Legislators like to give the impression that they are part of a sacred mission. Working in dark-paneled chambers filled with high-minded speechifying, they create the laws that drive social policy, behavior and morality, all for the greater public good. Right. In reality, legislators can get awfully personal. So can their…
We help injured people…that’s our job!” “I know how to handle insurance companies; I used to be their attorney!” “I will fight for your rights!” “Been in an accident? Got your check yet?” On the tube there’s the guy in the tank who runs over a car, the woman in…
It’s one hell of a way to get ahold of somebody. But more than twenty years after US West assigned a devilish prefix to telephone users in the towns of Louisville and Lafayette, the communities are still getting their kicks dialing 666. Over the years, the numerical sequence has inspired…
That’s rich! Now that the Rocky Mountain News has cut back on its distribution area, it’s not as much fun to compare the two dailies’ creative-writing efforts that “interpret” the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Not surprisingly, both the News and the Denver Post found something to…
Students left out in the cold when Barnes Business College closed its doors last August may find their student loans forgiven by the state. Colorado taxpayers may not be so forgiving: Since the school’s owner declared bankruptcy, they’re the ones who will have to foot the bill. According to C…
The metro area’s startling growth rate has alarmed Coloradans the past few years, as new subdivisions and mini-marts crowd valleys and hillsides from Longmont to Castle Rock. But a little-noticed effort by local cities to constrain urban sprawl–by drawing a line around Denver and daring developers to step across it–may…
It could be worse. This could be Boston. Or Cincinnati. Or Detroit. Or Kansas City. As it is, Denver, the Rocky Mountain West and assorted cornfields in Nebraska probably now have the ballclub they expected to have long before they got it. A club whose two most talented and expensive…
You are at a formal event, in heels and a sequined gown, when nature calls. Does the fact that you have a penis prevent you from using the ladies’ room? Not in Denver, it shouldn’t. But apparently it’s easier to dance backward in a tight dress and high heels than…
Attitude Adjustment Michelle Dally Johnston’s story “Adopting an Attitude,” in the April 25 issue, was mean-spirited, inaccurate and biased. (Whatever happened to the tradition of objective reporting?) She said there were 42 private adoption agencies in Colorado and then proceeded to lump them all together as incompetent, overpriced and non-essential…
After a long run, an athlete is chewing the fat. “Fifty-two-point-five miles,” Matt Reilly reports from Portland. “Yeah, I finished the race. It took me eleven hours, and I seem to have run until my butt cheeks chafed. You want a quote? Here: Chicks dig guys who run ultra-marathons.” “How…
Kiowa, the county seat of Elbert County, is tucked in a cottonwood-lined valley half an hour east of Castle Rock on state highway 86. The town of 300 consists of a few blocks of homes on each side of the highway, which also serves as Kiowa’s main street. On a…
Officials at Denver International Airport are moving forward with plans for major work on the baggage system in Concourse A, even though the carriers who use the concourse say they’re happy with the system they have and don’t want to pay for new construction. The expenditure also comes amid persistent…
Faculty members at the University of Oklahoma journalism school are split over Melissa Klinzing’s decision to leave an Oklahoma City television station to accept a post as news director for KMGH/Channel 7 in Denver. Assistant professor Bill Loving says that some of his colleagues were delighted to hear that Klinzing–who…
There auto be a law: If April wasn’t the cruelest month for lawyer Joseph Patrick Madigan, it sure came close. On April 8, the Colorado Supreme Court ordered Madigan disbarred from the practice of law for three years. Not only had Madigan “effectively abandoned” a client–Donna Carlton, owner of Consolidated…
Mickey Fantauzzi was on the phone with her mother last September when she heard someone knock quietly on her front door in Capitol Hill’s 26-unit Dalton Apartments. Before she could end her conversation, replace the phone in its cradle and walk the ten feet from the bedroom to the hallway,…
Employees say Guadalupe “Lupe” Salinas occasionally walked around Denver’s Social Security Administration office downtown crowing about his job and his good fortune. “Oh, it feels so good to be king!” the regional commissioner reportedly would say. The king is dead. Salinas, who was appointed commissioner of the agency’s six-state Denver…
To hear Ernie Paragallo tell it, he owns the fastest three-year-old on the face of the earth–maybe in the history of the universe. “I don’t think he’ll be beaten again,” Ernie boasted last week. “Ever?” a reporter asked. “Ever,” the owner said. Now, if you’d like to take that to…
In the fall of 1988, life in Denver was anything but a Rocky Mountain high. The economy had been down so long that replacing a perfectly fine airport with a giant public-works project half an hour from downtown seemed like a swell idea. Houses were selling–when they were selling at…
A Landmark Decision Regarding Steve Jackson’s “True Believers,” in the April 18 issue: I am a regular reader of Westword. Since I am a human being and have my own opinions, I don’t always agree with everything that is written in your paper. However, that hasn’t stopped me from continuing…
Every time Joley Cole hears one of her neighbors say “Joley did it the easy way–she adopted,” she wants to spit. Four years ago the Denver woman and her husband spent more than $12,000 and what felt like a lifetime answering personal questions and being examined in order to adopt…
The medical establishment grits its teeth when it hears Hal Huggins’s name. Dentists, scientists and patients regard the Colorado Springs dentist as a brilliant contrarian or a charlatan, with little shading in between. And State Administrative Law Judge Nancy Connick had no problem making up her mind, either. Although Huggins…
Rush to judgment: Boulder’s Aaron Harber was a popular fellow at the National Association of Broadcasters’ convention in Las Vegas last week. That’s because the johnny-come-lately to talk radio had just beaten Rush Limbaugh–in the courtroom, if not in the ratings. Twenty months after Limbaugh’s attorneys sued Harber for $20…
