“A miserable yellow melancholy stream”–that’s how Mark Twain saw the Platte River. In his book Roughing It, Twain described his first encounter with the pathetic little trickle, which fellow travelers had the nerve to say was “up.” If that was so, Twain replied, he’d hate to see it when it…
Screen Gems Regarding Chris LaMorte’s “Tune In and Turn On,” September 12: What was your reporter on when he picked out the “news babes”? Marcia Neville a news babe? Far from it. Let’s see the Women of Westword! Derek Mooneyham via the Internet A Ted-Letter Day I enjoyed Robin Chotzinoff’s…
Seven years ago, the Colorado legislature passed a law designed to put the bite on convicted criminals. The concept was sterling: to force lawbreakers who had money to reimburse the state or the county for the cost of their incarceration. In theory, such a bill would offset the cost of…
Ruth Blackmore leads a few of her south Boulder neighbors on a field trip, down a path she’s taken many, many times before. The excursion begins in a vacant field a few blocks from her home, where the trail is hemmed in by knee-high weeds and skittering grasshoppers; crosses a…
Did a math instructor at the Community College of Aurora whistleblow herself out of a job? For the past three years Katherine Mills has railed unsuccessfully against a colleague named George Bruner, whom she claimed was unqualified to teach anthropology because he doesn’t hold a degree in the field. Two…
All bets are off: Ten years ago, when Mike Plante was hired to manage a renovated warehouse at 15th and Platte streets owned by a bunch of Texas doctors, he never imagined himself someday owning the place–much less running a restaurant/ club that takes up a quarter of the space…
But at Denver International Airport, London’s still calling–and taxpayers are being asked to answer. Denver is the largest American market without nonstop airline service to the United Kingdom. So the city’s aviation department has spent tens of thousands of dollars in recent years trying to land a British Airways flight…
Characters in soap operas have phony first names like Blake and Krystle and Fallon and Caress–names no one else has. Real people have real names like Sandis and Uwe and Sylvain–you know, everyday names. The characters in soap operas are always trying to screw other characters in the bedroom or…
X Marks the Spat Will someone please tell Patricia Calhoun that it’s time to get over it? I appreciate the sentiment in her September 12 column, “Nip It in the Bud,” but the May D&F paraboloid is gone–and Adam’s Mark is still here. Some of us think the expanded hotel…
United States Senator Benjamin “Ben” Nighthorse Campbell is working the crowd at the Colorado State Fair when a man approaches with his hand outstretched. “Ben, I wanted to thank you–you really saved our butts this time,” he says, pumping the senator’s hand. The man is Ray Kogovsek, former U.S. representative…
Bob and Meredith Norton opened Parker Funeral Home three years ago, hoping to capitalize on one inevitable aspect of Douglas County’s rapid population growth. But they’ve found that their business is deader than they think it should be, and they’re crying foul. Bob Norton claims there’s no mystery. He points…
Flying blind: Former Denver mayor and current Transportation secretary Federico Pena, whose image took a dive along with ValuJet, may regain some much-needed polish when he accepts a Hispanic Heritage Award at the Kennedy Center later this month. Pena’s award will be presented by–no, not Pee-wee Herman–Esai Morales, who plays…
The families of three Maryland murder victims lost the first round in a wrongful-death suit against Boulder’s Paladin Press, but their attorneys vow to keep their teeth in Paladin’s nether regions for years to come. “We will continue to litigate this case until we reach the last court and the…
Let’s face it. When Denver’s suppertime TV news junkies think of Channel 4’s Aimee Sporer, the station’s hard-hitting “Mall Watch” segment probably doesn’t leap to mind. Instead, viewers are reminded of the regional Emmy award-winner’s less journalistic attributes: her flaxen hair, her milky skin and, of course, those luminescent baby…
A dispute over the future of a valuable piece of city-owned real estate across the street from Larimer Square has forced Denver officials to back down from plans to sell the property to developers. If downtown residents have their way, Denver will have a new park and history center instead…
Salt this name away, Rockies fans: Scott Randall. As the club’s fourth season winds down with an ineffectual bang (four Bombers with a hundred RBIs each–first time in the National League since 1929) and a resounding whimper (8 million bucks’ worth of Saberhagen and Swift still on the shelf), you…
The Rockies May Crumble… After reading Patricia Calhoun’s “Stealing Home,” in the September 5 issue, I have to ask: What’s next? Will the Colorado Rockies try to seize a certain mountain range because its name is too close to that of the team? I’m a lot more worried about what…
A gentleman entered a busy florist shop that displayed a large sign that read, “Say it with flowers.” “Wrap up one rose,” he told the florist. “Only one?” asked the florist. “Just one,” the customer replied. “I’m a man of few words.” The laughs are few and far between these…
When the Colorado Convention Center was dedicated on a spring day in 1990, the promises flew as fast and furious as a March snowstorm. Politicians who had spent years campaigning for the new center didn’t disguise their delight with the opening of the tenth largest convention center in the United…
The day was chilly, Teri Ralya recalls, when she returned to her Arvada apartment in March 1994 to air out the pesticides that had been sprayed there that morning. As she opened up all the windows in her third-story unit and switched on the stove’s exhaust fan, she hoped that…
The thigh’s the limit: Toe-sucking Dick Morris, the just-deposed Bill Clinton campaign strategist whose extracurricular efforts with a prostitute are splashed across the Star this week, once displayed his fancy footwork here in Denver. Back in 1983, when six candidates were challenging longtime mayor Bill McNichols (including then-state bureaucrat Wellington…
If you walk along the quaint quarter-mile stretch of Main Street in downtown Lyons, you can find a florist, a handful of antique dealers, Germanic knickknacks, a hearty omelet at the Gateway Cafe and the prototype for a radical new internal-combustion engine. Vern Newbold invented it; engineers from around the…
