, it was the hos — crack or otherwise — who moved into their yards after construction took over the abandoned lot at East Colfax Avenue and Steele Street that…
Malissa and Scott Spero Owners, ArmAzem Bookstore & Cafe 3215 East Colfax Avenue Years on Colfax: One week (they just bought the business) “We spent a year teaching ESL in Korea, and we were dreaming about owning a coffee shop. When we got back, Scott saw an ad on Craig’s…
For 28 years, Bobby Maxwell crunched big numbers for the government. He wielded a calculator with patience and determination for the Minerals Management Service, a branch of the Department of the Interior responsible for collecting royalties on oil, gas and mineral leases on federal lands, Indian reservations and offshore waters…
In 2001, under then-director Joe Allbaugh — who’d headed George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign — the Federal Emergency Management Agency predicted that a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was one of the three most likely, “most catastrophic disasters facing this country.” When Allbaugh left the agency — to consult…
Sometimes it takes a little time apart from a person to make you really notice what’s changed about him. If you see someone every day, you’re not going to realize that he’s gotten taller or that he finally had a voice box installed in place of the festering hole in…
The cover illustration for August’s Toilet Paper seems calculated to offend as many constituencies as possible in the free monthly’s Colorado Springs base of operations. Labeled “The Fashions of the Christ,” the drawing (by an artist who calls himself XT) spotlighted a “Commando Crusader” series of refrigerator magnets built around…
My Blue Heaven The joke’s on us: I love Josh Blue! I love Adam Cayton-Holland for writing “Kind of Blue,” and Westword for putting him on the cover of the September 1 issue. Josh is not only inspiring, but he is — as Adam says — fucking funny. Period. Laura…
Todd Hennis is not the sort of man to underestimate the dangers of wandering solo through an abandoned mine. The first time he went into the Mogul, a once-thriving gold mine high in the San Juans above Silverton, he took a professional crew from Utah with him to do an…
I can’t get over the new elevators. Even coated with layers of drywall dust and construction plastic, they’re an improvement — make that a miraculous improvement — over the last elevators here. They’re lit, for one thing. No Nazi swastikas are carved into the walls, for another. And there’s no…
Fifteen minutes before Friday’s eight o’clock show at the Comedy Works, the line stretches nearly to Larimer Street. Tammy Pescatelli from Last Comic Standing is in town, and she’s attracted a sell-out crowd of primarily white suburbanites excited about a night out in the city. Pascatelli travels with no openers,…
“If they define gonzo journalism as journalism where the writer is an integral part of the story, then you guys are gonzo filmmakers,” a Woody Creek Tavern patron told Haylar Garcia, Darcy Grabowski and Scott Baxendale — the trio behind the documentary Do It for Johnny — on August 20,…
First Zippy the Pinhead, now this. No sooner had Lawrence Argent recovered from the honor of seeing Bill Griffith feature “I See What You Mean,” the forty-foot blue bear that has been standing guard over the Colorado Convention Center since July, in his August 22 “Bear Market” Zippy strip, than…
Broadway bums beat the pants off of Colfax bums. Sometimes literally. The overlap in these derelict Venn diagrams usually occurs near where the streets intersect at Civic Center Park, much to the well-documented horror of Japanese tour groups. And the incidents generally go like this: Colfax bum randomly encounters a…
“I’m very positive about DCTV carrying on,” declares Paul Fiorino, a producer and liaison to the board of directors at Denver Community Television, the embattled nonprofit that runs the city’s community-access channels. “We have all the resources we need to make great things happen. Now we just need the money.”…
A Funny Thing Milking the joke: Adam Cayton-Holland, you fucking kill me! I’m serious — I still have your side-splitting bit on Carmelo’s plate-tectonic hydroponic chronic saved in my favorites. Last week’s What’s So Funny on Mile High Milk was likewise pure hilarity. Keep it rolling — you’re a badass…
Session two of Project Igloo is scheduled to begin any minute. My designated driver and I push through the wide glass doors of the Courtyard by Marriott in Superior at exactly 7:30 p.m. Although it could be from the chlorine wafting in from the hotel pool, we can already feel…
I figured I was up for some experimentation. I’m secure in my own identity and all, but I’m also a young guy in his prime. So why not try something a little risqué? Truth be told, I was malt-curious. And the Nob Hill Inn on East Colfax Avenue seemed like…
When all hell broke loose last year at the Crowley County Correctional Facility, a private prison on Colorado’s eastern plains, Vance Adams stayed very, very quiet. From his cell door, Adams could see prisoners armed with weight bars running in and out of his unit, smashing windows, busting up plumbing,…
