It is close to midnight on Saturday, and I’m growing impatient. Sitting in the same room for ten hours, surrounded by shifty-eyed strangers and an enveloping cloud of lung-rotting smoke tends to wear on a man’s nerves. I could use a drink. Bourbon on the rocks. Maybe a strong vodka…
1. Got miller moths? This year may — or may not — see a record number of the flappers. According to one expert, the moths are flourishing because: A. They always do well under Republican administrations. B. A mutant strain has been discovered that’s twice as hard to swat. C…
After a long winter hiatus, Johns TV is back — and the timing couldn’t be better. The new season of the half-hour Channel 8 show featuring the beguiling mugs of men (yes, only men so far) convicted of pay-for-play coincides nicely with the mayoral confab that’s in town through Tuesday…
For ages, seemingly, the fight for television-news viewers in Denver has been about as competitive as a bare-knuckles grudge match between Lennox Lewis and Richard Simmons. Channel 9 hasn’t come out on top of every time slot during the past decade-plus, but it’s won the great majority, and usually by…
Every broken-down horseplayer has a hero story to tell, and it never hurts to listen. You could be draining an ice-cold martini in the bar at Siro’s, up at Saratoga, when Frankie Bales sits down to describe the time he parlayed the rail speed at Monmouth into a $12,000 pick…
Moth Likely to Succeed Lip-smacking good: “Westword provides a great community service,” my mom observes as I share with her the May 29 issue. I was in stitches as I slow-framed my way through Kenny Be’s wizardry that so perfectly etched the sinister weasel-as-moth: “Mothkabobs” and that lip-smacking kitty! Joseph…
Jaime diPaulo doesn’t remember much about his dad. They shared the same house, saw each other every day, but when Jaime was a child, his father was practically an apparition. Distant. Unavailable. Unaware. “The man just wasn’t there,” he says. But there’s one memory that still burns white hot after…
A district judge in Arapahoe County who can’t keep up with cases has resorted to paying his grown kids out of his own pocket to do legal research. A Douglas County judge is so far behind that he had to take three boxes of court files with him on a…
These days, when I’m not working, spending time with my daughter or drinking beer, I mainly look forward to the new Harry Potter book. I anticipate escaping into the world of wizards and Muggles so I don’t have to think about how long it’s been since I’ve had sex. It’s…
Rant of the week: Quick, somebody call Jo Farrell! It looks like this year’s mayoral candidates aren’t the only Denverites in need of a makeover. This city’s been outed as, well, fashion-challenged by a recent visitor. Sure, the style here has always been more sporty than slick, less urban fashionista…
Earlier this month, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Colorado branch lauded the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News for “keeping alive the spirit of competition” after the papers entered into a money marriage via a joint operating agreement. In truth, the Rocky deserves more credit for fighting on, since…
Ask a baseball player why he plays, and he’ll tell you it’s because he loves the game, always has. Football players are usually driven by a passion for their sport, too. “When I stop enjoying the game,” the running back with aching knees will say, “I’ll know it’s time to…
Out in Left Field Smarm school: Wuxtry! Wuxtry! In the May 22 Message, Westword’s Michael Roberts breathlessly reports that the New York Times’s Jayson Blair scandal leaves readers with the “impression that papers tilt major stories.” What’s the difference between a reporter using his invisible friends as sources and the…
1. Despite all those scary headlines, it now appears this may not be a big miller moth season. Why? A Colorado State University entomologist summed it up with this: A. “Pesticides, pesticides and more pesticides.” B. “A major attack squadron of red-wing blackbirds took them out.” C. “There weren’t as…
“Welcome to the John Inmann Work and Family Center. Welcome home.” Mario Salinas stands in a cramped conference room, studying the faces of the eight men and one woman gathered around the table. It’s half-past nine on a Tuesday morning, but the director’s orientation speech always begins the same way…
Atif Gamal can open the door or close it. Either way, he loses. If he keeps the door closed, the walls start to close in on him. His room at the 11th Avenue Hotel is not much larger than the average prison cell, and he’s had enough of prison life…
Aboveground, the Olinger Mortuary in Highland looks like any historic building under renovation: drywall, exposed two-by-fours, boarded-up windows, tools littered everywhere. The mortuary’s history is masked. It’s sunny here. Spacious. Peaceful, even. It seems so, well, not scary. So when Paul Tamburello, co-owner and developer of Olinger’s, suggests a tour…
For Vince Phason, his 1987 GMC school bus was much more than just a set of wheels. Phason used the bus to travel all over town. To transport the kids he coached in football to games and practice. To get to Metro State, where he was studying social work. To…
He kissed her. She kissed him back. He did a tequila shot off her bare breast. She did shots off another guy in the room. She said she was too drunk to consent to what happened later. He said he was, too. Now Douglas Meester could face life in prison…
1. No memorial for him: About-to-be-sacked Crush coach Bob Beers said this as he walked off the field following his 2-14 team’s final loss: A. “A few bounces here and there, and we’d have been 3-13.” B. “Sometimes you eat the bear; sometimes the bear eats you.” C. “I think…
Westword Cafe critic Jason Sheehan brought home the bacon this month when he took first place in the Newspaper Restaurant Review or Critique category of the James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards, which honor the country’s best food writers. But that wasn’t Westword’s only national win. Last week, staff writer Julie…
Colorado’s Republicans keep insisting that Karl Rove, chief policy advisor to President George W. Bush, had nothing — absolutely nothing! — to do with that surprise redistricting proposal at the General Assembly, a move that conveniently tossed Mike Feeley right out of the seventh, which he almost took from Bob…
