The Westword.com blog shortcut, October 27 edition

David Eugene Edwards of Wovenhand. Blogs are everywhere — and you can get to them here. Today in Backbeat Online: • A live review of Wovenhand at the Mercury Cafe. • Remembering Rudy Ray Moore, the epically profane star of Dolemite: a Westword profile. Today in Cafe Society: • Is…

The scent of money at the Colorado Lottery

Flower power. Flowers are expensive, what with the economy and all. So why not buy the next best thing: the $3 Crossword Bouquet from the Colorado Lottery! Well, “the next best thing” might be stretching it. But the latest scratch ‘n’ sniff lotto ticket certainly smells more strongly than the…

Focus on the Family’s nightmare scenario about an Obama victory

If Barack Obama is elected, Focus on the Family thinks we’re in for a hell of a time. Here in Colorado, the conservative Christian forces trying to prevent the election of Barack Obama aren’t limited to the Colorado Family Institute, the organization behind The Colorado View newspaper featured in the…

Crowd estimates at Obama speech: off by at least one

Not quite sky-high for Obama — but at least branch-high. The October 27 Rocky Mountain News features “Crowd Was Big, But Just How Big?,” an amusing and timely piece about the difficulty of estimating the number of folks who actually watched Barack Obama deliver a speech at Civic Center yesterday,…

Fee-nominal Frontier flight

Pay to Play. It’s October, and I keep meaning to bring my kids to a corn maze. But I haven’t so far – what with the economy and all. Anyway, earlier this month, I had to take a last-minute trip to California for a family emergency and encountered a maze…

Sorry, Obama doesn’t run with the wolves

Wolves found no sanctuary at CSU Sunday. Barack Obama’s appearances in Denver and Fort Collins on October 26 set records for starstruck crowds and creative guesstimates of crowd size by reporters. But the Democratic presidential hopeful’s latest swing through our candidate-besieged state (you’d think we had ninety electoral votes here,…

The banners at the eminent-domain poster business are still flying

Hop aboard the “Never Surrender” bandwagon — er, cart. The banners and signs on view outside Pro-Tint, located at 1398 Wadsworth Boulevard, don’t have anything to do with the window-tinting services the business provides. Rather, they’re all about an RTD plan to seize the operation as part of its expansion…

Buttoned Up: Stop climbing mountains, Bob Kennedy

WTF? Editor’s note: To get you in the mood for ballot-casting, The Latest Word is kicking off each weekday between now and the November 4 election with Buttoned Up, a look at political buttons from my family’s extensive collection… Here’s another mystery button, this one related to Robert F. Kennedy…

The Westword.com blog shortcut, October 24 edition

Caleb Followill, a King of Leon. Here are some more blogs that really click. Today in Backbeat Online: • A live review of Kings of Leon at the Fillmore Auditorium. Today in Cafe Society: • Tyler Nemkov gets hot and bothered over Sexy Pizza. • Lew Cady shares more Wynkoop…

Denver’s mysterious birthday billboards

Will who? You may have noticed them around town, these maddeningly cryptic black billboards that display only one word: “WILL,” decorated with a simple white hat resting on the bottom of the second “L.” At first, I assumed they must be political messages, because who else is posting billboards these…

Denver Independent newspaper announces impending launch

The banner from the DenverIndependent.com website. It’s hard to imagine a worse time to launch a newspaper — but that’s precisely what Randall Lichner says he’s going to do. Despite the struggling economy and the surplus of publications in the area, he plans to have a paper he’s dubbed the…

Papa’s got a brand new Denver Water tote bag

That’s another nickel off my bill at King Soopers, suckas! On September 23, I wrote “Paying for Conservation at Denver Water,” a blog that juxtaposed Denver Water’s energetic advertising campaign with reports that the agency was considering a robust rate hike. Along the way, I mentioned the availability of free…

Denver Open Media hosts “New Frontiers in Community Media” conference

Tony Shawcross. “Tony Shawcross Saved Public-Access TV in Denver,” a July 8 Message column, reported about how Shawcross and his associates created Denver Open Media, an entity that rescued public-access television in the metro area. No wonder the organization was chosen to host “Access Without Borders: New Frontiers in Community…

KBPI’s Willie B. lands a reality-TV gig

Willie B. During his time at KBPI, Stephen Meade, better known to the station’s listeners as Willie B., has generated plenty of headlines — not all of them positive. Remember the controversy over a Willie-led “mudfest” near Nederland — a publicity nightmare chronicled in the October 2000 Message column “KPBI…

A vote for voting early in Denver

The early bird catches the “I Voted” sticker. Early voting. Early voting. Blah, blah, blah. I hear it every day. Everyone suggests it because it’s easier and you can avoid the lines. Mayor Hickenlooper voted on Wednesday. Somehow, I never seem to get around to voting early, however. Maybe it’s…

Hillary Clinton on AM760 this afternoon

“I really want Obama to win. I swear.” Sorry to break it to you, Hillary — but this is what happens when you almost but don’t quite win the Democratic nomination for president. Instead of getting a chance to speak on popular radio stations like KOA and KHOW (as John…

Buttoned Up: Dukakis and Bentsen, stylish losers

Ooh, pretty. Editor’s note: To get you in the mood for ballot-casting, The Latest Word is kicking off each weekday between now and the November 4 election with Buttoned Up, a look at political buttons from my family’s extensive collection… The buttons pressed to promote the 1988 presidential team of…